Digital Commons Network^™

Analysis Of Security Concerns In India-Central Asia Relations, Anmol Mukhia, Anurag Tripathi, Sanjeev Kumar Tiwari

Journal of Strategic Security

India-Central Asia relations have gained strategic significance driven by its historical ties, growing economic interests, and, most importantly, evolving security dynamics. This article deals with multifaceted security concerns such as drug trafficking, terrorism, radicalization, and the implications of instability in Afghanistan. The findings show that security concerns in the region, particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, constitute a significant obstacle, alongside geographical challenges, to India’s connectivity with the Central Asian Republics (CARS). India’s rising aspiration to increase connectivity and build closer ties with the region in energy, trade, and commerce heavily relies on a peaceful, prosperous, and stable Central and South …

Shadow Logistics: Military Vulnerability Through Civilian Dependence, Gilles A. Paché

Journal of Strategic Security

The rapid evolution of civilian-origin technologies repurposed for defense is reshaping the foundations of logistical advantage and altering the conditions under which armed forces operate. Modern missions rely on an extensive ecosystem of infrastructures—port terminals, cloud services, data platforms, and civilian contractors—whose reliability frequently lies beyond the authority of public institutions. This environment gives rise to shadow logistics, a network of civilian systems largely absent from conventional doctrine yet capable of producing significant operational disruptions when failures occur. Case studies show that some dark assets, whether physical or informational, can act as multipliers of effectiveness while simultaneously creating systemic vulnerabilities …

The Russian Fsb – A Concise History Of The Federal Security Service. By Kevin Riehle. Georgetown University Press, 2024., Michael W. Parrott

Journal of Strategic Security

No abstract provided.

Marketing As Practice: Resolving The Hunt-Anderson Stalemate Through Practice Theory, Stephen A. Lemay, Martin Svendsen

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

This paper revisits methodological debates in marketing theory, tracing the progression from Sidney Levy’s work on symbolic consumption to the Hunt–Anderson empiricist–relativist debate. We argue that this debate rests on a category error: marketing has been misclassified as either a science or an interpretive discipline. Drawing on contemporary practice theory, we reconceptualize marketing as a professional practice oriented toward creating and managing exchange relationships within cultural contexts. This perspective resolves the Hunt–Anderson stalemate, clarifies the epistemological foundations of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) and Transformative Consumer Research (TCR), and generates distinct research questions and methods. Through comparative exemplars, we show how …

Contesting The Sacred: Ideology And Church Music Reform In Spain, 1850–1900, Francisco J. Legasa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that sacred-music reform in Spain between 1850 and 1900 was not a unified movement culminating in the 1903 Motu proprio, but a contest between two distinct and contemporaneous programs. The first, associated with Hilarión Eslava, affirmed musical expression and artistic progress, embraced stylistic eclecticism, and sought to rebuild musical institutions, modernize pedagogy, and forge alliances with civic life. It drew on Romantic thought that attributed to music a distinctive capacity to mediate religious experience. The second, aligned with Roman ultramontanism, held that Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony were the only legitimate models for sacred music and that …

Trans-Cyber Cinema: Digital Embodiment In Science-Fiction Films, Sophia R. Schrock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis aims to define the trans-cyber genre within cinema. By looking retroactively at a selection of nine films made across various decades and countries, this genre connects these films through their visualization and thematization of both trans and cyber embodiments, whereby the trans-cyber being emerges. Before the cinematic analysis and explanation of the three generic conventions selected for this thesis – transformation of body/gender; altered reality, memory, and temporality; and, radical death – the two intertwining theoretical frameworks will be established. This includes a brief summary of applicable transgender theory, and an introduction to cyborg theory (using Donna Haraway’s …

Scaling Limits Of Critical Observables Through The High Dimensional Incipient Infinite Cluster, Pranav Chinmay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We give a general construction of the incipient infinite cluster in high dimensional percolation, and use it as a decoupling tool to rigorize geometric heuristics for analyzing the asymptotics of observables at criticality. Examples include demonstrating the limiting distribution of the chemical distance and full-strength asymptotics for k-point functions, which constitute foundational inputs for scaling limit results associated to critical clusters.

