San Francisco State University Digital Repository

Revisionary temporal experiences : how a recognition of tachpsychia in verse alters interpretation Colonnese, Francesca Kathryn The human mind experiences time as more flexible than suggested by today’s precisely regulated clocks. Seeking to understand this troubled relationship with temporality, this project examines representations of time in the verse of the Early Modem and Victorian eras. In literature that predates the discovery of quantum mechanics, general relativity, and the fMRI, science alone cannot serve as an explanatory refuge for the mind’s intrinsic ability to bend time. Poetry offers a flexible space for the portrayal of alterations in temporal perception. My particular focus is tachypsychia, a feeling of time slowing down, often generated by traumatic events. Recognizing these experiences of temporal strangeness as neurologically based, this paper will establish that tachypsychia is a common human experience that was captured in poetic form before science ever understood the phenomenon. Identifying this in canonical works from John Donne and Alfred Lord Tennyson also fundamentally alters the interpretation of these poetic works.

Trade war with China Hamilton, Lee Richard This is a Liberal-Peace argument that global free trade has been beneficial world-wide. Trade with China has been to the mutual benefit of both the United States and China. Pre-tariff data in the automotive sector from a variety of official U.S. Government sources demonstrate the huge benefits of free trade. Recent data that reflect the impact of tariffs shows its negative consequences. Tariffs are nothing more than taxes and their use regarding trade with China has strained the relations between the two countries. This study also responds to realist views that the United States and China have problems that could result in a military confrontation. International security is a product of military, economic and technological superiority, where data shows that the United States is clearly ahead in all three categories. Though a conflict could happen, it is not only not inevitable but highly unlikely.

Natural chimerism in the invasive colonial ascidian Didemnum vexillum Weinberg, Rachel Beth Colonial, asexually reproducing organisms are typically treated as genetically homogenous entities composed of clonal units. However, processes such as fusion and somatic mutation may lead to the integration of multiple genetic lines in a single physiologically continuous organism. This state, known as chimerism, has been documented in a broad range of sessile modular taxa, including plants, fungi, slime molds, and colonial metazoans such as ascidians. In the invasive colonial ascidian Didemnum vexillum, naturally occurring chimerism has been documented from the presence of more than two alleles at microsatellite loci, however factors such as homozygosity and spatial separation of genets within a colony may mask chimerism using this detection method alone. In order to more accurately quantify the prevalence of chimerism in introduced D. vexillum populations, zooids were dissected from 35 colonies and individually genotyped. Both spatial and molecular masking of chimerism was found in a proportion of the chimeric colonies, indicating that the sampling strategy applied here has the potential to identify chimerism in D. vexillum colonies that appear monogeneic from single tissue samples. In Umpqua, Oregon, 70% of the colonies sampled were chimeric, which is the highest prevalence of chimerism reported in any D. vexillum population studied to date. In Half Moon Bay, 30% of the samples were chimeric, which is similar to the rates of chimerism previously estimated in this population using single tissue samples. The significant differences in chimerism between the two populations were not associated with significant differences in genetic diversity or inbreeding, as measured by expected and observed heterozygosity. Relatedness was significantly higher among genets within chimeric colonies than across genets in the population as a whole, providing evidence from two natural populations that chimerism in D. vexillum is genetically mediated. These results show that there may be extreme variation in chimerism prevalence across populations, providing a basis for future studies to investigate the causes of this variation and its potential role in facilitating the successful establishment of non-native species.

Examining authorship and identity through the player-avatar relationship in video games Vengco, Timurhan Ecarma This thesis examines authorship and identity through the player’s relationship with the avatars of God of War III and The Last of Us. God of War III allegorizes a poststructural understanding of authorship, as the game forces the player to navigate a paradoxical position of power and powerlessness. The Last of Us highlights a poststructural understanding of identity development, as the player continuously develops and renegotiates their identity in relation to Joel, the most dominant figure in the narrative. Both games highlight how the player’s agency stems from their experience participating in the narrative while navigating the rules and limitations that structure the games.

Testimonios of undocumented students in higher education : A Critical Latina Feminist Phenomenology Barrera, Ana Maria This study of five undocumented Latina students focused on the lived experience of navigating higher educaTion in the context of the political climate in the United States. A Critical Latina Feminist Phenomenology lens gives voice to undocumented and describes the use of testimonio as a methodology to create a space for critical reflection, healing, and transformation. Two main trenzas (themes) collectively describe the phenomenon: (a) identidades politicos (political identities) and (b) de comunidad (of the community) that when woven together create a nepantlera consciousness; a space where undocumented students use their voice for political agency to create change in their communities while navigating higher education.

