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A CHANGED UNDERSTANDING OF OUR PRESENT : MOBY-DICK AS PROPHETIC ECOLOGICAL ACTIVISM
No full textMoby-Dick: Or, The Whale is a classic of American literature, spanning multiple genres and remaining culturally relevant nearly 175 years after its original publication. Though on the surface Moby-Dick reads as an adventure story of a man who experiences the whaling industry firsthand, Herman Melville’s text continues to invite new generations of readership through the framework of the twenty-first century climate crisis.
In this thesis, I position Moby-Dick as a text that can be used to understand our modern society’s current dispositions of ecological grief. My thesis operates at the intersection of three main literary critical theories: ecocriticism, affect, and queer. In the introduction chapter, I examine Ishmael as a modern American individual, driven by the mythical notion of American individualism on the frontier – the ocean, in this case – and identify Moby-Dick as an epic on grief. In the first chapter, I examine the “cruel optimism” of engaging with the American Dream and the plights of capitalism upon Ishmael, the other whalemen, and nature. I also identify two Ishmaels within the text: the past Ishmael, an ecological mourner, who experiences the whaling industry on the Pequod and the present Ishmael, an eco-melancholic, who writes the epic sometime after the Pequod has sunk. In the second chapter I argue that the present Ishmael suffers from melancholia, derived from both his ecological and queer losses, and examine multiple conditions under the “ecological grief umbrella” – namely, ecological elegy, politicized melancholy, the affective disposition of Anthropocene Horror, ecological mourning, and eco-melancholia.
I then propose my own handbook for how modern individuals can engage with these dispositions in conceptualizing new forms of ecological activism, specifically activist actions that go beyond the physical. My activist “gestures,” which can also be understood as “suggestions,” engage with a daily practice of world-making, of imagining and moving toward queered utopian horizons of possibility concerning climate change activism. Though Moby-Dick is a romantic adventure of American grandeur, this text can be recognized as a prophetic work of ecological activism as we continue to move through and imagine new ways to address the climate crisis
Restoring Rattlesnake Creek: Using Citizen Science to Assess the Ecological and Morphological Impacts of Dam Removal in Western Montana
Get PDFAs dam removals increase in frequency across the U.S., most research has focused on the impact of larger dam removals, despite the removal of small dams being much more common. Given the hundreds of small dams in Montana, this research uses citizen science data collected over eight years spanning before and after a 2020 small dam removal in Rattlesnake Creek, Montana, to investigate impact on stream ecology and morphology. We analyzed pebble count grain size distributions and aquatic macroinvertebrate biotic indices from 2017 to 2024 to assess changes in sediment transport and macroinvertebrate population as well as evaluate the efficacy of citizen science for long-term stream monitoring. Our analysis includes comparisons of pre- and post-dam removal data collected from above and below the dam site. Our findings revealed no significant changes in grain size or macroinvertebrate index values between upstream and downstream reaches post-dam removal. This suggests that the removal of this particular small dam had minimal detectable impact on sediment transport or macroinvertebrate communities within the study period. Our study also demonstrates the capacity for citizen science programs to effectively collect robust and valuable datasets. This study underscores the importance of meticulous data management along with the potential for and challenges of citizen science for environmental research. We provide recommendations for “best practices” to improve future citizen science monitoring and informing decision-making for future dam removals, particularly for the nine dams further upstream within the Rattlesnake Creek watershed
College Athlete Workload Management to Improve Performance
Get PDFLoad management is an often used and misunderstood term within the realm of sport science. It has been described as the reason behind numerous soft tissue injuries as well as being the reason star athletes sit on the bench for games. This review aims to synthesize the existing literature regarding the workload management paradox within sport. Seminal work in this topic has been gathered mostly by Tim Gabbett in the paper “The Injury Prevention Paradox” where a relationship between fitness gain and fatigue accrued is outlined. This theory was first proposed by Roger Bannister in 1975. This paper focuses on objective measures such as GPS, Force Plates, and Weight Room load. The second option is to use subjective data with surveys and questionaries. The original purpose of this paper was to find evidence to suggest that gathering all these forms of information in to one cohesive state would improve performance and mitigate injury risk. The methods by which research was selected for this topic was, the study or review had to include some metric of measurement from the above listed against a performance or injury related outcome. The major results were that an increase in acute workload compared to the chronic workload overtime at above a 1.3 or below a 0.8 level could lead to maladaptation. However, a lack of formal randomized control trial studies with workload management as the sole intervention was lacking in the literature. The results are still therefore mixed across studies and require further research to synthesize information into a cohesive model. The lack of understanding in the research surrounding workload management will continue to foster misunderstanding in the practical realm and could lead to mismanagement of athlete training
