SCARAB

“An Exceedingly Dirty and Nasty People”: Exploring the Patriot Forces of 1775

Katharine A. Maxwell — Thu, 10 May 2012 11:42:35 PDT

In popular revolutionary iconography, New England colonists are praised for their dramatic rush to arms during the first few months of the American Revolution. While this enthusiasm led thousands of colonists to take up arms, it faded by 1776 resulting in a dramatically diminished force. What happened? Why did the forces of 1776 differ so much from those of 1775? My research focuses on how the changing military organization of New England forces in 1775, from a collection of local militias to an army, impacted colonists’ enlistment and enthusiasm. To understand the development of New England forces, this thesis explores the connections between the local militia system, the creation of the Continental Army, the appointment of George Washington, and the changes in revolutionary rhetoric during 1775.

Political Change through Narrative

Catherine Elliott — Tue, 08 May 2012 07:17:28 PDT

When faced with well-organized opposition, political organizations often incorporate new strategies into their campaigns. Some progressive organizations situate their work within overarching frameworks or perspectives called narratives, which are designed to shift the terms of public discourse to favor particular social and political goals. Despite the theoretical significance of narratives, actual efforts to connect everyday change-making activities to narrative development are often complicated by practical and theoretical obstacles. I address this dilemma in collaboration with Maine People’s Alliance (MPA), a progressive community action group with 32,000 members throughout Maine. We ask how an organization such as MPA can pursue the abstract goal of a “narrative” while remaining committed to more concrete change-making activities that measure an organization’s success. To answer this question and the three tensions of power, practicality, and perceptions that it spawns, we build on the work of community organizers, social movement framing theorists, scholars who study political myth, narrative analysts, and policy analysts. We explore a new integration of narratives and policymaking that simultaneously develops an alternative perspective and accomplishes measurable political change. This investigation uncovers the two tiers of narrative: organizational narratives and public worldviews. By focusing on organizational narratives, we explore various methods of story collection and evaluation to develop a model of narrative development that accommodates the varied realities and complexities of MPA, MPA membership, and the current political environment.

Las Trans: Negotiating Gender, Personhood, and Citizenship in Chile

Sydney A. Hare — Mon, 07 May 2012 10:31:10 PDT

“Las Trans,” a group of male-to-female transgender residents living in Arica, Chile, challenge the strict dual-sex, dual-gender system of Chile’s family-oriented society. Chile presents an especially interesting case when analyzing the social position of sexual minorities due to the country’s historically strong ties to the Catholic Church, and, on a political level, the experience of 17 years of dictatorship during a crucial period of time in world history. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with las Trans, I consider how gender identity and gender expression affect to what extent an individual can achieve full personhood and full citizenship in this South American country. Because of las Trans’ gender identities, they are unable to take advantage of many opportunities that are, in theory, guaranteed as basic human rights. Specifically, they are unable to attain legitimate jobs and are instead forced to earn a living through sex work, putting them at a heightened risk of being assaulted and contracting STDs. Additionally, las Trans experience numerous barriers in effectively accessing government-sponsored institutions, like healthcare, which are allegedly free and accessible for all citizens. This thesis argues that such discriminatory and exclusionary practices, rooted in social discrimination and reinforced through government legislation and religious discourse, further marginalize those who fail to conform to culturally prescribed gender categories and norms.

Dams over Nukes: Explaining Indian Water Treaties

Romina Istratii — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:36:55 PDT

In 1947 India and Pakistan, sworn enemies on all fronts, managed to settle a water dispute on the Indus Basin eventually signing one of the most successful treaties that have since existed on the water front. I investigate this puzzle of cooperation in my thesis. Ultimately I show that the Indus Waters Treaty succeeded due to the intervention of an epistemic community which managed to depoliticize the dispute and establish an equitable treaty between the two sides. Without the contribution of the epistemic community the outcome of cooperation would most likely have been unsuccessful. I specify also that the initial impetus for cooperation came in the form of an international idea on dam construction which “convinced” India and (epiphenomenally) Pakistan that the dispute on the Indus needed to be resolved urgently and cooperatively.This is only part of the explanation however; the research conducted in this thesis leads to the conclusion that the distribution of bargaining capabilities between the signatories played a central role in determining the empowerment of the epistemic community, which then intervened to ensure a successful outcome of cooperation.

