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The Tragedy of Nationalism
No full textThesis advisor: Elizabeth ShlalaEveryone looks at the transition out of the imperial age in the 1800s as a massive leap of progress for humanity. While the end of the Age of Imperialism definitely came with many advancements, the nationalist age that followed was not as harmonious or just as it sometimes portrayed. Especially in nations that did not have full control of their rapid transitions (ie. Germany and Turkey), this evolution into an 'Age of Nationalism' was anything but peaceful. But why is it that nationalism can be so easily radicalized into violence? Why was the Wars and interwar period for Germany and Turkey so rife with instability, violence, persecution, and bigotry? Examining the patterns of homogenization, insulation, and stratification necessary to the birth of a nation out of an empire, this thesis seeks to understand just why and how radicalized nationalism can (and has) led to genocide.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: International Studies.Discipline: Departmental Honors
New Platforms to Diversify the Chemical Space of the Expanding Genetic Code:
No full textThesis advisor: Abhishek ChatterjeeGenetic code expansion (GCE) is an enabling technology whereby noncanonical amino acids (ncAAs) can be site-specifically incorporated into proteins of interest, allowing for vast applications and an improved understanding of structure-function relationships in biology. GCE stands out as a versatile platform due to the use of a variety of engineered aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (aaRS)/transfer RNA (tRNA) pairs, and it has endowed proteins with over 200 distinct ncAAs in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems. My dissertation outlines endeavors aimed at broadening the chemical diversity of α-amino side chains and substrates beyond α-amino acids in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms through the utilization of GCE technology. This was achieved by creating universal GCE platforms called altered translational machinery (ATM) strains, which eliminate the limitations of orthogonality for the evolution of aaRS/tRNA pairs. This expansion enables the use of the same aaRS/tRNA pair for ncAA incorporation functionalities into multiple domains of life. Moreover, the diversity of ncAAs that can be genetically encoded in eukaryotic cells was enhanced by evolving the E. coli leucyl-tRNA synthetase (EcLeuRS)/tRNA pair using a yeast-based selection system. This advancement facilitated the incorporation of novel ncAAs into proteins within mammalian cells. Additionally, I worked toward developing a platform for introducing monomers into the genetic code beyond α-amino acids. This involved developing an aaRS evolution platform that doesn't rely on translation as a selectable readout. Finally, I worked towards the creation of polyester-polyamide oligomers with sequence control as a step towards the goal of generating sequence-defined biopolymers with new-to-nature backbone chemistries.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Chemistry
Multispecies Communities: An Early Medieval Environmental History of Britain and Ireland, c. 600–1050 CE
No full textThesis advisor: Robin FlemingMy dissertation, “Multispecies Communities: An Early Medieval Environmental History of Britain and Ireland c. 600 to 1000 CE,” investigates invertebrates, plants, and non-humans as multispecies
communities, and my study reveals a way to understand how early medieval people understood and lived with their environments through their ecological material surroundings. This period witnessed
the economic and cultural shifts in post-Roman, northwestern Europe in Britain and Ireland, which resulted in the emergence of new types of rural settlements, towns, “productive sites,” and monastic
communities, all of which created a new ecological footprint. Our textual sources from this period are limited, and very few describe what settlements and houses during this shift looked like, so instead, we must rely on archaeological excavation to understand them. I work within the natureculture framework as formulated by ecofeminist Donna Haraway. Natureculture is defined as the entangling of nature and culture, something that happens when human and non-human agents move across species lines and live under and share the same ecological pressures. My dissertation asks how medieval people conceptualized themselves through bodily and household interactions when their day-to-day lives overlapped with invertebrates.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: History
Asian American Studies at California’s Public Universities: Strategies and Rhetoric of Asian American Student Activism in the Late 20th Century
No full textThesis advisor: Eddie BonillaThesis advisor: Emily Prud'hommeauxThe Asian American Movement began in the late 1960s, sparked by student activists in California looking to bring Asian American Studies to their universities. This thesis explores how the movement drew inspiration from the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam War protests and how it later influenced Asian American student activists at the University of California, Irvine in the 1990s. This thesis also uses computational linguistics and corpus linguistics techniques to analyze the rhetoric of Asian American student newspapers at UCLA from 1969-1974 and UC Irvine from 1991-1997. This quantitative data, combined with historical context, paints a picture of Asian American student activism that collaborates with other oppressed peoples, refutes the model minority myth, and drives change in their communities.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: History.Discipline: Scholar of the College
A Fire in My Belly: The Viral Legacy of a Controversial Film
