Reed Digital Collections (Reed College)
Not a member yet
8045 research outputs found
Sort by
American Theodicy: Blood Meridian and the Problem of Violence
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/2cc0a622-0675-4639-b456-fc51f94309b8/thumb/128.jpgThis work is an extensive analysis of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian; or, the Evening Redness in the West arguing for the centrality of violence, religion, and the question of theodicy in interpreting this novel, with any such interpretation needing to recognize and engage with the text’s deliberate dialogue with the reader to seek the meaning of and answers to these deeply interrelated themes. The work of Umberto Eco, René Girard, Georges Bataille, Simone Weil, and many McCarthy scholars are all incorporated into a specific interpretation of the role of violence and its relationship to religion in the text. That being that the novel’s central aim is revealing the destruction of human subjectivity inherent to violence and deconstructing the ways in which violence supplants religion in its mythologization and justification in both American and Western literary/cultural history. The novel does not stop here, however, as it also offers a perceptible model of resistance to violence grounded in meaning-making, which I argue is most effectively elaborated by explicitly religious and Christian paradigms, such as the thought of W.H Vanstone, John Milbank, Michel de Certeau, and the Christian tradition, especially the Gospels, more broadly. Finally, the question of theodicy that looms across the text’s in-vestigation of violence and the religious response to it is renegotiated with the work of Augustine, Boethius, and Irenaeus, concluding that the responsibility for violence is firmly placed in the exercise of human free will
Turbulent Flow: The Role of State Capacity in Transboundary Hydropolitics
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/e6e49293-6379-4f79-aa6a-aa003c7b6e0d/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis assesses the relationship between relative state capacity and the outcome of conflict and cooperation in a hydropolitical context. Hydropolitics is the study of how political actors, both domestically and internationally, manage water resources and respond to water scarcities. I focus on interstate relations over transboundary rivers, rivers that cross at least one international boundary or border. I argue that a difference in state capacity will induce cooperation in a bilateral situation. In the presence of a weaker state, the strong nation can wield the technical and administrative capacity necessary for negotiations. Similarly, two strong states can cooperate because of both of their capacities to negotiate and implement agreement conditions through strong public institutions. Conversely, two weak states will likely engage in prolonged conflict due to neither having the capacity nor institutions in place to negotiate and enforce an agreement. This lack of state capacity combined with competing national interests will render both parties unequipped to manage conflict. I examine the cases of India & Bangladesh, the US & Canada, and Egypt & Ethiopia by recounting a history of their water disputes and identifying the factors that led to cooperation or conflict
Love Your Mother (Earth): Eco-Anxiety and Perinatal Mental Health
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/2509bae1-eaad-433d-b903-6af278d49b80/thumb/128.jpgClimate change is an escalating global crisis with profound physical and psychological consequences. Individuals in the perinatal period may be especially susceptible to the mental health impacts of climate change, including heightened stress and anxiety. Eco-anxiety refers to anxiety about climate change and other environmental disasters. Previous research suggests that indirect exposure to climate change—such as through news media or educational content—can amplify eco-anxiety. The present study explored the relationships among eco-anxiety, perinatal anxiety, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and news media consumption. Two groups of participants were recruited: perinatal (n = 36) and non-perinatal (n = 83), resulting in a total of 119 participants. Findings revealed significant correlations between GAD and both perinatal anxiety and eco-anxiety. No significant relationship between eco-anxiety and perinatal anxiety was found. Perinatal participants reported higher levels of eco-anxiety than non-perinatal participants, whereas non-perinatal participants reported higher levels of GAD. High general news media consumption was negatively associated with eco-anxiety, but this effect was reversed when the news consumed focused on climate change. These findings contribute to a growing movement in psychological research examining the impacts of climate change on mental health
Exploring Individual Differences in the Information Preferences of Rats
