Digital Commons Network^™

Harnessing Irrationality, Jennifer E. Smith

All Theses

My thesis work considers the presence of objectifying gazes in representations of women in Western visual media and pop culture. I reference film, television, short form content shared on social media, and pornography to identify and repurpose tools of objectification in my large scale drawings and animated GIFs. I compare the objectifying tropes present in contemporary entertainment media and pop culture to those present in the Western art historical tradition of the reclining female nude, mythology and folklore, and pornography. Using these comparisons, I discuss objectification in terms of passive and active, consumption and appetite, and idealization and devaluation. I …

What Belongs In A Constitutional Law Casebook?, Ernest A. Young

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Essay argues that constitutional law cannot (and should not) be an autonomous subject within the legal curriculum. This argument echoes a long-standing debate about whether law itself is an autonomous scholarly discipline. The answer to that question is surely, as Allan Farnsworth put it, “sometimes YES and sometimes NO.” But this Essay does not focus on law’s autonomy from other disciplines, such as political science, psychology, or economics. Rather, I consider the extent to which constitutional law should overlap with other legal subjects, such as legal history, administrative law, or statutory interpretation. My conclusion is that, at least in …

Third-Person Direct-Object Anaphora In Translation From English Into Brazilian Portuguese: A Corpus-Based Study Of Juvenile Texts Reflecting Orality, Marcella Cascione Cerqueira Netto

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The third-person accusative clitics in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) are virtually extinct in spoken language and informal writing, although formal texts and contexts still retain them. Speakers often mark third-person direct objects using the stigmatized full pronouns (syncretic with the nominative forms), null objects, or full noun phrases (NPs), also referred to as lexical NPs. The realization of these forms is not arbitrary; it is influenced by the semantic properties of the referents, particularly animacy (mainly humanness) and specificity. Animate referents [+animate] tend to be realized with overt pronouns, whereas inanimate [–animate] ones tend to be used with null objects. This …

Asking Nicely: Americans’ Perception Of Jordanian Arabic Speakers’ Politeness When Making Requests In English, David Henen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines how Arabic-speaking Jordanian male graduate students at an American university in Mississippi employ request directness strategies and modifications as polite devices in oral English, and how American native speakers perceive these requests. Drawing on Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Theory and the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project taxonomy (Blum-Kulka et al., 1989a, 1989b), this study employed a mixed-methods design to examine request production and perception. Data were collected from six American English native speakers from Mississippi and six Arabic-speaking Jordanian international students, all at the same university, through six discourse completion tasks, six role-plays, and semi-structured interviews. …

The Pragmatic Mechanisms In King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud's Discourse: A Pragmatic Analysis Of The Shura Council Speech (Third Year - Eighth Session), Hejab Bin Mohammad Alqahtani

University of Tabuk Journal for Humanities and Social Sciences

This study aims to analyze the royal speech delivered by King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud at the opening of the third year of the eighth session of the Shura Council (1444H), through a pragmatic lens that reveals the underlying structure of political language in the Saudi context. It adopts a pragmatic discourse analysis approach, focusing on speech acts, deixis, presuppositions, implicatures, and argumentation, supported by quantitative representation. The findings indicate the strategic use of pragmatic tools in the speech: seventeen speech acts, fifteen deictic expressions, nine presuppositions, six implicatures, and eleven instances of argumentation. This reflects a deliberate and …

Chatgpt In Teaching English As A Foreign Language: Teacher And Learner Perspectives, Sameiha Alhussain N Khawaji

University of Tabuk Journal for Humanities and Social Sciences

This study investigates ChatGPT as a supplementary tool in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education through surveys of 150 teachers and 350 learners in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Results show that ChatGPT improves language proficiency by providing personalized feedback, conversational fluency (72% of users reported improvement), writing scores by 22% and vocabulary through contextualized practice. Teachers found it useful for lesson planning and administrative tasks. However, challenges such as plagiarism risks (15% of cases), occasional inaccuracies and cultural insensitivities especially in idiomatic and formal language use require ethical guidelines and human oversight. For example, Asian participants noted mismatches …