Foreign powers and coercive trade in antiquity : a review of the Megarian Decree Bodenchak, Mark Christian Studies surrounding the Megarian decree and the role it played in the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War often claim that the decree was an economically focused law, with some form of geopolitical impact. Few scholars go further in detail to explain the inner workings of the decree as an economic sanction and how it might have brought about any result with Megara. This thesis examines the economy of both Megara and Athens in a framework provided by modem economic sanction theory. Through comparisons of their production, reliance on foreign trade and the level of their economic interdependence on each other, it posits the means through which the Megarian decree would have been an effective geoeconomic and geopolitical tool.

Stonemover Carp, David

Pogchamp! an analysis of Twitch.tv and user intercommunications Werder, Brianna Twitch.tv is a social media platform which originally marketed itself specifically for gamers but has more recently gained recognition as appealing to aspiring live streamers of all interests. Social media platforms have the tendency to strive to individualize their users and make them stand out from others. Twitch is different than other social media sites like Facebook and Twitter because its emphasis is on building communities and bringing together people who share common interests. Twitch’s success is recent years has had a great influence on video games and media culture, and it continues to be a leader in community-based streaming services. This thesis will look at the innovations in online technologies and language that have come as a result of Twitch as well as the significance of the culture and communities that have formed on the platform.

Narcissus, Baudelaire, and Foucault : a response to Pierre Hadot Henrick, James Lawrence Pierre Hadot’s criticism that Michel Foucault advocates a modem day form of Dandyism has animated much d'".cussion among modem ethical theorists. Yet, little research has been done into the history of Dandyism and its importance to Hadot’s criticism. In order to properly situate their disagreement, this thesis traces the history of Dandyism from Beau Brummell to Charles Baudelaire, examining connections between Foucault’s thought and this intellectual history. After demonstrating the reasonableness of Hadot’s critique, this thesis examines Hadot’s own unstated philosophical assumptions, arguing that his writing on the myth of Narcissus provides substantial evidence of his Perennialist disposition. Finally, this thesis examines Richard Shusterman’s theory of somaesthetics to argue that Shusterman’s pragmatic conception provides a better model that can successfully incorporate both Hadot and Foucault’s ethical projects.

Iraqi women and U.S. occupation : decolonizing online resistance Thompson, Brianna Jo In March 2003, the United States military invaded Iraq and altered the history, geography, and culture of the country forever. To justify this invasion, the Bush administration framed Iraqi women as citizens needing to be ‘saved’ from their government and people. During times of war, women are left to care for their nation through upholding family values, culture, and economic prosperity. However, because women take on the significant role of upholding a nation during war, they also experience the most violence. This research locates how female Iraqi citizens experienced and resisted the colonizing powers of the U.S. while upholding the culture and nation. This work decentralizes oppressive western rhetoric by honoring female Iraqi experiences. Utilizing a critique of vernacular discourse, I locate Iraqi women’s ability to affirm their culture while simultaneously opposing Eurocentric power structures through online discourse.

Siegel’s epistemological theories and full dissociation of consciousness and attention Thomas, Michelle Elena I will use empirical evidence to support the argument that there is a possible dissociation between processes of consciousness and processes of attention such that the two independent systems work in tandem and simultaneously. Secondly, if there is a dissociation between processes of consciousness and processes of attention, I maintain that having two completely independent systems would affect views on epistemology, rationality, and perception. One such robust epistemological theory is Susanna Siegel’s theories of perceptual experience and inference. I aim to show what the full dissociation of processes of consciousness and attention would mean for epistemological and perceptual theories using Siegel as an example. Siegel has a complete and thoroughly comprehensive epistemological theory. I am interested in applying a theory of full dissociation to her epistemological system. I contend that her theory, when viewed in relation to a full dissociation theory would indicate support for full dissociation or partial overlap.

