Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Thresholds Of Atrocity: Liberal Violence And The Politics Of Moral Vision, Kristofer J. Petersen-Overton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

All political communities set normative limits to the acceptable use of force. A threshold of atrocity indicates the point at which acceptable violence meets the boundaries of the unacceptable. In liberal democratic states such norms are ostensibly set higher. Hence, there is a theoretical threshold to the modern state’s ability to act in ways that violate norms it claims to uphold. Paradoxically, thresholds of atrocity are almost never breached and unconscionable violence occurs regularly. This study seeks to explain the persistence of extreme violence by developing a theory of atrocity grounded in moral vision. Liberal democratic nation-states are able to …

Terrorism: A Tool For Shaping Public Opinion, Jonathan E. Voisich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public Opinion matters on issues of foreign policy. This makes controlling public opinion very important for governments. In this paper I will argue that elites use terrorism both as a tool for instilling fear and by creating a certain image of groups they wish to support or destroy in order to shape public opinion. I will examine both literature on framing and public opinion data on foreign policy to show why public opinion is so important and how it can be shaped. The two case studies showing terrorism being used in these ways will be the Ronald Reagan administration’s policy …

Dopamine D1 And D3 Receptor Polypharmacology In Cocaine Reward And Cocaine Seeking, Ewa J. Galaj

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: In the search for efficacious pharmacotherapies to treat cocaine addiction much attention has been given to agents targeting D1 or D3 receptors because of the involvement of these receptors in cocaine-related behaviors. D1 and D3 receptor partial agonists and antagonists have been shown to reduce cocaine reward, reinstatement of cocaine seeking and conditioned place preference (CPP) in rodents and non-human primates. However, translation of these encouraging results with selective D1 or D3 receptor agents has been limited due to a number of factors including toxicity, poor pharmacokinetic properties and extrapyramidal and sedative side effects.

Purpose: Given the …

Rights And Feelings: Marriage Equality And The Language Of Citizenship In Argentina And The United States, Julie Hollar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

By comparing the struggles for marriage equality in Argentina and the United States, this research elucidates the ways discursive change happens around high-profile policy issues, as well as how that process shapes the playing field for future movements. This work builds on scholarship concerning the construction of target populations, arguing that in contests over meaning, the social construction of the central actors shapes both dynamics and outcomes. It uses content analysis and discourse analysis to compare the constructions of gays and lesbians and the state across cases and to trace their impact on the discursive opportunity structure. It also takes …

The Relationship Between Clinical Teaching Effectiveness And Emotional Intelligence In Clinical Nurse Faculty In Pre-Licensure Baccalaureate Programs In New York State, Caroline K. Mosca

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is important to evaluate the Clinical Teaching Effectiveness (CTE) of nurse faculty because clinical teaching is one of the most effective pedagogies in nursing education (Billings & Halstead, 2012). However, clinical faculty must be able to manage effectively the stressors of the clinical setting, where lessons can be unpredictable and the environment is often laden with intense emotion (Gerolamo & Roemer, 2011; Ondrejka, 2013; Roberts, Chrisman, & Flowers, 2013). Emotional Intelligence (EI) may facilitate CTE because higher EI has been associated with improved management of stress in both nursing and the general workplace (Goleman, 1995; Görgens-Ekermans & Brand, 2012; …

A Whole New Wurld? How Unusual Brand Name Spelling Negatively Affects Sensory Perceptions Of New Products Through Cognitive And Affective Processing, Ann E. Mcneel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Introducing the importance of unusual brand name spelling to sensory marketing, this research shows that utilizing the linguistic device of unique brand name spelling can lead to differences in sensory perceptions and actual consumption of a variety of consumer products. Across five studies, we explore how perceptions of the uniqueness of a brand name can be achieved by varying one letter in the spelling of the brand name, and that such a small variation can result in less favorable sensory perceptions of taste (studies 1 and 3), scent (study 2), and vision (studies 4 and 5) as a result of …

The Fantastic Manifesto: Monstrosity Of Memory And Epiphany Of Selfhood In The Spirit Of The Beehive (1973), Layla Blodgett Carrillo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Spanish culture of storytelling suffered under the nearly forty-year dictatorship of Francisco Franco. The government-regulated cinema welcomed propaganda and melodrama, and denied the fantastic, the legendary, and the magical. These carefully manipulated histories, which served to romanticize the ideologies of the regime, also served to eulogize the delinquent and the depraved. In the early 1970s, at the heels of the collapse of Franco’s reign, the people of Spain bore witness to a new national cinema. The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), the feature debut from Victor Erice, exists at the threshold between a storied history of Spanish dictatorship and …

The Technocratic Politics Of The Common Core State Standards In History, Kate Duguid

