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Unchecked Authority
No full textThe Politics Department thesis “Unchecked Authority: How the Supreme Court Expanded the President’s Foreign Powers in Trump v. Hawaii” argues that the Supreme Court rejected settled jurisprudence to fulfill the partisan aim of expanding presidential authority over immigration and national security. Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion did not adhere to conservative or traditional methods of statutory interpretation, but created his own method to reach the outcome he and his conservative colleagues desired. This ruling grants seemingly unlimited deference to the President in matters of national security, thereby threatening constitutionally recognized civil liberties. Furthermore, the holding reinforces the logic of repudiated decisions such as The Chinese Exclusion Cases and Korematsu v. United States, which upheld President Roosevelt’s internment policy. This case resulted from President Trump’s third Travel ban—the realization of his campaign promise to ban Muslims from entering the United States and tacitly endorsed of the xenophobia and Islamophobia of the Administration. Furthermore, Hawaii is added to a pattern: the Roberts Court is upholding the Republican Agenda regardless of precedent, and is undermining the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.Politic
Envisioning Alternative Cuban Identities: How Black and Native Studies Inform Afro-Cuban Futures
No full textConsidering the shared, lived experiences of Afro-Cubans and Taíno Indians under conquest reveals the violent, repressive conditions of nationalist ideologies and colonial domination that have continued to obscure these groups from dominant historical narratives in Cuba. This is evident through an investigation of Fidel Castro’s totalizing dictatorship that began in 1953 and was crystallized in 1959. Westernized historical accounts of settler colonialism have a tradition of portraying the hegemonic perspective of the colonizer. This is to say that these dominant historical narratives not only uphold the power dynamic between the colonizer and the colonized, but limit the scope of critical historical inquiry about marginalized, historical actors. Castro’s work of redeveloping a new Cubanidad, being a unique understanding of Cuban nationhood and national identity, in the wake of the nation’s long fight for independence is incomplete. It was produced under a totalizing agenda of homogenization and through a forgetting of Cuba’s history of racial discrimination. As a result, it has suppressed the contributions that Afro-Cubans and Taínos brought to the framework of Cubanidad, further subjugated these marginal groups under the new Cuban Oneness, and has thwarted discussions of their possible futures. This independent research will use a critical race theory approach to critique Castro’s production of a post-Revolution Cubanidad that was predicated on notions of homogenization, stability, and contained identities. This critique will reshape Cubanidad to envision an alternative Cubanidad that considers alternative Afro-Cuban and Taíno futures by privileging notions of hybridity, impurity, and instability. This research will consider the role of race and identity in Cuban constructions of nationhood and the extent to which these conditions have and have not been investigated comprehensively. To consider alternative futures, this project will complicate binaristic modes of identity formation to reveal underlying power dynamics resonant of colonial structures, cultivate a methodology of “reading silences” that are present in historical narratives, and investigate critical moments where Afro-Cubans and Natives embody and exemplify an early understanding of a central component of Cubanidad: revolutionary subjectivity. Drawing on Tiffany Lethabo King’s metaphor of the shoal as a conceptual foundation, a term of scientific origin employed to theoretically conceptualize a “third space” of identity, where a subject is positioned as being “both, neither, and in between,” I challenge the rhetorics and ideologies that contain and homogenize Blacks and Natives, posit a multi-temporal and hybrid analysis of Cubanidad, and reignite discussions of Black and Native futures through a reconceptualization of post-Revolution Cubanidad. By offering an analysis of Black and Native intersubjectivity, I will situate an ethical relationality within the framework of Cubanidad as the basis to envision collective futures of mutual care.Critical Social Though
Painting Transplants: Processes in Healing
No full textMy thesis work consists of a body of diptych paintings on paper. Conceptually, I seek to investigate how bodies, as boundaried forms, experience the boundarylessness of energies and moods. Through a three-step procedural framework, these pieces investigate ideas of shared energy, boundaries of the physical body and holistic healing. The first step consists of pouring ink or watered down paint onto paper. The second step includes acrylic paint, ink, colored pencil and oil pastel to create various patterns and layers as a reaction to the initial spill. The third step is made up of what I am calling ‘transplants.’ In this final step, I cut shapes out of the paper, swap them with the corresponding piece in the diptych and suture them in place with embroidery thread, disrupting and shifting the composition. I use transplants as a metaphor for how we intentionally rearrange our perceptions of events in order to integrate experiences and grow towards health. The emergence of a process with somewhat predetermined steps has allowed me to be present and focus on visual concerns while in the studio. This work has emerged out of abstract expressionism. Specifically, the work of Helen Frankenthaller is discussed, as well as contemporary artists Alexandra Grant and Carrie Moyer.Art Studi
