Digital Commons Network^™

A Dialetical Materialist Reading Of Language And Ideology In The Metamorphosis, Sidhanth Sethi

Harriet L Wilkes Honors College Theses 2020 - Present

In this paper I use a dialectical materialist conception of ideology to analyze how it functions through language in Franz Kafka’s story The Metamorphosis. Beginning with Hegel’s account of consciousness as constituted through contradiction and its material reorientation in Marx and Engels, this project situates ideology within the social relations that shape human life. I then employ Evald Ilyenkov’s conception of material generation and Valentin Volosinov’s semiotic theory, arguing that signs constitute the material medium through which ideological meaning is produced and through which consciousness learns to misrecognize its own conditions. Using this framework, I interpret Gregor Samsa’s transformation as …

Signs & Symbols, Fall 2025, Illinois State University, Department Of Sociology And Anthropology

Signs & Symbols

Newsletter of the Illinois State University Department of Sociology and Anthropology. An email newsletter version of this document is available at https://web.archive.org/web/20260223203547/https://news.illinoisstate.edu/newsletters/signs-symbols-fall-25/.

Building Peace From Afar: Women-Led Peacekeeping From The Diaspora (Case Study: Afghanistan), Sveto Muhammad Ishoq

Kroc IPJ Research and Resources

This case study examines the challenges, tactics and tools of Afghan women activists in the UK in their peacebuilding efforts for Afghan women and girls post-Taliban takeover. It shows how operating from exile, these activists employ innovative strategies to amplify Afghan women’s voices, advocating internationally and providing support despite facing complex security, funding, and community unity issues.

Building Peace From Afar: Women-Led Peacebuilding From The Diaspora, Elena B, Stavrevska, Sveto Muhammad Ishoq, Shadi Rouhshahbaz, Kay Soe, Briana Mawby, Carolyne Komen

Kroc IPJ Research and Resources

Diaspora communities have long played critical roles in peacebuilding efforts in their countries of origin, yet the contributions of women within these communities remain significantly underexplored and underappreciated. This report seeks to address this gap by focusing on the unique roles, challenges and contributions of women in diaspora-led peacebuilding initiatives. Women in the diaspora — often navigating complex identities and facing distinct challenges — are vital actors in promoting peace, reconciliation and social change in their homelands.

Drawing on a comprehensive review of literature, research interviews, and detailed case studies, this report provides a nuanced understanding of how diaspora women …

Building Peace From Afar: Women-Led Peacekeeping From The Diaspora (Case Study: Iran), Shadi Rouhshahbaz

Kroc IPJ Research and Resources

This case study examines how young Iranian women, at home and abroad, envision Iran’s futures, their role in change-making and the challenges they face. It shows how their aspirations reflect lived experiences and the limited civic spaces within which they champion change, and the difficult choices they face about leaving or staying, while their visions for Iran’s future transcend current insecurities, offering images of a more equitable society that may inspire meaningful, feminist-led transformation.

Law School Announcements 2025-2026, Law School Announcements Editors

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Understanding Digital Communication Gaps With Hispanic Families In A Charter School In South Texas, Ruby Cabrera Aguilar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Now that access to technology is prevalent, digital communication in school districts and between schools and parents should be of high priority. Since schools do not emphasize digital communication policies and practices, a problem seen is a lack of communication across districts involving school staff, parents, and students. Determining school leaders’ roles in closing digital communication gaps through policies and procedures deserves further study because effective communication leads to awareness, involvement, relationship building, and student success. In this study, the knowledge gap theory and qualitative action research through reports and interviews assisted in understanding the perspectives of six school staff …

The Role Of Artificial Intelligence In Data-Driven Marketing: Enhancing Marketing Efficiency, Customer Engagement, And Business Performance In Smes, Abdelrehim Awad

Journal of Economics and Administrative Sciences

Marketing applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have revolutionized business strategy providing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) with superior customer engagement tools, strategic segmentation, and performance improvement. This study investigates the impact of marketing practices that are AI-based, like customer segmentation, predictive analytics, and marketing automation, on marketing efficacy, customer engagement, and on overall business performance in Egyptian small and SMEs. Utilizing a mixed-methods design, which means the integration of both quantitative (survey) and qualitative (interview) data analyzed with various methodological paradigms. The study consisted of structured surveys to 100 marketing professionals across several Egyptian SMEs and 30 executive interviews. Quantitative …

Using Some Artificial Intelligence Algorithms To Estimate The Parametric Regression Function For Spatially Dependent Data Of Water Pollution Of The Euphrates River, Ons Edin Musa, Sabah Manfi Redha

