Student Theses and Honors Collection
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Library, Information, & Technology Services (LITS) established the electronic Student Theses Collection in 2005. It contains over eight hundred e-honors theses created by MHC seniors from across the disciplines. By archiving your honors work in the Institutional Archive, you are contributing to the legacy of excellence in student scholarship at the College.
To submit an honors thesis to the collection, please start by reviewing the information found here.
Once you are ready to submit, click on the "Login" link within the "My Account" box on the lower right side of this page. Click on the MHC logo, and then enter your MHC username and password. You will be redirected back to the Institutional Archive homepage. Scroll down to the "My Account" box and click on "Submissions. Then choose "Student Theses Collection."
For questions about the Student Theses Collection, please contact Archives and Special Collections.
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Item Restricted Bennie: A Revolt Against the Heterosexual Lesbian in American Cinema (A Satirical Horror Short)Smith, Shelby; Montague, ElliotThis thesis explores the intersection of queer feminist theory, monstrosity in the horror genre, and industry experience through the creation of Bennie, a satirical horror short that critiques the misrepresentation of lesbian identity in mainstream cinema. Drawing on influences such as Barbara Hammer’s experimental lesbian aesthetics, the essay reflects on the author's development as a filmmaker at Mount Holyoke College, supported by immersive experiences at Cannes, Sundance, and on a professional film set. In addition to Hammer’s work, the film explores what it means to be a monster—particularly through a queer lens—and how monstrosity can be reclaimed as a symbol of resistance, transformation, and identity. Through the lens of Bennie, the essay challenges the "heterosexual lesbian" trope perpetuated by male-directed films and reclaims horror as a vehicle for queer expression and resistance. Blending narrative and avant-garde elements, Bennie subverts traditional slasher tropes and centers on queer protagonists who resist harmful representation and erasure. The production also served as a collaborative mentorship model, offering over 40 students experiential learning opportunities. Ultimately, the essay advocates for queer-led filmmaking as a means of visibility, solidarity, and cultural change in the face of ongoing political and representational challenges.Item Restricted Investigating Connective Tissue Disorders in Drosophila melanogaster(2025-07-09) Narin, Anna; Woodard, CraigThe Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) is a wide classification of tissue and joint connectivity disorders, with symptoms primarily manifesting as extended joint flexibility and reduced motor coordination. EDS primarily impacts collagenous tissues, though the exact impact and tissues affected varies among subtypes. For example, classical EDS (cEDS) impacts type I collagen, whereas Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (vEDS) impacts type III. Other varieties of EDS impact connective tissues via a more indirect method. The rare spondylocheirodysplastic subtype (SCD‐EDS / spEDS) impacts the production of a metal ion transporter protein (Xiao and Zhou, 2018). This protein is tasked with the influx of Fe(II) into the ER/golgi, and the efflux of Zn(II) ions into the cytosol (Calap-Quintana et al., 2017). Impacted synthesis of the transporter protein results in a two-factor effect: a build-up of Zn(II) in and a decrease of Fe(II) in the golgi. The Zn(II) ions interfere with the enzymatic activity of Lysyl hydroxylases, which use iron as a cofactor to facilitate a post-translational hydroxylation of lysine residues during collagen synthesis. Hydroxylysine and lysine both contribute to the stabilization of the collagen triple helix through bond networks on the alpha-chain (Eyre, Weis, & Rai, 2019). However, hydroxylysine is more effective due to its additional bonding opportunities. Collagen stability is important for structural support, especially as a component of more complex structures such as basement membranes. Basement membranes are support structures that contribute to the integrity and organization of connective tissues. Collagen type IV is a large component of basement membranes, and malformations in its structure have been linked to EDS subtypes. These malformations can be induced a number of ways, including the method utilized below. In this experiment, I attempted to trigger the development of EDS-like symptoms by reducing Fe(II) availability and therefore causing underhydroxylation of lysine residues, resulting in decreased connective tissue stability. This was done using the competitive relationship between zinc and iron for absorption in the small intestine /midgut, where the excess of one can lead to a deficit of the other (Bettedi et al., 2011). Excess zinc was added by supplementing three different quantities of ZnCl2 into D. melanogaster food. The goal was to reduce Fe(II) availability, therefore weaken the structure of