A BROAD RANGE OF SEXUAL MISCONDUCT AND ASSOCIATED MENTAL HEALTH OUTCOMES

College women are at a high risk of experiencing sexual misconduct (SM) (Graham et al., 2022). Research shows a connection between sexual victimization and psychological distress (Graham et al., 2022). The lack of research on a broader range of SM and associated mental health outcomes is a lacuna that must be addressed. SM is a widely understudied issue, and approximately 1 in 5 college women will experience it at least once during their time on campus (Muehlenhard et al., 2017). Women are not only at a high risk of experiencing SM during their time in college, but research shows a strong link between sexual victimization and psychological distress (Graham et al., 2022). On university campuses across the US, SM is a pressing issue that impacts many, especially those who identify as women. The present study uses a mixed methods approach to expand on Liz Kelly’s concept of a continuum of SM, where Kelly argued that SM should be regarded as a continuum, not as separate categories (Kelly 1987). A quantitative survey assessed the current prevalence of SM at Bucknell University and its connection to participant trauma responses and mental health. A qualitative interview asked participants to expand on experiences that occurred at Bucknell and or with another Bucknell student. The online survey was administered to a random sample of Bucknell students. Results indicated that rates of SM are higher in women and that victim-survivors experience significantly higher rates of psychological distress than non-victims. The qualitative interview was administered over Zoom to a subsample of students who had taken the survey. Future research should focus on recruiting a larger and more diverse sample

BEYOND CATHARSIS: THE EVOLUTION OF POPULAR TRAGEDY IN VIDEO GAME NARRATIVES

“Beyond Catharsis: The Evolution of Popular Tragedy in Video Game Narratives,” establishes a connection between traditions of Tragedy and video game narratives, arguing that the ways in which tragedy manifests within interactive media is an extension and development of previous, more formal understandings of Tragedy. Using Oxenfree (2016), Elden Ring (2022), and Baldur’s Gate 3 (2023), this thesis claims video games feature adaptations of traditional tragedy and catharsis that expand the genre. Through players directly instigating the action of the game, the allowances and limitations of the player’s agency, and the instances of misfortunate fates, interactive narratives translate tragic concepts—outlined by figures such as Aristotle, Arthur Miller, and George Boas—into a new medium which might, in turn, expand scholarly understanding of emotional responses to fictional stories. Analysis from scholars such as James Coltrain and Stephen Ramsay, Craig Bourne and Emily Caddick Bourne, Eric Hayot, and Grant Tavinor accompanies the discussion of player agency and integration into the fictional landscape of a video game, laying a foundation of heightened connection between reader and text which, in turn, allows for different implementation of tragic elements and stories while preserving the overarching cathartic impacts. This thesis concludes with a question of how the translation of tragedy into a new medium might impact previous understandings and studies of the genre

Coast to Coast

This project is a feature-length, satirical comedy screenplay entitled Coast to Coast. The lead protagonist, Jules Bown, is a young woman who goes through a transformative experience after accepting the offer of a lifetime. As the story progresses, we follow Jules navigating her way through a fictional clash between the East Coast (New York) and the West Coast (California) for the new Capital of the United States. A variety of notable celebrities represent each coast, turning the battle into a fight between elite figures, rather than between citizens. The tension between East and West is inspired by the 1990s East Coast - West Coast hip-hop rivalry; songs from key players in the feud are featured throughout the script. The use of recognizable celebrities is aimed to provide commentary on the state of our current political climate, with famous individuals getting more and more of a say in nationwide decisions. Power, wealth, and status are all heavily explored in Coast to Coast, as we see firsthand the way it impacts certain characters and their decisions. Jules’s journey encapsulates the interpersonal conflicts that come with power and status, as she struggles with her long term romantic relationship and friendships

John Banville

John Banville offers a close analysis of most of Banville’s major novels, his Quirke crime novels, and his dramatic adaptations of Heinrich von Kleist’s plays. Banville’s work has been marked by an embedded discourse about the significance of art and by a concurrent self-consciousness of its own status as art. His novels perpetually reveal an overt fascination with the visual arts, in particular, and with the aesthetic principle of literature as art. This study asserts that, as a whole, Banville’s work presents an elaborate and richly textured coded account of his relationship with art and with the self-referential fictional world that his novels conjure. It is from this critical context that John Banville’s central argument is derived: that his fiction can be viewed as an extended interrogation of the meaning and status of art and that it is itself representative of the type of art admired in the pages of the novels.https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/bucknell-press/1115/thumbnail.jp