Intrinsic motivation & intentions to be physically active : the role of high school coaches Thomas, Kelly Ann A primary goal of adolescent sport participation is to equip children with the competence and confidence to choose to participate in leisure physical activity as they transition into adulthood. Previous research on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) has shown that autonomy-supportive coaching has a positive relationship with the development of intrinsic motivation. However, the literature does not provide information about how this motivation development translates to greater exercise adherence to physical activity later in life. PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between perceived autonomy support, basic needs satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, and intention to be physically active among competitive high school athletes. METHOD: A sample of 37 high school athletes (majority white and female) completed a quantitative survey one time. RESULTS: Multiple regressions showed that motivation to experience (F (5,31) = 3.59,p=0.01) was significantly predicted by only team relatedness (P=.41,/?<0.05). Mean scores of the entire sample (N= 37) showed that intention to be physically active decreased as temporal distance increased. Hierarchical regression revealed that intrinsic motivation (P=.35,/?<0.05) and teammate relatedness (p=.35,/?<0.05) were the only significant predictors of intention. DISCUSSION: Findings suggest that the teammate relatedness component of basic needs satisfaction and intrinsic motivation are the only significant predictors of changes in intention, while coach autonomy support is not. It can be said that high school athletes that are most motivated by their experience, rather than their accomplishments and knowledge within their sport, and feel connected to their teammates are more likely to be physically active in college.

Nonlinear optical wave phenomena observed in defocusing m-cresol/nylon solutions Smith, Valton Doyle, II In this thesis, nonlinear optical wave phenomena are observed using a solution consisting of m-cresol and nylon. The nonlinearity of this material is due to the thermooptic effect, in which light absorption causes a change in the index of refraction - in this case, a reduction in value. Because this change in index of refraction is proportional to the intensity of the light, the nonlinear index of refraction can be modeled as a Kerr-type nonlinearity. In this work, the degree of nonlinearity was quantified in terms of the Kerr coefficient using the z-scan method. We found that this solution exhibited higher nonlinearity as the nylon concentration was increased and that the degree of nonlinearity was orders of magnitude larger than most other reported thermal materials. This thesis also reports experimental results of spatial ID dark optical soliton formation and interaction in this thermal solution. Dark solitons can exist in this material because of its thermal nonlinear properties, which causes light to experience self-phase modulation (SPM) resulting in a defocusing effect. We report the strongest attraction between two ID dark soliton stripes to our knowledge when they were formed in proximity. This attraction can be attributed to the nonlocal effect of thermal diffusion. Finally, we experimentally demonstrate the formation of spatial dispersive shock waves using this highly nonlinear solution. By adjusting the input power of the laser beam, we were able to observe different levels o f the shock formation and wave-breaking through the same sample pathlength.

Ehrhart quasipolynomials of coxeter permutahedra McWhirter, Jodi The Ehrhart polynomial counts lattice points in a dilated lattice polytope. The Ehrhart polynomials of permutahedra of types A, B, C, and D have been calculated by Federico Ardila, Federico Castillo, and Michael Henley (2015). However, when a type B permutahedron is shifted so that its center is the origin, it Decomes a halfintegral polytope, and its Ehrhart quasipolynomial was previously unknown. The same is true of odd-dimension type A permutahedra. We use signed graphs that arise from the generating vectors of each permutahedron to determine which sets of vectors are linearly independent and thus which form parallelepipeds that are a part of a zonotopal decomposition, as well as wmch of these parallelepipeds stays on the lattice when the permutahedron is shifted. This yields new approaches/formulas for Ehrhaxt quasipolynomials for these rational permutahedra.

Working from the middle : a multidirectional approach to mangrove conservation Mohan, Abigail Taylor Mangrove ecosystems are at continued risk of degradation and deforestation through anthropogenic activity. Mangroves once covered 75% of tropical coastlines, and only 30 - 50% of this habitat currently remains. These ecosystems provide important benefits for the local communities, including supporting livelihoods and providing resources. Through the long-term sequestration of carbon, mangroves are essential to global goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Although mangrove conservation and restoration are often recognized community or government goals, the lack of data and resources can hamper success. By analyzing approaches used across pilot conservation and restoration sites in Madagascar and Ecuador, lessons learned can highlight successful approaches that can be replicated and scaled up. This research analyzes how the influence of top-down (government or policy driven) and bottom-up (community-led) approaches impacted project outcomes. This case study comparison uses interviews with key experts, along with the Driver. Pressure, State, Impact and Response framework, to better understand the role national and local entities play in mangrove conservation and restoration. The most effective approach considers the underlying drivers of mangrove loss and includes a multidirectional approach to align government goals and community needs.

Queer new media Menaker, Chase Alexander At the dawn of the 1990s, queer as identity marker and political stance entered the cultural lexicon amidst the dot com boom and a proliferation of digital technologies. In what ways are these two events intertwined? Is it possible to queer digital media? Conversely, now might digital media invigorate a queer praxis? Offering a brief genealogy of both fields, I examine how a proximity to capital has ensconced queer studies and commercial technologies in neoliberal rhetoric. By exposing this tendency, I locate contingency as the driving animus behind the most salient aspects of queer theory and through a close reading of the 2018 film Annihilation imagine the possibility of a queer technology.

