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CULTIVATING POST-SOVIET GARDENS: SEED SAVING AND THE HOUSEHOLD PLOT IN RURAL TAJIKISTAN
No full textOver the last five years, local NGOs across Tajikistan have established community-based seed banks to support households cultivating agrobiodiverse kitchen gardens. While social movements to preserve local crop varieties are well-documented in other rural contexts, they are new to Central Asia and had gone without study. This dissertation brings together insights from political ecology, feminist political economy, and critical agrarian studies to explore how and why this effort emerged and what rural women’s participation in it signals about life-making in Tajikistan’s post-Soviet countryside. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork and document analysis, I argue that community-based seed banks are a response to persistent challenges in Tajikistan’s seed system and that women’s engagement with them—despite tradeoffs—indicates the kitchen garden’s importance to social reproduction. National institutions responsible for genetic preservation, seed breeding, production, and import oversight have struggled to recover after independence, a reality compounded by fragmented interventions from mainstream development actors. This has left local markets for vegetable seeds dominated by imported F1-hybrid varieties of inconsistent quality, raising concerns about varietal loss and frustrating households grappling with income insecurity. Encircling rural homes, kitchen gardens provide a protective barrier against an ongoing crisis of social reproduction, offering access to means of existence irrespective of income. To protect this function, women are turning to community-based seed banks to provide trusted, locally adapted seeds and reduce their reliance on expensive, unreliable imports. Locating the gardens and seeds of Tajikistan’s rural households within global trends— including growing dependence on women’s unpaid labor to subsidize patchworked precarious livelihoods, the corporate consolidation and enclosure of agricultural inputs, and the search for strategies to live as best as possible under constraint— this dissertation bridges often disparate academic discussions to nuance understandings of grassroots initiatives and small-scale cultivation under capitalism
Curating Climate Change: Information Flows Across and Within Social Media Platforms
No full textThis dissertation explores how climate change information spreads on X (formerly Twitter) and what content from YouTube travels to X, focusing on climate change related tweets posted during November 2022. Using content analysis, machine learning, and case studies, about 114,000 tweets and their embedded YouTube videos were analyzed. The findings show that not all climate-related content is equally shared, some information is more likely to spread than others. The findings also indicate that users with a moderate number of followers are the ones connecting YouTube and X, rather than those with the highest follower counts on X. The findings are interpreted through the frameworks of curation logics and network gatekeeping. The implications of this dissertation call for recognizing that both user choices and platform algorithms play a role in shaping which climate messages receive the most attention. This dissertation contributes to the limited research on cross-platform climate communication and provides ideas for improving how climate information is shared online
LIVES AND DREAMS: A STUDY OF THE ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNEYS OF BOSNIAN IMMIGRANTS IN THE STARTUP WORLD
No full textThis dissertation explores how Islamic faith, moral endurance, and community-based values shape the entrepreneurial practices of Bosnian immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States. Through three interrelated qualitative studies, it challenges dominant models of individualistic, profit-driven entrepreneurship by centering faith-informed ethics, relational motivation, and structural constraint. The first paper draws on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), Islamic ethics, and critical theories of endurance to examine how entrepreneurs navigate their motivations across the business lifecycle. It finds that religious duty, family obligation, and social responsibility often blur the line between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, giving rise to a distinct moral logic of endurance grounded in faith and community. The second paper critiques the “hero-preneur myth by documenting how Bosnian entrepreneurs respond to systemic barriers—such as financial exclusion and bureaucratic opacity—through informal networks, mutual aid, and peer mentorship. Rather than pursuing growth at all costs, they prioritize stability, sustainability, and collective well-being. This reframing contributes to immigrant and family entrepreneurship literature by emphasizing embeddedness, bounded solidarity, and moral economy. The third paper uses the lens of Entrepreneurship as Practice (EaP) and lived religion to analyze how Islamic values such as trust (amanah), interest avoidance (riba), and giving (zakat, sadaqah) are enacted in daily business routines. Entrepreneurs adapt their ethical commitments through what this study terms conscientious pragmatism, balancing religious ideals with real-world constraints. Together, these papers offer a practice-based theory of faith-driven immigrant entrepreneurship that redefines success through ethical stewardship, relational responsibility, and spiritual accountability. The findings provide conceptual and practical insights for scholars and policymakers seeking to support culturally grounded forms of entrepreneurship among structurally excluded communities
Newhouse Impact Magazine 2025
No full textShowcasing the research and creative work of faculty, staff and students at the Newhouse Schoo
Maya Binyam, Raymond Carver Reading Series, February 12, 2025
No full textA video recording of Maya Binyam reading on February 12, 2025, as part of the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program\u27s Raymond Carver Reading Series
A Model of Blind Quantum Diffusion
No full textWe introduce the Blind Quantum Diffusion Network (BQDN), a quantum computational framework designed for distributed systems operating under conditions of partial observability and asynchronous communication. BQDN generalizes the structure of Generalized Boolean Networks (GBNs) by replacing classical multivalued logic nodes with quantum registers, enabling the use of superposition, entanglement, and unitary evolution to model distributed computation and state propagation. Building on the properties of W-states and quantum teleportation protocols, the BQDN leverages entangled coin registers and a token-based control mechanism to implement blind diffusion across a graph. The system achieves synchronization-free evolution without classical coordination by embedding decision-making within quantum superpositions and using local measurements for conditional branching. The model avoids deadlock and contention through provable structural guarantees and employs a novel application of W-States to control state transition. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach in controlling diffusion. This work contributes both theoretical models and implementable algorithms for scalable quantum networked systems
Research Review: Experiences of women and minoritized US military veteran business owners: descriptive evidence on vetrepreneur survival and growth