Journal of Economics and Administrative Sciences

These models account for the spatial effects resulting from the proximity of events. A compromise exists in the mathematical accuracy of model parameters when spatial correlations are present in the data of the phenomenon. Data reliant on spatial correlations are crucial in statistical modelling, especially in environmental science, economics, epidemiology, and various other disciplines. This study employs and compares three artificial intelligence approaches—the genetic algorithm (GA), the TABU search algorithm (TSA), and the binary firefly algorithm (Binary FFA)—to determine which is the most efficient for estimating the parametric regression function for spatially dependent data. The Mean Absolute Percentage Error numbers …

Everyday Norms Have Become More Permissive Over Time And Vary Across Cultures, K. Eriksson, P. Strimling, I. Vartanova, Andree Hartanto

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Every social situation that people encounter in their daily lives comes with a set of unwritten rules about what behavior is considered appropriate or inappropriate. These everyday norms can vary across societies: some societies may have more permissive norms in general or for certain behaviors, or for certain behaviors in specific situations. In a preregistered survey of 25,422 participants across 90 societies, we map societal differences in 150 everyday norms and show that they can be explained by how societies prioritize individualizing moral foundations such as care and liberty versus binding moral foundations such as purity. Specifically, societies with more …

False Friends: The Pereiaslav Agreement Of 1654 And Competing Narratives In Russian And Ukrainian Historiographies, Jiansheng Zhang

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

The Pereiaslav Agreement of 1654, concluded between the Cossack Hetmanate and the Grand Duchy of Muscovy at the Pereiaslav Rada, marked the beginning of modern Cossack-Muscovite (in perspective, Ukrainian-Russian) relations. Owing to its central role in shaping both Russian and Ukrainian national narratives, the agreement remains a highly contentious event in Eastern European history. Historians from the Russian and Ukrainian historiographical traditions offer divergent interpretations of how the agreement was conceived and received by the Cossacks and Muscovites. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, this essay critically examines these competing narratives and concludes that Ukrainian historiography—emphasizing …

Creative Development And The Repertory Grid Method: Investigating How A Team Of Theater Teaching Artists Describe And Assess The Formative Creative Skills And Dispositions Of Students, Mark Andrew Onuscheck

Theses and Dissertations from DePaul University

This mixed-methods study explores how a team of theater teaching artists describes and assesses the formative creative skills and dispositions of students participating in an after-school theater arts program, and it explores how repertory grid methods may support curricular, instructional, assessment, and feedback practices within such programs. Rooted in personal construct theory and curriculum studies, this research investigates how creative development—often viewed as elusive—is revealed through educators’ language, perceptions, and evaluative choices.   Using repertory grid interviewing and statistical rating protocols, the study identifies how participating teaching artists articulate the “language of learning” related to creative performance, uncovering 68 formative creative …

Ai-Enabled Terrorism: A Strategic Analysis Of Emerging Threats And Countermeasures In Global Security, Shai Farber

Journal of Strategic Security

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming terrorist methods and counter-terrorism strategies, with far-reaching effects on global security. This paper examines how terrorists use AI for new attack tactics, propaganda, and coordination, while also evaluating the ethical, legal, and strategic challenges AI introduces into counter-terrorism. Through a systematic literature review and qualitative analysis, the study identifies key trends in AI's impact on security dynamics, highlighting its role in blurring the lines between peace and conflict. An analytical framework is proposed to navigate the complex landscape of AI-driven asymmetric warfare, providing practical insights for policymakers and researchers. The study …

From Matrimony To Autonomy: Divorce As A Fundamental Right, Karin Carmit Yefet

Cardozo Law Review

Liberal divorce is under assault. Yet this development—one that arguably may shape the everyday life of Americans more profoundly than nearly any other domain of state law—has elicited surprisingly little scholarly inquiry. Because divorce has long fallen within the province of states and hewed to the whim of state legislatures, restrictions on divorce have rarely inspired constitutional analysis. As a result, the constitutional architecture necessary to conceptualize—let alone resolve—the question of how divorce law intersects with fundamental rights remains strikingly wanting. Indeed, one of the enduring puzzles of constitutional scholarship is the diametrically opposed treatment of marriage and divorce. While …

Tracking Change: A Follow-Up On The Culturally Adapted ¡Iniciando! La Adultez Program, Antonio F Pagán, Katherine A Loveland, Ron Acierno

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: Research on interventions for Latino young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and their families often faces challenges in long-term engagement. This study aimed to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of the culturally adapted ¡Iniciando! La Adultez program through a long-term follow-up.

Methods: A cohort of Latino young adults with ASD and their families who participated in the ¡Iniciando! La Adultez program were followed for six months post-intervention. Participants were assessed at three and six months to evaluate continued engagement and outcomes. Retention rates at each follow-up point were calculated.

