IDA Mount Holyoke College Institutional Digital Archive
Not a member yet
1794 research outputs found
Sort by
The Formation of the Mount Holyoke Missionaries Collection: Race, Redemption, and the Early Archive
No full textWhat is an archive? Is it a place? An object or objects organized into collections? A mentality? How have the creators of archives determined what should be archived, and what ideas about history have their decisions preserved? My research centers these questions in a study of the creation, over time, of the Mount Holyoke Missionaries Collection, with its holdings related to the missionary work of alumnae from 1841 to the present.
In the early years of Mount Holyoke’s history as a Female Seminary, its founders and teachers sought to disseminate Protestant values and create an alumnae body of pious teachers, mothers, and in time, missionaries. Its early archive—represented in published works, financial records, and objects sent to Mount Holyoke from missionary fields—produced histories centered on Christian action and salvation blended with colonial discourses of race and civilization that venerated missionaries’ role in saving and civilizing non-Christian peoples.
At the turn of the century, once Mount Holyoke had become a college and moved to adopt more rigorous academic standards and empirical research practices, both its historical consciousness and its archive shifted. Librarians, students, and teachers reinterpreted archives as vital for understanding the human race and bringing about societal improvement. While this approach was more empirical, it reflected the religious mindset of previous generations as well as the Social Darwinism of the day. The Missionaries Collection grew to include more documents reflective of missionaries’ everyday life, such as missionary publications and newspaper articles. In doing so, it reproduced racist discourses and continued to venerate Christianity as a sign of racial and social progress.
This project contextualizes the archive as a historical phenomenon that has been constructed, reinterpreted, and redesigned over time. The Mount Holyoke Missionaries Collection is a prime example of an archival collection reflecting the distinct images of its creators’ and archivists’ historical consciousness over its nearly two centuries of existence.Histor
JAPANESE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH: SPACE AND OPPORTUNITY FOR REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH TALK AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN’S COLLEGES
No full textThis project examines Japanese college students’ experiences with reproductive health care and information access in Japan. I engage with participants’ stories to understand the complexity of the issues around sexual and reproductive health rights in Japan, identify the barriers to accessing care and knowledge, and learn how they overcome the barriers with constraints. Each participant offers their perspectives on reproductive health and experience as a person who lives in Japan, who attends a women’s college, and who is in their early twenties in this project. I use a feminist methodological approach, Interpretive Phenomenological Approach, and feminist usage of Foucault’s theoretical framework of biopower/biopolitics to analyze and deeply engage with the participant’s embodied knowledge. With an interdisciplinary approach, I focus on the participant’s own interpretation of their experiences and of the world they live in. Additionally, I interpret what participants are noticing about how complex social structures, norms, policies, and interpersonal relationships intersect with women’s experiences with reproductive health in Japan. Participants shared their stories within the category of visible, invisible, and shifting reproductive health topics. Visible topics are the focus of society for resolution as well as a heightened focus on gender discrimination. On the other hand, invisible topics are not often talked about in public spaces and women’s embodied experiences are kept silent as they are sources of stigma, discomfort, and discrimination. Lastly, shifting topics can appear or disappear in certain spaces and in contexts. Through this project, it is identified that Japanese women, who are mainly the center of the reproductive health discourse, are not noticing themselves as articulating their thoughts within the framework of reproductive health. With social norms, stigmas, and political ideologies that often discourage women from having conversations about their bodies and health, I suggest that women’s colleges have the possibilities as a space for women to feel empowered, build self-efficacy and self-affirmation, gain knowledge and skills to confidently exchange their thoughts and experiences with reproductive health in Japan, which then leads to the promotion of reproductive health care and information access.Gender Studie
Modularity and integration of copulatory structures in male Ratfish, Hydrolagus colliei
No full textGenitalia are one of the most diverse structures in nature. Different evolutionary processes, such as natural and sexual selection, influence their diverse and complex morphology. A combination of these processes may operate simultaneously in complex genital structures on a single system because they can have multiple modules and different genes that are responsible for the phenotype development. Male spotted ratfish, Hydralogus colliei, have modular structures that function together to achieve copulation, including two grasping structures, a frontal tenaculum paired pre-pelvic tenacula, and one intromittent structure, paired claspers. We produced 3D models of structures of adult and juvenile males and used a 3D geometric morphometric approach to study their allometric patterns, and their integration. We asked what the roles of ontogeny and function are in shaping the modular patterns and the integration among the components of these complex genital traits because they are unlikely to share the same development. In adults, we found that there is no significant relationship between body size and the pelvic tenacula and claspers, but the relationship between body size and frontal tenaculum size was significant. In juveniles, we found different significant relationships between body size and the copulatory structures. Interestingly, we found that the structures’ centroid size and shape change suddenly and significantly when the juveniles become adults. This discrete rather than continuous growth pattern for genitalia has not been previously described in vertebrate groups.Biological Science
What Are the True Sizes of Retired A Stars?
