Person to Person in Spain

While still in the midst of their study abroad experiences, students at Linfield College write reflective essays. Their essays address issues of cultural similarity and difference, compare lifestyles, mores, norms, and habits between their host countries and home, and examine changes in perceptions about their host countries and the United States. In this essay, Joel Trousdale describes his observations during his study abroad program at the University of Alicante in Spain

Autism Spectrum Disorder and Hazardous Air Pollutants in the U.S. and Maryland

The prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnoses in the United States has increased dramatically over the past 20 years, fueling investigations into possible environmental triggers for the disorder. Exposures to pesticides, persistent pollutants, prescription medications, and heavy metals through various routes have been examined, but very few studies have examined the potential role of chronic inhalation of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) in the etiology of ASD. This thesis was designed to examine possible relationships between HAPs and ASD prevalence on a statewide level for the U.S., with sub-analyses on a finer, countywide level within the state of Maryland. Findings suggest consistent, positive associations between ASD prevalence and HAPs at the statewide level for the U.S. The findings do not persist at the county level in the Maryland sub-analyses. These results reinforce the concept of ASD as a spectrum of phenotypes best explained through multifactorial etiological models

How to Change a Culture: Residential Tourism, Postmodernism, and Radical Transformation on the Iberian Peninsula

In this study, I looked into the cultural effects of the newly termed residential tourism on the Spanish coast, specifically looking into the Costa Blanca. In it, I argue that as a result of globalization and post-modernism, the coast of Spain has transformed Spanish culture into a highly commoditized object, radically transforming the coast from close-knit fishing communities to towns with barely any resemblance to the fishing villages they were, full of Northern Europeans and their cultural customs, but maintaining just enough of the exotic appeal that the Spanish Mediterranean offers them. Through this process, I argue that the culture transforms from one that is largely collectivistic in nature to one much more individualistic and commoditized. Furthermore, I argue that this process is one of gentrification, in which lower class and traditional fishers of the villages are pushed out by northern Europeans and fellow Spaniards with more money as the property values rise

Rex Augustissimus : reassessing the Reign of King Edmund of England, 939-46

This thesis is an examination and reassessment of the political situation in England c.939x46. The relationships between royal authority and the aristocracy in the former kingdoms of Mercia, Wessex, East Anglia and the Danelaw is the primary focus, however it also attempts to place such relations into the broader context of insular politics in the mid-tenth-century. Charters, chronicles, hagiography and literary evidence, legislation and numismatics serve as the primary source materials. King Edmund was the first Anglo-Saxon king to succeed to the whole of England; his role and that of his great men, both secular and ecclesiastic, in maintaining the diverse areas under West Saxon control as an integrated kingdom deserves renewed attention. The study establishes that regional concerns and the relationship between the burgeoning royal authority of the king dominated events during King Edmund's reign. The politics of the period are marked by the presence of strong local factions, and the ways that such divisions interacted with each other and the royal will are examined in detail. Furthermore it is argued that King Edmund pursued a balanced policy of regional realignment away from more traditional and established power interests in Wessex towards those based and growing in Mercia and East Anglia, through an emphasis on combined regional and royal centralized authority. This policy was employed through the promotion of powerful aristocratic families largely based outside of Wessex and the expansion of administrative and legislative developments, which encouraged cooperation between royal authority, local influence and the church. It is argued finally that throughout the period such developments should be considered alongside the suggestion that the royal family contributed to the development of a unified England because it was increasingly dependent on regional cohesion