Results: The study demonstrated high retention rates, with 48 …

Teaching Diffusion Models To Ground Alpha Matte, Tianyi Xiang, Weiying Zheng, Yutao Jiang, Tingrui Shen, Hewei Yu, Yangyang Xu, Shengfeng He

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The power of visual language models is showcased in visual understanding tasks, where language-guided models achieve impressive flexibility and precision. In this paper, we ex tend this capability to the challenging domain of image matting by framing it as a soft grounding problem, enabling a single diffusion model to handle diverse objects, textures, and transparencies, all directed by descriptive text prompts. Our method teaches the diffusion model to ground alpha mattes by guiding it through a process of instance-level localization and transparency estimation. First, we introduce an intermediate objective that trains the model to accurately localize semantic components of the …

Boosting Chart-To-Code Generation In Mllm Via Dual Preference-Guided Refinement, Zhihan Zhang, Yixin Cao, Lizi Liao

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Translating chart images into executable plotting scripts-referred to as the chart-to-code generation task-requires Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) to perform fine-grained visual parsing, precise code synthesis, and robust cross-modal reasoning. However, this task is inherently under-constrained: multiple valid code implementations can produce the same visual chart, and evaluation must consider both code correctness and visual fidelity across diverse dimensions. This makes it difficult to learn accurate and generalizable mappings through standard supervised fine-tuning. To address these challenges, we propose a dual preference-guided refinement framework that combines a feedback-driven, dual-modality reward mechanism with iterative preference learning. Our approach introduces a structured …

Making Math Accessible: Addressing Language Challenges In 3rd Grade English Medium Math Classrooms, Salha Mohamad

Theses

The research article, Making Math Accessible: Addressing Language Difficulties in 3^rd Grade English Medium Math Classrooms, addresses the issue of how the teachers in UAE elementary schools assist a student who is to study mathematics in English rather than Arabic. In the School X, Grades 1 and 2 applied mathematics and science using the Ministry of Education (MOE) Arabic-medium curriculum. Since Grade 3, however, the school has used the American curriculum, so students are expected to study these subjects in English. This change brings major barriers in understanding basic mathematical terms, word problems, and instructions. The research applies …

Evaluating The Quality Of Support Services For Students With Learning Difficulties: Perspectives Of Resource Room Teachers In The Sultanate Of Oman, Laila Al Salmi, Ibrahim Al Qaryoti, Ali Tekin, Amur Al Aisari, Mariam Al Mamari, Saed Al Saidi

Journal of Educational and Psychological Studies

This study investigates the quality-of-service provision offered by the Learning Difficulties Programs (LDPs) in Oman from the perspective of resource room teachers. Employing a descriptive approach, a sample of 329 teachers responded to a researcher-designed 49-item questionnaire, assessing six key domains: administrative and technical support, diagnosis and assessment procedures, family-school partnerships, curriculum and intervention programs, educational and technological aids, and behavior modification strategies. Results revealed that teachers held neutral perceptions regarding the overall quality of LDPs across most domains, except for the appropriateness of curriculum content for students with learning difficulties, which was rated positively. The study identified a lack …

Towards A Non-Alienated Philosophical Practice? A Critical Review Essay On The Latinx Philosophy Reader, Grant J. Silva

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Potential Impact Of Educational Equity Leadership On Gifted Education, Melissa Knettel

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

Knettel, M. (2025). Potential Impact of Educational Equity Leadership on Gifted Education

This qualitative single-case study examined how district-level educational equity leadership and policy impacted gifted education practices in a Minnesota school district. Despite well-documented underrepresentation of culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse students in gifted programs, limited research connects equity-centered leadership with the shifts necessary to transform gifted education practices. Using Dai and Chen’s (2013) framework of gifted education paradigms as a theoretical lens, this study investigated how the district defined educational equity in the context of gifted education, how educational leaders described their approach to providing gifted programs and …

Young Feminist Organizing In The State Of Yucatán, Mexico: A Case Study, Natalia Tenorio, Sonia Cruz, Esperanza Basurto, Anel Bobadilla, Paulina Márquez, Ricardo Regules

Adolescents and Young People

As part of the Participatory Action Research (PAR) Study on Young Feminist Organizing in Mexico and Kenya, this case study was conducted in the Yucatán, Mexico to understand the particularities of the feminist movement and organization led by young women in this state. The case study included in-depth interviews and focus groups with representatives of feminist organizations and collectives, civil society organizations, and public institutions. These were conducted in Mérida, the capital of the state of Yucatán, as described in the methodological note.

