Digital Commons @ Trinity

La Grande Mortalità: Florence and the Black Death

Rachel Podd — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 12:37:39 PDT

The epidemic which devastated Medieval Europe, known as the Black Death, struck particularly hard among urban populations, including the Italian city of Florence. A major center of art, religion, and politics, the city that existed after the plague abated in 1350 was far from the city of 1347. Through careful analysis of primary sources, chief among them Il Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio and the Chronice of the Villani Brothers, the scholar can deduce several major trends caused by la grande mortalita. Deeper divisions developed between the rich and the poor, even as status symbols became less indicative of class. Death ritual was profoundly altered, plague saints moved to the forefront of religious thought, and a compulsive focus on the sacrament of Mass developed. These primary sources allow the modern reader to better understand circumstances not experienced before or since.

Public Policy and Smoking Prevalence in High Schools

Jerel Xavier San Gabriel — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 14:13:46 PDT

The Game of Life: Designing a Gamification System to Increase Current Volunteer Participation and Retention in Volunteer-based Nonprofit Organizations

Ya Chiang Fu — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:31:47 PDT

Reproductive Rights in Latin America: A Rights-based Approach to Development

Katherine Leonard — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 13:08:20 PDT

Stone Oak Park Exploration: 1st Grade

Canyon Ridge Elementary School (San Antonio, Tex.) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:44:30 PDT

Topic: Living/Nonliving, Plant Parts, and Food Chain

Stone Oak Park Exploration: 2nd Grade

Canyon Ridge Elementary School (San Antonio, Tex.) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:20:10 PDT

Topic: Natural Resources, Rocks, and Plant Adaptations

Stone Oak Park Exploration: 3rd Grade

Canyon Ridge Elementary School (San Antonio, Tex.) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:20:08 PDT

Topic: Plant Adaptation and Soil

Stone Oak Park Exploration: 4th Grade

Canyon Ridge Elementary School (San Antonio, Tex.) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:20:05 PDT

Topic: Plant Adaptations, Weathering, Erosion, Food Webs

Stone Oak Park Exploration: 5th Grade

Canyon Ridge Elementary School (San Antonio, Tex.) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:20:03 PDT

Topic: Changes Over Time (erosion, weathering, deposition) and Plant Adaptations

Stone Oak Park Exploration: Kinder

Canyon Ridge Elementary School (San Antonio, Tex.) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 12:03:30 PDT

Topic: Temperature, Living/Nonliving, Soil Characteristics, Evidence of Conservations.

Can we reduce eating disorder risk factors in female college athletes? A randomized exploratory investigation of two peer-led interventions

Carolyn Becker et al. — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:36:29 PDT

Female athletes are at least as at risk as other women for eating disorders (EDs) and at risk for the female athlete triad (i.e., inadequate energy availability, menstrual disorders, and osteoporosis). This study investigated whether two evidence-based programs appear promising for future study if modified to address the unique needs of female athletes. Athletes were randomly assigned to athlete-modified dissonance prevention or healthy weight intervention (AM-HWI). ED risk factors were assessed pre/post-treatment, and 6-week and 1-year follow-up. Results (analyzed sample, N = 157) indicated that both interventions reduced thin-ideal internalization, dietary restraint, bulimic pathology, shape and weight concern, and negative affect at 6 weeks, and bulimic pathology, shape concern, and negative affect at 1 year. Unexpectedly we observed an increase in students spontaneously seeking medical consultation for the triad. Qualitative results suggested that AM-HWI may be more preferred by athletes.

Assignment

Jane Costanza — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:51:08 PST

Essay assignment requiring students to identify and report on well-known research ethics case studies in the social sciences

Brooding Deficits in Memory: Focusing Attention Improves Subsequent Recall

Paula T. Hertel et al. — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:52:39 PST

Ruminative habits of thought about one’s problems and the resulting consequences are correlated with symptoms of depression and cognitive biases (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008). In our orienting task, brooders and nonbrooders concentrated on self-focusing phrases while they were also exposed to neutral target words. On each trial in the unfocused condition, participants saw and then reported the target before concentrating on the phrase; in the focused condition, the target was reported after phrase concentration. A brooding-related deficit on a subsequent unexpected test of free and forced recall was obtained in the unfocused condition only. Brooders recalled more successfully in the focused than in the unfocused condition. Thus, impaired recall of material unrelated to self-concerns may be corrected in situations that constrain attention.

Performing Violence in Rotrou’s Theater

Nina Ekstein — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:06:59 PST

Violence has a significant and varied role in the theater of Jean Rotrou. Discord and strife are natural to the stage and violence is one of the ways such conflict may be expressed. The inherently spectacular nature of violence makes it particularly theatrical. At the same time, violence pleasingly tantalizes audiences. In this examination of Rotrou’s entire theatrical corpus, I first consider the use of “real” violence, both on stage and off. More interesting and even more common is potential violence, which includes threats of all sorts, as well as fortuitous interruptions. Potential violence avoids the serious difficulties that staging “real” violence entails; furthermore it opens the door to theatricality, as threats may be mere poses. Rotrou’s most innovative use of violence is to make of it a conscious performance on the part of his characters. Violence is thus tied to the performance of insanity, to cross-dressing, and to his fanfarons, among other elements. Finally Rotrou’s masterpiece, Le Véritable Saint Genest, reproduces the two levels of agency of violence—the playwright and his characters—while adding a third level, that of the violence represented, recounted, or threatened in the embedded play performed by Genest’s troupe. From a basic building block of dramatic spectacle and plot, Rotrou constructs a reflection on the nature of theatrical illusion.

