Digital Commons Network^™

Billiards Cosmographies, Camilla Radoyce, Camilla Radoyce

Masters Theses

The world is full of systems too large to change. Climate catastrophe, extraction, infrastructure, and property organize everyday life while remaining largely invisible in their totality. We possess the tools to alter these conditions, yet the same arrangements continue to return. The same worlds are built again and again.

Billiards Cosmographies treats billiards as a way of thinking about how humans organize around inherited systems and enduring forms. This thesis proposes the billiards table not as a fixed object, but as a gizmo: a device for imagining how new social worlds might be assembled from a constellation of what already …

Negotiating The Shoreline, Shuqi Hu

Masters Theses

This research examines sea otter reintroduction in Coos Bay as a spatial and temporal conflict between ecological processes and human activities. Through mapping and analysis, it identifies key misalignments between infrastructure, ecological rhythms, and human use.

Focusing on points of proximity, the project tests how landscape design can create conditions of visibility and engagement with coastal ecologies.

Rather than resolving large-scale conflicts, it proposes site-specific interventions that foster empathy and support adaptive relationships between human and non-human systems.

Waterway: A Steam-Based Therapeutic Device System, Mingyuan Dong

Masters Theses

Across history and global cultures, water has played a central and often spiritual role in practices of care, from cleansing rituals to saunas and steam therapies. Yet, within contemporary product design, water is typically treated as a utility rather than as an experiential material capable of shaping perception, attention, and well-being. This thesis, Waterway, investigates how water, specifically in its steam state, can be designed as both a therapeutic medium and a ritualized experience that engages the body and mind.

Waterway proposes a steam-based wellness system that addresses physical pain and somatic discomfort while cultivating slower, more attentive interaction. Rather …

Sentience, Sheetal Agrawal

Masters Theses

The increasing urgency for sustainable and adaptive systems has driven research toward embedding intelligence directly into materials rather than relying solely on external sensing and control systems. This thesis explores how smart material1 embedded systems can be designed to recognize and respond to environmental signatures, defined as measurable patterns such as temperature fluctuations and mechanical forces. Central to this investigation is the integration of shape memory alloys, particularly Nitinol, with geometry-based actuation mechanisms that amplify material behavior into functional system responses.

The central argument is that designing with smart materials is a design problem, not primarily a materials science problem …

Finding The Estuary, Rhea Hu

Masters Theses

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Within The Archive: Jewelry And The Poetics Of Historical Trace, Fusheng Zhong

Masters Theses

Jewelry is a poetic translator, through which my intense and complex engagement with history is materialized. By reinterpreting the classical Chinese poem Bring the Wine(Li Bai,752) through paper-based materials, I translate poetry infused with personal traces and a distinct stance into wearable objects that embody the weight of history.

Through jewelry, an art form carried in close proximity to the body, I engage with history by staging acts of document visualization, transforming poems and archival fragments into visual and tactile records.  I suggest that in conditions of informational overload, individuals may gravitate toward reductive positions in order to avoid being …

Perceptual Heterotopia: A Spatial Experience Through Light, Media, And Textiles, Anne Yeoji Kim

Masters Theses

This study originates from sensory experience of observing sunrises and sunsets. Although the space in which these phenomena occur remains constant, it is perceived in different ways due to changes in the light that enters the space at these times. From these sensory experiences, the study began to inquire into the relationship between reality and the ideal. From this inquiry, it evolved into an exploration of how the ideal, or utopian, could be experienced through the senses within the realm of reality.

The concept of a heterotopia, as proposed by Michel Foucault, was used to expand upon these issues. A …

Situational 情境中, Jo Zixuan

Masters Theses

The Chinese title of this book 情境中 (qíng jìng zhōng) translates directly to within the situation. Yet separately as three individual characters, qíng jìng zhōng means emotion, scene, within. A situation in my language is inherently an emotional scene, which requires us to account for more than the objective conditions, such as the geographical, economic, and social circumstances, as well as the subjective and affective experiences of individuals.

How can design analyze the context of given situations and construct new situations? The key terms organizing this book describe a movement. Site establishes the levels of context in which any …

Sites Of Departure, Kevin Tomas

Masters Theses

At all scales of human history, there exists a record: The story of how things came to be. An infinity of interconnected traces that thread the intimate and the immense into a single fabric.

Beginning from distinct points of entry, Sites of Departure explores the axes of resolution and scale in documentation, asking what becomes visible when the instruments of the dominant record are set aside. Moving between recovery and confrontation, the work questions the structures that produce our understanding, while creating new documents for future interpretation—all against the reality that to make a claim, is to claim some truth. …

Optimalism, Clara F. Cayosa

Masters Theses

Optima. Optimal. Optimism. Optimalism.

Optima is a humanist typeface created by designer Hermann Zapf (German, male)

Optimal is what design—and life—in 2026 wants to be: maximum productivity, maximum output. But optimal for whom, and by whose measure?

Optimism is what you find in jeepney decalomania, or sari-sari store signage in the Philippines. It is the joy of everyday making, an assemblage of color and humble material. In Clara Balaguer’s words: of turning shit into gold.

