Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Wukongism: Monkey King, Kungfu/Jazz, And Asian/American Performance, Sissi Liu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Wukongism offers one of the first non-western epistemic frameworks to examine theatre and performance that traverse beyond the shifting taxonomies of national, cultural, racial boundaries, and in particular, Asian/American theatre and performance. Wukongism, or shapeshifter consciousness, is built on the narrative of Sun Wukong the Monkey King, a supernatural shapeshifting character from the 16^th century classic Chinese novel Journey to the West. Juxtaposing physical shapeshifting (plastic surgery and performing of the racialized face) with institutional shapeshifting (reinventing and eliminating invisible and hypervisible boundaries), this dissertation project posits Wukongism as a means to examine the varying, fluid, and precarious …

The Upright Battle: Morphological Trends Of The Bipedal Pelvis, Nicole M. Webb

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The shift to bipedal locomotion is a distinguishing feature of the human lineage that required substantial remodeling of the postcranium in hominins. The pelvis, due to its important functional role as a stabilizing and weight-bearing structure, has undergone one of the most drastic transformations in the skeleton to accommodate obligate bipedalism, thus making it a valuable region for studying locomotor behavior within the fossil record. Although bipedalism occurs in several mammalian groups, it is rare within primates and the ability to utilize a striding gait with an erect, or orthograde, posture remains unique to hominins. Orthograde posture in this context …

The Role Of Self-Disclosure In Improving Workplace Cross-Race Mentoring Outcomes, Christine R. Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While the racial diversity of the workforce is increasing, minority employees still do not appear to be advancing professionally at the same rates as White employees. There are many explanations for why minority employees do not experience the same rates of advancement as White employees. One key developmental relationship that can aid in increasing the opportunities for minority employees to advance and grow in an organization is the mentoring relationship. However, given the lack of diversity in the upper levels of organizational hierarchies, minorities are more likely to have a White mentor than they are to have a minority mentor. …

The Unemployment Rate For Post-9/11 Veterans: A Multivariate Statistical Evaluation Of American Community Survey Data, 2003–2015, M. Celada

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research has two objectives: to develop the case for examining Post-9/11 veteran unemployment through the prism of race and gender and to analyze Post-9/11 veteran unemployment, 2003-2015, through this demographic lens. First, it critically considers how entrenched normative assumptions and statistical methodologies for veteran unemployment analyses, largely irrespective of race, gender, and skill-biased technological change, impede the development of an alternate theoretical frame and analytical method to assess Post-9/11 veteran labor outcomes. As a result, scant information exists on the labor force outcomes of Post-9/11 veterans. Secondly, it conducts an intersectional methodological multivariate analysis of unemployment outcomes for Black, …

Distinct Neuropsychological Profile And Associated Neurochemical Changes In Individuals With Mitochondrial Encephalomyopathy, Lactic Acidosis, And Stroke-Like Episodes (Melas), Emily B. Leaffer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: Mitochondrial Encephalomyopathy, Lactic Acidosis, and Stroke-like Episodes (MELAS) is a maternally inherited progressive multisystemic disorder. Occurrence of seizure and/or stroke-like episode, as well as classic biomarkers (i.e., cerebral lactic acidosis, depleted N-acetylaspartate (NAA)), have been linked to neuropsychological deficit and trigger the developmental cascade of neurodegeneration affecting posterior prior to anterior brain regions. While a pattern of global deterioration has been reported, systematic examination in a large MELAS cohort has not been conducted.

Objective: First, we examined verbal and visual memory function and its relationship to brain metabolites (lactate, NAA) in individuals with MELAS. Second, we hypothesized that MELAS …

Parent Childhood Abuse And Neglect And Offspring Mental Health: An Examination Of Potential Mediators, Joanna Young

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Child maltreatment has been associated with difficulties in parenting (Bailey, DeOliveira, Wolfe, Evans, & Hartwick, 2012) and children of abused mothers have been found to be at risk of more negative emotional and behavioral mental health outcomes compared to children of mothers with no abuse history (Collishaw, Dunn, O’Connor, & Golding, 2007; Delker, Noll, Kim, & Fisher, 2014). However, research is limited in terms of studies that investigate mediators in the relationship between parental abuse and child psychopathology. In addition, the majority of past research has focused only on self-reported, maternal histories of abuse and on limited offspring outcomes (i.e. …

Unveiling Chaim Shatan: An Analyst Unveiling War Wounds, Andrea Recarte

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Historically, the psychological wounds of war have been subject to a ritual of emergence and burial. This cycle is multilayered and paralleled in various levels of experience; society, governmental administrations, institutions, families, and individuals. Furthermore, the collective failure to witness the wounds of survivors adds to the cumulative trauma of the soldier. The field of psychoanalysis, originally preoccupied with that which is hidden, also takes part in the massive disavowal of combat stress. Analysts who have revealed war casualties tend to be forgotten, left to suffer the same fate of the grieving soldier. This project focuses on rescuing, contextualizing, critically …

