Digital Commons Network^™

Problematizing A Hegemonic English: An Assessment Of Language Use And Diversity In A Nation Of Immigrant Communities, Charlotte Choat

Honors Projects

The increasing development of language diglossia between global English and local languages around the world raises questions of how the American linguistic character will react. In a culture defined by its lack of ethnolinguistic definition, can language localization occur? A study of language development in America requires a historical assessment of language contact, discourse, and dominance. The present state of American English is not the natural result or authentic representation of America’s population, but the outcome of language restrictionism and resource disparity enforced on many ethnolinguistic groups throughout American history. In the modern era of intensified immigration, ethnolinguistic diversity is …

Sociology: Culture, Marcia Morrison

Open Educational Resources

This work examine culture. It begins by examining the foundations of culture to include norms, values, language, symbols and knowledge. In looking at each, it breaks down the implication of each to the development of ourselves as well as the person in the environment. It moves on to look at contexts of culture such as dominant cultures juxtapose to competing cultural systems, and how the various elements of culture can serve to either promote or minimize the various cultural constructs within society.

Anita’S Plight: Challenging Low Expectations For A Black Girl In A Montreal High School, Lerona Dana Lewis Dr.

The Qualitative Report

In this paper, I examine how a Black adolescent girl in a Montreal high school contests low teacher expectations that resulted in her being directed to a vocational program (Formation à un métier semi-spécialisé, FMS) in her high school. The FMS program prepares children for entry-level careers, defined in the Quebec curriculum as semi-skilled jobs. I (re)present her account in the form of a narrative found poem that explores how the use of found poetry as a heuristic device improves understanding of the school practices impacting the student’s placement in the FMS program. The found poem offers a critical reading …

Objects Into Things: The Ordinary Into Extraordinary, Michael K. Yirenkyi

Masters Theses

The most intimate experience of architecture starts at the scale of the object, from the slight grazing past the sofa to the painful bump of the toe against the legs of the sharply angled table. These objects have become a huge part of our everyday life and how we navigate the world around us, especially in the home where we spend the most time with them. Yet how many of us are truly aware when we engage with these objects. In a methodology deeply rooted in the design of objects into things, ideas investigated through this process are situated in …

Gradiance: A Mindfulness Intervention, Kip Geddes

Masters Theses

People in cities live life at a fast paced forward march that results in a mental state called ‘hurry sickness’. This prevents them from living in the moment, which often leads to a disconnection to those around them. Mindfulness techniques have been proven to increase people’s levels of happiness and openness to the people around them. However, many people are too busy to practice these methods. My thesis looks at ways for mindfulness to intervene into their established routines. Illumination has been shown to promote mental well-being, either in therapy lamps, or circadian rhythm based lighting; the liminal spaces that …

Time Reclamation, Yuming Hu

Masters Theses

In today’s involution culture or “internal competition”, epitomized by China’s 996 work schedule, time is tracked like a quota rather than lived. Drawing on Camus’ call to make one’s very existence a quiet act of rebellion, this thesis answers alienated time with multisensory design.

Four interventions, the Thermochromic Table, Blinds Light, Dappled Shadows Light, and a haptic Squeeze Timer, using temperature, light, shadow, and touch to stage brief “moments of awareness.”

Instead of urging users to optimize every second, these objects invite them to pause, feel, and enjoy time. Each prototype softens the clock’s rigid tick into a gentle cue, …

Jotographía // Fagtography: On Amor Propio Radical // Radical Self-Love, Jonathan Erick Guzman

Masters Theses

“Jotographía // Fagtography: On Amor Propio Radical // Radical Self-Love” is an interdisciplinary thesis that explores the intersections of queer Chicanx identity, photography, and performance as technologies of survival and self-construction. I construct a speculative archive of Chicanx queer experience through my tripartite personas: Barbí, Luke, and myself—collectively, the Guzman Triplets.

Through these embodied avatars, I embrace rasquachismo, camp, Catholic iconography, and hybrid photographic processes—including Polaroids, AI-manipulated imagery, anthotypes, and installation—to investigate visibility, fragmentation, and ancestral memory. Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa’s frameworks of la herida abierta and nepantla, José Esteban Muñoz’s concepts of disidentification and queer futurity, and bell …

The Navel Of The Dream, Ella C. Baum

Masters Theses

The images in The Navel of the Dream evoke a state of groundlessness. In this body of work, photographs act as thresholds between what is seen and what is felt, between daydreams and nightmares, and memories and myths. The camera is used as a means to engage with feelings of loss, and reenact the mythos of childhood, as well as the deep waters of the subconscious.