Mapping a Genetic Mutation involved in Larval Fat Body Remodeling Disruption in Drosophila melanogaster
No full textTissue remodeling plays an important role in the development of many multicellular organisms. It is also a key process in wound healing and tumor metastasis, and studying the control of tissue remodeling could lead to important developments in medicine, such as treatment and prevention of cancer and other diseases. Drosophila melanogaster, more commonly known as the fruit fly, is a great model organism to study such processes, due to their short life cycle and genomic similarities to humans. When Drosophila develop from larva into adult flies, they undergo metamorphosis, in which most of the larval tissues are destroyed by programmed cell death and replaced by adult tissues. However, the larval fat body is exempt from such cell death and is maintained until a few days into adulthood. During metamorphosis, the larval fat body cells remodel structurally through detaching from one another and moving to the head cavity. The larval fat body remodeling is a critical process, as failure to do so leads to lethality. Past members of the Woodard Lab performed complementation tests on fly lines that each had a single mutation on the third chromosome that resulted in abnormal fat body morphology and pharate adult lethality. The current study focuses on line l(3)LL-15413:L 04 PA, one of the seven lines that were identified to have completely lost the ability to remodel fat bodies during metamorphosis. In order to identify the location of the mutation causing the loss of fat body remodeling, I used the mapping methodology developed by Sapiro et al. (2013), and was able to determine the approximate location of the mutation to be between the dominant marker pair, Stubble and Hairless. Following that, line l(3)LL-15413:L 04 PA was crossed with 13 deficiency stocks, each missing a small fragment of the third chromosome, to further narrow down the location of the mutation. Despite having the gene mapped between the two dominant markers, I was unable to find a deficiency line that uncovered the mutation gene. Further experiments are required to determine the exact location and role of this gene, as well as other lines with abnormal fat body morphology. I hope this study will be a groundwork for further studies in the field.Biochemistr
In Conversation with the Devil: Linguistic Themes of Shiʿi Mobilization in the 2011 Bahrain Uprising
No full textIn 2011, an uprising gripped the small archipelago of Bahrain, located in the Persian Gulf, as part of the wider series of contentious politics known popularly as the “Arab Spring.” Started by the 14 February Youth Coalition, the uprising included many Bahrainis from diverse backgrounds who gathered together at Dawwār al-Luʾluʾ, the Pearl Roundabout. This multifaceted resistance used effective organizing tactics to push the al-Khalifa regime of Bahrain to meet their demands of democracy and governmental reform. Yet, popular conceptions of the Bahrain Uprising reduce it to a sectarian conflict between a Shiʿi populace and a Sunni ruling family. Using the poetry of one protester, Ayat al-Gormezi, a 20-year-old student at the time of the Uprising, as a guiding lens, this thesis seeks to explore the language of the Uprising in order to understand protesters’ decisions about how they framed their demands in the areas of non-violent resistance, anti-sectarian organizing, and anti-neoliberal praxis. In addition to al-Gormezi’s foundational works, this thesis surveys a wide range of chants, posters, banners, graffiti, and interviews with protesters from footage, government reports, and eyewitness accounts in Arabic and English to demonstrate the salience of these areas to Bahraini organizing. By taking a postcolonial approach and contextualizing the 2011 Uprising as part of a longer history of anticolonial resistance in Bahrain, this thesis demonstrates that popular conceptions of the Uprising as a “sudden” and disconnected resistance ignore its thematic relationship to past Bahraini organizing as well as the lessons which Bahrainis’ organizing can offer to anti-authoritarian activists across the world.Asian Studie
Nineteenth-Century Italian Flute Culture
No full textItaly is often neglected in the histories of the flute, where the focus is primarily on France, Germany, and England. Additionally, what little has been written about Italian flutes is almost exclusively in Italian. In this thesis, I aim to start bringing Italy into the conversation in what may be the first longer English-language study of Italian flute history. To answer questions about the existence of an Italian flute school, or lack thereof, and why Italy is so often neglected, I look into the flutists, methodology of teaching, institutions, repertoire, performance, and the physical instruments that Italian flutists played and developed. I also explore the impact Italy has had on modern flute culture. I concentrate on the situation from the 1830s through 1914, with a primary focus on Milan. This period featured the greatest number of changes in the instruments themselves. Additionally, during that time, Milan was the musical capital of Italy.