As is to Downer, Jonathan Michael The culmination of my experience at San Francisco State University ends with a poem book titled AS IS TO. It is broken up into two sections. The first section, Sonrose Paradox, is about a person whose name is always changing and how they are training to become a militant ghost. They struggle to articulate the importance of their assignment to join the Ghost Military because they have been stricken by a language infection that renders their statements inscrutably nonsensical. Surprisingly, as the protagonist gets more frustrated and esoteric, people find solace in their confusing language that seems proverbial to them. By the end of the first section the evasively named protagonist becomes the director of the Ghost Military and receives their final name: Foil-hat Father. The second half of AS IS TO, Foil-hat Father, is set three generations after the first section. It is a told from the perspective of the next Foil-hat Father. The new protagonist doesn’t possess the language gifts of their predecessor so nobody believes that they are the Foil-hat Father. The protagonist’s resentment towards the Father is what triggers their esoteric language magick. Even though their faculties are now similar to the Father’s, the protagonist has to be careful, they might be a victim of a time travelling ghost who overtakes your mind and body through language.

Normativity and non-conceptual content Dubreuil, Micah Jacobson In Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Wilfrid Sellars argues that ostensible perceptions (veridical seeings and non-veridical lookings) share not only a common propositional content but also a common descriptive content. In characterizing this sense content as neither conceptual nor purely causal, Sellars identifies a pressure point between his inferentialism and his critique of the empiricist Myth o f the Given. To resolve this tension, I argue that the Sellarsian position can and should appeal to a non* conceptual normativity—a set of minimal or proto-norms that governs both sense impressions and non-conceptual content more broadly construed. The resulting picture is a hybrid notion of descriptively locating specific sensory states while normatively ascribing these states to be responsible to proto-intentional norms derived from teleologically-structured activities. This account distinguishes non-conceptual representational states from mere physical differential responsiveness, while also allowing the relevant ongoing teleological projects of animals in the space of reasons to be shaped by conceptually normative activity.

Landscapes of belonging : white possession and settler subjectivity in Mashpee, Massachusetts D’Andrea, Erika Christine Mashpee, Massachusetts is unique amongst coastal areas in New England. This is due to the fact that the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe retained partial sovereignty and land-use rights in Mashpee from the pre-colonial era to the mid-20th century. Beginning in the 1950s, however, developers took interest in Mashpee and transformed the landscape into recreational-residential resorts, attracting an influx of new white residents. In 1976, the Mashpee Tribe filed suit for the return of their land, to the widely publicized outrage of the town’s white newcomers. How did the 1976 land suit reinforce the settler colonial logic that links whiteness and property? How are geographies o f belonging, comfort, and leisure formed on this land? In this thesis, I use this case study to explore how white subjectivities materialize through ideologies of US exceptionalism, Indigenous assimilation, and property ownership.

"Nation as family" and the causes of gender-based violence in modern Armenia Pirinjian, Lori In the setting of post-Soviet Armenia, members of the nation live as if they were members of one united family. Grandmothers giving advice to young mothers on the streets, older men ridiculing women for smoking in public, and young men openly making fun of one another for wearing shorts and sandals are all common occurrences between strangers in the streets of Yerevan (Shirinian 2018, 49). The family is one of the only institutions that remained stable in Armenia throughout the Soviet Union. The Armenian kinship network continues to be the centralizing factor of the overarching Armenian identity (Platz 2005, 30). In a "nation as family" framework (Abrahamian 2006), all members of the nation are expected to take on the roles of different members of the family in the way that they interact with all members of the nation. Women are meant to bear children and raise a family while men are afforded the right to have jobs and other freedoms (Ishkanian 2007, 494). These roles are unchanging, and have resulted in a power dynamic that unquestioningly favors men. Evidence in the favoring of men exists through Armenian women's consistent subjugation to widespread and regularized gender-based violence. In Armenia today, one in four Armenian women is a victim of domestic violence (Jilozian 2016, 14). In this thesis project, I will argue that this "nation as family" framework clarifies how contemporary Armenians explain gender norms that have resulted in the widespread normalization of gender-based violence in Armenia today. I will contend that the Armenian culture's commitment to the "nation as family" and the "Armenian family" as irreplaceable parts of Armenian identity creates the perception of an indestructible unit, and that any threat to this identity is met with great fear and disdain. In order to demonstrate this, I will rely heavily on the widespread fear that has surrounded Armenia's recently passed domestic violence law.