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Military Restrictions on Individual Rights: An Application of the Huntingtonian and Janowitzian Perspectives
Get PDFThesis advisor: Peter SkerryThe United States military imposes restrictions on individual rights virtually nonexistent in the rest of American society. The theoretical perspectives of Huntington and Janowitz provide fruitful ground for understanding the basis of authority for the military to enforce these controls. Each perspective examines the relationship between civilian control over the military and the impact on military effectiveness. These opposing viewpoints offer an analytical framework to evaluate restrictions on service members’ freedom of speech and freedom of religion. This analysis will demonstrate the tendency for the military to adhere to more of the Janowitzian principles since the end of the Cold War by integrating features of civil society. This transition away from the Huntington-dominated military institution is due to an increasingly complex and dangerous international environment and the end of conscription. However, the military is still a distinct society from the larger community. Therefore, the military should adopt more inclusive measures but only to the extent that they do not negatively impact military effectiveness. Finally, when service members undergo an indoctrination period, known as initial entry training, their understanding of rights begins to transition from the American civilian conception to the military conception. As a result, service members tend to be more accepting of rights restrictions because of a belief in the common good and the sense of a higher purpose.Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Political Science
The Influence of #MeToo on Sexual Assault Survivors' Decision Making and Health Behaviors: A Qualitative Inquiry
Get PDFThesis advisor: Holly B. FontenotSexual assault is a national public health problem, yet there is a dearth of information about how and why survivors disclose and obtain post sexual assault healthcare in the era of social media campaigns. This study examined the influence of #MeToo on sexual assault survivors’ decision-making post assault, including formal disclosures to health providers and formal health seeking behaviors. The research question is “what are the patterns of sexual assault survivors’ disclosure and health seeking behaviors in the era of #MeToo?” A qualitative, exploratory descriptive study was undertaken to understand the influence of #MeToo on a survivor’s decision to disclose sexual assault and obtain health care. With the use of online focus groups, 56 participants’ stories were shared, and four salient themes emerged. These results were the first to provide insight into how an online social media movement (#MeToo) influenced offline health behaviors. The knowledge gained from this study advanced nursing science focused on the care of sexual assault survivors. Additionally, findings informed intervention strategies such as developing targeted public health campaigns that capitalize on online social movements to impact offline behaviors.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing.Discipline: Nursing
Belated Modernism: The Late Style of Freud, Benjamin, and Woolf
No full textThesis advisor: Robert S. LehmanThis dissertation argues that literary modernism is structured by a logic of belatedness—its sense, that is, of having arrived too late. Belatedness thus perceived entails a reconsideration of late modernism, illuminated as it has been by scholars such as Jed Esty, Tyrus Miller, and C.D. Blanton. Because modernism is constituted first and foremost by its fraught relation to time, and, specifically, to the present and its representations, any discussion of late modernism must begin by interrogating the “afterlife” of this temporal predicament. Following Edward Said’s claim that modernism is a late-style phenomenon, Belated Modernism challenges the construct “late modernism” given that the notion of lateness is constitutive of modernism itself. This project necessitates a thinking beyond the generic, nationalistic, linguistic, and disciplinary distinctions that have informed most of the critical discourse on (Anglo-American) late modernism. To that end, Belated Modernism addresses a constellation of European writers whose late style emerges in modernism’s late phase: the strange parenthesis of 1939–1941, when the war had already begun but its magnitude was as yet unknowable. Focusing on the final works of Sigmund Freud (Moses and Monotheism [1939]), Walter Benjamin (“On the Concept of History” [1940]), and Virginia Woolf (Between the Acts [1941]), I argue that the singular conjunction of late style and late modernism reveals, in light of individual and world-historical ends, an intensification of the philosophical problem of belatedness that has haunted modernism since its origins.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: English
Changing Narratives of the Sri Lankan Civil War: How Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism and Tamil Nationalism are Rooted in Class and Caste Conflict