collagen by decreasing the amount of hydroxylysine residues. Post-eclosion, experimental progeny were tested for motor discoordination behavior using flight and climbing assays. Zinc concentration in tissues was quantified using a colorimetric analysis as well. Initial motor assay results suggested positive correlation in failure rates and Zn food concentrations, however further data analysis provided conflicting and inconsistent results.Item Restricted Optimization of RNA display for genetic detection of bacterial RNA-protein interactions(2025-07-09) Desmond, Erin; Berry, KatherineResearch on bacterial virulence has revealed the importance of small RNAs (sRNAs), which assist in bacterial gene regulation through interactions with untranslated regions (UTRs) of messenger RNAs (mRNAs). These interactions, often facilitated by RNA-chaperone proteins, are involved in bacterial growth, stress responses, and virulence, making it important to understand their molecular mechanisms. One promising approach to dissecting the mechanisms of bacterial RNA-protein interactions is a bacterial three-hybrid (B3H) assay developed by our laboratory. This system detects these interactions inside living E. coli cells by connecting the strength of RNA-protein interaction to the expression of a reporter gene. Previous studies demonstrate the B3H assay’s potential to detect interactions between many sRNAs and 3’UTRs with the RNA-chaperone proteins Hfq and ProQ. Still, new constructs are needed to examine interactions with certain classes of RNAs, such as 5’UTRs. Previous work has shown that an exogenous terminator provided to 5'UTR-containing bait constructs causes a detrimental background signal in the B3H. To increase control over how RNAs are expressed and presented within the cell, we are designing novel constructs to provide control over the display of 5'UTRs and prevent background signal. I have focused on affording post-transcriptional control over the RNA bait construct by introducing modifications that would remove the terminator sequence hypothesized to be responsible for background interaction. In this work, I demonstrated that a modified bait RNA construct that contains a self-cleaving ribozyme is capable of decreasing background signal in the B3H assay. Modification of the RNA bait construct to contain a ribozyme enables us to examine what ribozyme classes are capable of cleaving in vivo, as well as mRNA degradation after post-transcriptional processing. While results indicate the ribozyme-modified RNA bait construct is effective in reducing background signal interaction when no 5’UTR is present in the construct, for the application of detecting a broader range of RNA-protein interactions, it was imperative to determine if the presence of a ribozyme disrupted established 5’UTR-protein interactions. My results suggest that a ribozyme in the context of the RNA bait construct cleaves in vivo and does not disrupt 5’UTR-protein interactions. These constructs should greatly improve the scope of RNA-protein interactions that can be studied using the B3H assay.Item Open Access Structured Insights or Preprocessing Artifacts? “Breaking Down” the Impact of Text Chunking Strategies on Topic Model Interpretability(2025-07-09) Marcus, Becky; Gebre-Medhin, BenjaminComputational text analysis (CTA) has become an essential tool for sociologists seeking to extract cultural meaning from texts, particularly with the increased digitization of historical text corpora. Structural Topic Modeling (STM) is a popular exploratory tool for highlighting latent themes in text that warrant further investigation, but with new tools come new challenges for reliability and validity. Most researchers will adhere to the text preprocessing methods suggested in prominent CTA literature, though with some variability in the size of the text chunk, word tokenization, and vocabulary simplifying and filtering. These decisions are often made somewhat uncritically as part of an established methodological procedure yet have the potential to yield markedly different topics and interpretations. Supplementing existing literature on preprocessing strategies for topic models, this study takes a mixed-methods data science approach to evaluate the effect that text unit size has on topic content and prevalence. It analyzes a corpus of presidential addresses from meetings of the American Economic Association from 1888-2022 and includes meeting year as a topic prevalence covariate. Contributing to a larger research effort on social science presidential addresses, this study not only uncovers preliminary patterns in institutional and academic discourse over time but also discusses how text chunking can be aligned with different empirical questions.Item Restricted The molecular characterization of KH-domain proteins in pathogenic gastric bacteria(2025-07-09) Lett, Nay Won; Berry, KatherineItem Open Access What's In a Seed: Considering the Importance of Seedstock and Land Quality in Securing Power in The Colonial Chesapeake Region(2025-07-09) Lancaster, Tessa Hanley; Lauret, SavoyNicotiana tabacum, the species from which all commercial tobacco is derived, was central to the success of early English