2045 research outputs found
Sort by
Storytelling & Holistic Mental Health: A Fiction Collection
Full text linkIn this collection, I have used fiction to explore my academic focus on the holistic perception of mental health and healing. In my time at Skidmore College, I have explored all kinds of perspectives– religious/spiritual, psychosocial, medical, anthropological– what I have found is that the only generalizable thing is our need to tell a story about what we’re going through. My collection strives to show the value in the experiences of people with mental illnesses and addictions: how these experiences are often sidelined or seen as inferior/incorrect/out of touch with reality, but how these “alternative” realities can create inspiration, excitement, and enrich the world just as much as the experiences of neurotypical people and non-drug users. These narratives propose many ways to view mental illness and addiction: falling on spectrums between biological/spiritual, physical/mental, trauma-based and genetic. These stories suggest the origin of mental difference isn’t something that can be unanimously explained, and is entirely individual in the way that it is perceived, managed and expressed
Bridging the Gap Between Skidmore Students and Local Businesses
Full text linkSkidmore students are an underutilized customer base for small businesses in Saratoga Springs. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the purchasing behaviors of Skidmore students in order to determine how local small businesses can better attract them as customers. Current Skidmore students were surveyed and interviewed to ascertain overarching patterns in their purchasing habits. Results show that word of mouth and social media are influential at Skidmore, but are underutilized by local businesses. Findings also suggest that purchasing habits are largely formed during students’ first year at Skidmore. Finally, interview and survey results indicate that Skidmore students most value convenience when making purchasing decisions, and that local businesses must be made more accessible to students on campus in order for them to compete with online commerce sites and on campus options, which students find more convenient. Results were analyzed in order to generate communications, marketing, and business strategies that small businesses can adapt in order to effectively leverage survey and interview insights
Uncovering an Arcane History: How R.F. Kuang Demystifies the Entanglement of Translation, Academia, and Colonialism
Full text linkThe tagline of R.F. Kuang’s bestselling 2022 novel Babel (or Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution) is: “an act of translation is always an act of betrayal.” Thanks to the work of countless translation scholars, we know what this tagline means in the literal sense. In order to translate from one language into another, there is an unavoidable loss of meaning in the process. However, Kuang adds another meaning to this tagline in her work with Babel. Not only is she stressing the acknowledgement that all translation comes with a linguistic price, but she pushes this idea further by connecting language with a direct cost to people. In Babel, translation takes on a more sinister role in the greater scene of British colonialism: translation from the languages of colonized countries into English feeds directly and concretely into British industrialization and imperial might. Therefore, an act of translation becomes not only a betrayal of the language itself, but the people connected to that language. An act of translation is a direct aid to the British Empire
Movement, Daoism, and Social Action
Full text linkMovement, Daoism, and Social Action is an interdisciplinary senior self-determined Social Justice Studies project that resulted in a research paper and pilot movement workshop. Leventhal wishes to create a social action-oriented movement workshop. To do so, she wrote the research paper, \u27Stepping on Each Other\u27s Toes\u27: An Analysis of Cultural Appropriation Through Chinese Medicine and Internal Arts Practices & Possible Applications for Social Action . The paper reviews existing literature on cultural appropriation, applies key concepts to case studies of East Asian cultural appropriation, and analyzes them to construct new theory on how to share culture without reproducing harm. Leventhal then uses these new guidelines to design and facilitate her workshop, titled Movement, Daoism, and Social Action
Ugly Feet, OCD, and Other Intimations of Resistance
Full text linkUgly Feet, OCD, and Other Intimations of Resistance is a connected collection of personal essays that lie at the intersection of disability and masculinity
Iliadic Voicings
Full text linkThis senior project is an adaptation of The Iliad into an opera libretto, focusing on themes of gender and storytelling
Against The Establishment: How The Campaigns of Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura were Antecedents to Donald Trump
Full text linkIn 2016, the United States elected Donald Trump, a former businessman and reality star, as president. How did that happen? Why did that happen? There are many who have tried to answer this question in the years following his election, some of whom have offered variations on a similar idea: Trump\u27s style of politics is part of the larger trend of conservatism that has been taking over since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. This idea has been propagated both on the left and on the right, and while at first it may seem apt to compare Trump and Reagan, the two could not have been more different in terms of the campaigns they ran, the vision they had for the country, and how they transformed the nation. So if not Reagan, who was/were the political antecedents to Donald Trump. I propose that Trump\u27s brand of anti-establishment politics has much more resonance with the campaigns of Ross Perot and Jesse Ventura, who ran independent campaigns during the 1990s, and who each honed their own unique styles that allowed them to frame themselves as against the establishment. By historicizing Perot and Ventura\u27s campaigns within the larger economic, political, and cultural changes that occurred within the United States from the end of the Second World War all the way up to the end of the Cold War, I attempt to show how their campaigns were not anomalies, but rather, were manifestations of a new political energy that developed in response to a rapidly changing world and a new world order that prioritized certain people, industries, and values, and left others behind. It is with this historical context, along with a close examination of these two political outsiders, that may help explain how Donald Trump became electable in 2016
Disorientation of Memory: Trauma, the 9/11 Novel, and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man
Full text linkThis paper explores the literary devices and motifs used to portray 9/11 trauma on the page as representation for survivors and depictions of trauma for non-survivors. The paper focuses specifically on Don DeLillo\u27s Falling Man as the quintessential 9/11 novel to provide analysis on the larger genre. DeLillo is experimental in his form within the novel, using fragmentation and disorientation to explore the nuances of memory function during and after a traumatic event. These nuances of memory delve into complications of remembrance such as PTSD, memory impairment diseases, and the impact of media on memory
Relandscaping Eden: Northern European Topography as Theology in Auden’s Poems
Full text linkThis paper explores the contradiction Auden creates in his simultaneous description of the European North (The English and Scottish Highlands, Scotland, Iceland, and northern Norway) as an “Eden” and his awareness of the violent and pagan history of these places. It proposes that these dialectically opposed visions of the European landscape can be reconciled through a synthesis rooted in Auden’s eclectic version of history—both theological and secular—and his own desire for an Eden that is informed by the spontaneity of the Homeric Arcadia, the gravity of the Christian Eden, and apophatic theology
Driving Factors: The Effects of State Tax Incentives on the Market Penetration of Electric Vehicles
Full text linkThis research examines the effects of state tax incentives on the market penetration of electric vehicles (EVs), while also delving into other variables such as charging port availability, state political affiliation, state gas prices, and vehicle price levels, utilizing data ranging from 2011 to 2020. These definable variables influence in an individual’s decision when considering purchasing an EV. Using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) methodology, I am able to analyze the specific effects of these independent variables on the number of fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and all EVs sold in each state. My results find a significant positive relationship between states who offer charging station incentives and vehicle tax credits and the number of EVs sold in that state. Specifically, a 2.93% increase in EVs sold per capita in states who offered charging station incentives and a 2.52% increase in EVs sold per capita in states who offered vehicle tax rebates. I conclude that in order to increase the market penetration of EVs in a state, state governments should adopt state tax incentives and legislators must think of ways to responsibly recycle these batteries when they are no longer usable