"The Vindication of Spinsters: Winifred Holtby's Case for Female Satisfaction"

Katherine Ann Wiryaman — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:36:51 PDT

Winifred Holtby, the British interwar feminist, was one of the most talented and insightful writers of her time, yet sadly never achieved the status of household name. In a society where marriage was assumed to correlate directly with female happiness and satisfaction, the single woman was an object of pity. Never married herself, Holtby was passionate about promoting singleness as a viable alternative to marriage and even one that might bring about more satisfaction to a woman. Chapter 1 of this thesis deals with the portrayal of women and singleness in an earlier novel, The Crowded Street (1924), and Chapter 3, with her last and perhaps most famous novel, South Riding (1936). In Chapter 2 I look at her nonfiction work, Women and a Changing Civilization (1935), in order to examine her account of female history, the feminist movement, and her thoughts on the direction in which women are going. Holtby, in her own words, claims women can find satisfaction outside of marriage or living in relation to men, but these themes do not always manifest themselves so cleanly in her novels. I observe her handling of female characters, the choices they make in regard to men, and whether or not those choices result in satisfaction.

The Unbending Pillars of John Adams's Political Philosophy

Anna Kane Wallman — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:36:49 PDT

Though John Adams is rightly seen as one of the most active proponents of the American drive towards independence in the 1770s, he was also a staunch opponent of another revolutionary movement: the French Revolution of the 1790s. It has been difficult for scholars to reconcile the “radical” Adams of the 1760s with the apparently “conservative” and wary Adams of the 1790s. Historians have generally taken one of two approaches. Some argue that he underwent a deep and fundamental shift in political philosophy in the 1780s in reaction to a number of political developments in Europe and America. These trends, they argue, led to a wariness of popular control and an abandoned faith in the wisdom of the general will. Others contend that he did not change significantly during this period but maintained his previous positions, but they have tended to provide little support for this position with examples from Adams’s own writing. Reading a varied selection of Adams’s writings—some published, such as his well-known Thoughts on Government, others virtually unheard of, such as his extended marginalia in Mary Wollstonecraft’s 1794 book on the French Revolution—we see that Adams did not undergo a major shift in political thought. He held a consistent set of political beliefs, deeply rooted in the Puritan tradition, and which informed his reaction to many of the events in his lifetime, including the independence movement in America and the Revolution in France two decades later.

The Evolution of Chivalric Values in the Order of the Garter: Edward III to Elizabeth I

Sarah Joy Vigne Ms. — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:36:46 PDT

This thesis examines the evolution of chivalric values embodied in the Order of the Garter through historically conscious readings of the fourteenth-century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Book I of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. These texts each reference the Order of the Garter to prescribe an ideal of chivalric knighthood—Sir Gawain through the story of the green girdle (reminiscent of the garter symbol) and its acceptance by the court as a symbol of honor, and the Faerie Queene through the narrative of the Redcrosse Knight, who is in fact St. George, patron saint of the Order. Examining these texts through the lens of the Order illuminates the chivalric values of their times and illustrates the evolution of chivalry from the Edwardian to Elizabethan periods. Providing historical background on the Order of the Garter—England’s first chivalric knightly Order founded in 1348 by Edward III—and close reading of the texts in light of this context, I argue that chivalry in the medieval period was in a period of transition, characterized by conflicts between the military, courtly, and religious ideals of the time. By the time of Elizabeth I, these diverse elements had been united to create a hegemonic chivalric ideology emphasizing the elevated status of the courtly lady. This ideology was used as a political tool to support Elizabeth’s rule. The Order embodied the combination of chivalric elements, and provides one example of Elizabeth’s manipulation of chivalry as a means of justification of female rule.

Counting "Whole Persons" in David Foster Wallace's Fiction

Charles J. Thaxton — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:46:13 PDT

In David Foster Wallace’s fiction, the salient topic is the cultivation of moral personhood. Personhood and human individuality are represented through descriptive categories like “citizenship,” “wholeness,” “authenticity,” or “spirituality,” all nominations that bristle against the “postmodern” genre in which his fiction is critically located—and all partially inadequate in capturing Wallace’s spirit comprehensively. In Wallace’s fiction personhood is constantly frustrated by philosophical and psychological obstacles: addiction, trauma, self-consciousness, or simple failures of imagination. Wallace’s political and social concerns, in turn, reiterate these “private” topics; they are complicated by his desire to discuss “traditional human verities” through the dizzying techniques of literary postmodernism.

