Harriet L. Wilkes
Honors College Symposium
Talk Abstracts
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Kevin Lanning
Recent literature has
examined the ways that stereotypes produce biases in memory, called the
illusory correlation effect. The
present study focused on the exact cognitive processes operating to produce
stereotype memory biases. The format in
which stereotype-related information is recalled was hypothesized to be
influential in producing the memory bias.
This study tested a
sample of Honors College students, using stereotypes of four different
occupations. In Study 1, stereotype
sets were compiled from a group of raters.
Study 2 involved actual memory testing.
Participants were shown a list of pairs, each pair containing an
occupation and a trait (e.g., doctor - ambitious). Participants were later asked to recall the list in one of two
response formats. In one format,
participants recalled more information consistent with the stereotypes of
occupations. In the other format,
participants recalled more information that contradicted the stereotypes,
suggesting that response format is an influential factor in memory biases.
A Legislator's Decision to Restrict: The Immigration Reform and Control Act of
1995
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Timothy Steigenga
The history of
immigration in the United States reveals the complex and conflicting values and
interests working against the formation of a coherent and workable immigration
policy. Economic, political, and social
variables help to explain changes in immigration policy over time. This study tests the hypothesis that
legislators decisions to restrict immigration policy are based primarily upon
the following variables: his/her party affiliation, residence in a high
immigrant population state (California, Florida, Illinois, New York, New
Jersey, and Texas), and campaign contributions from the agriculture and
construction sectors. Preliminary
findings suggest that significant contributions from the agricultural sector
represent one of the most salient factors affecting voting on immigration
policy.
The Maya in Jupiter, Florida; Remittances and
Immigrant Perceptions of Changes in the Home Community
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Timothy J. Steigenga
Scholars disagree about the
over-all positive or negative impacts of immigrant remittances on the
macro-economic stability of developing nations. There are strong economic arguments about both the positive and
the negative economic results of remittances.
However, both sides tend to ignore the equally significant social,
cultural, and familial changes that remittances bring about in the sending
community. Based on ethnographic
interviews conducted among Jacaltec Mayan immigrants in Jupiter, Florida, this
study suggests that immigrants perceive the social changes brought about by
remittances to be equally if not more relevant to their daily lives than
economic changes. Since most of these
changes are perceived as negative, it suggests that immigrants are aware of the
dilemma they face when sending their remittances to their home community. Thus, the immigrant perspective provides a
framework for understanding the complex positive and negative social and
economic effects of remittances.
Aldo Leopold, the Land Ethic, and the Need for
Pluralism in Environmental Philosophy
Advisor/Professor: Dr. William O'Brien
I present Leopold's work
to demonstrate similarities between his Land Ethic and other diverse
conceptualizations within the often-polarized factions of the environmental
movement. I suggest that monistic
solutions will not provide effective means for the resolution of ecological
crisis's that encompass diverse social and cultural settings. Monistic interpretations provide one lens
for worldview, one perspective for interpretation, one solution for change, and
require one defense against criticisms of the essentializing nature of that
solution. I conclude that diverse
perspectives, such as eco-feminism, Buddhist and Islamic environmentalisms,
eco-Marxism, and others, share important elements with Leopold's Land
Ethic. Rather than suggesting the
replacement of views, creating a new monism, I conclude that a defense of
Leopold's holism requires a defense of pluralism, because one perspective
cannot be the universal sustenance for environmentalism. Such defense, provided by the Land Ethic,
can unify support for an alliance based upon a non-hierarchical collection of
ideas.
Ego Development and Tragedy: Personality and
September 11th
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Kevin Lanning
Adverse times cause
people to react in a variety of ways.
While some people behave in less than admirable ways, others exemplify
maturity, courage, and wisdom. It is
important to know how these circumstances affect the public. The intent of this project is to gain
something positive out of the September 11th tragedies. We use the Sentence
Completion Test to determine how the events of 9/11 affect Ego Development. Ego Development consists of 9 stages through
which people may progress. It describes
the thinking people use to understand the world around them. Impulsive,
conformist, and conscientious are examples of the stages. In the wake of the
tragedy, some people are expected to regress and others rise. The idea is that a difficult situation will
create true leaders of the world.
