Illuminations, Volume 7, Spring 2025

On the Spring 2025 Issue In this edition of Illuminations, students were asked to submit work that they associated with the feeling of nostalgia. This is an emotion that manifests in different ways for every person, and the submissions showcased in this year’s issue reflect that. This year, the submission guidelines were relaxed and opened to allow students a chance to submit any kind of work they are proud of, beyond the realm of nostalgia. Through prose, poetry and art, this year’s contributors have done an amazing job at representing the passion, dedication and wide range of skill that the honors students at UMF exemplify. Thank you to everyone who submitted for consideration in the Spring 2025 edition of Illuminations

Relationships Between High-Elevation Lake Water Chemistry and Soil Chemistry

Past atmospheric deposition of sulfuric and nitric acids (“acid rain”) has acidified high elevation lakes across Maine and New England, affecting the ecology of the lakes and their surroundings. Since the passage of the Clean Air Act Amendments in 1990, acid deposition has declined and many of the affected lakes have begun to recover. However, this recovery trajectory does not look the same at all lakes. Across western Maine, nine high-elevation lakes have been part of long-term water chemistry monitoring since 1986 and show variation in their pH trends over time, with five of the lakes increasing in pH, three declining in pH, and one showing no trend. To investigate why acidification recovery trends vary by lake, we explored relationships between water chemistry pH and ANC trends as response variables, and lake and watershed morphology and current watershed soil pH and dominant ions as predictors. We found no significant relationship between lake recovery and morphology, watershed morphology, or watershed soil pH. However, there was a relationship between soil pH and the lake sulfate trends. Further studies focusing on underlying surficial geology and longitudinal data collection on watershed soil chemistry will be useful to further reveal influences on lake recovery from acid deposition

Dissecting Sentence Anatomy A baseline morpho-syntactic analysis between English and Japanese [Condensed]

I would like to preface this essay by explaining the environment in which it was born. After meeting fellow student-linguistic, Utano Imada, the two of us began discussing the differences and fun aspects of our respective languages from the perspectives of both a native and non-native of each language. We then both discussed wanting to teach both languages and how we believed both perspectives on a language (those from a native and those from a learner) are important to those wishing to learn the language. From here we had the idea to do a long-term research project on the differences and similarities between English and Japanese, including a small focus on how these things can then be adapted and taught to learners. This essay is a precursor to that larger project due to my lower levels in the subjects at hand. Though I have a decent grasp on my first language, English, I am still learning Japanese and do not possess it as a foreign language to the degree that Utano possesses English as her foreign language. Utano also possesses a higher understanding of morph-syntactic rules, even in English, than I do of Japanese and English. Therefore, the main purpose of the research project was for me to bring up my skills to be more on par with those of my future research partner, as well to prepare myself for a preferred future in not only linguistics as a whole, but also foreign language learning and linguistics

Bella Ciao in Three Locations

We chose Bella Ciao as our song because of its relevance to Italy\u27s history. We left that decision to our musicians, who were Filippo, Riccardo, and Breckon. Next, we wanted to tie it to nature and the environment because of our course theme. So, we decided to make short clips of three different scenarios in Maine: the field by the sand, clear water, and the candy itself. We collected sounds of water and birds and filmed ourselves in different places. This was directed by Truly, Alex, and Maria

Water\u27s Mark

A Soundscape designed during the Music and Environment class of 2024 spring between Maine and Italian students: Using the natural sounds of Maine during spring, laid over a beautiful piece of music played by an Italian student, the group made an enlightening piece about the ethereal feel of water in its many elements. With the music piece named Watermark by Enya, the group decided to call the soundscape “Water’s Mark” as a play on words for how water leaves its mark on everything it touches. Water is everywhere and connects us no matter our backgrounds, locations, or choices. The Farmington and Italian students hope that this piece can inspire others to focus on the bodies of water around us

Regional Differences of Climate Change in Maine: Flow rates, Precipitation, and Snowpack

● Maine winters are changing rapidly, associated with changes in climate. ● These climate-linked changes are implicated in flooding, changes in snowpack, and changes in flow regimes in Maine. ● In this study, four different regions in Maine were analyzed to evaluate changes over time in snowpack, river ice, fall-through-spring precipitation,February Snowpack water equivalen

Adaptation: The Fanfiction of Academia?

Adaptive works—pieces of media inspired by pre-existing works—are extremely prevalent in the media landscape and have been for as long as humans have retold stories. A somewhat more recent edition to the conversation is fanfiction, or fan fiction, which is a unique form of audience interactivity that includes the writing of a work by a fan off of any given piece of media. This project explores the definitions, overlaps and delineations of adaptation, transmedial storytelling, transfictionality and fanfiction. It uses particular examples from published works of fanfiction to further unpack these categorizations and adds nuance and organization to studies on the overlaps of fanfiction and more officially-considered adaptive works. The project then exemplifies the variability of adaptive work by presenting an adapted screenplay and a fanfiction, both written off of a subplot of Charles Dickens’ 1864 novel Our Mutual Friend

Beyond the Binary: A Gender Memoir

This is a series of autobiographical poems that delve into the role the audience plays in an individual\u27s gender performance and how that can be helpful and harmful to identity, depending on the person performing and the people watching the performance. The concept of gender as a theatrical performance, the basis for many of the poems, is derived from the work of gender and queer theorists Judith Butler and Jack Halberstam. Additionally, these poems take inspiration from the works of creative writers Stacey Waite and Maia Kobabe and build on their work, which dissects and deconstructs gender as a social construct

Perceptions of Venetianisches Gondellied, op 19 n 6, by Mendelssohn

50 people listened to Venetianisches Gondellied, op 19 n 6, by Mendelssohn. Half Listened to a live piano version, half to a recorded version online. Participants then were asked questions about their experiences listening to the music. The results were presented with a video made of some of the personal comments in the survey

“I’m Not Here to Make Friends”: Genre Conventions, Literary Meaning, and Narrative Potentiality in American Reality Television

“I’m Not Here to Make Friends”: Genre Conventions, Literary Meaning, and Narrative Potentiality in American Reality Television is a collection of five scholarly essays engaging different aspects of the reality television genre. These essays seek to challenge the stigma of reality television as lacking in significant narrative meaning. Through case studies of various shows, these essays engage theoretical concepts such as simulacrum and metanarratives. Through cross-genre analysis, the project contends with sites of analytic potential in reality television