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper shows that the explicit aims of the American educational standards for public schools, the Common Core State Standards to teach history to create “college and career ready” students, marks a shift from preparing students for political participation to preparing them for market participation. I trace the intellectual and pedagogical origins of the Common Core’s pretense of technocratic apolitical values back through the previous two major American curricular reform efforts. In the first section I discuss the origins and development of the National History Standards and show how Cold War anxiety prompted a shift in evaluating students as potential …

Es-Esa: An Information Retrieval Prototype Using Explicit Semantic Analysis And Elasticsearch, Brian D. Sloan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many modern information retrieval systems work by using keyword search to locate documents in an inverted index by matching those documents based on terms in a user’s query. While highly effective for many use-cases, one notable drawback to simple keyword-based searching is that the contextual knowledge surrounding the user’s underlying information need may be lost, particularly if the user’s query terms are ambiguous or have multiple meanings. Research in the field of semantic search aims to make progress towards resolving this. One methodology in particular, explicit semantic analysis, works by modeling a document not only as a set of …

Retelling An Old Wife’S Tale: Postpartum Care Of Taiwanese And Chinese Immigrant Women, Kuan-Yi Chen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The focus of this dissertation is the Chinese postpartum tradition zuoyuezi, often translated into English as doing-the-month. Having its roots in ancient China, this set of practices has maintained its salience today in Taiwan, China, and among first generation immigrant women in the U.S. Women not only continue to perform zuoyuezi at home, many also rely on emerging forms of commodified care. While immigrant women’s postpartum wellbeing and care has been the focus of scholarly research in health related fields, studies in the social sciences addressing immigrant women’s postpartum practices and the care relations engendered remain scant.

In this …

The Impact Of Social Dominance Orientation On Experienced Threat And Consequent Interviewer Discriminatory Behavior: A Psychophysiological Approach, John F. Capman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Though the representation of Black males within lower echelons of organizations has increased since the inception of Title VII (CRA 1964), Black males continue to be highly underrepresented in management-level roles (EEOC, 2015). The current study was developed to examine how social dominance orientation (SDO) among White males (Sidanius & Pratto, 1994) might disadvantage Black males attempting to advance into management jobs. Additionally, I evaluated the role of threat in contributing to discrimination against Black males by directly assessing threat responses among Organizational Decision Makers (ODM) using psychophysiological measures (i.e., cardiovascular responses). Male and female participants were recruited to participate …

Sex Differences In The Anxiety Effects Of Cannabinoids, Helen T. French

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Aim: Anxiety disorders are twice as common among women, and those with anxiety disorders are 2-3 times more likely to have a substance abuse disorder than the general populace. However, little data exists on the sexually dimorphic effects of cannabinoids. In male humans and rodents, low acute doses of cannabinoids are anxiolytic while high and/or chronic doses are anxiogenic. In the dose response curve (DRC), we examined whether the biphasic effects of cannabinoids observed in males are also present in females. In the CB1R antagonism study, CP55,940-induced CB1R activation was antagonized via the CB1R-selective antagonist rimonabant to test the hypothesis …

Estradiol, Substance P, And The Pi3k-Akt-Mtor Pathway In The Dorsal Horn Of The Spinal Cord During Inflammatory Pain, Zane Ferguson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Pain is a critical survival mechanism that signals potential or actual damage, but it can become pathological when it persists beyond the injury. Chronic pain is a major health issue that affects 10-20% of the adult population and is found disproportionately in women. There are numerous, interacting mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. This study used female rats to investigate the impact of estrogens on sensory signaling by substance P, a neuropeptide that contributes to the development of chronic pain, and the PI3K-Akt-mTOR pathway, an intracellular mechanism of nervous system plasticity.

Brief And Extended Experimental Analysis Of Spelling Deficits, Kimberly Reyes-Giordano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Brief Experimental Analyses (BEA) have been primarily used to evaluate the effects of instructional variables on reading deficits with regular education students. The broader utility of BEA’s has been limited in academic scope and population. The current study aimed to expand upon previous research by determining the efficacy of a BEA in identifying effective spelling interventions for students with established spelling deficits. Four different spelling strategies, drawn from the BEA and broader spelling intervention literatures were integrated into the BEA assessment technology and were compared and experimentally analyzed. For all students, effective interventions were identified with clear distinctions between the …

Adhd And Theory Of Mind In School-Age Children: Exploring The Cognitive Nature Of Social Interactions In Children With Adhd, Rachel Feigenbaum

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) experience significant difficulties with social skills (Barkley, 2006; DuPaul & Stoner, 2003; Stormont, 2001). The inhibitory deficit associated with ADHD is typically identified as the cause of these impaired social skills (Barkley, 2006). Additionally, some researchers have suggested that theory of mind (ToM), which is the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and to others, may be involved, but the research on ToM deficits in children with ADHD is limited and the findings are mixed. A key methodological issue in this literature is the use of traditional but problematic measures of advanced …

