Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Politics As Loot: Reflections On Theories Of Decline In Political Thought, Milo Ward

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis responds to the perennial theories of political decline in Western political thought by reimagining politics as a part of the loot plundered by the victors of history. It unpacks and critiques prognostications of the impending end of politics, specifically those of theorists Wendy Brown and Hannah Arendt, by dredging up the colonial and the capitalist logics that covertly underpin assumptions that politics is something that can be exclusively possessed. The forensic treatment of narratives of political decline reveals the unmistakable tracks of the rationality of property relations behind laments over the fate of political traditions that also withhold …

Family–School Partnerships And The Missing Voice Of Parents, Laura R. Stein

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Educators, researchers, advocates, and others agree that effective family-school partnership is an important component in best supporting the academic outcomes and future success of students. However, schools and educators struggle in forming constructive partnerships with racially and economically marginalized and oppressed parents and families, particularly low-income Black parents and families. This compromises support for low-income Black students that are already served in underfunded and under-resourced schools compared to their White middleclass counterparts. Further, this phenomenon exacerbates a widely understood academic achievement gap between low-income Black students and White middleclass students. In seeking to unearth and better understand effective strategies and …

Explaining Animosity Towards The Roma: A Case Study Of Twitter Communication In Italy During The Refugee Crisis, Mayuko Nakatsuka

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Italy is known for hostile treatment of the Roma, one of the largest ethnic minority groups in Europe. This paper seeks to understand what is causing Italians to talk negatively about the Roma on Twitter. Statistical analysis is performed utilizing the data mined from Twitter along with other variables. The study finds that Roma population, foreign population, and number of refugees all have significant effects on the total number of tweets or the average negative sentiment of tweets. The results indicate that native Italians may group minority groups all together and regard them as “others”. Although the research design has …

Essays On Wealth Inequality And Asset Pricing, Georgios Koimisis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Economic and financial theories are often found to be in conflict with empirical evidence, suggesting revisions and elaborations of existing models. There are usually many revisions proposed in response to these "puzzles", but often the true resolution may be a factor not yet realized. This dissertation consists of three chapters and contributes to the explanation of a persistent and significant anomaly, the equity premium puzzle, by taking into account the implications of wealth inequality on consumer preferences and, consequently, on asset prices.

The first chapter examines how wealth inequality affects asset prices in a complete market setting. Wealth inequality is …

Weaponization Of Data For Governmentality, Juliana Son

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Who is a citizen? Who is a threat to public safety? Who is worthy of protection? What it means to be a valued body in the United States has been written into code, where the state and corporations have embraced an algorithmic approach to national security. Algorithms, previously praised for their neutrality, have been taking a neoliberal turn.

This thesis will examine how data is used by the state as a governance practice, specifically looking at how such practices have left certain communities more precarious and vulnerable than others. My aim is to show how the weaponization of data is …

A Critical Assessment Of The Internship At The Ngo Committee On The Status Of Women, New York, Ching-Kang Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone research project is the critical assessment of my internship paper at the The NGO Committee on the Status of Women, New York (NGO CSW/NY), which documents my experience of working from September, 2017 to December 2017. Part one focuses on the analysis and observation on LGBTQ human rights work at the United Nations. Part two records my work and experiences at the NGO CSW/NY, including the UNGA Gender Mapping Project and UN meetings. Part three is my observations and reflections upon the half-year internship experience, which serve as reference for people who intend to do NGO advocacy work …

Absences And Epistemologies Of Ignorance: A Critical Multi-Sited Study On The Teaching Of The Danish Colonial And Slave Trading Past, Naja B. Hougaard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study is a critical investigation of the production of subjectivities through the teaching of the history of the Danish slave trade within the current neoliberal multicultural (Melamed, 2006) landscape of education. By conducting a study of teaching on this subject in the context of a Danish high school, the aim is to understand how the teaching-learning of the Danish slave trading history shapes the ground for Danish high school students to develop their own positionings with regards to the past as it ties into present day issues of nationalism and xenophobia in Denmark. Drawing on the concept of …

Purepecha Aspirated Consonants And Their Phonetic Variants, Lluvia Camacho Cervantes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study describes phonetic realizations of aspirated phonemes in Purepecha [pua] from Azajo. The distribution of aspiration in Purepecha is limited to roots, a small number of spatial suffixes, one argument structure changing suffix, and clitics. Aspiration is never contrastive for inflexional suffixes, which occur in word final position. There are three basic allophones of aspirated segments: (i) post-aspirated; (ii) unaspirated, (iii) pre-aspirated, with pre-aspiration showing 4 distinct phonetic forms, depending on dialect, and phonetic context. Strengthening of pre-aspiration has been documented in the Lake and Sierra dialects as well as vowel lengthening in the Lake dialect. In Azajo Purepecha …

Describing Doggo-Speak: Features Of Doggo Meme Language, Jennifer Bivens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Doggo-speak is a specialized way of writing most commonly associated with captions on Doggo memes, humorous images of dogs shared in online communities. This paper will explore linguistic features of Doggo-speak through analysis of social media posts by Doggo fan pages. It will use the discussed features as inputs to five machine learning classifiers and will show, through this classification task, that the discussed features are sufficient for distinguishing between Doggo-speak and more general English text.

