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The Visual Conversation and the Politics of Curiosity in Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian
No full textAnn Radcliffe’s The Italian can be read as a meditation on sight; what can be seen can be understood as a truism at the crux of the novel. In an effort to explicate how vision invites curiosity, this thesis explores Radcliffe’s obsession with the veil, the sublime, and authority. Originating from a reading that focuses on what the eye sees, my argument examines the concept of female agency and its portrayal as bearing similarities to the portrayal of vision. As a novel written by a woman with a female protagonist, the idea of agency is often treated as a source of critical interest. I argue, however, that an ocular lens offers a perspective that views female agency as both intricate and often conflicting. Female characters in The Italian are hardly always or never in control of their own fate
Internal Geographies
Full text linkIn the digital age, we have unprecedented access to music in our daily lives, and, thanks to the advent of social media apps like YouTube and TikTok, everyday citizens are becoming amateur music supervisors, catering soundtracks to highly stylized versions of their lives. This past year, I traveled to 13 countries and trekked through many of them alone. Most of my time spent on trains, planes, buses, boats, and more was spent doing a great deal of introspection, accompanied by my own curated playlists that I felt matched the setting and my state of mind.
My collection of string quartet pieces aims to serve as a companion guide through the journeys I’ve embarked on throughout my life, as well as the emotions and ideas I had at the time. With every piece, I take inspiration from songs and pieces that span genres, languages, and instrumentation but are united by the fact that I believe they would work well in film or television.
Some of my pieces tackle concepts like nostalgia and mourning, unsureness and indecision, or friendship and fear. Others are about more specific moments in my travels, such as the instances when the bpm of the music I listened to perfectly matched the speed of flashing lights on a tarmac or bumps on a turbulent subway. The through-line for this collection of pieces is their emotional density, which I aim to establish through soundtrack-oriented composition techniques
“There’s No Place Like Home”: How 21st Century Ecopoetics Cope With Ever-Changing Notions of Home Amidst Environmental Disaster
No full textThere is a long history of literature that invokes nature through imagery, symbolism, and metaphor. This thesis examines the difference between traditional forms of nature writing and ecopoetics, which is that the latter must make an inherently political argument about how humans should interact with the environment. Through an analysis of four 21st century ecopoetic collections—Iep Jaltok by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz, Flare Stacks in Full Bloom by Katherine Hoerth, and Trophic Cascade by Camille T. Dungy— it is evident that the genre of ecopoetry is uniquely equipped, as a literary form, to cope with various kinds of environmental disaster. The findings highlight that recent ecopoetry utilizes familiar literary themes and a common shared language so that it can be used as a coping mechanism. These themes include, but are not limited to, tradition and history, religion, and family. This research demonstrates the utility of ecopoetry because as a genre it is able to take the personal and amplify it to the level of the universal. Ecopoetry\u27s overlap with other fields of scholarship—postcolonial studies, ecotheology, and ecofeminism—is productive for incorporating multiple perspectives and forms of knowledge into environmental discourse
My Love is Like Eternity: A Process in Choreography and Immersive Performance
Full text linkThis study expands and reflects upon creating and producing My Love is Like Eternity,my original durational performance. The work, which premiered February 12-13, 2025, infused choreography, video, improvisation, costume, scenic design, and text. In this paper, I discuss my creative research in conversation with the works of artists and scholars Faye Driscoll, Kitty Winslow, MP Landis, Tristan Koepke, Diana Taylor, Max Kozloff, and Miguel Gutierrez. Throughout, I investigate choreographic themes of duration, nature’s cyclical existence, liveness, and decay. I employ performance theories and practices to critique Western culture’s binary of life and death and instead propose ideas of cycle and regeneration. I also discuss more broadlymy choreographic process, including the specific challenges and successes of working in a multimedia form. Combining narrative with rehearsal documentation and drawn images, I demonstrate the multilayered process of imagining and building an immersive performance. Additionally, I expand on various choreographic devices my collaborators and I utilized as we experimented with subtraction and abstraction to conjure hazy and ephemeral movement architecture. Lastly, I examine the culmination of this research, reflecting on the bodily and emotional experience of performing My Love is Like Eternity and discussing ongoing choreographic inquiries
Using CSIA-AA of Paleo Cod Bone Collagen to Uncover Changes in Basal Nitrogen Sources and Trophic Position in the Gulf of Maine Over the Past 4,400 Years
No full textThe ecosystem found within Gulf of Maine is both economically valuable, and rapidly changing. It is important to study past hydrographic and ecosystem changes to understanding how the system may behave in the future. This can be done by utilizing stable nitrogen isotopes from paleomarine organism’s tissue. Previous nitrogen isotope studies of bulk proteins extracted from ancient Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) tissues document a 1-2‰ decrease in δ15N values over the last couple of centuries (Harris et al., unpub; Lueders-Dumont et al., 2018). Due to the nature of the nitrogen isotope signal in bulk proteins, this isotopic shift may be attributed to a decrease in trophic level and/or a change in baseline nitrogen in the Gulf of Maine over this time period. Here, we analyze the δ15N value of individual amino acids (AA) from ancient cod bone collagen to tease out the relative importance of shifts in trophic level vs baseline nitrogen sources to cod diets through time. The δ15N values of phenylalanine (minimally-fractionating “source” amino acid) extracted from cod bone collagen fluctuated between 4.8±0.9‰ to 9.4±1.3‰ over the last 4,400 years with a peak at 500 yr BP. This peak in δ15NPhe suggests a shift in basal nitrogen sources, potentially linked to changes in hydrographic conditions, such as an increased influence of Labrador Slope Water during this period. The calculated trophic position (TP) shows a significant decline at 500 years BP, which may be associated with the pulse of Labrador Slope Water (LSW). This pulse of LSW could have impacted the ecosystem by shortening the food web or by triggering changes in indigenous fishing practices that favored smaller cod
Connecting with Your Future Self: Behavioral Interventions on Decision Making
Full text linkFuture Self-Continuity (FSC) influences intertemporal choice (ITC), with stronger connections to one’s future self promoting beneficial behaviors like saving and exercising, while discouraging procrastination and impulsive consumption. However, research that compares FSC with other factors, such as impulsivity, and examines the role of time scale, remains limited. Additionally, adolescents, particularly vulnerable to academic procrastination, are underrepresented in the literature. This thesis addresses these gaps through three studies. In Study 1, we explore the relationship between FSC and ITC through an online experiment. Ninety-two participants were randomly assigned to one of three time-scale conditions and completed surveys assessing FSC, impulsivity (Barratt Impulsiveness Scale), and ITC (incentivized choice task). Study 2, an online experiment with 91 participants, evaluates the effectiveness of a behavioral intervention—letter exchange—in enhancing FSC. Study 3 uses a field experiment to assess whether the letter exchange intervention can enhance FSC among high school students and reduce academic procrastination. Results show that: 1) neither Future Self-Continuity (FSC) nor impulsivity is a strong predictor of intertemporal choices; 2) letter exchange with one’s future self in the long-term future enhances FSC; but 3) the intervention did not reduce time discounting or procrastination behaviors, neither general nor academic. These studies deepen our understanding of ITC mechanisms and provide insights into interventions for reducing procrastination in both adolescent and adult populations
Situations of Habituation: Examining Habitual versus Goal-Directed Behaviors Under de Wit’s Slips of Action Task
No full textThis research explores the balance between habitual and goal-directed behavior using de Wit’s Slips of Action Task across three experiments. Experiment 1 (N = 50) examines the impact of time pressure on decision-making, hypothesizing that time constraints will lead to increased reliance on habitual actions due to impaired cognitive control. Experiment 2 (N = 60) compares the effects of negative punishment in the learning stage to this task’s traditionally utilized feedback method of positive reinforcement. It is expected that punishment will enhance inhibitory control and reduce impulsive responses, leading to improved cognitive control. Experiment 3 (N = 109) investigates the relationship between creativity and performance on the slips of action task, proposing that individuals with higher creativity will demonstrate greater cognitive flexibility and inhibitory control, and therefore perform better on the slips of action task. Data support the first hypothesis (Experiment 1) but fail to support the other hypotheses (Experiments 2 and 3). Together these experiments provide valuable insights into how cognitive, situational, and individual factors influence the balance between habitual and goal-directed behaviors, offering a deeper understanding of the mechanisms driving decision-making and behavioral regulatio
Individual-level Data to Accompany “Respiratory Plasticity Induced by Chronic Hyperoxia in Juvenile and Adult Rats”
No full textSprague Dawley rats were exposed to chronic hyperoxia (60% O 2 ) as juveniles or as adults. Ventilation (whole-body plethysmography) and metabolic rate (respirometry) were then measured in normoxia (21% O 2 , balance N 2 ) and during acute hypoxic or hypercapnic challenges (15 – 20 minutes in 12% O 2 or 7% CO 2 , respectively) immediately following chronic hyperoxia or after a period of recovery in room air. The linked data files contain the individual-level ventilation and metabolism data. The full methods and summary data are available in the peer-reviewed article:
Bavis RW, Danielson MD, Dufour G, Hanus J, Pratt AE, Tobin KE, 2025. Respiratory plasticity induced by chronic hyperoxia in juvenile and adult rats. Respiratory Physiology and Neurobiology 333: 104386. [DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resp.2024.104386]
This article will be freely be available to download from PubMed Central on 2/1/2026 here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39732308
The Politics of Visual Language in Boston\u27s Climate Resilience Planning
No full textBoston’s climate plans reproduce and aestheticize a model of resilience that relies on pre-identified vulnerability and capital-driven greening. In doing so, they obscure the role that green infrastructure plays in displacement, and use visual and rhetorical strategies to mask the politics embedded in these developments. “Achieving optimal levels of distributive justice without procedural justice is challenging,” yet this is precisely what Boston’s resilience efforts have attempted (Van Den Berg et al). This exposes the contradictions between visual renderings of inclusion and the realities of exclusion and reflects a broader failure to treat vulnerability, justice, and climate adaptation as interdependent, evolving, and deeply political. Analyzing these reports not as objective representations of climate change and climate action, but as images, maps, artifacts, and technologies that circulate and reinforce path dependencies allows us to unveil the hidden politics and interests of Boston’s climate resilience approach