Created in Southern Sweden between 2022 and 2025, these photographs investigate the fallow winter landscape, the liminal space of deep, dark Scandinavian nights and the transformative qualities of ice, snow and …

Eco-Posthumanism — A Utopian Transformation Of Modernist Residence, Shuli Wu

Masters Theses

The Eco-Posthuman Manifesto, in this thesis, serves as a framework for spatial transformation within the context of the Anthropocene. As of 2020, the weight of human-made matter has surpassed all living biomass. This shift is both material and symbolic. It exposes the consequences of human-centered development and calls for a rethinking of architecture’s relationship with life, time, and ecology. Taking the Barbican Estate as a case study, the thesis proposes a 100-year transformation, shifting the site from a concrete, human-optimized housing complex to a living biome shared by humans, non-humans, and embedded technologies. Through design strategies such as Miyawaki afforestation, …

Ib-Adat, Anum Naseer

Masters Theses

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Unnatural Nature: A Visual Artist’S Reflection On Myth, Medium, And Feminine Being, Rong Xu

Masters Theses

My artistic journey has been guided by a childhood fascination with mythology and how our ancestors interpreted the natural world. As my practice evolved toward digital media, I began questioning what "nature" truly means—is it an objective reality or a construct filtered through cultural lenses and personal experience?

The transition from traditional to digital tools—from physical brushes to Apple Pencil and Wacom stylus—removed much of the spontaneous dialogue with materials that once mirrored nature's own randomness. While I initially celebrated my ability to simulate traditional techniques digitally, I now recognize this transformation demands a fundamental reconsideration of how artists connect …

The Red Thread: Objects As Medium, Hsin-Ning Alin Yang

Masters Theses

There are moments when people hesitate to speak their emotions or needs
—whether it’s love that feels too shy to articulate, needs that risk sounding too forceful, or feelings too vague to verbalize. By shifting the priority of emotion and communication factor ahead of pure functionality, this thesis posits that objects can serve as an alternative medium of communication.

This thesis begins by examining the root causes of communication difficulties and the coping strategies people use, ultimately identifying five situations in which objects can effectively substitute for verbal interaction. Building on these categories, the thesis explores how an object’s features, …

Restoring Qi In Urbanism: Restoring Spatial Connectivity And Energy Dynamics Through Landscape Intervention, Jiaqi Pan

Masters Theses

This thesis explores how Taoist “Qi”, a dynamic energy flow, can provide a productive lens for approaching contemporary landscape architecture.

Taking the ancient city of Tai’an in China as a case study, I analyze the historical changes made to its Qi network at the urban scale. This draws a carrier theory that Qi could be examined by water connectivity and spatial porosity. Thereby, I further establish the dynamic network relationship between landscape factors and Qi.

Blending ancient philosophy with modern ecological thinking, I proposed Qi carrier theory for healing Qi ruptures in urban landscapes. Through design in White Horse Village, …

Graphic Gestures On The Digital Surface; In Defense Of The Observational, Soyoung Ro

Masters Theses

This thesis offers a subjective and process-based exploration of digital tools, challenging the dominant function-driven mindset that often defines digital design today. Rather than prioritizing speed, efficiency, or usability metrics, this work is a shift in focus toward experience, spatial awareness, and the subtle dynamics of interaction.

Rooted in acts of attention—looking inwards, looking outwards—this approach begins by setting aside assumptions about what tools are for, in order to ask how they shape our behaviors and ways of thinking. In doing so, it proposes a design methodology grounded in presence over productivity, process over execution, and agency over automation.

The …

Politics, Trauma, Cinema: Archiving And Communicating Accountability, Jose Jowel Canuday

Social Transformations Journal of the Global South

Excerpt: Contributions to this issue take state-driven experiences of violence to account in two discursive grounds of communicating accountability, rights violations documentation and social realist cinema. These explorations offer distinctive thinking on how traumatic episodes in sociopolitical history are recorded, archived, and circulated for public interest examination, discourse, and action in a Global South context.

Cinema As Praxis: An Integrated Theoretical Framework For Philippine Social Advocacy Cinema, Herwin Benedictos Cabasal

Social Transformations Journal of the Global South

This theoretical paper examines social advocacy cinema in the Philippines as a form of counter-hegemonic cultural practice. Drawing on Third Cinema Theory (Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino), critical theory (Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer), and participatory communication for social change (Paulo Freire and Thomas Tufte), this paper proposes Cinema as Praxis as an integrated theoretical framework for understanding how politically driven advocacy films operate through the convergence of cultural and political production, ideological representation and critique, and participatory communication. It argues that social advocacy cinema functions through interconnected dimensions: (1) production as praxis, in which collective and grassroots filmmaking constitutes …