No full textThesis advisor: Kevin LoteryA Fire in My Belly (A Work in Progress) was David Wojnarowicz’s large-scale film project that he undertook in the late 1980s. Filmed in three separate locations -- Mexico City, San Juan, and New York City -- A Fire in My Belly is divided into two different versions. Each film addresses themes regarding spirituality, violence, and control and makes up a total of 21 minutes of footage. Analyzing through both formalist and social art history lenses, this paper touches upon the function of analog film, how the medium led to A Fire in My Belly’s survival into the digital age, and its eventual connection to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. Furthermore, this paper analyzes Wojnarowicz’s filming style through his choice of zoom-in angles, collage-like editing, and provocative and gory imagery.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Morrissey School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Art, Art History, and Film
Pediatric Nurses and Preventable Adverse Event Disclosure: Building a Foundational Understanding
No full textThesis advisor: Jane FlanaganBackground: Preventable adverse events are an unfortunately frequent occurrence of pediatric health care. Disclosure of preventable adverse events to patients is a vital aspect of ethical and just practice. Pediatric nurses’ have a unique role as part of the clinical care team. Despite the prevalence of preventable adverse events and the impact of nurses, best practice for pediatric nurses during disclosure is not specified. In addition, it is unclear how pediatric patient and their family. This work provides a foundation for future nursing research and the development and identification of best practice for pediatric preventable adverse event disclosure.
Methods: First, thorough review of existing literature identified gaps and key themes. Secondly, a cross-sectional survey shared via social media provided insight into the current policy, education, and pediatric nurses’ involvement in PAE. Lastly, pediatric nurses’ perspectives were unveiled via narrative interviews, adding the voice of nurses into the dialogue.
Results: Pediatric nurses in the U.S. want the option to be present during disclosure to patients and their families. Currently, nurses are seldom present during disclosure and do not routinely receive disclosure training, nor do they have a policy to guide them through the process. While there has been a trend towards the use of interdisciplinary disclosure teams, it is unclear what role a nurse has.
Conclusions: This exploratory work is foundational to understanding pediatric nurses and PAE disclosure and future research exploring best practice for policy, education, and practice are needed.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing.Discipline: Nursing
Building Bridges: A Policy Case Study of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Ireland
No full textThesis advisor: Christopher R. GlassThe rising demand for higher education after secondary education has led to the massification of higher education systems worldwide. However, there is a growing debate about whether students graduate from universities with the skills needed for successful labor market integration and lifelong career adaptation. This qualitative study delves into Ireland's evolving Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) system, examining its current role within the larger context of tertiary education in Ireland and how it interacts with different sectors in the system. Employing an in-depth case study design, this research identified the factors that stakeholders consider during TVET policy development, the processes involved, and lessons learned from implementation across Irish institutions. The findings depict Ireland's tertiary system as complex and dynamic: it is characterized by participatory policymaking and frequent policy shifts, often transitioning between centralized and decentralized approaches, binary and unified structures, and fluctuating priorities between TVET and higher education. Notably, the absence of formal evaluation mechanisms s means policy development is often influenced by political actors and considerations rather than rigorous assessment. This tendency, alongside the complexities of stakeholder roles, regionalization challenges, and chronic TVET underfunding, contributes to persistent obstacles in the Irish tertiary system.These findings offer valuable insights for tertiary education systems, emphasizing the importance of coherent and articulated TVET policies throughout design and implementation. The research also contributes to the understanding of factors influencing public policy decisions. By expanding on the challenges faced by countries developing cohesive tertiary systems, this study aims to contribute to building more inclusive, equitable, and just societies.Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Teaching, Curriculum, and Society
Insurgent Culture: Strategy and Strategic Change in the Palestinian National Movement
Get PDFThesis advisor: Peter KrauseHow do insurgent organizations form their strategies? Existing scholarship focuses on either strategic effectiveness or the exogenous conditions that produce specific strategies; there is significantly less work on how insurgents select between strategies or how those choices iterate into strategic change over time. The theory of insurgent organizational culture posits strategic preferences are produced by organizational culture. A significant body of scholarship analyzes the effect of organizational culture on state militaries and private businesses, but there has not yet been a systematic treatment of organizational culture’s effect on non-state militant organizations, i.e., insurgents. These organizations exist in a state of uncertainty, and their search for information is a powerful driving factor in the formation and evolution of their strategy. But there are a multitude of sources an organization can pull information from. Insurgent organizations differ in how they prioritize these different sources of information and how easily they are moved to change tact by new information; respectively, their embeddedness and reactivity. These two variable qualities comprise constitute insurgent organizational culture, which determines how insurgents convert information into strategy and strategic change. I use the Palestinian National Movement to develop this theory and weigh it against alternative explanations, comparing the organizational culture of Fatah, the PFLP, and Hamas. Analysis of primary sources and original interviews with key figures in Palestinian politics demonstrates these three organizations vary significantly in their organizational culture, leading to radically different approaches to strategy even under similar conditions and pursuing similar goals. Insurgent organizational culture theory shows that insurgent strategy is produced in an iterative process of rational updating rooted in organizational culture’s different prioritization of information and impetus for action under uncertainty; in so doing, it can explain variation in insurgent strategy more precisely than purely rationalist theories.