IDA Mount Holyoke College Institutional Digital Archive
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Provenance of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum Harpy Capital and Its Monstrous Theme
No full textArt Histor
"We Must Shape the Next Future": The Role of Buddhist Temples in Japan's LGBTQ Activism
No full textIn June 2021, a proposed bill on LGBTQ anti-discrimination failed to pass in the Japanese Diet. Members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party adamantly rejected the bill by publicly stating homophobic and transphobic comments, demonstrating how Japan has a long way to go before protecting LGBTQ rights through the rule of law. Yet, despite the struggle to gain recognition in the political realm, the LGBTQ community in Japan has recently found an unexpected new group of allies: Buddhist temples. In the last couple of years, more and more Buddhist temples in Japan have begun to support the LGBTQ community through officiating gay weddings, organizing graves for gay couples, and giving posthumous names for transgender people. Why are Buddhist temples getting involved in these activities? In what ways do they benefit from them? And how do these activities contribute to broader LGBTQ activism in Japan?
My project uses a combination of ethnographic research at select Japanese temples as well as historical research on the history of Japanese homosexuality. There is a long history of homosexual relationships among Buddhist priests. Historical records from the Heian period (794 - 1185) show that senior priests in Buddhist temples practiced male love with chigo — young disciples who were targets of homoerotic fantasy — as a religious practice. The chigo model was later passed down to secular realms of society and became popular among samurais, students, and soldiers. I will argue that the model of the adult male-chigo relationships associated homosexuality with particular social hierarchies that do not translate easily into modern ideas of love and marriage. Hence, there is resistance to the idea of same-sex love and marriage.
Historically, the primary functions of Japanese Buddhist temples have been to provide funerary services. Contemporary LGBTQ-supportive Buddhist temples are now offering funerary services specifically tailored to the LGBTQ population. Additionally, LGBTQ-supportive Buddhist temples are getting into the business of weddings. In recent Japanese history, weddings have been the responsibility of Shinto shrines or Christian churches. Something new is happening here. My ethnographic research, which involves interviews with select LGBTQ-supportive Buddhist priests and nuns, explores the motivations for promoting LGBTQ funerary services and same-sex Buddhist weddings. Among these are a commitment to envisioning an inclusive and egalitarian Japanese society, as well as the pressing need for Buddhist temples to stay relevant to people’s lives and deaths.Religio
Who Do You Trust?: The Effects of Meditation on Perceived Trustworthiness of White and Asian Americans Through Stress and Visual Attention Using a Virtual Reality Method
No full textMany studies have been done to look at general trustworthiness between in-group and out-group
members using trust and investment games. However, the effects of meditation on trustworthiness towards White and Asian Americans have not been thoroughly studied. This study looked at the effects of Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) on perceived trustworthiness towards White and Asian Americans using a virtual reality device with embedded eye tracking, and to see if visual attention and stress mediates the relationship between LKM and perceived trust. Using a 2x2 between participants design, participants either meditated prior to the VR exposure or did not and interacted with either White or Asian actors in VR. LKM was unrelated to perceived trustworthiness towards both White and Asians. Also, contrary to expectations, it was found that participants reported higher levels of trustworthiness towards Asians than White; and stress while interacting with Asians was related to greater levels of trust. These findings are interpreted in relation to theory of intergroup contact, cognitive load, model minority myth, and social desirability.Psychology & Educatio
The Preservation and Transformation of Destrehan Plantation: Physical Geographies and Social Landscapes of White Supremacy in Twentieth Century South Louisiana
No full textCertain regions of the American South are known for their plantation house museums that attract large numbers of tourists every year. One of the most popular regions, the River Road of South Louisiana, occupies a portion of the Lower Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Most River Road plantation museums’ institutional narratives, the content conveyed to visitors during a site tour, centers around the late-colonial and antebellum periods from the late 18th to the mid 19th century and maintains the historical perspective of the white Creole planter elite. Plantation tours rarely detail the site’s 20th century history, or the history of the museums themselves. The narratives that costumed interpreters present to visitors during daily tours carry an immense weight and responsibility of understanding our past, that in turn, affects our future. In the following essay, I argue that through the 20th century history of River Road plantations, we can trace the preservation of white supremacy post-emancipation and South Louisiana’s racialized class system. A critical analysis of the Destrehan Plantation in St. Charles Parish demonstrates the preservation of white supremacist social and economic dynamics during the plantation’s 20th century transformation from agricultural capitalism to the production of historical memory.Histor
Sensing the City: An Embodied Approach to Urban Space Observation and Notation
No full textThis thesis considers possibilities provided by dance improvisation and theory to enhance individual sensory experiences of urban space. Citing phenomenological capabilities of dance improvisation, it posits that the art form can bring forth new ways of observing and relating to the built environment. Central to this research is the design of a new notation system which draws from existing dance notation systems Feuillet and Labanotation, and urban design notation systems Motation and Ray Lucas’s Notation for the Senses. This new notation system provides a strategy for capturing sensory-based observational data. Through a carefully selected series of characters, maps, and written phrases, this notation system presents multimodal syntheses of the urban landscape. Three movement experiments are recounted, occurring at the Umass Fine Arts Center Plaza and Kendall Sports and Dance Complex. These 3-4 hour experiments bring together groups of dance students to participate in “movement explorations” in urban space, from which their observations are recorded using this project’s new notation system. Results from these experiments demonstrated dance improvisation’s ability to deepen urban space observation and provided feedback for further iterations of the notation system.Architectural Studie
