Honors Projects
Showing 261 - 270 of 298 Items
The Current Support Theorem in Context
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Ethan Winters
Access: Open access
- This work builds up the theory surrounding a recent result of Erlandsson, Leininger, and Sadanand: the Current Support Theorem. This theorem states precisely when a hyperbolic cone metric on a surface is determined by the support of its Liouville current. To provide background for this theorem, we will cover hyperbolic geometry and hyperbolic surfaces more generally, cone surfaces, covering spaces of surfaces, the notion of an orbifold, and geodesic currents. A corollary to this theorem found in the original paper is discussed which asserts that a surface with more than $32(g-1)$ cone points must be rigid. We extend this result to the case that there are more than $3(g-1)$ cone points. An infinite family of cone surfaces which are not rigid and which have precisely $3(g-1)$ cone points is also provided, hence demonstrating tightness.
"One Never Knew": David Foster Wallace and the Aesthetics of Consumption
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Jesse Ortiz
Access: Open access
- Increasingly, David Foster Wallace is becoming a cult figure among literary enthusiasts. His novels, essays, and short stories are all known for their poignant critiques of modern culture. Since his 2008 suicide, Wallace’s name has come to represent a way of thinking that rejects – and perhaps transcends – the hegemonic power of late capitalism. Wallace had a problem with pleasure. His writing often seemed to deflate or deconstruct what many people enjoy. For him, so much was “supposedly fun.” To understand Wallace’s relationship with pleasure, we must see how pleasure incorporates aesthetics and consumption. Wallace takes issue with the pleasure that comes from the aesthetics of cultural commodities. Irony produces pleasure, which turns culture into a desirable commodity. In my first chapter, I argue that Wallace’s essays challenge aesthetic pleasure by deconstructing self-reflexive irony. In his descriptions of consumer culture, Wallace evokes the feeling of disgust to undo the aesthetic pleasure of consumption. In my second chapter, I move to Infinite Jest to show how Wallace engages with irony while using it to exceed aesthetic pleasure. Infinite Jest challenges the hierarchy of aesthetics and suggests that deformity and waste can be beautiful and important. Infinite Jest demonstrates that, by trusting others instead of pursuing aesthetic ideals, people can build communities that are more honest and fulfilling than the pleasure of consumption.
Growing Pains: Toward a Coalition-Based Theory of State Land Use Policy
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Patrick Rochford
Access: Open access
- In the decades following World War II, mass suburbanization remade the American landscape. While suburbs accounted for 83% of the nation’s growth between 1950 and 1970, cities bled their populations and natural resources dwindled. Treating the postwar era as a critical juncture, this thesis examines the political history of twentieth-century state land use policy to illuminate how competing interests have shaped policy outcomes across the United States. Specifically, the paper seeks to explain the passage of statewide growth management and smart growth programs. After providing a history of American suburbanization, the paper considers an emergent challenge to the postwar growth paradigm as manifested through resistance to urban renewal, open space loss, and diverse anti-freeway coalitions that combined actors from each movement. Thereafter, I detail the development of statewide growth management and smart growth programs before employing a set of case studies to discern causal factors associated with the success or failure of such legislation. Testing the theory that broad-based coalitions were essential to the passage of state growth management legislation, I perform a controlled comparison of two pairs of states, Maryland and Virginia and Oregon and Washington, employing additional within-case analysis for Washington. In so doing, I find evidence that diverse coalitions—from environmentalists and housing advocates to farmers and historic preservationists—were essential to the passage of state growth management programs. I conclude by considering the implications of these findings and the relevance of state land use policy to contemporary issues such as affordable housing and climate change.
