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Regional Geography and Tuning Systems of Traditional Georgian Folk Music
No full textThe project focuses on the traditional folk music of Georgia, mapping the geographical distribution of singing traditions across the country’s historical regions. Because vocal traditions and stylistic features of Georgian folk music vary significantly across historical regions, the project highlights these differences for the audience, which might be interested in learning Georgian folk music, seeking a basic understanding of its structure, or planning to visit the country for cultural or educational purposes related to folk music. In addition, this work examines the tonal organization of Georgian traditional music, drawing on recent ethnomusicological research. It engages with ongoing scholarly discussions regarding the existence of a distinct Georgian tuning system. A recently compiled corpus of high-quality multimedia field recordings compiled by Scherbaum et al. (2019) provides both auditory and visual evidence of tonal differences between Georgian musical practice and the other, globally dominant tuning systems.
The project is a digital interactive platform built as a single-page web application. It features an interactive choropleth map of Georgia’s historical regions, where each region is associated with an audio recording of a traditional folk song from that region. The design centers on sound-based interaction, enabling visitors to explore differences in vocal style and tonal characteristics across the country through the map. The interface also includes background information on each region’s singing tradition, so listeners can better connect the music to its regional context. Besides, the site also includes a separate interactive visualization that compares pitch deviations between Georgian tuning patterns - derived from computational analysis of laryngeal microphone recordings across multiple regions - and the twelve-tone equal temperament (12-TET) system, the most widely used tuning framework in global music practice. The visualization enables observation of cent-level differences between the two tuning systems. Interactive elements allow users to trigger either pitch sequences or individual notes, linking cent deviations to familiar note references and making audible the perceptual effects of small pitch differences.
The capstone project can be viewed at: https://akutubidze.github.io/Capstone/
The code repository is publicly available at: https://github.com/akutubidze/Capston
Paper Government: How the State Governs Migration Through Extending Rights: A Study of Colombian Immigration Policy, 2016–2024
No full textThe question of how states interact with irregular or undocumented immigrants is a key issue of contemporary politics and the social sciences. A large proportion of studies focuses on traditional destination states which engage irregular immigrants through coercion and exclusionary measures. This study examines how states govern irregular migration through the extension of rights rather than coercion and exclusion and how these rights extension affect immigrant incorporation, their lives, and that of their families. This dissertation is a case study of what might be considered an “anomalous case” (Seawright and Gerring 2008) or a case of “positive deviance” (Cammett 2022). As Colombia rapidly became an immigrant destination country due to mass Venezuelan displacement, some of its highest officials decided to implement a 10-year work and residence permit with a pathway to citizenship, documenting 2.4 out of 2.8 million foreign-born in its territory. Additionally, Colombia maintained an exceptionally low level of deportation and border enforcement.
As Colombia implemented one of the world’s most expansive regularization programs, granting work and residence permits to Venezuelans and providing a pathway to citizenship, it maintained exceptionally low levels of deportation and border enforcement. This response defies dominant theories of migration governance, including the presumed trade-off between rights and numbers and expectations that liberalization is driven by business interests, electoral incentives, or left-wing governments, among others. Conceptually, the study advances the notion of the documenting state, arguing that large-scale regularization can function as a strategy of state-building by using rights-based governance to increase bureaucratic legibility and state capacity. Empirically, it combines elite interviews with policymakers, legal and documentary analysis, public records requests, ethnographic fieldwork, and in-depth interviews with Venezuelan migrants of varying legal status. This mixed qualitative approach bridges top-down analyses of policy design with bottom-up accounts of immigrant incorporation.
Chapter one introduces the concept of the documenting state, arguing that large-scale regularization of undocumented immigrants can function as a strategy of state-building. Through analysis of Colombia’s 2021 Estatuto, the chapter shows how documentation reshapes the relationship between immigrants and the state. Chapter two develops the concepts of paperwork gaps and documentation bridges to explain how the Colombian state adapted legal and bureaucratic requirements to expand access to legal status among Venezuelan migrants. It demonstrates that regularization was not a one-off policy but an ongoing state project. The chapter also illustrates how these concepts travel beyond Colombia. Chapter three examines the effects of documentation on immigrant incorporation by comparing documented and undocumented Venezuelans and centering the immigrant family as the unit of analysis. It finds that legal status constitutes a critical life-course juncture, improving access to employment, healthcare, and empowerment—even in Colombia’s low-deportation, high-informality context. Chapter four analyzes the interaction between documentation and informality in the labor market and in housing, arguing that informality can facilitate immigrant incorporation when migrants retain the option to exit it through legal status. Drawing on ethnographic evidence and Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty framework, the chapter distinguishes between compulsory and non-compulsory informality and shows how strategic non-enforcement operates as a form of migration governance. Chapter five studies the mass denationalization of 43,000 Venezuelan-Colombians as a counterfactual case, demonstrating that Colombia possessed the capacity for coercive exclusion but chose not to deploy it broadly. Through comparative analysis, including cases such as the UK’s Windrush scandal, the chapter shows how citizenship itself can be undermined through bureaucratic immigration enforcement, highlighting the fragility of even the most stable legal rights
Culture and Its Discontents: Versions of Matthew Arnold from the 1860s to the 1980s