Measuring Islamic Republic Propaganda In Western Media Coverage Of Iran: A Computational Framework, Leila Habibi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Detecting propaganda is fundamentally difficult: effective propaganda must simultaneously conceal persuasive intent while achieving persuasive effect, which means that sophisticated propagandistic discourse necessarily occupies the ambiguous middle of a rhetorical spectrum rather than its obvious extremes. This thesis defines this property as the dual constraint problem and argues that it poses two challenges for the binary classification framing that dominates propaganda detection in Natural Language Processing (NLP). First, propaganda by definition does not come with clear labels: no propaganda arm willingly accepts the designation, so reliable ground truth does not exist at the source. Second, because the producer is actively …

No Reply: The Exclusus Amator Through Ancient And Modern Love Poetry, Ayla Wing

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the exclusus amator, or “shut-out lover” trope as it appears in Greek and Roman texts, surveying the many examples of this motif and picking out its main elements: Intense Pain, Strong Emotions, Rejection, Interaction with the Door. It also notes the universality of the trope (anyone of any sexuality from any walk of life can be an exclusus amator) and the many references to the motif in other types of ancient media, including in graffiti, which shows that the exclusus amator was a real-life occurrence. This paper then examines modern songwriting, a genre chosen for its similarities …

Counterinsurgency In Afghanistan: Doctrine, Implementation, Cannibalization, Noah S. Fischer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Taliban return to power in Afghanistan on August 15th, 2021, is a watershed moment in the 21^st century history of the United States of America. The swift collapse of the U.S. backed Afghan government shocked American politicians, military leadership, and the general public. To many, trillions of dollars were wasted in funding a government that could not even survive a month without U.S. troops. But those dollars were used by U.S. military leadership to implement a new and innovative strategy those same leaders thought would guarantee success: counterinsurgency, abbreviated as COIN. In this thesis, I will ask: what …

Unrepresentable Objects: Neoliberalism In The Contemporary Novel In French, Alicen Marie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation operates at the intersections of textual analysis, political theory, psychoanalytic theory, and aesthetics to investigate the prevalence of uncanny imagery in ten examples of contemporary fiction, while also interrogating the notion of the uncanny as a category of analysis. Entitled “Unrepresentable Objects: Neoliberalism in the Contemporary Novel in French,” it examines a group of novels by Marie Darrieussecq, Virginie Despentes, Marie NDiaye, and Linda Lê, published in France between 1993 and 2017. These novels share an aesthetic of hauntedness and breakdown, incongruous affect, and a continual presence of the uncanny; they depict a world split from history and …

Semi-Peripheral Whiteness In A Global City: Central And Eastern European Women In Dubai, Hana Rubenstein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone examines how Central and Eastern European (CEE) women navigate professional mobility in Dubai and asks to what extent Dubai enables them to bypass the post-socialist stigma attached to their semi-peripheral European identity. Situated at the intersection of migration studies, gender, and critical scholarship on semi-peripheral whiteness, the study addresses the limited attention paid to CEE women as economic actors outside European contexts, where they are often either absorbed into the category of “Western expatriates” or reduced to highly gendered stereotypes. Grounded in a qualitative, interpretivist approach, the study combines digital discourse analysis of 50 publicly accessible LinkedIn profiles …

Hip-Hop Hypocrisy: How Rap Music Culture And Its Lyrical Obsession With Luxury Fashion Compromises Black America, Jeffrey Ampratwum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Black creative thought is often regarded as a secondary means of expression, particularly within a meritocracy like the United States of America. Many Black intellectual thinkers and writers undoubtedly communicated with a style and prose that was widely understood amongst people of the culture. One of these creative communicating styles is the art of hip-hop and the use of language to tell a story. Born out of struggle in the 1970s, this musical derivative from funk, soul, and jazz penetrated the inner city communities and forced the upper class to listen to words from Black artists. Hip-hop initially represented four …

Race And The Enduring Logic Of Exclusion In U.S. Immigration Policy, 1882–2025, Kejda Nikollaj

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how immigration law in the United States has historically functioned as an instrument of racial exclusion and argues that this logic continues to shape contemporary policy and enforcement. Although overtly racist laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) or the National Origins Act (1924) have long been repealed, their underlying rationales and structures continue to survive under the modern language of legality, security, and national interest. This study argues that restrictive immigration policies tend to emerge when racial and social insecurities intersect, allowing old hierarchies to be revived under new legal justifications. Through a comparative historical …

Gremlin Theory: A Film Art Of Joe Dante, Frank Falisi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis seeks to establish the work of the filmmaker Joe Dante as a catalyzing and anarchic force let loose inside larger, dumber superstructures: linear narrativity, Hollywood, America, etc. It works to read the genre films he worked on—many of them made as popular entertainment for mainstream movie studios—as moments of actual subversion, allocating status quo (studio system) resources to create a biting-back against American imperial norms in the lingua franca of Marx and the Marx Brothers: gummy leisure-seeking stupidity and Gremlin transformation. This thesis seeks to argue that to understand Dante’s work is to understand pop transfiguration itself. This …

Kanak-Ish Misfits: Queer Imaginaries, Racialized Borders, And The Politics Of Care In Berlin, Germany, Faruk Seref