Get PDFThesis advisor: Kalpana SeshadriThe dominant discourse on the Sri Lankan civil war classifies it as an ethnic conflict resulting from Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism and Tamil nationalism. The classification of Sri Lanka as an ethnic conflict neglects to account for divisions within both the Sinhala community and the Tamil community, especially along class and caste divisions. This thesis provides a nuanced historical understanding of the Sri Lankan civil war as a class conflict arising from Sinhalese nationalism and manufactured ethnic tensions. The argument presented is that the Sri Lankan civil war is rooted in class struggle within and across ethnic groups for access to political power and economic equality. Since there have been instances of solidarity between Sinhalese people and Tamils due to shared class interests, it is clear that ethnic divisions were not inherent to the Sri Lankan polity but were caused by colonial policies and class divisions. To make this argument, the thesis utilizes an intersectional Marxist framework accounting for the influence of ethnic relations in class theories of exploitation, exclusion, and class interests. The thesis concludes with a focus on the current economic crisis in Sri Lanka and how it furthers my argument for a nuanced understanding of the civil war with attention to the class disparities in the nation.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: International Studies
Male Centered Universe: A Critical Analysis of the Role of an Action Heroine
Get PDFThesis advisor: Celeste WellsThis paper analyzes the rights and privileges Black Widow and Captain Marvel are afforded in their respective films coupled with audience perception to understand how that might inform the future of the action heroine genre. There is a stark contrast between the reception of Black Widow and Captain Marvel that is best understood through the release timing of the films along with the character’s plotline within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Regardless, the rights and privileges each character is afforded in both films demonstrate a dimension of the female experience that had not been fully realized in the MCU prior to their release. Captain Marvel and Black Widow indicate a progression of female representation within the action heroine genre– both in frequency and quality.Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Departmental Honors.Discipline: Communication
Anti-Racist Educational Leadership In Times of Crisis: An Examination of the Experience of Black Educational Leaders in This Moment of Racial Reckoning
Get PDFThesis advisor: Andrew MillerThis qualitative case study explored anti-racist educational leadership during a time of crisis, specifically the COVID-19 pandemic and our nation’s recent racial reckoning, within a Massachusetts school district. The study used Critical Race Theory as its theoretical framework and Community Cultural Wealth as its conceptual framework. This study examined the experiences and perceptions of Black educational leaders and the associated outcomes of leveraging community cultural wealth for communities of color. Data were collected through interviews, a focus group, a survey, and a review of documents. Findings revealed an experience of racism for Black educational leaders consistent with research that asserts that Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) leaders face racist challenges (Frank et al, 2019). Findings also present the perception of an opportunity in this historical moment for anti-racist work at the individual and system levels through increased attention to racism across the country, specifically anti-Blackness. Black educational leadership in the district experienced a decrease in daily microaggressions. In pursuit of anti-racist work, Black educational leaders leveraged social and resistant capital to sustain them in the field.Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education
AMechanistic and Chemistry-Focused Approach Towards the Development of Novel Covalent Binding Cyclic Phage Libraries:
No full textThesis advisor: Jianmin GaoCovalent drugs present a unique situation in the clinical world. Formation of a covalent bond between a drug molecule and its target protein can lead to significant increases in a number of desirable traits such as residence time, potency, and efficacy of a drug. From a kinetic perspective, the formation of a covalent bond between a drug and its target functionally eliminates the dissociation rate (koff) of the compound, ensuring that the compound will stay engaged with its target. However, development of covalent drugs has been met with caution and concern, as an irreversible covalent bond forming on the wrong target can have disastrous results, so specificity is of the utmost importance. One option for increasing specificity is by linking a covalent binding electrophile, or warhead, to a peptide. Peptide-based therapeutics have already been shown to serve as effective protein-targeting modalities with high specificity, a specificity that would greatly benefit covalent drugs. Phage display is a powerful technique for the discovery of selective peptides which utilizes the screening of vast libraries of randomized peptides to identify strong binders. This technology has been used to discover a large number of protein-targeting peptides, but also a smaller number of cyclic, covalent binding peptides that function as enzymatic inhibitors. Herein, this study aimed to explore the idea of adding covalent-binding functionality to phage libraries in novel ways and expand upon the scope of proteins that can be targeted with phage libraries containing covalent libraries. We sought to develop a mechanistic and chemical understanding of the interactions between bacteriophage and chemical warheads to best understand both the limits and the potential of this technology.