The Patterns And Prosecutions Of Media Leakers, Julia M. Lipkins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the cases of government employees who are responsible for the disclosure of confidential information to the press, known as media leakers. I claim that the government and media leaker engage in a series of patterned responses, which leads to both the disclosure of information, and prosecution of the leaker. More specifically, I demonstrate how the government’s executive branch manages a game of leaks, in which ‘illegitimate’ leakers are separated from elite officials who also leak, but are often spared from prosecution because they are considered ‘legitimate’ players of the game. Although the boundaries surrounding ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ …

Parents Frame Childhood For The World To See In Digital Media Postings, Aysenur Benevento

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

With the wellbeing of children being at the center of contemporary media discourse (Livingstone & Bovill, 2013), developmental studies are ever more challenged to understand both children’s and adults’ behavior in online spaces. Parents and children are involved in the human development process in complementary ways (Johansson, 2010; Uprichards, 2008) while using media platforms. As the development and use of innovative media technology are accelerating at a fast pace, theory and methods for analyzing uses of digital media for human development have lagged behind. This study examines adults’ postings of photos of their children on social media and offers a …

Educational Attainment Of Immigrant Students In The United States: Generational Struggle Towards Success, Robin Das

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Known as the land of opportunities, United States has always been a key attraction to outside world as the place where people can live up to their potential dreams. People migrate from far lands to settle down and find the missing link that was absent in their native country. Among numerous reasons, financial inefficiency and social and political insecurity at homeland, new immigration policies in the US, expectation of a better socio-economic lifestyle and a secure and prosperous future for their children are some key reasons why immigrants move out of their motherland and travel to America. They hope and …

Music For Ai Reports: Dual Prospects In Music Production, Achim Koh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) technology have led to industrial attempts at applying AI to music making, namely AI music. In the context of the history of music technology, AI music raises the prospect of a new phase that extends digital technology’s role as central mode of music production. The computer has become an essential metamedium in contemporary cultural production, leading in the field of music to the digitization of tools and content and the digitalization of social institutions and relationships. This technological change had the dual effect of decentralizing music production while reinforcing capitalist logic in it. The …

The Intergenerational Transmission Of Mentalization: How Parental Reflective Function On The Parent Development Interview Relates To Child Mentalization On The Thematic Apperception Test, Kira Boesch

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Mentalization is defined as the metacognitive ability to think about one’s own and other’s thoughts and feelings, with the goal of comprehending behavior (Benbassat & Priel, 2012). Mentalization is associated with secure attachment, and is both directly and indirectly linked to multiple social and emotional outcomes. This study looked at the correlation between parent and child mentalization as a means of exploring the impact of parent reflectiveness on children’s’ mentalization capacities.

Methods: This study utilized archival data collected at The Psychological Center, a community mental health clinic at the City College of New York. The sample consisted of 15 parent-child …

Corporate Urbanization: Between The Future And Survival In Lebanon, Deen S. Sharp

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

If you look today at the skyline of downtowns throughout the Middle East and beyond, the joint-stock corporation has transformed the urban landscape. The corporation makes itself present through the proliferation of its urban mega-projects, including skyscrapers, downtown developments and gated communities; retail malls and artificial islands; airports and ports; and highways. Built into these corporate urban structures are edifices of politics, ideology and certain forms of socio-spatial and temporal organization. The corporation, however, has largely escaped critical scholarly analysis in Geography and/or Urban and Middle East Studies. In this thesis, I argue that the corporation is far more than …

A Preliminary Program Evaluation Of A Narrative Therapy Intervention For Persons Incarcerated For Violent Crime, Brooke C. Greene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Longtermers Project is a fifteen-session group therapy intervention that has been run in three prisons in New York state, two men’s facilities and one women’s, since 2010. The Coming to Terms curriculum, designed specifically for work with this population by Kathy Boudin and her partners at the Osborne Association, a non-profit organization that provides assistance to formerly and currently incarcerated persons in New York state, asks participants to think, write, and speak about their lives in general and particularly about the incident crime for which they were incarcerated. Now that the program has run for several years and a …