Using Authentic Inquiry To Unpack Emotions And Thorny Issues Within Teaching And Learning, Leah Denise Pride

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This manuscript-styled dissertation embodies the theoretical and methodological framework of authentic inquiry (Tobin, 2006). In the holistic context of this dissertation, authentic inquiry as a theoretical framework encompasses deep epistemological and ontological questions such as: What is knowledge and how is it informed by research? Who may engage in research? How does positivism compare to authentic inquiry? What are thorny issues and how do they relate to authentic inquiry? How do we research thorny issues in classrooms? What mindfulness practices may be used to research emotions when discussing thorny issues? How do we nuance “safety” in learning spaces where emotions …

Sociality And Stress In Female Chacma Baboons (Papio Ursinus) In The Cape Peninsula Of South Africa: Behavioral Flexibility And Coping Mechanisms, Shahrina Chowdhury

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The physiological stress responses that animals exhibit to the myriad stressors in their environment can be used to assess the state of their health and well-being, and even survival capability. Although the stress response is adaptive in many cases, chronic stress responses may be maladaptive in some situations when it leads to dysfunction of the physiological system involved in the stress response itself, and can also cause deleterious effects on health, reproduction and survival. The stress response includes physiological responses to both environmental perturbations and psychosocial stress and anxiety associated with social perturbations. The latter factor is particularly important for …

Dolls Who Speak: Sex Robots, Cyborgs And The Image Of Woman, Victoria E. Pihl Sorensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the emerging phenomenon of sex robots from a feminist materialist perspective. I explore the current scholarly and popular debates on sex robots, and suggest a reading of sex robots in their machinic, literary and cinematic expressions to move beyond the moral-ethical impasse that seems to dominate sex robot discussions. Employing Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Myth” on a methodological and theoretical level, I argue for an interdisciplinary approach to studying sex robots, which proceeds carefully so as to avoid contributing to sex panic, and which thinks critically about what it might mean to assess sex robots from a feminist …

Out Of The Shadows: Women Of The Fmln Guerrilla Army In El Salvador’S Civil War, 1979–1992, Erica Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the course of a century, revolutionary movements have emerged every few years across the region of Central America, movements that fought for overturning dictatorships and confronting socio-economic inequalities. Women experience higher levels of poverty, human rights violations and discrimination due to gender inequalities. Representing 30% of the FMLN guerrilla army, women in El Salvador took a quantum leap into one of the most horrific and violent armed conflicts in the history of the country (Montgomery 123). Theorists have sought to explain why women became involved in the war. Experts of insurgent collective action agree that women's participation played a …

Facebook As A Social Outreach And Advocacy Tool In Intersex/Dsd Groups, Emelie J. Ali Ms

Publications and Research

My project includes a netnography of a Facebook intersex group called Families and Friends of Intersex People. I observed the group’s forms of communication within the group and which topics they discussed. It appears one of the major concerns the group has is the use of nonconsensual, sex assignment surgery on infants to “correct” their body to match a gender identity. I have also discovered a link between being intersex and affiliated with the LGBT+ community. Since the 20th century, intersex people have been stigmatized due to their assumed ability to engage in sexual, same-sex relations. I have concluded that …

English Influence On L2 Speakers’ Production Of Palatalization And Velarization, Jennifer C. Gabriele

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Irish is a Celtic language spoken in Ireland. It is currently endangered with only 73,803 people using the language on a daily basis as of 2016 (Official Office of Statistics, 2016). The reason for the decline is that English is the dominate language, pushing Irish to the periphery. Revitalization efforts have been put into place in an attempt to revitalize the language. There has been a growth in L2 speakers of Irish. The position of English as the dominate language, and high amounts of L2 speakers creates an environment where English is likely to influence the Irish language. The purpose …

