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Spurred By Faith: Harnessing the Power of Non Denominational Christian Churches for Socio-Economic Advancement
Get PDFThis study explores the role of non-denominational churches as mission-driven organizations in advancing socio-economic mobility for Black communities. By analyzing mission statements, sermons, programming, and social media engagement, the research identifies three distinct categories of church engagement: low, moderate, and high. The study examines how these churches address socio-economic issues through both immediate relief efforts and long-term empowerment initiatives. A central theme is the shift in contemporary leadership, particularly within high engagement churches, where pastors are increasingly promoting economic advancement through a blend of spiritual discipline, financial literacy, and self-sufficiency.
The research further investigates how gap ministries foster individual empowerment and indirect social change. Findings suggest that, while historically focused on survival amidst systemic oppression, today’s church leaders are creating pathways to upward mobility. The study concludes that non-denominational churches are uniquely positioned to bridge socio-economic gaps, providing a holistic model for community development that integrates faith-based leadership with tangible social change efforts. The study also suggests that additional research, particularly qualitative data, is needed to assess how these programs impact individuals, gather feedback, and measure real-life changes
Fragility, Division And Exclusion: Identity and the Intersectional Limits of the Disability Rights Movement
Get PDFThis thesis asserts that there are acute barriers facing the US pan-disability rights movement’s progress towards embodying intersectional praxis: a necessary feature of any social movement furthering human rights.
These obstacles largely revolve around the fragility of disability’s collective sociopolitical identity. The porosity and heterogeneity, combined with persistent medicalised perceptions, which characterise the Disabled experience, undermine the manufactured common identity the movement hinges on. In so doing, not only do contentious impairment-based politics subsume activist theorisations of inclusion, but a lack of external validity stalls intersectional practices in its own right as well as inspiring a culture of marginalisation and victimhood, which motivates actors to double down on disability essentialism.
The paper utilises oral history sources, survey data, eight expert interviewees and website content analysis in making its conclusions. The first section starts by establishing the current state of intersectional praxis in the US disability rights movement, which can be deduced to be failing those in the movement who are multiply marginalised. The development and nature of disability identity are then established before its impacts on the movement’s intersectional praxis are substantiated. This thesis concludes with the suggestion that not only can DRM itself learn from understanding its own internal culture and mechanisms but other movements as well
Mother Knows Best: The Role of Olfactory Cues in Postpartum Maternal Care
No full textThe transition into motherhood is characterized by profound changes in the brain and body. During pregnancy and after birth, the reproductive, endocrine, and nervous systems undergo significant modification to support the growth and care of offspring. Among these changes, sensory systems also adapt to meet the demands of motherhood. While the olfactory system plays a critical role in pup retrieval and nesting behaviors in dams, how the olfactory system adapts during motherhood remains unclear.
Using odor preference testing, we have demonstrated that first-time mothers develop a specific preference for pup urine following parturition and early postpartum care, which is not observed for other social or neutral odors. This preference is absent in late-pregnant females, first-time mothers separated from their pups after parturition, and virgin females exposed either to pups or to pup urine. This finding suggests that the development of pup urine preference requires both internal (hormonal) and external (chemosensory) cues to develop.
Finally, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis identified specific volatile compounds in pup urine that may drive this behavior. These findings may provide valuable insight into how the transition to motherhood influences the sense of smell, with chemosensory cues playing a key role in shaping maternal responses and enhancing olfactory-guided behavior
Reimagining Social Media to Design Culturally Congruent Care for Black Women
No full textBlack communities continue to grapple with increased psychological threats due to historic, systemic oppression, and must combat structural barriers that impede their access to mental health care. These threats and barriers manifest differentially and are more pronounced for Black women, who often face providers and institutions incongruent with their cultural values, worldviews, and norms. Black women identify failures in every aspect of mental health care, including social policies that regulate access, norms of care, and therapeutic approaches that are culturally incongruent with their lived experiences and sociopolitical realities. In response, Black communities have increasingly turned to social media to address gaps left by traditional social policies and therapeutic approaches.