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines queer Muslim experiences of border politics, racialization, and care in Berlin, Germany. By formulating bordering as a domineering and oppressive practice of boundary-making, I study how global bordering mechanisms shape and disrupt structures of care, caring, and being cared for. With an intersectional focus on race, gender, sexuality, and sex, I argue that borders are simultaneously materialized and challenged in varying localities, including the nightclub, the queer scene, the diasporic neighborhoods, and households. Ultimately, viewing collective care as fundamental to survival, healing, resistance, and building non-punitive lifeworlds, I theorize the counter-hegemonic practices of queers of color through …

Electromagnetic Counterparts To Active Galactic Nucleus Disk-Embedded Binary Black Hole Mergers, Emily Mcpike

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The accretion disks of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising environments for producing binary black hole (BBH) mergers, which have been detected via gravitational waves (GW) with LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK). BBH mergers embedded in AGN disks are unique among GW formation channels in their generic ability to produce electromagnetic (EM) counterparts, via interactions between the merger remnant and the surrounding disk gas (though these are not always observable). While such mergers represent valuable multi-messenger sources, the lack of predictive statistical models in existing literature currently limits our ability to select possible EM counterparts with GW detections in archival data and in …

A Predictive Coding Account Of Spatial Working Memory Following Prophylactic Levetiracetam Administration Prior To Traumatic Brain Injury, Omeima Mutwali

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) symptom prevention and remediation is an important area of research that would benefit vulnerable groups, including active-duty and veteran soldiers. These patients can sustain penetrative forces in fields of combat or in training, which result in focal lesions that trigger inflammatory and degenerative processes in the brain. Both primary and secondary injuries are associated with changes to cognition, behavior and affective state. This disease poses increased risk of epileptogenesis, as well. Given these outcomes, prior research has evaluated levetiracetam (LEV) as a prophylactic treatment for seizures, cognitive deficits and negative emotionality. LEV acts as a presynaptic …

Unfreezing Language: A Decolonial Reframing Of Translanguaging Pedagogies In English As A New Language & Dual Language Bilingual Education Settings, Cristian R. Solorza

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This qualitative multi-case study examines how elementary teachers in English as a New Language (ENL) and Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) settings conceptualize, implement, and reflect upon translanguaging pedagogies, with particular attention to translanguaging rings as tools for language differentiation. Grounded in a rearticulation of language as a dynamic, socially, politically, and historically constructed subject and object, this study challenges monoglossic ideologies that position named languages as bounded systems at the center of language education. Instead, it centers students’ lived, embodied, and agentive language practices as foundational to language learning and to their participation as knowledge producers in ENL and …

Pedagogy Of Care: Exploring Climate Justice Frameworks In Cuny Undergraduate Courses, Ismerlyn Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Climate justice centers the human rights of communities most impacted by the climate crisis rather than solely focusing on the scientific aspects of environmental challenges and disasters. Higher education institutions play a key role in advancing climate justice education, but research shows that frameworks are not consistently defined across institutions. The IRB-approved study that produced the findings in this capstone sought to explore how climate justice frameworks are implemented at the CUNY undergraduate level and learn more about the instructors delivering these courses. From February to April 2026, instructors from different CUNY undergraduate campuses were surveyed, interviewed, and asked to …

The New York City Fields Of Calcio Libero: Where Protagonists Activate Counter-Hegemony, Olivia Soderini

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Derivative from a deeply rooted calcio (“football”/ “soccer”) passion, with years of associated empiricism in diverse contexts, as well as from a profound intellectual interest in examining (im)migratory trends through interdisciplinary lenses, stems the development of this project’s topical focus and multi-dimensional argument. My calcio experiences, further combined with my interest in and knowledge of political and critical theory, served as the converged impetus of recognizing what already exists and is thriving: (im)migrant protagonism and counter-hegemony by way of New York City (“NYC”) calcio libero.[1] This project embarks on a creative autoethnographic and analytical journey to explore pickup’s …

Cooling Deserts For Renters: Heat Equity Inside The Nyc Housing System, Tahreem Ashraf

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study introduces the Cooling Desert Index (CDI), a composite spatial measure designed to identify census tracts in New York City where extreme heat vulnerability and structural barriers to adaptive cooling converge. Drawing on five publicly available datasets and a seven phase statistical pipeline, the CDI scores all 2,231 NYC census tracts on a continuous 0 to 100 scale by integrating heat exposure, severe rent burden, household income, racial composition, language access, disability status, and housing crowding. The analysis identifies 557 cooling deserts, defined as tracts where environmental heat risk is high and financial constraints make effective cooling structurally inaccessible, …

Vestigial Choreographies: Climate Consciousness In The Long Nineteenth Century, Alexandra A. Rego

