Saintly Patriotism: Vicente Grez and The Women of the Chilean Independence Movement

The Chilean Independence Movement (1810-1823) is an epoch that has captured the popular imagination of twentieth and twenty-first century Chileans; the stories of the próceres patrios (national patriotic heroes) have resounded in Chilean popular culture.1 However, the canonical body of literature that deals with this revolutionary epoch in Chilean history often focuses primarily on the victorious heroes—and not the heroines— who ultimately established the independent Chilean state. As reporter Natalia Núñez, a writer for Revista Ya of the top-selling Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, rightly notes: “Detrás de ellos [los héroes de la independencia], hubo mujeres que fueron confidentes, amantes y amigas.” While few publications—academic or popular—dedicate themselves to these feminine “victors” of the Independence Movement, their stories have not always been relegated to playing a secondary role in Chilean history. In 1878, Vicente Grez—a renowned reporter, writer, editor, and civil servant of nineteenth century Chile— published one of his first historical texts titled Las mujeres de la independencia.2 This text is composed of a series of short, biographical essays that narrate the lives of the women of the “Generation of 1810” who played central roles in the movement for Chilean autonomy and sovereignty, including names like Javiera Carrera, Luisa Recabarren, and Mercedes Fuentecilla. While Grez’s accounts of these women are largely secular in nature, his hyperbolic and idealized descriptions of the Generation of 1810 and their efforts are reminiscent of the hagiographic texts of the medieval and early modern period. In secularizing the hagiographical genre, I argue that Grez creates a number of lay saints who—by their example—contribute to the consolidation of Chilean national identity. Their function as secular saints is to spread a new religion, a religion that makes sense in an increasingly anti-clerical climate: patriotism

Master of Science

thesisRecent paleontological discoveries reveal a dramatic range of tooth morphologies in extinct reptiles, with some dentitions rivaling the complexity of extant mammals. Many of these dental morphologies have no modern analogs, inhibiting detailed dietary and ecological reconstructions for ancient ecosystems. Living saurian reptiles exhibit a wide range of diets, from carnivores to strict herbivores. Previous research suggests that the tooth shape in some lizard clades correlates with diet, but this has not been tested using quantitative methods. In order to elucidate the diet of extinct heterodont reptiles, I investigated the correlation between phenotypic tooth complexity and diet in living reptiles by examining the entire dentary tooth row in over 80 specimens comprising all major dentigerous saurian clades. I quantified dental complexity using orientation patch count rotated (OPCR), which does not require the identification of homologous landmarks on each tooth and discriminates diet in living and extinct mammals, where OPCR values increase with the proportion of dietary plant matter. OPCR was calculated from high-resolution CT scans, and I standardized OPCR values by the total number of teeth to account for differences in tooth count across taxa. In living saurians, OPCR values for omnivores and herbivores are higher than those of carnivores. In contrast with extant mammals, there appears to be greater overlap in tooth complexity values across dietary groups because multicusped teeth characterize herbivores, omnivores, and insectivores, and because the herbivorous skinks have particularly simple teeth. Additionally, insectivorous lizards have dental complexities that overlap with omnivores. These results suggest reptilian tooth complexity is related to diet, similar to extinct and extant mammals. These data were used to reconstruct the diet of 14 extinct crocodyliforms. OPCR data indicate that extinct crocodyliforms occupied a larger ecological range than their living relatives. In particular, herbivory independently developed at least three times, with each occasion utilizing a different tooth morphology to break down plant material. These data, when combined with key morphological characters, allow for the dietary ecology of extinct organisms to be reconstructed

Effectiveness of a Low-Budget Sports Vision Training Program for Improving Batting Statistics of an NCAA Division I Baseball Team

Context: Sports vision training (SVT) has been increasing in popularity among many dynamic reactive sports. Dynamic reactive sports require extremely accurate detection and discrimination of visual stimuli in order to execute a precise motor response. Manual interception, locomotion, and depth judgement are found to be the most important visuomotor abilities with interceptive sports such as baseball. Baseball is a highly visually demanding sport, especially offensively. The effectiveness of the batter is dependent on his/her ability to locate, track, and swing at a projectile in ~0.2 seconds. This presents the opportunity to implement an SVT program with a baseball team as a means to improve sports performance. Due to the expensive nature of visuomotor training equipment however, it was crucial that we were able to achieve the same improvements with a low-cost program that we would see with an expensive SVT program. Objective: The purpose of this study is to determine if a low-budget SVT program can be used to improve target visuomotor abilities as well as improve batting and fielding statistics of an NCAA division I baseball team. Design: Analytical observational study. Participants: 30 NCAA baseball players. The average age was 20.6 ± 2.6 years, the average height was 184.1cm ± 11.5cm and the average years of baseball experience was 15.5 ± 2.5 years. Intervention: A low-cost SVT program was implemented at the beginning of the 2018 spring baseball season. The program utilized accommodative flippers, a brock string, saccadic eye movement, near-far movement, visually-guided manual interception training, and an EYEport II. Main Outcome Measures: Stereopsis scores for gross depth perception and EyeGuide Focus scores for smooth-motor pursuit. Results: Stereopsis measurement increased significantly from baseline to mid-season and mid-season to post-season (pConclusion: The results of this study would imply that implementation of a low-budget SVT program is a viable option for improving the key skills necessary for enhancing sports performance in baseball. We were able to determine that our SVT program was able to improve DP, manual interception, and locomotion through tracking stereopsis and smooth-motor pursuit measurements. Although we did see slight improvements in slugging percentage, on-base percentage, and in defensive errors between the 2017 and 2018 seasons, none were statistically significant enough to definitively state that our SVT program improved the performance of an NCAA division I collegiate baseball team