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Political Science
AMultimethod Approach to Understanding Emerging Adult and Parent Management of Congenital Heart Disease:
No full textThesis advisor: Christopher S. LeeBackground: Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most prevalent birth defect in the United States. Advances in treatment have changed CHD from what once was almost always a life-threatening condition to what is commonly a lifelong chronic condition. Up to 60% of adults with CHD experience large gaps in cardiology care during the transition from pediatric to adult specialty care. Effective CHD management in emerging adulthood maximizes lifelong potential, functioning and quality of life. Past research has failed to consider how emerging adults and their parents work together to manage CHD together as an interdependent team. Thus, there remains a dearth of information on how best to support emerging adults and their parents. Since CHD is a life-long diagnosis there is a critical need to understand the ways in which emerging adults and their parents as primary care partners engage in behavior to manage CHD together. This manuscript dissertation had an overarching goal to develop a deeper understanding of emerging adult and parent contributions to the management of CHD. Methods: First, an integrative review summarized and evaluated the evidence of published and peer-reviewed literature regarding parental perspective of the emerging adult with CHD. Next, a cross-sectional quantitative hypothesis-generating pilot study investigating emerging adult and parent contributions to management of CHD was conducted. And finally, an exploratory qualitative study was completed to describe health care team provider perspectives on the experience of emerging adults and their parents in managing CHD. Results: These three manuscripts have the key following results: 1) parents have concerns about their emerging adult children with CHD related to their future, independence in self-care of CHD, including health care system navigation, 2) there was a positive correlation between emerging adult and parent contributions to self-care (management, monitoring and maintenance) of CHD, and in the domain of navigating the health care system, there was a weak and negative correlation (the more an emerging adult does, the less the parent contributes), and 3) providers in health care teams report differences in both emerging adult and parent factors that impact management, and that self-care in emerging adults with CHD is critical with known health care system barriers that need assessment and improvement to support this population. Conclusion: The constellation of these findings from the dissertation and past work help fill critical knowledge and research gaps in emerging adult and parent/care partner contributions to management of CHD. These findings support the much-needed future work to inform clinical care, research, and policy for emerging adults with CHD and parents to further improve health and quality of life for this population.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing.Discipline: Nursing
TheMorphology of Slow-Slipping Oceanic Transform Faults on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge:
No full textThesis advisor: Mark D. BehnThe global mid ocean ridge system is segmented by transform faults and non-transform discontinuities. Oceanic transform faults display distinct morphology characterized by a deep valley and shallow transverse ridges on either side of the valley. Although the morphology of oceanic transform faults is known to first order, there is no consensus on the processes that form the transform valley and/or the adjacent transverse ridges. To date, most models of transform morphology attribute these features to either transform-normal extension or to shear stresses induced by slip along the fault. In this thesis, I compile bathymetric data along 16 major transform faults on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and identify the key morphological properties of each transform. Specifically, I estimate transform valley width, depth, and total relief measured from the valley floor to the adjacent transverse ridges. The strongest correlation is between the relief and maximum depth, but there is a weaker correlation between maximum depth and valley width. These morphologic properties are then compared to key fault parameters such as slip rate, fault-normal compression/extension rate, thermal area, and the seismic coupling ratio, which is defined as the fraction of total fault slip that occurs seismically. These comparisons are used to test models that describe mechanisms of the formation of the transform valley. The strongest correlation is between the fault thermal area and valley half width. This suggests that the width of the transform valley may be controlled by the shear stress applied to the fault as it slips. By contrast, the data are not consistent with a model in which the valley is created by extension across the fault, because our data show that the maximum transform valley depth increases with compression and not extension.Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2024.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences