Exploring Saudi Arabia’s Failed War in Yemen Through a Civil-Military Relations Lens

This article argues that the Saudi Arabian military\u27s inability to achieve its goals in its war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen is largely the result of the relationship dynamics between the country\u27s civilian and military institutions. For decades, this relationship has been defined by extensive coup-proofing on behalf of the Saudi civilian monarchy that has weakened some of its military\u27s capabilities and fundamentally affected its battlefield quality. Through exploring specific cases of the Saudi military\u27s performance in Yemen and incorporating relevant literature on coup-proofing and the civil-military problematique, this article contends that a country\u27s military performance cannot be analyzed outside the context of the relationship between that country\u27s civilian and military institutions

My Love is Like Eternity: A Process in Choreography and Immersive Performance

This study expands and reflects upon creating and producing My Love is Like Eternity,my original durational performance. The work, which premiered February 12-13, 2025, infused choreography, video, improvisation, costume, scenic design, and text. In this paper, I discuss my creative research in conversation with the works of artists and scholars Faye Driscoll, Kitty Winslow, MP Landis, Tristan Koepke, Diana Taylor, Max Kozloff, and Miguel Gutierrez. Throughout, I investigate choreographic themes of duration, nature’s cyclical existence, liveness, and decay. I employ performance theories and practices to critique Western culture’s binary of life and death and instead propose ideas of cycle and regeneration. I also discuss more broadlymy choreographic process, including the specific challenges and successes of working in a multimedia form. Combining narrative with rehearsal documentation and drawn images, I demonstrate the multilayered process of imagining and building an immersive performance. Additionally, I expand on various choreographic devices my collaborators and I utilized as we experimented with subtraction and abstraction to conjure hazy and ephemeral movement architecture. Lastly, I examine the culmination of this research, reflecting on the bodily and emotional experience of performing My Love is Like Eternity and discussing ongoing choreographic inquiries

Jujubes on the Margin: Trauma, Community, and Memories of a Village in Central Shanxi

In the first four years of the Guangxu Emperor’s reign (1876–1879), a severe famine, known as the Dingwu Famine, devastated northern China, claiming thirteen million lives. The experience and memories of the famine were far from “natural.” In my research on the memories of Dingwu Famine, I investigate how the residents of a 2,000-person village, Gulian, in Shanxi Province organized their community, tried to save themselves during a crisis brought about by both environmental and political failures, and later remembered both their trauma and achievements. What their memories reveal is the broader story of Chinese local cultural and social history, and how contemporary communities continue to engage with and narrate their past. This research engages closely with a growing body of scholarship in environmental history, the history of famine, and the history of state-society relations in late imperial China. Adopting the method of microhistory, it draws on both unpublished sources from private collections and published materials, including gazetteers, missionary journals, newspapers, and local cultural and historical records, all of which hold great narrative potential

Effects of synesthetic photisms on visual cognition: Investigating the temporal organization of grapheme-color synesthesia and object trimming in the visual processing pathway

The present study aims to determine the order in which object trimming and synesthetic associations occur during visual processing and examines the way that these two phenomena may influence each other. The first two experiments used grapheme-color synesthetes and flashed a numeral with an adjacent two-dot mask on a screen. Participants were asked to identify the synesthetic color triggered by the target (Experiments 1 and 2) as well as the number they saw during each trial (Experiment 2). Results showed strong evidence that trimming occurs before synesthetic associations in the processing pathway, as participants responded with the color of the trimmed number in all trials where trimming occurred. A third experiment, similar in design to the first experiments but allowing for the addition of non-synesthete control participants, used colored two-dot masks and asked participants to identify the color of the dots as well as the number that they saw. Findings suggest that object trimming has the ability to alter the speed of visual processing, and even modify the way that different streams of visual processing interact with each other

