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Recent Submissions
A Bilingual Teacher Creates a Writing Workshop
(Boston University, 1988) Brekke, Kay
This ethnographic study documents the experience of a bilingual teacher who created a writing workshop with her bilingual students using the word processor as an available tool. This was one model created by one bilingual teacher to show how literacy can develop in interactive classrooms that seek to empower their students for learning.
A study of opinions of selected families about the functions of the nurse in the school health program
(Boston University, 1965) Baugh, Edith D.
Mogadishu poems and translation of poems by Cabdillahi Suldaan Timacadde
(Boston University, 1994) Ali, Abdi M.
Sample PROQUEST SWORD Deposit with Embargo
(2015) Student, Graduate Middle; Carroll, Test C; Simon, User R
Description for Sample Dissertation.
Sample PROQUEST SWORD Deposit with Embargo
(2015) Student, Graduate Middle; Carroll, Test C; Simon, User R
Description for Sample Dissertation.
Test Item Bistream Embargo and CC License
(2024-07-10) User, Test
Comparison of language and somatic experiences between reports of trauma and trauma-related dreams & personality features of trauma-exposed persons reporting trauma-related dreams
(2024) Hickey, Kimberly Lynn; Trinkaus-Randall, Vickery; Pace-Schott, Edward
INTRODUCTION: (Study A) Trauma-Related Nightmares (TRNs) are a core feature of Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We explored linguistic and somatic-experience differences between self-reports of trauma and those of nightmares related to the trauma.
(Study B) Neurotic personality features are associated with many psychological disorders, including PTSD. Based on this relationship, we explored whether neuroticism predicts the rate of nightmares and bad dreams as well as the number of replicative nightmares (TRNs similar or exactly like their traumatic experience), above and beyond PTSD severity.
METHODS: (Study A) Seventeen participants with varying severity of PTSD symptoms reporting recurring TRNs (mean age 27.47 years, SD = 10.33, 14 females) recalled a traumatic experience and nightmares related to that trauma. Trauma reports were written by participants, while nightmare reports were transcribed from audio recordings made as they were recalled following nightmares. Following both types of reports, participants indicated co-occurring somatic experiences by choosing from a list of 51 selections. Choices were later grouped into cardiovascular, respiratory, interoceptive, and tension categories. Linguistic content was measured using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program and positive emotion, negative emotion, and somatosensory category words were totaled. Since trauma reports had significantly higher word counts than TRNs (p=0.0495), LIWC categories were normalized for total word count. Total and symptom- cluster severities of PTSD were assessed using the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5). Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Tests and Spearman Correlations were used for statistical analysis, as Shapiro-Wilk tests showed that data were non-normally distributed.
(Study B) 126 participants who had experienced a traumatic event within the past two years were recruited (mean age 24.13 years, SD = 4.994, 69% female) and, for an average of 14.89 nights, completed a dream questionnaire on which occurrence of nightmares (causing awakening) and bad dreams were reported and ranked based on their similarity to their recent traumatic experience. PTSD symptoms were assessed using the PCL-5 and personality features such as neuroticism were measured using the NEO Personality Inventory Revised (NEO PI-R), a questionnaire based on the Five Factor Model of personality. The combined number of nightmares and bad dreams was divided by the total number of nights reported and expressed as a rate, while a replicative nightmare count was generated by summing “similar to traumatic experience” and “exactly like traumatic experience” ratings. Hierarchical regressions were used to determine whether neuroticism predicted the rate of nightmare and bad dreams as well as the number of replicative nightmares above and beyond PTSD severity. Pearson correlations were used to check for relationships between variables and possible collinearity.
RESULTS: (Study A) There were significantly more somatic experiences of interoception (p=0.0084) and tension (p=0.024) in trauma vs nightmare reports. The intrusion cluster of the PCL-5 was associated with cardiovascular (rho=0.592, p=0.0156) and respiratory (rho=0.619, p=0.0109) experiences in trauma reports, and interoception (rho=0.718, p=0.0033) and tension (rho=0.556, p=0.0224) experiences in nightmare reports.