No full textTo find exoplanets, it is important to have accurate measurements for potential host stars to make it easier to tell when something changes that might indicate the presence of an exoplanet. A-type stars, which have up to about twice the mass of our Sun, rotate very fast, making it hard to see if an exoplanet's gravity is tugging on them. However, when these stars have aged and cooled into subgiants, they rotate slower, making it easier to spot planets around them. This project uses near-infrared data from Georgia State University’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) on Mount Wilson, CA, to accurately measure the radii of five retired A stars. Models make it possible to predict the stars’ luminosity, temperature, age, and mass from the radii measurements. The measurements of these five properties are then compared to the properties estimated by existing literature, which generally uses broad-band photometric data and derives the radius using a chart rather than measuring it directly. Hypothetically, there will be a systematic offset in the measured values as compared to the literature values. This comparison will help to refine the models and lead to more accurate measurements of retired A star radii — and lead to more exoplanet discoveries.Astronom
The Effect of Compulsory Primary Education on Mother's Labor Force Participation
No full textIndia’s female labor force participation rates have been steadily declining for the last decade. Low female labor force participation is often associated with a reduction in GDP per capita and economic growth. Thus, as part of a strategy for increasing economic growth, it is necessary to examine factors that could potentially increase female labor force participation. One of the aspects that could increase labor force participation is childcare. However, in low-income countries like India, childcare is often expensive and inaccessible. In my thesis, I examine if relaxing this constraint by providing free and compulsory education to children as substitute childcare will encourage higher female labor force participation. I find that the probability of a woman’s decision to enter the labor market increases by 1.7% − 1.8% in some states. However, my results remain statistically insignificant when I include all states in India in my estimation. Thus, other factors such as gender norms, safety for women in the workplace, and wage disparity should
be explored to encourage higher female labor force participation in countries like India.Economic
The Daunting Task of College: First-year Seminars and Student Experience
No full textThis study examines the significance of first-year seminars (FYS) on student experience by looking through the lens of the nationwide shutdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through surveys and interviews, Mount Holyoke professors and students give their perspectives on first-year seminars to provide insight into the value of first-year seminars. Using thematic analysis this study tries to answer three questions. How do FYS meet institutional expectations from a professor and student perspective? How do FYS meet student expectations for pre, during, and post-COVID-19? How do FYS meet student expectations for different affinity/identity groups? By answering these questions, four themes were developed from the data set. With these themes, we can start to gain knowledge on how first-year seminars affect the student's experience and adaptability to college. This creates a new understanding of first-year seminars, adding to the limited research that exists in this area.Psychology & Educatio
The Taste of Spoiled Earth
No full textThe Irish Famine of 1845-1852 is an event defined by silence. Despite its tremendous demographic impact on both Ireland and the worldwide Irish diaspora, the Famine received relatively little literary or historical treatment prior to the late 1990s. Even now, a crucial element missing from both history and scholarship is the voice of the victims, which nineteenth-century chroniclers struggled to convey. One way in which chroniclers sought to convey the destruction and suffering of the Famine was through supernatural and often apocalyptic imagery of “living skeletons” and “walking dead.” Drawing on this legacy, “The Taste of Spoiled Earth” presents a speculative history novella in which the Famine dead rise, imbued with a hunger for living flesh. The figure of the undead allows for a blurring of boundaries that defies traditional rationalist narratives of history, while remaining true to, and commenting on, the social and political realities of hunger in a colonial state.Englis
Myth Adaptations in Chinese American Literature
No full textThis thesis explores the question: how do Chinese American writers adapt the Chinese traditional myths in their work? The definition of myth used in this study is inclusive, encompassing both stories of supernatural beings and stories of humans.