Strengths And Resiliencies Of Black Msm In New York City Who Maintain Hiv-Seronegativity, Jagadisa-Devasri Dacus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Black gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) carry the greatest burden of the HIV epidemic in the United States. Because Black MSM’s identities lie at the intersection of race and sexual orientation, they are more likely to experience negative social determinants of health, which have been associated with greater HIV acquisition. However, the majority of Black MSM maintain seronegativity, but few public health studies have identified what contributes to their seronegativity maintenance. In order to address this gap in knowledge, I explored maintained HIV-seronegativity among a cohort of Black MSM in New York City (NYC). …

Multimodal Depression Detection: An Investigation Of Features And Fusion Techniques For Automated Systems, Michelle Renee Morales

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Depression is a serious illness that affects a large portion of the world’s population. Given the large effect it has on society, it is evident that depression is a serious health issue. This thesis evaluates, at length, how technology may aid in assessing depression. We present an in-depth investigation of features and fusion techniques for depression detection systems. We also present OpenMM: a novel tool for multimodal feature extraction. Lastly, we present novel techniques for multimodal fusion. The contributions of this work add considerably to our knowledge of depression detection systems and have the potential to improve future systems by …

The Dictators’ Dilemma: Repression Or Concessions In The Face Of Resistance, Chris Massaro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Arab Spring revolts of late 2010 and 2011 were a profound moment in the history of a region troubled by decades of authoritarianism. Years of economic mismanagement and security force repression trammeled on the rights and aspirations of people striving for a better life. When social movements and anti-government protests erupted throughout the region, each country responded to the uprisings with different methodologies. This research closely examines why autocratic regimes of the region chose such divergent responses, with some opting to use violent repression, others attempting to make concessions and most combined repression with concessions. I will make the …

Splendid Disarray: The Music Of Andrew Mckenna Lee, Nina Berman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The music of composer Andrew McKenna Lee spans multiple genres and styles, and does so in a way that draws parallels to the New York City downtown new music scene as well as the progressive and experimental rock scenes. These connections are especially apparent when looking at his 2013 song cycle The Knells, written for Lee’s ensemble, also called The Knells, which he assembled expressly for the purpose of performing this work. The band consists of three female singers singing without vibrato, backed by a rock group, plus percussion and string quartet. Lee deploys these forces to create a sound …

Educational Relevance As A Motivating Operation For Equivalence Class Formation: Implications For Application, Julia Brodsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Equivalence-Based Instruction (EBI) is a method of teaching sets of physically disparate stimuli that uses stimulus equivalence principles (Critchfield & Fienup, 2008). The basic stimulus equivalence literature informs which procedural variants are used in research and clinical practice, but application of these findings requires determining the effect of educational relevance on equivalence class formation. In the current study, Experiment 1 compared the relative difficulty of the stimulus sets to be used in the educationally relevant conditions of Experiment 2, while Experiment 2 examined the effects of stimulus meaningfulness and educational relevance. The Arbitrary group learned nonsense symbols from Steele and …

Speech Perception In “Bubble” Noise: Korean Fricatives And Affricates By Native And Non-Native Korean Listeners, Jiyoung Choi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The current study examines acoustic cues used by second language learners of Korean to discriminate between Korean fricatives and affricates in noise and how these cues relate to those used by native Korean listeners. Stimuli consist of naturally-spoken consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel (CVCV) syllables: /sɑdɑ/, /s*ɑdɑ/, /tʃɑdɑ/, /tʃ^hɑdɑ/, and /tʃ*ɑdɑ/. In this experiment, the “bubble noise” methodology of Mandel at al. (2016) was used to identify the time-frequency locations of important cues in each utterance, i.e., where audibility of the location is significantly correlated with correct identification of the utterance in noise. Results show that non-native Korean listeners can discriminate between …

Hierarchical Meta-Analysis: A Simulation Study Comparing Classical Random Effects And Fully Bayesian Methods, Nancy R. Andiloro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Meta-analytic data have a natural hierarchical structure to them, where individuals are nested within studies, and have both within-and between-study variation to model. A random-effects hierarchical linear model is useful to conduct a meta-analysis because it allows one to appropriately parse out the two components of variation that exist within and across studies to determine an observed effect. Empirical Bayes estimation considers the reliability of variance estimates; when the reliability of the effect size estimate for a study is high, substantial weight is placed on that estimate. However, problems with estimation arise when the number of studies and their sample …

Process Evaluation Of Terrorism Amnesty And Reintegration Program, And Perceptions Of The Program Within Kenya Police, Resila Onyango