No full textBetween the 1860s and the 1980s, the concept of culture articulated by Matthew Arnold provided a widespread and persistent language for making claims about who was ready for inclusion in British politics and identity and who was not yet ready or even incapable of being included. Scholarship on Arnoldian culture has often focused on presenting just one version of Arnold, whether as a cultural elitist, a progenitor of literary studies, or proponent of “doing away with classes.” This dissertation instead shows that Arnold’s concept of culture was so pervasive and persistent because he could be appropriated and redefined by people who filled in their own ideals of perfection and their own programs of education reform. It presents a genealogy of these successive appropriations of Arnold in Britain and its empire, such as those of middle-class women and of subalterns in Ireland and India. The specific policies, education reforms, and curricula on behalf of which people invoked him, however, were inevitably divisive. Arnoldian culture was consistently pulled to the right by exclusionary uses of culture as a “holding pen” for the working class, women, and colonial subjects, or as a bulwark against the alleged anarchy of mass politics and the philistinism of American mass media. It was only at the end of the 1960s, when the British New Left abandoned Arnoldian arguments for education reform, that Arnold became associated with the conservative pole of subsequent culture wars in Britain and the United States
High-Sensitivity Ultrafast Spectroscopy of Exciton Dynamics in Nanomaterials
No full textThe development of next-generation optoelectronic devices is dependent upon the understanding of light-matter interactions of low-dimensional materials. Semimetals, semiconductors, and insulators comprise the family of these materials and many have been extensively studied for their robust optical properties. Understanding the fluence-dependent photophysics of nanomaterials helps to characterize their intrinsic behavior and nonlinear interactions in the presence of light. However, a comprehensive transient study of these materials perturbed with ultra-low excitation densities remains unexplored. This thesis presents the nature of several van der Waals materials, novel Dion-Jacobson perovskites, and singlet fission nanocapsules in low absorbed carrier density environments. Highly sensitive ultrafast, broadband, transient spectroscopy and photoluminescence spectroscopy are employed to probe the fluence dependence of exciton dynamics. The responses after sufficiently low pump fluence includes the crossover regime from net interband transitions in graphene, suppressed energy transfer in DJ perovskites, and fission of excitons in WSe2. The results of this work will largely impact the design and functionality of photodetectors, solar cells, and optical transistors
Colloquial language, standard language, or educated language?
No full textThis assignment invites students to critically explore Spanish dialects, regional expressions, and language variations through guided interactions with ChatGPT. Students will examine colloquialisms across chosen Spanish dialects, analyze their meanings and linguistic significance, and compare AI-generated examples with their own academic revisions. Through structured reflection, students will assess the strengths, limitations, and risks of using AI as a language tool. The focus will be on intentional prompting, linguistic awareness, and critical evaluation, rather than simply substituting human expression
MA 250 – Evaluating & Creating with GenAI
No full textIn this assignment, students use Excel and ChatGPT to design, analyze, and interpret a regression model. They create visualizations, calculate the regression equation manually, and make predictions before consulting AI-generated feedback on their model’s strengths and limitations. Students then compare their own interpretation with ChatGPT’s insights, summarize their findings, and critically assess the model’s accuracy and real-world usefulness. The exercise develops quantitative reasoning, practical AI application, and reflective evaluation skills
Analyzing Best Practices in Reintegration, Education, Restorative Justice, and Reentry
No full textThis collaborative assignment in SOC 301 (Penology) requires students to critically examine best practices in reintegration, prison education, rehabilitation, and restorative justice through comparative international case studies, such as APAC, Bastøy Prison, or the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program. Working in groups, students analyze at least five peer-reviewed sources to assess both documented benefits (e.g., reduced recidivism, improved reintegration) and key challenges (e.g., scalability and sustainability). The scaffolded structure—proposal, draft, final paper, and presentation—strengthens research skills, critical thinking, and evidence-based academic communication
Essay Assignment on Current Political Development
No full textThis assignment asks students to reflect on how recent election results may influence policies related to the administration of justice. Students use ChatGPT as a brainstorming tool to generate possible policy impacts, then select one example and analyze it using course readings. By connecting AI-generated ideas to established scholarly arguments, students practice evidence-based reasoning and application of course concepts. The assignment also requires students to reflect on the strengths and limitations of using AI for idea generation, emphasizing independent analysis, proper citation, and critical engagement with AI-assisted work
Formulating Research Question with CHAT GPT
No full textThis assignment guides students through the process of developing strong, focused, and measurable research questions while critically engaging with ChatGPT as a collaborative tool. Students begin by identifying a broad topic, narrowing it to a specific and feasible area of inquiry, and determining the purpose and type of research question (descriptive, explanatory, comparative, or evaluative). After drafting their own question, they use ChatGPT to generate feedback and suggested refinements, which they must evaluate critically using the FINER criteria (Feasible, Interesting, Novel, Ethical, Relevant). Through comparison of AI-generated and human-generated revisions, students assess the strengths, limitations, and ethical considerations of AI in academic research. The assignment strengthens critical thinking, academic writing, interdisciplinary reasoning, and reflective AI literacy while reinforcing the foundational role of well-crafted research questions in scholarly inquiry
Creating and Analyzing Topic Sentences with Chat GPT
No full textThis assignment engages students in creating and analyzing AI-generated topic sentences using ChatGPT. By working with a shared textual dataset—in this case, the Comments & Discussion section of the article “If Hispanics Hate the Term ‘Latinx,’ Why Is It Still Used?”—students practice distilling key ideas into concise, coherent sentences that preview and structure content. In groups, students generate topic sentences with ChatGPT, then evaluate them for keyword inclusion, main topic, emphasis, and omissions. This exercise develops skills in clarity, coherence, stance-taking, and rhetorical analysis, while encouraging critical reflection on how AI summarizes and interprets text. The activity concludes with group discussion and comparison, fostering collaborative analysis and a deeper understanding of topic sentence construction