In the nineteenth century, Italian music was dominated by opera. The influence of opera on almost every aspect of Italian musical life, including flute culture, is evident in everything from the repertoire to the method books to the Italian preference for wood, conical flutes over the cylindrical metal models starting to become popular in France and Germany. Other important aspects of Italian flute culture at the time included the rise of amateur musicians, the importance of bands, and the importance of Milan as a center of opera, flute-making, and publishing. Furthermore, the Italian flutists had a major effect on the modern flute world. Briccialdi's B-flat thumb key significantly impacted the flutes in use today, and a less direct influence comes from the Italian methods, which inspired the French method books that are widely used today. The impact of the Italian flute world, although smaller than that of France or Germany, is still noteworthy. Finally, I argue that due to the fragmented nature of the Italian conservatories, an Italian flute school never truly developed, but always remained regional. This research sheds light on a relatively unknown aspect of the flute's history, filling a gap in both the history of the flute and the canon of flute literature.Musi
Tending the Ghosts: A Contemporary Adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth Through the Lens of Intergenerational Trauma and Transmission Within the Chinese American Community
No full textThe notion that the past never fully recedes into the past, and that memories and trauma can be passed on to another subsequent generation is one that is particularly relevant to second generation individuals, or the “post-generation” as Marianne Hirsch describes in her work. Cathy Caruth, a scholar in trauma theory, also notes how trauma is an event that cannot be entirely witnessed by one’s self nor fully integrated into one’s experience.
Just as the idea that trauma can haunt a subject for generations is not new, neither are adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, nor the conversation about the role and place of adaptations in the Shakespearean literary realm. This project can best be thought of as one branch of the Shakespearean rhizome, a notion that adaptations are not completely beholden to the original text and its power, but have a life and creative force of their own.
The goals of this project were to use fiction as a way of understanding the experiences of the post-generation as well as understand and contextualize the ways in which trauma is passed down between generations, particularly within Asian American communities. My aim in using a Shakespearean text to do this work is to also critique the “universal” white western audience that was Macbeth’s intended audience, as well as to use the themes of haunting and the supernatural to help contextualize the ways in which trauma and memory are transmitted.
This project contains both a critical theoretical component as well as a creative component, though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The theoretical portion of this project explores how memory and trauma are passed down between generations as well as understand how fiction can aid in interpreting and contextualizing those memories. The creative portion of this project consists of a full length play adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The adaptation explores how a young girl growing up in a Chinese American family navigates and understands her family’s history and the intergenerational trauma that grows from that. Much of the play focuses on the ways in which this young girl acts as witness to the effects of the trauma and memories of her parents and ultimately how this affects the ways in which she sees and understands herself.Englis
Flesh and Mud: Bodily Deconstruction through Handmade Paper
No full textMy art practice primarily utilizes handmade paper to create works that are both alluring and repulsive in the ways they represent the human body. As a transmasculine nonbinary artist, I am challenging representation that can make people uncomfortable by being vulnerable with my body. Through video, handmade paper, and the process of making body casts, I embrace manipulating the image of my body to create monstrous or mythical hybrids to reflect the experience of being “othered” and living in a state of hyper awareness around gendered visibility.
