Digital Commons Network^™

The Effects Of The Source Of Celebrity Information On Parasocial Relationships, Noelle Roys, Monique Newman, Mark Spooner-Leduff

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The purpose of the study is to examine how the source of information about celebrities affects media users’ feelings toward them. Specifically, we will focus on two ways in which people relate to media figures. Parasocial relationships (PSR) are one-sided relationships that people form with media figures. The concept of parasocial interaction (PSI) is closely related in that it entails one-sided involvement with a media figure, but the experience is restricted to the duration a person is viewing the figure. Due to the nature of social media and to celebrities’ increasing use of social media platforms, existing research implies that …

Effect Of Polymer Composition Of Injectable Hydrogels On Programmable Release Of Methylene Blue, Mary Brandecker

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Temperature sensitive hydrogels have been used as injectable hydrogels because the polymer solutions can be liquid at room temperature and gel at body temperature. Injectable hydrogels have been used in biomedical applications to deliver drugs and other small molecules throughout the body. Methylene Blue was used as the drug in this study for its antioxidant and neuroprotective properties. PluronicⓇ F127 (PF127) is a copolymer consisting of repeating units of polyethylene oxide and polypropylene oxide in the form PEO-PPO-PEO. PF127 in solution is a temperature sensitive hydrogel that transitions to a gel at body temperature at specific polymer compositions. A standard …

Effects Of Skin Color And Clothing Color On Perceived Violence And Aggression Of Criminals, Courtney Merchant

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Introduction: Society has a history of attaching meaning to colors, and few colors have been given as much attention as red and black. In many contexts, these colors have strong negative associations. Red has long been representative of danger and aggression (Young, Elliot, Feltman, & Ambady, 2013), while black represents death and evil (Adams & Osgood, 1973; Sherman & Clore, 2009). Unfortunately, color associations are not limited to clothing or advertisements; skin color is also a subject of negative associations in the form of stereotyping. Darker skinned people, especially African-Americans, have long been subjected to negative stereotypes. The current …

Culture Of Mobile Phone Novels In Japan: A Comparison Of Cultural Particularities Of Mobile Phone Novels And Service Providers, Sarah Trinh

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Honor thesis on the Culture of Mobile Phone Novels in Japan: A Comparison of Cultural Particularities of Mobile Phone Novels and Service Providers.

The Impossible Tasks, Rachel Kalman

Graduate School of Art Theses

In this thesis I unpack the still life genre and its relation to my painting practice, examining the ways in which banal objects project influence and disrupt the notion of a linear, narrative history. Through the contextual lenses of close observation, propagandistic agendas, and the transgressive history of pattern, I explore the inherent contradiction contained within still life painting; working to balance an empathic respect for objects, as such, with my deeply seated desire to metaphorically interpret and empower visual imagery. I am fascinated by the impossible tasks we ask of weak, inanimate, decorative objects and work to generate still …

Ethical Problems With Plastic In The Ocean, Brennan Cotter

Senior Theses

In the year 2018 this paper argues that plastic use and waste is destroying our oceans and that we should address the problem by fully adopting the principle and practices of sustainability. The first section outlines the advent of our plastic disposable culture. The second section gives evidence of how plastic waste is negatively affecting marine life. The third section draws from literature in environmental philosophy to develop the concept of sustainability, and the concluding section outlines several steps we can take as individuals and nations to practice sustainability.

Name Fluidity And Its Effect On Ashkenazi Genealogical Research, Meredith Dreyfuss

Senior Theses

It is commonly believed that genealogical research has become easier and more popular than ever before, and with more and more records being digitized and available over the internet, the ability to research family history can be done by anyone with an interest and a computer. Where one might have had to travel to the places that housed the records that trace family life, now many of those records are online, with the data store growing all the time. Similarly, relatively inexpensive DNA testing is bringing family background and history to the masses.