This brief summarizes the current issues that mobilize young feminists in the state of Yucatán, their forms …

Improving The Accessibility Of Speech For Deaf And Hard-Of-Hearing Individuals Through Affective Captions, Caluã De Lacerda Pataca

Theses

Captions have traditionally served as a bridge between the spoken word and its written representation, helping make speech accessible to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) individuals. It is worth considering, however, how much from speech is left out by this ’bridging’ between sound and visuals. This dissertation describes a research project that has, over six studies, looked at this very issue. We first examined whether there is an issue here at all. What does the experience of DHH individuals with captioning systems tell us about these systems’ shortcomings? For one, we found, captions are felt as monotonous and ambiguous. While communication …

From Canterbury To The Conference: Chaucer’S First 18 Lines Reborn, Charles X. Li, Tony Liang, Anika Saphiloff

Journal of the Symposium of University Research and Creative Expression

Project Mentor(s): Charles X. Li, PhD

This presentation examines the phonological shift from Chaucerian Middle English to Modern English, focusing on the Great English Vowel Shift. Using the first eighteen lines of Chaucer’s “General Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales as a case study, we demonstrate how vowel sounds in Middle English transitioned to those in Early Modern and Modern English. By analyzing specific words from these opening lines, we illustrate the vowel changes that marked the shift and their impact on pronunciation. Our presentation will conclude with a recitation of Chaucer’s first eighteenth lines, intertwined couplet by couplet by their …

From Old English Genitives To Modern English Possessives: Tracing Grammar Evolution Through Biogrammar And Grammatical Biology, Charles X. Li

Journal of the Symposium of University Research and Creative Expression

Project Mentor(s): Charles X. Li, PhD

This paper presents a biologically grounded and historically informed framework, Biogrammar, as a means to explain grammatical evolution and cognitive processing. It compares Biogrammar with two foundational theories in the study of language: the Nature-Nurture Hypothesis and Chomsky’s Universal Grammar. As a case study, the paper examines the historical evolution of English plural and genitive constructions, focusing on morphological developments such as the -as/-es mergers, his-genitives, group genitives, and the rise of the of + noun phrase pattern. These diachronic changes are interpreted as evidence of grammar functioning as a biologically adaptive system shaped …

Code Words, Josh Grauer

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Between Shores: Geophilosophical And Psychogeographical Explorations Of Belonging In Abdulrazak Gurnah’S By The Sea (2001), Nabila Khelil, Mahmoud Al-Shetawi

Jordan Journal of Applied Science-Humanities Series

In Abdulrazak Gurnah's work By the Sea (2001), the complex notion of belonging emerges as a central concern, intricately interwoven with the cultural and geographic landscape of the Indian Ocean region. The novel weaves a tapestry of profound geophilosophical and psychogeographical implications, as its primary setting, the coastline, becomes a multifaceted metaphor for the complex human experience of displacement, identity, and the ever-shifting nature of borders, both physical and existential. The vastness and fluidity of the sea, juxtaposed with the solid but permeable shoreline, serves as a symbolic stage upon which the characters' journeys of self-discovery and grappling with their …

The Transformative Value Of Antigone On The Arab Stage: Amplifying Voices Of Resistance And Justice, Maram Al-Dweik, Mahmoud Al-Shetawi

Jordan Journal of Applied Science-Humanities Series

In contexts marked by human rights abuses, state violence, and gender-based injustices, theatrical performances in the Arab world offer a vital platform for marginalized voices. By exploring the transformative power of modern adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone, particularly in this unique context, this study reveals how these performances serve as poignant reflections of resistance, justice, and societal transformation. Antigone is renowned for its exploration of political themes and moral dilemmas and continues to resonate across cultures and epochs. Through an adaptation theory lens, this study examines various Arab adaptations of Antigone, demonstrating the global reach and influence of this …

The Soviet Truth About China: Portrayal Of The Prc In Pravda During The Sino-Soviet Split, Artem Rakitskii

Chronos

No abstract provided.

A Study Of The Knowledge And Awareness Of Dental Students In Syrian Public Universities About The Using Artificial Intelligence In Pediatric Dentistry, Abdulrhman A. Alkhaled, Chaza N. Kouchaje

Arabian Journal of Pediatric Dentistry

Background : The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has caused a paradigm change in the medical and dental disciplines in recent years. It is crucial for practitioners to comprehend the basic ideas, underlying principles, and applications of AI as it continues to influence clinical practices in the present and the future. AI is a potent diagnostic tool in pediatric dentistry that improves precision, effectiveness, and judgment. To maximize AI's potential in clinical practice, a thorough grasp of its function in this field is essential.

Object: The purpose of the current study was to evaluate a group of Syrian dental …