Showing 541 - 550 of 2039 Items
Guarding Whiteness: Disability, Eugenics, and Rhetorical Agency in Southern Renaissance Fiction
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Philip Carl Bonanno
Access: Open access
- This project explores fiction from white authors in the Southern Renaissance, specifically William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers. By examining their work alongside some of the performers that appeared historically in freak shows of the South, chapter one investigates how physically enfreaked individuals (usually phenotypically white) have access to power and the powers of whiteness. Chapter 2 interrogates how the South pathologizes promiscuity as mental illness with words such as moronic or feeble-mindedness, and the ramifications it has for the stratification on class divides among Southern elites and “White Trash.” The chapter seeks to answer the question of why, for a short period in the 1940s, white women were more likely to be punished with forced sterilization than Black women. Chapter 3 uncovers the rhetorical agency used by Benjy in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, looking at how he resists the powers of whiteness through crip time and his trauma responses to his family that seeks to reinsert the Antebellum South. Using an intersectional approach of critical whiteness studies, disability studies, crip theory, and queer theory, relies on a variety of scholars including, but not limited to; David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder, Rosemarie Garland-Thompson, Richard Dyer, Matt Wray, Jasbir Puar, Ellen Samuels, and Allison Kafer. The primary works examined include promotional materials of historical freaks, McCullers’ The Ballad of a Sad Café, William Faulkner’s The Hamlet and The Sound and the Fury, and Flannery O’Connor short stories “Good Country People” and “A Temple of the Holy Ghost.”
Church Space as Queer Place? LGBTQ+ Placemaking, Assimilation, and Subversion within Progressive Faith-Based Spaces in Maine
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Salina Chin
Access: Open access
- In popular discourse, understandings of queerness and religiosity as antithetical proliferate. However, the political involvement of Portland, Maine’s First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church in Maine’s queer political movement points to a more complex relationship between the LGBTQ+ community and progressive religious institutions. Through participant observation, archival research, and semi-structured interviews with nine LGBTQ+ community members and informants, I reveal the crucial role of Portland’s First Parish Unitarian-Universalist Church in Maine’s queer political movement from the late 1980s into the present day. On the one hand, progressive faith-based spaces across Maine provide safe spaces for queer political organizing. On the other hand, “ephemeral placemaking” in progressive faith-based spaces represents an assimilationist political strategy that stresses LGBTQ+ respectability. Thus, I argue that queer placemaking in progressive faith-based spaces reflects both subversive and assimilationist politics. LGBTQ+ activists utilize ephemeral placemaking strategies within progressive faith-based spaces to challenge political opposition from the religious Right while also reinforcing what Mikulak (2019) terms “godly homonormativity”: the normalization of LGBTQ+ identity and the upholding of heteronormativity by emphasizing respectability and monogamy. My analysis of queer political organizing within progressive faith-based spaces “queers” religion and LGBTQ+ politics, disrupting dominant narratives of religion as homophobic and LGBTQ+ politics as radical.
Power Play: The President's Role in Shaping Renewable Energy Regulation and Policy
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Luke Bartol
Access: Open access
- With the impacts of climate change becoming more and more apparent every day, finding means of effective action to mitigate its effects become increasingly critical. While localized work can play an important role, federal action is necessary to have the most widespread and effective impact, especially on interconnected issues such as clean energy. Congressional action is the avenue of change at this level, however in an increasingly partisan and divided environment, progress on this front is far short of what is needed. Looking to the president is logical here, both as a single actor more insulated from partisan fights, but also as head of the branch in charge of implementing the nation’s laws. This paper looks to explore what means of influence the president has on the action taken by federal agencies and how such methods can be made more effective. Through a principal-agent framework, the role of regulatory and appointment powers are examined with a variety of historical and contemporary case studies. While only a subset of the powers afforded to a president, the areas explored offer wide latitude for action, in areas that are particularly important for energy development. The paper concludes with some reflections for the future, suggesting how these considerations can be practically applied.
“Something most girls don’t do” An Ethnographic Study of Women in Extreme Sports
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Jacqueline Boben
Access: Open access
- Extreme sports, like skateboarding, whitewater kayaking, and skiing, have historically been male-dominated. As women’s participation in these sports grows, my research asks: how do women navigate sports spaces and cultures that have for so long been defined by men? To answer this question, I draw on ethnographic research on communities of skateboarders, whitewater kayakers and skiers conducted during the summer of 2021 in Bozeman, Montana. I found that the specific landscapes where these extreme sports take place are often conceptualized by participants as more masculine spaces. Within these spaces and communities, women participants often leverage gender performances associated with masculinity to gain entry into these male-dominated communities. Performing in more masculine ways mitigates feelings of hypervisibility, while also helping to build connections to established members of the community. More than simply fitting in, women find that these gendered performances also help them to build competence in the sport. At the same time, women are transforming skateboarding, whitewater kayaking, and skiing through their participation by creating opportunities for more dynamic and fluid gender performances.
Modeling UV Light Through N95 Filters
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Lorenzo Hess
Access: Open access
- Reuse of N95 FFRs helps mitigate the effects of shortages. UV-C exposure is an ideal method for the decontamination necessary for FFR reuse. Recent research quantifies the transmittance of UV-C through the 3M1870+ and 3M9210+ FFRs [1]. Other research measures the reduction in viral load in relation to UV-C exposure time [11]. We design and program a ray tracing simulator in MATLAB to characterize the distribution of scattered photons in N95 FFRs. We implement an object-oriented FFR with configurable physical characteristics. We use the simulator to record the number of photons available for decontamination in each sub-layer of the filtering layers of the 3M1870+ and 3M9210+ for a given number of photons incident to the layers. We make assumptions about the photon absorption and viral deactivation in each sub-layer to derive a relation between the number of incident photons and the number of viruses remaining. The transmittance computed by our simulator matches the experimentally measured transmittance. The diameter of the simulated scattered beam also matches the experimentally measured scattered beam diameters. Our data, combined with our assumptions about absorption and deactivation, however, fail to account for the dropoff in viral load observed at about 25 seconds of exposure time in the 3M1870+.
