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Joanna Bartell
Deconstruction and the Law
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Mark Tunick
The Critical Legal Studies movement, whose members share many of the same ideas as deconstructionists, assert that the Constitution is an oppressive document used by America's powerful elite to keep the marginalized groups, such as non-Christians and women, under their control and away from positions of power. Drawing on arguments by Ronald Dworkin and John Searle I challenge the Crits' position and argue that the Constitution is not itself inherently oppressive. Rather, the collective intentionality of the people forms many prevailing conceptions of particular concepts which are in themselves inherently fair and equal; it is the prevailing conceptions of the day that are oppressive. The ideals of equality within the Constitution have not always been justly applied in law, leaving non-whites and women marginalized. The Crit's deconstructionist view of law is inappropriate, however, because it fails to take into account the inherent adaptability of the Constitution to a changing society.
Erin Brown
An Ironic "The Taming of the Shrew"
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Michael Harrawood
Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" is a play within a play, ironically framed by the Induction, a comedic story in which a common drunkard is tricked into believing he is a lord. Due to the farcical nature of its Induction, and the many parallels between the play proper and its frame, the shrew is not tamed, she merely changes tactics. The spirit she displays at the beginning of the play is maintained at the end, simply redirected.
Sarah Callender
Medieval Medicine, Public Health, and the Black Death
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Christopher Ely
The Black Death's first attack on fourteenth-century Europe, between 1347 and 1351, eliminated at least one-third of the population. Signs and omens had previously suggested that disaster was approaching, and many saw the plague as the worst embodiment of their fears; victims often died within a few days. Repentance and prayers did not end the disease, and medical remedies sought by the wealthy could not offer much hope for protection. Wealthier individuals abandoned their families and homes to escape the disease, so trade, agriculture, and order within societies were all sharply disrupted. Temporary public health boards quickly issued quarantines and restrictions to protect the residents of cities from the emergency of the plague. As the plague still returned four times before the century ended, many of these health boards became permanent, and their efforts blended with medical discoveries to offer more protection to the cities.
Morgan DeFranco
E-Raced: The Shift from the Maker to the Made
Advisor/Professor: Professor Amy Broderick
The boundaries between the divine maker and the made have become increasingly harder to discern. Post modern societies have come to be defined by replicas or copies of originals. The shift from God as creator to man as maker has elicited many societal anxieties. Processes such as cloning and art making are considered in a unique textual layout which accompanies seven life-sized artistic renditions of this concept. The loss of individuality and mechanization of human beings are among the ideas portrayed in the work.
Sarah Deutsch
Voice of the Willing: Mormon Young Women's Conceptions of Femininity
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Rachel Corr, Dr. Wairimu Njambi
This project compiles the oral accounts and observations of the Young Women of the Jupiter First Ward, Stuart, Florida Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints regarding both personal and institutional standards of femininity. While the practice of a patriarchal lifestyle by these adolescent girls goes against mainstream feminist theory, their gendered roles are justified by their complete participation in the plan of salvation. The responsibilities that they are expected to adhere to justify gendered roles for them and create their own sort of feminism. This is about their femininity and the femininity I found in myself as a Non-Member.
Andrew Donovan
Spectral Decomposition of Grid Data
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Mark Rupright
Complicated three-dimensional physical models can be simplified by expressing the problem in terms of fewer dimensions. A nearly
spherically-symmetric problem can be reduced to a one-dimensional approximation through the use of spherical harmonics. However, the rectangular coordinates of the original problem are not well adapted to computations on spheres. We investigate methods of interpolating rectangular data onto spherical surfaces, and integrating that data against spherical harmonics to perform the dimensional reduction.
Brooke Hall
Rave New World: A Synthesized Generation
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Michael Harrawood
As frightening (and intriguing) as it may be, Rave culture exemplifies a technological evolutionary process that both subordinates and enhances man's cultural and evolutionary journey. The synthesized music, the manufactured drugs, and the artificial enlightenment of an expanding sub-culture mirror the technology-induced transformation of the world into a "global village." There is no doubt that the raver's narrative has been constructed by consumerism, superficiality, spiritual transcendence and the imagination; and as rave evolves, so too will language, the narrative it constructs, and the logos. The ritual of the Rave is definitive of the post-modern techno-consumer structure that embodies American popular culture. With all the machines, time clocks, gadgets, computers and cyborgs, rave culture epitomizes the synthesized generation, marking the beginning of a (B)Rave New World.
