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Elected To Die: The Effect of Municipal Assassinations on Remittances in Mexico
Full text linkThis paper looks at localized violence in Mexico through both a qualitative and quantitative approach. Looking at some motivating factors behind violence against political institutions at the municipal level in Mexico. In addition, this paper looks at the relationship between assassinations of municipal mayors in Mexico to see if their assassination leads to changes in remittances in those municipalities in the following periods. This paper uses various difference in difference models to come to its conclusion. There is suggestive evidence of a relationship between remittance growth in municipalities in the periods following an assassination of a mayor currently in office
Refracting State Development: Alliances In The Virtual World EVE Online
Full text linkWhy would states, resource intensive and difficult organizations, develop when they are not necessary? Unlike the voluntaristic model of social organization assumed by liberals starting from a state of nature, the real-world history of state building is a narrative of necessity and competition. By probing the process of state development in a virtual world (EVE Online), this paper explores state building in the absence of social or physical infrastructure that ties people together, what Michael Mann calls “the social cage.” In doing so, it demonstrates support for the idea that violent competition drives state development as states build organizational power in order to fight wars. However, it also shows that organizations in EVE are far less stable than their real world counterparts due to a lack of social caging. Through a qualitative analysis of interviews and documentary data about EVE, this paper illuminates how virtual worlds are useful sites of social science study, especially as counterfactuals for large-scale social phenomena. It also contributes vocabulary to understand virtual worlds, appropriating Stephanie Mudge’s term refraction to describe when and how virtual worlds are shaped by users. It argues refraction is a contingent interpretive process that attempts to solve problems generated in moments of uncertainty, often by drawing on ideological, social, and cultural models familiar to actors. In short, this paper shows that even in the absence of social caging, the users of EVE Online built states in order to solve the coordination and resource problems of territorial conquest
Risk, Routes, and Media Reports: The Impacts of Perceptions of Crime on Bus Ridership in Minneapolis and Saint Paul
Full text linkBy collecting data on media reports about crimes on or near public transit, I study how changes in perceptions of crime affect bus ridership at the route level in Minneapolis and Saint Paul between 2015-2019. Treating the publication dates of these media reports as events, I perform panel event studies. Based on these models, I find no statistically significant evidence that media reporting about crimes on or near bus routes impacts ridership. With that said, my work points out important gaps in the literature where researchers and policymakers still have the opportunity to more deeply understand a key determinant of public transit ridership
(Un)Imagined Nationalisms: Space, Power, and Capital in the Joseonjok Ethnicity
No full textThis thesis examines the Joseonjok community—the ethnically Korean Chinese citizens who resided in China over generations. By adopting three central concepts: nation, capitalism, and power, this thesis reveals how geopolitics, economy, and ideology have collectively shaped the Joseonjok community. Through a contrapuntal reading, this thesis examines early Korean migrants under Qing\u27s rule, identity formation under Japanese colonialism, and subsequent evolution under communist governance and neoliberal economic reform. Through this historical analysis, I expose how the Joseonjok community exists in a fourth space—an unresolved liminal space that defies simplistic categorization. Toward a conclusion, I discuss if cosmopolitanism is a potential solution to the liminality the community faces
Martyrs, Dictators, and Revolutionaries: The Scramble for Legitimacy in Postcolonial Myanmar
No full textThis thesis examines the ways in which the struggle for state legitimacy in Myanmar has shaped the trajectory of the postcolonial nation\u27s future. It analyzes how disregard for the country’s deeply heterogeneous social, economic, cultural, and religious public by the Tatmadaw contributed to the recurring patterns of oppression and repression. Synthesizing methods such as critical theory, historical analysis, and discourse analysis, I argue that the fragmented Burmese state maintains power by institutionalizing Bamar supremacy in three distinct yet interconnected mechanisms—the historical erasure of non-Bamar agency, the ideological destruction of religious discourse, and the economic fragmentation of ethnic territories. In addition, I introduce the concept of the Peripheral Paradox, that occurs when the Bamar-Buddhist core offers ethnic minorities in the peripheries conditional inclusion in the national project in exchange for their oppression of other subaltern groups, undermining counter-hegemonic coalescence and fracturing potential solidarity across stratified communities. As the world enters an era of unprecedented upheaval, Myanmar’s struggle to forge a unified national identity can offer us a blueprint to confront emerging legitimacy crises across the entire world-system
Monitoring the Degradation of Methylammonium Lead Iodide Perovskite Thin Films by UV Exposure