Scoring Accuracy And Differential Rater Functioning Of Large Language Models (Llms) In Evaluating Short Student Essays Under Different Conditions: A Simulation Study, Majed Mahmoud Ajoudeh

University of Tabuk Journal for Humanities and Social Sciences

This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy and differential rater functioning (DRF) of LLMs in scoring short essays, based on synthetically generated data of 270 essays with varying quality. The LLMs scored the essays under three prompting conditions: without a rubric, with a brief rubric, and with a detailed rubric. Human benchmark ratings were also generated in comparison with the automated scores. The results showed that using detailed rubric improved accuracy and consistency with human raters. Regression analysis further revealed differential rater functioning: the LLMs were more likely to award higher scores to longer essays, favored indirect writing styles, and …

Digital Communications Between Firms And Investors: Impact Of Explanatory Responses On Investor Engagement In Online Financial Q&A, Runyu Wang, Zili Zhang, Keng Siau, Ziqiong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The emerging trend of digital communications between firms and investors through online question-and-answer (Q&A) platforms is recognized as a vital strategy for managing investor relations, contributing to enhanced market efficiency and information transparency through increased information exchange. Potential investors can seek responses from firm managers to address their information needs, thereby mitigating market uncertainties. To provide foundational insights, we conduct a survey of investors to assess their awareness, usage, and perceptions of firm-investor Q&A platforms. In the subsequent empirical study, we specifically focus on the substance of managers’ responses, which are primarily aimed at clarifying firm events or information. In …

Per Se Non-Takings, Nestor M. Davisdson, Timothy M. Mulvaney

Faculty Scholarship

In the discourse on the Takings Clause, disputes over methodology have long formed a kind of proxy war, with per se rules ordinarily underwriting strong constitutional protection for property rights and ad hoc standards more often vindicating public interests. At a moment when the Supreme Court is increasingly embracing the rules end of this rules-standards spectrum, this Article offers a novel perspective to challenge the conventional link between categorical reasoning and classical liberal conceptions of constitutional property.

To do so, the Article excavates a vast body of law denying takings liability through rule-like reasoning, an approach the Article calls per …

Digital Solutions For Bridging Language Barriers: Designing And Testing An App For Construction Spanish Safety Communication On Construction Jobsites, Adrian Cappella

All Theses

Language barriers between English-speaking supervisors and Spanish-speaking workers create safety risks on U.S. construction jobsites. Hispanic workers face higher injury and fatality rates, with miscommunication being a major contributing factor. Existing translation tools lack the accuracy, cultural context, and jobsite relevance needed for effective safety communication.

In this study a mobile application with construction-specific safety phrases in English and Spanish was designed and field tested. The research included a literature review, phrase collection and validation with industry experts, application development and design with a computer science collaborator, and usability testing with supervisors and workers. Surveys and field trials measured navigation, …

Environmental Sanitation In Long-Term Care Facilities: A Focus On Regulations And Implementations, Ruwan Dissanayake Dissanayake Mudiyanselage

All Theses

Environmental sanitation is a fundamental component of infection prevention in long-term care facilities (LTCFs), where residents are at increased risk due to advanced age, underlying health conditions, and communal living arrangements. Despite its critical role, significant gaps remain in implementing environmental sanitation procedures and the regulatory frameworks that guide them.