"It wasn't our world anymore":
Fanfiction's Postmodernist Coup
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Laura Barrett
Fan
writings, known as fanfiction, are here presented as Postmodernist texts that
recreate, rewrite and retell the stories of popular culture and toy with the
literary canon. A rampant and mostly
female authored internet phenomenon that began with fan circulated magazines,
fanfiction gleefully embraces social taboos, examines its place in relation to
and within academia, and blurs the line between high and low culture. Seen from a Postmodernist approach,
fanfiction appropriates fictional worlds in order to create stories the fans
wish to see and explore. Not limited to
the television or movie screen, fanfiction writers also rewrite novels,
celebrities, songs, and historical and political figures, utilizing the tried
and true themes of literature, and employing lenses and backdrops ranging from
pornography to the Bible.
High-Modernist Development Praxis vs. 'Metis'
Among Haiti's Popular Class
Advisor/Professor: Drs. Timothy Steigenga, Rachel Corr, and William O'Brien
From
before its independence to the present day, "high-modernist" development
schemes have been imposed upon Haiti by non-endogenous sources. These stem from the development theories of
Western political thinkers, and have been implemented at the behest of Western
powers and Haitian elites. Yet Haiti
today stands as the most impoverished nation of the Western hemisphere. What has gone wrong? In reply, I examine the
"metis"-the development aspirations, culturally-based practices, and
localized knowledge-of the Haitian popular class, and contrast these with
"high-modernist" development.
I highlight four Haitian case studies to show the profound
"misfit" between the two development forms, and the conflicts that
have arisen because of it. In Haiti,
"high-modernist" development will inevitably go awry because its
starting points are fundamentally flawed.
The crucial element of Haitian "metis" must have primacy in
development foundations, theory, policy, and projects, and not just moderately
at the project implementation level.
Effect of Native Language on Event Perception
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Julie Earles
Effects of mtDNA mutations on growth rates in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Paul Kirchman
Many theories have been
proposed to explain the biological basis of aging, or senescence. Only after the causes of aging are
discovered can there be any hope of alleviating the symptoms of aging, as well
as reducing or eliminating diseases related to old age. I have based my research upon the free
radical theory of aging, which explains senescence as an accumulation of toxins
at the cellular level as a by-product of aerobic metabolism. My goal was to create and identify strains
of yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which grow more slowly than normal as a
result of mutant genes related to cellular respiration. Identification and analysis of these mutant
genes will help to elucidate the role of genetics in the aging process.
Man and Nature: Reading Steinbeck through a
Transcendental Lens
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Laura Barrett
John Steinbeck's life
experiences greatly influenced his worldview and directed the themes that
pervade his work. As a student of literature, exploring literary themes,
movements and methods has allowed me to make connections and identify
correlations between ideologies and authors. One such observation involves the
worldview and philosophy of John Steinbeck in relation to the transcendental
movement, specifically the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. After a survey of
Steinbeck's fiction and non-fiction in relation to transcendentalism and a
number of Emerson selections, I have found that Steinbeck subscribes to many of
the basic principles Emerson explores in his work. While not an attempt to
prove that Steinbeck was or was not directly influenced by transcendentalism or
the works of Emerson, this thesis is an exploration of common themes and ideas
concerning man, nature, society and the construction of the universe.
Advisor/Professor: Dr. LuAnne McNulty
Polyaniline is an
electrically conductive polymer with many interesting properties, and dansyl chloride
is a fluorescent marker often used to label proteins. By replacing some of the aniline monomers in polyaniline with
N-dansyl-p-phenylenediamine, a copolymer is created which is essentially a
polyaniline backbone with dansyl side groups.
Since the electrons are loosened from the dansyl moiety when it is
exposed to ultraviolet light, exposing the polymer to ultraviolet light should
reduce the electrical impedance of the material. The polymer can be electrically characterised by using an
oscilloscope to measure the capacitance of the polymer, from which the
impedance can be calculated.
Free will, determinism, and responsibility
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Mark Tunick
There are several issues
debated in the dialogue between those who believe that we have free will, and
those who believe that we do not. I
will argue that the will is not necessarily free, and also that, due to certain
physical phenomenon, the definition of determinism needs to be overhauled. I will argue that free will and determinism
are not compatible ideas, despite attempts to show otherwise. I will also examine the idea that free will
is necessary for responsibility, and argue that this is not true, and that the
concepts of responsibility and morality are actually just further constraints
on the will.
Jorge Luis Borges's Immortalities
Advisor/Professor: Mary Ann Gosser-Esquilín
Milton and the Sabbath
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Harrawood
This paper will consider
the influence of the great 17th century debate over the Sabbath on the poetry
and prose of John Milton. Milton
defended regicide and Parliament during the revolution, while he condemned the
Priesthood and Prelacy for their concern with obedience of church law and
strict enforcement of it; yet the same Parliament he defended enacted laws that
restricted behavior on the Sabbath creating a precise listing of activities
permissible on that day. The issues
that emerge from an examination of the Sabbatarian debate deal directly with the
subjects Milton takes on in his work: the power of the church, and the relation
of the individual to religious community.