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aims of this project are twofold: (a) to develop a method of theoretical analysis and (b) to put this method into pointed use. In service of (a), I propose a method of choreographic analysis. This method operates relationally, highlighting the production of movement and stillness among and between bodies, objects, and encounters. Choreographic analysis draws from methods typically sequestered to dance studies. Towards aim (b), this project demonstrates the relevance and breadth of choreographic analysis by connecting it to ecocriticism. Throughout this project, I apply choreographic analysis to a diverse set of case studies. I use choreographic analysis to …

Beyond The Veil Of Modernity: René Guénon, Prophet Of The Metapolitical Imaginary, Frederic Colier

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Heralded by some as one of the greatest intellectuals of the 20th century, French metaphysician René Guénon (1886-1951) is also the controversial father of Primordial Tradition, a metaphysics designed to remedy the decline of Western civilization. Guénon viewed the West in the grip of a prolonged cycle of degeneration. He sought to implement a pseudo-authoritarian spiritual reset that required a total rejection of its Western intellectual heritage and an embrace of Eastern doctrines.

Focusing on his landmark book The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), the dissertation examines how Guénon implemented his controversial reset. After outlining the religious, cultural, and …

Profiling Nucleolin Phosphorylation During Dna Damage Response And Cell Cycle Arrest, Hanjun Jeon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines site-specific and global phosphorylation dynamics of nucleolin (NCL) in response to DNA damage and cell-cycle perturbations. By combining phospho-specific immunoblotting with Phos-tag SDS-PAGE analysis, distinct phosphorylation patterns were identified across experimental conditions. The results define reproducible, condition-dependent phosphorylation states of NCL and provide a framework for studying its regulation under cellular stress.

Healing Historical-Intergenerational Trauma And Colonial Soul Wounds With Ancestral Healing Practices And Psychosocial Limpias: An Ofrenda For The Salvadoran Community, Joanna D. Beltrán Girón

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1992, the United States-backed Salvadoran military and the leftist guerrillas signed the Chapultepec Peace Accords, which put an end to a 12-year war in El Salvador that resulted in 75,000 deaths, 12,000 forced disappearances, and half a million internal displacements. Around 85% of the reports made by survivors of the war attributed the violence to state agents, paramilitary groups, and death squads.While taking into account this history of state violence, this dissertation is interested in the psychosocial aftermath of the war and in how survivors integrate healing practices in their lives in response to the painful memories their bodies …

Roe V. Wade With Audre And Nikki: Their Social And Political Impacts Following The Landmark Decision, Sharon L. Eaddy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes how the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade shaped public understandings of reproductive rights and how those understandings diverged across race, gender, class, and sexuality. Using a qualitative, interdisciplinary design, the study pairs close textual analysis of Nikki Giovanni’s and Audre Lorde’s poems and essays with socio-legal and historical context on constitutional privacy doctrine, the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, and the Reconstruction legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The central research question is: what kinds of reproductive “freedom” become legible through Roe’s rights-based framing, and what forms of constraint remain visible when Black …

Building On Rented Land: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis Of Black Women’S Digital Homeplace-Building On Tiktok, Monica Thompson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) examined the lived experiences of seven Black women TikTok users, exploring how they describe and make meaning of TikTok as a space of digital expression amid algorithmic constraint and platform precarity. Grounded in Black Cyberfeminism, Critical Race Theory, and hooks’ (1990) homeplace theory, the study asked three questions: how Black women describe their use of TikTok; how they make meaning of the platform as a space of expression; and how they navigate platform instability, political threats, and content restrictions while maintaining authentic expression. Drawing on semi-structured Zoom interviews and analyzed using Smith et al.’s (2009) …

Reexamining The Croton Aqueduct: A Ward-Level Microhistorical Analysis Of Infrastructure And Cholera Mortality In 1849 New York City, Alexandria R. Toothman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This work reexamines the Croton Aqueduct’s role in public health by shifting analysis from the citywide level to the ward level, revealing that infrastructure expansion did not produce uniform benefits across New York City. When the Croton Aqueduct opened in 1842, it was celebrated as an achievement that would deliver pure water and eliminate disease. However, only seven years after its opening, in 1849, cholera returned with greater force in the Sixth Ward. This work shows that the uneven distribution of Croton infrastructure corresponded with uneven cholera mortality rates, challenging narratives that present Croton as a singular triumph of urban …

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems And The Principles Of Distinction And Proportionality, Nicholas Cromie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) challenge the core principles of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), distinction and proportionality, by delegating life-and-death decisions to algorithms rather than human judgment.  This dissertation examines whether LAWS can conform to these principles and, if so, under what conditions.  Through process tracing, the study traces the historical integration of disruptive weapons technologies, including chemical, biological, nuclear, and armed drones, into IHL-compliant frameworks or their exclusion via prohibition.  Each case reveals distinct pathways: outright bans for indiscriminate or inherently inhumane systems (chemical and biological weapons), normative restraint and limited acceptance despite destructive power (nuclear weapons) and phased …