Digital Commons Network^™

Immigrants Facing Immigration Policy: State Laws Regulating Eligibility For In-State Tuition And Belonging Among Immigrant Youth In The United States, Fanny Lauby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation focuses on new paths of immigrant incorporation and on the political mobilization of undocumented youths in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area. The goal of this investigation is to assess whether contrasting state laws that either open or restrict eligibility for in-state tuition are associated with different levels of belonging and different styles of organizing among immigrant youths. This research draws from theories on political incorporation and a resource mobilization model of collective action. It also builds on theories of policy design highlighting the role of policy images in immigration reform. This dissertation aims to develop a broader …

China's Search For "Peaceful Internationalism" Vis-À-Vis A Liberal World Order: Interests, National Identity And Foreign Policy, Bo Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I employ the concept of national identity to explain China's foreign policy behavior during the history of the People's Republic of China. Specifically, I propose the concept of "peaceful internationalism" to characterize the behavioral orientation of China in the post-Mao era. Peaceful internationalism as both an idea and a policy, aims at a cross-national framework for cooperation and co-existence through non-conflictual, non-hegemonic and non-unilateral mechanisms of dispute resolution. This study argues that China pursues peaceful internationalism in a liberal international order, which is consistent with its contemporary national identity, which I term the "phoenix rising" identity. This …

"With The Class-Conscious Workers Under One Roof": Union Halls And Labor Temples In American Working-Class Formation, 1880-1970, Stephen Mcfarland

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a historical geography of interior spaces created by labor unions and other working class organizations in the United States between 1880 and 1970. I argue that these spaces-- labor lyceums, labor temples, and union halls-- both reflected and shaped the character of the working class organizations that created them. Drawing on Neil Smith's theories of geographic scale, I spatialize Ira Katznelson's framework for understanding working class formation. I demonstrate that at their best, these labor spaces furthered working class formation at multiple scales, enabling collective action across lines of racial, ethnic, and gender difference, and bridging the …

Law Without Recognition: The Lack Of Judicial Discretion To Consider Individual Lives And Legal Equities In United States Immigration Law, John Clark Salyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Law is not separate and apart from society but exists as a unique institution within society both being directed by social change and affecting social change. The history of U.S. immigration law shows that immigrants were welcomed or rejected depending on economic, political, and social factors (such as racial attitudes) and the legal definitions of what sorts of immigration were permissible or excludable differed over time. Since the 1990s, hostile attitudes towards certain immigrants have been represented in laws to a greater and greater extent, most significantly with the 1996 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act. As a result …

The Reproductive Body: Exploring Reproduction Beyond Gender, Ilyssa Ann Silfen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Most of us have been taught over the course of our lives that biological sex, gender, and reproduction are inescapably linked and, over time, this has created the illusion that these are all naturally connected. However, these “natural” connections have been formed over time after generations of repetition. While it may seem impossible to separate biological sex, gender, and reproduction from one another, it is important to deconstruct this falsely organic system from both a gender and human rights perspective.

This thesis seeks to explore the complex relationship between society’s reproductive mandate and the reality of the various processes of …

Water Conservation To Reduce Wet Weather Pollution Loads To The Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn, Ny, Suzanne Carol Stempel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public participation plays an important role in wet weather pollution management. However, the effects of participation programs on local water quality are often difficult to quantify. This project aims to quantify the potential effects of a community based, non-structural, BMP aimed at controlling inputs to combined sewage systems by encouraging residents to reduce their water use during rain events. A household could participate by reducing the amount of water they use for flushing toilets, washing dishes, taking showers, etc. during rain events; thereby reducing stress on the system during the time of highest demand. The Gowanus Canal sewershed in Brooklyn, …

Marvel Comics And New York Stories: Anti-Heroes And Street Level Vigilantes Daredevil And The Punisher, Jesse Allen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues that the creation of street level, vigilante heroes The Punisher and Daredevil created by Marvel Comics authors and illustrators in the late 1970s and early 1980s reflected the socio-economic environment of New York City at this same moment in history. By examining an era of New York that was fiscally and socially tense along with the development of characters created by the New York based Marvel Comics, I aim to show how their creation was directly related to the environment which they were produced in.