An Old Law With New Tricks? The Prospects And Pitfalls Of Using The Antiquities Act Of 1906 To Shape Climate Policy On Federal Lands, Chick Hallinan

Vanderbilt Law Review En Banc

The Antiquities Act of 1906 empowers the president to declare a national monument on federally owned land, subject to constraints. As physical hazards enhanced by climate change endanger historically or biologically valuable objects and places, the Act can shape climate policy on federal land—extending the designation to new tracts and enhancing protections on existing monuments. This Note contends that climate change qualifies as a threat to federal public lands sufficient to trigger presidential authority to proclaim a national monument. Still, any such proclamation must account for the constitutional and statutory restraints that have some gravity on the president’s power to …

The Power Of Storytelling: Creatively Facilitating Conceptual Change In The Classroom, Mackenzie S. Rose, Marcus Johnson

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

Conceptual knowledge encompasses understanding the interrelationships among multiple pieces of information. Misconceptions of these interrelationships illustrate the need for effective educational strategies to facilitate conceptual change, with the goal of facilitating changes in learner understanding to appropriate, accurate, and complete concepts. Strategies, such as refutation texts, have proven effective in addressing science misconceptions, yet there is a prominent gap in research on conceptual change in nonscience subjects and the use of storytelling to facilitate such change. Storytelling, presented in a range of educational subjects, invites learners to engage in social discourses and problem-solving exercises. Prompted by classroom storytelling practices, creativity, …

Upward Mobility Of First-Generation Low-Income Dartmouth Students, Robin T. Frye

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

The most promising way for young people to achieve upward mobility, which at the most basic level means making more money than their parents, is to attend the best college possible. From its inception, Dartmouth College has been an institution set up to educate the children of the wealthiest and most powerful families. Over the last few decades, more and more promising students have come from families whose parents and grandparents did not attend college. When First-Generation Low-Income (FGLI) students arrive at Dartmouth, they encounter an institution set up for wealthy students. I aimed to discover how well Dartmouth supports …

Beneath The Surface: Unearthing Legal, Cultural, And Environmental Challenges To Resource Extraction On Indigenous Land, Danara Greer

San Diego Journal of Climate & Energy Law

Much of the world’s natural capital lies on or beneath lands occupied by Indigenous peoples. Since the advent of colonialism, Indigenous communities have tirelessly safeguarded their land from encroachment by extractive industries. The contemporary consequences of resource extraction on Indigenous lands include environmental degradation and cultural heritage destruction. Rather than providing a legal pathway to self-determination, the United States Supreme Court has eroded tribal sovereignty and undermined the trust relationship between tribes and the federal government. American Indians and Alaska Natives are prohibited from tapping into their resource wealth by an intricate bureaucratic framework that dictates how resources may—and may …

Protecting Traditional Cultural Expressions: Law, Indigenous Protocols, Library Practices, Ulia Gosart, Valmaine Toki, Susan Townzen

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This study responds to contemporary international policy developments focused on protecting Indigenous creative work classified as Traditional Cultural Expressions. The study claims that states’ interests continue to guide policies in this area, compromising the relationship between regulations and the aspirations and needs of Indigenous communities. The study uses comparative methodology and content analysis to develop this argument. The study also highlights the significance of partnerships between Indigenous communities and cultural institutions that may function as alternative means to protect Indigenous creative works. The study explores cases from Indigenous communities and cultural institutions in New Zealand, the USA, and Mexico to …

Archaeological, Pxrf, And Gis Analyses At The Trestle Bridge Site (8ja186), Northwest Florida, Victoria Marie Freitas

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Trestle Bridge Site (8JA186), located on an eroding riverbank of the upper Apalachicola River in northwest Florida, represents a significant multi-component precontact site with occupations that date from the Early Woodland (~800 B.C.–A.D. 300) and the Fort Walton periods (A.D. 1000-1500). Previous research has broadly classified the site based on ceramic and lithic assemblages, but a detailed investigation into pottery production and environmental changes over time at the site remains unexplored in the understudied Apalachicola valley region. There also appears to be over a thousand-year gap in occupation at the site, as no Middle or Late Woodland ceramic or …

The Cobeo Collaboration Tools & Processes: A Taster, Maya Haviland,

Nulungu Research Week

No abstract provided.