This study combines two components: (1) an across-state regulatory review of environmental sanitation in LTCF regulations and (2) a cross-sectional survey assessing environmental sanitation characteristics of nursing homes (NHs) and assisted living facilities (ALFs) and Rural and Urban LTCF observation study in South Carolina (SC) . For the regulatory review …

Feedback Loops: Fly On The Wall, Patrick Barry

Articles

I recently turned to an interesting source to get some feedback on the way I communicate when leading meetings and speaking to large groups: artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Born into a family of fast-talking New Yorkers who don’t always wait for you to finish your thoughts before they jump in with theirs (my mom grew up in Manhattan and my dad grew up in Long Island), I recently realized that I have developed what the linguist Deborah Tannen calls a “high-involvement” conversation style, especially when I take the lead in meetings or teach my classes. I nod as other people …

Evaluating Parent Workshops To Reduce Sexual Health Misinformation, Marshall Farrior

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone project addressed the problem of sexual health misinformation among youth in Santa Cruz County, which stems from cultural factors, limited parental communication, and inadequate comprehensive sexual health education. Implemented through the Santa Cruz County Public Health Department’s Teen Health Outreach (THO) program, the project evaluated the effectiveness of parent workshops designed to build the capacity of adults’ knowledge and confidence to discuss sexual and reproductive health topics with youth. Serving primarily Hispanic/Latino communities in Watsonville and Freedom, THO collaborates with local schools and organizations to deliver workshops. The intervention aimed to reduce misinformation by empowering parents as trusted …

Barriers To Hospice Access For The Latino Community, Guadalupe Rivera

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

The Latino community in Monterey County faces significant obstacles to accessing hospice care, including language barriers and cultural misunderstandings. Many community members are unfamiliar with available hospice services or hold common misconceptions, such as equating hospice only with dying or abandonment. This capstone project, in partnership with the Central Coast Visiting Nurse Association (VNA), investigated these barriers through interviews conducted at a local senior event. An important outcome of the project was the creation of a bilingual (Spanish and English) resource guide for new Social workers which helps social workers efficiently connect Latino families to appropriate services in their preferred …

Advocacy At The Front Door, Tenisha S. Hill

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This capstone project examines how integrating social work practices into the jail intake process can strengthen support for clients represented by the Public Defender’s Office. The project focuses on understanding the challenges clients face at the earliest point of contact often marked by trauma, instability, and limited access to services and how a social-work-informed approach can improve outcomes. Through direct observation, interviews with staff, and review of intake procedures, the project identifies key gaps in assessment, communication, and referrals. Findings highlight the need for more holistic intake practices that address clients’ social, mental health, and resource needs alongside their legal …

Building Healthy Smiles: A Bilingual Oral Health Workshop With The Monterey County Health Department, Paulina J. Moran

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Untreated dental decay remains high in Monterey County, particularly among low-income, Spanish-speaking families, due to provider shortages and persistent gaps in oral-health education. In partnership with the Monterey County Health Department’s Oral Health Program, which delivers prevention, education, and access initiatives countywide, this capstone project focuses on parents and caregivers of young children living in a diverse community with long-standing access barriers. The project’s purpose was to strengthen parents' knowledge, confidence, and intentions to practice preventive oral-health behaviors at home. To achieve this, an interactive, bilingual (Spanish/English) workshop was designed and delivered on November 5, 2025, featuring demonstrations on proper …

Students Insufficient Reading Proficiency, Carmen Bolanos Chavez

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Students’ lack of foundational reading proficiency continues to be a significant barrier to academic success, particularly among bilingual and underserved communities. This capstone project was implemented at ProYouth, an expanded learning program serving students in grades K–12 in King City, California, where many families speak primarily Spanish and face limited time to support reading at home. The project aimed to strengthen students’ literacy skills through targeted small group reading interventions and to gather parent input through surveys to better understand student needs and family challenges. Intervention groups met daily during the six-week ProYouth Summer Program and utilized evidence-based strategies focused …

From Stigma To Strength: Exploring Workplace Wellness At Nami Monterey County, Maria G. Zamudio

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Employees in Monterey County face persistent challenges related to poor mental health, driven by high costs of living, limited access to providers, workplace stress, and stigma surrounding help-seeking behaviors. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Monterey County, a grassroots organization committed to education and advocacy, primarily serves caregivers and families of individuals with mental illness but is expanding efforts to address systemic workplace mental health barriers. This capstone project involved designing and piloting workplace-focused interventions, including presentations for a Public Works Department, a customizable training binder, and pre/post-assessment tools. The initiative sought to reduce stigma, increase awareness of resources, …