Politics As A Sphere Of Wealth Accumulation: Cases Of Gilded Age New York, 1855-1888, Jeffrey D. Broxmeyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines political wealth accumulation in American political development. Scholars have long understood the political system selects for "progressive ambition" for higher office. My research shows that officeseekers have also engaged in "progressive greed" for greater wealth. I compare the career trajectories of four prominent New York political figures during the Gilded Age: William Tweed, Fernando Wood, Roscoe Conkling, and Chester Arthur. Using correspondence, census, tax and land records, government reports, investigations, and newspaper coverage, I explain why each political figure chose to either seize or pass up opportunities for political wealth accumulation. I also examine the principal sources …

Striving For Integration: Referential Activity And Object Relational Level In A Sample Of Bisexual Women, Lauren Demille

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sexuality has been theorized as a particular human experience that is driven, unmirrored in development, and enigmatic, not reaching what Fonagy describes as "second order representation." Yet, as a social being, one is expected to declare and publically live out a sexual identity. This study is situated within this point of contact between the visceral and the sociolinguistic, with particular attention paid to the experiences of bisexual women, whose potential challenges in articulating a sexual identity are considered. The study sample was comprised of forty bisexual women participating in the Dually Attracted Women's Narratives study (Levy-Warren, 2013) returning for the …

A Study Of Twenty Two Caliber Long Rifle And Nine Millimeter Parabellum Bullet Ricochet From Common Substrates, Peter Diaczuk

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Determining the angle at which a bullet will successfully ricochet is essential information when a shooting investigation involves indirect fire. In this research, determining the critical angle and its variance was measured for six substrates, two calibers and two bullet types. This information provides the forensic scientist with fundamental data required for the scientific reconstruction and assessment of a shooting scene. Depending upon the bullet's design, the substrate, and the angle of impact, a bullet may fail to ricochet upon impact, or the bullet will ricochet. Knowledge of bullet behavior with common substrates provides valuable information for scientific investigation of …

When Wives Migrate And Leave Husbands Behind: A Jamaican Marriage Pattern, Elaine B. Douglas-Harrison

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For over a hundred years Jamaicans have been migrating to make the proverbial `better life' for themselves and their families. In the early 20th century husbands migrated, leaving wives behind. As economies of the United States and Canada have become more service-oriented, wives migrate leaving husbands behind. The experiences of Jamaican immigrant women are documented in Caribbean migration studies, but the marriages of Jamaican legally-married immigrant wives and their husbands left behind in Jamaica are so far unstudied. The main research question of this study is what maintains these transnational marriages over time, sometimes for decades, when spouses see each …

Birthing, Blackness, And The Body: Black Midwives And Experiential Continuities Of Institutional Racism, Keisha La'nesha Goode

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Within the last decade, historical and contemporary accounts of midwives, along with the efficacy of the Midwives Model of Care for pregnancy, childbirth and general women's health, have become increasing popular in mainstream publications and documentaries. Yet, very few of these accounts represent historical or contemporary black midwives (and midwives of color, more generally). Despite a long history of midwifery in the black community, black women currently represent less than 2% of the nation's reported 15,000 midwives. Relatedly, black women and infants experience the worst birth outcomes of any racial-ethnic cohort in the United States.

In the early 20th century, …

The Kids Are All Right Online: Teen Girls' Experiences With Self-Presentation, Impression Management & Aggression On Facebook, Alison Michelle Hill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Online social network participation is widespread among American adolescents. Prolific creators, consumers and curators of content, they write themselves into being (boyd, 2007) on social network sites like Facebook. Drawing on Erving Goffman's study of symbolic interaction in the form of dramaturgical perspective and The Third Person Effect, this research explores how young women ages 14-17 craft their self-presentations, engage in impression management, and experience aggression and bullying on Facebook. I propose that the majority of this age cohort craft online self-presentations that are consistent with their offline selves, yet they believe that other girls their age use their profiles …