settlements in the Chesapeake region. Their success would require and accelerate the displacement of Indigenous people from their homelands and the establishment of commercial slavery in North America on a massive scale. During the peak growth of tobacco in the Chesapeake, two strains dominated the market: Sweet-Scented and Oronoco. Current research on Sweet-Scented and Oronoco tobacco has focused on delineating the regions in which each strain could grow based on soil type; however, the research so far ignores the dynamic, evolving nature of N. tabacum as a species. Originating in South America, N. tabacum spread across the colonial world, and its relocation would expose the plant to new selective pressures in each locale. Different populations of tobacco could and would have come in contact with each other depending on how and where seeds were purchased and introduced to the Chesapeake. Therefore, it is also important to consider the evidence that genetic differences between Sweet-Scented and Oronoco tobacco were a major factor in their differentiation. I have used a combination of historiography, primary source analysis, sediment mapping, and a modern biological perspective to create a better understanding of genetic influences on colonial tobacco strains. This work contributes to our collective understanding of what factors enabled specific planters to amass the economic and political power to displace Indigenous populations and institute commercial slavery on a large scale.Item Open Access The Effect of Glial Tau Expression and Traumatic Brain Injury on Heat Shock Protein Expression(2025-07-09) Baako, Ann Kabuki; Colodner, KennethRecent studies examining the brains of footballers and boxers have shown that successive, low-impact traumatic injuries to the head lead to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a tauopathy characterized by the aggregation of misfolded Tau both in neuronal and glial cells. Glial cells play a crucial role in overall brain health, but the effect of glial Tau aggregation in CTE, as in other tauopathies, remains unclear. In this project, we used a Drosophila model of human glial tauopathy to investigate the effect of both glial Tau expression and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) on the expression of two Heat Shock Proteins (Hsps). Hsps are a class of molecular chaperones that prevent the aggregation of misfolded proteins, and the formation of Tau tangles suggests a deficit in this chaperone system. We have found that Hsp23 and Hsp70 levels attenuate with aging. Moreover, the presence of glial Tau in 3-day-old flies similarly results in a decline in Hsp levels. TBI also leads to a reduction in Hsp70 levels in young flies that do not express glial Tau, while Hsp levels in older flies were resistant to TBI-induced changes. Our results indicate that the Hsp chaperone system is indeed affected by TBI and compromised in tauopathies; the Hsp chaperone system represents a pathological pathway that may be targeted in an attempt to combat tauopathies.Item Open Access Connections in Conversation: Dialogue Rooted in Equity(2025-07-08) Delamere, Katherine; Gebre-Medhin, BenjaminThis thesis analyzes filmed dialogues that center interracial and intergroup understanding through small group communication. This research seeks to deepen understandings of structures and power dynamics in communication networks at the intersection of social network analysis, communication analysis, and restorative justice principles. Examining seven filmed dialogues, including five intergroup identity-based dialogues and two restorative justice circles, through computational techniques to analyze the transcripts using social network analysis, centrality measures, and sentiment analysis, this research illuminates the relationship between communication, dialogic connection, and social power structures. This research finds that these filmed identity-based intergroup dialogues center the narratives and emotional arcs of the white participants, and, more often than not, use the participants of color as educators instead of equally included participants. Further, this research finds that white participants often expressed higher sentiment scores than participants of color, and that their sentiment scores followed how positively or negatively they felt about their place in a racialized society. By centering the emotional and educational stories and arcs of understanding of the white participants, these filmed intergroup identity-based dialogues reinforce the very racial injustices that they claim to work toward dismantling.Item Restricted Tracing Anxieties: American Missionary Schools in Turkey and the Figure of the Spy(2025-07-08) Yildiz, Gunes; Watson, Matthew C.Approximately 450 American missionary schools were established between the nineteenth century and the Ottoman Empire’s collapse. Currently, only five of them exist in the form of high schools and universities in the Republic of Turkey. During the reign of Sultan Abdülhamit (1876-1909), these schools were tightly controlled by the “Yıldız Intelligence Organization.” This led to the closure of many schools and the deportation of some missionaries on the