Zooarchaeological And Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction Of Newly Excavated Middle Pleistocene Deposits From Elandsfontein, South Africa, Frances L. Forrest

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Increased consumption of animal tissue is arguably one of the most important adaptive transitions in early hominin behavior. A dietary shift toward regular tool-assisted meat consumption and increased competition with the carnivore paleoguild likely helped shape many important hominin adaptations such as foraging patterns, habitat preferences, and social behaviors. Yet, the ecological and behavioral implications for increased hominin carnivory remain poorly understood. This dissertation examines the zooarchaeological and paleoenvironmental history of an important Acheulean hominin locality, Elandsfontein, South Africa (ca. 1.0 – 0.6 Ma). The goal is to begin addressing under-investigated aspects of Acheulean hominin behavioral ecology and place Acheulean …

Capitalism And Unfreedom: Louis D. Brandeis And A Liberty Of The Left, Eric L. Apar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The American Right features a well-developed—and well-heeled—infrastructure for promoting a conception of freedom as inextricable from capitalism. The American Left, by contrast, has seemed content to cede the territory, abandoning the ground of freedom for the terrain of “equality,” “justice,” “fairness,” and “prosperity.” This paper is an effort to address this asymmetry in the public discourse over the meaning of freedom. Its principal objective is to capture the vision of freedom embodied in the political and economic thought of Louis D. Brandeis, one of the American Left’s ablest expositors of freedom.

In addition, the paper has three subsidiary objectives. The …

Asymmetric Alliances And Side Payments: Alliance Politics Between Unequal Powers, Muhammad S. Kabir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Strong states use foreign aid as side payments to form and maintain military alliances with small and poor states, to a degree not adequately appreciated in the international relations literature. The amount of aid necessary to form and sustain alliances with strong ones is affected by small states’ domestic politics—such as regime type (coalition size) and stability—and the divergence of their strategic interests with the strong power. The alliance and foreign aid literatures, however, have generally downplayed the importance of foreign aid in the formation of asymmetric alliances, have not explained when and why foreign aid matters for asymmetric alliances, …

The Failure Of Post-War Reconstruction In Jaffna, Sri Lanka: Indebtedness, Caste Exclusion And The Search For Alternatives, Ahilan Kadirgamar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Reconstruction of contemporary war-torn societies can lead to further dispossession and social exclusion, particularly through neoliberal development policies and financialized indebtedness. This dissertation analyses post-war reconstruction of the Jaffna District in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka after the end of a brutal three decade long civil war in May 2009, through a survey and ethnographic study of one village, Pathemany and its oppressed caste quarter, Bharathy Veethy. Drawing on a study of Pathemany village on agrarian change before the war, this study addresses contemporary questions about land, rural incomes, rural debt and caste structure. The study evaluates reconstruction policies …

Overpopulation And The Impact On The Environment, Doris Baus

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this research paper, the main focus is on the issue of overpopulation and its impact on the environment. The growing size of the global population is not an issue that appeared within the past couple of decades, but its origins come from the prehistoric time and extend to the very present day. Throughout the history, acknowledged scientists introduced the concept of “overpopulation” and predicted the future consequences if the world follows the same behavioral pattern. According to predictions, scientists invented the birth control pill and set population control through eugenics. Despite that, population continued to increase and fight with …

Contesting Victimhood: A Linguistic And Legal Anthropological Analysis Of Defendant Experiences In New York’S Human Trafficking Intervention Courts, Mark T. Romig

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Human Trafficking Intervention Courts (HTICs) have been operating in New York City in an effort to connect victims of human trafficking to treatment programs. Unfortunately, the net that the courts cast was too wide and people who did not identify as victims of human trafficking were coerced into treatment programs that they did not need or want. Through textual discourse analysis and ethnographic observation, this paper explores the contestation of victimhood in HTICs by focusing on the experiences of defendants and how they are perceived by the police, judges, and other agents of the HTICs. Before entering the HTICs, defendants …

Merchandise, Promotion, And Accessibility: Keith Haring’S Pop Shop, Amy L. Raffel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the peak of his career in New York, Keith Haring took his highly recognizable artistic style and distributed it in the form of merchandise in his Pop Shop, established in 1986. Stemming from his early work displayed on the New York streets, directly within public space, and his explorations into mass media strategies, he learned he could make his work accessible to new audiences outside contemporary art institutions and art circles. He translated his work across several surfaces: from subways or canvases, to everyday functional merchandise, such as buttons, t-shirts, and bags sold in his shop. Responding to a …