Alicia Harraway
Dream and Memory: Representation of the 1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic in Two Texts
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Mary Ann Gosser-Esquilín
In 1937, dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo ordered the massacre of thousands of Haitians living within the border of the Dominican Republic. This outward display of animosity was the culmination of Dominicans' resentment of their Haitian neighbors, with whom they share years of conflict and the island of Hispaniola. Since the death of Trujillo and the publication, in 1973, of El Masacre se pasa a pie-a first-person testimony of the massacre by Dominican lawyer Freddy Prestol Castillo-more details and commentary on the occurrence have come to light. In 1998, Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat published her novel The Farming of Bones. An analysis of both texts shows a denunciation of the massacre by the authors through two distinct writing styles and despite personal bias. Finally, the aftermath of the massacre is examined in light of the current context of Caribbean literature and Dominican society.
Shannon Jessie
Population Dynamics Beyond Classic Lotka-Volterra Models
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Eugene Belogay
The infamous brown tree snake invasion on Guam motivates our study of population models involving one predator and two prey species. Starting with the classic (single-prey) Lotka-Volterra model, we add layers of complexity in an attempt to create a "more realistic" model for the unusual population on the island of Guam.
Michael Kerr
Everybody is a Student of Music: the Purposes of Copyright Laws and the Benefits of an Alternative System of Compensation for Musicians
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Mark Tunick
I consider both Lockean and Utilitarian justifications of intellectual property rights in music, concluding that, while musicians do indeed have a natural right to benefit from the fruits of their labors, the ultimate and necessary justification of intellectual property laws is that they promote social utility. I argue that all people are, to some degree, students of music just as we are all students of history. As students, the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law currently permits us to reproduce copyrighted music for our own nonprofit scholarship. However, legislating such a broad interpretation of the fair use doctrine, without first establishing an alternative method of compensating musicians, would do a huge disservice not only to musicians, but more importantly, to society in general by taking incentives away from the best musicians, and by lowering the overall quality of music that is produced.
Jason C. Lane, Dr. Julie Earles, Dr. Alan Kersten, Eileen Curtayne
Event Memory and Age
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Julie Earles
A group of 32 older and 32 undergraduate participants were tested in a memory experiment in which they viewed a set of 30 short video clips of female actors performing common actions such as brushing their hair or rolling a ball. The participants returned one week later and viewed 150 clips, some of which they had seen before and some which they had not. The participants' responses were assessed for the presence of the unconscious transference effect. This effect occurs when an eyewitness accuses a person of commiting a crime even though the person was a merely an innocent bystander seen in another context. We hypothesize that this effect occurs as a result of a binding error in memory, and present evidence that older adults are more susceptible to a binding deficit in memory.
Kathryn Lewis
Double Take: Looking Beyond the First Glance at Bush v. Gore and the Fourteenth Amendment
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Mark Tunick
The Florida Supreme Court's order to manually recount the votes cast in the presidential election of 2000 at least looked like an equal protection violation. Ballots in different counties were counted according to different, and seemingly arbitrary, recount standards, leaving open the possibility that out of two identical votes, one could be accepted in one county, and the other rejected in another county. The Supreme Court adopted this argument and in Bush v. Gore ruled that the Florida Supreme Court did indeed violate voters' equal protection rights. However, a closer examination of the 2000 election reveals that Bush's complaint did not meet all the criteria for an equal protection claim. I argue that taking a second look-a "double take"-at Bush v. Gore reveals that the Florida Supreme Court violated not voters' equal protection rights, but rather their due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Laura Lynch
Factorization in the Ring Z[]
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Stephanie Fitchett
Every natural number greater than one can be factored into primes, and up to the ordering of the primes (e.g. 6=(2)(3) or 6=(3)(2)), the prime factorization of a number is unique. Interestingly, prime factorizations are not unique if we consider numbers of the form a+b(sqrt{-5}). For instance, 6=(2)(3)=(1+sqrt{-5})(1-sqrt{-5}). This presentation will examine "primes" and factorization using numbers of the form a+b(sqrt{-5}).