grounds that they participated in spy work or instigated minority uprisings. Rumors and conspiracy theories about existing missionary schools persist today. In my research over the summer of 2024, I traced past and present anxieties, particularly those relating to accusations of espionage, through archival research, ethnographic interviews, and fieldwork. In this thesis, rather than proving or disproving such theories and allegations, I aim to examine how the figure of the spy has been socially constructed in the Turkish context.Item Open Access Effects of Climate Change Factors on Hypericum perforatum Presence in New England(2025-07-08) Gerbi, Elizabeth; Hoopes, MarthaABSTRACT Climate change effects throughout the globe cause increased ecosystem disturbance risk from invasive species. Common St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) is a forb native to Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa, and considered an invasive weed in the northwestern United States. H. perforatum is present in New England, but appears to be non-invasive. Climate change is highly affecting New England temperatures and precipitation variability, which could have a species-dependent effect on invasives, either facilitating or discouraging invasion. As climate change alters New England climate and ecosystems, the shift in conditions could facilitate H. perforatum growth, possibly spurring invasion in New England. This research examines changes in temperature and water availability on H. perforatum both alone and combined with competition and disturbance. Water availability was the most important factor in H. perforatum germination in this study. Increased temperature facilitated germination when combined with consistent water availability but inhibited germination when combined with variable watering. Disturbance and competition both led to low germination and survival rates although a combination of consistent water and heat increased both. The current climate conditions in New England appear favorable for H. perforatum invasion, but non-climate factors likely best explain the current lack of H. perforatum invasion.Item Open Access Mixed-Race Fugitivity: The Politics of Identity, Abolition, and Racial Performance in 19th Century American Literature(2025-07-08) Lee Adams, Amanda; Moskowitz, AlexThis project interrogates how early American literature stages the racialized body as a contested site of power, perception, and discipline through the work of William Apess’s Eulogy on King Philip (1836), William Wells Brown’s Clotel, or The President’s Daughter (1853), and Sui Sin Far’s Its Wavering Image (1912). Through a historical materialist lens, I trace the afterlives of colonialism and slavery—ongoing structures of violence that sediment in the racialized ordering of the social—and examine how these texts mobilize narrative as a fugitive strategy, locating in the margins of literary form a critique of dominant racial ontologies. While the figures at the center of these texts are often retroactively framed within a “mixed race” discourse, my analysis resists imposing contemporary identity categories, instead attending to the historical and epistemological work of racial ambiguity: how it becomes legible to the state, how it is surveilled, eroticized, commodified, and ultimately weaponized in service of racial capitalism and settler sovereignty. Apess’s eulogy functions as a counter-historiography, reclaiming Metacomet not only as a symbol of Indigenous resistance but as a rupture in the settler colonial narrative of inevitability. Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, I argue that Apess stages race as an unstable and contested construct, using performance as a mode of political intervention that resists fixed racial legibility and asserts Indigenous futurity—a fugitive practice resonant with Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s Undercommons. Brown’s Clotel, situated at the nexus of race, gender, sexuality, and labor, exposes the libidinal economy of slavery and the contradictions embedded in Jeffersonian democracy. Rather than succumbing to a narrative of tragic archetype, Clotel’s racial and gendered position destabilizes legal and ideological boundaries, foregrounding Black female body as both a juridical problem and a theoretical site. Far’s Pan occupies the racial threshold marked by Xine Yao’s term “oriental inscrutability”—her perceived unreadability becomes a mechanism through which white desire and nationalist anxiety co-produce her racialization. Across these texts, I argue that narrative form becomes a method of dissent, a praxis of disruption wherein authors refuse the coherence of racial ideology and instead foreground race as a structure of feeling—unstable, relational, and always already in crisis. These works not only historicize the emergence of monoracial paradigms but also render visible the affective and political stakes of ambiguity, situating racial perception as a battleground through which the violences of nation-building are both masked and maintained.Item Restricted On the Existence of Numbers(2025-07-08) Cazeault, Ellamae; Mitchell, SamuelThis thesis will argue that