Senior Capstone Experience by Liane Beckley ’21 Submitted to the Department of Art & Art History: Studio Art Concentration Description: My work is formally rooted in composition and color. It plays with conceptual boundaries within the genre of self-portraiture. . . The collection of film vignettes and their corresponding scripts, Self-Portraits as Various Relatives, are an alternative approach to…
Category: Volume XXVIII
Predicting Domestic Violence: Risk Factors and Clinical Assessments
Senior Capstone Experience by Brooke Brown ’21 Submitted to the Departments of Psychology and Biology Advised by Dr. Lauren Littlefield and Dr. Robin Van Meter Description: Due to the high prevalence of domestic violence (DV) in the United States and across the world, as well as the significant psychological and mental health issues that arise in both victims and perpetrators,…
“Unsex me here”: The Inordinate Criminalization of Female Violent Offenders in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, King Lear, and Titus Andronicus
Senior Capstone Experience by Annalie Buscarino ’21 Submitted to the Departments of English and Sociology Advised by Dr. Rachel Durso and Dr. Courtney Rydel Description: Shakespeare’s female violent offenders suffer from punishments that occur offstage, threaten their femininities, and double as criminal acts. However, interdisciplinary scholarship situates their identities in a liminal position between female embodied criminality (criminality resulting from…
On Newton Polygons
Senior Capstone Experience by Brenda Clark ’21 Submitted to the Department of Mathematics Advised by Dr. Emerald Stacy Description: In school, we are taught that there is an absolute value function, but in fact, there are an infinite number of absolute value functions. If we complete the rational numbers under the traditional absolute value function,…
A Discussion of the Ecological Impacts of Trout Stocking and a Cost-Benefit Analysis of Stocking Trout in Pennsylvania’s Class A Wild Trout Streams
Senior Capstone Experience by Willie Cosner ’21 Submitted to the Departments of Economics and Environmental Science Advised by Dr. Brian Scott Description: Trout stocking has been a means to supplement ailing freshwater systems and provide greater recreational opportunities for anglers. From this practice of stocking, non-native brown and rainbow trout have reproduced and spread throughout the many freshwater streams of…
Moonlight and Dust: the Ethereal Sister-Brides of Dracula
Senior Capstone Experience by Leah Duff ’21 Submitted to the Department of English Advised by Dr. Katherine Charles Description: From the beginning of modern horror as a genre, Bram Stoker’s Dracula has been an essential example of the inherent homoeroticism of monster fiction. It is widely accepted in Dracula scholarship that the sexual alignment and gender expression of the…
Evaluation of the Environmental Prevalence and Toxicity of Sulfonamides and Their Metabolites
Senior Capstone Experience by Allison Gallagher ’21 Submitted to the Department of Chemistry Advised by Dr. Leslie Sherman Description: Antibiotics are one of the most used drugs worldwide. Sulfonamides (SNs) were the first class of antibiotics discovered, and remain among the top used antibiotics, as they are commonly used in humans, agriculture, and aquaculture. Due to the heavy use of…
Analysis of the Therapeutic Potential of Essential Oils as Antimicrobial Agents
Senior Capstone Experience by Jessica Gunoskey ’21 Submitted to the Department of Biology Advised by Dr. Kathleen Verville Description: Essential oils (EOs) have been used as homeopathic remedies throughout history, primarily as inhalants or topical treatments. Essential oils are extracted from a variety of plants as volatile metabolites with high lipophilicity. Both in vivo and in vitro trials have shown…
The Body as an Abode of Freedom: Redefining the Female Self through Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus
Senior Capstone Experience by Nicole Hatfield ’21 Submitted to the Department of English Advised by Dr. Elizabeth O’Connor Description: Angela Carter describes Sophie Fevvers—the female protagonist of her eighth novel, Nights at the Circus (1984)—as a woman who breaks boundaries and redefines female empowerment: “What you have to do is to change the rules and make a new…
“True solace is finding none:” Grief Through the Seasons of Gretel Ehrlich’s The Solace of Open Spaces
Senior Capstone Experience by Rebecca Kanaskie ’21 Submitted to the Department of English Advised by Dr. Katherine Charles Description: “A ‘place’ is made only by ‘slow accrual’ of births, lives, and death. A place comes about because stories and memories emerge from experience on that land” (MacDonald 501). In tandem with a research project funded by the Douglass Cater Society…
What Came Before and What Comes After XLNet
Senior Capstone Experience by Michelle Ly ’21 Submitted to the Department of Computer Science Advised by Dr. Kyle Wilson Description: This paper presents an overview of XLNet’s state-of-the-art system in the field of Natural Language Processing and specifically text generation. I look at previous language models Transformer-XL and BERT in order to understand the foundations that XLNet is built…
Friend of the Indian: The Origins and Purpose of Native American Education
Senior Capstone Experience by Alejandro Mendoza ’21 Submitted to the Department of History Advised by Dr. Carol E. Wilson Description: During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the United States embarked on a crusade to remove and disassociate American Indians from their land. As a result, many historians are quick to cite the brutal removal and slaughter of hundreds of…
The Effects of Mutated SOD1 on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and how siRNA Treatment Could Lead to a Cure
Senior Capstone Experience by Nathaniel Neuland ’21 Submitted to the Department of Chemistry Advised by Dr. James Lipchock Description: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, is an incurable muscular dystrophy disease. The degradation of motor neurons and central nervous system leads to declining physical ability until the lungs are no longer…
The Fountain of Youth: Is Aging Reversible?
