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The Impacts of Wing-flashing by Northern Mockingbirds on Foraging, Parental Care, and Reproductive Success
No full textForaging efficiency may be enhanced by flashing patches of white wing and tail feathers and has been documented in several avian species. Northern Mockingbirds (Mimus polyglottos, NOMO) exhibit this “wing-flashing” (WF) behavior while foraging, during displays, and in response to predators. In NOMOs, WF has been hypothesized to increase foraging success, but previous findings are inconclusive. To further investigate the biological role(s) of WF behavior in NOMOs, the ventral surface of white primary feathers of male NOMOs were artificially darkened, and the foraging and provisioning rates of undarkened (control) males and their mates were compared. While foraging, undarkened males performed significantly more prey strikes than darkened males; however, when foraging without WF, prey strike success did not differ between darkened and undarkened males. There was no clear effect of darkening on the provisioning rate of males. Body condition (mass/tarsus3) of experimental nestlings was similar to control nestlings, but experimental nestlings had significantly lower mass and had shorter tarsus lengths compared to control nestlings. Additionally, experimental nestlings fledged significantly later than control nestlings. These findings suggest that artificial darkening of white wing patches of NOMO males may negatively impact the quality of parental care, contributing to lower mass, shorter tarsus, and a longer time to fledge for nestlings
Fly the Coop - Pilot Script and Bible
No full textFly the Coop is a children\u27s cartoon about a young teenage girl, Robin, who gets caught in a storm while in a hot air balloon alongside her father. She finds herself teleported to a foreign land called Perch which is inhabited by humanoid bird-people called avains, Robin herself being transformed into one. She enters the small town of Roost Rest where she meets and befriends a trio of orphans. Goldie, a canary who wishes to be theater star, Rudite, a burrowing owl who strives to be the most intelligent bird around, and Pebb, a penguin wisecracker always trying to earn more money. Along with them is their caretaker Malcontense, a stern white peacock and owner of the orphanage they reside in, Nest Warmers. Robin will need their help to adapt to this strange world, find her father, and uncover the mystery of what brought them here. The story\u27s themes revolve around confronting the stereotypes based on birth, both externally by others and those internalized, and the value of creating your own family when the one you are born into cannot be relied on.
This document includes the pilot script for the first episode and its show bible. The script depicts Robin\u27s first meeting with the other main characters, her difficulties in navigating through this new world, and all four children banding together to defeat a foe. It ends with Robin being forced into Malcontense\u27s care and her revealing herself as a human to Goldie, Rudite, and Pebb. The bible shows further details about Fly the Coop\u27s setting, including character biographies, avian classifications, and loglines for potential episodes
Look, Make, Play: The Natural Order in Children’s Books
No full textThis paper will examine conceptualizations of nature through environmentally themed picture books. While environmentalism is not a new topic for children’s book, recent works reveal changing attitudes toward the impact of human agency on the natural world. These texts provide a microcosmic view of the shift toward “green” kidlit and shows literary depictions of human interactions with nonhuman nature through an ecocritical lens. Specifically, I will look at three approaches to how humans conceive of, impact, and interact with the natural world depicted in children’s literature: observation (as the observable “other”), creation (as a communal resource), and recreation (as urban wildscape). I will then examine how my thesis texts fit within each of those frameworks
Dancing With Ghosts: Memory and Melancholy in The Subversive Artist
No full textThis thesis examines how subversive artists use autonomy and memory to imagine new ways of existing beyond systemic violence. Through analysis of theory and performance studies, it highlights the efforts and risks these artists take to challenge representation and the political aspects of embodiment. The interconnected roles of language, power, and imagination are emphasized as essential to creating a more just and liberated world.
Accompanying this research is a dance piece that responds to the sorrows within American society. Developed as an improvisational score, the dance becomes a process of reinvention, employing movement and imagination to seek collective solutions. The work aims to symbolize form as a space of possibility, utilizing duality, simple visual design elements, and dimensionality to reflect both accessibility and the transformative power of imagination. The body acts as a politicized space of potential, engaging with the current cultural moment to create a performance that both reflects and reimagines contemporary reality.
The thesis ends with a reflection on how artmaking involves risk—an extension of life and a continuous struggle many try to avoid. Yet facing this struggle is itself a deeply shifting state. Each day provides the opportunity to create a world beyond sorrow. Every moment allows us to bring justice to darkness and find peace through love, if we choose. Freedom in art becomes possible when we focus on hope, selecting love as a steady guide, and following the path to uncover the transformative power of art
Competitive Dance and the Adolescent’s Body: Considering Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching Competitive Dancers
No full textDiving into the past and researching for the future, this thesis explores the development and perpetuation of hyper-sexualized adolescent bodies through the competitive dance scene. Drawing on dance theorists, educational theorists, and embodied research (i.e., the author’s body archive), this thesis explores how the competition gaze is performed for and by a capitalist patriarchy. Specifically, this thesis critically reflects on the author’s career as a young competitive dancer in the greater Los Angeles, California, area during the 1990s and 2000s, as well as a competition dance instructor and K-12 educator for two decades, and how those personal experiences have shaped her understandings of self, femininity, and ethical pedagogy. This thesis is a call to action for educators to investigate their pedagogical practices more critically, diversify their curricula, and expand their own understandings of gendered and racialized perspectives. All teachers have an imperative, as bell hooks explains, and it is “when as teachers we teach with love, combining care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, [that] we are often able to enter the classroom and go straight to the heart of the matter.
Te Kaitiakitanga o Ngā Tūpuna: Restructuring Repatriation and Globalizing Decolonial Indigeneity
No full textPreserving cultural heritage through repatriation has admittedly worked against Indigenous communities because museums have maintained a system of control over their belongings and have fractured their trust in partnerships. Repatriation is the process by which Indigenous belongings, land, and people are returned, and must be decolonized into a system of support within museums’ institutional structures. The aim of this thesis is to analyze how the institutional mechanisms for repatriation are ineffective and offer a new framework to be globalized and accessible. While decolonial theories and methods act as a lens, Māori educationalist Graham Hingangaroa Smith’s Kaupapa Māori is a theoretical praxis that contributes to the decolonization of Māori cultural heritage. Museums’ implementation of this framework has transformed the foundations of their partnerships with Māori communities, and has the potential to be globalized as a decolonial repatriation framework. By using this alongside Aníbal Quijano’s theory about coloniality and modernity/rationality, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonial Methodologies, the structure of this thesis advocates for restructuring the institutional mechanisms of repatriation, and to instead use this as a tool for cultivating possibilities for a decolonial indigeneity. Thus, by examining Aotearoa New Zealand and the US’ repatriation programmes, museums can re-center their purpose to support the needs of Indigenous communities, working closely together to foster trust and deepen understanding within the decolonial context
Invited by the Dictator
No full textINVITED BY THE DICTATOR is about nine-year-old Hong Mi who spends an all-expense-paid summer in North Korea with nine other Korean American kids. She’s excited to learn everything about Korea to make her parents proud. To her alarm, she discovers the kids will be separated from their parents even before the trip starts. Thrown into an orchestrated tour with a relentless diet of propaganda, Hong Mi must adapt quickly, but she soon realizes Korea isn’t anything she imagined it would be.
Compared to the perfect North Korean children put on display, Hong Mi questions if she’s even Korean. But nothing prepares her for the horrors of American-led massacres at the war atrocities museum. Everything she’s known about her Korean and American identity is obliterated. Then, she begins meeting others in the diaspora, and at the international reunification festival, she experiences an overwhelming oneness with the Koreans. By the end of summer, she learns about jeong—the deep warmth and care between people—and what it truly means to be herself, Korean American.
This thesis draws on the traditions of Asian American middle-grade ancestral travel narratives and explores themes of ethnic identity formation, transculturality, and transnationalism. The storytelling style incorporates elements of memoir and travelogue. INVITED BY THE DICTATOR hopes to offer both a mirror for young Asian American readers and a window into one of the most secretive nations in the world
Black Joy: Positive and Diverse Representation in Fiction
No full textIn modern day children’s literature, there is a scarcity of representation of people of color. Many of the books that exist currently either prominently feature black pain, struggle narratives or justifications for existence. The ongoing book ban epidemic also makes it harder for children of color to have access to books in their local school libraries about people who look like them. I propose that we need more fictional books about people of color that are written to express joy for the sake of joy; black joy. In making more fictional stories that reflect this ideal of black joy, I believe there will be a more positive impact on the world of children’s literature. This will encourage more children of color to read, expand their imaginations, and improve their self-esteem. In this paper, I examine several books that reflect the principles of black joy, and how I used them as inspiration in creating my own graphic novel, Our Trip to Orlaea, that represents this joy for the sake of joy, without talking about pain and struggle in the African-American race
Fall Hunter Trial Team, Sweet Briar, 1991
No full text1991 Fall Hunter Trial O.D.A.C. Team at Sweet Briar. Left to Right; Charlotte Sprague on Commander, Samm Neilsen on The Bachelor, Debbie Beirne on Mystery Flight, Ruth Holland on Palm Beach.https://digitalcommons.hollins.edu/riding/1124/thumbnail.jp
Jen Adams \u2706, Oyster Pond; Lindsay Urbani \u2706, Bella Lagosi
No full textLeft - Jen Adams \u2706 and Oyster Pond. Right - Lindsay Urbani \u2706 and Bella Lagosihttps://digitalcommons.hollins.edu/riding/1118/thumbnail.jp