Examining Personality Traits as Moderating Factors in the Relationship Between Social Connectedness and Subjective Wellbeing

Abstract Objective: A robust body of literature suggests that social connectedness (SC) enhances subjective well-being (SWB) while a lack of SC significantly impairs SWB (i.e., lower SC is linked to depression, maladaptive coping, risk of early mortality). The specific variables that impact the positive relationship between SC and SWB remain unclear. We sought to address this gap by assessing personality traits using the 5-factor personality model (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism- OCEAN) to understand if personality moderates the relationship between SC and SWB. These five traits are well established dimensions of personality and, individually, have demonstrated relationships with SWB. We hypothesize that each dimension will strengthen/ weaken the correlation between SC and SWB to differing degrees. Method: N=218 participants completed demographic information and two surveys measuring SWB via the Life Engagement Test (LET), Satisfaction w/ Life scale (SWL) and Flourishing measure, recent affect via the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS-negative & PANAS-positive) and were scored on OCEAN via the Big Five Inventory. SC was measured via the General Belongingness scale (GBS). Data were scored, and analyzed with SPSS. Results: As predicted, GBS scores strongly positively correlated with all SWB measures. We examined only the Flourishing scale as the SWB measure in our moderations, because all SWB measures were highly correlated (Pearson’s r values exceeding ~ 0.7.) Out of OCEAN, only agreeableness moderated the relationship between GBS and Flourishing. Highly agreeable participants had a weaker correlation between their GBS scores and Flourishing vs less agreeable participants. Significance: This is a novel finding suggesting agreeableness and its components require further exploration, whereas the other big five personality traits may not be as important in strengthening/ weakening the relationship between belongingness and flourishing. A person\u27s agreeableness could contribute to the question of “when” and “for whom” the positive benefits of social connectedness are obtainable and translate it from a one-fits-all prescription into a tool that can be used with personal differences considered

Transformer-Based Symbolic Music Generation

This thesis investigates the capacity of transformer-based architectures to learn generalized musical patterns through symbolic generation. To support this exploration, a complete music generation pipeline was developed, beginning with the construction and classification of a large-scale dataset of over 170,000 MIDI files. The dataset was processed using rule-based heuristics and custom neural classifiers to separate tracks by musical function and contour. A novel tokenization scheme, MINTii, was introduced to encode musical information compactly through interval-based representations, reducing redundancy and promoting generalization. Using this infrastructure, a transformer model was trained to generate single-track melodic sequences. Its performance was evaluated through both memorization and generalization tests. While harmonic tendencies such as pitch motion and range were learned with moderate success, rhythmic understanding remained limited. Further analysis revealed that the model could not reproduce even short, repeated sequences under ideal conditions, highlighting structural limitations in learning temporal phrasing. These findings suggest that fully data-driven transformer models lack the inductive bias needed to internalize musical form, and that future systems may benefit from rule-based constraints, structural labeling, or loss functions grounded in music theory

The Afterlife of War: Coal, Communities, and Routinized Violence in Post-Conflict Colombia

https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_coll/1067/thumbnail.jp

Maithil Women\u27s Oral Tales Digital Archive

This archive of Maithil women’s tales is intended to preserve this art for generations to come – for members of the Maithil and broader South Asian community, for scholars and educators of oral traditions in South Asia and around the world, and for the general public. In Mithila today, gender norms are very much in flux due to influences of new globalized technologies of communication, along with other economic, political, educational and cultural transformations, including outmigration. My research reveals that these very same forces have already resulted in the displacement, and will likely eventuate in the loss, of women’s cross-generational oral storytelling as a way to pass down cultural knowledge and values. Maithil women’s stories for centuries have functioned as a locus for the expression and dissemination of cultural value and history. The disappearance of this women’s oral storytelling is no small loss, given the unique artistry, as well as perspective, humor, pathos, and insight embedded in the practice. They promulgate understandings and dispositions toward action enabling Maithil women to navigate (including critique) their significantly constrained and dominated lives in life-affirming and sometimes life-expanding ways