I\u27ve Never Felt a Pain Like This A Dialogic Analysis of Parent-Child Estrangement Narratives on Reddit
Get PDFHow do adult children estranged from their parent(s) create meaning and make sense of their estrangement in Reddit posts on the subreddit r/EstrangedAdultChild? This study analyzed Reddit posts written by estranged adult children for a presumed audience of other estranged adult children. Using relational dialectics theory (RDT) as a lens for analysis, this research examined the competing discourses that influence the meaning-making and sense-making processes of estranged adult children in their posts when the intended audience is fellow estranged adult children. Seventy-four posts from r/EstrangedAdultChild, authored by adult children who self-identified as estranged from at least one parent, were collected from Reddit, coded for themes, and analyzed through the RDT framework. The results revealed two centripetal discourses of parent-child connectedness and parental expectations alongside one centrifugal discourse focused on the estrangement experience. The interplay of these discourses illustrates how estranged adult children derive new meaning from their experiences and offers valuable insights into the estrangement process
MIGRATIONS AND MALTHUSIAN DEMOGRAPHICS AMONGST TWO PIONEERING PALEO-INUIT TRADITIONS
Get PDFUnderstanding the ways in which resource variability, environmental conditions, and cultural behavior impact population movements has been a central concern both within the subfield of arctic archeology and within anthropology as an overarching discipline. To provide insights into these questions in Greenlandic contexts, Saqqaq and Independence I occupation movements have been examined through an analysis of broad trends in the radiocarbon record throughout the duration of these two cultural traditions. While the ultimate goal of this analysis is to recognize patterns in occupational progressions as indicated by the radiocarbon record, the demographic and environmental forces of change involved in the colonization of Greenland have been addressed through comparisons with Holocene paleoclimate reconstructions and the use of Summed Probability Distributions (SPDs) of radiocarbon dates in conjunction with insights provided by the archeological record. Recognizing that questions of human ecology and adaptation cannot be answered adequately without examining the role of demographic variables, the contributions of Malthusian demographic theory in directly connecting ecological factors of production and distribution to the demographic history of a settlement offer further insights into the cycles of resource/population abundance and decline that may have contributed to hunter-gatherer migration decisions. Through the statistical and spatial analysis of radiocarbon dates and an analysis of environmental pressures within Malthusian frameworks, a better understanding of the environmental and demographic factors that may have informed the migration behavior of these highly mobile hunter-gather groups may be achieved
UMFC #132: A Comprehensive Forensic Case Report
Get PDFThis case report of an individual designated as University of Montana Forensic Case 132 (UMFC 132) serves to partially fulfill the requirements for the Master of Arts (MA) degree in Forensic and Biological Anthropology. UMFC 132 is a complete human skeleton, used as part of the teaching collection in the University of Montana Forensic Anthropology Laboratory. The minimum number of individuals (MNI) of UMFC 132 is 1. The analysis of UMFC 132 was conducted according to bioarchaeological and forensic anthropological standards of skeletal assessment. UMFC 132 was estimated to be a mid-adult, between the ages of [30-40 years] of age at the time of death. The individual’s biological markers of sex in the pelvis and cranium lacked any persuasive sexually dimorphic traits, leading to a sex estimation of undetermined or ambiguous. Bioaffinity estimation was consistent with an individual of probable Asian descent. This assessment was made with recognition of the variable and often inaccurate nature of ancestry estimation. The stature of the individual is estimated to be [159 to 169 cm] or [5’2” to 5’6”]. UMFC 132 reflected only minor evidence of taphonomic change, including limited cracking and breaking throughout the skeleton. UMFC 132 had pathological changes throughout the skeleton, including osteophyte formation throughout the axial and appendicular skeleton, ossification of cartilage on the manubrium, eburnation of the temporomandibular joint, bifurcation of the spinous process in the cervical vertebrae, and fusion of the right rib. These pathological changes may be reflective of degeneration due to age or normal human variation. The individual reflected no evidence of ante-, peri-, or postmortem trauma. Based on the lack of repeating elements and consistent taphonomic state, the MNI of this case is 1