Evaluative Mind: Extraneous Influences On Morality, Aesthetics, And Perception, Angelika Luiza Seidel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a series of experiments I examine extraneous factors that influence evaluative judgments and perception. Specifically, I focus on two kinds of evaluative states: moral evaluation and aesthetic evaluation. I use the domain of morality to explore the impact of emotions on moral value. I use the domain of art to explore influence of spatial features such as size and position, as well as attributions of fame of artist on aesthetic value. I show ways in which evaluation goes beyond the thing evaluated. I will in addition conclude with some exploratory work on valenced visual object recognition. This relates …

Development Of Authoring And Agency In Early Childhood Through Play, Pi-Chun Grace Ho

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The recent national focus on universal early childhood education programs has drawn attention to the challenges of organizing learning contexts and practices in which children can thrive as learners and community members. Preparing children for school and improving the quality of early childhood education face limits, however, when the role of play is dismissed or reduced to merely instrumental activity. Framed in Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, Bakhtin’s dialogic approach, and Stetsenko’s transformative activist stance, I reframe play as a process of authoring that fuels children’s passion for being agentive actors in the world and their own lives. This approach addresses how …

"Tough On Crime, Tough On The Causes Of Crime": Liberal Carceral Logics And The Reproduction Of Settler Colonial Violence In Winnipeg, Mb, Canada, Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation illustrates how settler colonialism is reproduced in present-day Canada through the governance of crime, and how political struggles against policing, imprisonment, and colonialism are linked. It focuses on the politics of crime in the Province of Manitoba from 1999–2016, during which the left-of-center New Democratic Party (NDP) government engineered a significant expansion of the carceral state, overseeing unprecedented increases in policing and jail growth. In Manitoba, the vast majority of prisoners are Indigenous. This dissertation explores the logic through which the NDP integrated their support for policing and imprisonment into their “progressive” value system, packaging their carceral expansion …

Expanding Intersectionality Praxis: Informing Culturally-Responsive Programming For Black And Latino Gay And Bisexual Young Men, Justin T. Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Black/Latino gay/bisexual young men face a multitude of health disparities caused by various determinants of health. However, despite the awareness of the gaps, health intervention research rarely explores the impact of current health intervention strategies on Black/Latino gay/bisexual young men’s overall health and well-being. Traditional health interventions are deficit-based, health condition-specific, and often limited in their cultural-specificity. As health-related fields move toward holistic, evidence-based practices, new primary prevention approaches need to emerge. Using qualitative investigation strategies, this study included primary analysis of participatory workshop artifacts, and secondary analysis of survey and focus group data. This study identified critical factors necessary …

Masculinity And Disproportionate Risk Of Contact With The Criminal Justice System: Findings From A Select Sample Of Low-Income Black Males In New York City, Michael G. Pass

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Official statistics document that Black males experience disproportionate contact with the criminal justice system (CJS). Existing theory and research suggest that this contact may be attributed to unique attributes of Black masculine behavior. Utilizing a meta-analysis of Black masculinity studies and content analysis of narratives from a select sample of Black males, ages 19-50, the current study examines the similarities and differences between the construction and performance of normative or traditional masculinity, as measured by Mahalik et als’ CMNI and the attributes of Black masculinity as defined in the literature. A goal of the study was to assess whether Black …

Dehumanization: A Case Study, Regina Varthi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The capstone “Dehumanization” is divided into three main parts.

The first part contains a brief presentation on the UN family (or UN system), showing its role through its organizational and managerial structures. All data are derived from UN corresponding websites.

The second part, “Homelessness,” focuses on the SDG 11 of the 2030 GA Agenda. In 2014 the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed Leilani Farha Special Rapporteur on adequate housing in order to conduct research on the subject of homelessness as a violation of human rights. In her report, presented at the Human Rights Council in March 2016, Farha claims …

Should We Talk?: Examining Individual And Aggregate Level Predictors Of Mediation Selection At The New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, Cynthia-Lee Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Currently, there are few studies that examine mediation programs within civilian complaint review boards. Research that analyzes these programs mainly focus on the degree of citizen satisfaction. This study adds to existing research by examining possible individual and aggregate-level characteristics linked to mediation selection. Specifically, this study considers the long standing tensions shared between the police and certain groups (e.g. minorities, youths, and residents of disadvantaged communities), and attempts to uncover which groups are more or less likely to meet with officers to resolve police complaints. The data (obtained by the CCRB and US Census 2010) allows for the analysis …

Beyond Inclusion: Critical Race Theory And Participatory Budgeting, Celina Su

Publications and Research

Critical Race Theory (CRT) researchers maintain that mainstream liberal discourses of neutrality and colorblindness inherently reify existing patterns of inequality, and that privileging the voices of people of color and the marginalized is essential to addressing issues of equity and equality. Participatory budgeting (PB) aims, too, to include the voices of the marginalized in substantive policy-making. Through a CRT lens, I examine the ways in which the New York City PB process has thus far worked to simultaneously disrupt and maintain racial hierarchies. I pay particular attention to how social constructions of the “good project” shape the discourses around community …