Factlessness & Faultlessness: Individual Differences & Dimensions Of Philosophical Dispute, Geoffrey Scott Holtzman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project addresses the question of why philosophical disputes persist, and tackles the problem of how we might better approach them. I demonstrate empirically several ways in which personality, gender, and other factors are associated with specific philosophical beliefs. Typically, one might assume that these individual difference factors are irrelevant to philosophy, and can only serve to bias philosophical disputants. Against this view, I present four case studies, which collectively highlight the different ways in which individual differences in lived experience may be inseparable from philosophical concepts themselves.

A Meta-Analysis Of The Prediction Of Violence Among Adults With Mental Disorders, Hing Po Lam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study of the risk for violence among persons with mental disorders has received substantial scientific attention over the past few decades; however, many uncertainties and controversies remain due to the wide disparities in the reported results. Using the state-of-the-art perspective of public health, a meta-analysis was conducted to clarify the ambiguities by synthesizing quantitative findings from 85 research reports (completed between January 1970 and May 2010) on violence risk assessment among mentally disordered adults. Results of this meta-analytic study revealed that the estimates of the prevalence of violence among the psychiatric population varied considerably from 1.1% to 78.4% with …

If You See Something, Say Something: A Look At Experimental Writing On Art, Charlotte Lucy Latham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Signs all over New York City state, "If you see something, say something," but museum studies repeatedly find viewers do not attend to pictures, just as eye witness testimony is invariably skewed. Ways of seeing have been limited to known ways of discussing. Alternative approaches offer new insights. The first section, "Experiments in Art Writing," examines two texts: T.J. Clark's The Sight of Death, a journal of his daily visits looking at two Poussin paintings, for which he maintains the ambiguity of exploration and argues to keep visual images from their dissolution into political symbols; and, Charles Simic's Dime Store …

Can All Religions Live In Peace?, Antony Das S. Devadhasan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Can All Religions Live In Peace?

Religion is identified as one of the main factors that divide humanity. Pluralists like, John Hick identify the conflicting truth claims or the doctrines of different religions as the basis for religious exclusivism. Hick accuses the exclusivists of being epistemically arrogant and morally oppressive. His remedy for eradicating exclusivism is that every religion with conflicting truth claims should reinterpret these claims so as to share an outlook with other religions. Alvin Plantinga, a critic of Hick, contradicts Hick on behalf of a believer or an exclusivist.He argues that for a believer his beliefs are …

Conservation Of Desert Wetlands And Their Biotas/Conservacíon De Humedales Desérticos Y Su Biota, Mauricio De La Maza-Benignos, María De Lourdes Lozano-Vilano, Evan W. Carson

Faculty and Staff Publications

The biological diversity of arid and semi-arid ecosystems is threatened by exploitation of water resources for agricultural and economic development. As demand for the scarce water supplies of these regions has increased in recent decades in North America, efforts to moderate consumptive water use generally have been unsuccessful. This problem is highlighted in Mexico, where arid and semi-arid regions represent approximately 65% of the land area and are home to over 46% of the populace. The Chihuahuan Desert is the largest and most biodiverse desert in Mexico, and also is one of the more degraded by unsustainable use of water …

On Attachment And BeLonging: Or Why Queers Mourn Homophobic President?, R Kulpa

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

In this article I ask why gay and lesbian people in Poland mourned their infamously homophobic president Lech Kaczynski, and, in turn, what it means to mourn one's own enemy. In examining this extraordinary case of national bereavement and the collective performance of grief, I point to complex models of attachment that position Polish homosexual subjects in a locus where they are able to enter the national discourse as subjects, and not only as abjects. I stress the role of identification rather than identity, relationality, processuality and performativity in understanding the relations between nationhood and homosexuality. Homosexual subjects attaining the …

The Egyptian Uprising And April 6th Youth Movement Split, Somaia Metwalli El Sayed