Assessment of Strain Rates in Southern California Fault Zones in Relation to Earthquakes by Examining GPS Station Data
No full textGeolog
Fighting for the Right to Remain in Los Filtros: Place Attachment and Expropriation Efforts in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico
No full textMy thesis research examines the complex relationships between place, land, power, and space for the community of Los Filtros in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Los Filtros was founded in the 1920s as one of the communities that emerged from massive rural to urban migration in Puerto Rico. As Guaynabo became modernized during the last two decades of the 20th century, urban
sprawl and land commodification pressures trapped Los Filtros and other informalized communities in the municipio inside a context of socioeconomic inequity. In an effort to homogenize Guaynabo’s population by socioeconomic class through strongly supporting upscale gated communities and privatizing space, Guaynabo’s municipal government has actively sought
to expropriate Los Filtros’ residents since 2001. However, Los Filtros remains in place today. Despite Guaynabo’s municipal government’s power and intense outside economic pressures that foster displacement, Los Filtros community members have resisted and fought long-sustained expropriation efforts for two decades. To understand Los Filtros’ long-standing lucha (fight) and
strategies for remaining in place, I investigate the scope of municipal government-led expropriation efforts in Los Filtros and the broader context of inequity that intensified such efforts. I draw upon two primary methods to advance my research, namely semi-structured interviews that I held with nine Los Filtros community members and nine non-community members in the summer of 2021 and research in three different archives. Based on my data, I argue that in a context where land privatization and spatial homogenization are predominant pressures, Los Filtros community members’ strong place attachment has sustained their
resistance to Guaynabo’s municipal government’s neoliberal practices, driven their efforts to claim a right to the city, and compelled their advocacy for equitable development. My research offers an analysis of Los Filtros’ fight that centers people-place connections as a basis for understanding activism at large. Los Filtros community members engaged in social activism that
challenged the elite’s imposition of spatial order by reasserting their right to determine their community’s future and, more generally, their right to the city. Therefore, this case study of Los Filtros contributes to important discussions about who is valuable in the city and how social justice is practiced at the urban scale.Geograph
Strategy or Identity? An Analysis of the Adoption and Implementation of Voter Suppression by the Republican Party
No full textDemocracy has been considered to be at the core of the American ethos since the country’s founding, though the privilege of civic participation has never been equally accessible. In particular, large populations in the United States have been denied the right to vote throughout history, keeping power concentrated in the hands of a select few. The phenomenon of voter suppression has especially skyrocketed since the 2020 presidential election, and these efforts have been overwhelmingly spearheaded by the Republican party. This research explores the factors motivating contemporary voter suppression efforts as well as the effects and distribution of voter suppression legislation. Drawing on theories of party development and ideology, I propose the “party identity hypothesis:” that the support for voter suppression by the Republican party is not merely a strategy to win elections, but rather an adoption of the practice as a key element of the party’s identity.
To test this hypothesis, I have created a voter suppression index tool to measure the degree of voter suppression in all 50 states. The data are then analyzed using a multiple linear regression model to determine whether index scores are significantly correlated with significant degrees of electoral competition and percentages of people of color, as the existing literature suggests. I find that the only variable significantly correlated with suppressive outcomes is party affiliation, suggesting that the Republican party has motives to suppress beyond winning elections. To further support the party identity hypothesis, I identify two case studies of Republican states where voter suppression is present without significant degrees of electoral competition or large communities of color. I conclude with implications and limitations of the study as well as areas of future research that could expand the contributions of this study.Politic
An electrostatic interaction between the proteins ClpC and YjbA mediates their in vivo function in Bacillus subtilis
No full textBacillus subtilis sporulation is a developmental process that culminates in the production of an environmentally resistant, metabolically dormant cell type called a spore. However, the molecular mechanisms that drive metabolic dormancy are poorly understood. Genetic and biochemical approaches have led the Camp Lab to a working model in which a previously uncharacterized protein, YjbA, is hypothesized to function as a novel adaptor protein for the AAA+-ATPase chaperone-protease ClpCP. The working model further suggests that the YjbA-ClpC complex targets the degradation of key metabolic enzymes in the forespore, in turn driving metabolic dormancy. One of the many aspects that needs to be tested for this working model is the interaction between YjbA and ClpC. A co-crystal structure of these two proteins generated by collaborators suggested three sites of electrostatic interactions, one of which is the YjbA E116 - ClpC K85 site. My project aims to test the hypothesis that this specific site of interaction is necessary for overall YjbA-ClpC interaction and function in vivo. To do so, I first measured the interactions between mutated versions of YjbA and ClpC lacking E116 and K85, respectively, using an Escherichia coli based two-hybrid assay. This assay revealed that both YjbA E116 and ClpC K85 are necessary for YjbA-ClpC interaction in an E. coli system. I also investigated the importance of both residues for YjbA-ClpC interaction in vegetatively growing B. subtilis by making mutations on each residue and testing for their effects on YjbA-mediated toxicity. My results indicate that interaction at YjbA E116 and ClpC K85 is important for the toxic phenotype in vegetatively growing cells. Overall, my data suggest that the YjbA E116 - ClpC K85 electrostatic site is important for the YjbA-ClpC interaction in vivo.Biochemistr