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Propaganda y progreso: el rol paradójico de la magia en la España premoderna
No full textLa magia tiene varios roles diferentes en la literatura española premoderna. A causa de las connotaciones pecaminosas de la magia, frecuentemente se usa para discriminar contra un grupo subalterno, como en la obra de teatro El niño inocente de La Guardia de Lope de Vega. Se ve que esta forma de discriminación difunde y apoya la anxiety of sameness definida por Christina Lee. La anxiety of sameness es el temor de los nobles de ser infiltrados por los no nobles, incluyendo a los judíos, los moriscos y los de la clase baja. Pero, como se ve en esta tesis, la anxiety of sameness puede resultar en cualquier relación entre un grupo dominante y un grupo dominado.
Aunque la magia funciona a veces para apoyar la anxiety of sameness, se puede usar para criticar la anxiety of sameness también. En este trabajo vemos que la representación de la magia en tres otras obras premodernas—La Celestina de Fernando de Rojas, El Conde Lucanor de don Juan Manuel, y El retablo de las maravillas de Miguel de Cervantes—realmente critica la anxiety of sameness. Además de criticar la anxiety of sameness, estas obras desarrollan una mejor definición de la anxiety of sameness y enseñan lo amplio que es.
Pressure through Economics: Assessing the Effectiveness of US Policy across Shifting Geopolitical Contexts
No full textWhile some US policymakers argue that economic sanctions always work and continue to use them as a key foreign policy tool, and while some other scholars argue that sanctions never work, this thesis focuses on when, not if, sanctions work. Contextualizing a discussion of the effectiveness of sanctioning undemocratic regimes in the Middle East and North Africa around the early 2000s shift away from US hegemony back to multipolarity, I conclude that the rise of Russia, China, and smaller states in the early 2000s affected the process through which the US is able to sanction adversarial regimes. Through an analysis of six case studies, I show that pressure to adopt political reforms more favorable to the US through economic sanctions alone has not been successful regardless of global power dynamics. Although such sanctions consistently have limited success, the end of unipolarity gave previously less powerful states room to not only oppose but actively work against US sanctions regimes. The governments of Sudan, Syria, and Iran were given more opportunities to work around US sanctions legally through access to markets in other states. This ability of US adversaries to affect its sanctions regimes alters the costs imposed on the states targeted by sanctions and makes it more likely that the US will act alone in its imposition of sanctions. In a multipolar world, as opposed to a unipolar one under US hegemony, the US will encounter not only more difficulty in garnering international support for its policies, but also more difficultly in bringing about lasting change in the states it sanctions
Diversity, Bias, and Student Outcomes
No full textThis paper examines how racially-motivated bias incidents relate to college students’ academic outcomes, and how this relationship differs across race. There is evidence that students’ academic outcomes are negatively impacted by bias, particularly among marginalized groups. This could have severe impacts on equality, overall student success, and future outcomes. I use Colby College student-level data to analyze the effects of bias incidents on both changes in individuals’ GPAs, and differences in probability of retention across individuals. I analyze the effects of one severe bias incident in the Spring of 2009, and the effects of several bias incidents which occurred over the span of 16 years. I find that the 2009 incident relates to significant declines in students’ GPAs, and small potential declines in the probability of retention. The correlation between multiple isolated incidents and semester GPAs is largely insignificant; however, there is evidence that multiple incidents are related to lower probability of retention, and students’ final GPAs decline significantly as they experience a larger number of incidents. As the Spring of 2009 followed two other bias incidents directly, this may suggest that while students are resilient to isolated incidents, an accumulation of several severe bias incidents may have severe, negative effects on academic outcomes
Effects of Energy Resolution and Bin Size on the Measurements of Nuclear Neutron Distributions Using Coherent Elastic Neutrino-nucleus Scattering
No full textCoherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering is a process that involves the neutral-current scattering of a neutrino with an entire nucleus, which probes more bulk properties of the nucleus. Using the Taylor expansion of the form factors and calculation of effective moments that sums over isotopes, we successfully simulate the events for coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering for detectors using Ar and Ge and demonstrate that coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering can determine both the second moment and the fourth moment. Running the Monte Carlo simulation using a detector filled with 10 tonnes of natural germanium, a neutrino flux of 3*10^7 neutrinos per second per cm squared, and a bin size of 5 keV, we demonstrate that the neutron radii can be determined with less than 1% uncertainty if the detector efficiency remains constant and that a lower energy threshold can lead to a more accurate result
Food System Resilience in the Face of COVID-19: A Study of Maine’s Food Sovereignty Movement
No full textAs the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities in the United States’ industrialized food system, the need for a more resilient alternative is stronger than ever. In Maine, food sovereignty - the right of people to determine their own food system - has been enacted at the local level through the adoption of the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance (LFCSGO). Using unstructured interviews with leaders of Maine’s food sovereignty movement conducted prior to the pandemic, this study aims to link food sovereignty in Maine to the concept of food system resilience. Participants defined food sovereignty specifically in relation to the LFCSGO and they emphasized its implications for food safety, community development, and local democracy. The vision promoted by Maine’s food sovereignty movement connects directly to discussions of food system resilience in existing scholarship, as well as to responses to food system failures during the pandemic. Ultimately, food sovereignty presents a potential path to increased food system resilience in Maine, in the face of both the current crisis and the ongoing threat of global climate change