Theses and Dissertations

Few months after the Egyptian uprising, a considerable number of April 6th Youth movement announced their split. Knowing that the movement was already suffering from internal disputes over a number of issues, the research problem is centered on questioning whether and how the uprising played a role in such incident. Academic scholarship on social movements developed partial and action-oriented theories to explain different processes and dynamics of movement’s collective action. However, little work has been done on the trajectory of social movements in the Middle East, especially after radical forms of change as revolutions, uprisings or upheavals. It is argued …

From The Forefront To The Sidelines: Youth In Post-Revolution Egypt, Khadiga Omar

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the reasons for the declining role of youth as effective political players since the Egyptian Revolution in 2011. Particularly looking at the “Revolutionary Youth”, this study investigates why their activism over the course of the past four years could not translate into political power that would lead to the realization of the goals of the revolution. Resource Mobilization Theory, Political Opportunity Structure and Framing constitute a tri-lens through which the political experience of the youth is analyzed in this research. This thesis argues that a) the youth’s organizational dilemma; b) their reliance on protest as the exclusive …

The Graffiti Of Mohamed Mahmoud And The Politics Of Transition In Egypt: The Transformation Of Space, Sociality And Identities, Nouran Al-Anwar El-Hawary

Theses and Dissertations

This study is concerned with the spatial transformations taking place in Mohamed Mahmoud that branches from Midan el-Tahrir; the official site of the Egyptian January 25 Revolution. Since the revolution, this street has witnessed a great deal of violence during several bloody clashes between protesters and security forces. It has also become famous for the dissenting graffiti murals wrapping the walls of it entrance. By conducting ethnography of this block of Mohamed Mahmoud Street, my study focuses on the residents and shop owners in the area, who I frame as the graffiti's ‘unintended audience,’ to understand how these spatial and …

Catholic Schools In The Public Interest, Thomas J. Kiely

Journal of Catholic Education

Review of Catholic Schools in the Public Interest, by Patricia A. Bauch, O.P. (Ed.).

Principles Of Catholic Social Teaching, Critical Pedagogy, And The Theory Of Intersectionality: An Integrated Framework To Examine The Roles Of Social Status In The Formation Of Catholic Teachers, Caroline Marie Eick, Patrick A. Ryan

Journal of Catholic Education

This article discusses the relevance of an analytic framework that integrates principles of Catholic social teaching, critical pedagogy, and the theory of intersectionality to explain attitudes toward marginalized youth held by Catholic students preparing to become teachers. The framework emerges from five years of action research data collected in Foundations of American Education classes in a teacher education program of a Mid-Atlantic Catholic Liberal Arts University. The authors propose new directions for research on Catholic schools and suggest that the gaps between espoused values and practices in Catholic schools as identified by researchers over the last decade might be more …

Motivation And Job Satisfaction Of Catholic School Teachers, John J. Convey

Journal of Catholic Education

This article examines the relationship between Catholic school teachers’ motivation and job satisfaction. The data are derived from a survey of 716 teachers in Catholic elementary and secondary schools in three dioceses in the US (Atlanta, GA; Biloxi, MS; and Cheyenne, WY). The school’s academic philosophy and its environment were important predictors of the teachers’ satisfaction with their work with students and with their relationships with administrators and other teachers. The motivation to teach in the school because it was a Catholic school was an important predictor of the teachers’ satisfaction with the school. The results of the study confirm …

The Colour Of Poverty: Understanding Racialized Poverty In Canada Through Colonialism, Seema Allahdini

Social Justice and Community Engagement

No abstract provided.

Scholastic Minutes 09/30/2014, Scholastic Committee

Scholastic Committee

2014-15 undergraduates initiatives SCEP report; All University transfer policy review; foreign language requirement for students whose first language is "difficult" to test by usual SC means/exams.

Central Washington University Football, Charles Chandler Biography, Central Washington University Athletics

Football

No abstract provided.

2014 September 30 - Etsu Staff Convocation, Office Of The President, East Tennessee State University

Office of the President Speeches

No abstract provided.

Central Washington University Football, Montreux Macon Biography, Central Washington University Athletics

Football

No abstract provided.