However, while science and technology have revolutionized …

Sastra Buruh Migran Indonesia: Crossing Borders And Proposing A New Concept Of Indonesian Domestic Workers, Tri Murniati

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, Indonesian migrant women who seek employment as domestic workers in foreign countries have caught the Indonesian reading public’s attention with their novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction writings. Creative work by migrant domestic workers was established as a genre when Denok Kanthi Rokhmatika, a domestic worker who works in Hong Kong published her collection of short stories Negeri Elok nan Keras dimana Kami Berjuang (Beautiful and Tough Country where We Struggle) in 2002 (Insani and Raihan iii). The publication marks the birth of a new genre, which has become known as “Sastra Buruh Migran Indonesia” (Indonesian migrant …

Always In-Formation: The Presence Of Sound In The Work Of Dan Graham, Jennifer Smart

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues for a reconsideration of the role sound plays in the work of the American artist Dan Graham. Graham regularly used his work as a means of drawing viewer’s attention to the seemingly infinite multiplicity of the subjective experience which shapes their encounter with the visual art object. I argue Graham’s engagement with music and his involvement in the multidisciplinary art scene of Downtown New York City in the 1970s and 80s shaped and encouraged his interest in this greater sensorial environment in which a work of art is encountered. Through performance, video, and architecture, Graham has attempted …

Book Review Of The Rooster Bar By John Grisham, David Ray Papke

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

A Study Of Communication And Hispanic Cultural Values Within The Family, Gabrielle Lafond

Senior Honors Projects

Every human being has a unique communication style, which has often been carefully and significantly molded by family members during their upbringing. Cultural variations in those communication styles are common because different ethnic groups possess their own standards or values for what constitutes effective and appropriate verbal and nonverbal communication. For my project, I focused on communication patterns and cultural values practiced by young adults within Hispanic families, specifically regarding the concepts of familism, respect, and conflict. Familism is a value often associated with Hispanic families and it revolves around the notion that family is paramount in a person’s life. …

Pop-Up Museums: An Exhibit Utilizing Pop-Up Practices, Mary Kwandras

Museum Studies Projects

Pop-ups are a new phenomenon emerging within the last decade. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to explore this current trend, delving into their origins and their multiple uses. To compliment this research, a pop-up exhibition was developed using the skills learned within the museum studies master’s program. The exhibition: Howard D. Beach and the Museum Studies Master’s Program was on display from January 20^th through February 8^th, 2019 at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum, in Buffalo, New York.

Implementing Social Activism Into An Elementary Classroom, Chelsea Riotutar

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Social Activism is a key aspect to educating and being educated. For this Capstone, the researcher discusses on the outcomes to implementing a social activism curriculum into an elementary classroom. The participants for the Capstone Project included fifth-grade students in a public elementary school located in a small agricultural city. Through a literature review and detailed lesson plan, the researcher has further discussed and described implementations through multiple subjects which serve and acknowledge all students in the classroom. As a result, the researcher has found a need for a social activism curriculum in this problem-solving elementary school. With an arrangement …

Communication And Conflict Management In Romantic Relationships, Jordan Pastrone

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

College students and young adults are in more serious romantic relationships now in their young adult lives than when they were at a younger age. Therefore, it is useful for them to have the skills to maintain a healthy relationship such as communication skills. To address this issue, I will be conducting an online training of good communication skills in romantic relationships for CSUMB undergraduate students in Seaside, California.

Navigating The Path To Presence: Ideology, Politics, And The Campaign For Gender Balanced Boards And Commissions In Iowa, Ezra Joseph Temko

Doctoral Dissertations

From 1986 through 1988, Iowa adopted and strengthened a gender balance law that required men and women be equally represented on state boards and commissions. In 2009, Iowa extended this law to also require its counties, municipalities, and school districts to gender balance their boards and commissions. Iowa’s law remains unique in the United States. Through archival research and interviews, my research investigates how advocates navigated the ideological landscape associated with this policy issue. My research unveils the mechanisms that substantially deradicalized gender balance in Iowa, enabling its passage and shifting Iowans’ perceptions of gender, governance, and affirmative action—disembedding gender …