Grounded & Connected: Enhancing Mental Health Literacy And Resilience Among Transfer College Students, Alyson Morgan

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Many college transfer students experience poor mental health, including anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and suicidal ideation. Recent findings show that transfer students face unique stressors related to adjusting to a new campus environment and often struggle to access support services (Center on Transition Innovations, 2023). Although many students recognize the signs of deteriorating mental health in themselves, they may not know how to seek help or use healthy coping strategies. To address this need, I created an 80-minute workshop for transfer students at Modesto Junior College to address the lack of awareness of mental health struggles, the different stressors of …

Mental Health Education For Latinx Students In High School, Wilbert F. Rivas-Vides

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Mental health has become a significant concern for adolescents, especially high school juniors and seniors who are getting ready to transition into adulthood. At this age, students often face academic pressure, uncertainty about their future, and the challenge of balancing increased independence with family and cultural expectations. These stressors can be even harder for students from immigrant, low-income, or bilingual backgrounds because they may face extra barriers when trying to seek support. National data show that mental and behavioral health conditions are common among teens, with anxiety and depression standing out as leading concerns (Sappenfield et al., 2024). To address …

More Than Words: A Parent-Led Approach To Triqui Language Revitalization At Home, Monica Andrade

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Preserving indigenous languages is crucial for maintaining cultural identity, strengthening family bonds, and promoting the healthy development of children. For many immigrant Triqui families, the shift to using dominant languages like English or Spanish can lead to language attrition, a gradual loss of their native language when it is no longer spoken regularly at home (McCarty, 2003). To help Triqui parents actively preserve and promote their heritage language, I conducted a workshop specifically for a group of Triqui mothers at the Greenfield Community Center. The workshop provided practical strategies to engage children in everyday Triqui conversations, strengthen intergenerational connections, foster …

The Effect Of An English Mother Tongue On Spanish Language Acquisition, Erin Wallace

Honors Theses

This study investigates how English influences the Spanish acquisition of English-speaking learners by analyzing written errors, background factors, and interview data. Using two linguistic classification frameworks, it identifies both the types and underlying causes of errors, revealing that gender and plural agreement issues, verb forms, word order problems, and subjunctive misuse are the most frequent difficulties. These errors primarily stem from first-language transfer, overgeneralization, and instructional gaps. The findings highlight the need for targeted practice, contrastive analysis, and greater exposure to authentic Spanish input. Despite limitations such as small sample size and incomplete interview participation, the study offers direction for …

A Phenomenological Exploration Of Black International Graduate Students’ Experiences In Building A Sense Of Belonging And Community At A Predominantly White Southern University, Hilda Solange George

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Black international graduate students’ experiences navigating and developing a sense of belonging and community at higher educational institutions in the United States and particularly at predominantly white institutions have received minimal attention in scholarly inquiries, despite their cultural, intellectual, and financial contributions to host institutions and the country. To fill this gap in the existing literature, this hermeneutical phenomenological study aimed to gain a nuanced and in-depth understanding of Black international graduate students' perceptions of their sense of belonging and community at a predominantly white southern university (PWSU) in the United States. Guided by the research questions and the Black …

Emotion Analysis And Neural Language Models For Classification, Andrew Mackey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Emotion analysis is a branch of artificial intelligence and natural language processing focused on recognizing emotions hidden throughout various forms of digital data, including text, images, and multi-modal representations. In this dissertation, we present four published and planned works that investigate different methodologies for natural language analysis tasks using deep learning techniques. The first published work we present considers the task of identifying fake news using various text and emotion representations. We demonstrate that emotion representations combined with word embedding techniques can improve the accuracy of fake news classification. Our second published work further investigates the fake news classification task …