Senior Capstone Experience by Kylie Peets ’21 Submitted to the Department of Biology Advised by Dr. Mala Misra Description: Aging is a major risk factor for some of the most common chronic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, and cancer, yet there is little emphasis on treating aging itself in the medical field. Many…
Direct Anthropogenic Actions and Their Negative Effects on Little Penguins (Eudyptula minor)
Senior Capstone Experience by William Reid ’21 Submitted to the Department of Environmental Science Advised by Dr. Jill Bible Description: Little penguins (Eudyptula minor) live exclusively on the Australian continent on the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. Humans have historically interacted with little penguins in negative ways, but the contemporary urbanization of society has greatly increased the harmfulness…
Visions of the Future for “Third Century America” at the 1976 Bicentennial Exposition on Science and Technology
Senior Capstone Experience by Katy Shenk ’21 Submitted to the Department of History Advised by Professor Janet Sorrentino Description: In 1976, the White House organized a science and technology exposition in conjunction with the Bicentennial celebration, or the 200th anniversary of the American Revolution. While the majority of Bicentennial programming focused on the past, this…
The Potential for European Green Crab (C. maenas) Invasion of the Chesapeake Bay
Senior Capstone Experience by Samina L. Soin-Voshell Submitted to the Departments of Biology and Environmental Science and Studies Advised by Dr. Jillian Bible and Dr. Martin Connaughton Description: The European green crab (Carcinus maenas) is a small shore crab native to the Northeastern Atlantic, but successful as an invasive species around the world, including along…
A Review of the Genetic, Epigenetic, and Toxicological Causes of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and Analysis of Current Treatments
Senior Capstone Experience by Maggie Witham ’21 Submitted to the Department of Biology Advised by Dr. Mindy Reynolds Description: Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a disorder of the reproductive endocrine system that affects 6-20% of pre-menopausal women worldwide. Disruptions in the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis (HPG axis) and its upstream control counterparts are thought to lead to the development of PCOS. The…
Faculty in Focus: Writing Community
Dr. John Boyd, Director of the Writing Center In addition to teaching a First-Year Seminar, Writing Communities, Dr. Boyd teaches Writing Center Theory and Practice: A Seminar in Peer Tutoring, the course students take in preparation for working in the Writing Center. There, students learn pedagogical principles related to tutoring and develop a critical framework…
The Eradication of Misogynoir Culture in Black Communities: How Stereotypes Perpetuate a Rape Culture
By Meagan Kennedy ’24, an English major and Creative Writing, and Art & Art History minor. The following work was created for FYS 101: Feminism and the #MeToo Movement Brief description: “The Eradication of Misogynoir Culture in Black Communities: How Stereotypes Perpetuate a Rape Culture” is an exploration of the defining stereotypes of Black women…
A Modern Girl Living in a Regency World: A look into the character of Lydia Bennet
By: Emma Russell ’23 The following was created for FYS 101: Jane Austen and Fan Culture. One often hears about stories that last the test of time. The reason they tend to do so is that people still find them relevant in their current era. Jane Austen’s novels, which were strictly placed during the Regency…
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