Wallace acknowledges the category of the individual person as tenuous, always implicated in language, contingent and historical, but no less necessary for these reasons. For him personhood is not found or discovered, instead it is posited and risked continuously. He admired Stanley Cavell’s description that individuality consists not in the fulfillment of our desires, but in their continuous transformation.

Though Wallace’s scene is late American life, wherein he locates a crisis of “seeming” and “being,” I argue that the typical critical rubric of “sincerity” and “irony” generally descriptive of his fiction is inadequate. Instead, in a genealogical approach, I investigate Wallace with philosophical, critical, and literary progenitors like Cavell, Richard Rorty, and most importantly, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Like Wittgenstein, Wallace leads readers away from unhelpful chimeras, toward pursuits more difficult, gratifying, and strange. He enacts something like Wittgenstein’s “therapies,” the dissolution of apparent problems in place of their solution.

The Structure and Stratigraphy of Small Point, Maine: D3 Inverted Transtensional Map-Scale Folds of Neoacadian Provenance

Haley Russell Sive — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:46:10 PDT

The Cape Small Synform lies in an area of the Northern Appalachians that has undergone successive deformation from at least two major orogenic events, the Salinic Orogeny (440-423 Ma) and the Acadian Orogeny (421 – 400 Ma) (van Staal et al. 2009) and contains evidence for Norumbega shearing deformation (Early Devonian-Carboniferous) (Swanson 1999). With a grant from the USGS EDMAP program, a 1:5,000 scale map has been created which sheds light on the complex history of folding and shearing. The study identifies 5 new lithologic units within the Scarboro Formation (youngest to oldest- amphibolite, garnet rich member, muscovite rich member, quartz-rich member, and rusty-weathering member), 2 new units in the Spring Point Formation (a calc silicate and a marble), and articulates 6 seven other members which are similar to those mapped by Hussey and Berry (2006) in the Cape Elizabeth and Diamond Island Formations. A previously unseen graded bed, located in the Cape Elizabeth silver schist implies a downward facing stratigraphy, and designates the previously named Cape Small Synform as a synformal anticline. This folding generation, which dominates the area, is related to D3, which took place during the Neoacadian Orogeny creating a complex regional fold that changes from open in the south to tight in the north. The upright folds deform two previous events: D1, an isoclinal recumbent folding event during the Salinic orogeny observable in foliation of quartz-rich beds of Bald Head; and D2, an isoclinal recumbent refolding deformation event evidenced by folded quartz veins and foliation at Bald Head related to a local Early Acadian event. Strike and dip measurements taken for both meso- and macro-scale D3 folds suggest the existence of two synformal anticlines (Head Beach fold (190/21), and Hermit Island fold (191/39)), and two anticlinal synforms (Cape Small fold (193/22), the Seal Island fold (165/8)). The well-exposed trough of the Cape Small synformal anticline shows hinge parallel extension, which is linked to deformation outside of a purely compressive regime. Thus a wench dominated, transtensional environment (Venkat-Ramani and Tikoff 2002) is proposed to explain both hinge parallel extension and the connection of this Acadian orogenic folding to the subsequent Norumbega shearing.

Revising Sovereignty - A Case Study of Kosovo, East Timor, and South Ossetia

Gina Cristina Sima — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:46:06 PDT

Recently, it appears that the international community has felt compelled to intervene in situations of humanitarian crises. However, such collective action, despite its noble purpose, is in clear violation of the principle of sovereignty. This thesis argues that the meaning of sovereignty has changed from being seen as an inherent, inalienable right of international state system membership to a version that incorporates the responsibility to protect, thus adding an element of accountability and better standards of behavior into sovereignty’s definition. By looking at Kosovo, East Timor, and South Ossetia, this thesis tracks the construction of the revised meaning of sovereignty as it observes the way the international community attempts to integrate clashing notions of sovereignty (the principles of nonintervention and territorial integrity) as the existing governing principle of the international system and emerging trends of human rights and humanitarian intervention.

Access to Information in the Developing World: The Role of Mobile Telephony in Economic Development

Michael Bruce Sagan — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:43:36 PDT

Classical theory suggests that economies operate efficiently when agents have open and symmetric access to market information such as the price, quality, and availability of goods and services. Emerging economies often lack the infrastructure and institutional framework necessary to facilitate this fluid transmission of information, and are subsequently defined by informational divides that sustain systemic structural impediments to development. The recent proliferation of mobile telephone services in the developing world, however, has created new possibilities for information-sharing among the globe’s poorest populations, and has introduced the potential for development that is both economically sustainable and inherently “bottom up.”