Assessing The Outcomes Of A Jail-Based Substance Abuse Treatment Program: A Quasi-Experimental Approach, Laura Lutgen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Jails and the needs of their populations are often overlooked despite their nearly 11 million annual admissions. More than 700,000 inmates are housed in jail on any given day in the United States, most of whom are non-violent and not yet convicted of a crime. This large population also reflects a high-need, heavily drug-involved population with nearly 70% of all jail inmates having a diagnosable substance use disorder. These high-need individuals are likely to continue cycling in and out of jail without treatment especially as they often return to the people, places, and things that are conducive to their use. …

“Are They Supposed To Be Heugin?": Negotiating Race, Nation, And Representation In Korean Musical Theatre, Ji Hyon Yuh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines contemporary Korean musical theatre as a form of popular culture that has served an important role in reflecting and establishing personal and national identity in Korea, especially as it intersects with the global and local manifestations of race and racial ideologies. I argue that musical theatre has served an important political and economic role, since its beginning as a cultural weapon in the height of the Cold War to more contemporary examples in which Korean musicals serve as a tool to brand Korea as an advanced nation in the world. To make a case for this relationship …

Essays In New Keynesian Monetary Policy, Tzu-Hao Huang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation consists of three Chapters. I consider New Keynesian models which involve tradeoffs between output gap and inflation variances. Such policy strategy is often referred to as flexible inflation targeting rules (e.g., Lars Svensson 2011, pp.1238-95). Taylor rules, in general, have the symbolic expression ��_t=��_x��_t+��_����_t+��_g��_t, where ��_t is the nominal interest rate at period t, ��_t is the target variable output gap at period t, ��_t is the target variable inflation rate at period t, ��_t is realized shock …

Cross-Race Effect Of African-Americans And Caucasians, Bianca Vidal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Studies have shown that eyewitnesses are less accurate when the accused and foils (i.e., non-suspects in a lineup) are of a different race from the eyewitness than when of the same race. This has been termed the Cross-Race Effect (CRE). To study the CRE in eyewitness identifications, this experiment used a 4x2x2 between-subjects design with 492 participants. Participants watched a film act in which an African-American (AA) or Caucasian (C) either stole or recovered a cell phone. Afterwards they had to identify the person as well as answer a series of questions. There were 4 perpetrators for each race (4 …

Time-Series And Cross-Section Variation Of Bond Risk Premia, Niloofar Sahebalzamany

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A long-term bond that is sold before its maturity has an uncertain excess return over the certain return from a shorter-term risk-free bond maturing at the time of sale. There is strong evidence that this excess return is predictable and that the predicted excess return, or risk premium, is time varying. Cochrane and Piazzesi (2005) use five forward rates to predict excess returns on one to five-year maturity bonds. I extend and improve their approach in multiple aspects. Firstly, the data set for the US market is expanded in two dimensions: cross-section and time series. In the cross-section dimension, one- …

Amount Superlatives And Measure Phrases, E. Cameron Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation provides a novel analysis of quantity superlatives by bringing together research on three interrelated topics: superlative ambiguity, semantic constraints on measure constructions, and the internal structure of the extended nominal phrase. I analyze the quantity words, most, least, and fewest as superlatives of quantificational adjectives (Q-adjectives), but argue that these are often embedded inside a covert measure construction, rather than directly modifying the overt noun. I also introduce novel data showing that the measure phrases that appear in overt pseudopartitive constructions have more complex internal structure than previously assumed. Specifically, they may contain adjectives, including superlative inflection …

The Social Construction Of Protest: Print Media Coverage Of The 2004 Republican National Convention And The 2011 Occupy Wall Street Protests In New York City, Kirsten Christiansen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Majoritarian democracies are founded on the idea that the governance of society will reflect the needs and desires of the majority of the people and that all citizens are given a voice. Public protest activity is one of the ways in which social movement organizations as claims-makers can reach an audience to attempt to convince a majority to effect social change. The mainstream news media can disseminate information about protest messages and activity beyond the local. However, the mainstream news media filters information in its own way, influenced in part because of traditional news routines but also potentially by the …

The Threats Of Sea Level Rise: An Eco-Geopolitical Visual Analysis, Jorge L. Nowell-Enriquez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This eco-geopolitical research produces information about the sea level rising, and the analyst explains and projects global effects, and further problems and consequences of the phenomena in a five-minute-long video clip.

The focus is coastlines floods as a consequence of the sea level rising produced by glaciers melting. The floods will affect regions where over a billion persons are living, mainly coastal cities. Therefore, the sea level rising will produce or ease gradual destruction and sudden catastrophes. Moreover, these catastrophes will spur mass migration that might change the lives of a billion persons by 2045.