Investigating Educational Outcomes for Providence Community Advocacy

Education systems in multilingual communities face unique challenges, particularly when balancing equity and accessibility for students of diverse linguistic backgrounds. Within Providence, a city heavily comprised of Latin American, as I am, and English as a Second Language populations (ESL/ELL), Early-Ed students are struggling to meet the appropriate proficiency standards. Using data analysis methods present in R, we investigated the discrepancies of ELL and Non-ELL student performances under a variety of factors. The results obtained showed that on each test, ELL students performed significantly worse, even including the long-term solutions of Charter Schools and Takeovers. These findings underscore the failures of the Takeover and Charter Schools as an equitable solution to increase performance for all students. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of restructuring the pedagogy present in Providence and creating more effective solutions for all students of all demographics

Regenerating the Elwha: The Return of a Free Flowing River

The removal of the two dams on the Elwha River in Washington State had profound effects on the surrounding ecosystem. In 2014, the dams were removed and scientists have recorded many miraculous ecological recoveries in the past 10 years. From changes to the physical structure of the river, the regeneration of native species such as salmon and trout, to the healing of the wider ecosystems around the Pacific Northwest through the restoration of habitat used by bears, beavers and Elk. The removal of two dams had a profound effect on every level from the microscopic level to the permanent change of landscape across the whole region

Land Use Matters: The Interactions Between Soil Characteristics, Ecosystem Cycling, and Anthropogenic Influences at Valley View Farm

Soil characteristics are the foundation of forest and agricultural productivity. Therefore, understanding how soils change as a reflection of changing landscapes is essential for sustainable management. Valley View Farm is a small, multi use farm in central southern Maine, which seeks to balance conservation and successful farming in terms of providing for the owner and the surrounding community. There are a variety of management practices across the farm, but three distinct areas were examined: the Older Forest, which has been only minimally managed for the last 100 years; the Newer Forest, which was selectively logged 15 years ago and left as a forest; and the Wet Pasture, which was clear cut 15 years ago to establish an open pasture area. By comparing the initial soil characteristics (texture, color, O horizon depth), pH, soil moisture, mycorrhizal fungi inoculation, percent carbon and nitrogen, isotopic carbon and nitrogen values, and cation exchange capacity among these three land use areas, the large influences of biomass removal and interruption of previous nutrient cycling was observed. The change in types of inputs between the larger, deciduous Older Forest, the more coniferous Newer Forest, and the grasses and introduction of domesticated animals on the Wet Pasture was integral in changing soil quality. Specifically, in the Older Forest, %C and %N were much higher, with median values of 47.0 and 1.6 compared to 13.2 and 0.4 in the Newer Forest, and 8.4 and 0.5 in the Wet Pasture. There was also a higher percentage of roots inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi in the Older Forest. These data point to lower soil organic matter content, which has a cascade of effects including lower cation exchange capacity and nutrient retention, and soil stability. Data findings generally aligned with the base knowledge of the current farmer, affirming her lived experiences and her hopes for the future of the farm. Across all three land uses, the observed soil characteristics were due to synergistic interactions among the amount and type of source material, and the quantity and rates of processes such as decomposition or nitrogen cycling. These interactions, and therefore the current soil qualities and what they might evolve to become, determine the possibilities for future land use, whether that is agricultural production, forest continuity, and/or biodiversity maintenance

Trump vs. The Fourteenth Amendment

This paper argues that President Trump’s 2025 executive order to end birthright citizenship represents a major break from constitutional tradition and a clear turn toward far-right ideology. The order challenges the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born on United States soil and has been upheld for more than a century, including in the Supreme Court case United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Although some conservatives may frame the action as a routine effort to strengthen immigration policy, the order moves beyond traditional conservatism. It departs from the rule of law, rejects long-standing legal precedent, and promotes an exclusionary national identity rooted in ethnonationalism. The paper outlines the key differences between conventional conservative thought and far-right ideology in order to show why this executive order aligns with the latter. It also examines the broader implications for democratic norms, citizenship, and executive power. The analysis concludes that Trump’s order is not a typical conservative policy. Instead, it is an unprecedented attempt to reshape American citizenship through executive authority and should be understood as a threat to established constitutional principles