This paper considers the role of mobile telephony for development through an empirical examination of agricultural markets in one of the world’s poorest countries—Mozambique. Using established methods of analysis in conjunction with a novel geospatial approach, we find that while the introduction of cellular technology has a discernible impact on agricultural price behavior in our sample, the overall the estimated effect of mobiles falls short of our expectations. This study therefore draws upon an alternative theory on price dispersion and connects it with the current empirical research on mobiles phones for development. In total, we conclude that while mobiles are an influential force in Mozambique’s staple food markets, additional constraints such as trade discontinuities between markets are the primary source of persistent price dispersion and inefficiency.

Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell: Authorship, Collaboration, and Divergence

Maria J. Rouvalis — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:43:33 PDT

A working relationship between a male and a female novelist in the Victorian era begs exploration, especially when the man’s name is Charles Dickens. When Dickens rallied up-and-coming talent Elizabeth Gaskell in 1850 to write for Household Words, they forged a literary connection that illuminates their different perspectives on and approaches to fiction and contemporary social issues – from authorship and publication, to labor unrest and class struggle, to gender roles. This thesis investigates the ebb and flow of the Dickens-Gaskell relationship by examining their correspondence, their novels, and their historical context. Theirs is not the expected tale of a master and pupil, but a complex story of a shifting power dynamic between the famous “conductor” of Victorian literature and a woman author who quietly dared to disagree with him.

Los “Chicago Boys”: A Powerful Exchange of People and Ideas between Chile and Chicago

Josephine B. Reinhardt — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:41:01 PDT

On September 11^th, 1973, Chile broke with its strong democratic history when the military bombed the presidential palace and Augusto Ugarte Pinochet began his 17-year dictatorship. On the day of the coup, a team of Chicago-educated Chilean economists presented a document they had been asked to draft by the Chilean Navy. It called for the abolition of the statist economy that characterized Chile at that time and the implementation of a free-market model. The free-market model that emerged under the dictatorship brought Chile to its position as one of the strongest economies in Latin America and its fundamentals are still in place in present-day Chile. The model is glorified by some and criticized by others because of the authoritarian atmosphere in which it was introduced. But the forced exit of Pinochet in 1990 and return to democracy provides an example to other Latin American countries that a free-market can only be sustained alongside a democratic regime. Drawing from personal interviews, archival material, and historical documents, I examine how and why an exchange between Chilean Universities and the University of Chicago began in the mid-1950s and how these ideas have carried through to reshape Chile’s economy. I focus on the context in which the exchange emerged and how the Chicago Boys’ policies infiltrated Chile. Ultimately, the longevity of the free-market policies demonstrates that they have been effective in bringing Chile to its superior economic position in Latin America today.

In Defense of Israel: How Social Context Affects Jewish-Americans’ Moral Reasoning

Michael Pasek — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:40:57 PDT

The American Jewish community is liberal, yet some contend that American Jews become more conservative when thinking about the defense of Israel. Recent research suggests that conservatives base their moral judgments on the foundations of fairness, minimizing harm, in-group favoritism, respect for authority, and purity. By contrast, liberals largely base moral judgments on just two foundations: fairness and harm-minimization (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). This thesis expands this research by thinking about how a topic that is important to someone alters their moral reasoning. If Israel is important to someone who is Jewish and if thinking about Israel, specifically in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, makes American Jews more conservative, they should alter their moral judgments in ways consistent with conservatives. To test this hypothesis, two studies primed Jews and non-Jews to think about Israel or a different location, and measured the accessibility and relevance of moral foundation categories. Results suggest that priming for Israel does not influence the moral reasoning of Jewish-Americans. However, when asked to think about explicit moral violations committed by military guards, Jewish-Americans expressed less concern for the interrogated victim, less anger at the interrogating soldier, and more support for the soldier’s actions when the military guards were Israeli, compared to a different location. Irrespective of ingroup identification, when individuals were presented with a moral violation committed by soldiers from a nation that they glorify, individuals also showed a preference for conservative-consistent moral foundations. The results from this study also suggest that previous research may have conflated the effects of ingroup identification and those of group-specific glorification.