numbers are real objects and that we ought to admit them into our ontology. Results in logic, particularly Gödel’s incompleteness proofs make it impossible to avoid doing so. I will argue that to give up the fact that numbers are real is to give up math as we currently understand it and practice it. I will argue this by explaining how David Hilbert has the best method of utilizing math without committing numbers to our ontology. I will then go through Gödel’s incompleteness proofs and show why Hilbert’s methods will never work. This means that in order to do math, we must admit numbers into ontology. I will then further argue that it is very difficult to give up math. I will show this through Quine’s indispensability argument. Thus, we must admit numbers into our ontology.Item Open Access Does Ranked Choice Voting Affect Turnout?: An Examination of US Mayoral Elections(2025-07-08) Rapoport, Luz; Hilton, AdamHow does the way we vote affect democratic participation? The goal of my thesis is to determine the effects of the adoption of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) by looking at voter turnout across the United States. Whereas most people recognize what is called a Single Member Plurality system, 2 states, 3 counties, and 47 cities have established the use of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) (FairVote, n.d.). Based on previous literature, my initial hypothesis was that turnout is affected by RCV, whether positively or negatively. However, I will demonstrate via my findings that, in the aggregate, the usage of RCV does not significantly increase voter turnout. I used local and county level electoral data, including Voter Registered Population (VRP) and votes cast to calculate voter turnout and its statistical correlation to the usage of RCV. This answer is demonstrated through a quantitative, differences-in-differences analysis of turnout in these localities in comparison to others that use a plurality electoral system. More research should be conducted on this specific question, as case studies and higher implementation rates could provide different results.Item Open Access Seeing Walls: A Study of Separation and Connection in Manila(2025-06-04) Heller, Micah; Darling, NaomiA careful reading of the form and materiality of colonial infrastructure in Manila exposes the extent and limitations of the colonial dominated archive. Seeing Walls reveals a history of material resistance against the walls that divide the city through informal architectural additions throughout the city. Given the strategic location of the archipelago that make up the Philippines, Manila provides a site in which walls – understood broadly as both divisive and connective - are part of the landscape. For example, the ocean offered a protective wall to early inhabitants but, with the development of boat technology, that same water became temporarily habitable and permeable. The oceanic wall thus enabled extensive trade routes that connected the Pacific Islands and China. Since then, architectural walls have been built as part of colonial projects and, likewise, have been subverted through transient and perishable interventions. As examples, the Intramuros fortification was built during the Spanish colonial rule to separate Spanish and native Filipinos. But, woven throughout, Sari Sari shops and food carts inhabit this colonial infrastructure. These small moments of deliberate “misuse” complicate our understanding of the planned use of the city fabric. The simple act of providing people shade and respite from the tropical weather are evidence of colonial refusal. These documented examples of resistance expand the archive and recontextualize historical images. My thesis considers the rich history that produced precedents of resistance and proposes a design strategy that deconstructs and transforms the Postigo de La Nuestra Señora De Soledad, a small hidden gate in the Intramuros fortification. By partially obscuring and inhabiting this section of the fortification, using bamboo scaffolding of coastal villages and textile boat sails in juxtaposition with the stone wall, my aim is to circumvent the reproduction of colonial ideology in architecture.Item Open Access Geopolitics at Play: Trans and Intersex Athletes in Elite Sports(2025-03-28) Kearney, Amanda; Smith, Sarah StefanaAt the foundation of many iterations of the conversation around trans and intersex athletes in competitive sports, there is a common foundational understanding that there ‘must be a male winner, and must be a female winner,’ thus justifying the exclusion of trans women from competing. In attempting to combat this kind of exclusion, I was struck by the question, ‘why is that? What is at stake? In this project, I work to investigate the gendered, racial, and global implications of winning, especially considering competitive sports’ position on an international scale and its connections to what Earl Smith defines as the Athletic Industrial Complex (AIC). The AIC is an institution with immense influence to produce/reinforce imperial hegemony due to its location in the global economy and its entanglements with other institutions of power (Smith, 2014, p. 72). I