IDA
Mount Holyoke College Institutional Digital Archive
The Institutional Digital Archive (IDA) is a service that collects, preserves, and showcases the scholarly work of MHC's faculty and students. Some materials are restricted to the campus community and require an MHC login to access.
Communities in IDA
Select a community to browse its collections.
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
- This is an archive of United States immigration sanctuary policies that were passed from 2001-2014. The archive contains four main collections organized by policy type: Executive Orders; Ordinances; Policing Policies; and Resolutions. There are 234 policies in the archive. Welcome!
- This community houses data collected on campus as part of the Campus Living Laboratory Initiative. Data include those collected from environmental monitoring stations, as a result of faculty and student independent projects, or data collected in labs or other collection exercises. Datasets are presented with varying levels of access as described by the party responsible for uploading the data.
- Repositories for retaining data and scholarly research of the Mount Holyoke College faculty
- Repositories for retaining data, scholarly research, and academic output of Mount Holyoke College students
Recent Submissions
Quel Tramonto Gentile: Validating the Tribulations of Girlhood in Lidia Ravera & Marco Lombardo Radice's PORCI CON LE ALI
(2024-07-08) Gagnon, Gabriella; Frau, Ombretta
A jarring and underappreciated book, Lidia Ravera and Marco Lombardo Radice’s 1976 novel Porci con le ali: Diario Sessuo-Politico di Due Adolescenti narrates the relationship of two Roman highschoolers, Rocco and Antonia. Originally published under the collective pseudonym of the two protagonists, this story gives voice to the difficulties of navigating the choppy waters of youth against the backdrop of Italy’s politically treacherous Lead Years (gli Anni di Piombo) and the unspoken societal norms that impacted Rocco and Antonia’s everyday decisions. Despite there existing very little scholarship dedicated to this book, Porci con le ali garnered much attention upon its publication due to the vulgar language the characters use to communicate with each other and the nature of their erotic relations. While Rocco and Antonia are both average teenagers, it is Antonia who leads this story—and their relationship—with a stronger sense of self following the blatant disrespect and disregard for her bodily autonomy that she receives from her Rocco.
My thesis seeks to defend the crudeness with which Antonia’s adolescence is handled as the story progresses. Because this novel is written in the journal format, it gives the audience a comprehensive window into the emotional turmoil she experiences in addition to appealing to a sense of nostalgia. With her own internal struggles of identity, Antonia alternates between bouts of maturity and childishness as she grapples with the notion that the only person who cares about what she has to say is herself. Through an in-depth character analysis of both characters, Antonia’s colorful use of language, and an exploration of how her sexual encounters further distance her from contemporary expectations, my work aims to circulate Lombardo Radice and Ravera’s novel back into modern feminist conversation due to its depiction of female adolescence.
The Ethics of Ideal Animal Farming
(2024-07-03) Savid, Sofía; Harold, James
Industrial animal farming has been rejected in academic as well as non-academic spheres for several reasons, in particular its negative impact on animal welfare and the environment. As an alternative, people have turned to “organic,” “small scale,” and “local” animal farming, treating it as an ethical solution to many, or perhaps all, of the problems caused by industrial animal farming. However, Tom Regan’s paper, “The Case for Animal Rights,” and Christine Korsgaard’s paper, “Getting Animals in View,” note that there is something morally wrong that happens when we use animals—both human and non-human—as resources. Therefore, Regan and Korsgaard’s arguments seem to ultimately reject any kind of animal farming, including “organic,” “small scale,” and “local” animal farming. In this thesis, I use these two papers by Regan and Korsgaard as well as Peter Singer’s paper, “All Animals Are Equal,” as the foundation of my own argument. I introduce the ideal animal farm as the perfect animal farm which is ethical and ideal in every way we might want it to be, and I argue that even ideal animal farms can be unethical because of what Regan and Korsgaard note in their papers. I identify exploitation as a necessary part of many cases of animal farming, and I argue that exploiting non-human animals is always morally wrong.
I am additionally interested in the stark contrast between our treatment of humans and non-human animals, even in ideal farms, which implies that exploiting a human is morally worse than exploiting a non-human animal. This thesis looks closely at what I think are the strongest arguments and explanations in defense of this contrast in treatment, and I ultimately conclude that the defenses are not strong enough to justify systemically treating non-human animals, and not humans, as resources.
Optimizing the dose-response of Interleukin-4 (IL-4) to further investigate its role in the association between Maternal Allergic Asthma and Neurodevelopmental Disorders.