Program Music and the Influence of Extra-Musical Narratives on Performance

Karen E. Nicoletti — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:37:47 PDT

In looking at the responsibilities of the performer of Western Classical music, we must consider music, like many art forms, as a mode of communication. Whether the composer’s writing depicts a tangible idea or narrative or expresses less definable emotions, the performer coming to the music grapples with the responsibility of representing that extra-musical content in performance, how those ideas should influence performance style, and what kinds of freedoms the performer has with the written notes on the page. My thesis takes two parts: the first is a performance with a carefully selected program of flute repertoire ranging from pieces as programmatic as Debussy’s Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun”, to J. S. Bach’s Sonata in E-flat, which presents no programmatic context. I explore these ideas in my written thesis, by isolating three works from my program that represent the variety of programmatic influence found in compositions. In each work I examine the motives of the composer and extra-musical ideas he contemplated while writing. I follow this with in-depth interviews with flute performers and teachers knowledgeable in each respective style of music, discovering their views of extra-musical influences and the weight those carry in performance. Engaging published accounts of the motives and contexts of a musical composition with the opinions of musicians performing and teaching the music today, this thesis explores how extra-musical ideas surrounding a piece are physically manifested and sheds light on the elusive effect that preparation has on a final performance.

The β-lactam antibiotic ceftriaxone as a treatment for the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease and L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia in 6-OHDA-lesioned rats.

Caroline B. Neville — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:37:44 PDT

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder caused by the loss of dopamine (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra. The most effective treatment is DA replacement therapy using the DA precursor L-DOPA, which can unfortunately often result in L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia (LID). Animal studies in hemi-Parkinsonian rats have shown glutamatergic NMDA receptor antagonists to be effective in treating both PD symptoms and LID, however, the cognitive side effects prevent these drugs from passing clinical trials. Upregulation of GLT-1, the primary glutamate transporter that removes glutamate from the synapse, could be an alternative to direct receptor antagonism. The β-lactam antibiotic ceftriaxone has been shown to substantially increase GLT-1 protein expression and activity in the brain without side effects. In Experiment 1 it was found that sub-chronic injections of 100 mg/kg ceftriaxone in unilaterally 6-OHDA-lesioned rats caused a 44% increase in impaired forepaw stepping, a measure of bradykinesia, that lasted at least 30 days after the last ceftriaxone injection. In Experiment 2, sub-chronic injections of 50 mg/kg ceftriaxone resulted in a 41% increase in impaired forepaw stepping that was found to be equivalent to that produced by 10 mg/kg L-DOPA. However unlike ceftriaxone, treatment with L-DOPA resulted in the development of L-DOPA-induced dyskinesia. Ceftriaxone was able to slow the development of LID, but not decrease the expression of pre-established LID. Indicating that the effects of ceftriaxone on forepaw stepping were due to enhanced GLT-1 function, injections of the selective GLT-1 inhibitor, dihydrokainate (DHK) reduced the improvement in stepping produced by ceftriaxone. Collectively, these data indicate that ceftriaxone may be a superior treatment for Parkinson’s disease than L-DOPA.

The Problem of the Ordinary: Liberating the Fantastic and the Uncanny

Meghan R. Napier — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:37:41 PDT

Tzvetan Todorov’s theory of the The Fantastic systematizes fantastic literature, binding it within a moment of hesitation. Todorov argues that when a seemingly supernatural event, object, or being enters a narrative, readers must decide whether this is to be explained by natural laws or not. Only before this decision is reached does the text sustain the fantastic; otherwise it falls into the categories of the marvelous or the uncanny. Yet the fantastic and the uncanny inherently contain tensions that play out best on a spectrum of ordinariness rather than separated by the strict boundaries in which Todorov places them. These tensions between uncertainty and closure break and reform boundaries between internal self and external self, between the fantastic mind of the reader and authorial words. The thesis, by examining the narratives of Kleist, Hoffmann, Gotthelf, Hauptmann, Hawthorne, Tieck, Chamisso, Márquez, and Banville, challenges Todorov’s restrictive terms to explain the fantastic and the uncanny and require it to conform to a genre. The critical writings of Freud, Adorno, Cavell, Jackson, Royle, Todorov, Frye, Chaouli, Kermode, and Foucault are queried and analyzed. Narratological explanations concerning uncertainty, boundaries, textual and readerly perceptions, and distortions function to clarify how or why the fantastic or the uncanny should be assigned or to judge when either of the two terms transcends the ordinary without breaking from it or remains a mere projection of it.