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/a30e670f-efc4-46c8-b64e-e759c9d1b1bb/thumb/128.jpgInformation reduces uncertainty, allowing decision-makers to optimize their actions for the best possible outcome. However, when information becomes available after the window for action has closed, many animals still seek it, even at a cost. When trained to choose between two levers, one that signals the outcome of a trial via one of two tones and is rarely rewarded, versus another lever that plays the same tone regardless of trial outcome and is more frequently rewarded, rats choose the informative option at a frequency based on their unique preference. When the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is inhibited, this preference is destabilized, and rats choose stochastically between the two options. These individual-level differences in information preference were hypothesized to be the product of anxiety, which reduces tolerance to uncertainty by amplifying the perceived threat of negative outcomes. To test this, rats were surgically treated with bilateral inhibitory Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs (DREADDs). The ability of each rat’s level of anxiety-like behavior to predict its information preference was tested with and without ACC inhibition. Contrary to the hypothesis, the results reveal a negative predictive relationship between anxiety-like behavior and information preference. Two possible mediating traits are discussed: comfort with risk and curiosity
Still Life with Warm Beer and Cold Regards
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/e3e5f085-390c-42a3-85ca-af67fa872917/thumb/128.jpgThis paper is a supplementary document to a series of paintings I have done within the past year. The paintings and the writings are an attempt to identify and portray a strand of Americana, possible meanings of Americana itself, and how to reconcile traditions (i.e. art, music, literature) through time. Drawing from a deep and wide well of culture, such as Dutch still life painting, 20th century folk music, film, and mid-century photorealist art, my work explores the living mythology of America, masculine identities drawn from said mythology, as well as urban, suburban, and rural relationships, specifically of the Western region of the United States. Much of the project has to do with base functions like looking, seeing, and being seen; that is, representation as a whole. There is an overall emphasis on the psychological and emotional experiences of the figures and happenings, where I negotiate a balance between archetype and arbitrary. I do so not with the hope of answering questions or making claims, but on the contrary, to spark inquiry in the viewer; to reiterate what has been looked at but not fully seen in stillness
Enacting Debater: Style-Shift(ing) Practices in High School Competitive Deba/t/e
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/2142d288-af87-4af6-a421-21511fea783a/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis investigates the style-shifting practices (Eckert 2004; Schilling- Estes 2013) of high school competitive debaters and examines how debaters’ linguistic practices shape and are shaped by their conception of the social organization of the debate community of practice (Bucholtz 1999; Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 2003) and their position within it. Specifically, I interrogate the relationship between an ideologized Debater persona (D’Onofrio 2020) and broad social variables of gender and class. To that end, I recruited a sample of six students who participate in Public Forum debate at a high school in Portland. With each participant, I recorded a debate round and conducted a follow-up sociolinguistic interview (Labov 1984; Tagliamonte 2006) to elicit naturalistic speech and metalinguistic commentary. Acoustic analysis confirmed that the debaters performed a significant style shift, such that in the debate rounds, participants released word-final /t/ (D’Onofrio & Stecker 2022) at higher rates and increased their overall pitch (Esposito & Gratton 2022) and pitch variation (Podesva 2007) compared to the sociolinguistic interviews. I argue that the debaters are drawing on features from multiple circulating styles to accomplish different interactional goals (D’Onofrio & Stecker 2022), making reference to ideologies of hyperstandardness to present themselves as intelligent, articulate, and confident (Bucholtz 1999, 2001; Eckert 2008), but also evoking and repurposing ideologies of gendered ways of speaking to present themselves as passionate and emotionally invested (Lakoff 1973; Podesva 2007). Through this process of bricolage (Eckert 2004), debaters contribute to the creation and evolution of the Debater persona and its associated linguistic style. These results support a theoretical focus within linguistics on local constructions of identity within communities of practice
Sex Steroid Hormone Dynamics Impact Duration of Acoustic Preferences in Female Xenopus laevis
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/b8fbd845-fc94-4adf-8dae-7917318a82f1/thumb/128.jpgThe courtship signaling modality male African clawed anurans (Xenopus)use in an attempt to attract their potential female mate is auditory. There are many species within the Xenopus genus, however the current study focuses on X. laevis and X. petersii. These two species are closely related, nevertheless, females from these species discriminately prefer the advertisement calls of males belonging to their own species (conspecifics). In the context of the current study, this preference was exhibited by ovulating female X. laevis. Female X. laevis were treated with hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) to induce ovulation in order to establish baseline sexual receptivity. Female X. laevis oocyte maturation which occurs during ovulation is thought to be driven by androgens. Further, while estrogen does not drive oocyte maturation, it is one of the prominent gonadal hormones in the ovaries of ovulating female X. laevis. Because the preferences towards conspecific advertisement calls were observed during ovulation, I hypothesized that the sex steroid hormones which are prevalent during ovulation, like androgens