(Study B) In two hierarchical regression models, neuroticism predicted neither nightmare and bad dream rate nor number of replicative nightmares over and above total or PTSD symptom cluster severity (p=0.596; p=0.886). Collinearity checks did demonstrate a moderate positive relationship between these variables (r=0.317, p<0.001).
CONCLUSION: (Study A) More somatic experiences of interoception and tension were recalled from traumas than TRNs. Because the brain is deafferented from sensory input during dreaming, we expected, but did not find, state differences in other somatic experiences. Word categories in narratives also did not show state differences. Only the intrusion symptoms of PTSD predicted bodily sensations in trauma as well as TRN reports.
(Study B) We found that neuroticism did not predict either nightmare and bad dream rate or the number of replicative nightmares above and beyond PTSD severity, when taking demographic factors into account. The positive correlation between PTSD and neuroticism could explain this lack of significance.
SUPPORT: R21MH128619
Salary Survey: New England Health Sciences Librarians
(2024-06-12) Ettien, A’Llyn
The world “In Search of its Soul”: UNESCO, America, and the struggle to build a postcolonial world
(2016) Olson, David; Keylor, William R.
This dissertation traces the international, intellectual, and institutional history of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This organization became the intellectual branch of the United Nations and was able to mobilize intellectual resources from around the world. Historians, educators, economists, and communications theorists used the organization’s conferences, roundtables, and meetings to forge transnational networks. American and European statesmen exploited these networks to encourage postwar peace and promote their own visions of international society. Third World diplomats and intellectuals embraced the organization but campaigned against its Eurocentric priorities. They pushed it to focus on discrediting the set of ideas and assumptions that underpinned the imperial world order. American diplomats and intellectuals championed UNESCO’s anticolonial agenda for decades and assisted such global campaigns as the fight against illiteracy, the preservation of ancient monuments, and the transfer of communications technology. By the 1970s, however, intellectual disagreements about the international economic system sparked a war of ideas and instigated a diplomatic crisis that led to American withdrawal from the organization. The decline of European imperialism and the rise of the Third World led to decades of economic, diplomatic, and military tension. This dissertation concludes that this sea change in world history also led to profound confrontation in the international realm of information and ideas. UNESCO was not the only forum devoted to the international exchange of information and ideas. But its authority as the intellectual arm of the United Nations made it one of the major battlegrounds in the struggle to create a postcolonial world.
Digital music consumption and social capital shifts within the Cape Breton diaspora in Boston
(2015) Berman, Amanda Elaine Daly; Heimarck, Brita R.
While ethnomusicological scholarship has begun to address Internet studies, the field has yet to amply consider digital diaspora theory. Arguing that the increasing digital aspect of social capital – defined as “the benefits individuals derive from their social relationships and interactions” (Ellison, Steinfeld, and Lampe 2010, 873) -- affects social, cultural, and musical capital in diasporic community groups, I discuss the pivotal role that social media, videosharing sites, and other Internet platforms play in connecting diasporic communities. I develop a hybrid ethnographic fieldwork model for examining contemporary diasporas’ music consumption and production that builds upon Putnam’s (2000) work on social capital, Song’s (2009) analysis of virtual communities, Brinkerhoff’s (2009) conceptualization of digital diaspora, Turkle’s (2011) fieldwork on technology’s impact on social interaction, Sparling’s (2006) conception of cultural capital in Gaelic Cape Breton, and O’Hara and Brown’s (2006) examination of music consumption. To address the high value of music production and consumption in Cape Breton culture, I introduce the concept of musical capital. I define this as arts currency, both tangible and intangible, which can be procured, acquired, or shared, as a more specific way to discuss the shifts in participation and consumption documented in my fieldwork in 2014-15, conducted both online and at the Canadian-American Club in Watertown, Massachusetts. Forms of musical capital analyzed include Skype music lessons, songs of diasporic longing, fiddle sessions, online videos, and in-person performances. I conclude that the online availability of one’s culture has long-range effects for community participation by non-musicians. While artists still gather in person to practice and perform, the greater diasporic community can now interact with other members online and virtually experience their culture, though the personal social capital benefits are not equal to in-person interactions. These changes reflect a larger social capital shift within contemporary American society and acknowledge the impact of the increased use of, and reliance upon, Internet platforms as a means for creating, consuming, and disseminating musical and cultural capital.