This dissertation draws from theoretical frameworks like Radical Healing, Black Psychology, and Intersectionality to advocate for a reimagining of mental health care that better addresses the unique needs of Black communities and, more acutely, Black women. Specifically, this dissertation explores how social media might be most effectively leveraged to develop culturally congruent care (CCC) as conceptualized by Black women. Employing a multi-methodological qualitative research design, this dissertation analyzes digital data in the form of Instagram comments from two popular virtual events centering Black audiences and conducts focus groups with self-identified Black women.
Study One contextualizes the broader landscape of how Black communities, particularly during moments of collective crisis, turn to social media to facilitate connection, self-care, wellness, and healing. Building on these insights, Study Two provides a more focused, population-specific, and participant-driven examination of how Black women specifically define, engage, and sustain CCC across multiple settings, both on and offline. This study addresses critical gaps and offers several theoretical, practical, and empirical implications for social work scholarship by empirically validating existing models of CCC for Black communities, challenging dominant clinical frameworks through culturally specific care practices, and expanding the recognition of social media and emerging technologies as legitimate sites for care and intervention.
By examining the intersection of social media and CCC, this research underscores the potential of digital and virtual platforms as vital tools for fostering healing and wellness, ultimately enhancing the efficacy of mental health interventions. By highlighting the essential features of social media platforms facilitating CCC, this research offers valuable insights into how to improve care for Black women and advance mental health equity for historically marginalized communities more broadly
The Performativity of Diagnosis: Case Writing Between Medicine and Literature in Postwar Germany
No full textThis dissertation investigates the interrelation of medicine and literature across multiple vectors of form, history, agency, and epistemology. Written observational practices in medicine have long shaped both clinical care and the dispersal of disciplinary knowledge, from case studies to pathographies, patient files to anamneses. In the course of their historical development, in close conjunction with literary texts, these forms have become tied to particular practices of scientific reasoning and discursive structures of authority—structures which literary writing is also uniquely positioned to query and to collapse. In the first chapter, I provide an overview of both theoretical and historical developments in case writing and pathography in German-speaking areas by tracing the circulation of the story of the “mad” poet J. M. R. Lenz from the 18th through the 21st-centuries.
Having established this history, I turn my focus to the post-World War II era of Germany. In the second chapter I undertake an archival investigation into the patient files of a consequential Berlin psychiatric clinic, the Karl-Bonhoeffer-Nervenklinik. Establishing the “clinical writing scene,” I demonstrate how the roles of doctor and patient were linguistically constructed in the text of the anamnesis. The postwar KBoN files provide key insights into the clinical expression of war trauma and political persecution amidst strict biomedical understandings of psychiatric illness. In the third chapter, I assess the political uptake of medical language in the context of postwar antifascist writing. I contrast the varied approaches of Karl Jaspers, Alexander Mitscherlich, and Theodor Adorno as they sought to use or critique pathologizing language in the ongoing project of understanding and preventing another fascist outbreak. The fourth chapter addresses the work of Ingeborg Bachmann and contends that medical encounters and case writing are of primary significance in the development and narrative structures of the speech “Male Oscuro” and the unfinished novel The Book of Franza.
The fifth chapter offers a revised reading of the works of Surrealist writer Unica Zürn. Although produced in the context of institutionalization and medical crisis, I demonstrate that Zürn’s texts are observational, thus collapsing the epistemological hierarchies otherwise preserved by the formal separation of clinical and literary writing
Secular Body, Sacred Space: Nude Dance at Judson Memorial Church
Get PDFThis thesis examines how nude performance works by Judson Dance Theater—particularly Waterman Switch (1965) and Trio A with Flags (1970)—challenged prevailing American sexual mores by placing the naked, moving body within the sanctity of Judson Memorial Church. Though artists like Yvonne Rainer and Robert Morris often rejected overt political framing, their choreographic choices—especially in the context of a sacred Christian space—became entangled in larger cultural tensions between the burgeoning Sexual Revolution and conservative religious values. Drawing on theories of the “effervescent” (Sally Banes) and “unruly” (Ramsay Burt) body, this work argues that these performances disrupted dominant ideologies around sexuality, intimacy, and morality not merely through nudity, but through the spatial juxtaposition of secular bodies and sacred space. By examining archival materials, critical reception, and cultural responses—including backlash from Christian institutions—this project reveals how Judson’s nude performances operated as both transgressive and reverent, occupying a liminal space that destabilized binary understandings of purity and sin, resistance and conformity. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that the nude body in motion became a potent site of political and spiritual contestation in the rapidly shifting cultural landscape of 1960s America.