Ragoonaden, Shanthini; Schwartzer, Jared
Clinical studies have demonstrated that allergic asthma during pregnancy is linked to an increased risk of neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders in offspring. The Schwartzer Lab has developed a Maternal Allergic Asthma (MAA) model that has established a role for Interleukin-4 (IL-4) connecting MAA to neurodevelopmental deficits in the offspring. A forthcoming research project will examine the sufficiency of IL-4 by evaluating whether elevations in maternal IL-4 dosage have a dose-dependent effect on offspring behavioral deficits. However, it remains unknown the appropriate IL-4 dosage to be administered in a mouse model to replicate the IL-4 response observed in MAA. The goal of this research is to identify the optimal IL-4 dosage needed to mimic the inflammatory responses observed in MAA. To test this, Experiment 1 investigated the best time to take blood samples from female C57 mice when exposed to OVA and when injected with 5μg of IL-4. In Experiment 2, we aimed to investigate the IL-4 dose response by injecting 2 different doses of IL-4 in the mice. In both experiments, blood samples were analyzed using Bead-Based immunoassays to measure IL-4 biomarker concentrations. Findings show that IL-4 IP injection has a higher rate of decay post-exposure, when compared to MAA OVA exposure. We also estimate an IL-4 dose of 0.025 ug suitable for IP injection in a mouse model aimed at investigating the cytokine’s sufficiency in causing neurodevelopmental disorders in the offspring. This thesis research project was positioned to derive an IL-4 dose-response curve, thereby providing guidance in determining the optimal injection dosage for future studies exploring the causal link between maternal IL-4 and MAA.
Refining the Formation of Fissures on Europa
Grobe Perlman, Eliana; Dyar, Darby
Europa is a large moon of Jupiter with an icy crust and a subsurface ocean. Europa orbits close to Jupiter and is tidally locked, so it experiences tidal forces that cause the tectonic, magmatic, and volcanic processes that shape its surface. This relationship has formed two prominent terrain types: ridged plains and chaos terrain. While the ridged plains are dominated by ridges and the chaos by pits and domes, both are home to fractures and gorges (fossae). Studying these landforms could prove useful in deciphering the subsurface's physical, chemical, and mechanical characteristics. Current models of the crust posit a two-layered system with a thinner, brittle outer layer and a thicker, ductile one. However, the exact thickness of these layers and whether this thickness varies over the surface is as controversial as their chemical compositions. Europa's subsurface processes are also debated. The many models of linear landform formation fall into two broad categories: formation via tidal tectonics and formation via indirect tidal forces like tidal heating. The maps and morphological analyses of the landforms in this thesis have contributed to the conversations regarding Europa’s subsurface processes and characteristics. This thesis finds an overabundance of wavy and jagged linea compared to tectonic model predictions. It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that indirect tidal processes such as diapirism are at least partially responsible for these landforms. Bethel (2018) explains that tidal forces will preferentially deform regions of the thinner crust, while on planets with uniform crusts, tidal forces will act more symmetrically. The results of this thesis fit the ladder explanation and thus question the idea of a homogenous Europan crust. The landforms mapped in this thesis could be of speleogenic and geochemical interest. However, the quality and quantity of current Europa data have made this dataset incomplete. Thus, once better data is acquired, this list should be refined and expanded upon before it is used for geochemical or spelogenic research.
Exploring Variation of Female Genital Morphology in Hydrolagus colliei (Spotted Ratfish)
Garcia-Israel, Jennifer; Brennan, Patricia
Female genitalia are found to be more diverse than previously thought, yet they have been historically understudied in the scientific world. Hydrolagus colliei is a particularly interesting model for studying female genital morphology. Female ratfish have paired vaginal openings, as well as a paired vagina and oviducts. We investigated how female ratfish genital morphology varies through body size and ontogeny, and how the female ratfish genitalia may have coevolved with male ratfish genitalia by examining the histology of the vagina in females of different sizes. We also examined the anatomy of the anal pad, a fleshy structure present only in females on the ventral side of the tail. I found that the relationship between vaginal shape and body size is significant, vaginal thickness increases with size of the female ratfish, and that vaginal density does not appear to vary significantly. I also found that the anal pad has a thick layer of collagen that increases in thickness with body size. This study shows that vagina shape changes with body size in females, and that male and female genitalia are coevolving in ratfish. It also provides evidence that females evolve other specializations that differ from males, likely in a reproductive context.