Stretch Feedback in the Lobster Heart: Experimental and Computational Analysis
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Katelyn J Suchyta
Access: Open access
N,N’-Dimethyimidazolium-2-Carboxylate as a Ligand Precursor for the Accession of a Constrained Olefin Dimerization Catalyst
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Michael Harris
Access: Open access
- A significant market share of modern plastics is held by long-chain hydrocarbon polymers, such as polyethylene and polypropylene, properties of which can be dramatically changed by addition of linear α-olefins. Production of linear α-olefins involves the creation of many unwanted byproducts, representing significant quantities of both economic and ecological waste. While catalysts have been designed to selectively produce industrially useful olefins, these catalysts often encounter challenges such as synthesis of other unwanted byproducts, slow reaction times, and difficulty of synthesis. Based on one such prior catalyst, we report here synthetic work towards a cobalt catalyst with a constrained N-heterocyclic carbene supporting ligand predicted to allow for more favorable product distributions. Synthesis of two precursors to a sterically unhindered N-heterocyclic carbene, as well as development of a synthetic protocol for the coordination of N,N’- dimethylimidazolium-2-carboxylate to Cp*Co(ethene)2 was completed. Activation of the precatalyst and preliminary catalytic experiments were performed, though abbreviated research periods made complete analysis impossible. Finally, we report evidence of the formation of a novel cobalt-NHC dimer as a temperature controlled byproduct of the desired catalyst synthesis.
Alongside Despair: Signs of Life on the River des Peres
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Marina Henke
Access: Open access
- This River des Peres is a partially enclosed river which runs through St. Louis, Missouri. Used since prior to the city’s founding, the des Peres has gone through two considerable engineering projects: one in 1901 in light of the World’s Fair, and one in 1923, which encapsulated more than half of the river and placed nearly five miles of it underground. Presently, the des Peres constitutes the backbone of the sanitary and sewer system of St. Louis city and county. Ultimately, the river offers a broad meditation on what it means to live around and in a “natural” waterway that is simultaneously not natural at all. Themes of St. Louis are equally reflected in the river: of environmental racism, of Midwestern decline, and of urban decay and renewal. Additionally, those who interact with the river prove a broad cast of characters. Through using a selection of interviews with locals, alongside an engagement with the work of contemporary poet Donald Finkel, this piece of creative nonfiction explores the multiplicity, and ultimately the value, of distorted natural spaces.
Mechanisms underlying variable responses to the neuropeptide C-type allatostatin (AST-C) across isoforms and among individuals in the American lobster, Homarus americanus
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Audrey J. Muscato
Access: Open access
- Central pattern generators (CPGs) produce patterned outputs independent of sensory input. The cardiac neuromuscular system of the American lobster (Homarus americanus) is driven by a CPG called the cardiac ganglion (CG), which is composed of nine neurons, making it a model system of study. Modulation of CPGs allows for functional flexibility. One neuropeptide family that modulates the CG is C-type allatostatin (AST-C I-III). Previous research has shown variation in the responses of the CG across the three isoforms and among individuals. First, we investigated why AST-C I and III elicit responses that are more similar to each other than they are to the responses elicited by AST-C II. We hypothesized that an amino acid difference in the conserved sequence was responsible for the observed variation in responses. We synthesized isoforms of AST-C that replaced the endogenous amino acid and recorded responses to these isoforms. The identity of one particular amino acid in the conserved sequence seems to be responsible for variations in responses in frequency. Next, we focused on variation among individuals in their responses to AST-C I and III. We hypothesized that the mechanism behind this individual variation is differential expression of AST-C receptors and/or their downstream targets. We recorded physiological responses of the cardiac system to AST-C and then sequenced CG RNA from the same lobsters. Differential expression of one of the AST-C receptors and a number of downstream factors is correlated with physiological response. These findings inspire further experimentation investigating molt cycle as the underlying cause.
A Stepping-Stone? An Analysis of How the Minimum Wage Impacts the Wage Growth of Individuals in Monopsonistic Industries
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Levi McAtee
Access: Open access
- Do minimum wage increases serve as stepping-stones to higher-paying jobs for low-pay workers? This paper analyzes the impact of state minimum wage policy on the one-year wage growth rates of individuals across the wage distribution and whether that impact changes for individuals in highly monopsonistic industries. I review the recent literature on the disemployment effect, the impact of the minimum wage on wage growth rates, the nature of monopsonistic industries, and the relationship between the minimum wage and monopsony power. I offer theoretical reasons why the minimum wage may impact the wage growth rates of individuals in monopsonistic industries differently than it impacts those of individuals in competitive industries. I then re-estimate Lopresti’s and Mumford’s (2016) panel fixed effects model to determine how the effect of a minimum wage increase depends nonlinearly on the size of the increase. Using data from 2005-2008, Lopresti and Mumford found that small minimum wage increases have a significant negative impact on wage growth rates, while large minimum wage increases have a significant positive impact. Using data from 2016-2019, I find similar results. As my primary empirical contribution, I test whether individuals in highly monopsonistic industries experience minimum wage changes differently than individuals in more competitive industries. I find monopsony power in the form of high labor immobility primarily impacts the wage growth rates of high-pay workers and does not influence how low-pay workers experience minimum wage changes. Finally, I recommend policymakers impose larger minimum wage increases to avoid impeding the wage-growth of low-pay workers.