Galatea: A Representation Of The Nature Of The Goddess, Courtney Flamm

Theses

This paper analyzes the figure Galatea, including the original narratives of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the visual representations of her character. Examinations of these images and the circumstances that surround Galatea’s character, including her association with Venus, provide an in-depth exploration of Galatea’s relationship to the archetypal Mother Goddess and the role of feminine deities throughout history. As interpreted in the prehistoric past, the ancient Mother Goddess was worshipped as an all-encompassing deity in ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Aztec, and Greek societies. Her duality as the source of life and death provided a superior nature to her surrounding male counterparts that was …

Demonic Pedagogy And The Teaching Saint: Voice, Body, And Place In Cynewulf's Juliana, Christina M. Heckman

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In Cynewulf’s Old English poem Juliana, the saint frames her encounters with her adversaries as pedagogical confrontations, refusing the lessons they attempt to “teach” her and ultimately adopting the identity of a teacher herself. These confrontations depend on three key tropes in the poem: Juliana’s voice, as a material manifestation of language deployed by the saint; her body, both as living body and as relic; and place, especially the place of the saint’s martyrdom and/or burial. Viewed through theories of material feminism, these tropes reveal diverse forms of agency in the poem, as both human and non-human agents make …

Delineation Of Events In Centripetal Migration During Drosophila Oogenesis, Travis Tait Parsons

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

All multicellular organisms initially start out as a single cell. This cell must use the genetic information encoded in its DNA to multiply in number and build itself into a complex multicellular organism. How this process occurs is the focus of developmental biology, a field that seeks to understand how a combination of genetic information and environmental conditions shape a cell from its beginnings as a zygote all the way to maturity. A fundamental part of this process is the ability of cells to work together in order to build complex tissues and organs. Cells achieve this coordination by using …

Working Lives: Artistic Solidarity In Revolutionary Peru (1960–1980), Jose R. Chavarry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the discourses and experiences of cultural work as a form of intellectual and artistic solidarity in Peru during the 1960s and 1970s. Amid the broader Latin American and global spirit of revolution, anti-imperialism and Third World liberation, in Peru these decades saw a radical transformation in society where rural and urban masses rose against a traditional political and socioeconomic system that maintained colonial structures of domination and oppression of marginalized populations. In an attempt to rein in this desborde popular, as it became known, the nationalist and populist Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces and a …

Effects Of Teacher Attitudes On Academic Growth And Connectedness For Students With Learning Disabilities: A Quantitative Case Study, Emily Ellen Moulton

Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative case study was to explore several variables for students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) and their teachers at the elementary level with a large local school district. I wanted to examine the relationship between teacher perceptions of students with SLDs, academic growth, and school connectedness for this subgroup of students, along with the demographic school characteristics. Existing school-level data were examined, including growth for students with disabilities on state and district assessments of skills in both literacy and math, along with the results of the district’s School Connections Survey (SCS). A newly developed measure of …

Transnational Law As Socio-Legal Theory And Critique: Prospects For “Law And Society” In A Divided World, Peer Zumbansen

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

“Those People [May Yet Be] A Kind Of Solution” Late Imperial Thoughts On The Humanization Of Officialdom, David A. Westbrook, Mark Maguire

Buffalo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Superhybridity And The Swallowing Of Subculture: Collisions Of Afro-Asian Cross-Cultural Production And Consumption In Post-Internet American Popular Culture, Valentia Sundell

Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects

Responding to a recent resurgence in Afro-Asian imagery in the American consciousness, this paper examines the meaning and direction of the contemporary Afro-Asian relationship in post-Internet American popular culture. To investigate these questions, this paper constructs a brief history of the American Afro-Asian relationship through the performance of racial identity and cross-cultural production and consumption from the 1850s through the 2000s. An increase in American Afro-Asian imagery has not come from a place of abstraction, but rather stems from a lengthy and complex history of cross-cultural collisions, collaboration, and convergence along with a post-Internet that allows for the ready flow …

The Portrayal Of Income Inequality As Represented In American And Spanish Film, Chloe Riggs

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this thesis, I will examine the portrayal of wealth in film. Further, I argue that the portrayal of wealth in film has the power to shape the public’s perceptions of income inequality, even going so far as to later impact their actions towards both their own and differing economic classes (Kendall 2011; Kenworthy 2007). With a film’s ability to portray wealth, stressing the importance of an individual’s position on the hierarchal economic ladder, the individual is led to view both success and failure as a personal matter, the latter with a scornful gaze. This belief is then naturally cycled …