Christine Mancuso
Female Members of the Concrete Block Society
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Rachel Corr, Dr. Mark Tunick
Recently, much attention has focused on a disturbing new trend that reveals an increase in female juvenile crime. Some professionals argue for mental health intervention instead of incarceration while others argue for more federal dollars to build maximum security facilities to house female offenders. I focus on two issues that concern female juvenile offenders. First, I present an ethnographic analysis that explores the different ways in which the Florida department of juvenile justice punishes or rehabilitates its female juvenile offenders from past to present, and the effects of those strategies on women's experiences and self perception. I incorporate multiple perspectives including my own past memories as a female juvenile offender. Second, I assert that female juvenile crime may be reduced if preventative measures are incorporated into the educational system. At its core, I believe that diversity is not being respected in an intellectual capacity-aside from race and gender discrimination.
Jennifer McIvor
Everglades Restortion and the Ethics of Restoring Ecosystems
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Bill O'Brien
This study investigates relationships among ecological restoration, environmental ethics, and the restoration of Florida's Everglades to assess principles of an ethic of ecological restoration. Issues considered in this study include the nature/culture debate in determining humanity's place in the natural environment; the idea that the "natural" is a human construct, and the impact of this perspective on ecological restoration; among others. I will focus on the varied meanings of ecological restoration and their relation to the formulation and implementation of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. Questions to be addressed include: What constitutes "good" ecological restoration? Can Everglades restoration be deemed an appropriate and good restoration project? and, What are broader ethical implications of Everglades restoration for decisions to pursue ecological restoration projects?
Rose Moon
Rejecting Motherhood: The Ramifications of 'Favorable' Defenses for 'Baby Killers' with Respect to Race and Class
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Wairimu Njambi, Dr. Mark Tunick
Recently the media frenzy which has burst forth concerning a nationwide panic over mother inflicted child homicides has been met by a series of scholarly debates over the law's responsibility in recognizing "deference" among groups of individuals. Pluralist or multicultural arguments suggest that differences (as well as similarities) in society at large also effect the social consciousness of women who carry-out these acts: how aware are these women that they are perpetrating crimes and were these murders pursued out of ill will? Nevertheless, the legal scholarship with respect to difference and defenses has been limited to cultural and infanticide defenses, which cite the woman's cultural background or hormonal imbalances as a result of postpartum disorders as the impetus for their actions. However, these defenses are inadequate in their protection of black women who commit similar statutory crimes because they fail to recognize the historical and contemp
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Erin Moore
Conscientiousness and Procrastination on Academic Tasks
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Kevin Lanning
Academic procrastination is a maladaptive behavioral pattern in which an individual fails to sufficiently complete academic tasks in the allotted time. The present study examined the influence of individual personality traits and academic task difficulty on procrastinatory behavior. Personality traits were measured using a self-report questionnaire, the NEO-PI-R. Procrastination was measured using self-report data from the PASS. In addition, two behavioral measures of procrastination were developed. The first measured the degree to which procrastination was influenced by task difficulty, while the second measured proschedule.htm#talkscrastination across all levels of task difficulty. For each behavioral measure, the total time taken to complete the series of tasks was used as an index of procrastination. I examined the convergence between the self-report and behavioral measures, and examined the hypothesis that individuals who scored high on the Conscientiousness scale, of the NEO-PI-R, would score low on each of the three measures of procrastination.
Steve Nicole
The Religious Market of Chile: Causes for the Growth of Pentecostalism
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Timothy Steigenga
Utilizing a mixture of economic and political science research methods Chilean Pentecostalism will be examined to determine the variables that led to the rise of Pentecostal parishioners in a predominantly Catholic nation. The religious institutions of Chile act within a religious market place, which abides by principles similar to a traditional economic market. The competing churches are synonymous to firms competing in the market place. The main services provided by the churches to their consumers are spiritual, political, and emotional salvation. The primary variables that affect the productivity of these firms are institutional reliability, availability of service, and consumer transaction cost. The Catholic Church's lack of clergy, the lower class distrust of the intensions of the Catholic Church, and the low consumer transaction cost from Catholicism to Pentecostalism presented an environment where the Pentecostal churches, especially the Iglesia Metodista Pentecostal (IMP), could flourish.
