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Climate Change, Virtue, and Moral Agency: An Essay in Muslim-Christian Comparative Theological Ethics
Get PDFThesis advisor: Catherine CornilleThesis advisor: James F. KeenanIn the last decade, virtue ethics has steadily grown as a viable and useful framework for addressing the problems and challenges of climate change. Interest in broader concerns of environmental virtue ethics has intensified in the study of particularly “ecological” character traits that reveal how human flourishing is embedded in ecological relations, and that promote practices of restoration ecology. As an exercise in Muslim-Christian comparative theological ethics, cumulatively, this dissertation attempts to contribute to this ongoing discourse. More specifically, its principal task becomes clarified by the central methodological question of how virtue is acquired, cultivated, and may become developed. From a Catholic standpoint, the critical aim concerns developing the proper hermeneutic to both shape and inform virtue responses to climate change. In this regard, the ethical perspective continues to emphasize three crucial implications that must be kept at the forefront of any effective, systematic response to the urgent struggle of climate justice, namely, radical inequality that disproportionately affects the poor and most vulnerable, basic commitments to protect creation and care for non-human creatures, and solidarity with future generations. To this end, proposing practical means and key conditions for the pursuit of ecological conversion, this comparative theological approach is developed to cultivate a more suitable response. Building solidarity and practicing hospitality, this virtue-rooted approach proposes lessons in developing sobriety, attunement, and resilience in accord with hope.A core concern that I address is the lack of engagement with both concrete problems and shared challenges that transcend religious boundaries. In The Future of Ethics, Willis Jenkins contributes key focus toward “reform projects,” that is, actual cases of cultural change and religious creativity. In a pragmatic way, he suggests that these social movements offer vital lessons that demonstrate how to become better managers of humanity’s planetary powers. In a “prophetic” spirit, furthermore, he claims these lessons should enable and may inspire persons as moral agents to resist and overcome how conditions of “moral pluralism and cultural conflict” alienate ethical responses. From a comparative theological perspective, I critique his understanding of hospitality, how his strategy systematically ignores contributions of religious others and his relative lack of engagement with non-Christian sources. I argue that the discipline of comparative theology functions to make a particularly important contribution to this issue, pointing to the usefulness of virtue ethics that highlight the types of people we should become, the capabilities and distinct contributions of religious perspectives, and the methods of virtue cultivation that might serve climate ethics in understanding the complex goal of “reinhabitation.” I define this aspirational concept of reinhabitation as threefold, providing an altered sense of place, “spiritual landscape,” and practice of everyday life.
In response to climate change, therefore, this dissertation attempts to forward a possible method of ethical reasoning as much as a discrete role for the discipline of comparative theology. As virtue ethics is supplemented dialectically with the use of case-based reasoning, the dialogical method allows a back-and-forth style of reasoning that enables judgments to be challenged and revised and even allows the possibility to listen and learn from others. The current literature of climate ethics tends to fall short of how theoretical work on virtue must be guided toward concretely affecting how flourishing becomes understood, implicating both the practice of everyday life and moral formation. While highlighting friendship as a possible basis for shaping ecological agency, I argue that the virtue ethics of Thomas Aquinas continues to provide important lessons in “broadening” justice to include those who are excluded from their “due” share, and encompasses the “community of the universe.” However, in Thomas’s understanding of ecological agency, Christian theology must confront, rehabilitate, and seek to reconcile limitations and inherited problems. In particular, I shall address habitual tendencies to either dominate or exclude other, non-human creatures in Christian visions of flourishing. In common, Islamic approaches seem to be developing the question of ecological agency with a more acute consciousness toward habits and virtues that integrate ecological concerns. In the virtue ethics of Abū Hamid al-Ghazālī, I turn to an alternative model of virtue cultivation that emphasizes bodily practices in its development perspective, with a more corporeal and therapeutic way to practice temperance, enact justice in accord with law, and perhaps fostering hope.