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There are a few articles on front line officials as implementers of Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) measures, a gap the dissertation has partly filled by exploring the Terrorism Amnesty and Reintegration Program (ARP) in Kenya using both qualitative and quantitative data. ARP developments have occurred in a political context wherein foreign government have been eager to advance CVE and the Kenyan Government has more-or-less gone along with that. The implication here is whether such policies will be effective and sustainable in Kenya. Importantly, if we view Kenya in a regional and even global context, it is now something of a …

"I Was Not Sick And I Didn't Need To Recover": Methadone Maintenance Treatment (Mmt) As A Refuge From Criminalization, David Frank

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) has been undergoing a cultural and epistemological shift away from an approach that emphasized client stabilization and a reduction of social harms towards one grounded in values associated with the recovery movement. These changes include promoting a view of addiction grounded in the disease model as well as efforts to make abstinence and ancillary services such as recovery coaching/counseling, programs emphasizing proper citizenship, and concern for clients’ spirituality necessary parts of the program. As such, the increasing use of recovery as the dominant conceptual framework for MMT represents a change in how methadone, MMT, and those …

Socialization Trajectories Of Civic Development: Examining Variation Among Children In Black Immigrant And African American Families, Juliana Karras-Jean Gilles

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Little is known about how developmental experiences spanning early childhood through adolescence prepare children and youth to engage with society (Astuto & Ruck, 2017), and even less so for ethnically diverse Black children and youth (Jagers, Lozada, Rivas-Drake, & Guillame, 2017). Building from work linking positive youth development (PYD) to civic engagement (Lerner et al., 2006), this study examined how socialization trajectories from early childhood through adolescence in concert with early childhood experiences and contexts related to adolescent civic development. Civic development was measured by the PYD outcomes of competence, confidence, connection to school and peers, caring, and character; these …

Event-Related Potential Studies Of Error Monitoring To Affective And Non-Affective Stimuli In Adolescents And Emerging Adults, Rebecca K. Reed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is hypothesized that prefrontal cortex (PFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) function may be still under development in adolescents. As the generator of the error-related negativity (ERN) and the N2, the ACC is expected to be sensitive to the degree of development with age. In adults, these top-down control areas ideally serve to direct attention to goal-relevant information, which can increase the likelihood of making a correct choice, even in fast-response laboratory based tasks. However, adolescents may show increased susceptibility in these top-down control areas when the stimulus is social and emotional. In the first study, event-related potentials were …

The Structurally Adjusted School: School Restructuring And Youth Political Incorporation In Suburban America, Erin Michaels

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation argues that key 21st century education reforms intended to improve education for Latinx and Black students are actually new mechanisms of educational inequality. I examine this trend in the suburbs where Latinx and Black populations are growing due to new immigration and gentrification. I show how state-mandated education reforms use conditional financing and coercive restructuring policies to undermine the school’s local control by tying major reforms to vital school aid and threatening it with closure. I relate this model to the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) the IMF and World Bank use globally in order to coerce countries to …

Being In Performance: A Philosophical Account Of The Embodied Actor, Brad M. Krumholz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation I present and analyze three distinct actor-training exercises primarily through the lens of the Embodied Cognition (EC) branch of contemporary philosophy, which attempts to frame human understanding as a fully embodied interaction with the environment. Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, and other branches of philosophy, EC provides both an excellent set of tools and a strong theoretical framework to help explain how people encounter meaning in life. I apply its unique perspectives to this philosophical account of the embodied actor as I analyze the various elements at play in actor training praxis, which allows me to shed …

Leadership Ineffectiveness: The Interactive Effects Of Leader Personality, Job Demands, And Job Resources On Ethical Climate And Employee Turnover Intentions, Michelle D. Corman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Goals of the present research were to demonstrate that: (a) leadership personality is related to employee perceptions of the organization’s ethical climate; (b) leader job stress moderates this relationship for certain personality attributes; and (c) such leader-associated ethical climate, in turn, is related to employee turnover intentions and ultimate turnover (see Figure 1). Specifically, I investigated how individual differences in certain leadership “dark side” traits interact with leader job stress to influence the perceived ethical climate of their employees, to ultimately impact employee turnover intentions and turnover. Another goal of this research was to make unique predictions for the leadership …

Merging Subsistence Perspective And Buen Vivir: An Alternative To Damming The Mekong, Aaron B. Eisenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will examine the planned development on the Mekong by looking at the historical, political, and economic reasons why largescale hydroelectric dams are now being pushed upon the river. It will then critique the international state sovereignty system focusing directly on the Mekong River Commission and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) for their inabilities to mitigate environmental impact while pursuing development. I analyze how the “global city” discourse cannot rationally be applied to Southeast Asia and how the urban-rural divide in Southeast Asia creates only greater problems as dam production on the Mekong accelerates. I propose an alternative …