3948 research outputs found
Sort by
Charismatic Christ, Charismatic Church: The Development of the Gratia Gratis Data in Thomas Aquinas’s Theology in Light of the Summa Halensis
No full textThesis advisor: Boyd Taylor CoolmanThis dissertation investigates Thomas Aquinas’s understanding of the charisms (gratiae gratis datae) as distinctly social or ecclesial graces in light of his critical engagement with the Franciscan Summa Halensis. It first looks at the Summa Halensis’s christology and theology of the charisms to show the theological inseparability of charismatic grace from the threefold grace of Christ (the grace of union, capital grace, and the grace of the singular man). I then trace the development of Aquinas’s understanding of Christ’s humanity (in terms of the grace of Christ’s humanity) as a conjoined instrument of the Word and show how at every step Aquinas critically engaged the christology of the Summa Halensis. I bring that historical development in christology and its application to the sacraments to bear on Aquinas’s understanding of the charisms as social or ecclesial graces, graces given to one person for the sake of another’s salvation. Instrumental causality provided Aquinas a new conceptual framework with which to understand what it might mean for the charisms to be social graces, placing the charisms within a wider array of created causal agents in the economy of grace. I place this development within the context of the rise of Joachite prophecy as well as the secular/mendicant conflict at Paris, factors that motivated Aquinas to conceive these graces as distinctly mendicant charisms. Just as the development of instrumental causality in Christology propelled Aquinas’s understanding of charisms as social graces, so this application of instrumental causality reciprocally informed Aquinas’s account of the charismatic Christ in the Tertia Pars of the Summa Theologiae.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Theology
My Body, My Post: Emerging Adult Women and Presentation of Body and Sexuality on Social Networking Sites
Get PDFThesis advisor: Usha Tummala-NarraWomen receive many contradictory messages about what their bodies should look like and how they should behave. These messages necessarily impact how women are socialized to use social media and how they engage with online platforms. Little attention has been paid to the impact of these mixed messages on women’s self-concept and social engagement online, or to the mental health and social consequences of these interactions. The present study, guided by Objectification Theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) and Relational Cultural Theory (Miller, 1976), intended to gain a deeper understanding of how emerging adult women understand the messages they receive about their bodies and what they should be used for and how these messages influence their relational behaviors online. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 women (ages 19-25), focusing on messages concerning expectations of women’s bodies and sexuality, performance of body and sexuality in social media spaces, social media activism, and social interactions online. Conventional content analysis was used to examine the interviews. Interview data revealed multiple themes, composing four broad domains: (1) expectations of women; (2) social media curation; (3) mental health and social effects of social media use; and (4) activism and advocacy. Notions about how women wanted to perform their identities online were shaped by several factors, including aspirational goals for self-love and body acceptance, an interest in portraying themselves authentically and in the best possible light, and a desire to be part of a movement of social change. The study underscores the impact of social media in individual functioning and wellbeing and reveals deep-seated conflict that women face in integrating messages about who they should be with performance of their own identities. This study highlights the need for situationally responsive clinical practice, intervention, and future research.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology
Supporting Science Teacher Learning in Curriculum-Based Professional Development:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Katherine L. McNeillScience education is shifting from a vision of students memorizing facts towards engaging in figuring out the natural world as students build ideas from their own experiences and backgrounds. This shift is hard for teachers. One way to support teachers is curriculum-based professional development, which pairs high-quality instructional materials with professional development to help teachers understand the philosophy of those materials and what that looks like in practice. This three-paper dissertation uses the OpenSciEd middle school field test, a curriculum-based professional development program, as a context to investigate how to support teachers with this shift. The first paper is a quantitative look at teacher surveys taken across the first two years of the OpenSciEd field test. I tracked changes in teachers’ beliefs about science instruction and confidence in implementing OpenSciEd. I used Hierarchical Linear Modeling to identify teacher characteristics associated with differences in those changes. Beliefs and confidence changed initially and leveled out over time, but confidence took longer to change than beliefs. Teachers who had more experience and found the PD more valuable were less likely to hold traditional beliefs and more likely to have higher confidence.
The second paper is a conceptual look at practice-based professional development activities focused on one new one: the student hat. Student hat is when teachers engage in science activities while considering ideas and experiences their students might bring to them and sharing those ideas using students’ language. Student hat uniquely helps teachers to consider students’ relationship to the science ideas under discussion and their cognitive and affective responses to reform science instruction.
The third paper is a qualitative look at the use of the student hat in one professional development workshop. I engaged in thematic analysis of interviews and video to determine what student hat helped teachers to learn and how. Student hat provided safety for teacher confusion, allowing teachers to learn science ideas. It also helped teachers develop their epistemic empathy for students, helping them to learn about their students and the OpenSciEd instructional approach.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction
On applications of Khovanov homology:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Julia Elisenda GrigsbyIn 1999, Khovanov constructed a combinatorial categorification of the Jones polynomial. Since then there has been a question of to what extent the topology of a link is reflected in his homology theory and how Khovanov homology can be used for topological applications. This dissertation compiles some of the authors contributions to these avenues of mathematical inquiry.
