Showing 601 - 650 of 662 Items
- Restriction End Date: 2027-06-01
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Yi Peng Wang
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Jaida Hodge-Adams
Access: Open access
- The alt-right is a hyper-extreme, decentralized network of far-right pundits and their doggish supporters that exists almost entirely online. Consumed by conspiracy and identity, the myths of bigoted ideologies like racism, antisemitism, and transphobia are taken for granted, and their ideology calls for violent ends by violent means. In the physical world, members of the alt-right often keep their rhetoric to themselves; Online, however, they find solace in a vast, international network of websites and forums that together form one giant echo chamber into which they can dump their darkest thoughts. Though any individual member of the alt-right may operate uniquely within the context of their home country, together they form a collective, international voice whose strongest claims often transcend borders and resist state-level analysis. Unspeakable acts of violence like mass shootings, senseless killings, and acts of terrorism are unpredictable but become significantly more likely when the rhetorical atmosphere breeds hostility. By demonizing minority groups and spreading ideologies of hate, the alt-right makes these acts of violence more likely. On massive platforms like Twitter, the alt-right’s rhetoric can seep into mainstream conversations; their framing of concepts like race, gender, sexuality, and national identity are forced into relevance. Their rhetoric is euphemistic, but their message is clear, and their hate poses a real threat to people’s lives. This honors project explores the ideological and geographic features of the alt-right and their international implications, concluding that the alt-right is a globally interconnected group of actors whose conspiracies motivate lone-wolf terrorists worldwide.
- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Deva K Holliman
Access: Embargoed
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Camille E. Wasinger
Access: Open access
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Benjamin Ross
Access: Open access
- Remote sensing of solar induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) is a valuable tool in understanding the global carbon cycle. While SIF is highly correlated with photosynthesis at the ecosystem scale, the role that remote sensing of SIF can play at smaller scales is still unclear. The goal of my research was to investigate the ability of SIF to detect changes in pigmentation, photosynthesis, and energy partitioning at the grass canopy and leaf level in response to water stress and abscisic acid (ABA) hormone treatments. Both treatments immediately inhibited photosynthesis by limiting gas exchange through stomatal closure, but SIF declined gradually. Recovery of photosynthesis after alleviation of water stress was not reflected in remote measurements of SIF. I found that senescence in the tips of grasses had been driving changes in remote measurements, which affected remote measurements even when measured leaf-level gas exchange in the lower living tissue recovered. This heterogeneous senescence pattern contextualizes the disconnect between SIF and photosynthesis in stressed turfgrass.
- Restriction End Date: 2027-06-01
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Michael Christopher Dean
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Emma A. Bomfim
Access: Embargoed
- Restriction End Date: 2026-06-01
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Zubin Jay Kenkare
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Rory Mayne Devlin
Access: Open access
- Democratic theory suggests that voters reward or punish incumbent political parties in elections by evaluating parties’ ability to provide services. But do voters reward incumbent parties for service provision in practice? This project explores the relationship between municipal-level service provision and voting in the South African context. I test whether the local provision of services, such as electricity, piped water, internet, trash collection, and flush toilets, impact the performance of South Africa’s two major political parties, the African National Congress (ANC) and the Democratic Alliance (DA) in municipal and national elections between 2009 and 2021. I observe this relationship in ANC- and DA-controlled municipalities using municipal-level data on public service provision, election results, and nighttime brightness levels. The municipal-level results show that DA-controlled municipalities with higher levels of service provision in 2016 offered more support for the DA in the 2021 and 2019 elections. However, ANC-controlled municipalities with higher levels of 2016 service provision did not support the ANC at higher rates. Additionally, ANC-controlled municipalities that improved service provision between 2011 and 2016 supported the ANC at higher rates in the 2021 and 2019 elections than they did in previous elections. DA vote share did not increase in DA-controlled municipalities where services improved over time.
- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Ari Geisler
Access: Embargoed
- Embargo End Date: 2027-05-19
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Justin K. Yang
Access: Embargoed
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Sophia Walton
Access: Open access
- The blue mussel Mytilus edulis alters its phenotype in species-specific ways in response to either green crab (Carcinus maenus) or sea star (Asterias sp.) predation. Previous studies have shown that only sea stars induce changes in abductor muscle morphology, while green crabs generally alter the shape and thickness of shells. In the Western Gulf of Maine, Blue mussels collected from wave protected sites with abundant green crab predators were shown to have significantly thicker shells and larger adductor muscles than mussels collected from wave exposed sites with few green crab predators. The phenotypes of mussels originating from wave-protected and high green crab abundance sites increased the handling time by A. forbesi compared to sites with low wave exposure and high green crab abundance. These results contradict the paradigm that shell thickness trades off with abductor morphology, and I propose that a likely candidate for increased energy allocation to these traits is a decrease in reproductive allocation. My results further suggest that the escalating “arms race” between invasive green crabs and blue mussels in the Western Gulf of Maine is leading to changes in the phenotypic response of mussel populations in ways that are likely impacting sea star foraging dynamics.
Date: 2020-01-01
Creator: Marie Marjorie Bergsund
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
- Restriction End Date: 2026-06-01
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Kodie R Garza
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
- Embargo End Date: 2026-05-20
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Lianna Harrington
Access: Embargoed
- Restriction End Date: 2027-06-01
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Emily Ruth Staten
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Kyubin Kim
Access: Open access
- In 2019, Korean American writer Cathy Park Hong published her memoir Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning in the midst of a turning point in Asian American politics. Hong describes minor feelings as “emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic, built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one’s perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed.” Used as a concept to summate the Asian American experience in white America as living in a country where one’s reality is constantly questioned and made invisible, minor feelings forges an affective framework to study minoritized, diasporic literature. My project enriches Hong’s “minor feelings” by studying Korean American literature through a transnational and multimedia lens, considering how Korea’s colonial history and nation-building play roles in emoting Korean American self-realities. I structurally model my project after Sianne Ngai’s Ugly Feelings, split into four chapters, each focusing on one affect: shame, anger, han, and love. My project follows and documents the contemporary shifts occurring in Korean Americana, in how they perceive collective racial and diasporic identity, the intersectionality of layered identities, and the younger generations’ call for coalition. Since Korean American affects often are studied as an afterthought to Korean affects, my project retains a focus on the Korean American experience, recentering members of a diaspora whose globalizing homeland’s triumphs may eclipse their minor, invisible realities in America.
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Kate Elizabeth Tapscott
Access: Open access
- ¿Cómo es que se puede escapar verdaderamente de la opresión patriarcal? Esta investigación aborda a través de un análisis de la literatura de escritoras del Cono Sur el asunto complicado de la liberación bajo un sistema en constante mutación. En el primer capítulo, a partir de aportes teóricos de Freud, Josefina Ludmer y Homi Bhabha entre otros, analizo cuentos de Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo, y Clarice Lispector cuyas protagonistas intentan resistir su condición de víctima con diversos grados de éxito. En el capítulo que sigue, exploro una tendencia reciente en la literatura de escritoras del Cono Sur que incorpora elementos del horror y lo gótico para desestabilizar una cosmovisión humanista y patriarcal. Incorporando la teoría de Gabriel Giorgi, Rosi Braidotti, y Julieta Yelin, investigo los efectos que los animales, los cuerpos, y la materia tienen en la expansión de la agencia feminista y discuto si ofrecen o no nuevas e inesperadas posibilidades para resistir el sistema.
Date: 2021-01-01
Creator: Dylan J. Bess
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Yucheng Hua
Access: Open access
- The theory of functional approximation has numerous applications in sciences and industry. This thesis focuses on the possible approaches to approximate a continuous function on a compact subset of R2 using a variety of constructions. The results are presented from the following four general topics: polynomials, Fourier series, wavelets, and neural networks. Approximation with polynomials on subsets of R leads to the discussion of the Stone-Weierstrass theorem. Convergence of Fourier series is characterized on the unit circle. Wavelets are introduced following the Fourier transform, and their construction as well as ability to approximate functions in L2(R) is discussed. At the end, the universal approximation theorem for artificial neural networks is presented, and the function representation and approximation with single- and multilayer neural networks on R2 is constructed.