Optimalism is my (Filipino, female) thesis; an accumulation of what I've learned trying to persist in graphic design. This is …

Re-Assembly, Tonia Zhang

Masters Theses

Graphic design is bound by invisible defaults — software suites, standardized formats, and interfaces optimized for speed, profit, and frictionless output. Re-Assembly treats these standardized technologies not as neutral scaffolding, but as the primary material for critical inquiry. By dissecting this “default” infrastructure, the work exposes the logic of extraction and control baked into our templates and grids. Through a practice of subverting and rebuilding these everyday systems, design is pushed to operate under decentralized and open terms. This repositioning rejects the role of the designer as a surface technician, instead defining them as an active agent and an architect …

Growing Pains Inc., Abigail B. Jarvis

Masters Theses

In Mierle Laderman Ukeles' "Manifesto for Maintenance Art”, Ukeles describes an art practice that reveals the invisible labor of daily upkeep and care, describing development as “pure individual creation; progress; advance,” and maintenance as “keep the dust off the pure individual creation, preserve the new; sustain the change”.

Growing Pains Inc. is embodied in a collection of patterns that dresses and addresses the changes buildings of New Bedford Massachusetts have experienced. It is driven by an attention to stewardship and care for our buildings that have been with us through generations. This thesis is about Growing Pains Incorporated. It speculates …

Unleashing Material Agencies, Yahui Chen

Masters Theses

Contemporary architectural practice has come to rely on a narrow repertoire of high-energy industrial materials, giving rise to what might be called a material "hegemonic structure" in which certain substances and construction logics dominate at the expense of others. This dominance suppresses material diversity and limits architecture's capacity to align with ecological processes, producing a systemic metabolic imbalance within the built environment. At its root, this imbalance reflects a structural absence: the persistent treatment of architecture as a closed, controllable system that imposes human will upon matter while suppressing its inherent agency.

Engaging with what Jane Bennett terms "vital materialism," …

Learning From The Remains: Meditations On Sustainability, Julae Tan

Masters Theses

What remains when a person or material assemblage is stripped of its

component parts?

What is left is the remainder, an irreductible core.

Purely cerebral learning can be fleeting. A hybrid approach of cerebral and

visceral, “perverse” learning grounded in a familial understanding of the

remainder yields a more resilient pedagogy that endures long after leaving the

site of formal education.

This research was completed under the aegis of the 2025/26 Sustainability

Design Lab and features the subject of making with paper discards as the

primary mode of interrogation.

Via a collection of essays, a literature review, as well as …

Meadowkeepers, Molly Lefanowicz

Masters Theses

New England’s cities cover the lowlands where meadows once dotted the landscape. These meadows were among the first spaces lost to development— hidden today beneath layers of concrete foundations, asphalt roads, and diligently mowed turfgrass lawns. Meadows are critical ecosystems: they support pollinators, act as seed banks for local plants, filter rainwater, sequester carbon, and build soil. But their steady disappearance is more than an ecological loss. As stewards and inhabitants of meadows, people hold a longtime cultural connection to their presence. Meadowkeepers is an effort to renew that connection.

Meadowkeepers introduces a community-scale model for meadow reestablishment in urban …

Open Forms, Barbara Cutlak

Masters Theses

Open Forms

Architecture always exists in relation to the context in which it stands. There is no way, however, to anticipate how the constructed space will be inhabited, or transformed by the surroundings — and so, it remains open to discovery and change. Graphic design form can operate in a similar way: opening itself to a context by offering multiple ways of seeing, interacting and being performed.

Drawing from the contexts that have informed my practice — my training in architecture and the artistic movements of Brazil, my home country — Open Forms experiments with how to translate these spatial …

Temporary Constructions, Elliott Golden

Masters Theses

Temporary Constructions is a photographic series made by a process of multiple exposures, material assembly, and surface intervention on large format film. Working in a photographic lighting studio, I build provisional structures from scrap wood and metal and photograph the structures in multiple possible forms to produce images that are visually intelligible but spatially impossible. In my writing, I situate these images within a longer lineage of artists using photography to recast our relationship to surface and depth, and consider what that lineage reveals about contemporary mediation and the increasingly blurred boundary between image and object.

Watershed Amendments: Assembling New Pervious Ground From Landscape Waste, Sophie Kaplan-Bucciarelli

Masters Theses

In Providence, Rhode Island, much of the downtown area is built over a vast historic tidal estuary. Though we no longer see the salt marshes, wooded bluffs, or meadows that once characterized this landscape, we recognize their absence in contemporary crises of urban heat, flooding, polluted soils and stormwater runoff, and habitat loss. These conditions are particularly acute along the city’s industrialized river corridors, where vacant lots and parking areas sit idle, their history paved over and potential constrained by limited imagination and resources.