In order to best understand the relationship between chemical warhead and phage particle, a model system was developed based on the M13KE pIII protein. It was found that the extracellular N-terminal domains of this protein could be expressed and purified in low yields in bacterial cells and that these domains would behave similarly in solution as in the membrane of the M13KE bacteriophage. With this protein in hand, experiments previously performed using small, cysteine containing peptides, could be performed on a full protein to mimic the phage labeling environment. This protein was used to identify efficient cysteine crosslinkers, most notably dichloroacetone (DCA) and bis-chlorooxime (BCO). The pIII protein system was then used to study the viability of bifunctional warhead molecules containing a covalent warhead and a cysteine crosslinker.
Based on preliminary analyses with the pIII protein, aryl sulfonyl fluoride was chosen as a novel warhead candidate that warranted further pursuit. Kinetic NMR studies verified that aryl sulfonyl fluoride was capable of forming covalent bonds with phenols under phage labeling conditions. Labeling experiments analyzed with LC/MS seemed to indicate a degradation of the warhead. However, as the source of the degradation was not able to be determined, it was decided that various affinity assays would be used to identify if phage could be labeled with an aryl sulfonyl fluoride-DCA conjugate. Both streptavidin-bead pulldown assays and ELISA assays were used, however both assays yielded results that could not conclusively verify the integrity of the warhead.
During phage labeling experiments, a phenomenon was noted that phage titers after modification showed a 2-3 order of magnitude drop in phage count. Covalent modification of phage beyond what is intended could have troubling consequences for all covalent phage libraries, and so a more in-depth approach was taken to identify and better understand phage toxicity as it relates to covalent warheads. As a model, a well-studied diazaborine-mediated warhead with a slow dissociation rate was selected and used in a range of phage toxicity screenings. Despite statistical fluctuations between trials, toxicity screenings using this warhead served to highlight a unique concern for bifunctional covalent warheads. A concentration-dependent toxicity can be seen in phage incubated with bifunctional small molecules that is not present when incubated with the monofunctional equivalents. The presence of this toxicity even towards a phage with no free thiols highlights a unique challenge of off-target labeling within phage particles that, if solved, could provide the next significant step towards developing novel covalent phage libraries.Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Chemistry
"The Power of Community to Bring Those Walls Down": Exploring the Interpersonal Process in Men’s Groups
Get PDFThesis advisor: James R. MahalikHeadlines and scholarly research alike sound the alarm that boys and men are in crisis (New York Times, 2018; Way, 2011). In the United States, boys and men are at higher risk for psychological, physical, and interpersonal problems, including depression, anxiety, suicide, substance abuse, lower academic retention, loneliness, and both sexual and physical violence (against women, hate crimes against marginalized individuals, against other boys and men, and gun violence), as well as political attitudes such as social dominance, support for authoritarian leaders, and climate change denial (American Psychological Association, 2018; Ferree, 2020; Gerdes & Levant, 2013; Manowski & Maton, 2010; Nelson, 2020). Extensive research has established these negative outcomes as corollaries of a culturally-dominant socialization process, or the degree to which boys and men adhere to hegemonic masculine norms such as strength, hyper-independence, and aggression (Mahalik et al., 2003; Way, 2011). In efforts to “redefine” masculinity (Levant, 1992) to be flexible, healthy, and prosocial (Adams & Frauenheim, 2020), the American Psychological Association has called for engaging boys and men in preventative, health promotive, and social change interventions. Men’s group programs are expanding both in prevalence and in the amount of scholarly attention they receive, yet there remains a lack of research focused on understanding how these groups work, Specifically, little empirical work has examined how the interpersonal process among members in a men’s groups might play a role in engaging them in individual growth and social change related to masculinity. Situated in a theoretical framework centering the quality of connection in interpersonal relationships as a central influence in hegemonic masculine socialization (precarious manhood theory; Vandello & Bosson, 2013), a primary factor in human growth and change (relational-cultural theory; Miller, 1976), and the therapeutic dynamics of groups (Yalom & Leszcz, 2005), the purpose of this dissertation was to examine the subjective experiences and reflections of men who participated in a 10-week long men’s group, offered by a non-profit violence prevention organization, A Call to Men. This group, called the “Circle of Influence,” aims to support men in practicing “healthy manhood” and promoting it elsewhere in their lives (see A Call to Men, n.d.). To explore the role of the group interpersonal process in men’s experiences of the program, this study posed the following research questions: 1) how do men understand changes in their own sense of masculinity and what it means to be a man? 2) how do men understand changes in the ways they promote healthy masculinity beyond the group? and 3) how do men understand their experience of the interpersonal process in the men’s group as playing a role in these changes?