Date: 2015-05-01
Creator: Bridgett C McCoy
Access: Open access
- This study provides the first analysis of the politics and ethics behind carbon taxation in South Africa and Mexico. Using the preexisting scholarly frameworks of climate change policy, tax policy, and Robert Putnam’s two level games, I determine that in both cases, international pressures from multilateral negotiations and international development funding sources initiated the carbon tax policymaking process within the environment and treasury ministries of both countries. Once environment ministry bureaucrats initiated the carbon tax a lack of politicization of climate change (both countries) and an additional gain of raising revenue (Mexico) allowed the taxes to become law. I then turn to the laws themselves, analyzing their implications for climate justice. In both cases, the government did not adopt any proposals made interest groups representing environmental concerns and poverty groups, and instead shaped the bills so as to tailor to the interests of heavy manufacturing. This policy decision had the main effect of weakening the climate change mitigation impact of the carbon tax, and exacerbating issues of regressivity by not recycling revenues towards projects aimed at poverty reductions. I conclude this paper with an analysis of the ethics of such a carbon tax in developing countries. The carbon taxes, as they currently exist, sacrifice the rights and needs of the present poor for those of the future generation while an ideal policy that addresses poverty betters the condition of both groups. In order to ensure climate justice and for all groups and prevent political backlash, policy makers in middle-income countries must make carbon reduction policies with the unique challenges of poverty and climate change mitigation in mind.
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Micah Benjamin Wilson
Access: Open access
- This thesis investigates three predominantly Jewish housing cooperatives that emerged in the Bronx in the late 1920s. The Amalgamated Housing Cooperative, the United Workers Cooperative Colony (the “Coops”), and the Sholem Aleichem Houses offered garment workers utopian retreats from the drudgery of Lower East Side tenements where Jewish immigrants arrived in droves between 1890-1920. With each cooperative housing a distinct faction of the Jewish Left––from socialists to communists to Yiddish nationalists––the Bronx housing cooperatives, more than experiments in communal living, were the site of a highly contested battle over competing Jewish cultural and political worldviews across the 1930s and 1940s. Transcending the era that is typically considered the movement’s “peak” in the 1910s, this thesis demonstrates that the era of the Bronx cooperatives must be central to any study of the Jewish labor movement by revealing the ways radical Jews attempted to maintain and negotiate their various worldviews against the backdrop of the threats posed by the capitalist housing market, assimilation, and sectarian struggles. I reconsider the disproportionate attention the “success story” of the Amalgamated Cooperative has received, situating its politics as but one of many responses to the contradictions embedded in the housing cooperative model. Finally, I analyze the role of nostalgia present across resident recollections of the cooperatives and situate it in the contexts of 1970s neoliberal urban reform and suburbanization, while considering the discursive power of this emotion to obscure the persistent legacy of anti-black racism entangled in the cooperative housing movement despite its progressive reputation.
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Adedunmola Praise Adewale
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2022-01-01
Creator: Francis Jacob Kassama
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Patrick Rochford
Access: Open access
- In the decades following World War II, mass suburbanization remade the American landscape. While suburbs accounted for 83% of the nation’s growth between 1950 and 1970, cities bled their populations and natural resources dwindled. Treating the postwar era as a critical juncture, this thesis examines the political history of twentieth-century state land use policy to illuminate how competing interests have shaped policy outcomes across the United States. Specifically, the paper seeks to explain the passage of statewide growth management and smart growth programs. After providing a history of American suburbanization, the paper considers an emergent challenge to the postwar growth paradigm as manifested through resistance to urban renewal, open space loss, and diverse anti-freeway coalitions that combined actors from each movement. Thereafter, I detail the development of statewide growth management and smart growth programs before employing a set of case studies to discern causal factors associated with the success or failure of such legislation. Testing the theory that broad-based coalitions were essential to the passage of state growth management legislation, I perform a controlled comparison of two pairs of states, Maryland and Virginia and Oregon and Washington, employing additional within-case analysis for Washington. In so doing, I find evidence that diverse coalitions—from environmentalists and housing advocates to farmers and historic preservationists—were essential to the passage of state growth management programs. I conclude by considering the implications of these findings and the relevance of state land use policy to contemporary issues such as affordable housing and climate change.
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Khushali N Patel
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
- Embargo End Date: 2027-05-16
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Tess Davis
Access: Embargoed
Date: 2016-01-01
Creator: Emily M King
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Ethan Winters
Access: Open access
- This work builds up the theory surrounding a recent result of Erlandsson, Leininger, and Sadanand: the Current Support Theorem. This theorem states precisely when a hyperbolic cone metric on a surface is determined by the support of its Liouville current. To provide background for this theorem, we will cover hyperbolic geometry and hyperbolic surfaces more generally, cone surfaces, covering spaces of surfaces, the notion of an orbifold, and geodesic currents. A corollary to this theorem found in the original paper is discussed which asserts that a surface with more than $32(g-1)$ cone points must be rigid. We extend this result to the case that there are more than $3(g-1)$ cone points. An infinite family of cone surfaces which are not rigid and which have precisely $3(g-1)$ cone points is also provided, hence demonstrating tightness.