These lots - already experiments in fill and land building after centuries of disturbance - can …

Chronos | Kairos: Exploring Time Through Experimental Comics And Artist’S Books, Rhea Pradeep

Masters Theses

This thesis examines how the reading experience of comics changes when they are presented in various artist’s book formats, particularly through the lens of time and space. This project encourages the practice of close reading, arguing that the physical form of a book is not only a container for the content, but also plays a part in its meaning-making. It shifts the narrative pace, perception of time and reader engagement. Research in this paper is heavily influenced by scholars like Johanna Drucker, Scott McCloud and Will Eisner. This interdisciplinary, practice-led research combines narrative analysis of experimental comics, close reading of …

Resistant Silence Engraved Trauma, Silence In Domestic Spaces, & Acts Of Resistance, Priyanka Kumar

Masters Theses

This thesis argues that silence surrounding trauma within domestic spaces is not merely an absence of speech or a condition of voicelessness, but it functions as an act of resistance. Focusing on domestic abuse within patriarchal structures, this research examines the ways trauma is embodied, negotiated, and concealed in everyday life. Central in this inquiry is the figure of the “sole witness” to abuse, those who live in close proximity to violence, endure its aftermath and negotiate survival through subtle and often unseen acts of resistance.

I am not attempting to define trauma, but the thesis explores the traces trauma …

Human After All, Ritu Mantri

Masters Theses

human

0. a being, relating to, or belonging to a person or to people.

1. an organism whose behaviour is structured by survival, instinct, and the immediate conditions of its environment.

2. a primate capable of thinking in abstractions. It makes marks, builds tools, and uses language to reflect on itself and the world around it.

3. a maker that increasingly constructs systems as a mirror of itself to store memory, meaning, and perception beyond the limits of its body.

4. an entity whose intelligence is increasingly indistinguishable from the tools and technological infrastructures it has built.

5. a superhuman …

Tuning The Neighborhood: Purifying People, Places, And Environments In Suburban Kolkata, Sourav Saha

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

In modern science, disciplines such as physics, mechanical and civil engineering, seismology, and acoustics have conceptualized vibration as a quantifiable mechanical phenomenon, measured through the metrics of frequency, amplitude, and resonance. In contrast, scholarship in anthropology, musicology, and sound studies has approached vibration as a socio-historical, cultural, and political phenomenon. This article examines how vibration (spandan) operates as a metaphysical, sensory, and ethico-affective force that mediates relations among people, places, and environments. Focusing on the practice of satsang adhibesan (devotional congregation), the article demonstrates how members of the Deoghar-Satsang community participate in sonic rituals of prayer, silent chanting, meditation, sacred …

The Autonomy Plan In Morocco: Legal Foundations, Political Dimensions And Prospects For Resolving The Sahara Conflict, Limam Boussif, Jalila Ait Soudane

Journal of Maya Heritage

Summary: The territorial conflict over the Sahara is one of the most enduring territorial disputes in international relations, involving issues of sovereignty, self-determination, and regional stability. In this context, Morocco’s 2007 Autonomy Plan is presented as a negotiated framework of self-government under Moroccan sovereignty.

This article analyzes the evolution and consolidation of the Autonomy Plan using a conceptual approach based on self-determination, territorial governance, and conflict resolution theories. It shows that the initiative has progressively evolved from a national proposal into an internationally recognized framework, particularly through growing diplomatic support and developments within the United Nations Security Council, including Resolution …

A Proposed Uniform System For Title Ix-Compliant Revenue Sharing In A New Era Of Intercollegiate Athletics, Jackson Schneider

DePaul Journal for Social Justice

Revenue sharing between colleges and universities and their student-athletes marks one of the most significant developments in the NCAA’s nearly 120-year history. House v. NCAA and its subsequent settlement enabled many Division I colleges and universities to begin sharing revenue directly with student-athletes in 2025. However, the House Settlement leaves a critical question unanswered: whether revenue sharing must comply with Title IX requirements. In the absence of judicial, legislative, or executive guidance, colleges and universities possess nearly complete discretion as to the amount of revenue to share, how to share it, and with whom to share it. This discretion creates …

Les Grands Chantiers De La Transition Énergétique Au Maroc: Le Cas De Dakhla-Oued Eddahab Entre Réalisations, Facteurs De Réussite Et Perspectives, Limam Boussif, Jalila Ait Soudane

Journal of Maya Heritage

Résumé: Cet article examine la dynamique de la transition énergétique au Maroc à travers une analyse descriptive et analytique du cas de Dakhla-Oued Eddahab. Dans un contexte marqué par l’accélération des politiques de décarbonation à l’échelle mondiale, le Maroc s’impose comme un acteur stratégique en matière de développement des énergies renouvelables et de l’hydrogène vert. L’étude met en lumière les principaux chantiers structurants engagés dans la région de Dakhla, notamment le développement des énergies éolienne et solaire, les projets de production d’hydrogène vert, le dessalement de l’eau de mer, ainsi que la réalisation du port Dakhla Atlantique. L’analyse montre que …

Vda 42nd House Of Delegates - Actions In Brief September 19-22, 2013

Virginia Dental Journal

No abstract provided.

The Tax Adviser, Volume 18, Number 9, September 1987, American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Tax Trends, Nicholas J. Fiore

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Tax Clinic, John L. Norman Jr.

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.

Corporate Amt: The Book Income Adjustment, New Regulations Offer Guidance But Few Surprises, Samuel P. Starr, Kathryn A. Kindgren

Tax Adviser

No abstract provided.