"Who minus who": suicide in Boston's Ethiopian community

This thesis examines suicide in Boston's Ethiopian Community. The act of suicide and individual cases are explored through participant narratives. Narratives from family members and acquaintances of those who died by suicide are examined. I rely on in-depth (N=8) and follow-up interviews (N=7). Drawing heavily on culturally constructed notions of self, this thesis explores what it has meant for persons of the Ethiopian community to lose fellow members to suicide. Intersections of emotions, constructions of choice and agency, and idealized notions of self emerge as central themes. The body, in life and death, is situated as a vehicle for communicating dis-eased social relationships and unrealistic cultural expectations. Participants position their perceptions of the deceased in relation to popular preconceived notions of life in the United States and stresses encountered during and after the immigration process. Memory of Ethiopia, the United States, immigration, and the suicide are significant for understanding the rigidity of culturally authoritative truths. This thesis emphasizes the progressive and beneficial methodology of an anthropological investigation into suicide. Understanding the reasons and acquiring specific knowledge about Ethiopian suicide in the United States can contribute to current conversations regarding immigrant suicide. Ultimately, this study aims to contribute to comprehensive prevention measures, which support every individual

Experiences with Environmental Gentrification: Evidence from Chicago

Environmental contamination and limited access to green spaces disproportionately burden communities of color with negative impacts on residents’ health. Yet, cleaning up contamination and creating green spaces has in some cases been associated with displacing long-term residents as the neighborhood becomes desirable to more affluent, often Whiter, populations through environmental gentrification. We used mixed methods to investigate environmental gentrification in the city of Chicago, IL, USA. We examined quantitatively the relationship between green areas, brownfield cleanups, and indicators of gentrification, including race and ethnicity, income, households without children, and home ownership. We explored through qualitative interviews how key informants perceive the risk and impacts of environmental gentrification. We found that brownfields cleanup is statistically correlated with proportionately fewer Hispanic residents and more White residents. We did not find any significant correlation between green area and demographic change with the exception of an elevated rail trail linear park. These results align with a racialized process of gentrification, described by some key informants, whereby racial stereotypes lead White newcomers to feel more comfortable moving into Hispanic than Black neighborhoods. The interview results also suggested that racialized disinvestment drives the displacement of people of color, especially African-Americans, from their communities and serves as a precursor for gentrification. These results add to a growing body of evidence that interventions to prevent environmental gentrification will need to be context-specific, multi-faceted, equity-centered, and ideally occur early on within disinvested communities before gentrification takes hold

Three essays in resource economics : protecting non-use values through ecosystem management and estimating recreational demand to determine use values

This dissertation consists of three essays that illustrate how the different ecological and economic tradeoffs accounted for in decision making affect estimates of value, with the ultimate goal of promoting more efficient ecosystem management. The first essay develops a bioeconomic model of managing excessive predation. A wildlife manager can reduce predation by removing the predator or by investing in exclosures to limit predator-prey interaction. Predator-prey dynamics are analogous to commercial exploitation of a renewable resource and predator removal and exclosures are analogous to entry fees and harvest quotas, respectively. Thus, the ecological model has relevance to more common human recreational hunting or commercial harvesting management problems. I find that using predator exclosures can yield a win-win outcome that increases both prey and predator populations. The model is parameterized and applied to the case of the Great Lakes Piping Plover, an endangered shorebird. I find that the solution to the Piping Plover problem is sensitive to the choice of economic values. The second essay compares habitat creation and predator removal in conservation of the endangered Gasp\ue9sie Woodland Caribou. The caribou have suffered from habitat loss historically, but predation is currently a major limiting factor. In fact, land converted from caribou habitat to human use appears to favor increased predator survival. Using a bioeconomic model, I find that while increasing caribou habitat increases caribou survival and reduces caribou predation, a priori using caribou habitat as the only wildlife control is not first-best. The optimal management strategy involves a combination of predator removal and caribou habitat protection.The third essay presents a model of the demand for Great Lakes fishing among Michigan recreational anglers. To control for travel cost endogeneity, two techniques are tested: alternative-specific constants and a control function. Both methods identify no evidence of travel cost endogeneity. Overall, model estimates predict that walleye, followed by chinook salmon, are the most valuable Great Lakes fish to Michigan anglers.Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Economics, Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics, 2012Includes bibliographical reference