Feeling As Knowing: Trans Phenomenology And Epistemic Justice, B. Lee Aultman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a critical intervention into the literatures on epistemic and phenomenological claims about trans experiences, and embodied knowledge more generally. It also addresses the conception of ordinary affects, or feelings of self-adjustment in everyday life, and their political implications for trans people. Traditional literatures on the political tend to avoid questions of embodiment and the experiences of everyday life in favor of institutional interpretations of courts, elections, and protest movements. This has become particularly true of scholarship on trans politics and theories of ordinary life. These literatures often reduce political movements to their presumed universal intentions for constitutional …

De-Centering The Monolingual: A Psychophysiological Study Of Heritage Speaker Language Processing, Christen N. Madsen Ii

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Models of grammar, processing and acquisition are primarily built on evidence from monolinguals and adult learners of a second language. Heritage speakers, who are bilinguals of a societal minority language, acquire and use their heritage language in informal settings; but who live, work, and are educated in the societal majority language. The differences between heritage speakers and both monolinguals and adult second language learners are extensive: heritage speakers are not educated in the heritage language, their input is typically not from a prestige variety of the heritage language, and they are dominant in the majority language, using it more frequently …

Curcumin Inhibits The Ikk:Nf-Kappa B Pathway In Neural Fear Circuits, Miguel A. Briones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study of how the brain acquires fearful memories has attracted considerable experimental attention, due in part to the promise of discovering novel therapeutic approaches for psychiatric disorders that are characterized by unusually strong and persistent traumatic memories. In recent years, extensive research has focused on studying the neural and molecular mechanisms by which fear memories are acquired, stored, and retrieved in the brain. Once acquired, fear memories may be attenuated using one of 2 procedures: 1) fear extinction, which involves repeated presentation of the fear-arousing stimulus in the absence of an aversive consequence, or 2) interference with the reconsolidation …

New Use Of An Old Discourse Marker: The Interface Of Implicit Attitudes, Explicit Attitudes, And Rapid Language Change Of "So", Syelle Graves

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates a linguistic feature called “backstory so,” defined as discourse marker so when it prefaces the answer to a question or request for information from an interlocutor. The motivation for its investigation is a collection of highly negative internet comments expressing irritation and insulting attitudes toward this use of so and the people who say it, calling them annoying, inarticulate, and condescending, for example. I also examine controversy in the (limited) literature about whether or not this language feature is new.

I therefore first present findings that this use of so is an instance of rapid language …

Underlying Contribution Of Executive Functioning To Cognition And Academic Achievement In Individuals With Dystrophinopathy, Robert Fee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Dystrophinopathy is a genetic disorder that results in the lack of or abnormal expression of the protein dystrophin. It is a disorder that alters cell structure and function, impacts the developing brain and brain function, presents with multi-domain cognitive deficits, and influences both mood and behavior. Cognitive impairments appear to be more localized to specific areas of functioning rather than a global deficit; however, deficits have been identified across multiple cognitive domains including language and aspects of executive functioning. A careful examination of the cognitive phenotype and its association to mutations affecting CNS isoforms is necessary to clarify the neuropsychological …

Critical Paradigm Theory: A Deconstruction Of The Dominant Discourse Shaping Public Education In America, Kevin Froner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this study was to deconstruct the dominant discourses shaping public education in America. To understand the ontological and genealogical roots of public education, the researcher developed a framework referred to as Critical Paradigm Theory (CPT) to examine the current education paradigm. Longitudinal data was collected from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) with an analysis of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Additional analysis was performed applying critical paradigm theory to a …

Resting-State Functional Connectivity In Youth With Gender Dysphoria, Felix L. Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Current developmental models of gender identity and gender dysphoria (GD) lack sex-specific profiles of brain function that differentiate between typically-developing and cross-gender identified youth, as postulated by models like the unified theory of the origins of sex differences (Arnold, 2009) and the neurobiological theory of the origins of transsexuality (Swaab & Garcia-Falgueras, 2009). Previously, investigators have used brain imaging modalities such as Resting-State functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (R-fMRI) to demonstrate differences in resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between typically-developing male and female youth, and between typically-developing and GID-diagnosed youth. In the present pilot study, I used R-fMRI to investigate differences in …

Manipulating Goal States And Brain States: Using Eeg And Hd-Tdcs To Investigate Mechanisms Underlying The Influence Of Achievement Goals On Declarative Memory, Yuliya Ochakovskaya

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When it comes to learning factual information, students may benefit from having opportunities where they can learn from their mistakes as opposed to only being asked to study that information. However, the achievement goals that instructors set for their students may influence how students engage with these learning opportunities. Although some instructors may focus students on learning (i.e. mastery goals), others may seek to motivate students by focusing them on doing better than others (i.e. performance goals), which is thought promote greater sensitivity to errors and impair learning. Across two studies, the present dissertation examined the roles of dorsolateral frontal …