East End Eden: The Gentrification of Portland’s Munjoy Hill
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Katharine Kurtz
Access: Open access
- This thesis explores the gentrification of Munjoy Hill, a neighborhood on the northeast end of Portland, Maine from 1990-2024. Once the industrial hub of the city filled with factories and an industrial shipping port in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Munjoy Hill is now the most desirable neighborhood in the city with expensive, high-end condos, water views, ocean access, and hip restaurants and breweries. I argue that Munjoy Hill’s industrial past and strong connection to the local environment has made it unique, however the recent gentrification also makes Munjoy Hill a place that resembles, gentrified neighborhoods in cities around the country. This thesis studies Munjoy Hill’s change through three lenses: environment, housing, and food and drink. In the environment chapter I argue that the Hill’s natural beauty and connection to Maine’s scenic coastline primed it for gentrification once the area deindustrialized in the 1990s. In the housing chapter I explore the dramatic increase in housing prices and three ways residents are attempting to control the changes: affordable housing development, zoning, and historic designation. In my final chapter I analyze the role of new food establishments in transforming the Hill’s culture and cementing it as a neighborhood that feels, in part, like gentrified neighborhoods around the country.
Bondi Accretion in Trumpet Geometries
Date: 2016-01-01
Creator: August J Miller
Access: Open access
- The Bondi solution, which describes the radial inflow of a gas onto a non-rotating black hole, provides a powerful test for numerical relativistic codes. However, this solution is typically derived in Schwarzschild coordinates, which are not well suited for dynamical spacetime evolutions. Instead, many current numerical relativistic codes adopt moving-puncture coordinates, which render black holes in trumpet geometries. Here we transform the Bondi solution into two different trumpet coordinate systems, both of which result in regular expressions for the fluid flow extending into the black hole interior. We also evolve these solutions numerically and demonstrate their usefulness for testing and calibrating numerical codes.
Young Authoritarians? Trends and Individual Differences in Preschoolers' Perceptions of Adult Authority
Date: 2018-05-01
Creator: Ava Alexander
Access: Open access
- Although traditional stage theories (e.g., Piaget, 1965) postulate that preschool age children are guided entirely by punishment avoidance and absolute deference to authority, more recent research suggests that their concepts of adult authority are complex and vary based on social cognitive domain and the content of the commands (e.g., Tisak, 1986). Also, although past studies have shown that the majority of children will reject adult authority in certain contexts, much individual variation between children has been observed (e.g., Laupa, 1994). The current study expanded upon past research by exposing children to multiple typical and atypical commands across domains, while also testing for individual differences based on two forms of parental authoritarianism. Results showed that children as young as four reject commands that go against established moral or conventional norms, and sometimes reject commands in the personal domain. This pattern grew stronger with age. High right-wing authoritarianism was a significant predictor of more authoritarian parenting style, and also predicted lower child support for authority in typical conventional scenarios.
Sociocultural Orientations and Mental Illness Stigma: A Novel Mediational Model
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Karis Treadwell
Access: Open access
- This study proposes a novel mediational model to investigate the relationship between sociocultural orientations and mental illness stigma by exploring empathy and controllability attributions as mediators. Past literature suggests that understanding these variables may contain important implications for guiding stigma-reducing efforts. Questionnaires assessing sociocultural orientations, empathy, blaming attributions, and general mental illness stigma were administered to 109 students at a small liberal-arts college in the northeast United States. The sample consisted of 80 female-identifying participants, 28 male-identifying participants, and 1 non-binary participant. Questionnaires administered included the Individualism and Collectivism scale (Triandis & Gelfand, 1998), the Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (Reniers et al., 2011), a modified version of the Attribution Questionnaire (Corrigan et al., 2003), and Day’s Mental Illness Stigma Scale (Day et al., 2007). Analysis showed that vertical sociocultural orientations were associated with more blameful attributions and heightened stigma. Horizontal collectivism was associated with increased empathy and less blameful attributions, but empathy did not mediate this relationship. Controllability attributions, but not empathy, partially mediated the relationships between both vertical orientations and stigma. These findings demonstrate the importance of sociocultural orientations, particularly the equality preference dimension, as predictors of mental illness stigma. Efforts to counter societal stigma should consider the role of sociocultural orientations and their interaction with empathy and blaming tendencies.