No. 41: Crisis, Pandemic Precarity And Food Insecurity Among Migrant Households During The Covid-19 Pandemic In Quito, Ecuador, Mercedes Eguiguren, Taymi Milán, Cheryl Martens

Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network

This study examines the food insecurity experiences of Venezuelan migrants in Quito, Ecuador, within the broader context of the Venezuelan crisis, regional migration responses, and the structural precarity migrants face. Moving beyond the dominant “migration crisis” narrative, this paper adopts a crisis-living framework to analyze how protracted instability and pandemic precarity shape migrants’ experiences. Based on a 2023 survey of migrants and refugees who lived in Quito throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the findings reveal that food insecurity is a persistent challenge, disproportionately affecting female-led and extended households. Key factors influencing food insecurity include job instability and deteriorating employment conditions, limited …

Associations Between Breastfeeding Duration And Weight Status Transitions In Early Childhood, Hyojun Park, Eric N. Reither

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Empirical evidence with respect to the protective effect of breastfeeding on childhood obesity remains inconclusive, and studies on sex-specific associations are sparse. We investigated whether (H1) longer breastfeeding duration reduces the risk of entry into elevated body mass (EBM); and (H2) longer breastfeeding duration increases the likelihood of exit from EBM. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), our sample comprised 10,550 mother-child pairs after excluding 100 non-biological pairs. The ECLS-B assessed children from 9 months of age through kindergarten, spanning infancy through 7 years of age. We used two transitions in weight status (i.e., entry to EBM …

Considering The Ethics Of Conserving American Art: White Nationalism And The Evolving Meanings Of Nineteenth-Century Genre And Landscape Painting, Evan M. Crocker

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the stylistic and conceptual qualities of American genre and landscape painting from the antebellum period and how these qualities acted in service to establishing white nationalism before the Civil War. The intricate and calculated system of typing in genre painting presented carefully crafted idealizations of quintessential Americans, defined by their whiteness and maleness. Landscape painters of the early- to mid-nineteenth century endowed their compositions with a sense of wondrous opportunity which justified and upheld westward expansion under Manifest Destiny. At the intersection of genre and landscape practices sits plantation paintings—specifically house portraits—in which the plantation serves as …

Fieldnote 24: Who Is Sharpening Your Iron?, Venus Evans-Winters, Mildred Boveda, Erica Mccray

Fieldnotes of a Black Woman Scholar: Research, Culture, and Wellness

In this episode, Dr. Venus Evans-Winters and Dr. Mildred Boveda (Youtube @mboveda) sit down with Dr. Erica McCray—educator, researcher, and leader—to discuss the powerful roles of mothering and daughtering in shaping our work and wellness in academic spaces. Together, they explore how intergenerational care and personal identity influence educational leadership, equity-focused research, and the pursuit of balance in high-pressure environments. Dr. McCray reflects on her lived experiences and shares how she integrates care, legacy, and advocacy into her scholarship and professional life. This is a rich, intimate conversation for anyone invested in justice, healing, and the ways Black women lead …

Fundamental Dimensions Of Law And Legal Education: Developing A Model Of A Modern Legal System And Its Application To The Transnational Dimensions Of Law, Mark L. Jones

Mercer Law Review

The present article is the fourth in a series of articles addressing the fundamental dimensions of law and lawyering and urging the reliberalization of U.S. legal education. It is largely an exercise in analytical jurisprudence. Parts I and II seek to provide an account of a modern legal system and legal evolution that combines and integrates my own fundamental dimensions of law taxonomy with the accounts of a legal system given by the legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart and the comparatist John Henry Merryman. The model of a modern legal system these Parts develop should be part of the cognitive equipment …

Microplastic Production And Toxicity Of Marine Ropes On Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, Amelia Lawson

Graduate Masters Theses

Marine environments have been affected greatly over the last 50 years by anthropogenic marine waste, particularly plastic. Plastic waste in the oceans comes from many sectors, such as textiles, shipping, and the fishing industry. As plastic litter degrades, it produces microplastics, including five major forms: foam, films, fragments, beads, and fibers. Fibers are the most prevalent microplastic type and are often formed from marine ropes, which are frequently discarded or lost at sea. These ropes contribute to entanglement, ingestion hazards, and microplastic pollution. While the shedding of microplastic fibers from ropes during active use has been studied, much less is …

Take As Needed For Pain: An Analysis Of Consumption Of Bottled Products And 19th-Century Working-Class Experiences At The Hassanamesit Woods Augustus Salisbury Site, Grafton, Ma, Matthew Becue

Graduate Masters Theses

Industrialization rapidly changed the cultural and socioeconomic landscape of Central Massachusetts in the mid-19th century, shifting the region from a primarily agricultural society into one increasingly focused on industrial manufacturing. This, combined with the emerging middle class, created new class structures and expressions that were ever more defined by labor, ethnicity, and consumption habits and behaviors. Due to their location on the outskirts of town, the types of labor they performed, and in some cases their status as immigrants, those living at the Hassanamesit Woods Augustus Salisbury (HWAS) site in Grafton, Massachusetts from 1850 to 1890 would have likely been …