Honors Projects
Showing 171 - 180 of 298 Items
"Possessive gentleness": Insecure Attachments in American Literature
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Ella Pearl Crabtree
Access: Open access
- “‘Possessive Gentleness’: Insecure Attachments in American Literature” applies psychological attachment theory to works of American Literature. Each novel examined—Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851), Dred: A Tale of the Dismal Swamp (1856), and The Minister’s Wooing (1859) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Third Generation (1954) by Chester Himes, and The Bluest Eye (1970) by Toni Morrison—describes the forces behind insecure attachment relationships between child characters and their caregivers. The first chapter of this project focuses on Stowe’s anti-slavery novels. It argues that the institution of slavery is in conflict with Christianity in these works, because it impedes disinterestedly benevolent mothering and disrupts secure attachments. The second chapter analyzes The Third Generation, and suggests that colorism in the black community is the cause of insecure attachments in Himes’ work. The third and final chapter examines The Bluest Eye, and presents sympathy, as embodied by the novel’s narrator, as a potential remedy for insecure parent-child attachments. Together, these texts elucidate how societal forces (e.g. colorism, poverty) intrude upon the family structure and destabilize parent-child attachments. Optimistically, however, they also suggest that improved parent-child attachments might function as a vehicle of broader social change.
A Conscious Image of Liberation: Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in the Late Franco Regime, Through the Lens of the Press
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Sebastian de Lasa
Access: Open access
- The rise of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in the early 1970s coincided with the rise of national liberation movements across Europe, which largely were inspired by notable examples of resistance throughout the Global South in the decades prior. ETA’s growth over this period, and in the years prior, was heavily dependent on the image created of the organziation in the local, domestic, and international press, including through documents distributed by the group itself. By comparing ETA’s external presence to the group’s internal strife, it becomes clear that ETA made efforts to align itself with the popular revolutionary language of the period. The group took advantage of, and aimed to create press spectacles, in attempts to manipulate its public image. However, the discrepancy between the group’s public image and internal dissolution became apparent as the group pursued more violent acts in the goal of Basque liberation.
How do long-term above-ground biomass dynamics vary between different forest stand types at Harvard Forest?
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Maya Y. Chandar-Kouba
Access: Open access
- Monitoring forest carbon storage is necessary in accurately modelling the global carbon cycle. In the Northeast, terrestrial forests represent a major carbon sink with above-ground biomass (AGB) accounting for 40% of stored forest carbon. Therefore, understanding how AGB varies spatiotemporally is essential in predicting future carbon storage. Repeated measurements in permanent, long-term plots provide an opportunity to examine how carbon stored in AGB is changing over time. I used 29 years of data from the Harvard Forest Environmental Monitoring Systems (HF EMS) Site to determine how stand composition, intrinsic factors, and extrinsic environmental factors influenced rates of carbon storage in AGB over time. Using a partition around medoids (PAM) clustering method, I separated the 34 ground plots at the EMS stand into their respective stand types. I found that each stand type at the HF EMS plots accumulates carbon at consistent rates throughout the study period, although rates of carbon accumulation between stands were significantly different. Red Pine stands experience a rapid decline in biomass in 2018 due to the introduction of the Southern Pine Beetle. Across all stand types, sporadic mortality events determine variations in yearly rates of carbon accumulation, although this has little significant influence on total AGB accumulation. Leaf area index (LAI) and foliar N contents have no effect on growth increments. Extrinsic environmental variables had mixed effects on growth and mortality, highlighting the complexities of predicting forest carbon storage under changing climate conditions.
Outlier Detection in Energy Datasets
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Stephen Crawford
Access: Open access
- In the past decade, numerous datasets have been released with the explicit goal of furthering non-intrusive load monitoring research (NILM). NILM is an energy measurement strategy that seeks to disaggregate building-scale loads. Disaggregation attempts to turn the energy consumption of a building into its constituent appliances. NILM algorithms require representative real-world measurements which has led institutions to publish and share their own datasets. NILM algorithms are designed, trained, and tested using the data presented in a small number of these NILM datasets. Many of the datasets contain arbitrarily selected devices. Likewise, the datasets themselves report aggregate load information from building(s) which are similarly selected arbitrarily. This raises the question of the representativeness of the datasets themselves as well as the algorithms based on their reports. One way to judge the representativeness of NILM datasets is to look for the presence of outliers in these datasets. This paper presents a novel method of identifying outlier devices from NILM datasets. With this identification process, it becomes possible to mitigate and measure the impact of outliers. This represents an important consideration to the long-term deployment of NILM algorithms.
Salud Callejera: Mobilizing Cuidado at the Margins of Neoliberalism; Reimagining Care for People Experiencing Homelessness in Buenos Aires
Date: 2019-05-01
Creator: Brandon Morande
Access: Open access
- On any given night, thousands of individuals sleep on the streets of the Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. Without secure housing, people in situación de calle (experiencing homelessness) suffer elevated rates of physical trauma, transmissible and chronic diseases, and symptoms of depression. Nevertheless, two-thirds of this population do not receive annual health consultations, with the majority solely accessing the emergency department when their conditions severely worsen. This study finds that municipal services and, to a lesser extent, the public health system render individuals responsible for housing insecurity by adopting a neoliberal subjectivity of homo economicus, medicalizing poverty as a symptom of psychosocial illness potentially curable through economic and social rehabilitation. Those who do not conform with such pathologization or other employment-based demands confront heightened criminalization and exclusion from care services. As an alternative response, this project investigates the actions of civil society networks, which employ a contrary notion of homo politicus, reimagining care as a collective right and site of political mobilization. This thesis draws upon interviews with people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, members of civil society organizations, public health providers, and municipal social workers, as well as observations from street-outreach.
