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Letter to Dean Lythcott on the First Jerry Wood Lecture
No full textLetter to Dean Lythcott commending the first in the ongoing Jerry Wood Lecture Serie
Economic Development and Transformation: China vs. India
No full textThis is a survey course on the economic development and recent transitional experience in China and India. The course will examine the economic structure and policies in the two countries, with a focus on comparing China and India's recent economic successes and failures, their past development policies and strategies, and factors affecting the current transformation process in the two countries, from varying degrees of centrally planned communist/socialist economic systems, towards more decentralized reforming hybrid economies combining plan and market. One of the goals of this course is to expose students to critical analysis of published research and to introduce them to the process of conducting original research
The Macroeconomic Impact of Oil Price Shocks
No full textNancy Yannan Li was a Bryn Mawr student.This thesis studies the impact of oil price shocks on key macroeconomic indicators including GDP growth, inflation, exchange rate and the current account balance for both oil exporting and importing countries from 1999 to 2015. Structural Vector Autoegression model is first used to decompose the underlying causes of oil price shocks at each period. Then a Vector Autoregression model is used to analyze the responses of each macroeconomic indicator to different types of oil price shocks. This thesis has following key findings. First, countries respond to different types of oil price shocks very differently. Following an oil supply shock, oil exporters tend to benefit from further GDP growth while oil importers tend to experience a fall in GDP growth. In the case of an aggregate demand shock, all countries seem to benefit from an increase in GDP growth. Whereas following an oil market specific shock, most countries experience a fall in GDP growth. Second, among the oil importers, the more advanced economies tend to suffer less from an oil price shock than the developing economies. Third, oil exporters with lower crude oil reserve-to-production ratio tend to benefit less from an oil price shock
Supporting the Whiteline: Differences in the Probability of being Fined in the NFL by Race
No full textAlthough numerous studies have analyzed discrimination in professional sports, none have analyzed fines and suspensions in the NFL. Analyses of the probability of being fined after an infraction between 2010 and 2014 show that African American athletes are more likely to be fined than White athletes. The analyses make racial comparisons over infractions categorized as aggressive and unsportsmanlike. Controlling for pre-market and market factors, the racial disparities in likelihood of being fined disappear for aggressive fines but remain significant and large (roughly 70 percentage of the mean likelihood) for unsportsmanlike fines. Further, Black athletes who have been fined once in a season are significantly more likely than White athletes to be fined for a second unsportsmanlike offense. Finally, Black athletes are subject to 15 percent higher fines for aggressive penalties than White athletes while controlling for pre-market and market characteristics. Pre-market control variables like high school program type and median house-hold income have little impact on higher incidence levels of Black fines, while market factors serve to reduce racial disparities. Overall, results provide evidence of discrimination in the form of conscious, negative responses to shows of dominance by Black athletes in the NFL
Every Nation’s Refugee? A Comparative Analysis of Asylum Policies towards Syrians among Hungary, France, and Germany
No full textComputational Modeling of Musical Enculturation: An Investigation of Multicultural Music Learning Using Self-Organizing Maps
No full textPast research has shown that children are able to implicitly learn the underlying melodic structure of their native culture's musical system, even without formal musical training. Although implicit musical learning has been well studied, little is known about non-Western and multicultural musical enculturation. The present study addressed these issues though three experiments using self-organizing maps (SOMs), a type of neural model, to simulate implicit musical learning. Experiment 1 used SOMs to simulate Western, Chinese, and Hindustani musical enculturation, each learned independently from one another. Experiment 2 simulated a child growing up in a multicultural context, to investigate whether they might learn the structure of multiple native systems. Experiment 3 simulated an adult encountering an unfamiliar culture, to examine whether adults – not only children – may implicitly acquire the syntax of new musical systems. Results generally supported the plausibility of successful multicultural learning, with the caveat that certain systems disrupted the learning of others. Our findings led to further discussion of cross-cultural similarities between musical systems and the implications of these connections
Seeking Peace within War: Military Medicine and the Search for Healthy Violence
No full textAs an institution, the military trains individuals to conduct violence while remaining, at least ideally, healthy. From the standpoint of the institution, a successful soldier is someone who is “an expert in the application of violence” at the same time that he or she is mentally and physically fit. With a close look at warfare and the U.S. military, this course tackles the intersection of violence and health. Students will explore the social, cultural, political, historical, and economic contexts shaping the health of war torn communities, soldiers, and veterans. With a particular emphasis on the health (as broadly defined) of Iraq and Afghan veterans, this course focuses on how specific institutions—for example, the U.S. Military, media, Veterans Affairs, families, the medical profession, and the legal system—influence individuals and conversely, how these individuals shape social structures.\ud
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We will discuss the “illness experience,” paying attention to how people decide when they are sick, how they respond and cope with the symptoms of various diseases (especially “invisible” mental health concerns like PTSD), and how people make decisions about when and from whom to seek help. Students will consider the various factors that shape the occurrence of mental illness and why certain groups of soldiers are exposed to more sickness and disease than others. Readings will draw from interdisciplinary scholarship in the fields of sociology, history, psychology, psychiatry, and health and medicine. We will analyze popular depictions of war and veterans in order to assess how veterans are understood in the public imagination.\ud
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Some of the broad questions the course will address are the following: What is the on-the-ground experience of war like for soldiers and civilians who are “in theater”? What defines concepts like “health,” “illness,” and “resilience”? How do we cope, adjust, make sense of, and heal from war’s violence? How does context shape the understanding of a violent event? How does military culture shape soldier and veterans’ health? How does violence and/or combat influence the experiences of veterans?; Might certain wars affect health differently than others? (I.e.: Are there significant differences between WWII veterans and OIF vets?); Are the health needs of veterans unique? Do male and female veterans differ in their health experiences? How does the organization of the Veterans Affairs (VA) affect the lived experiences of former soldiers? Are there any potential benefits of having survived violent contexts?\ud
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While there is an emphasis on military health, you will apply lessons broadly and extend these ideas and concepts to a range of contexts, groups, and institutions which affect, and are affected by violence. In addition to war and the US military, we will look at the contexts of organized sports (such as concussion in football) and gender-based violence like intimate partner violence
Historical phonology should be conducted with a basis in phonetics
No full textIn this thesis, I demonstrate that Articulatory Phonology, a theory of phonological representation,\ud
can be fruitfully combined with Optimality Theory, currently the most widespread\ud
theory of phonological processes, to describe sound change. I argue that this combination is\ud
suited for explaining sound change because it is firmly grounded in the physical movements\ud
of the mouth - meaning that only those sound changes which are natural can occur. As an\ud
example of this approach, I analyze the development of Icelandic preaspirated stops from Old\ud
Norse unvoiced geminates as an example of constraint promotion and interaction, and find\ud
that just a few, wholly natural constraint rankings are necessary to produce the typologically\ud
rare subsystem that can be observed in the Icelandic oral stops
Latino Heritage Month Funding Proposal
No full textBudget proposal by HOLA requesting funding for a party celebrating Mexican Independence Day and Latino Heritage Mont
1992 Letters to Professor Friedman
No full textHandwritten letters to Professor Joan Friedman, in recognition of their service to HOLA, the Latino community on campus, and the Intercultural Center, as well as student concerns for the future of HOLa and the I