In this dissertation, as a result of this dialogical engagement, I argue for the incorporation of both case-based reasoning and development of virtue ethics. Taken together, this method of reasoning can draw inquiry into cooperative habits of solidarity and may create conditions for practicing hospitality. In sum, what kind of justice is necessary? In the concluding chapter, based on the case of the Niger Delta, I begin to sketch the outlines for a model of restorative justice with the promising basis of Muslim-Christian dialogue, the key role of climate change witnesses, and building possible pathways toward building resilience in the name of the greater common good.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Theology
Essays in Labor Economics and Corporate Governance:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Claudia OlivettiThesis advisor: Arthur LewbelThe goal of this dissertation is to understand the absence of women from executive and high-earning positions, with a special focus on the corporate environment. In the first chapter, I analyze the role of news media towards explaining why women in top executive roles in the United States face more unstable appointments relative to their male counterparts. To improve female representation at the top of the firm, several European countries mandated gender quotas on corporate boards. In the second chapter, I analyze a board gender quota mandated on Italian listed companies and its effects on the composition of the board and firm performance. Family responsibilities are among the most important factors that prevent women from reaching high-earning positions. In the third chapter, I broaden the scope of my investigation to high-skill women in the United States, and provide explanations for the very large increase in childcare hours spent on young children by high-skill mothers of the recent generations. The first chapter, “Media Focus, Executive Turnover, and Female Leadership”, analyzes how the tendency of news media to focus on negative events affects executive turnover in publicly listed firms in the U.S., and to what extent negative media focus explains the relatively higher incidence of turnover for women in top executive roles. Negative media focus implies that news reporting decisions can produce downward-biased public beliefs on firm performance. From the standpoint of a rational board, pessimistic public beliefs on firm performance may affect the expected benefit of retaining a CEO, and in turn, turnover decisions. Linking CEO positions to firm-level news, I provide evidence that the negative focus is higher when a company is led by a woman or an outsider CEO. Counterfactual simulations from a model of executive turnover with event-dependent media focus show that the higher negative focus explains around 15% of the differential turnover rate in female-led firms, even when women are as effective at managing the firm as their male counterparts. In the second chapter, “Do Board Gender Quotas Matter? Selection, Performance, and Stock Market Effects”, co-authored with Giulia Ferrari, Paola Profeta, and Chiara Pronzato, I analyze the effects of a gender quota mandated on corporate boards of Italian listed companies in 2013. Exploiting staggered board elections, we find that quotas are associated with a new selection of board members – characterized by higher education and lower age – and no significant costs, neither on firm performance nor on the stock market. In the third chapter, “Revisiting the Childcare Gap Between High- and Low-Skill mothers”, I show that information diffusion on the importance of early child development has been growing fast starting from the mid-1990s. At the same time, childcare hours have increased, especially for mothers of very young children and the high-educated. I argue that information diffusion on the importance of early investments coupled with increasing income inequality plays an important role towards rationalizing some of the trends in childcare time and the widening of the education gradient in childcare hours at different ages of the child’s lifecycle.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Economics
Developing novel 1,2-azaborine building blocks & the basic science of 1,2-azaborine as hydrogen-bond donors:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Shih-yuan LiuThesis advisor: Xiao-Xiang ZhangThe overarching theme of this dissertation is developing 1,2-azaborine motif as a novel arene pharmacophore. The first chapter of this dissertation is about exploring the synthesis and character of a new α-boryl diazo family-diazomethyl-1,2-azaborine and its diverse reaction chemistry. As a remarkable 1,2-azaborine building block, it can undergo a variety of classical diazo reactions including C–H activation, O–H activation, [3+2] cycloaddition, halogenation, and Ru-catalyzed carbonyl olefination. In the second chapter, we take a closer look at the hydrogen bond donor ability of 1,2-azaborines. A congeneric series of 1,2-azaborine ligands were used to probe the strength of hydrogen bonding as a function of the ligand’s steric effects. The results of this study provide fundamental reference data for establishing 1,2-azaborines as potential pharmacophores. Lastly, 1,2-azborine as a new ligand for T4 lysozyme double mutant L99A/M102 was investigated, and a new mode of ligand-protein interaction was discovered and evaluated by X-ray crystallography and ITC.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Chemistry
Hypersymmetric Points on Shimura Varieties of Hodge Type:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Keerthi Madapusi PeraWe study the necessary and sufficient conditions for a Newton stratum on a Shimura variety of Hodge type to admit a hypersymmetric point, more explicitly by showing that hypersymmetric points arise as the image of points in the basic stratum of a smaller Shimura variety. We compare this condition with the combinatorial conditions proved by Chai-Oort and Zong in certain PEL-type cases.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Mathematics
Exploring how mathematical authorial identity emerges: An applied conversation analysis of students’ small group discussions
Get PDFThesis advisor: Dennis L. ShirleyThe recent mathematics curriculum reforms in the United States resulted in various classroom initiatives and research on cultivating students’ mathematical identity. Among many dimensions of mathematical identity (Fellus, 2019), mathematical authorial identity is connected to how students leverage the interactional space and communicate their ideas about mathematical concepts while invoking authority, especially during students’ peer discussion in mathematics classrooms (Povey & Burton, 2003; Schoenfeld & Sloan, 2016). Despite the emerging importance of students’ mathematical authorial identity, most research on authorship and authority in mathematics classrooms has focused on the relationship between teachers and students, and not on the relationships of students with one another in small groups (Amid & Fried, 2005; Cobb et al., 2009; Wagner & Herbel-Eisenmann, 2014). More attention is needed to understand how the notions of authorship and authority work in students’ interactions with others, and what interactional patterns occur as students construct mathematical authorial identity through classroom discourses (Langer-Osuna, 2016, 2017, 2018; Langer-Osuna et al., 2020). The current study used an applied conversation analysis to investigate students’ interactional patterns of seven small group discussions. These students met