“No Man Is An Island:” A Critical Discourses Analysis Of Newspaper Reporting On The Marshallese Community In Northwest Arkansas, Johana Vazquez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study was to examine local newspaper coverage of the Marshallese community in Northwest Arkansas from 1998 to 2017 and analyze discourses that could be attributed to linguistic bias, stereotypes, and Pacific transnationalism. This analysis examines how marginalized immigrants are portrayed in local news coverage using a critical discourse analysis (CDA). The study analyzes the labels and metaphors used in the coverage of Marshallese immigration, adapts the Stereotype Content Model for a discourse analysis, and compares the experiences of Marshallese in the area with larger scholarly work on Pacific transnationalism. The researcher analyzed 11 published pieces from …

Reading Between Lines: Mapping El Orinoco Ilustrado, Guillermo Pupo Pernet

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines El Orinoco Ilustrado (EOI) by Joseph Gumilla as a layered textual and cartographic artifact central to the production of colonial knowledge in the Orinoco River basin. Moving beyond surface narratives of evangelization and exploration, it interrogates the sombras and silencios implanted in the Jesuit chronicle. Through an intradisciplinary approach combining literary analysis, archival research, and visual studies, the study reveals how EOI helped construct imperial visions of space, race, and resource extraction in eighteenth-century Spanish America. The dissertation is structured around six chapters. Chapter One outlines a theoretical framework. Chapter Two provides a longue durée historical context, …

The Role Of Procedural Due Process In Equal Protection And Affirmative Action Analysis: The Narrowly Tailored Prong, Simona Grossi

UC Law Constitutional Quarterly

The Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College marked the end of affirmative action as traditionally practiced in higher education admissions, forcing universities to seek alternative legal pathways for fostering diversity. At the same time, the Trump administration’s executive orders targeting DEI initiatives have exacerbated the legal uncertainty, raising critical questions about how institutions can preserve fairness in admissions while withstanding both judicial and political scrutiny.

This article argues that Procedural Due Process—when read in conjunction with Equal Protection—provides a constitutionally sound and structurally fair framework for admissions policies that align with strict scrutiny while preserving …

Beyond The Surface: Exploring The Experiences Of Black Female Athletes At Power 4 Institutions, Michonné Leatrice Gamble-Rivers

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Black female athletes, have a long history of fighting for visibility and inclusion. They are celebrated and hyper-visible as performers on the court yet deemed invisible in the institutional decision making that shapes their holistic development and success. This Dissertation in Practice (DiP) challenges this structural problem looking to amplify voices that have been historically silenced by systems that reduce these individuals to mere athletic capital.

Beginning with Manuscript I, this three-manuscript dissertation is built on a conceptual framework anchored in Womanist Theory, Intersectionality, and Athletic Identity, providing the necessary critical lens to investigate challenges like double jeopardy and limiting …

Reading Teacher Perceptions: The Impact Of Educator Preparation Program Literacy Coursework And Clinical Experiences On Teacher Efficacy In Historically Underrepresented Populations, Emily Taubken

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite research that indicates the critical importance and lifelong impact of early reading proficiency for students, national reading proficiency trends demonstrate most students in the United States are not yet reading at grade level, with disparities existing among historically underrepresented subgroups. Additionally, research shows that preservice and in-service teachers have documented limited feelings of self-efficacy in teaching reading specifically, suggesting limitations in preservice training for educators. To better understand how reading teachers perceive the efficacy of their preservice teacher academic and clinical experiences, especially for those who serve historically underrepresented student populations, this study seeks to document the perspectives of …

Knowledge Acquisition On Mass-Shooting Events Via Llms For Ai-Driven Justice, Benign Ihugba

All Theses

Mass-shooting events pose a significant challenge to public safety because they generate large volumes of unstructured textual data, making it difficult to conduct effective investigations and formulate public policy. The proposed knowledge acquisition system utilized Large Language Models (LLMs) with few-shot prompting to extract vital information from news articles, police reports, and social media content at high speed. The system used entity recognition to detect vital information, which included offenders, victims, locations, and criminal instruments that support legal investigations. An experimental study conducted on actual mass-shooting datasets showed GPT-4o performs best for mass-shooting NER. The o1-mini delivered competitive performance while …