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Sea and Storms: Decolonial Aesthetics and Poetics of Catastrophe in the Caribbean
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/0b1426a2-710e-4b07-aa5e-e74e5dd7c40f/thumb/128.jpgThe crossing of the Atlantic and the ‘middle passage’ is theorized by many Caribbean writers as constituting a “break within a continuous historical reality” –– a cataclysmic rupture (Ferdinand 133). In the first chapter, we look to the crossing of the Atlantic –– exploring the concept of the sea in Caribbean poetics and aesthetics as a repository of history, an ‘abyss’ where “stories, memories, battles, martyrs” are submerged in the ocean’s watery depths. This crossing of the sea represents the beginning of the Caribbean, the violent rupture of ‘historical reality’ and interruption of modernity and the ‘Anthropocene’ or ‘plantationcene’. The second chapter looks to the other side of this rupture, to what emerges in the wake of catastrophe in the Caribbean –– to the life that unfolds in the aftermath of the storm
Crystal in Motion: Dynamic Behavior in Crystalline Adamantane-Azopyridine Assemblies
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/40d155a3-0202-4719-a6e8-90ceb0c22726/thumb/128.jpgGlobal dependence on fossil fuel products is an enduring and pressing issue with deep implications in climate change and pollution. Not only are fossil fuels burned to produce energy and greenhouse gases, but energy is required in the form of distillation to process petroleum and liquid hydrocarbons into combustible products and chemical feedstocks. Because global dependence on fossil fuels is not projected to decrease substantially in the next 20 years, alternatives to distillation must be investigated. One promising avenue for non- thermal, selective separations is solid state host-guest chemistry. Chemical hosts, however, are not typically reusable and often require energy to remove guests from the hosting chemical. Host-guest systems that incorporate molecular machines, molecules with controllable motion under macroscopic stimuli, could potentially create atomic level leverage to release guest molecules. To this end, crystalline molecular machines known as amphidynamic crystals have been explored. This work reports the synthesis and characterization of three such molecules composed of a 4,4’-azopyridine molecular machine linker and adamantanecarboxylic acid derivative stators. Although no guest inclusion was observed, motion about the central azopyridine linker was inconsistent across samples. To rationalize differences in motion in the crystal lattice, morphological and chemical space analyses were performed, but did not yield any clear relationship. This work serves as a starting point for exploring relevant design parameters for amphidynamic crystals
Loving from the Outside-In: An Exploration of Autistic Forms of Love
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/254dd935-ad79-4687-8cbb-59edb2cacf78/thumb/128.jpgAutism Spectrum Disorder is characterized in large parts by deficits in empathy, interpersonal communication, and relationship skills. It is, in other words "a disorder of love" (Jack 2014). This auto-ethnography examines how Autistic love is conceived both in the popular imagination and by Autistic people themselves. The socio-historical development of autistic love is traced as a concept so as to determine its effects not only on popular conceptions, but on the experiences of autistic people themselves. While autistic forms of loving are marginalized and queered my normative conceptions of love, autistic people nevertheless voice both their rhetorical awareness of societal stereotypes, and the authenticity of their forms of loving
Leave Room for Community in my Coffee: Creating Social Capital in a Community Centered Café
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/92af123e-b07a-4ed1-a19a-b34d5da448ca/thumb/128.jpgSocial capital is a term coined by sociologists that represents cumulative social networks of individuals or groups to share information or resources. It has also been shown that social capital can be connected to space: third-places are spaces, other than home or work, where people can gather, interact, and form ties with others. However, sociologists have found that social capital and community in America has been in decline for decades, people are creating or strengthening fewer social ties less often than before. While cafés are a notable example of a third-place, research shows that coffee shops are losing their ability to facilitate the formation of social ties between individuals that occupy its space due to factors and behaviors coming from both coffee houses and their patrons. Yet in these conditions, some cafés are specifically focusing on creating community within their stores. Favela Brazilian Café in Portland, Oregon is one such example. This research employs ethnographic qualitative methods to explore the reasons why a coffee shop may focus on creating community and how it attempts to do so. The key findings of this research show that a café can create social interactions if it was formed first and foremost to build social connections rather than a place to sell coffee; they achieve this by converting cultural engagement into social capital via hosting social events and the encouragement of public participation by its owners. These results can give a glimpse into how people are creating social capital in the face of a lack of public engagement
Hiding in plain sight: Validation of an urban climate refugium for Thuja plicata (western redcedar) in Portland, OR
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/0f771805-6322-46f3-b62b-6f8b85387e47/thumb/128.jpgIncreased temperatures and drought are driving elevated rates of tree mortality globally and increasingly in the carbon dense conifer forests of the Pacific Northwest. However, climate change impacts on forest trees may be less pronounced in sites with persistent water supplies, i.e. hydrologic refugia. Within the American Pacific Northwest, western redcedar (Thuja plicata) is a culturally and economically important species that has experienced recent dieback due to exacerbated drought and heat stress and may be especially vulnerable in warm, dry urban sites that are subject to the urban heat island effect. The extent to which potential hydrologic refugia in urban environments, such as local urban wetland and riparian habitats, might be able to protect T. plicata from worsening regional drought conditions and heat waves has yet to be evaluated. I investigated an urban wetland/riparian natural area as a potential hydrologic refugium for T. plicata on the campus of Reed College, in Portland, OR. The small forested natural area (i.e. the Reed Canyon) is perennially fed by a large natural spring and sits in a local topographic depression, both features of hydrologic refugia in other systems. To see if T. plicata trees in this relatively mesic habitat were buffered from regional drought conditions, I compared predawn and midday leaf water potential (Ψw), CO2 assimilation (A) and temperature optimum from Reed Canyon's trees to those in warmer, drier urban sites, as well as rural forested areas (i.e. outside the urban heat island effect). I found that T. plicata trees in the Reed Canyon exhibit a level of tissue water status (Ψw) and photosynthetic activity (A) that are more similar to rural trees than to those in other urban sites. This suggests that the trees in the Reed Canyon may have increased access to soil moisture, reduced stress, and mortality risk from regional drought conditions, despite exposure to the urban heat island effect. This also suggests that trees in the Reed Canyon may be better able to persist under worsening regional drought conditions, compared to other urban trees
