Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Home In The Dawnland: Sense Of Place And Eco-Cultural Relations In The Penobscot River Valley, Kate Kemper

Honors College

In a world where a deep disconnect between humans and nature is commonplace, this thesis is motivated by a personal interest in reconnecting with the more-than-human world. The purpose of this project is to explore my own sense of place and lived experience on the land we’ve called Maine and the Dawnland, and to strengthen my relationship to this land through a co-creative artistic practice. It draws on the historic context of the land, as it has been stewarded by Penobscot people, to investigate existing human-land relationships in the area, and attempts to honor Indigenous perspectives. The praxis for the …

Maine Monsters: How Indigenous And Non-Indigenous People Perceive Environmental Monstrosity, Cheyenne Hebert

Honors College

Wilderness is a creation of the human mind. Wilderness reflects our desires, fears, and truest selves—therefore within it we often find monsters. The application of monstrosity to the natural world is an act of projection and an accumulation of the cultural and historical influences that shape the perceiver. It’s often a reflection of religion—e.g. European gods associated with agriculture, while their monsters and demons roam the woods—and varies across peoples. This thesis seeks to understand how people create and assign monstrosity from their own mind to the environment around them, and in turn how they perceive it. Specifically, it explores …

The Impacts Of Covid-19 On Friendship Reciprocity In Adolescents, Tori Lucia

Honors College

The current study looks at how COVID-19 affected adolescents’ interpersonal relationships due to safety restrictions. Adolescent friendships are particularly important in adolescence (Yu and Deutsch, 2021; Adler & Adler, 1995; Parker et al, 2006). Emerging research suggests that interpersonal relationships were impacted during COVID-19 (Shoshani & Kor, 2022), but there is more to understand about precisely how adolescent friendships were impacted. Specifically, it is not known whether the onset of the pandemic impacted the number of reciprocated friendships, the stability of reciprocation in best friendships, and both positive and negative friendship quality in adolescents’ lives. The current study tests whether …

Evidence-Based Family Strengthening Training In Maine: A Resource Assessment And Proposal To Reduce Barriers And Increase Facilitators, Elaine Thomas

Honors College

The purpose of this research is to conduct a resource assessment of family strengthening training programs in the state of Maine. The primary focus of the resource assessment is to identify the agency and provider-level barriers and facilitators that impact their capacity to provide caregivers with awareness of and access to programs. Prior to presenting the resource assessment, this thesis reviews data about key child and family issues in Maine and examines how family strengthening training is applied as an evidence-based tool to prevent child maltreatment, foster healthy attachments within the family, and nurture positive caregiving skills. The methodologies used …

Incel Bonding: Masculinity And Storytelling In Online Misogynist Spaces, Gunnar Eastman

Honors College

The incel subculture, short for “involuntary celibate,” is one that exists mostly online, but boasts a relatively large number of dedicated members. The goal of this research is to determine how the incel subculture shares their ideology and develops a sense of group identity. The study reviewed 76 threads of posts across two incel forum websites, and was able to conduct three interviews of members from one of those sites. That content was analyzed iteratively for cohesive themes. Several themes emerged, chief among them was the activity of storytelling, which appeared to be done in three different major ways, with …

Already Too Late, Abigail Logan

Honors College

Already Too Late (Dec. 2021), in its beginning stages, is a novel that explores the intricacies of trauma response within the context of creative writing that appeals to both older and younger readers alike. This thesis consists of a complete story outline, four well-established chapters, and a disquisition that examines my motivations, methodology, and the research related to the content of this project. The novel is a dual-perspective narrative that interweaves 17-year-old Avery Landon’s traumatic experiences with sexual assault with her father Marty’s overwhelming grief and his coming to terms with his failed parenting. When Avery is raped at a …

The Effect Of Waste And Waste Management On The University Of Maine And Community During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Alexis Welch

Honors College

The Covid-19 pandemic closed the University of Maine the second week of March. Quickly following, most of the country was on lockdown. The virus also has directly affected the University of Maine and its waste stream due to the drastic changes in population and the types of waste being produced. The purpose of this study is to first analyze the direct effects on the amount of waste produced per category on campus in 2019 compared to 2020. The main categories are municipal solid waste, single stream, compost, demo debris, metals, electronics, hazardous waste, universal waste, and biowaste. The second purpose …

An Analysis Of Citizenship Education In Maine Middle Schools, Tom Adams

Honors College

An essential responsibility of public schooling is to cultivate civic awareness in students and prepare them to participate in a democratic society. Schools have, however, broadly failed this task, a trend the Maine Department of Education has attempted to reverse through policy. The 2019 edition of the MDoE’s Maine Learning Results (“MLR”) standards mandates that middle school social studies teachers implement civic action and service-learning projects (a.k.a. “citizenship education”) to address community needs and foster students’ civic identity. Existing literature suggests that citizenship education improves students’ civic awareness, community engagement, and future voting behavior, but the effectiveness of this new …

The Effect Of The September 11, 2001 Terror Attacks On Policing In Maine: The Officers Point Of View, Andrew King

Honors College

There was a marked change in policing after the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. While much research has examined this change in other areas of the country, less is known about how 9/11 impacted policing in Maine. To fill this research gap, the present study examined police officers’ perceptions of job change since the 9/11 terrorist attack. Data from semi-structured interviews with ten police officers were analyzed using focused content coding. The data analysis revealed three general themes that represent how police officers thought that their jobs had changed: (1) national security, (2) local policing, and (3) fusion centers. …