Christina Oliver
Secular Trends in Expressions of Positive Emotionality: A Study of High School Yearbooks
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Kevin Lanning
This project identifies trends in smiling between 1969 and 2003 and relates these trends to historical developments in personality. Participants used the basic principals of the Facial Action Coding System (Ekman and Friesen 1976, 1978) in order to score the intensity of muscle movements involved in smiling. Photographs came from 1969, 1979, 1989, 1999, and 2003 high school yearbooks. Environments vary across time and over generations. Numerous studies have found a connection between these environmental variations and historical developments in personality. Over the decades, people have become more anxious and more worried about safety, social acceptance, and job security (Twenge, 2000). Studies have also suggested historical changes in the rates of major depression (Klerman & Weissman, 1989). In accordance with these trends of increasing anxiety, worry, and the rates of major depression we hypothesis that there will be a decreasing trend in the intensity and senserity of smiles over time.
Charles Oerter
United States Foreign Policy: The Maintenance of a Unipolar World and the "Axis of Evil"
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Timothy Steigenga
President Bush has dubbed Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the "axis of evil" because of their hostile foreign policies and undemocratic domestic politics. These countries are characterized by human rights abuses, exporting terrorism, and developing nuclear weapons. Despite their similarities, only Iraq has been invaded. This thesis argues that the different U.S. policy responses towards the "axis of evil" can only be understood as part of the United States' effort to expand its hegemonic position in the international arena. As predicted by realism, the geographic location, national resources, and international relations of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea determine the particular U.S. policy response. However, realism no longer serves to sufficiently explain or predict United States foreign policy. Whereas realism would predict prudence towards both allies and enemies in order to maintain the status quo, recent U.S. policy has aggressively challenged the status quo, suggesting a fundamental paradigm shift away from hegemonic stability international relations.
Erik Pettersson, Dr. Kevin Lanning
Decision Making and Personality: Individual Differences in Prospect Theory
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Kevin Lanning
The authors investigated the relationship between decision-making items tapping monetary risk during both gains and losses, and personality traits as measured by the NEO PI-R. Primarily, we were interested in Extraversion and Neuroticism as these tap "hope" and "fear" respectively. Given that Extraversion and Neuroticism are orthogonal, and that Extraversion is associated with sensitivity to reward and, we hypothesized that Extraversion would be related to risky choices among gains, but not among losses. Given that Neuroticism is associated with avoidance of punishment, we hypothesized that Neuroticism would be negatively related to risky choices among losses, but not among gains. We found moderate but not statistically significant support for both hypotheses. The failure to reach conventional significance can likely be attributed to the small sample size.
Brian Pita
Litigation vs. Legislation in the Pursuit for African American Slavery Reparations
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Mark Tunick
In recent years, activists have attempted to transform the dream of reparations for the descendants of African American slaves into reality by pursuing two distinct courses of action. The first includes the filing of tort actions against the United States government and/or private estates and corporations that have a history of profiting from the slavery, while the lobbying of Congress for legislative remedies and compensation comprises the second. This thesis focuses on whether or not this use of litigation, as compared to legislation, is a legally viable and useful tool for the garnering of reparations for slavery. Analyzing the dismissal reasonings of two recent high-profile reparations lawsuits leads to the conclusion that the legal hurdles hindering reparations suits are so high as to be realistically insurmountable. By comparison, the obstacles facing reparations activists in the quest for legislative amends, though significant, are much more manageable, and more likely to succeed.
Susie Quintana
Extraversion & Procrastination on Dull Academic Tasks
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Kevin Lanning
Procrastination, the tendency to postpone or delay completion of tasks, can negatively affect many elements of a person's life, especially in an academic setting, where deadlines are commonplace. Procrastination is a product of both personality characteristics and task characteristics. The current study investigates procrastination as a function of the personality characteristic of Extraversion, as measured by the NEO-PI-R, and the task parameter of intrinsic interest or desirability over a series of 40 tasks. Procrastination is measured in two ways, first, as the sum of the time taken to complete the boring or undesirable tasks, and second using a standard self-report measure. Students who procrastinate, particularly on the boring tasks, are hypothesized to score higher on the Extraversion scale on the NEO-PI-R. Students who score higher on the Extraversion scale are also hypothesized to be more distractable, as measured by the number of words generated in online chat conversations.