The Dna Damage Response Gene Ddr48 Regulates Sterol Synthesis Genes To Confer Antifungal Resistance To The Pathogenic Fungus Histoplasma Capsulatum, Gabriella Reyes

Honors Theses

Histoplasma capsulatum is a dimorphic fungal pathogen that is endemic to the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi river valley regions. The fungus grows as a mold at environmental temperatures (25C) and transforms into a unicellular yeast upon inhalation by a mammalian host (37C). The mold to yeast shift is required for pathogenicity in host organisms, where the potentially fatal disease, histoplasmosis, can present. This study aims to characterize the DNA damage response protein DDR48 and the role that it plays in combating cellular stressors in H. capsulatum. We found that DDR48 is expressed strongly in the mold phase but expressed only …

U.S. Surveillance Of Citizens: The Prevention Of Domestic Terrorism, David Rogers

Senior Honors Theses

The United States drastically increased the powers given to the federal government following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as the sheer number of casualties and shock that struck the nation called for an immediate response. The fear of another mass attack is still within the minds of the American people, and the U.S. government has taken measures to attempt to prevent such a tragedy. This thesis will analyze the topic of domestic surveillance, as well as ethical concerns for the criminal justice field, and will explore the future of homeland security and anti-terrorism for this country if this …

Cosmopolitan Democracy: Re-Evaluation Of Globalization And World Economic System, Muhammad Dalhatu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines cosmopolitan democracy theory as a method of addressing the problems of globalization. I begin by introducing the concept of “cosmopolitan democracy.” I then proceed to discuss contemporary political climate and its relation to critiques of globalization. Finally, I conclude by examining the elaborations of cosmopolitan democracy by various theorists as a way of addressing these problems. Chapter 1 introduces the work of David Held who introduced the concept in his book, Cosmopolitan Democracy and the Global Order: Reflections on the 20^th Anniversary of Kant’s “Perpetual Peace.” Cosmopolitan democracy refers to global governance through democratic theory. Held …

The Body And Its Signifiers: Bodily Depictions In Niccolò De’ Conti And Odorico Da Pordenone, Antonella Dalla Torre

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines textual, bodily depictions in two western European, medieval and late-medieval travel accounts, which describe the eastern travels of the Venetian merchant Niccolò de’ Conti and those of the Franciscan friar Odorico da Pordenone. My analysis show how a connection between the characterizations of the body and the process of identity definition is forged and sustained in these texts.

Through a cultural-studies perspective, my work focuses specifically on depictions of the body in Poggio Bracciolini’s account of the travels of Niccolò de’ Conti and in the text of a vernacular rendition of Odorico da Pordenone’s Relatio, the …

Presenciar El Pasado: Witnessing The Spanish And Argentine Dictatorships Through Film And Television, Kristina L. Jacobs

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the ways in which recent (1999–2017) films and television series ask today’s spectators to witness the 20^th-century Spanish and Argentine dictatorships by analyzing these texts on both a narrative and technical level. I examine torture in the Argentine films Garage Olimpo (Marco Bechis, 1999), Crónica de una fuga (Andrés Caetano, 2006), and, from Spain, La voz dormida (Benito Zambrano, 2011). I also investigate the theme of disappearance as seen in two Spain-Argentina joint ventures, Pasaje de vida (Diego Corsini, 2015) and Los pasos perdidos (Manane Rodríguez, 2001), both of which portray how parental absence affects …

Existentialmd.Com: Building Towards An Embodied Internet Aesthetic, Natasha Ochshorn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

ExistentialMD.com is a website that aims to treat the body as an emotional and social subject in an online space that is purposefully bodied and fleshy. The website contrasts original creative nonfiction essays with a formal structure that alludes to the medical website WebMD. Mimicking WebMD’s symptom checker, which asks users to locate their discomfort with increasing specificity before suggesting conditions they might be suffering from, ExistentialMD uses a similar structure to yield results that are more exploratory than diagnostic, and which envision the body as a site of experience and emotionality. Form and content combine to create an …