IDA
Mount Holyoke College Institutional Digital Archive
The Institutional Digital Archive (IDA) is a service that collects, preserves, and showcases the scholarly work of MHC's faculty and students. Some materials are restricted to the campus community and require an MHC login to access.
Communities in IDA
Select a community to browse its collections.
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
- This is an archive of United States immigration sanctuary policies that were passed from 2001-2014. The archive contains four main collections organized by policy type: Executive Orders; Ordinances; Policing Policies; and Resolutions. There are 234 policies in the archive. Welcome!
- This community houses data collected on campus as part of the Campus Living Laboratory Initiative. Data include those collected from environmental monitoring stations, as a result of faculty and student independent projects, or data collected in labs or other collection exercises. Datasets are presented with varying levels of access as described by the party responsible for uploading the data.
- Repositories for retaining data and scholarly research of the Mount Holyoke College faculty
- Repositories for retaining data, scholarly research, and academic output of Mount Holyoke College students
Recent Submissions
The AAA+ ATPase ClpC-M Domain is a Secondary Interaction Site For the Sporulation-Specific Adaptor Protein MdfA in the Bacterium Bacillus Subtilis
Morrison, Jade; Amy, Camp
Protein degradation is a tightly regulated mechanism in bacterial cells that ensures that the correct proteins are being degraded appropriately to avoid harmful consequences within the cell. ClpCP is an example of an AAA+ protease that facilitates proteolysis within bacterial cells through a degron tag or with the assistance of an adaptor protein. MdfA is a recently discovered sporulation-specific adaptor protein that interacts with ClpCP within the bacterium, Bacillus subtilis. Based on results from a previous study, it is speculated that MdfA interacts with the ClpC-M domain, corresponding with an AlphaFold Multimer structure that collaborators constructed. This study investigates whether the ClpC M-domain is a site of interaction for MdfA, which was tested by mutating the appropriate codon of residues located at the contact point between the M-domain and MdfA C-terminal domain. A series of bacterial two-hybrid assays has demonstrated that the M-domain is a potential interaction site and that the ClpC M-domain residues are more critical for MdfA than MecA. The results and a parallel study by a Camp lab member, Jen Butler, support the hypothesis that the M-domain is a secondary interaction site for MdfA.
Effect of Tau Expression on Subperineurial Glia in Drosophila
(2025-07-15) Newman, Birdy; Colodner, Ken
Tauopathies, neurodegenerative disorders exhibiting symptoms such as dementia and motor deficits, are characterized by pathological aggregates of a microtubule-associated protein called tau. While prior research has focused largely on the ramifications of neuronal tau pathology, tau pathology also affects glial cells, a diverse group of non-neuronal cells that play key roles in the nervous system. Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) have been used to effectively model glial tauopathy. However, the specific effect of tau expression on subperineurial glia (SPG), a glial cell subtype involved in the fly’s blood-brain barrier and sleep patterns, remained unknown. This study transgenically expressed human tau in SPG to investigate how the presence of human tau affects SPG nuclear quantity and morphology in the fly brain. Tau was found to decrease the number of SPG nuclei in young male flies and decrease SPG nuclear sphericity in general. The newfound age- and sex-dependent toxicity of human tau to Drosophila SPG contributes to the growing base of knowledge about glial tauopathy that will lay the foundation for innovative tauopathy treatments.
“For Canons Do”: Black Literary Production and the Canon’s Empire
(2025-07-15) Morrison, Ainsley; Kristen, Maye
As Toni Morrison writes in “Unspeakable Things Unspoken,” “canon building is empire building.” The ever-present debate around the canon, which is to say over which texts are relevant, meaningful, and “great,” always carries high stakes. Understanding the Western literary canon as both a product and producer of empire, I consider the relationship of Black Literary Production to canon. Drawing on the work of Sylvia Wynter and Zakiyyah Jackson in addition to Toni Morrison, I argue that the canon seeks to reproduce beings that serve the interests of empire. By making “great” the texts that produce beings in service of empire, the canon becomes a vital mechanism for not only empire’s self-definition, but for the continual reproduction of the dominant modes of being. By seeking out the texts that the canon and canonical scholarship reject, condemn, or simply cannot accommodate, we are able to identify and name the features of texts that create and support empirical modes. More significantly, in these counter-canonical texts we necessarily find those features that reach towards alternative modes, modes that could fundamentally threaten the dominance of empire. My project examines three works belonging to Black writers—The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara, The Street by Ann Petry, and Corregidora by Gayl Jones—so as to identify how these works gesture towards the possibility of ways of being that are disappeared by the canon and by empire. To contextualize this practice, I read Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon as a symptom and product of canon and empire.
The Effects of Repeated Heat Stress on Heat Shock Protein Induction in a Drosophila Melanogaster Model of Glial Tauopathy
(2025-07-15) Tatusko, Tabitha; McMenimen, Kathryn
Tauopathies are a family of neurodegenerative disorders characterized by hyperphosphorylated tau aggregate accumulation in neurons and glia. These disorders include prevalent diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal lobe dementia, and progressive supranuclear palsy. Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are part of the chaperone machinery responsible for maintaining proper protein folding and clearance of aggregates. However, they are ineffective in preventing tau toxicity associated with these disease pathologies. Using a female Drosophila melanogaster model of glial tauopathy, this study broadened the established chaperone profile, illuminating novel differences in induction across the HSPs in response to glial tau and varied intensities and frequencies of heat stress. These findings are promising for understanding why the chaperone response differs between early- and late-onset tauopathies and suggest chaperones like HSP60 may be uniquely responsive to compounded stress. This study also supports emerging research demonstrating the unintended off-target effects of the GAL4 transgenic driver. Distinct and pervasive differences were observed in heat induction across the chaperones when comparing the non-transgenic and transgenic control groups.
Queering Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing Through Education and Performance
(2025-07-15) Pott, Talia; Tuleja, Noah; Rodgers, Amy
This thesis documents my directing process of Much Ado About Nothing by William
Shakespeare. In it, I discuss literary criticism of the work, its relationship to the rest of the work
in the canon, my directing process from start to finish, and a reflection thereof. A core theme of
the work is a unique gender queerness I found in the characters of Beatrice and Benedick. I hope
my submission contributes to further queer readings of Shakespeare, and a renewed interest in
the importance of inclusive theater making.
I wish to dedicate this thesis to the work of teachers throughout the world. You save lives
and inspire students every day with your endless care and enthusiasm!