Showing 1841 - 1850 of 2085 Items
Surfing the Kali Yuga: Tracking the Alt-Right on Twitter
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Jaida Hodge-Adams
Access: Open access
- The alt-right is a hyper-extreme, decentralized network of far-right pundits and their doggish supporters that exists almost entirely online. Consumed by conspiracy and identity, the myths of bigoted ideologies like racism, antisemitism, and transphobia are taken for granted, and their ideology calls for violent ends by violent means. In the physical world, members of the alt-right often keep their rhetoric to themselves; Online, however, they find solace in a vast, international network of websites and forums that together form one giant echo chamber into which they can dump their darkest thoughts. Though any individual member of the alt-right may operate uniquely within the context of their home country, together they form a collective, international voice whose strongest claims often transcend borders and resist state-level analysis. Unspeakable acts of violence like mass shootings, senseless killings, and acts of terrorism are unpredictable but become significantly more likely when the rhetorical atmosphere breeds hostility. By demonizing minority groups and spreading ideologies of hate, the alt-right makes these acts of violence more likely. On massive platforms like Twitter, the alt-right’s rhetoric can seep into mainstream conversations; their framing of concepts like race, gender, sexuality, and national identity are forced into relevance. Their rhetoric is euphemistic, but their message is clear, and their hate poses a real threat to people’s lives. This honors project explores the ideological and geographic features of the alt-right and their international implications, concluding that the alt-right is a globally interconnected group of actors whose conspiracies motivate lone-wolf terrorists worldwide.
Do Voters Reward Incumbents for Service Provision? Electoral Accountability in South African Elections
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Rory Mayne Devlin
Access: Open access
- Democratic theory suggests that voters reward or punish incumbent political parties in elections by evaluating parties’ ability to provide services. But do voters reward incumbent parties for service provision in practice? This project explores the relationship between municipal-level service provision and voting in the South African context. I test whether the local provision of services, such as electricity, piped water, internet, trash collection, and flush toilets, impact the performance of South Africa’s two major political parties, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) in municipal and national elections between 2009 and 2021. I observe this relationship in ANC- and DA-controlled municipalities using municipal-level data on public service provision, election results, and nighttime brightness levels. The municipal-level results show that DA-controlled municipalities with higher levels of service provision in 2016 offered more support for the DA in the 2021 and 2019 elections. However, ANC-controlled municipalities with higher levels of 2016 service provision did not support the ANC at higher rates. Additionally, ANC-controlled municipalities that improved service provision between 2011 and 2016 supported the ANC at higher rates in the 2021 and 2019 elections than they did in previous elections. DA vote share did not increase in DA-controlled municipalities where services improved over time.
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.
Ama Gyamerah '17 interviews Sewheat Asfaha '16
Date: 2016-01-01
Creator: Sewheat Asfaha
Access: Open access