No full textThis research examines the survival and growth of U.S. veteran-owned businesses, focusing on gender and race disparities. Using longitudinal microdata from 1976–2019, the study reveals that veteran-owned firms exhibit higher survival rates, greater revenues, and strong payroll performance compared to nonveteran businesses, though they experience lower employment growth. Women veterans show notable resilience, suggesting military experience helps mitigate gender gaps in entrepreneurship. Findings highlight the need for targeted policies, such as improved access to capital and workforce planning, to support scaling among women and minority veteran entrepreneurs. The study provides critical insights for policymakers and future research on vetrepreneurship
Disabling Structures: Disability and Graduate Student Professionalization
No full textWhile scholarship on graduate education and graduate teacher assistant training has emerged as a growing trend in the field of rhetoric and composition, perspectives from disabled graduate students about their navigation of academic spaces remain understudied and undervalued (Lutkewitte, Kitchens, Scanlon; Macaulay; Badenhorst, Amell, Burford; Brown). An often neglected and precarious student population, disabled graduate students’ experiences are critical to graduate education scholarship because their lived experiences offer insight into critiques of normative and disabling academic structures. This IRB-approved study contributes to scholarship on graduate education by carefully analyzing the cultural expectations of normativity, ability, and productivity that are implicitly and explicitly delineated in rhetoric and composition graduate programs. My work explores the ways these expectations influence disabled graduate students\u27 professionalization in the discipline and what kinds of resistance disabled graduate students have employed to meet their access needs. Using critical disability, feminist, and decolonial methods and methodologies to analyze qualitative data from interview subjects about their lived experiences with academic structures and policies, I consider its impact on the professional identity construction of disabled graduate students. The voices of approximately 70 disabled graduate students form the central data for this study, which relies on 70 usable survey responses, 17 interview participants, and over 20 hours of transcripts. I conclude with ways that disabled graduate students resist ableism and discuss their suggested recommendations for constructing a culture of access. The following research questions drive my research: 1. How do rhetoric and composition’s cultural expectations and discursive notions of productivity, efficiency, and ability impact disabled graduate students’ identity construction as they negotiate liminal spaces between teaching, research, and community? 2. How can listening to how disabled graduate students navigate institutional and departmental structures and practice resistance lead to structural recommendations for rhetoric and composition graduate programs that prioritize collective care and the development of a culture of access? While disability and ableism are an issue for all disabled people working and visiting university campuses, the ways that disability manifests differ. Variable power dynamics, institutional structures and expectations, and interpersonal relationships materialize the mutable ways disability is perceived within the academy and discipline. Graduate students are especially vulnerable to these power dynamics and institutional structures, given their precarious positions require them to operate in liminal positions within universities. My project interrogates where access breakdowns occur. For instance, one critical implication from my research is the necessity of reframing how we conceptualize productivity and labor in ways that can highlight the additional labor expected of disabled graduate students when institutional and departmental structures fail to meet students’ accommodations. Further, many interview participants have remarked that access is often dependent on interpersonal relationships, especially the relationship with their dissertation advisor, suggesting that the construction of explicit professional documentation around mentorship responsibilities in rhetoric and composition programs would be helpful. This data emphasizes the need for transparency in graduate education, especially for marginalized graduate students
Computational imaging and the shifting ground of digital journalism ethics
Get PDFThis dissertation investigates how United States-based professional photojournalists are using computational imaging technologies in their smartphones from a diffusion of innovations perspective. Computational imaging can be considered “on-the-fly” photo manipulation, performing tasks such as blurring out the background the way a larger Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) or Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera can, or simulating lighting that didn’t exist on the scene. As image manipulation was previously viewed as taboo in photojournalism (Reaves, 1992), the increased usage of smartphones with computational imaging embedded in software could have wide-reaching implication for ethics research regarding the industry. In-depth interviews with newspaper and web news organization photo editors, staff photographers, wire service photographers and freelance photojournalists in the United States will demonstrate how far the technology has permeated the traditional print and web still photojournalism industry, what factors influence the visual journalist’s use of computational imaging, and what the ethical implications of that are. The aim of this research will be to provide a framework for molding new ethical standards that can be adopted by news agencies and publications, which can then be further used as a framework for the use of expanded technologies, such as artificial intelligence, in journalism
What We Carry Carries Us: Narratives of African Immigrants Through Cultural Artifacts in the United States
Get PDFIn this thesis, I explore how African immigrants in Syracuse, New York, use cultural objects to navigate identity, memory, and belonging in a new environment. Through interviews, story circles, and personal narratives, it examines how everyday items transform into meaningful symbols of home, acting as emotional anchors and ways to preserve culture. The study reveals that these objects, though initially practical, gain significance through migration, helping individuals cope with the experience, maintain ties to their heritage, and negotiate hybrid identities. However, their meanings are fluid: some objects retain emotional and cultural weight, while others fade as immigrants adapt. Beyond personal objects, African markets emerge as key transnational spaces where food and material culture bridge past and present. These markets function as sites of memory, community, and exchange that enable immigrants to recreate traditions as they adapt locally. By analyzing participant stories, I show how objects and cultural spaces like African markets facilitate continuity amid change, resist cultural erasure, and strengthen intergenerational connections. This work contributes to conversations on migration, material culture, and postcolonial identity by centering African immigrant perspectives. The narratives highlight migrant agency in redefining belonging, home, and culture. In essence, this study demonstrates how ordinary objects hold profound significance, that serves as a bridge between loss and renewal, preservation and adaptation in transnational lived experiences