Copyright (c) 2009 Colby College All rights reserved. http://digitalcommons.colby.edu Recent documents in DigitalCommons@Colby en-us Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:35:06 PST 3600 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/497 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/497 Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:22:02 PDT Regression analysis has shown that recovery rates are determined by a variety of conditions at the time of default. These conditions can be broken into five major categories: (1) a security's seniority within the capital structure of the defaulting firm, (2) the type of default event, (3) firm-specific factors, (4) industry-specific factors, and (5) macroeconomic factors. Expectations of these inputs determine the expected recovery rate if default were to occur, thereby determining credit ratings and security prices. Although it is widely understood how recovery rate estimates influence credit rating assignments (the higher the expected recovery rate, the higher the assigned credit rating), no research, to the best of my knowledge, has investigated the reasons why higher rated securities recover more than lower rated securities in the event of default. Specifically, this paper will empirically investigate why securities originally rated investment grade, fallen angels, recover more than securities originally rated high yield in the event of default. Adler Carolyn http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/496 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/496 Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:02:53 PDT Under the rickety fans and mosquito nets, the three of us would talk about work, the dog, my future, and before falling asleep I would always reflect on how amazing it was that I could live with these women, not just visit and impose myself, but become a part of their family and a part of their lives. Sadly, the connection in the dark was just that, it never carried on past sunrise, during the day, outside in the light. We are from two contrary cultures, one in which I clearly see intolerable injustices all around me. This is the same culture in which Indian women find a way of life that has existed for centuries that has aged into tradition. There exist two separate female identities; one is the powerful goddess whose Images pervade every crevice of society. The other identity is the reality, found in most every Indian woman's current situation. As I found myself connecting with the women in my Indian family, I also identified with their oppression. However, I was experiencing the oppression from a vastly different perspective, a temporary outsider's perspective, but one that has allowed me to question the sexual stratosphere and explore its origin and its slow transformation. Ann W. Levy http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/495 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/495 Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:02:47 PDT In 1924, Sergei Eisenstein wrote "The Montage of Film Attractions," an essay that would powerfully influence the subsequent history of cinema. His insights as expressed in this essay widened the potential for nonfiction film to incite change through the audience reaction, modifying the screen-audience relationship from a passive reaction to an active interaction. Since Eisenstein's work in the 1920s, there has been a progression in the acceptance of Eisenstein's theories through the work of John Grierson and Frederick Wiseman. The final acceptance of Eisenstein's belief in the power of editing to incite change came in the late 1960s and early 1970s in a wave of documentaries based on Vietnam, which catalyzed their audiences through the use of novel juxtapositions. The Vietnam documentaries that illustrate this excitation through juxtaposition were Eugene Jones's A Face of War, Emile de Antonio's In the Year of the Pig, and Peter Davis's Hearts and Minds. Victoria A. Starr http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/494 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/494 Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:02:42 PDT The goal of this project is to compare the ways in which Emily Dickinson (1830 -1886) and Wu Zao (1799-1863), two female poets from America and China, respectively, create a unique female poetic voice with respect to and despite the cultural-specific challenges posed by their literary traditions. I will focus on lyric poetry, a genre that highlights the performative in both its structures and use of language as well as in its demands of engagement on the reader. Both Dickinson and Wu respond to the ideological challenges they face as women poets by expressing their temperaments in their lyric poems through their creative and performative use of diction and other literary devices. Po Yin Wong http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/lib_newsletter/vol2/iss1/1 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/lib_newsletter/vol2/iss1/1 Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:28:18 PDT http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/493 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/493 Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:04:13 PDT The Guatemalan Civil War is largely understood as a war against the Maya. When unable to defeat the insurgency, the government adopted increasingly harsh counterinsurgency tactics like state terror and violence against women in an effort to suppress potential guerilla supporters. This paper finds that counterinsurgency did not set out to specifically target women, but that was its effect. Through testimonios, human rights documents, and other primary sources we are able understand how counterinsurgency violence targeted women differently than men. Historical gendered violence