Milton was for the believer's right to choose. He wrote in his "Reason of Church Government" that
while drunken behavior was offensive, other activities Sabbatarians spoke out
against were acceptable. Placing
obedience of the Commandments too high could be a sin itself.
Fractal Dimension: An Analysis of Different
Definitions
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Stephanie Fitchett
Mandelbrot used the term
"monsters" to describe shapes that possess irregular and fragmented
behavior. Fractals, as these
"monsters" are called, break most common notions of geometric
objects. In particular, most fractals
have non-integer dimension - a trait not shared by any familiar objects. How do we extend our notion of dimension to
handle these "monsters"? In
the talk we will explore two of the most widely used definitions of fractal
dimension. The goal of the talk is to
understand logic behind the definitions, as well as provide an example where
the different definitions produce different results. This example will highlight the meaning and interpretation of
each definition of dimension, as well as reveal the drawbacks of each
definition.
"Through Narrow Streets": Walking in
Expatriate Modernist Literature
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Laura Barrett
A great deal of
post-World War I modernist American literature is linked to expatriation. This physical disassociation from one's
roots both by the authors of the time and by many of their characters relates
closely to issues of emotional and spiritual despondency, feelings of
otherness, and an attempt to react to an increasingly mechanized and
fragmentary world. Frequently, these
concepts are coupled within modernist fiction with the idea of walking,
particularly the persistent, symbolic image of a lone city walker. These walkers, usually the male protagonist
of a text, engage in a destinationless wandering through urban surroundings, an
act which is couched in solitariness and an inability to connect with the world
around them. The poetry of T.S. Eliot
and the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway all use the
recurring theme of walking to address issues of urbanization, observation and a
lack of sexual fulfillment.
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Timothy J. Steigenga
In the past five years
the Mexican film industry has experienced a resurgence in the quality and
content of its national cinema. The new
films share candid portrayals of formerly taboo subjects as well as new
techniques in filmmaking which have inspired international attention and
acclaim. This paper examines the impact
of political changes in Mexico on the film industry through an analysis of the
treatment of violence, sexuality, and corruption in recent Mexican films. Mexico's transition from one-party rule has
sparked a reformation in the film industry which, in turn, is modernizing views
of Mexican society in the eyes of the world.
Effects of Human Recreation on Sea Urchins
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Jon Moore
The sea urchin,
Lytechinus variegates is one of organisms that live within the seagrass beds
around Jupiter, FL. However, many of
the seagrass beds in the area are part of or adjacent to recreational
facilities. The recreational activities
seen at one site includes boating, jet skiing, snorkeling, swimming, dog
walking and kayaking. Surveys were done
using quadrats and transects to determine population densities in both
recreational and non-recreational sites.
The statistical difference between the two methods was calculated and
showed that either method could be used.
This study of the recreation impacts on the sea urchin population and
the impact of temperature on the population density of sea urchins proved that
recreation is a determining factor of sea urchin population density.
Reconfiguring the Gestalt of War: Women's Collective Memory and its
Representations in American Vietnam War Films
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Daniel White and Dr. Christopher Strain
This thesis seeks to
answer the question, "What do women's films on the Viet Nam War offer to
the American collective memory of the Viet Nam experience?" I am interested in the way film
monumentalizes and counter-monumentalizes an event as well as how it distorts
and creates memories, particularly altering memories of historical events, as
well as how films about traumatic events such as the Viet Nam war address
unresolved issues and anxieties, and which perspectives of the war have yet to
be acknowledged.
I will discuss the way
the war has been generally represented in popular films, what is not included
in these different representations, what impact this has on collective memory,
and what films by women offer to the American collective memory of the Viet Nam
War.
Factoring in a Timely Fashion
Advisor/Professor: Dr. Stephanie Fitchett
Most of the world trusts
the security of our current cryptosystems, which rely on the fact that
factoring a large number is computationally infeasible. Finding a way to factor "large"
numbers efficiently is important both to those who create and those who break
cryptosystems.
One trick for factoring
a large number is to express the number as a difference of perfect
squares: If n = x2 – y2,
then n = (x + y)(x – y), which means x + y and x – y are
factors of n. This simple trick
shows that if a number can be easily expressed as a difference of perfect
squares, then it can also be easily factored.
This talk compares implementation times for two algorithms that use a
variation of this factoring trick.
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April 2003
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