capstone project

The purpose of this study is to understand how collegiate student athletes cope
with stress and mental health concerns Specifically, I ask: (1) How does the role of
being a student-athlete affect one’s mental health? (2) Are there gender differences
in how student-athletes cope with stress? Using data from in-depth interviews with 10
male student-athletes and 10 female student-athletes, I found that the student-athlete
experience had both positive and negative impacts on an individual’s stress and overall
mental wellness. Student-athletes benefited from the collegiate athletic experience in
various ways—including career opportunities and learned skills like time-management.
However, student-athletes also endured large amounts of stress stemming from the role
conflict involved in sport participation and academic performance. This research clearly
proves the strong impact that gender roles and societal stigma has on the effects of role
conflict for mental well-being. I found that gender impacted the sources of stress and how
student-athletes understand the ways they are supposed to cope with stress. Studentathletes’
interpersonal relationships with teammates and coaches could either serve as a
positive buffer from emotional challenges—or intensify the emotional struggles an
athlete endures. Far too many athletes felt as though help-seeking behaviors signaled
weakness. The majority of the athletes felt as though they would be better off handling
emotional challenges on their own. Rather than identifying such mental health issues,
student-athletes addressed these concerns as personal problems that were not crucial to
their mental health. This research signifies the importance of understanding how studentathletes
cope with both stress and the challenges related to role conflict and mental illness
stigma.

An exacting command of language in his employ, journalist Camille Desmoulins was
arguably one of the most dangerous and cunning players in the political arena of revolutionary
France. His work is a clear synthesis of linguistic and political theory but what, precisely, made it
so effective? When his work is regarded collectively, a theme emerges wherein Desmoulins uses
language designed to categorically perpetuate suspicion. Using the principles of lexical semantics,
rhetoric, and connotation, this project seeks to examine the semantic undercurrents of
Desmoulins’s works as they relate specifically to the public perception of suspicion, and to define
the linguistic parameters within which he operated. An analysis of selected examples will
demonstrate how the evocative language speaks to the author’s acute cognizance of his audience
and his talent for inflaming the collective unrest through the use of tropes; specifically
dehumanization, personification, and the neologism brissoter. Additionally, a feature analysis of nouns and verbs drawn from a sample of Desmoulins’s work further identifies tropes and atypical
semantic forms and argues that, through his linguistic manipulation, he was able to sow suspicion
among the mercurial Third Estate; both against the monarchy and the ultra-radical Republic.

Earth’s environment has been undergoing unprecedented rates of degradation
during the Anthropocene paradigm. Current projections for the near future show climate
change producing grim outcomes for most habitable parts of the world. This thesis defends
the argument that in order to adequately address the state of the environment, humanity
must experience a shift in collective consciousness away from the current philosophical
paradigm, and instead adopt a paradigm that enables a common mindset regarding the place
of humans within the natural environment. Various forms of spiritual ecology are explored:
deep ecology, biblical eco-theology, and eco-feminist theology. These positions are
explored in order to introduce a framework necessary to achieve the collective shift in
consciousness required to address environmental issues: a Spiritual Framework of Organic Oneness, which includes components of spiritual ecology and earth-centered religious
traditions.

I analyzed the potsherds (n=732) recovered from the 2009 archaeological excavations at the site of San Antonio in Chinandega, Nicaragua. I classified the pottery in accordance with the Type: Variety-Mode system that is used almost exclusively in Mesoamerica and the Greater Nicoya Sub-Region. Identifications of known ceramic wares, groups, types, and varieties were made through comparisons with reference specimens from type collections housed at several institutions. New taxa were defined as needed in accordance with the established protocols of the Type: Variety system (e.g., Smith et al. 1960) and as subsequently amended (e.g., Rice 1976). In the thesis, I describe the composition of the pottery assemblage from the earliest complex found at the site because it represents the most significant finding from the analysis. I identified a suite of Late Preclassic ceramic groups and types identical to those known from western El Salvador and eastern Guatemala including abundant Jicalapa Usulután, Pinos Black-brown, Santa Tecla Red, and Olocuitla Orange, all of which form part of the Chul Complex of that region. Statistical analysis implies that the ceramic complex most similar to that of San Antonio are not those from adjacent regions, such as the Uapala Complex of eastern El Salvador or the Aviles Complex of Rivas (Healy 1980), but rather those further west, i.e., the Chul Providencia Complex of Santa Leticia. The near identity of the San Antonio materials to those of the Chul Complex, which is part of the Providencia Ceramic Sphere, leads us to denominate them the Cosigüina Providencia Complex. Current dating places the Chul Complex chronologically between 400 B.C. and 50 B.C. (Inomata et al. 2014). The early occupation of San Antonio may extend into the succeeding Caynac Complex as well (ca. 50 B.C. to A.D. 50 or 100). The pottery suggests that inhabitants of the site were probably ethnically an ancestral Ch’olan or proto-Ch’orti’ Maya group (Sharer 2009).

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo (1891-1961), the ruthless Dominican Republic ruler
dominated his island’s politics for over thirty years. In his acclaimed 2000 novel, The
Feast of the Goat, Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa creates Urania Cabral, a
49-year-old émigrée who at 14 left her nation after becoming Trujillo’s sexual victim.
The novel, told from many perspectives, focuses on her return, the dictator’s last day, and
the story of the four conspirators waiting to ambush him the night of May 30th 1961.
My study analyzes the complex narrative structures of the novel as masterful
“rupturing” techniques. Through these the reader pieces together the broken body politic
of a traumatized nation as Urania reconstructs in painful detail how the impotent dictator
digitally rapes her to ensure her body bears the mark of his brutal anger and frustration.