Using a qualitative descriptive approach (Sandelowski, 2000), semi-structured interviews with thirteen men who participated in the men’s group yielded five themes: 1) the group enables interpersonal experiences that counter hegemonic masculine socialization; 2) the group enables men’s development of insight into their masculinity; 3) the group enables positive shifts in men’s close relationships; 4) the group enables men’s participation in social action; and 5) men offer feedback for program development. These findings underscore the critical role of a community in which interpersonal dynamics counter those of hegemonic masculine socialization. As the findings suggest, such relationships can become catalysts for the goals of masculinity-focused interventions, such as insight and behavior change. Implications for intervention research and the application of relational-cultural theory to such interventions, the role of men’s groups in creating broader social change, and future research directions are each discussed.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology
Politics and Bureaucracy in the Modern State:
Get PDFThesis advisor: Robert C. BartlettGovernment, today, encapsulates both politics and bureaucracy. Yet if politics and bureaucracy are understood within this context it is hard to conceptualize the nature of each or their effect on one another. In this paper I attempt to separate bureaucracy from politics in order to understand each before considering their effect upon one another. I begin by considering bureaucracy according to its most famous commentator, Max Weber. Since bureaucracy must be understood in relation to the modern state, I include a treatment of the modern state that presumes a beneficial civil service, G.F.W. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. If Hegel shows us a politics dependent upon the bureaucracy and seamlessly reflected in that bureaucracy, we must examine politics anew in a context in which it is neither entangled with nor compromised by bureaucracy. Aristotle provides a definition of politics unencumbered with bureaucratic administration: a seeming alternative to the modern state. But is such activity possible today? Or in the American republic? I conclude with a discussion of these questions using the work of Hannah Arendt and James Q. Wilson. Arendt discusses the worst effects of bureaucratic administration while Wilson suggests that the American constitutional order can withstand the addition of bureaucratic administration. The question that remains is whether politics as described by Aristotle—speech about justice and injustice on the public stage—can exist alongside the American bureaucracy. My initial response to this question is yes and no: political speech in America is still possible, but its character has been altered. The productive form of political speech has become complaint—complaint against the actions of the government, complaint that makes its way to the floors of the House and Senate, and complaint that is registered in the voting box or the courthouse. Complaint, however, is not the whole of political speech, and therefore bureaucracy cannot be wholly compatible with political activity.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Discipline: Political Science
"Beyond the screen": Exploring Students’ Sense of Place in Virtual Exchange
Get PDFThesis advisor: Gerardo BlancoThesis advisor: Rebecca SchendelAs an emergent form of internationalization that incorporates the use of digital technology, virtual exchange offers students the possibility to transcend national borders and connect with other students entirely within a virtual learning environment. Participants in virtual exchange mediate between the physical and virtual worlds, and a sense of place allows them to connect with peers, actively engage with their environment, and achieve learning outcomes. Despite a growing interest in virtual exchange in higher education, however, there is limited research on how students navigate their online learning environment and develop a sense of place. This thesis addresses this gap by exploring how students construct and experience a sense of place while participating in virtual exchange. Focus group interviews were conducted with 29 students participating in virtual exchange through the non-profit provider, Soliya. Using grounded theory, a number of emergent themes were explored, revealing how students understood and situated themselves within both their physical and virtual spaces before, during, and after their virtual exchange. The findings of this study suggest that sense of place is
impacted by the environment as well as both individual and communal identity. The results of this study will provide higher education institutions and virtual exchange providers with a better
understanding of the construct of sense of place within virtual learning environments and, consequently, how to foster a strong sense of place among virtual exchange participants.Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2022.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education