explains why the Guatemalan government resorted to extreme brutality against Maya women in order to defeat the insurgency. Historical scripts of violence against women, centuries of counterinsurgency warfare, and the extreme militarization can help explain why the Guatemalan government turned to violence against women. Testimonios show that Ladino male dominance persisted through centuries and came to characterize how the state fought the Civil War. Mayan women became strategic targets of the government, and were victims of especially brutal and gender-specific forms of violence, rape, and torture. This paper traces the violence against women in the Civil War back to the colonization of Guatemala. Sarah K. deLiefde http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/492 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/492 Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:04:09 PDT Monitoring flight calls of nocturnal migrants is a valuable tool for detecting patterns of avian migration. In conjunction with radar, morning observations, and other visual methods, acoustic monitoring of migration yields information about the numbers and types of migrants moving through an area. However, there is a general assumption that flight calls indicate an early morning peak in migration, while visual monitoring indicates a peak in the hours after sunset. In this study I use flight call data collected in Déline, NW Territories, and Lesser Slave Lake, Alberta to investigate and compare nightly and seasonal distributions of nocturnal flight calls during post-breeding migration. The results indicate that across a season the nightly distributions of flight calls at the two sites are distinct from one another. Furthermore, within each site nightly distributions appear to be very similar, though dates closer to together are usually the most similar. Thus, the results indicate that flight call distributions are related to local factors, and extrapolating information from one site may be uninformative or even misleading. Andrew C. McEvoy http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/491 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/491 Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:36:24 PDT The goal of this experiment was to observe the effects of variations of experimental conditions on the ultracold plasma that formed as a result. The wavelength and power of the ionizing laser were varied to change the electron temperature and plasma density. The delay between the ionizing laser and the field ionization pulse was changed as well. In each case, plasma evolution and the resulting distribution of Rydberg states were observed. It was found that both electron temperature and plasma density directly affected the plasma lifetimes. However, neither electron temperature nor plasma density nor delay length had an effect on the distribution of the Rydberg states. Future experiments are planned to observe the effects of a prematurely quenched plasma on the distribution of Rydberg states formed. Lauren Rand http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/490 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/490 Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:22:47 PDT The aim of this project is to provide an explanation for recently obtained binding constants for two similar guest molecules, NDMG and N-MAP, with a p-sulfonatocalix[6]arene host in ammonium acetate buffer. This work was done primarily using pressure perturbation calorimetry, which is a technique that determines the coefficient of thermal expansion, α, which is in turn related to the solute molecule's effect on the order of the surrounding water molecules. A series of experiments were designed to test the effects of suspected confounding variables on the validity of PPC data. PPC was then used to study NDMG and N-MAP in ammonium acetate buffer. NDMG exhibited a minimum in α as function of temperature, while N-MAP did not. This difference was theorized to be due to the formation of an intramolecular hydrogen bond in monocationic NDMG that would lower the heat capacity of the molecule and better distribute the molecule's charge. Computational work and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy confirmed that monocationic, ring-closed NDMG has less concentrated charge and more constrained motion than monocationic, ring-open NDMG. This evidence supports the theory that monocationic NDMG forms an intramolecular hydrogen bond and that this may be responsible for the minimum in α. This difference may explain the differences in binding constants between NDMG and N-MAP. Cassandra Newell http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/489 http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/honorstheses/489 Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:40:14 PDT 'We do not see childbirth in many obstetric units now. What we see resembles childbirth as much as artificial Insemination resembles sexual intercourse. --Ronald Laing, Psychiatrist For the vast majority of world history, parturition has been a uniquely woman- centered phenomenon. The one exception to this norm is the contemporary state of childbirth in the United States of America, where labor and delivery has become an increasingly medicalized field. This project explores the historical and contemporary states of midwifery in America; I place specific emphasis on the historical use of midwifery, the medicalization of childbirth and the professionalization of obstetrics, the marginalization and survival of the craft of natural childbirth despite these developments, and the women's health movements' function in the revitalization of midwifery. I also examine the demographics of the contemporary midwifery profession and community, specifically utilizing analysis of in-depth interviews with midwives in Maine. Abigail K. Sussman