Honors Projects
Showing 31 - 40 of 298 Items
Love is Real & I Just Had Some for Dessert: Legacies of Communal Care & Compassion in Asian Diasporic Women's Food Writing
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Miki Rierson
Access: Open access
- In this project I work to recover influential yet often erased Asian American female immigrant chefs and food authors from the mid-twentieth century to the present, situating their contributions in a deep-rooted tradition of diasporic women who used cooking as a means of communal agency and care. Immigrant Asian cookbook authors and chefs have long faced internal criticisms from their own diasporic communities of either inauthenticity or engaging in “food pornography,” to use writer Frank Chin’s term—a line of criticism that Lisa Lau has elaborated on as “re-Orientalism.”Though these criticisms should not eclipse the works themselves, I discuss and counter them in my project because they reflect broader challenges faced particularly by Asian female diasporic authors even today. , I seek to address a broader scholarly gap through my project. Presently, much important work exists on the legacies of historical trauma and violence on marginalized communities, work that highlights the insidious ways violence manifests in academia, pop culture, and everyday lives. This project is a personal pursuit to focus on the healing and beautiful aspects of diasporic community and identity, an ode to the parts of us that are not defined by the pain and suffering but that seek self-affirmation beyond them.
Music Streaming Services, Programming Culture, and the Politics of Listening
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Walker Kennedy
Access: Open access
Liberty and Its Legacy An Analysis of Freedom and Liberty in American Political Rhetoric
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Ryan S. Kovarovics
Access: Open access
- The concept of freedom has always been central to the American identity, but its meaning has never been agreed on by all and has long been the subject of debate. An abridged explanation of the evolution of liberty’s meaning in political thought and American history is presented in the first chapter of this project. It demonstrates the long-standing importance of individual freedom in America and highlights some historical moments when liberty has come into conflict with other societal values. When used in American political rhetoric today, “freedom” and “liberty” typically take on a “negative” meaning that is focused mostly on individual freedom from government intervention. This is especially clear with regard to issues each party claims to “own” in the context of freedom, including abortion for the Democrats and the covid-19 pandemic response for the Republicans. To verify this partisan ownership of freedom and compare how each party uses freedom in political rhetoric, an empirical analysis was conducted of the uses of “freedom” and “liberty” in candidate tweets and campaign ads from the 2022 midterm elections. The analysis found some support for partisan ownership of freedom rhetoric surrounding these and other issues, but the most interesting finding was that Democrats and Republicans invoked “freedom” and “liberty” in their rhetoric at virtually identical rates. This shows that neither party can lay an exclusive claim to be the “party of freedom.”
Three-Year-Old Agents of Social Change: How aeioTU Educators Build on Children’s Agency
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Andrea Rodriguez
Access: Open access
- aeioTU is a Colombian organization that works to enact social change through the field of early childhood education. In collaboration with the Colombian government, aeioTU oversees several public centers located in socioeconomically vulnerable municipalities in Colombia. This thesis analyzes the aeioTU curriculum and the practices of several aeioTU teachers through the theoretical lens of Freire’s critical pedagogy. This thesis argues that by fostering critical awareness of the world from an early age, as well as by collaborating closely with mothers and the communities at large, aeioTU teachers equip children with the tools to become social agents who can challenge and positively change their lived realities. The research presented in this thesis affirms the potential of aeioTU teachers to enact social change in socioeconomically vulnerable communities by building on young children’s social agency.
He Mauka Teitei, Ko Aoraki, The Loftiest of Mountains: The Names of Aotearoa’s Highest Peak and Beyond
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Joseph B. Lancia
Access: Open access
- My thesis discusses the cultural, political, and social dynamics of mountains with separate Indigenous and Western names and identities. Centering on Aoraki/Mount Cook—the highest peak in Aotearoa New Zealand—I integrate personal experiences as ethnographic data through narratives, mainly of my time hiking while studying abroad in New Zealand and during the two recent summers I spent exploring Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Through its name, Aoraki/Mt. Cook maintains Indigenous Māori and Western perspectives: Aoraki being a Māori atua (god) and Captain James Cook being a significant colonial figure in the Pacific. The slash upholds both identities while ensuring that they exist together. These dynamics are explored in depth and extended to mountains in places including Colorado, Alaska, and Australia. While discussing Rocky I rely heavily on Oliver Toll’s Arapaho Names & Trails (2003) which contains a substantial collection of Arapaho knowledge of the area and I give strong attention to Nesótaieux (Longs Peak and Mount Meeker). Additionally, I look at Mount Blue Sky, Denali, and Uluru/Ayers Rock to discuss mountains that have had formal name changes and how legacies are maintained through toponyms. With discussing varying identities and perceptions of each example and the knowledge held in names I encourage readers to do research into local Indigenous knowledges to further their and others’ understandings of places. I emphasize the concepts of historical silences, the revealing of knowledge, and the importance of language to articulate that Indigenous knowledge might be difficult to find but is never truly lost.