Gendered Subjectivity in Refugee Resettlement Processes: From Somalia to Lewiston, ME
Date: 2018-01-01
Creator: Elena Gleed
Access: Open access
- Refugee Resettlement to the United States is a globalized and transnational process of making home. After Somali state collapse in 1991, more than a million displaced people fled to refugee camps across the Kenyan border. Today, over 12,000 Somali people now live in Lewiston, ME, an old mill town located along the Androscoggin River. As refugees are resettled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees they enter a system created over fifty years ago in response to World War II. Using post-colonial and feminist scholarship, this project analyses the “female refugee” subject as she appears in the official discourse of resettlement processes. I trace the historical emergence of this subjectivity from an individual and work-based neoliberal American ethos to non-governmental organizations run by Somali women in Lewiston. Drawing from document analysis and ethnographic interviews, this paper explores the how Somali women are made to be “new American workers” in a process that combines western liberal feminism with ideas of integration and cultural orientation to the United States.
Brutal Encounters: Primitivity, Politics, and the Postmodern Revolution
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Archer Thomas
Access: Open access
- The switch from late modernism to postmodernism in Western aesthetic theory and criticism took place in the mid-to-late 20th century, radically changing the face of cultural criticism. Much has been written on how postmodernism broke from modernism, but what factors paved its way in the decades following the Second World War? This paper argues that postmodernism represents both a reaction to and a necessary evolution of late modernism, specifically as it manifests in architecture, politics, and the politics of architecture. It focuses on the crisis of confidence among Western left-wing circles following the upheaval of the Second World War and posits that, because of this upheaval, primitivism came to dominate the epistemology of a renewed modernism led by figures such as Clement Greenberg, Reyner Banham, and the practitioners of “the New Brutalism.” The paper then explores how the Western left-wing reaction to developments like decolonization and postwar modernization challenged primitivity’s newfound importance, resulting in a shift towards a “postmodern populism” in aesthetics and politics by the 1960s as described by Jean Baudrillard, Fredric Jameson, Robert Venturi, and Reyner Banham.
Economic Costs of Elevated Public Debt Levels During Banking-Crisis Recessions
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Gavin T Shilling
Access: Open access
- The Great Recession of 2007 and 2008 exposed the risks of excessive borrowing. We learned the essential economic principle that greater leverage harbors greater risk. Although this global economic contraction was driven primarily by booming private credit expansion, economically inefficient incentives in the public sector, such as short-term reelection concerns, may lead politicians to engage in rash deficit- financed, fiscal spending. The primary purpose of this research is to assess the economic costs of heightened, preexisting government leverage on real economic outcomes during recessionary periods, focusing on both banking and non-banking crisis recessions. In both advanced economies and emerging economies, this study confirms that banking recessions are associated with more severe economic contractions and more persistent output declines than normal recessions. In advanced economies, GDP recovers quickly and strongly with expansionary and supportive fiscal policy during low debt recessions, even with depressed private investment. While GDP recovers slowly and weakly with less expansionary fiscal policy during high debt recessions, even with strong private investment. Thus, the social marginal benefit of public sector investment exceeds the social marginal benefit of private sector investment in advanced economies. In emerging economies, GDP recovers quickly and strongly with strong private investment during high debt recessions, even with weak fiscal spending. While GDP recovers slowly and weakly with depressed private investment during low debt recessions, even with expansionary and supportive fiscal policy. Thus, the social marginal benefit of private sector investment exceeds the social marginal benefit of public sector investment in emerging economies.
Seasons Without Borders: the Ali Smith Quartet
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Claire M Burns
Access: Open access
- This project considers how the novels of contemporary Scottish author Ali Smith work to destabilize traditional constructions of temporal, formal, national, and gender borders. The motifs of the border and the border identity have been thematically pervasive in Scottish literary history, as reflected in the recurrence of the Scottish split identity. This thesis explores how the borders that have become essential to the construction of Scottish national literature, often relying on binaristic categorizations, have been disestablished in the contemporary era. Ali Smith’s novels, particularly the novels of her seasonal quartet, introduce forms and figures that highlight the instability of many of these borders, challenging fixed representations of the border identity. Through this focus on Scotland, Smith constructs a template for a consideration of national identity beyond the boundaries of Scotland, extending toward a more global sensibility.
Improving Energy Efficiency through Compiler Optimizations
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Jack Beckitt-Marshall
Access: Open access
- Abstract--- Energy efficiency is becoming increasingly important for computation, especially in the context of the current climate crisis. The aim of this experiment was to see if the compiler could reduce energy usage without rewriting programs themselves. The experimental setup consisted of compiling programs using the Clang compiler using a set of compiler flags, and then measuring energy usage and execution time on an AMD Ryzen processor. Three experiments were performed: a random exploration of compiler flags, utilization of SIMD, as well as benchmarking real world applications. It was found that the compiler was able to reduce execution time, especially when optimizing for the specific architecture, to a degree that depends on the program being compiled. Faster execution time tended to correlate with reduced energy usage as well, further suggesting that optimizing programs for speed and architecture is the most effective way of decreasing their overall energy usage.