Through a home framework, I examine how Maxine Hong Kingston’s use of the myths of Mulan and Ts’ai Yen in The Woman Warrior shows the dilemma of being a Chinese American female.
Through the same framework, I investigate the ways in which Chinese American writers might diverge in their mythological reimagination by looking at different adaptations of one myth: the myth of Sun Wukong. Through a close reading of Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, and Ken Liu’s “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King”, I give insights into the ways in which three different writers make faithful or subversive decisions when adapting the essence of Sun Wukong and the effects of these myth adaptations. While Kingston and Yan both discuss Chinese Americans’ identity crisis, Ken Liu addresses a historical topic beyond that recurring theme in other texts: the crimes of the Qing Empire.
Additionally, this study examines Liu’s Sci-Fi short story “Good Hunting” which sets in British Hong Kong. Through an analysis of Liu’s portrayal of the hulijing, this study aims to provide insights into issues related to colonialism, environmentalism, and sexism.
At last, this study provides the means for future researchers interested in exploring myth adaptations, examining the influence of foreign language story collections on American literature, and even critiquing silkpunk literature.Englis
Gendered Dispensationalism: An Analysis of Evangelical Prophecy Fiction and Gender Roles in the Twentieth Century United States
No full textThis thesis explores the role of gender in American prophecy fiction from the period 1900-2000. Prophecy fiction, or novels that present an imagined end of the world informed by evangelical readings of the Bible, has been popular with an evangelical audience since the genre’s inception in the late nineteenth century. By choosing who achieves salvation and through what means, authors of prophecy fiction engage in cultural interventions, indicating to readers what elements of larger American culture should be accepted or rejected in order to achieve eternal life in Heaven. In this work I focus on how gender has been understood by prophecy fiction authors and how these understandings have evolved over the twentieth century. I analyze two influential works of prophecy fiction: Joseph Birckbeck Burroughs’ Titan, Son of Saturn: The Coming World Emperor (1905) and Timothy LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind (1995), to understand how their historical context informs their positions on gender roles for men and women during their life on earth with the goal to achieve eternal life after death. I find these novels reflect that evangelical women have experienced a decrease in public facing leadership and religious autonomy in the 90 years between the two publishings.Religio
An Investigation of the Stability of Hydrophilic Polymer Thin Films: Crystallinity, Hydrophilicity, and Electrostatic Charge
No full textPolymer thin films are ubiquitous in everyday life, playing a role in fields such as electronics, optics, space science, aircrafts, defense, medicine, sensors, and biotechnology. Thin film stability is a property that describes whether a film forms a continuous layer or ruptures into a morphology often characterized by holes, polygons, or droplets. This latter process, termed dewetting, has traditionally been considered an obstacle to avoid, but more recently it has been harnessed as a tool for producing patterned thin films with features on the nanoscopic scale. Regardless of its desirability, an understanding of the mechanisms that underlie dewetting is critical for tailoring the morphologies of thin films to the specifications of their applications.