Living Upstream: Kennebec River Influence on Nutrient Regimes and Phytoplankton Communities in Harpswell Sound
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Siena Brook Ballance
Access: Open access
- Phytoplankton underpin marine trophic systems and biogeochemical cycles. Estuarine and coastal phytoplankton account for 40-50% of global ocean primary productivity and carbon flux making it critical to identify sources of variability. This project focuses on the Kennebec River and Harpswell Sound, a downstream, but hydrologically connected coastal estuary, as a case study of temperate river influence on estuarine nutrient regimes and phytoplankton communities. Phytoplankton pigments and nutrients were analyzed from water samples collected monthly at 8 main-stem rivers stations (2011-2013) and weekly in Harpswell Sound (2008-2017) during ice-free months. Spatial bedrock and land use impacts on river nutrients were investigated at sub-watershed scales using GIS. Spatial analysis reveals a 10-fold increase in measured phytoplankton biomass across the Kennebec River’s saltwater boundary, which demonstrates ocean-driven phytoplankton variability in the lower river. The biomass pattern is accompanied by a transition in phytoplankton community structure with respect to which groups co-occur (diatoms, chlorophytes, and cryptophytes) and which are unique (dinoflagellates in Harpswell). Upstream, the timing of each community depends on land-use proximity and seasonal discharge. In Harpswell Sound, the nutrient regime and phytoplankton community structure vary systematically: first diatoms strip silicate, then dinoflagellates utilize nitrate, followed by chlorophytes and cryptophytes that utilize available phosphate. These findings reveal, for the first time, patterns in phytoplankton communities and nutrient dynamics across the fresh to salt water interface. Ultimately the Kennebec River phytoplankton communities and nutrient regimes are distinct, and the river is only a source of silicate to Harpswell Sound.
The Colombo-Venezuelan Border Through the Lens of the Colombian Press
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Diego Rafael Grossmann
Access: Open access
- The Colombo-Venezuelan Border Through the Lens of the Colombian Press examines the dominant Colombian press coverage of crises of sovereignty at the Colombo-Venezuelan border, Venezuelan migration, and the February 2019 attempt to introduce humanitarian aid into Venezuela, as seen in El Espectador and El Tiempo’s coverage from the period of August 2018-November 2019. Through theories of nations and power, this thesis reveals the divergent editorial lines and dominant narratives within each newspaper’s construction of the relation between the Colombian and Venezuelan nations, states, and their people. The study details how both newspapers construct different “truths” through divergent constructions of similar events in a manner coherent with the ideological affinities and conceptions of Colombian national identity held by their respective audiences and editorial leadership, constrained further by economic factors. The thesis is split into three main chapters. Chapter 1 addresses the construction of Colombian nationhood rooted in militarism and the presentation of the Colombian state as a protector in El Tiempo’s coverage concerning binational tensions at the border. Chapter 2 traces the coverage regarding Venezuelan migration to Colombia within El Espectador, detailing the conception of national identity rooted in liberal-democratic values that the newspaper constructs and appeals to. Chapter 3 considers both newspaper’s coverage of the attempt to introduce humanitarian aid into Venezuela in 2019. Ultimately, this thesis argues that the discursive actor––and construction––of Venezuela permits the “imagining” of the Colombian nation, a project framed through a discussion of the Colombian conflict and official commitments to multiculturalism by the Colombian state.
Localizing Resistance: How Southern Women Locate Sexual and Bodily Autonomy and Strategically Resist the Institutions Aiming to Shape Them
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Gillian Raley
Access: Open access
- This paper analyzes the methods of resistance enacted by women-identifying people in Mississippi against the institutions seeking to police how they understand their own sexuality and bodily autonomy. This analysis draws upon a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in the summer of 2020 focused on construction of community, intersectional identity, relationship with the body, and what inputs frame how women in Mississippi understand sex. This project puts these interviews in conversation with literature from a variety of subfields, including resistance studies, the Sociology of the South, and the Sociology of sexuality, all of which help bring the argument behind these data to light. Resistance looks different in different eras, and generally scholars like to analyze resistance as collective action, collective voice, collective struggle. These data instead argue that strategic, individualized resistance is just as vital to marginalized bodies, particularly when explosive action is not possible. Studying strategies of resistance that lurk beneath the surface not only expands what we now see as “radical,” but it also lends insight into where lasting change can begin.