Fall forward, spring back: Drivers of synchrony in the sea star crawl-bounce gait transition
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Brady R Nichols
Access: Open access
- The Froude number is the ratio of kinetic energy to gravitational potential energy used during locomotion and is often used to analyze gait transitions. Here, I compare and contrast the human walk-run gait transition, which occurs at a consistent Froude number of 1 because there exists a mechanical speed limit to walking, and the sea star crawl-bounce gait transition, which occurs around Froude numbers of 1*10^-3. In this thesis I investigate why sea stars exhibit two gaits despite lacking brains and moving at Froude numbers far below other known gait transitions, hypothesizing (1) that the crawl-bounce transition may be mechanical and thus still depends on the Froude number, and (2) that the crawl-bounce transition is best modeled gradually compared to the instantaneous human walk-run transition. Thirty sea stars were filmed and the resulting kinematic data is used here to inform thinking about the crawl-bounce transition. I first discuss damped driven harmonic motion of a single oscillator, but eventually turn to using coupled oscillators and deriving that a coupling constant between metronomes on a moving base is the Froude number, which is therefore relevant for the crawl-bounce transition. I lastly discuss a purely mathematical analogue of the crawl-bounce transition as a Hopf bifurcation in horizontal speed and vertical velocity phase space, which leads to a rough model with results qualitatively similar to observed kinematic data from films, and indicates that a gradual transition is in fact a good fit for the crawl-bounce transition.
Functional redundancy of a non-native foundation species (eelgrass, Zostera japonica) across intertidal stress gradients
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: S. Maria Garcia
Access: Open access
- Non-native species foundation species can alter ecosystems in both positive and negative ways. The creation of habitat can be beneficial to native species when they provide a limiting resource or in a stressful environment. Yet this creation of habitat can also be detrimental by replacing native species and/or facilitating the presence of more non-native species. In Willapa Bay, WA, a non-native foundation species, Zostera japonica, co-exists with the native foundation species Zostera marina. Zostera japonica persists at the higher intertidal in monocultures, the two species overlap in the mid intertidal, and Z. marina persists in monocultures in the low intertidal. Epifaunal invertebrates, the organisms that live on eelgrass blades, connect eelgrass to higher trophic levels. Through a series of transplants and removals, I used this zonation pattern to ask if the two species can fulfill a similar functional role in respect to epifaunal invertebrates (functional redundancy), and if this was due to the identity of the foundation species or a response to the stress gradient of the intertidal. My results suggest that the epifaunal invertebrate community is responding more to the physiological stress gradient, and the functional redundancy of the two species depends on the location they are found. Z. japonica is expanding the range of vegetated habitat into to the physiologically stressful high zone, which supports a different community. This experiment highlights that the impacts of non- native species are highly localized and that abiotic and biotic factors are important to trophic interactions.
Synthesis of N-Heterocyclic Carbene Complexes of Coinage Metals and Their Application in the Activation of Hydrogen
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Maryam Akramova
Access: Open access
- The main cause of the ongoing global climate crisis is the emission of greenhouse gases, and current climate reports emphasize the need to transition to low-emission renewable energy sources. Urgently needed are methods for storing renewable energy, such as synthetic fuels like hydrogen (H2) gas; however, a challenge to the widespread implementation of hydrogen fuel is its low volumetric energy density. This thesis describes an effort to synthesize a catalyst that takes advantage of hard-soft acid-base (HSAB) mismatches to activate H2 and facilitate its reaction with CO2 to form hydrocarbon fuels, thereby providing a sustainable means of storing renewable energy in high-density carbon-neutral fuels. The catalyst design features an exceptionally bulky N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) ligand known as IPr** (3-Bis[2,6-bis[bis(4-tert-butylphenyl)methyl]-4-methylphenyl]-1H-imidazol-3-ium chloride), a coinage metal acting as a soft acid, and a hard base such as an alkoxide ion. Herein is reported a modified synthetic route of IPr**, along with its metalation with silver, and preliminary results of the addition of an alkoxide base. The ligand and its complex with silver are structurally characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Further work is needed to complete the characterization of IPr**-supported HSAB mismatch complexes and investigate their potential to activate H2.
The French Official Mistress: Fashioning Female Political Power in the Ancien Régime
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Samantha Brown
Access: Open access
- This thesis focuses on the French official mistress as a position of unofficial female political power under the French monarchy from the 16th to the 18th century. Centering on three case studies – Diane de Poitiers, Madame de Maintenon, and Madame de Pompadour – this thesis argues that the role of the official mistress extended beyond sexual companion to advisor, negotiator, diplomat, artistic patron, and cultural trendsetter. By taking a deep look at the epistolary and artistic record of these three official mistresses from across France’s modern history, the extent of their autonomy and political maneuvering becomes clear in the tactics they used to project and solidify their power. Diane de Poitiers, Madame de Maintenon, and Madame de Pompadour all existed in unique contexts of the French court and constructed their own methods of fulfilling the role of the official mistress, revealing both changes in the monarchy and their impacts upon it. Notably, the ways in which they projected identity through self-fashioning resulted in a reflection of this image back onto the monarch, expanding the extent of their impact on the monarchy. In striving to understand the political reality of women in France under Salic law and today, the position of maîtresse-en-titre is a crucial framework to recognize the significance of female power structures at court and in the monarchy, and the degree to which women were able to shape these structures themselves.
DS-PSO: Particle Swarm Optimization with Dynamic and Static Topologies
Date: 2017-05-01
Creator: Dominick Sanchez
Access: Open access
- Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is often used for optimization problems due to its speed and relative simplicity. Unfortunately, like many optimization algorithms, PSO may potentially converge too early on local optima. Using multiple neighborhoods alleviates this problem to a certain extent, although premature convergence is still a concern. Using dynamic topologies, as opposed to static neighborhoods, can encourage exploration of the search space at the cost of exploitation. We propose a new version of PSO, Dynamic-Static PSO (DS-PSO) that assigns multiple neighborhoods to each particle. By using both dynamic and static topologies, DS-PSO encourages exploration, while also exploiting existing knowledge about the search space. While DS-PSO does not outperform other PSO variants on all benchmark functions we tested, its performance on several functions is substantially better than other variants.