The stability of a thin film to some extent depends on its thickness, and spin coating offers a convenient and affordable means for producing thin films of tunable thickness. However, existing models for predicting the film thickness of spin coated films are based primarily on nonpolar polymer thin films and often fail to accurately predict experimentally obtained results. Therefore, the goal of this independent study is to uncover the mechanisms of the polymer deposition and film formation processes for hydrophilic polymers and to work towards a model that predicts the thickness and stability of spin coated hydrophilic thin films. Various hydrophilic polymers were selected as the focus of this investigation on the basis of their crystallinity, degree of hydrophilicity, and polymer charge. Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVOH) is a semicrystalline polymer that exists in various degrees of hydrolysis corresponding to varying hydrophilicities. PVOH 99%H (more hydrophilic and crystalline) and PVOH 88%H (more hydrophobic and less crystalline) were studied in this work. Additionally, poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) and poly(allylamine hydrochloride) are two amorphous polyelectrolytes whose pH-tunable electrostatic charge and lack of crystallinity offer an insightful point of comparison to the neutral and crystalline PVOH polymers. Poly(sodium 4-styrenesulfonate) (PSS) is a polyanion bearing a permanent negative charge that was selected for this investigation to serve as a pH-resistant point of comparison as well as a slightly more hydrophobic water soluble polymer due to its styrene moiety. Poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) is a neutral and amorphous polymer, which makes it similar to PVOH except for its lack of crystallinity. This makes it possible to isolate the effects of crystallinity on the polymer deposition process.
Building on the research of previous lab members, a model for thin film formation that decouples total film thickness into a spontaneously deposited (h1) layer and a spin deposited (h2) layer was investigated in order to probe the relative contributions of polymer-substrate and polymer-polymer interactions, respectively, on thin film total thickness and stability. Static adsorption experiments were used to obtain h1 values for each polymer. These were then subtracted from the total thickness of the spin coated film of the corresponding polymer to determine the thickness of the h2 layer at various spin rates. Film morphologies under atomic force microscopy (AFM) were used to determine the stability of spin coated films. This information, combined with h1 and h2 values, allowed for an analysis of how the film formation process results in stability or lack thereof in the context of each polymer’s combination of properties.
PVOH 99%H, PVOH 88%H, and PVP spin coated on silicon wafer are stable systems, forming films that do not dewet at any spin rate. Meanwhile, PAA, PAH, PSS, and PAA- spin coated on a silicon substrate are metastable systems because they dewet at some or all spin rates. PVOH 88%H, PVP, and PAA- formed relatively thicker films at the highest spin rates, indicating the presence of a thicker h1 layer. In the case of PVOH 88%H and PVP, this was attributed to the hydrophobicity of the polymer. In the case of PAA-, this was attributed to the aggregates that formed upon titration of PAA with NaOH to produce PAA-. At the lower spin rates, PVOH 99%H and PVOH 88%H formed relatively thicker films, which is evidence of a thicker h2 layer. This was attributed to the crystallinity of the polymers and, in the case of PVOH 88%H which was the thickest film at the lowest spin rate, polymer hydrophobicity. PAA, PAH, PSS, and PAA- all yielded shallow spin curves that were thinner than the stable systems at all spin rates (except PVOH 99%H at the highest spin rate). This is indicative of both weak cohesive forces and weak adhesive forces. However, the dewetting observed for these four systems implies that the cohesive forces dominate over the adhesive forces. Only PAH and PSS had spin curve exponents near -0.5, predicted by the well-known Meyerhofer model. The other exponents ranged from -1.3 to -0.2. The h1 thicknesses obtained from static adsorption experiments did not align with what was expected based on the properties of each system and the spin coated thickness at the highest spin rates. Only PVP formed a significant h1 layer, and all polymers including PVP formed thinner h1 layers than anticipated. This discrepancy was attributed to the presence of a loosely bound layer within the h1 layer that was rinsed off during the rinse steps associated with the static adsorption procedure. Repeating static adsorption with fewer rinse steps using PAA and PAA- showed that reducing the number of rinse steps produced h1 layers more similar in thickness to the h1 thickness projected by spin coated film thickness at the highest spin rate.
The insights achieved through this work lay the foundation for future efforts to identify an experimental procedure that can produce h1 layers of reliable thickness. This will allow for a validation of the proposed decoupled thickness model. Additionally, this work has continued the ongoing effort to probe the effects of crystallinity, hydrophobicity, and electrostatic charge on adhesive and cohesive forces within polymer thin films. However, future work is still needed to explore some of the nuances of these polymer systems, particularly the apparent absence of hydrogen bonding as a driving force for polymer adhesion to the silicon substrate.Chemistr