Transient Diffraction Grating Measurements of Molecular Diffusion in the Undergraduate Laboratory

Daniel Spiegel et al. — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:42:39 PST

Mass diffusion is a central process in many biological, chemical, and physical systems, and although the mathematics of diffusion has long been an important component of an undergraduate physics education, experimental measurements of diffusion are not very common in the undergraduate laboratory. We describe here an experiment that employs the interference of laser beams to allow measurement of molecular diffusion on micron length scales. The interference fringes of two intersecting “pump” beams within a dye solution create a sinusoidal distribution of long-lived molecular excited states. A third “probe” beam is incident at a wavelength at which the indices of refraction of the ground and excited states are different, so that the probe beam diffracts from the spatially periodic excited-state pattern. After the pump beams are switched off, the excited-state periodicity washes out as the system diffuses back to equilibrium, and the molecular diffusion constant is easily obtained from the rate constant of the exponential decay of the diffracted beam. It is also possible to measure the excited-state lifetime. The experiment provides hands-on insight into fluid dynamics, random walks, and coherent optics.

Quem somos nós: os Wari´ encontram os Brancos

Flavio Braune Wiik — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:38:05 PST

Apapaatai. Rituais de Máscaras no Alto Xingu

Geraldo Andrello — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:38:03 PST

Um peixe olhou para mim: O povo Yudjá e a perspectiva

Peter Gow — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:34:05 PST

Uneasy Neighbors: Maroons and Indians in Suriname

Richard Price — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:34:04 PST

This paper presents a history of relations between Saramaka Maroons and Amerindians in Suriname, which ran the gamut from limited friendship and solidarity to bitter enmity. During the seventeenth century, as African plantation slaves fled into the forest, individual Indians served as occasional advisors and spouses for Saramakas. During the decades of war between the nascent Saramaka people and the colonial government, Indians served the Government as the most effective of jungle scouts and bounty hunters against Saramakas. By the time of the 1762 peace, one Saramaka village included about a dozen Akurio Indians as well as several Arawak captives and another included the famous “Tufinga” group. The paper ends with consideration of the anti-Maroon role of Indians during the Suriname Civil War (1986-1992) and the current land-rights struggle in which Indians and Maroons are at last cooperating.

Cet essai présente l’histoire des rapports entre les Marrons Saramaka et les Amérindiens au Suriname, où il s’agissait parfois d’amitié ou de solidarité, parfois d’inimitié acharnée. Pendant le XVIIe siècle, les Amérindiens partageaient souvent leurs connaissances de la forêt avec les esclaves qui se sont échappés, et dans certains cas devenaient leurs épouses. Au temps de la guerre entre les premiers Saramaka et les colons, les Amérindiens utilisaient leurs connaissances de la foret au service du gouvernement, servant de scouts pour trouver les campements des marrons. Souvent c’était des Amérindiens qui les capturaient, tuaient ou les ramenaient à la côte. Au moment de la paix en 1762, il y avait un village Saramaka qui comprenait environ 12 Indiens Akurio et plusieurs Indiens Arawak capturés ; un autre hébergeait les fameux Indiens « Tufinga ». L’essai se termine avec une discussion du rôle des Amérindiens qui luttaient contre les Marrons au cours de la guerre civile au Suriname (1986-1992) et la lutte pour les droits territoriaux dans laquelle les Amérindiens et les Saramaka se sont enfin devenus solidaires.

The Rain Stars, the World’s River, the Horizon and the Sun’s Path: Astronomy along the Rio Urucauá, Amapá, Brazil

Lesley Green et al. — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:28:25 PST

This article curates excerpts from astronomical narratives recorded in Palikur between 2000 and 2008 along the Rio Urucauá, in the Área Indígena do Uaçá on the border of Brazil and French Guiana. The material assembles around the seasonal cycle of stars associated with particular rains and seasonal changes in the landscape. Star maps of the major constellations are counterposed with wood carvings of the constellations. The curation of these narratives and carvings serves three arguments. First, the figures in this mythical cycle offer multiple references to Amerindian astronomies documented across lowland and highland South America. While the contemporary Palikur population knows its history as that of a federation of Amerindian groups and as one that has drawn Africans and Asians, slaves and settlers into its midst in relatively recent generations, the extent of the links that these texts offer to Amerindian astronomies elsewhere mitigates against representing this astronomy in culturalist terms as “Palikur ethnoastronomy”. Rather, we argue, the material augments the view that astronomical knowledge in the region affirms the history of a vast and extended network among Amerindian populations. Second, the material demonstrates that astronomical knowledge is strongly present in everyday practices and in narratives of residents along the Rio Urucauá. That it is spoken of very little in the everyday, we argue, reflects not so much the forgetting of oral knowledge – since the material has not been forgotten – but the complex choices people make on a day to day basis in navigating the rationalities associated with citizenship of wider collectives, including the global economy, the frontier towns of Brazil and French Guiana, and a range of church groups of which significant sectors readily render Amerindian astronomies as somewhere between maleficent and irrational. The third argument moves toward rethinking the representation of Amerindian astronomy with attention to the ways in which the memory of movement serves alongside the memory of star patterns to establish the references that make star positions predictable in the seasons. Yet while the memory of movement is translatable with reference to axes and lines, the ontology that gives them meaning is that of the movements of living beings: anacondas, ancestors, a tortoise, shamans, birds, with whom the elders had relationships. While the material is readily presented in the global language of information, to borrow from Bruno Latour (2010), the sorrow that accompanies some of the tellings speak of people’s loss of astronomy in the everyday as a loss of the language of transformation: a way of knowing that implies presence and relationality.