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Margaret Elizabeth Weinstock
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
- Restriction End Date: 2028-06-01
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Christoph Anders Tatgenhorst
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Lucia Marie O'Sullivan
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Isabel Sharp
Access: Open access
- The rejection of the realist position in metaethics creates difficulties in rationalizing our moral intuitions and the meaning of our values. Antirealists must explain what we are left with, morally-speaking, without objective moral truth to rely on. I argue that this resolution may be found in thoroughgoing constructivism, particularly that put forth by Sharon Street. In this thesis, I compare the constructivist theories of Sharon Street and Christine Korsgaard, ultimately arguing for Street’s model of constructivism as a viable and compelling way forward for the antirealist position.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Abigail Jane Steinwachs
Access: Permanent restriction
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Inga Christhild Dovre
Access: Open access
- Large dams intrinsically change the geomorphic and hydrologic forms and processes of the rivers they reside in, yet the complexity of their impacts in different settings is not fully understood. In the Upper Midwest, Saylorville and Red Rock Dam are constructed on the Des Moines River, in a region undergoing drastic alterations due to climate and land use change. In this study, I seek to quantify these alterations, using the principles of Lane’s Balance to evaluate dam impacts on river aggradation and degradation. I use historical aerial imagery to measure channel width and other geomorphic properties from the 1930s to the 2020s. Stream gauge data from the United States Geological Survey is used to construct a temporal and spatial hydrologic understanding of the Des Moines River during this time period. I find that channel width is increasing significantly, driven by both the trapping of sediments by dams and the climate-driven increase in annual mean flows. These width increases are variable spatially, with the inter-dam reach widening slower than the reach downstream of both dams. These results demonstrate the control of other factors such as climate and land use on the geomorphic changes seen downstream of dams, illustrating the importance of considering regional characteristics of watersheds in geomorphic analysis.
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Caroline Griffith Vauclain
Access: Permanent restriction
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Diego Armando DeSousa
Access: Permanent restriction
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Daniel Seongmin Kang
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Liam Roehr
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Nicholas Peter Everin
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Kristen Kinzler
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Samantha McLemore
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Claire A. Stoddard
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
Date: 2025-01-01
Creator: Jane McCarter
Access: Permanent restriction
Date: 2016-05-01
Creator: Jesse Ortiz
Access: Open access
- Increasingly, David Foster Wallace is becoming a cult figure among literary enthusiasts. His novels, essays, and short stories are all known for their poignant critiques of modern culture. Since his 2008 suicide, Wallace’s name has come to represent a way of thinking that rejects – and perhaps transcends – the hegemonic power of late capitalism. Wallace had a problem with pleasure. His writing often seemed to deflate or deconstruct what many people enjoy. For him, so much was “supposedly fun.” To understand Wallace’s relationship with pleasure, we must see how pleasure incorporates aesthetics and consumption. Wallace takes issue with the pleasure that comes from the aesthetics of cultural commodities. Irony produces pleasure, which turns culture into a desirable commodity. In my first chapter, I argue that Wallace’s essays challenge aesthetic pleasure by deconstructing self-reflexive irony. In his descriptions of consumer culture, Wallace evokes the feeling of disgust to undo the aesthetic pleasure of consumption. In my second chapter, I move to Infinite Jest to show how Wallace engages with irony while using it to exceed aesthetic pleasure. Infinite Jest challenges the hierarchy of aesthetics and suggests that deformity and waste can be beautiful and important. Infinite Jest demonstrates that, by trusting others instead of pursuing aesthetic ideals, people can build communities that are more honest and fulfilling than the pleasure of consumption.
- Restriction End Date: 2026-06-01
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Colleen Hughes McAloon
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
- Embargo End Date: 2027-05-16
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Sarah Conant
Access: Embargoed
- Embargo End Date: 2027-05-15
Date: 2024-01-01
Creator: Victoria Dunphy
Access: Embargoed
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Nhi Nguyen
Access: Access restricted to the Bowdoin Community
- Embargo End Date: 2028-05-18
Date: 2023-01-01
Creator: Eliana Roberts
Access: Embargoed