Full text linkThis project involved lead-halide perovskite thin films, a promising novel solar cell material. The goal was to monitor the composition of the samples during degradation from blue light exposure using vibrational spectroscopy. IR and THz spectroscopy measured the composition of the samples in-situ between periods of blue light exposure, probing the N-H and Pb-I vibrational modes. Plotting MA and MAPI concentrations versus blue light exposure showed that the MA and MAPI concentrations initially decreased in a gradual linear fashion until a threshold photon flux where both vibrational absorption bands simultaneously collapsed. This suggests that there is a discontinuous change in the material once it reaches the threshold photon flux
Modeling Literary Connections: Exploring Transregional Resistance in Dalit Poetry
Full text linkStructuring socio-political identities, the caste system (a graded form of hierarchy) remains entrenched in contemporary Indian society. Dalits, marginalized by the caste system, have expressed their resistance through literature, envisioning substantive equality and social change. In this thesis, I draw on digital humanities methods to examine regional variation in translated Dalit poetry from Bengali, Hindi/Urdu, Marathi, and Tamil languages. I utilize topic modeling—a machine learning algorithm that detects latent semantic structures in a text—as a point of departure for poetry analysis. I observe how topic modeling enables newer readings of the poems, revealing regionally resonant and broader Dalit themes
The Effect of Employment Shocks on Earnings: Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic
Full text linkEconomic research has documented significant short, medium, and long-term labor market consequences following recessions (Goodman & Mance, 2011; Yagan, 2017; Farber, 2011). The Covid-19 recession triggered an unprecedented economic downturn, disproportionately impacting employment in industries with high concentrations of low-income and female workers. In this paper, I leverage the substantial spatial variation in employment shocks to examine their effects on earnings and employment outcomes in both the short and medium terms. I find remarkably stable trends in earnings and employment when comparing counties experiencing high employment shocks with those that did not. Although these results differ from previous recessions, they underscore the critical role played by fiscal support policies implemented during the pandemic
Quantifying DNA Methylation in Response to Drought Stress in Silver Firs (Abies alba)
Full text linkAs future droughts are expected to increase in duration and severity due to climate change, forest managers may need to evaluate which coniferous species are the most resilient in drought events. Drought stress induces changes in physiology, including decreases in water potential, stomatal closure, pigment degradation, and leaf senescence (Jongdee et al., 2002, Munné-Bosch & Alegre, 2004, Heitholt et al., 1991). These physiological changes are associated with epigenetic regulation of gene expression in response to abiotic stressors (Alongi et al. 2025) and have been highly studied in crop plants and Arabidopsis. This project examines the photosynthetic and epigenetic response of silver fir (Abies alba) seedlings to progressive drought stress. I collected data biweekly over a six-week period on leaf photosynthetic characteristics, leaf pigment reflectance indexes, and leaf water potential. To establish genetic and epigenetic underpinnings of physiological stress responses, DNA was extracted from harvested new growth needles at mid- and end-drought timepoints. The DNA samples were analyzed through a whole-genome methylation assay to determine what percentage of the genome was methylated cytosines and to calculate the difference in percentage of overall methylation between the drought and control samples. The methylation assay revealed a significant increase in whole-genome methylation in drought-treated seedlings at the mid-drought point, indicating that epigenetic modification plays a role in drought resistance mechanisms even under mild drought stress. Observing the abiotic stress response at an epigenetic level may reveal how trees can continue to assimilate carbon efficiently and withstand abiotic stress through dynamically adjusting to drought and other changing climate conditions
Death and Inheritance: How Meanings of Money are Drawn from Everyday Life
Full text linkProbate is a legal process to distribute a deceased person’s assets involving a personal representative who administers the estate on behalf of the deceased. It is uniquely situated in the intersection of a procedurally exhaustive process and the deeply emotional experience of losing a loved one, where legal procedures are imposed on relational contexts. I draw on in-depth interviews with personal representatives from four counties in Minnesota to expose the dissimilar way personal representatives understand the meaning of inheritance money, which in turn influenced how they understood and navigated the probate process. The lack of a clear pattern found in the meaning of inheritance money in the probate process presents a puzzle: Inheritance is among the most commonplace phenomena, yet is understood and experienced so differently. I argue that it is these ambiguous understandings that, rather than obscure social meanings of inheritance, legitimate inheritance processes as necessary for defining complex and contextual social relationships via a fluid meaning of inheritance money. I will use a combination of theoretical frameworks to fill gaps in current theories on inheritance. I distinguish between relational and interactional frameworks to argue that the social differentiation of money and specifically earmarking occur beyond a purely relational level. Specifically, I situate earmarking in the framework of legal consciousness and the interactional, fluid nature of legality to illustrate that inheritance’s social and legal meanings draw from each other to culminate in a dominating social meaning of inheritance as a legitimate and necessary procedure, despite its inconveniences, to accommodate the non-linear nature of complex social relationships and the way that inheritance money helps to define these relationships