Peter Rauch
Videogames as Protected Speech
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Christopher Strain
Concerns over the effects of videogame violence have naturally led to efforts to restrict their availability to minors. While other often violent media (such as film and television) remain protected from government restriction due to the First Amendment, there remains some disagreement as to whether or not videogames are expressive enough to be considered "speech" under the Constitution. This thesis argues that the videogames constitute a unique expressive medium that must be afforded the same legal protections as other media, drawing on the legal history, videogame theory and studies of individual games.
Ari Rosenberg, Dr. Kevin Lanning
The Structure of Attitudes Towards Civil Rights, Civil Liberties, and Security in Post 9-11 America
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Kevin Lanning
September 11th, 2001 marked the beginning of a new era in American history. Since this date, we can no longer pretend that our world and our lives are impervious to the threat of inimical forces. There are few ways we can respond to this threat and each can be thought of as a variation on three approaches: 1. A pacifistic response, 2. An active response compromising the civil rights of high risk individuals (e.g., Arabs), or 3. An active response compromising the civil liberties of everyone. In our present study, we consider individual differences in American attitudes towards these approaches. This is accomplished through an analysis of the relationships between scores on two individual difference variables (Right Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation) and responses to items reflecting either a Concern for Security, a Civil Rights Orientation, or a Civil Liberties Orientation.
Shane Sandford
Deletion of SOD1 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Paul Kirchman
Superoxide dismutases (SODs) act as antioxidants by converting reactive oxygen species (ROS) to hydrogen peroxide and oxygen. ROS are initially produced by the univalent reduction of dioxygen to generate sequentially superoxide anion radical and hydrogen peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide, if not eliminated from the cell generates the highly reactive hydroxyl free radical, which is widely believed to be the main agent of oxidative damage and aging. Increasing the activity of SODs is theorized to increase cell longevity by decreasing the damage caused by ROS. To study this, the SOD1 gene was deleted from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This strain will be used as a tool to assay the ability of more active forms of SOD1 to increase oxidative stress resistance and increase life span. Any discernable increases in longevity would suggest that an increase in SOD activity is correlated with increased lifespan.
Caroline Taylor
Where are Women in Islam?
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Rachel Corr, Dr. Wairimu N. Njambi
The question put forth in the title, Where are Women in Islam? is an inquiry designed to explore the complex lives of Muslim women beyond the marginalizing and exoticizing images laden in western ethnocentrism. In demonstrating that Muslim women- like Muslim men- are involved in the reproduction of knowledge, in the process of cultural invention and the transmission of Islamic tradition, my aim is to dispel myths that illustrate Muslim women as mainly victims of their own culture. This study works to not only hear the voices of Muslim women, but it demonstrates how the acknowledgement of their part in Islamic culture is crucial to understanding their culture as a whole.
Walteria Tucker
Guns vs. Growth: The Military Industrial Complex and the Economic Effects of Military Spending
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Timothy Steigenga
This study incorporates data from a cross-section of 80 countries in order to test how the influence of the military industrial complex (MIC), reflected in government military expenditure, affects economic performance and spending choices. Statistical analysis reveals that MIC influence is correlated with decreased GNP growth rates, high inflation, and high adult illiteracy rates.
Tara Warrington
A Reevaluation of the Emergence of the Conspiracy Culture in the United States
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Christopher Strain
In Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to The X-Files, Peter Knight begins to develop a theory in which he asserts that the culture of late twentieth century America was one of conspiracy. If one accepts that a conspiracy culture did emerge in America in the second half of the twentieth century, then one must examine the political context in which it emerged, not simply the cultural one. Events during the Cold War such as the Kennedy assassination and Watergate facilitated the development of the elements of the conspiracy culture and incidences such as Ruby Ridge and Waco in the early 1990's solidified conspiracy as the dominant mode of evaluation. Together these events directly influenced the emergence of the culture of conspiracy.
Nicholas Yanes
X-Men as a Reflection of Civil Rights in America
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Christopher Strain
Looking at the Marvel Comics' X-Men and other related titles, as well as other media translations; this thesis argues that the series has acted as a metaphor for civil rights in America. First dealing with African American civil rights in the sixties, the X-Universe has also dealt with the growing presence of strong, independent women in America. The thesis than goes on to discuss how X-Men have reflected issues of homosexuality and continue to reflect the evolution of civil rights in America by touching upon issues of 9/11 and post 9/11 politics.
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