In the first chapter, we prove that for a fixed braid index there are only finitely many possible shapes of the annular Rasmussen invariant of braid closures. Focusing on the case of 3-braids, we compute the Rasmussen -invariant and the annular Rasmussen invariant of all 3-braid closures. As a corollary, we show that the vanishing/non-vanishing of the invariant is entirely determined by the -invariant and the self-linking number for 3-braid closures.
In the second chapter, we show if is any link in whose Khovanov homology is isomorphic to the Khovanov homology of then is isotopic to . We show this for unreduced Khovanov homology with coefficients.
Finally in the third chapter, we exhibit infinite families of annular links for which the maximum non-zero annular Khovanov grading grows infinitely large but the maximum non-zero annular Floer-theoretic gradings are bounded. We also show this phenomenon exists at the decategorified level for some of the infinite families. Our computations provide further evidence for the wrapping conjecture of Hoste-Przytycki and its categorified analogue. Additionally, we show that certain satellite operations cannot be used to construct counterexamples to the categorified wrapping conjecture.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Mathematics
Sights and signs of transdisciplinarity: Disrupting disciplines through art and science inquiry
Get PDFThesis advisor: Jon M. WargoRecent critical literature on science and art education highlights a shift from engagement with disciplinary canons toward expansive, equity-oriented disciplinarity. Efforts to integrate the science and art disciplines, especially under the acronym STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math), have not sufficiently engaged with such within-discipline critique. Left unchallenged, proposals for disciplinary integration cannot meet the transformative potential to which they aspire. Therefore, this 3-paper dissertation adopts an anti-colonial lens to explore conceptualizations of art and science inter- and transdisciplinarity as a collection of interconnected stories of disciplinary reimaginings. Drawing from multiple theories and methods, this dissertation aims to demonstrate the possibilities of transdisciplinarity conceptually, methodologically, practically, and personally. The first paper critically examines current discourse trends that mention transdisciplinarity efforts in K-12 schools, specifically in curricular activity that seeks to expand science learning through the arts. It offers a critique against flattened ways of being and knowing present in schooling and aims to put forward considerations for critical and creative transdisciplinary curriculum development. The second paper presents a vertical case study that investigates how the purposes of art and science transdisciplinarity are defined by multi-level actors: from the macro national and city policy level to that at the microlevel of an art and science museum. Using critical discourse analysis alongside Bakhtin’s concepts of centrifugal and centripetal forces, this study identifies how the purpose of transdisciplinary learning is reproduced and reimagined through discourse at multiple scales. Tensions arose in the pull of how transdisciplinarity was conceptualized, particularly between board members and staff who felt different responsibilities for aligning with national discourse. Finally, the third paper is an autoethnographic study weaving together personal narrative, theory in the arts and cultural studies, and student work from one summer art and science program. Grappling with the art/science disciplinary dichotomy, this last paper troubles framings of the human-nature divide through material inquiry into place. In the discourse of critique and iterative making, the class community follows one student’s movement in a relational encounter with an ant as a disruption of enduring dualisms that signify Cartesian logic.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction
Investigating Regional Differences in Suicide Acceptability Attitudes in the U.S.
Get PDFThesis advisor: Sara MoormanIn this thesis, I investigate if there are regional differences in suicide acceptability attitudes in the United States and what might explain these differences, namely political views or religious beliefs. I examine four suicide attitudes from the 2018 General Social Survey: whether a person has the right to die by suicide due to an incurable disease; bankruptcy; dishonoring one’s family; or being tired of living and ready to die. I draw upon a number of theories that discuss how one’s environment can influence their attitudes and how individuals form their attitudes in general. An individual from New England was found to be more accepting of suicide than someone from another region, and individual-level political and religious views were somewhat able to explain one’s suicide acceptability attitudes. Overall, regional differences in suicide attitudes do exist, perhaps helpful for future research to better understand differences in suicide rates around the country.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: Sociology
The Dream of King Wah: A Family History
No full textThesis advisor: Min SongThe following work is dedicated to my family to bridge the generational, cultural, and nationalistic differences within my first-generation immigrant family. I explore two contentions that have divided my generation from my parents. First, capitalism, including our relations to work and money, and what it means to become, as Ling Ma puts it in her novel Severance, a “person of use.” Additionally, nationalism, through recording my family’s immigration journey and factors that have informed their sense of identity. The contrasting ways in which my family views work and a sense of belonging has represented the conflict between two disparate ideologies: individualism versus collectivism. While the memoir remains the dominant voice, I include threads of research and interviews with my family members. Ultimately, I recognize that these political and personal threads intertwine and shape each other.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: English
Perceptions of Anorexia Nervosa and Presumptions of Recovery: A Phenomenological Analysis of Performance, Power, and Choice in Healing