In Akiko Busch’s book, How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency, Busch presents an argument that claims true liberation from the confines of societal structures and psychological exhaustion comes from re-evaluating the ways in which we connect to nature. Instead, she suggests defiantly detaching from the pressures to be completely understood or “seen” by society through ritualistically surrendering to the environment. The full bodily engagement, use of natural plant fibers, and meditative process inherent to hand papermaking can be likened to that notion of surrendering to the environment as it becomes a self-healing and liberating process to mediate the frustration and rage of being “unseen” in everyday life. My work acknowledges the internal effort put into that experience to find peace and comfort within the self through the process of making paper. At the same time, I categorize my usage of hybridity and unsettling bodily forms as an external, public method of processing negative experience. Therefore, my body of work blends the external and internal response to defying gender conformity: calling attention to the arbitrary yet confining structures around bodily normativity while simultaneously working in a process that functions as a ritualized act of healing and ownership of the body in communion with nature.
The physicality of making paper and sculptural body casts demands an intentional awareness and exploration of the body that confronts the uncomfortable and the intimate. In these processes of making, my body and handmade paper become a vessel for expressing a nonbinary transgender experience and radical reclamation of the self.Art Studi
Subjective Social Status, Stigma, and Student Experiences with Mental Health Resources
No full textThis study examined the relationship between college students’ subjective social status (SSS) and their use of professional mental health resources offered on a college campus and the extent to which that relationship is mediated by stigma against help-seeking. Participants responded to a quantitative survey about their SSS, their perceptions of public stigma, social network stigma, and self-stigma, and their likelihood to use resources offered on campus and their frequency of use of those resources. It was hypothesized that SSS would be related to both outcome variables, frequency of use and likelihood of use, and that stigma would mediate those relationships, but the results did not support this prediction. Participants with high self-stigma scores participated in qualitative follow-up interviews that expanded on the quantitative findings to explore how stigma shaped their experiences with mental health resources on campus. The themes that emerged from interviews were (a) differences in perceived stigma across regions in the United States, (b) cultural differences in stigma against mental health, (c) perceived a decrease in public stigma against mental health, (d) variability in support from social networks, (e) expressions of self-stigma against help-seeking, (f) positive change in self-image after using mental health resources, (g) varying use of resources offered at Mount Holyoke College, (h) influence of social class on use of mental health resources, and (i) suggestions for change within the Mount Holyoke College Counseling Center. Additionally, subthemes are described within each theme (see Table 9). Limitations and recommendations for future research based on the quantitative and qualitative results are discussed.Psychology & Educatio
Field-based body temperatures reveal behavioral thermoregulation strategies of the Atlantic marsh fiddler crab Minuca pugnax
No full textManuscript preprint and associated data filesBehavioral thermoregulation is an important defense against the negative impacts of
climate change for ectotherms. In this study we examined the use of burrows by a
common intertidal crab, Minuca pugnax, to control body temperature. To understand
how body temperatures respond to changes in the surface temperature and explore how
efficiently crabs exploit the cooling potential of burrows to thermoregulate, we measured
body, surface, and burrow temperature data during low tide on Sapelo Island, GA in
March, May, August, and September of 2019 . We found that an increase in 1°C in the
surface temperature led to a 0.70-0.71°C increase in body temperature for females and
an increase in 0.75-0.77 °C in body temperature for males. Body temperatures of small
females were 0.3°C warmer than large females for the same surface temperature. Female
crabs used burrows more efficiently for thermoregulation compared to the males.
Specifically, an increase of 1 degree C in the cooling capacity (the difference between the
burrow temperature and the surface temperature) led to an increase of 0.42-0.50°C for
females and 0.34-0.35 °C for males in the thermoregulation capacity (the difference
between body temperature and surface temperature). The body temperature that crabs
began to use burrows to thermoregulate was estimated to be around 24 degree C, which is far
below the critical body temperatures that could lead to death. Many crabs experience
body temperatures of 24 °C early in the reproductive season, several months before the
hottest days of the year. Because the use of burrows involves fitness trade-offs, these
results suggest that warming temperatures could begin to impact crabs far earlier in the
year than expected.NSF RUI (research at undergraduate institutions)
Award Number: 1755335 IO