Digital Commons Network^™

Understanding Community Abundance And Anthropogenic Impact On Acadia National Park's Rocky Intertidal Ecosystem Through Photoplot Analysis, Kayla Mclagan

Honors College

Acadia National Park’s rocky intertidal ecosystem is one that supports a variety of different species and is highly susceptible to changes from human activity. This study aims to assess the pros and cons of using photo plots and community abundance analysis, compared to point-intersect transects, in rapid assessment protocols monitoring Acadia’s rocky intertidal ecosystem. I piloted the photoplot method, a photograph taken of the area contained within a foot-byfoot quadrat, to assess community abundance of the rocky intertidal ecosystem. Histograms and a nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination were used to analyze the community structure of various testing sites. This method of …

What It Was & What I Know: Attempts At Family History, Katherine Reardon

Honors College

Family stories and family histories are contingent on how they are remembered. As these stories are passed down, the ways that they are remembered can change, with the truthful aspects of these stories disappearing over time. As a result, many family stories are not necessarily truthful, but this does not discount their value. The aim of this project is to explore these ideas while also answering the following question: to what extent are family stories bound by the ‘truth’? In order to answer this question, I have explored my own family stories that I know may not be true and …

Themes Of Identity And Power In Contemporary Topical Song, Hilary Warner-Evans

Honors College

This thesis explores the role of identity and power in contemporary topical song using three case studies. The first of these deals with two songs written after the arrest of Maine’s North Pond Hermit in April 2013. It makes a case for the songs, in the context of other creative reactions to the hermit’s arrest, as being expressions of anxiety related to Maine identity. The second study is about new versions of the labor song “Which Side Are You On,” with a particular focus on one from Wisconsin one from Maine. It looks at the theme of solidarity through analysis …

The Sapphire Mirror, Renée Levasseur

Honors College

Morgan Molloy is the worst student at Graybridge Academy, a school for the children of the rich and famous. She doesn't do her work, talks in class, and is a professional troublemaker; she's Queen Bee, and knows it. Nothing can ruin this high in life.

Until her friend goes missing.

Morgan's world is turned upside down by the aftermath of her party; things only get stranger when she receives a letter from her father, a man she has never met. After this revelation, Morgan starts to see the world a little differently - that maybe the strange disappearances of the …

Class Conflict And The Confederate Conscription Acts In North Carolina, 1862-1864, Tyler Cline

Honors College

This thesis will analyze the effect that Confederate conscription policies during the American Civil War from 1862 to 1864 had on the social order that existed in North Carolina. Conflicts arose during the war between the slave-owning aristocratic class and the yeomen farmers who owned few slaves, if any, and thus were not dependent on the slave system in the pre-war era. A regional approach, exploring the impact of geography on social development, illustrates that the undermining of this social stability led to growing class-consciousness among the middle class farmers who dominated the Piedmont region of North Carolina. It will …

User Experience Design For Presence-Aware Spaces And Technologies, Samuel Foster

Honors College

User experience design is a diverse field of study that is constantly changing as unique technologies and modes of interaction are developed. Metaphors are a critical aspect of UX design, serving to acclimate users to new technologies by comparing them to existing objects and ideas. As newer technologies become increasingly distant from real-world objects, developers are quick to look to existing technology for metaphors. This results in a lack of experience-unique metaphors that would create a more immersive experience. This thesis focused on identifying potential real-world metaphors through the use of emerging technologies in an interactive art installation. Based on …

The Grand Derangement In The Context Of The Eighteenth - Century British Empire, Derek A. Jones

Honors College

Since the 1960's there has been a fierce debate on the criminality of the deportation of the Acadian people from the Maritimes. Since then, many historians have compared the deportation of the Acadians, also known as the Grand Dérangement, to modern acts of 'ethnic cleansing'. However, these comparisons take the Grand Dérangement out of context. This thesis compares the Grand Dérangement to the transportation of Scottish and Irish rebels after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 and United Irish Rebellion of 1798 in an effort to establish that the Grand Dérangement was extraordinary in the context of the 18th-century British …