conduct a discourse analysis on the sensationalized stories of elite athlete Caster Semenya and high school student-athletes Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood. In this process, I engage with Black Feminist, Marxist, Critical Trans and Critical Sports theorizers to frame the the continuums and congruences connecting capital and imperial interests of transmisogynoir-istic legislation across time and space. The first chapter historicizes the social construction of biological sex dimorphism to disrupt the notion that there is an unbiased, objective truth. Black feminist and Marxist analyses of sex and gender help frame sex and gender as inextricably racialized and classed with serious material consequences that allows for exploited gendered labor to persist as well as (re)inforces pathologization of Black people’s bodies. The second chapter begins our discussion about Semenya, Miller and Yearwood and point out the ways that their treatment is connected to/occuring in the afterlife of slavery, thus informing the basis for their subjugation. Reading the discourse of these athletes together contours the boundaries between liberal conceptualizations of human and non-human subjectivities and their relation to the state. The third chapter explores the ways in which winning is embroiled in accumulation of capital and alienates the production of labor from athletes – particularly racialized athletes. In this chapter, I also investigate the connections of winning, nationalism, knowledge production, and imperialist hegemony. Finally, in framing the question of what is to be done, I problematize inclusionary-based politics within our current neoliberal capitalist context, particularly as it is positioned as liberatory.Item Restricted (In)validating the KPFM Method for Estimating the Trap Density of States in Organic Semiconductors(2025-03-05) Yuan, Sophia; Aidala, KatherineDue to the complex structure of organic semiconductors, accurately estimating the trap density of states (DOS) within these materials is a challenge. In the past few decades, multiple techniques have been developed that estimate traps in organic materials. However, each technique has some limitations. This thesis focuses on improving our understanding of one less commonly used technique that employs Kelvin Probe Force Microscopy to measure the surface potential of a thin semiconducting film. We used OghmaNano to simulate this measurement of trap DOS within P3HT, a p-type material. OghmaNano computationally solves the drift-diffusion equation and incorporates non-equilibrium Shockley-Read-Hall formulism, which describes the physics of carrier traps in these materials. Our analysis employs analytical equations derived by previous groups that relate the density of states to the surface potential of a thin film as a gate voltage is changed. While this technique has been employed experimentally, the trap DOS was not known in those materials. In our simulations, we define the trap DOS, run the simulation to calculate the potential, and then apply the analysis used by others. We are unable to extract the correct trap DOS. We investigate the reason for this, examining the role of temperature and whether our use of SRH trap dynamics is sufficient to explain the difference. We were not able to conclusively determine the cause at this time.Item Open Access The Art of Witnessing: An Ethnography of SUD Treatment in Rural Vermont(2025-01-22) Pugh, Christine; Aulino, FelicityThis thesis explores the lived experience and structural conditioning of Substance Use Disorder (SUD) treatment in rural Vermont. It is based on seven months of ethnographic research with an SUD recovery center, where I participated in various modalities of clinical and social treatment for those with SUD. In this text, first I highlight the interconnections between biomedicine and policing as they come into conflict with the care goals of individuals with SUD, resulting in a need for advocates in the form of Recovery Center staff. I then discuss the moral stakes of SUD in the local area, with particular attention to the dimensions of social suffering related to SUD. Finally, I look into the ways in which current shortcomings in this realm might be addressed through the usage of art and art therapy, not just as treatment for SUD in and of itself, but also as a tool for advocacy that can affect the landscape of stigma and subsequent treatment of people with SUD.Item Restricted Quel Tramonto Gentile: Validating the Tribulations of Girlhood in Lidia Ravera & Marco Lombardo Radice's PORCI CON LE ALI(2024-07-08) Gagnon, Gabriella; Frau, OmbrettaA jarring and underappreciated book, Lidia Ravera and Marco Lombardo Radice’s 1976 novel Porci con le ali: Diario Sessuo-Politico di Due Adolescenti narrates the relationship of two Roman highschoolers, Rocco and Antonia. Originally published under the collective pseudonym of the two protagonists, this story gives voice to the difficulties of navigating the choppy waters of youth against the backdrop of Italy’s politically treacherous Lead Years (gli Anni di Piombo) and the unspoken societal norms that impacted Rocco and Antonia’s everyday decisions. Despite