Digital Commons Network^™

The Chinese Red Record: Western Lynch Law And The Nationalization Of Racial Terror, 1853–1915, Kevin Hegg

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Between the California Gold Rush and the First World War, Chinese immigrants were subjected to a systematic regime of extralegal racial violence marked by lynchings, riots, massacres, and forced expulsions. Using a newly compiled dataset of anti-Chinese lynchings and related lethal incidents, this thesis reconstructs a “red record” of that violence and traces its spread from California and the Pacific Coast to the Mississippi Delta. In doing so, it expands the geography of what Ida B. Wells called “OUR country’s national crime” in “Lynch Law in America” (1900). These extralegal killings formed part of a Western anti-Chinese exclusionist regime that …

“Like Taking Your Armor Off:” Examining The Communication Challenges Faced By Lgbtq+ Liaison Officers, Emily P. Nicholson

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Policing has been and remains one of the most significant issues facing society in the United States. One response to this issue which has seen a rise in the last decade is the presence of liaison officer programs, which are designed to help improve police relations with vulnerable groups by forging connections with local, identity-aligned organizations and practicing identity-first policing. This study sought to understand what the challenges faced by liaison programs are and what organizational tensions are experienced by police officers in LGBTQ Liaison positions. Following an inductive approach to analysis, participants in the study engaged in a semi-structured …

Aggression And Mobility: The Power Of A Cavalry Pursuit During The Civil War, Leland G. Smith

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Decades after the Napoleonic Wars ended, military theorists in western countries began to write books and other manuals on how to successfully use cavalry on the battlefield. One such writer; Barron Jomini, mentions in his book The Art of War that cavalry should be used for reconnaissance, guarding flanks and looting, but its most important use was “opening the door for victory” by exploitation and pursuing the enemy for total victory. Jomini’s book was influential for the generals fighting the Civil War. In the early days of the war the Confederates would greatly use cavalry to conduct reconnaissance, while the …

The Coffee Crisis: What Starbucks Coffee Company Teaches Us About Exploitation, Chloe Baker

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The average American consumer associates the coffee shop with an earth-toned color pallet, a comfortable seating arrangement, and a delicious beverage. American popular culture mimics that imagery, in television shows like NBC’s Friends and Frasier, and movies like You’ve Got Mail. Coffee shops are one kind of third place, a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe tertiary spaces to work and home where people commune and form community. But a darker side of coffee shops exists relatively unnoticed. This thesis demonstrates how popular cultural portrayals of coffee and coffee shops—small businesses and Starbucks Coffee Company—have both …

The Effects Of An Autism Community Member Feedback-Based Training On Increasing Positive Interaction Skills, Francis Gary Powers Iii

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The current study examined the effects of a behavioral skills training (BST) on the frequency with which participants engaged in positive interaction skills that could be used when interacting with individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The behaviors for which the BST sought to increase were identified through a study that interviewed the members of a local autism community and first responders regarding actions that can be taken to foster more positive interactions when both specifically first responders and individuals with autism are at an emergency scene. A multiple baseline across behaviors design was used to assess the effect of …

"An Hospital For These People": Community Cooperation In The Construction Of America's First Psychiatric Hospital, Kira Quintin

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The Public Hospital in the Colonial Williamsburg Historic Area is a reconstruction of the first psychiatric hospital in America. It is intended to interpret the psychiatric history of colonial Virginia to museum-goers, but with no dedicated staff or interpreters, the site is open for less than two hours a week at most. This project seeks to expand the accessibility of the site and the conversation surrounding the history of mental health among visitors to one of the largest living history museums in the country. This was accomplished by working with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation to publish a self-guided tour of …

Building A Comprehensive Insider Threat Defense Program, Alan Saquella

Publications

Organizations today face a growing and evolving threat that often originates not from an outside hacker or criminal organization, but from within their own workforce, vendor networks, and trusted partnerships. Insider threats continue to represent one of the most difficult risks to identify, prevent, and mitigate because insiders already possess something external adversaries spend enormous resources trying to obtain: trust, access, and legitimacy.