Kinematics of the Phippsburg Shear Zone at Hermit Island and the Wood Islands, Small Point, Maine

Peter Kent Miller — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:35:18 PDT

The Phippsburg Shear Zone is located within the Casco Bay restraining bend associated with the Norumbega fault zone in south central Maine. Mapping of the shear zone was conducted at Hermit Island during the summer of 2011 as part of an EDMAP grant. The shear zone deforms schists of the Ordovician Cape Elizabeth Formation and granites and pegmatites of Devonian age. The shear zone is part of a D4 deformational event that proceeded regional folding associated with D3 Acadian deformation. The shear zone has a foliation that strikes northeast-southwest and dips steeply SE along the western shore of the Phippsburg peninsula. There is a strong lineation defined by fold hinge lines and quartz rods that plunges gently south. The shear zone width extends at least two kilometers to the west of Small Point. Swanson (1999, 2010) has documented dextral shear both regionally and locally by evaluating macroscale kinematic indicators within Casco Bay and Hermit Island. In this study, γ-shear strain within the Hermit Island section of the Phippsburg Shear Zone was calculated from the synthetic rotation of granites that are assumed to have intruded orthogonally. Minimum γ-shear strain values were calculated from 15 rotated and variably boudined granites on Hermit Island and 27 of the same on the Wood Islands. These data suggest a decrease in shear strain from south (γ = 5.14) to north (γ = 1.47) and west (γ = 9.51) to east (γ = 1.43). A NE-SW striking line separates areas of high from low shear strains and is demarked by a regional dip change from east dips in the shear zone to west dips outside of it. 2D Strain ellipses determined from elongation of boudin strings and shortening of fold trains around Hermit Island were used to complement the shear strain calculations and further define the eastern boundary of the shear zone. The east dipping foliation, south plunging lineation, and dextral kinematic indicators suggest the Hermit Island shear zone is a dilational, type I shear zone (Fossen, 2010). The eastern shear zone boundary strikes more northerly than the shear zone as defined by Swanson (2010.). The kinematics of Phippsburg Shear Zone at Hermit Island support the strike-slip fault bounded crustal extrusion model for the Casco Bay restraining bend as proposed by Swanson and Bampton (2009).

"It's All Happening at the Zoo:" Plural Visions of Landscape, Animals, and Humans in the Early Days of the Bronx Zoo

Rebecca Lauren Merten — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:35:15 PDT

This thesis examines the Bronx Zoo from the creation of the New York Zoological Society through the year of 1906, seven years after the zoo opened. This zoo, like other parks and zoos of the time, was born out of larger movements that placed importance on civic public amenities and valued certain open spaces as inherently good. This thesis questions what we can learn about our understanding and use of nature by following this development. Zoos offer a rich context in which to analyze human considerations about the world they occupy because the spaces are heavily constructed yet display natural elements that zoo leaders had to consider, assign value to, organize, and present. By examining the development of the Bronx Zoo, it becomes clear that city officials, park designers, and zoo designers considered nature and its human utility in varied, complex, and even contradictory ways. An analysis of parks and zoos through both archival records and academic writing demonstrates that humans created these spaces in the hopes of bettering the lives of their cities’ residents, with their own personal motivations and visions, and with the willingness to create hybrid spaces that offered disparate elements in public green space. This thesis examines the display of nature as the sum of three parts—the development and presentation landscape and architecture, animals and their exhibits, and the display of the human. It focuses on how artificial landscapes were developed and created and the control that the zoo developers tried to exert over the nonhuman elements with which they came into contact.

The Categorical Balance of Safeguarding Honor: A Cluster Analysis of Rhetorical Value Hierarchies in the Ninth Circuit’s United States v. Alvarez

Kevin Brown McCandlish — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:35:12 PDT

On July 23, 2007, elected public official Xavier Alvarez rose to introduce himself at a water district board meeting of directors in California. His brief statements formed a sequence of inexplicable mendacities, which included fabrications about serving in the U.S. Marines and having been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Punishable as criminal under the revised Stolen Valor Act of 2005 (Public Law 109-437), these falsifications resulted in the legal case United States v. Alvarez, which reached the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In a highly contentious decision authored by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr., the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 was ruled unconstitutional on account of its over broad abridgement of First Amendment protections. This judicial decision invoked an explicit weighing between the legal value of First Amendment protections and the societal value of preserving the sanctity of military service medals. Utilizing the theories developed by Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca on value hierarchies and their rhetorical implementation in arguments, this thesis critically views the Alvarez decision authored by Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr. through the methodological lens of cluster analysis. The deliberate word associations cultivated within the legal language, and the frequency and intensity thereof, provide a unique insight into the justifications made in the weighing of two values long deemed paramount in American culture.