there existing very little scholarship dedicated to this book, Porci con le ali garnered much attention upon its publication due to the vulgar language the characters use to communicate with each other and the nature of their erotic relations. While Rocco and Antonia are both average teenagers, it is Antonia who leads this story—and their relationship—with a stronger sense of self following the blatant disrespect and disregard for her bodily autonomy that she receives from her Rocco. My thesis seeks to defend the crudeness with which Antonia’s adolescence is handled as the story progresses. Because this novel is written in the journal format, it gives the audience a comprehensive window into the emotional turmoil she experiences in addition to appealing to a sense of nostalgia. With her own internal struggles of identity, Antonia alternates between bouts of maturity and childishness as she grapples with the notion that the only person who cares about what she has to say is herself. Through an in-depth character analysis of both characters, Antonia’s colorful use of language, and an exploration of how her sexual encounters further distance her from contemporary expectations, my work aims to circulate Lombardo Radice and Ravera’s novel back into modern feminist conversation due to its depiction of female adolescence.Item Open Access The Ethics of Ideal Animal Farming(2024-07-03) Savid, Sofía; Harold, JamesIndustrial animal farming has been rejected in academic as well as non-academic spheres for several reasons, in particular its negative impact on animal welfare and the environment. As an alternative, people have turned to “organic,” “small scale,” and “local” animal farming, treating it as an ethical solution to many, or perhaps all, of the problems caused by industrial animal farming. However, Tom Regan’s paper, “The Case for Animal Rights,” and Christine Korsgaard’s paper, “Getting Animals in View,” note that there is something morally wrong that happens when we use animals—both human and non-human—as resources. Therefore, Regan and Korsgaard’s arguments seem to ultimately reject any kind of animal farming, including “organic,” “small scale,” and “local” animal farming. In this thesis, I use these two papers by Regan and Korsgaard as well as Peter Singer’s paper, “All Animals Are Equal,” as the foundation of my own argument. I introduce the ideal animal farm as the perfect animal farm which is ethical and ideal in every way we might want it to be, and I argue that even ideal animal farms can be unethical because of what Regan and Korsgaard note in their papers. I identify exploitation as a necessary part of many cases of animal farming, and I argue that exploiting non-human animals is always morally wrong. I am additionally interested in the stark contrast between our treatment of humans and non-human animals, even in ideal farms, which implies that exploiting a human is morally worse than exploiting a non-human animal. This thesis looks closely at what I think are the strongest arguments and explanations in defense of this contrast in treatment, and I ultimately conclude that the defenses are not strong enough to justify systemically treating non-human animals, and not humans, as resources.Item Restricted Optimizing the dose-response of Interleukin-4 (IL-4) to further investigate its role in the association between Maternal Allergic Asthma and Neurodevelopmental Disorders.Ragoonaden, Shanthini; Schwartzer, JaredClinical studies have demonstrated that allergic asthma during pregnancy is linked to an increased risk of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders in offspring. The Schwartzer Lab has developed a Maternal Allergic Asthma (MAA) model that has established a role for Interleukin-4 (IL-4) connecting MAA to neurodevelopmental deficits in the offspring. A forthcoming research project will examine the sufficiency of IL-4 by evaluating whether elevations in maternal IL-4 dosage have a dose-dependent effect on offspring behavioral deficits. However, it remains unknown the appropriate IL-4 dosage to be administered in a mouse model to replicate the IL-4 response observed in MAA. The goal of this research is to identify the optimal IL-4 dosage needed to mimic the inflammatory responses observed in MAA. To test this, Experiment 1 investigated the best time to take blood samples from female C57 mice when exposed to OVA and when injected with 5μg of IL-4. In Experiment 2, we aimed to investigate the IL-4 dose response by injecting 2 different doses of IL-4 in the mice. In both experiments, blood samples were analyzed using Bead-Based immunoassays to measure IL-4 biomarker concentrations. Findings show that IL-4 IP injection has a higher rate of decay post-exposure, when compared to MAA OVA exposure. We also estimate an IL-4 dose of 0.025 ug suitable for IP injection in a mouse model aimed at investigating the cytokine’s sufficiency in causing neurodevelopmental disorders in the offspring. This thesis research project was positioned to derive an IL-4 dose-response curve, thereby providing guidance in determining the optimal injection dosage for future studies exploring the causal link between maternal IL-4 and MAA.