No full textThesis advisor: Sharlene N. Hesse-BiberSociocultural theorists of eating disorders recurrently investigate anorexia nervosa (AN) through a macro lens of inequality, underscoring thinness as a social construction of beauty and form of cultural capital. Conversely, other scholars attest that focus on AN as a manifestation of idealized body image may, instead, function as a red herring in illness understanding. Taken together, it becomes unclear how to best advance AN research and treatment practices when etiology is uncertain. While researchers largely depend on eating disorder professionals to elucidate AN healing complexities, as an alternative, I utilized a feminist epistemological approach to inquiry in centering individuals with personal AN experience, as another type of AN expert, from whom there is much for researchers to learn. With recognition of health and illness as both private and social experiences, I sought to understand how individuals experience AN and recovery in their everyday lives. I conducted 25 in-depth interviews (article one) and 150 open-ended surveys (articles two, three, and four) with individuals who identified as having had experience with AN. I explored: 1) how respondents understand AN and recovery, and 2) what respondents most want researchers to know about AN and recovery. My aim was not to explain why AN happens, as much as to phenomenologically explore how. In article one, I focused on how individuals experience AN and recovery in everyday self-presentation. A central implication is that AN and recovery can be recognized as interactional accomplishments that are un/successfully “done.” Thus, while conventional portrayals of AN often depict a person with AN looking into a mirror and seeing a distorted perception of their own body, respondents demonstrated how they relied on the interpretations of others to inform their impressions. In article two, I investigated how respondents evaluate weight as a metric of AN recovery. Respondents portrayed weight as a weak criterion, underscoring how it is a physical measure for a mental illness. Yet, respondents simultaneously stressed how weight matters for recovery, given low weight is requisite for support. In effect, respondents pivoted emphasis from weight as a catalyst for AN, to weight as an obstacle to recovery. In article three, respondents articulated how others’ expectations for healing did not always resonate with personal experience. This disjuncture led to treatment strategies that were often incompatible with respondents’ recovery realities. While a single definition of recovery may be useful to researchers, it may paradoxically present disempowering effects for individuals with AN, constituting or exacerbating iatrogenic harm. In article four, respondents further illuminated juxtapositions between clinical and personal definitions of AN healing. Notably, respondents positioned the development of positive relationships with others as among the most efficacious ways to heal. In addition, respondents advocated for recovery criteria that centered personal agency for more individualized and integrative AN healing. Collectively, the article themes overlapped, with AN manifesting as: an identity, role, entity, experience, and status. Ultimately, some respondents felt they had fully recovered from AN. However, most respondents, regardless of illness status, spoke about others’ misunderstandings of AN, which, from their perspectives, collaborated to fashion a masquerade of recovery that immobilized healing. The voices of respondents in the dissertation are profound, as they expose how the validity and legitimacy of their illness experience, as uncertain and negotiable, become the definition of the AN situation. Consequently, AN history remains a composite of social constructions that continually reposition questions of cause, meaning, and blame. The answers to these inquiries,which mold into illness etiologies, shape academic, clinical, conventional, personal, and professional responses.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Sociology
New Strategies for Stereoselective Preparation of Densely Functionalized Cyclobutanes:
No full textThesis advisor: Shih-Yuan LiuThis dissertation describes the utility of 1,2-azaborine motif as a 4C+1B+1N synthon in organic synthesis, especially for the preparation of densely functionalized cyclobutanes based on the framework of the 1,2-azaborine photoisomerization. The substitution of a CC unit with a BN unit in benzenes significantly modifies the properties of classic benzenoid compounds, leading to new reactivities and functionalities. In this vein, Chapter 1 discloses photoisomerization of 1,2-azaborines to selectively form BN-analogues of the Dewar benzene. Three applications of the Dewar photoisomers are described herein: 1) a rhodium-catalyzed ring-opening reaction to form 1,2-azaborines; 2) furnishing cis aminoborylated cyclobutanes with the boron unit as a further functionalization handle; 3) a stereospecific ring-opening reaction to afford diene which can engage in Diels-Alder reaction. Chapter 2 elaborates on a modular and stereoselective strategy to access a variety of cyclobutane β-amino alcohols. Discussed herein are regioselective functionalizations and di-functionalizations of the 1,2-azaborine core and a tandem photoisomerization-hydrogenation-oxidation protocol to translate the functionalized azaborine core to cyclobutane amino alcohols. Also examined herein are the scope of azaborine photoisomerization and Dewar hydrogenation.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Chemistry
Should America Adopt an Industrial Policy?
Get PDFThesis advisor: Stephen HudsonThis paper analyzes the intellectual rift in the contemporary American conservative movement, focusing on the differences of opinion between classical liberals and national conservatives on economic policy and economic philosophy. Given the precipitous economic malaise of the domestic American economy, and the attendant decay of social cohesion and quality of life for many Americans, the paper proposes that domestic manufacturing offers a distinctively important way of life that is inclusive of the largest possible segments of American workers. This paper finds that nations compete as economic actors, and that sovereign nations have an interest in promoting certain economic outcomes, similar to how other market actors participate in the global market. This paper concludes by affirming that on these grounds, America has an interest in pursuing an industrial policy through the tools of law and public policy.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: Philosophy