For decades, many organizations relied heavily on pre-employment criminal history checks and reference verification as their primary safeguard against insider misconduct. While these tools remain important foundational elements of any hiring and risk management program, they are …

On Paper, Dallas Spears

MFA in Visual Art

I create sculptural works from discarded copy paper that I combine with found objects, all sourced from my immediate environment. The associations of paper such as writing, tearing, stacking, folding, and scribbling echo through my formal gestures. Found objects mimic these gestures, while adding unexpected textures and colors to the compositions. These machine-made objects are intertwined with the handmade to form displays of exchange. I am interested in the tension between the manufactured and the hand-formed, and how these tensions inform our daily lives. Objects that surpass the human lifespan, products alienated from us via opaque networks of exchange, especially …

Identifying Dominant Factors That Impact Hazardous Alcohol Use Among Sexual And Gender Minority Groups, Laurie A. Drabble, Cat Munroe, Anthony Surace, Katherine J. Karriker-Jaffe, Priscilla Martinez-Matyszczyk

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

Introduction Sexual and gender minority (SGM) people report higher rates of hazardous alcohol use relative to heterosexual and cisgender people. Although research has identified factors that contribute to these disparities, few studies include both general and SGM-specific correlates of alcohol outcomes or quantify which factors have the strongest effects. Methods. We used dominance analysis with data from SGM participants in a 2024 national survey (N = 1524) to evaluate the relative importance of multiple factors on past-year heavy drinking days (i.e., days on which participants drank 5 + standard drinks) and alcohol use disorder (AUD). SGM-specific variables included peer drinking …

Temporal Ubiquity, Brittni Mosby

MFA in Visual Art

My thesis examines looking as a sacred and relational practice rooted in familial memory, storytelling, and the photographic archive. Drawing from early experiences of engaging family photographs alongside my mother and great-grandmother, I conceptualize these encounters as the formation of “temporal altars”: living vessels that activate space, memory, and multiplicity. These intimate acts of looking and listening position the home as a critical site where Black subjectivity is held with care and complexity.

By casting these modes of perception into domestic spaces, my thesis not only resists reductive external gazes but interrogates the archive as a colonial apparatus structured by …

Grounding In Place And Space, Levi Anthony Walker

MFA in Visual Art

The foundation of Levi Walker’s artistic practice relies on the use of natural materials that reference the landscape. The materials within his sculptures, in combination with sculptural processes, create a conceptual language that is in conversation with the land and the ways that we engage with it as a community. As a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, his work addresses the relationship that Indigenous tribes have with the federal government, and the ways the tribe must navigate colonial systems in order to support their communities without erasing their identities or beliefs. Influenced by his upbringing, a strong …

Identity And Intervention: United States' Foreign Policy Toward The Dominican Republic, Eileen Ledesma

College Honors Program

Constructivist theory provides a framework for understanding United States foreign policy toward the Dominican Republic during the U.S. occupation (1916-1924), the rise and consolidation of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s dictatorship, and the regime’s eventual political isolation during the Cold War. This thesis argues that U.S. foreign policy was shaped by identity narratives and political culture, also identified through historically constructed understandings and the repeated performance of legitimacy and order. By situating U.S.-Dominican Republic relations within broader debates in international relations theory, this thesis highlights the explanatory value of constructivism in understanding the evolution and contradictions of U.S. policy in Latin America. …

Consonance, Dissonance, And The Brain: Directions In Modern Concert Music, Julianna F. Stratton

College Honors Program

Modern Western arts pedagogy can easily lead its students to believe in the unimpeded evolution of musical language, progressing from highly consonant music to the dissonant explorations of the 20th century. Although extreme schools of music made their mark on the modern music scene, and some of their techniques do continue today, recent trends in the concert hall have seemingly embraced tonality and consonance again. This work addresses some of the neuroscientific and psychological underpinnings of this change. It explores the processes by which we assign meaning to sound, which might tell us about future trajectories of music in the …

Sequential Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma And Small Cell Carcinoma Following Prior Nissen Fundoplication, Melika Babadi, Morgan W. Stewart, Adil Bhatti, Peter Schultz, Brett Dunbar, Eric Delman

Student Publications

Primary small cell carcinoma of the esophagus (PSCCE) is a rare and aggressive malignancy with clinical features that often resemble more common esophageal cancers, leading to delayed diagnosis and uncertainty in management. We present a unique case of sequential squamous cell carcinoma followed by PSCCE in the distal esophagus after a previous Nissen fundoplication, emphasizing diagnostic and surveillance challenges. A 63-year-old man with a history of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and prior fundoplication presented with chest pain and progressive dysphagia. Initial esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) revealed a distal esophageal lesion, and biopsy confirmed invasive squamous cell carcinoma arising from Barrett's mucosa, which …

School Closure As Education Policy Failure: A Quantcrit Analysis Of Reform-Resistant Schools In Memphis (2010–2025), Stacy Hubbard Patton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

High-stakes accountability policies have reshaped urban school governance by linking standardized test performance to decisions about intervention, restructuring, and closure. Although these systems are designed to improve low-performing schools, prior research suggests that accountability classifications reflect broader structural conditions, including racial segregation and concentrated poverty, rather than isolated instructional deficits, with schools serving Black and Latino students in historically disinvested communities bearing a disproportionate share of these consequences. This study examines the 2010–2025 achievement trajectories and survival-to-closure patterns of reform-resistant schools in Memphis–Shelby County Schools, guided by Quantitative Criticalism (QuantCrit) as both a theoretical and methodological framework. School-level administrative records …

Future-Oriented Science Education: A Delphi Study Of Policymakers’ Views From Four European Countries, Sibel Erduran, Jessica Chan, Olga Ioannidou

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

Future-oriented skills have become increasingly important in science education. These skills include critical thinking, problem solving and managing complexity. While policymaking has a direct bearing on the what and the how of a future-oriented perspective in science education, previous research focused on a narrow group of stakeholders such as teachers and students. Little is known about what policymakers perceive as significant future-oriented skills to be included in the science curriculum. By policymakers we mean government officials, legislators, educational administrators, and other influential figures who are key decision-makers in the educational eco-system. The exploratory empirical study reported in the paper employed …

Mec Property Holdings, Llc V. Gelfand

All Decisions

In a plenary action for overdue rent, the Appellate Division dismissed the landlord's complaint. The lease required a 14-day rent demand as a condition precedent to any action seeking overdue rent. The landlord failed to serve this notice. The court held that the plain meaning of the lease controlled, even for a plenary action, and that failure to satisfy this contractual condition precedent warranted dismissal. The tenants' motion for summary judgment on their counterclaims was denied due to insufficient evidence.

Mindset Versus Circumstance: How Fatalism And Food Insecurity Shape Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption In Young Adult Latinas, Mi Zhou, Elba Nohely Vidal, Giselle Pignotti, A. Susana Ramírez

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This study examined the association between fatalism and sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption among young adult Latinas, with food insecurity as a moderating factor. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with 829 Latina women aged 18–29. Measures included fatalism, food insecurity, daily SSB intake, education, and income. Moderation analyses showed that fatalism was positively associated with SSB consumption (β = 5.22, p = 0.002), as was food insecurity (β = 20.40, p = 0.010). A significant interaction between fatalism and food insecurity (β = −4.85, p = 0.024) showed that fatalism predicted higher SSB intake among food-secure participants but not among …

Local And Indigenous Knowledge, Innovation, And Sustainable Development: Creating Sustainable Futures Amidst Crisis Conditions At The Community Level, Carlos Andrés Arias

Dissertations and Theses

In 1987, the Brundtland Commission's Our Common Future (1987) made clear the need to reject longstanding development processes and focus on sustainable development. The Commission stressed that actual sustainable development integrates three elements: social development, economic development, and environmental protection. Though developed nations have achieved economic growth through conventional and extractive development practices, these practices have intensified natural disasters driven by climate change, increased food insecurity, and deepened poverty. This has acutely impacted Indigenous and local communities, many of whom face crisis conditions, such as war, terrorism, civil disorder, and their aftermath. Even so, many of these communities successfully implement …

Silent No Longer: Pedro Albizu Campos And The Fbi, Noah D. Dubroff

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis explores the Puerto Rican revolutionary, Pedro Albizu Campos, and how he evolved from a typical independence-minded young man into a radical who actively rebelled against the colonial rule of the U.S. because of the pressures applied by law enforcement agencies, especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  The United States annexed Puerto Rico in 1898 at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. Ever since, many Puerto Ricans have strongly advocated for their independence from the continental U.S., shaping the relationship into the present day. This article argues that the pressure and strain of such an imperial relationship influenced Albizu …

Cardiac Hdac3 Disruption Contributes To Hdac Inhibitor-Induced Qt Prolongation, Jiao Lu, Christopher Ward, Sichong Qian, Lilei Zhang, Jiang Chang, Zheng Sun

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors are approved for cancer treatment and are being investigated for a wide range of other diseases. Despite their therapeutic promise, clinical studies have reported cardiac side effects, particularly electrocardiogram (EKG) abnormalities, with QT interval prolongation being one of the most consistently reported findings. The mechanisms underlying these cardiac effects remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the role of HDAC3 in cardiac electrophysiology. We found that postnatal depletion of cardiac HDAC3 in mice caused QT interval prolongation, recapitulating the EKG abnormalities reported with HDAC inhibitor use. Adult-onset inducible depletion of cardiac HDAC3 induced additional EKG abnormalities, …

Correction: Watts Et Al. Multi-Antigen Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus (Eehv) Mrna Vaccine Induces Humoral And Cell-Mediated Responses In Mice, Jessica R Watts, Jennifer L Spencer Clinton, Jeroen Pollet, Rongsheng Peng, Jie Tan, Paul D Ling

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The authors would like to make the following corrections to this published paper [...].

Cigarette And E-Cigarette Use In Greater Philadelphia: Proportion Of Use Compared To National Data And Local Predictors Of Smoking Status, Munjireen Sifat, Joshua Banks, Lilianna Phan, Kuang-Yi Wen, Julie A. Barta, Rebecca J. Melillo, Hee-Soon Juon

College of Population Health Faculty Papers

UNLABELLED: Objective tobacco use, cigarette, e-cigarette, cancer-related beliefs, perceived risk, lifestyle attribution, cancer disparities, health equity. We assessed cigarette smoking and e-cigarette use in the Greater Philadelphia region alongside national data. The objectives were to descriptively explore differences in tobacco use by sociodemographic characteristics. We also examined cancer belief associations with smoking and e-cigarette use in the local context.

METHODS: We descriptively compared cross-sectional survey data from 2744 adults in the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center (SKCCC) catchment area (Greater Philadelphia region; May-July 2022) with 6252 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 6) nationally representative respondents (United States; March-November 2022). …

Descriptive Analysis Of Career Planning And Industry Insight (Cognitive Component) Among Final-Year Mechanical Engineering Education Students, Fadliyanti Firdausia, Purnomo Purnomo, Eddy Sutadji, Tommy Tanu Wijaya, Muhammad Idris Effendi

Jurnal Pendidikan: Teori, Penelitian, dan Pengembangan

This study aims to analyze the level of understanding of final-year Mechanical

Engineering Education students regarding career planning and industry insight as

cognitive components in preparing for the workforce. The study employed a quantitative

approach with a descriptive method involving 58 eighth-semester students who had

completed industrial internships. Data were collected using a Likert-scale questionnaire

consisting of 20 items on career planning and 18 items on industry insight, and were

analyzed using descriptive statistics, including mean scores and percentages. The results

indicate that students’ understanding of career planning falls into the high category, with

a mean score of 3.78, while …

A Reassessment Of “Tityus” Tenuimanus Banks, 1910, As A Misidentified Leiurus Sp. (Scorpiones: Buthidae), Mohamed Mousaid, Ersen A. Yağmur, Zoe Flores, Alana Rivera, Aziza Lansari, Abdellah Bouazza

Euscorpius

This study re-examines the holotype of “Tityus” tenuimanus Banks, 1910, previously synonymized with Buthus atlantis Pocock, 1889 by Lourenço & Francke (1984). Our results indicate that the specimen is a misidentified representative of Leiurus Ehrenberg, 1828, as it exhibits the diagnostic characters of this genus: the central lateral and posterior median carinae of the carapace fused into a lyre-shaped configuration, and tergites I–II bearing five granular carinae (a character absent in the genus Buthus Leach, 1815). Moreover, the holotype lacks one of the most distinctive characters of the genus Tityus Koch, 1836, namely the presence of a subaculear tubercle. The …

Modeling The Dynamics Of Infectious Disease Transmission Through Wastewater Surveillance: Applications To Covid-19 Epidemiology, Ephraim Agyingi, Michael Kostrna

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Ontario High School Teacher Perspectives On Failure: Bridging Policy And Practice, Dan Guadagnolo, Kelly Li, Klea Mosho, Megan Anderson, Nicole Laliberte, Fiona Rawle

Journal of Educational Research and Practice

This study explores teacher perceptions of the role of failure in secondary school education. Our case study analysis, based on 23 interviews in Ontario, Canada, suggests secondary school teachers understand failure as a core element of the learning process. However, teachers do not feel they can easily use failure as a pedagogical tool. Teachers perceive Ontario Ministry of Education guidelines regarding student success to have created an institutional culture within which student failure is administratively burdensome and is framed as external to the learning process. These success narratives in government assessment guidelines have created a situation wherein teachers often feel …

From Beirut To Montreal, En-Camp-Ment-S On The Fringes Of Society, But What Society, Soñar Soñar

Gatherings

This text is a prose that retraces my experience as a researcher and activist in three camps, between April 2024 and July 2024 : the Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, Bourj El Barajne, and the pro-Palestine encampments in Montreal, Al-Aqsa and Al-Soumoud. The text is a continuation of writings of different genres, particularly creative, which relate facts and lived experiences around liberation struggles. This writing constitutes “a method of inquiry”, “a way of “knowing” – a method of discovery and analysis. By writing in different ways, we discover new aspects of our topic and our relationship to it” (Richardson 516).

Watermelon Peels, Watermelon Peels

Gatherings

This piece comprises critical commentary by six students and two faculty who began a collaboration under urgent and difficult circumstances after October 7, 2023, when Israel intensified its genocide in Gaza. Writing from the University of Toronto, Mississauga — a campus situated on treaty lands and with a significant Palestinian student population — the eight contributors reflect on their solidarity work for Palestine between October 2023 and May 2024. The commentaries share this time frame and a commitment to Palestinian liberation, but they are different in voice, focus, and experience. Calling themselves the "Watermelon Peels," the group reflects on how …

Feminist Solidarities And An Ethos Of Care: Reflecting On Faculty Marshal Experiences At The University Of Denver, Andrea L. Stanton, Dheepa Sundaram

Gatherings

Spring 2024 witnessed student encampment protests around the US and world protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Israeli occupation in Palestine. The University of Denver (DU) became part of this movement in April when students established a Palestine solidarity encampment, permitted by DU's then-current freedom of expression policies. To protect students' free speech rights, we trained as marshals alongside faculty and staff colleagues to ensure student rights, peacefully de-escalate tensions, and keep all community members safe. This essay adopts an autoethnographic approach grounded in our lived experiences and care-based interactions with campus and broader community. Taking an intersectional approach …