and estrogen, also drive the mating behavior of female X. laevis. I used anti-androgenic and anti-estrogenic drugs, flutamide and tamoxifen, to manipulate levels of active androgens and estrogen receptors, respectively. After subjects were treated with hCG and flutamide or tamoxifen, they were exposed to advertisement calls from X. laevis or X. petersii males for 48 hours to allow for an investigation of how acoustic preferences are impacted by gonadal hormones. Flutamide treated subjects seem to exhibit a decreased duration in their preference for conspecific advertisement calls and although tamoxifen subjects show a similar trend, they also show a renewed preference for aforementioned calls in the last 12 hours. These results support the hypothesis that sex steroid hormones may influence acoustic preference behaviors of ovulating female X. laevis
Profane TempleOS
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/83efb0b3-f5c0-4a94-9774-c48559f7f901/thumb/128.jpgComputer operating systems are the site and product of worship for modern mass religion. I will demonstrate how the unusual, biblically-themed computer operating system TempleOS deconstructs this relationship and gives its users new weapons for understanding literature and the world – by employing programming language to form a relationship between man and God where the computer user occupies both roles, i.e. is God and also subject to God. The focus of my research is how the relationship we have with literature is altered by a relationship with personal computer operating systems. The basic idea of a computer operating system is to provide a user with the means to run computer programs. We write documents, convert them to PDFs, email them and publish them through a series of programs – we play videogames, browse Wikipedia and library materials, etc. In an operating system like Mac OSX or Windows, most of these user programs are enclosed within a ‘window’ that lies flat on some kind of surface or desktop. The first chapter discusses personal computer operating systems and TempleOS. The second discusses cinematic attractions and surfaces as a bridge to thinking about the relationship between the personal computer and literature, leading into a final analysis that uses TempleOS emphasize the role of practice in our interactions with literature through our personal computers
Why You Actin’ Like That: Examining the Bidirectional Relationship between Acting White Accusation on Ethnic Racial Identity Development and Socialization Among Black/African American College Students
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/57f69551-2de0-455f-9b6b-4b96b3fd15f0/thumb/128.jpgActing White Accusations (AWA) are cultural invalidations that occur when Black/African Americans are criticized for engaging in behavior that is stereotypically associated with “Whiteness”. These accusations challenge the individual's ethnic-racial authenticity, disrupt ethnic-racial identity (ERI) development and have been linked to negative psychological outcomes. The present study examined the bidirectional relationship between AWA and ERI development and the role of socialization among Black/African American college students at predominantly White institutions. Seven Black/African American college students participated in interviews exploring their experiences with AWA across developmental stages. Thematic analysis revealed that AWA often disrupted participants’ sense of authenticity and belonging, particularly in the absence of positive racial socialization. However, some viewed AWA as a catalyst for deeper self-reflection and identity growth. Moreover, positive racial socialization and community support can serve as a protective buffer. These results highlight the complex, directional relationship between AWA and ERI development in Black/African American college students
Tagged and Bagged: Purifying MeeF and MeeY TerC Proteins Using an Atypical Resin-Teabag Method
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/0bdf3b95-63bc-4740-9c57-6ce3577de470/thumb/128.jpgThe TerC family of proteins are only vaguely understood in terms of their function and structure; however, there are current studies that are slowly progressing towards a more complete understanding of its potential roles within the cell. Transmembrane proteins, like TerC, are important to understand due to their potential functions for cell communications and intracellular maintenance. However, these transmembrane proteins are difficult to purify. Laboratories have still been able to purify and study these proteins and probe their function as potential manganese regulators within the cell. In the laboratory of Dr. John Helmann at Cornell University, he was able to determine that TerC proteins may act as manganese regulators through observing the TerC homologues YceF (MeeF) and YkoY (MeeY) proteins and their impact on cell growth and ability to regulate manganese within the cell. The work was all carried out in vivo, with no structural or biological characterizations of the proteins themselves. To further characterize and identify an optimized protocol for these difficult to purify proteins, I aimed to use an uncommon resin “teabag” method to purify the proteins more efficiently than with a more traditional, gravity-flow column purification. I was able to find that the “teabag” method was successful and able to produce purer protein products through the confirmation of FPLC. Unfortunately, using SDS-Page, it is still unclear if I was able to purify the proteins of interest due to experimental errors that produced less concentrated products