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The “Humanitarian Mystique:” Tracing the Rhetoric and Politics of Aid in Southeast Asia from the Age of the Civilizing Mission to the Present
No full textIn contemporary Western popular culture, humanitarian action often serves as the ultimate expression of altruism, compassion, and moral obligation. This research historicizes humanitarianism to understand the assumptions that underlie its affective appeal. Oversimplified narratives of aid work frequently fail to acknowledge the historical and geopolitical context in which this work occurs. I argue that humanitarianism, as both a discursive tool and code of practice, makes visible some legacies of the ‘civilizing mission’ – the ideology used to justify colonialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An exercise in comparative history, this research consists of three spatially and temporally distinct case studies in Southeast Asia in the long twentieth century. After a brief survey of the literature of the civilizing mission and humanitarianism, the first case study examines the U.S. government’s response to an outbreak of cholera in the Philippine Islands in 1902. The following chapter, a Cold War era case study, investigates the work of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) along the Thai-Cambodian border in the 1980s. The final case study explores the U.S.Agency for International Development’s (USAID) response to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami in Indonesia. Studied comparatively and in context, these seemingly disparate cases illuminate fascinating, sometimes uncomfortable historical continuities. In exploring the humanitarian dimensions of civilizing and the civilizing dimensions of humanitarianism, I seek to demystify what historian Michael Adas terms the “humanitarian mystique” and to offer ways forward in a field of discourse chronically plagued by historical amnesia
Assessing a Two-Hit Model of Schizophrenia: Prenatal choline deficiency and induced hypofunction of NMDA receptors in male and female Long Evans rats
No full textCholine is an essential dietary nutrient essential to the development and function of the central nervous system. Prenatal choline deficiency alters hippocampal development as well as acetylcholine metabolism, leading to cognitive impairments and attentional and sensory processing deficits into adulthood. MK-801 is an NMDA receptor antagonist frequently used in rodent models of neuropsychiatric conditions, particularly schizophrenia. Acutely and sub- chronically, it causes hyperlocomotion and social withdrawal. One primary goal of the present study were to investigate prenatal choline deficiency induces a biological vulnerability to the motor deficits, anhedonia, and social impairment precipitated by low-dose sub-chronic MK-801 administration in adulthood. Another goal was to illustrate any sex differences that exist in response to this treatment. Using the saccharin preference task, we found that deficient-fed males administered MK-801 had a diminished preference during test 2, but the effects of drug and diet condition were inconsistent overall and across sex. In motor assessments immediately following injection with MK-801 or saline, males and females injected with MK-801 demonstrated motor impairment across three dimensions. Females sustained this level of impairment throughout the course of injections. Taken together, the results of this study suggest that prenatal choline deficiency may represent a vulnerability to MK-801 induced anhedonia in males. Females are also affected to a greater degree by this neurotoxic treatment, as indicated by motor responses to acute and sub-chronic administration. This research contributes to the existing body of research investigating the effect of prenatal choline availability and pharmaceutical treatment on the expression of symptoms relevant to schizophrenia
Finding Obscure Black Hole Growth via Spectral Energy Distribution Modeling
Get PDFAn active galactic nucleus (AGN) occurs when the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy starts to grow. We still currently do not know what triggers AGN. Theories suggest that galaxy mergers could trigger AGNs, but past research has not been able to find a correlation between x-ray detected AGNs and disturbed galaxies. The present research looks specifically at AGN not detected in the x-ray, or obscured AGN. Using a newly updated IDL code, FAST, we were able to identify potential obscured AGN through spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling. We found a total of 526 obscured AGN in all CANDELS fields, all with the following properties: mass greater than 1010 Msolar, redshifts between 0.5 and 1.5, and a magnitude brighter than 24.5. Using visual classification, galaxies were labeled as either disturbed or undisturbed. Then using a simple binomial distribution, we found a slightly significant difference (σ = 2.18) between obscured AGN and a control group. In conclusion, we found that obscured AGN were slightly more disturbed than their non-AGN counterparts
The Colby Echo (February 28, 2019)
No full textPublished by the students of Colby College since 1877, The Colby Echo is the weekly, editorially independent student-run newspaper of Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Published monthly, 1877-1886; semi-monthly, 1886-1897; and weekly, during the academic year, 1898-present
The Colby Echo (October 10, 2019)
No full textPublished by the students of Colby College since 1877, The Colby Echo is the weekly, editorially independent student-run newspaper of Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Published monthly, 1877-1886; semi-monthly, 1886-1897; and weekly, during the academic year, 1898-present.
