Reading Power: Female Sexuality, Bullying, and Power Relations in Young Adult Literature

READING POWER: FEMALE SEXUALITY, BULLYING AND POWER RELATIONS IN YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE CARA CRANDALL, B.S., MASSACHUSETTS COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS M.F.A., EMERSON COLLEGE Ed.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Denise K. Ives Over the last thirty years, American society and schools have struggled to understand and respond to bullying and harassment by young people. In that time, scholars and policy makers have worked not only to understand this phenomenon but to also create interventions that can prevent such incidents because the consequences of bullying have been shown to be so detrimental for all involved. Adult concerns with peer aggression has led to a proliferation of young adult (YA) novels that take bullying as their narrative focus. Such novels are popular among young people as part of their personal reading practices and increasingly are being integrated into English curricula in American schools for a variety of reasons. However, not only has YA literature previously not been seen as worthy for inclusion in the classroom, but also the genre has been largely ignored by literary critics. This theoretical gap is especially true of novels about bullying. In this dissertation I report findings from an analysis of seven YA novels. I completed both a narrative analysis of these novels as well as a discourse analysis using poststructural feminism and feminist critical discourse analysis. In order to understand contemporary discourses on bullying, female sexuality, and power relations within each novel, I employed modes of address as an analytic tool to identify and discuss the subject positions afforded readers within the text and how these subject positions reflect discourses at work in the real world. My findings include discourses on the problematic nature of adolescents, and female friendships in particular. My findings also explore discourses of sexuality and romantic partnership that follow a heteronormative script and depict both as dangerous for young women. I then outline implications for English language arts teachers, researchers, and adults in light of these findings with an emphasis on the critical approach needed to identity and disrupt hegemonic discourses around adolescence, female sexuality, and power

A new representation for non--local operators and path integrals

We derive an alternative representation for the relativistic non--local kinetic energy operator and we apply it to solve the relativistic Salpeter equation using the variational sinc collocation method. Our representation is analytical and does not depend on an expansion in terms of local operators. We have used the relativistic harmonic oscillator problem to test our formula and we have found that arbitrarily precise results are obtained, simply increasing the number of grid points. More difficult problems have also been considered, observing in all cases the convergence of the numerical results. Using these results we have also derived a new representation for the quantum mechanical Green's function and for the corresponding path integral. We have tested this representation for a free particle in a box, recovering the exact result after taking the proper limits, and we have also found that the application of the Feynman--Kac formula to our Green's function yields the correct ground state energy. Our path integral representation allows to treat hamiltonians containing non--local operators and it could provide to the community a new tool to deal with such class of problems.Comment: 9 pages ; 1 figure ; refs added ; title modifie

Calculating expected DNA remnants from ancient founding events in human population genetics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent advancements in sequencing and computational technologies have led to rapid generation and analysis of high quality genetic data. Such genetic data have achieved wide acceptance in studies of historic human population origins and admixture. However, in studies relating to small, recent admixture events, genetic factors such as historic population sizes, genetic drift, and mutation can have pronounced effects on data reliability and utility. To address these issues we conducted genetic simulations targeting influential genetic parameters in admixed populations.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We performed a series of simulations, adjusting variable values to assess the affect of these genetic parameters on current human population studies and what these studies infer about past population structure. Final mean allele frequencies varied from 0.0005 to over 0.50, depending on the parameters.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results of the simulations illustrate that, while genetic data may be sensitive and powerful in large genetic studies, caution must be used when applying genetic information to small, recent admixture events. For some parameter sets, genetic data will not be adequate to detect historic admixture. In such cases, studies should consider anthropologic, archeological, and linguistic data where possible.</p

On the Path Integral in Imaginary Lobachevsky Space

The path integral on the single-sheeted hyperboloid, i.e.\ in $D$-dimensional imaginary Lobachevsky space, is evaluated. A potential problem which we call ``Kepler-problem'', and the case of a constant magnetic field are also discussed.Comment: 16 pages, LATEX, DESY 93-14

A UAV Mission Hierarchy

In the following sections, each of the primary missions are decomposed into mission planning, management, and replanning segments in order to identify what the primary functions a human operator will need to perform. The goal is to understand what tasks/functions are common across different UAV missions and platforms in order to map the generalizability of any particular research project.Prepared for Charles River Analytic

Annual Crossbreeding Report for South Dakota Livestock Production Records Association

Each year since 1970 weaning weight records from member herds of the Production Records Association have been used to prepare a crossbreeding summary for use by members and other cattlemen in the formulation of individual breeding programs. This report presents the five year summary which includes the 1974 calf crop