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Increasing Canopy Cover for Urban Resilience in Easthampton, MA
No full textIn Easthampton, Massachusetts’ 2024 Climate Action Plan, the city identifies the development of an Urban Forestry Master Plan as Municipal Action #23 (Easthampton, 2024). In order to support Easthampton in managing its tree cover to build climate resilience equitably, we developed a set of priority planting sites and complementary maps, a community outreach plan alongside an informational fact sheet for residents, and a tree species recommendation list. These resources provide Easthampton with an understanding of the current state of its urban forest and provide actionable strategies and resources to the city. The priority planting analysis highlights areas that should be prioritized when implementing tree planting initiatives based on socioeconomic factors, extreme heat, limited existing tree canopy coverage, high population density, and land characteristics. Soil quality maps for these areas inform the selection of recommended tree species. The community outreach plan offers strategies for the City to prioritize the involvement of its residents and engage the community around increasing tree canopy coverage in the cit
Alicia Alonso’s Giselle: A Cuban Dancer’s Journey into Romantic Ballet and Modern Dramaturgy | La Giselle di Alicia Alonso: il viaggio di una ballerina cubana nel balletto romantico e nella drammaturgia moderna
No full textThis article examines the trajectory of Cuban ballerina Alicia Alonso as both performer and restager of Giselle. After offering a historical overview of Romantic ballet in nineteenth-century Cuba, the study traces Alonso’s transformation into one of the most acclaimed figures in the performance history of Giselle. The text considers her interpretation of the eponymous role in the United States, Cuba and beyond, beginning with her 1943 debut as Giselle with Ballet Theatre in New York, and highlights the interplay between her performances and stagings of the piece. It charts the evolution of Alonso’s productions of Giselle from the first time she set the piece, for Havana’s Pro-Arte Musical Society in 1945, to her definitive staging of it on film with the National Ballet of Cuba in 1963. As demonstrated here, Alonso’s Giselle productions advanced in tandem with the growth of Cuban ballet, of which she was a passionate advocate. The study underscores key sources and influences on her stagings, including significant connections to Anton Dolin, Mary Skeaping and the Soviet productions of Giselle in which she danced during 1957-58. Among the multiple perspectives from which Alonso’s reworking of Giselle could be approached, this text foregrounds her transformative integration of modern dramaturgical concepts she cultivated through her collaborations with Antony Tudor, Igor Youskevitch and Cuban film director Enrique Pineda Barnet.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/dance_books/1000/thumbnail.jp
Episode 14: Bechtel DC0405
Full text linkThis episode features three alums from the Class of 2005: Michelle (Montepara) Andersen, Rhonda (Stratton) Forde, and Kristen Wright-Ng. Their Design Clinic project with Bechtel Infrastructure focused on design options to increase sustainability of the Metrorail stations in the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project
Towards Connecting Requirements with Developer Artifacts in a Local Context: Supplemental Material
Full text linkSupplemental material for the paper: Towards Connecting Requirements with Developer Artifacts in a Local Contex
Audible Loss: New Music and the Crisis of Memory
No full textAn innovative and much-needed critical work on music and memorialization in relation to AIDS, 9/11, and anti-Black violence in America
Music has long served as a powerful medium for communal mourning and remembrance in times of crisis. Audible Loss examines musical responses to three major crises in US society at the turn of the twenty-first century: the AIDS epidemic, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the ongoing conditions of anti-Black violence.
Analyzing a range of works written to commemorate these losses, Andrea Zarafshon Moore explores how contemporary classical music (aka “new music”) frames and narrates these crises, gives voice to grief, imagines other possibilities, and makes loss audible. These crises are read alongside one another to reveal the ways they are mutually imbricated, while also recognizing the sheer commemorative dominance of 9/11 in this century. Attending to broader debates and discourses through which commemoration is always filtered and the ways interpretive consensus has been sought and articulated in both musical and other memorial forms, Moore probes the conventional claims of commemoration, particularly those for the necessity of remembrance to “healing” and the prevention of future crises.
Audible Loss concludes by reflecting on the limits of existing commemorative forms and the possibility, even necessity, of new ones. Taking the COVID-19 pandemic as a case study, it proposes that while memorials of all kinds may provide outlets for collective remembrance and even mourning, their power to forge a sense of collectivity is diminished as public discourse grows more fragmented. Deeply informed yet highly approachable, Audible Loss is a major contribution to the fields of music and memory studies and essential reading for anyone interested in memory culture in the United States today.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/mus_books/1002/thumbnail.jp
Weighing Risks: How Families of Disabled Children Made School Choices During the Pandemic
Full text linkIn this paper, we show how positionality shapes caregivers’ decisions about children’s schooling, by expanding on research on Black families’ educational decision-making (Cooper, 2025; Posey-Maddox et al., 2021) to examine the positions from which families of disabled and multiply-marginalized children make educational choices. The families of disabled children in our sample made holistic, ongoing risk assessments and weighed trade-offs based on their positions during a period of time marked by multiple, on-going “choice moments” (Posey-Maddox, et. al, 2021): the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. We show that disability and ableism – intersecting with racism and socioeconomic inequality – increased the frequency, ongoing nature, and complexity of choice moments, as well as the risks embedded in each educational option. This intersectional marginalization constrained the options available to families, forcing them to choose between school settings that caused different kinds of harm. Our findings extend beyond the pandemic by revealing how ableism and special education structures complicate and stratify school choice for families of disabled students
God’s Country: Perceptions of Religious and Place-Based Candidate Identities
Full text linkIt is often assumed that the rural identity is linked to the Republican Party and the urban identity to the Democratic Party, but little scholarship has investigated how voters connect these identities to the parties in an electoral context and how that perception may influence their electoral preferences. Furthermore, recent elections have seen various political elites employ rural and Evangelical Christian identity labels in virtually synonymous ways in their association with the Republican Party. But are these partisan stereotypes really how Americans perceive these candidate identities? Utilizing a novel survey experiment, we find important distinctions between religious and place-based candidate cues. Our results show the enduring power of religion in partisan politics and suggest America’s urban-rural divide may be asymmetric in the minds of voters. These findings are subsequently meaningful for the study of religion’s place in America’s growing array of politicized social identities
Decarbonization is Happening in U.S. Higher Education, but Carbon Neutrality Goals Alone are not Delivering it
No full textCarbon neutrality emerged as an overall framework for climate action several decades ago, with the assumption that institutions would follow a carbon management hierarchy - reducing their own emissions (i.e. decarbonization) and relying on high-quality offsets to address any residual emissions. In practice, offsets and other accounting-based emissions reductions have often dominated both discussion and action. However, sector-wide studies examining the balance between decarbonization and offsetting have been limited. Here, we examine 23 U.S. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) that have declared carbon neutrality and contrast their direct (Scope 1) greenhouse gas emissions reduction efforts with a broader universe of U.S. HEIs, including those that have not declared carbon neutrality but have made strong campus decarbonization efforts. In our overall population of over 600 U.S. HEIs that report GHG emissions, we find that the median direct emissions reduction was only 9%, with 37% of HEIs reporting recent emissions that are higher than their baseline emissions. At the same time we find that HEIs have already demonstrated that decarbonization of a majority of direct emissions is possible today, and many others are in the process of similar infrastructure changes. In particular, we identify six institutions that have not declared carbon neutrality but which have made significant (50-\u3e90% Scope 1 reductions from baseline) progress in reducing emissions through the use of decarbonized heating technology (primarily ground-source heat pump systems), and energy efficiency upgrades. In contrast our data suggest that the collective actions of carbon neutral HEIs remain centered on offsets rather than decarbonization. Offsets remain the dominant strategy (69% of aggregate reductions) for Scope 1 emissions reductions at carbon neutral HEIs, with 17% of institutions actually increasing Scope 1 emissions from their baseline year while claiming carbon neutrality. Of the 23 carbon neutral HEIs we examined, only one has made \u3e50% progress in decarbonizing its campus. These results suggest a serious need for HEIs to rethink carbon neutrality as the foundational framework for institutional climate action but also highlight the achievability of significant decarbonization if the economic, technical and leadership conditions are right
Influence of Subduction Interface Geometry on Surface Displacements and Slip Processes in Cascadia
No full textThe subduction interface geometry is particularly important for estimating interplate coupling and surface geodetic motion, which has significant implications for seismic hazard mapping.Several published Cascadia subduction interface geometries derived from different seismic data sets vary significantly from one another. However, results from deformation models that use the different interface geometries are rarely systematically compared. Here, we assess the impact of subduction interface geometry on surface motion predictions, slip inversion results, and interface coupling estimates from four published Cascadia subduction interface geometries. We isolate the effect of the interface geometry on the predicted surface motion by applying uniform unit slip or Gaussian slip patterns to each interface geometry and calculate the predicted displacements at locations of GNSS stations. The forward model‐predicted horizontal displacements can differ by \u3e20% and show azimuthal differences up to 10°; such differences correlate spatially to geometric differences amongst the interface realizations. Inversions of surface displacements estimated using a Gaussian distribution of slip, mimicking an earthquake, recover the applied slip distribution with differing spatial patterns and residuals of up to 38% of the maximum applied slip. Block models that use the four interface realizations produce coupling estimates on the interface with regions of significant coupling (\u3e50%) that differ noticeably in down‐dip extent and lateral continuity. The results we present suggest that models utilizing interface geometry as an input, such as earthquake and tsunami models,should consider comparing models with differing interface geometries to critically evaluate model uncertainty stemming from this fundamental input
How to Lose Yourself: An Ancient Guide to Letting Go
No full textA central tenet of Buddhism is the idea that the self is an illusion and by relinquishing it, our self-centered impulses melt away. But what does it mean not to have a self, and how does one go about ridding oneself of the idea? Drawing from early Buddhist texts and scriptures from the Theravada, Tibetan Indian, and Chinese Zen traditions, this will be the first non-Greco-Roman volume in our Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers (AWMR) series. Jay Garfield, Maria Heim, and Robert Sharf introduce and translate the key texts they individually know best. They show how these texts argue that while we exist as conventionally constituted, interdependent persons, we have no self, or core that makes us who we are. More importantly, they reveal that this approach is not nihilistic, but rather, a positive way of thinking about personal identity, ethics, and our place in the world. -- Provided by publisher.https://scholarworks.smith.edu/phi_books/1010/thumbnail.jp