Who Speaks for the Trees: Place Attachment and Environment Identity in the Pacific Northwest Forest Industry
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/c86908a9-05d2-4c0b-b514-e61f0a668b17/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis explores how foresters in the Pacific Northwest engage with place- specific attachments and meanings in navigating environmental discourse. In the light of the complex environmental terrain in the Pacific Northwest, I assess how foresters construct and justify their valuations of the natural environment. Primarily proceeding from scholarship on rural identity and place-attachment, I conduct an in-depth analysis of how foresters legitimate their claims to the forest, revealing what they hold to be valuable in environmental debates. Principally, I find that foresters use the depth of their utilitarian attachments to Oregon forests to give credibility to their opposition to environmental regulations. Foresters draw upon populist frames and arguments drawn by timber lobbyists and intersperse these greater frames with their own deeper moral values and attachments. This thesis contends that foresters simultaneously engage with inherited frames and bring their own personal meanings into environmental debate. I argue that understanding physical relationships to the land, as both a way for foresters to demonstrate their knowledge on environmental issues, as well as a determinant in how environmental valuations are constructed, is an important analytical asset in environmental sociology
Kahzdan-Lusztig Polynomials on Matroids
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/33cbd7f4-2991-412e-8d94-520c93905889/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis investigates the log-concavity of Kazhdan-Lusztig (KL) polynomials in the context of matroids, exploring the connection to combinatorial Hodge theory. We first review the theory of KL-polynomials and their recursive definition in relation to characteristic polynomials. Our primary focus is on a specific class of graphic matroids. We compute the KL-polynomials for matroids in this class, specifically for this class of graphs, and conjecture a simplified form for the coefficients of these polynomials. The main result of our study is a formula that characterizes the KL-polynomial for a certain class of graphs based on deletion-contraction, with a correction term. Our work contributes to the ongoing investigation of the log-concavity conjecture for KL-polynomials of matroids and offers suggestions for future research directions
Reformed, not Abolished: The Forced Labor of Native Americans in California
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/7c86bc95-ba3b-44e9-8f20-0ffa023a1a7a/thumb/128.jpgThe utilization of forced labor from Native Californians was something taken advantage of by members of the Spanish, Mexican, and American governments for about a century in the modern American State of California. From its establishment in the grounds of the Spanish missions in 1769 to its final form in the gold fields of the California gold rush in the early 1870’s, forced Indian labor in the region of California had been vital to the establishment of settlements and generation of profit for the non Native population. Through its decades of existence there was a significant shift in how Indian labor was exploited, with there being refinements and expansions over the years for it to meet legal codes and apply to different situations and industries in the region
UnCarted Waters: Urbanity, Political Power, and the Future of the Food Carts in Portland, Oregon
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/5998a3d8-8476-472a-8c91-38aa33e45b01/thumb/128.jpgFood carts are a novel facet of the extraordinary food scene of Portland, Oregon. These unconventional vendors, operating in semi-mobile metal hulls referred to as carts, are fundamental to the gastronomic identity that Portland has cultivated, particularly since the 2000s. Despite their popularity, the food carts face daunting challenges as the city changes beneath their wheels. Between the new regulations that have garnered significant press attention for their impact on food cart operators and creeping urban development that threatens the very space the food carts inhabit, food carts must navigate a complicated political and economic environment. As an industry, the food carts of Portland have failed to organize and leverage their political power into a friendly regulatory environment or for access to government resources. The lack of widespread membership to a central organizing body for the food cart industry hints at the larger struggles of food cart operators in Portland. In exploring the unique plight of the food carts, broader societal tensions between the city and its citizens, the public and urban space, and development and equity become more salient
A Non-Field-Theoretical Evaluation to the Point Charge Electrodynamics in Compact Extra Dimension - Potential, Bound States and Self-Forcing
No full texthttps://rdc.reed.edu/v1/resources/b562a9d1-b835-4a95-837a-2f01d05cfc47/thumb/128.jpgThis thesis examines the electrodynamics associated with a point-charge in four spatial dimensions with one of the dimensions compact using the method of images. We calculated the potential of a static point charge in this space and built a hydrogenic potential that approaches the Coulomb potential for hydrogen in three spatial dimensions in the faraway limit. Confining the electron to the same “3D plane” with the proton, we took a classical and a quantum mechanical approach to evaluate the ground state of the potential and developed a numerical test to verify the existence of the ground state. According to the test, there exists a critical value at around a0/12 ± a0/60, where a0 is the Bohr radius, such that the ground state only exists when the radius of the compact dimension is smaller than this value. We also looked at the self-forcing of the system when the point charge moves in a non-compact dimension and compared it with the radiation reaction force in three spatial dimensions. I also included an inspirational story in italics to guide you through this paper