virtually four times over one school year to exchange feedback on each other’s mathematical arguments. After transcribing students’ small group discussions, I focused on the occurrences of accounts, which are statements “made by a social actor to explain unanticipated or untoward behavior” (Scott & Lyman, 1968, p. 46). They are typically used by interactants when they offer additional explanation or elaboration in situations when they are accomplishing a dispreferred action. The results indicate that mathematical authorial identity was manifested in three different types of account turns. The first type of account turns was ‘missing accounts,’ which were expected to occur but were missing due to students accomplishing other interactional work. Students deployed this type of accounts as they accomplished various forms of disagreement. The second type of account turns invoked external authority. Students typically deployed this type of account turns towards the end of a sequence, and they were likely to use strong expressions of disagreement. The third type was account turns that invoked shared/internal authority. These account turns usually occurred at the beginning of a new sequence and when students expressed weaker disagreement. The various types of account turns and interactional environments suggest that students actively conceptualize and manage interactional work, such as facework and preference organization, when navigating mathematics classroom discourse. Based on the findings, this dissertation offers pedagogical implications for mathematics educators to actively cultivate group norms that could occasion more interactional affordances for students and be aware of interactional features and sequences that foster students’ construction of mathematical authorial identity.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction
The Healthcare System of Strangers: A Feminist Ethics of Care Correction to Autonomy in Western Healthcare
Get PDFThesis advisor: Mary TroxellThis thesis explores the flaws of classical autonomy in Western healthcare, and alternatively proposes a feminist ethics of care relational autonomy in healthcare settings. It proceeds in four chapters: a brief history of classical autonomy, autonomy's role in healthcare and medical ethics, an introduction to relational autonomy, and relational autonomy's focus on marginalized populations in Western healthcare. It concludes that to address the disconnect in Western healthcare between the patient, provider, and healthcare system, we need to shift to a more relational view of society.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: Philosophy
Real Women in Korean Film and TV: Progressive Portrayals of Unmarried, Elderly, and Lesbian Women
Get PDFThesis advisor: Christina KleinWith the recent rise in popularity of Korean media, more audiences than ever before have been exposed to portrayals of Korean women. Most female protagonists in Korean dramas adhere to Confucian gender norms: they are primarily concerned with romance and fail to drive their own narratives. This paper analyzes feminist characters who instead bend or expand conservative gender conventions in order to normalize different lifestyles for all women. In seeking out progressive portrayals, this paper focuses specifically on depictions of unmarried, elderly, and lesbian women in Korean entertainment. By honing in on women who do not fit the mold of traditional or acceptable femininity, this paper argues for more realistic representations of women in modern Korean society.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: English
"What Do They Do?”: The Jurisdiction of Technology Consultants
Get PDFThesis advisor: Sarah BabbBecause technology consulting came out of management consulting, it should be clear that the jurisdiction of a technology consultant is what a management consultant does but with an emphasis on technology. With existing research, it does not seem so certain that the jurisdiction is as clear cut as believed because jurisdictions must have their expertise and cannot adopt all the skills and values of an existing jurisdiction. My research sets out to identify any differences between the ways employers see the jurisdiction of technology consultants and how technology consultants themselves see their jurisdiction through a series of job descriptions/ client services and interviews as the profession emerged out of management consulting.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: Sociology
Quantifying Feedbacks Between Ice Flow, Grain Size, and Basal Meltwater on Annual and Decadal Time-Scales Using a 2-D Ice Sheet Model:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Mark D. BehnIce sheet flow is strongly controlled by the conditions at the ice-bed interface. While these processes are hard to observe directly, comparisons between numerical modeling and ice surface observations can be used to indirectly infer subglacial processes. Specifically, seasonal summer speed up near the margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) has been linked to the presence of subglacial water. For decades, the Glen flow law has been the most widely-accepted constitutive relation for modeling ice flow. However, while the Glen law captures the temperature-dependent, nonlinear viscosity of ice, it does not explicitly incorporate ice grain size, which has been shown in laboratory experiments to influence ice rheology. To compensate for the lack of explicit grain size dependence, ice sheet models often utilize an “enhancement factor” that modifies the flow law to better match observations, but does not provide insight into the physical processes at play. Using a grain size sensitive rheology that incorporates grain size evolution due to dynamic recrystallization and grain growth, I model the effects of seasonal variations of subglacial hydrology in a 2-D vertical cross-section of ice flow on both annual and inter-annual timescales. The presence of subglacial water reduces the frictional coupling between the ice and the bed. Here I simulate the presence of water at the ice-bed interface during the melt season using patches of free-slip and explore a range of patch sizes and geometries to investigate their role in modulating ice surface velocities and grain size within the ice. I compare modeled winter and summer surface velocities to observations taken on the western margin of the GIS and find that realistic surface velocities are achievable using agrain size sensitive flow law without the introduction of an enhancement factor. Further, the grain size of the internal ice responds on an inter-annual timescale to these seasonal forcings at the bed, potentially leading to long-term changes in surface velocities.Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences
Who Heightens Regional Tension?:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Robert RossThe regional great power competition between the United States and China is escalating in various dimensions such as economic, political, and security realms. Who instigates such tension and how? To answer these questions, this paper inquires whether it is the declining power, the United States, or the rising power, China, that causes regional tension to heighten. Applying the theories on power transition and power transition war to the three case studies on South Korea, Taiwan, and the South China Sea dispute in Vietnam, how the United States is provoking China to adopt policies that increase tension will be examined.Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Political Science