Keywords: Judson Dance Theater, Nude performance, Christian nationalism, Sexual morality, Avant-garde performanc
The Urban Climate Change Footprint of Greater Cairo
Get PDFUrban climate change will exacerbate existing climate vulnerabilities in Greater Cairo, with the potential to deepen ongoing human development and spatial inequalities. Climate change generates a high degree of uncertainty over water resources in the capital, increases climate vulnerability such as heat waves, and impacts biodiversity, as well as food production and availability. Greater Cairo's growing population will place additional pressures on urban service provision and deepen the exposure of assets and people to climate risks, with these risks disproportionately borne by the urban and peri-urban poor
Longleaf pine in the low countries
Get PDFAmong the species used for dendrochronology in the Low Countries, pine from the North American continent represents a small and possibly overlooked subset. Southern Yellow Pine is the collective name for a number of pine species (Pinus spp.) of which longleaf pine (P. Palustris Mill.) is of prime importance. The wood anatomy of longleaf pine is easily confused with the far more common Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.), Additionally, longleaf pine did not appear in the Low Countries until relatively recently, meaning it can be found in objects which can be dated through other means than dendrochronology, typically archival sources. In this study we present a chronology for longleaf pine, as well as its distinguishing (wood anatomical) features, application and provenance details to enable further research into the scope of this trans-Atlantic timber trade
Efficacy and safety of mechanical transvenous lead extraction: median follow-up analysis and development of an experimental model for predicting survival post-extraction
Get PDFBackground
Cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED) implantation is on the rise, accompanied by an increase in its inevitable complications such as different types of CIED infections that require further therapy and potential device extraction. Ensuring efficacy and safety remains paramount in transvenous lead extraction (TLE), given the complex nature of the procedure. The purpose of this study is to assess the outcomes of relatively low-cost mechanical TLE, including mid-term clinical follow-up, and to develop a predictive model for post-TLE survival. This study included all consecutive patients admitted for TLE at two tertiary medical centers between 2016 and 2021. Baseline characteristics, TLE procedure details complications occurring during and/or after the procedure and follow-up outcomes were collected.
Results
During the 5-year period, 100 consecutive patients underwent TLE. The mean age of the subjects was 61 ± 3 years. The average time from lead implantation to TLE was 69.34 ± 9.36 months, with a total of 216 leads extracted. The most common indication for TLE was infection observed in 87% of subjects with pocket infection seen in the majority (84%). Complete clinical success was achieved in 98% of patients, with major complications occurred in 5% of cases and only one case of peri-procedural death. Proposed experimental model showed that near 50% of the patients will live less than 73.29 months.
Conclusion
TLE demonstrated a high level of safety with low mortality and morbidity rates. Using low cost widely available mechanical tools is useful for treating CIED-related infections
Centering Mercy: What Seneca’s De Clementia means for Institutional Justice
No full textThis paper argues for the importance of mercy as a guiding virtue in the criminal justice system, following the arguments of Seneca’s De Clementia. In particular, I argue that Seneca portrays mercy not only as an individual virtue, but as an institutional one. In doing so, I offer a new reading of the De Clementia which emphasizes its focus on features of the state, rather than just individual psychology. While some legal philosophers have used the De Clementia to argue for individual mercy within the justice system, I show that this reading does not do justice to Seneca’s argument. Ultimately, viewing mercy as an institutional virtue puts explicit pressure on systemic features that prevent the exercise of mercy, such as mandatory minimum sentencing