Identifying The Advocate In Me: An Undergraduate Autoethnography Exploring The Personal Identity Of Activist Versus Advocate, Aiden Ciaffaglione

Honors College

“Identifying the Advocate in ME: An Undergraduate Autoethnography Exploring the Personal Identity of Activist Versus Advocate” explores and redefines the social definition of “activists” and “advocates” through an autoethnographic lens of personal growth and identity formation. Stemming from my previous research into the University of Maine 1974 Gay Symposium,I reflect on my undergraduate academic ecology composed of leadership roles, course work, and extracurricular involvement in order to understand my identity development as a queer advocate. I incorporate previous scholarship around social movements, emotion work, and the role of activists in social change to develop a “Social Movement Identification” typology that …

Assessing Lipid Content In Migrating Alewife, Anthony Zenga

Honors College

Alewife are a commercially, economically, and ecologically important fish, that expend large amounts of energy during their long migrations to spawning habitat. This energy demand can influence an individual’s chances of surviving and reproducing successfully. To understand how energy use may affect fitness, we captured alewife from the Souadabscook Stream over the course of their spawning migration. Fifty fish were sampled each week from May 12th to June 10th 2019. The lipid content of each individual was measured by using i) a Distell Fatmeter and ii) gravimetric analysis by measuring muscle moisture as an indirect method to assess lipid content. …

Terms Of Erasure: The Jewish Experience In A Rural New England Town, Jessica Sweeney

Honors College

Throughout history, Jewish Americans have been and continue to be persecuted for their religion and ethnic identity. Additionally, anti-Semitism has been a rising problem in recent years. This research seeks to understand how this national issue affects individuals in a rural community in New England. More broadly, this thesis attempts to understand how Jews in a rural community in New England experience anti-Semitism. To conduct this research, a series of interviews were collected in the region and were subsequently analyzed using a modified version of Grounded Theory. The purpose of this research is to understand the Jewish experience in a …

Terrorism In Context: The Stories We Tell Ourselves, James Brown V

Honors College

With no universally accepted definition of terrorism, the process by which the media labels an act as terrorism becomes inherently variable. In Western media, such variance is unilaterally skewed towards coverage of Islamic terror. This paper examined the similarities and differences in newsprint coverage of two unique terrorist attacks: The Boston Marathon bombing and the Charleston Church mass shooting. Data included 64 articles from The Wall Street Journal that were published in the seven days following each attack. Data were analyzed using grounded theory, which revealed three primary themes: construction of the attack, construction of the attacked, and …

Trauma And Attachment In Sierra Leone, Alli Dellamattera

Honors College

The purpose of this thesis is to propose a training workshop, called “Attachment Theory Workshop and Self-Paced Refresher Training.” The goal of this training is to increase attachment between caregivers and trauma-impacted children in Sierra Leone. Prior to presenting this training, this thesis first reviews both psychological and sociological perspectives of attachment, with a focus on classical attachment theory. Next, from a sociological lens, I examine the significance of culture and attachment. Then, I contextualize the current status of Sierra Leone, including, the traumas the country has faced, and how attachment is affected by such traumas.

To better implement the …

Behind Closed Doors: Unpacking College Students’ Complex Relationships With Pornography Consumption, Samantha K. Saucier

Honors College

This thesis is a quantitative and qualitative study of University of Maine students attitudes and consumption habits of pornography. It contains a literature review of anti-pornography feminism from the Second Wave, as well as an overview of sex-positive and sex-critical theories of pornography from more recent years. The goal of the thesis is to understand how sex-negative and/or sex-positive ideas have or have not permeated college student’s understanding of pornography. Over 800 students were surveyed about pornography consumption through the Psychology Department’s Fall prescreen. 4 students from the survey, who all happened to be women, were interviewed about their relationships …

The Hyde Amendment: An Obstacle To Seeking Abortion Care In Maine?, Olivia Pennington

Honors College

This thesis is an examination of the effects of the Hyde Amendment on lower-income people in the State of Maine seeking abortion care. The Hyde Amendment, passed in 1976, prohibits any federally funded insurance from covering abortion services unless the pregnancy results from sexual assault or incest, or if the pregnancy places the pregnant person’s life in danger. This thesis aims to examine how not having an abortion covered by insurance exaggerates other financial obstacles to receiving abortion care. Through a literature review and survey data collected from a local sexual and reproductive health care center this paper explores how …

The Effects Of Video Games And Religious Reminders On Prosociality, Heather K. Cross

Honors College

Religious primes have been shown to increase prosocial intentions (Shariff, 2016), whereas prosocial video games tend to increase both prosocial intentions and behaviors (Greitemeyer & Osswald, 2010). The aim of this study was to see whether or not these two predictors could work better in tandem to increase prosociality. It was hypothesized that both types of predictors would increase prosocial intentions on their own, that both types of predictors would work together to further increase prosocial intentions, and that this interaction would be moderated by personal religiosity. Participants were randomly assigned to read religious or nonreligious passages, and then randomly …

Cultural Appropriation In Contemporary Neopaganism And Witchcraft, Kathryn Gottlieb

Honors College

This thesis examines the discourse surrounding cultural appropriation in contemporary witchcraft and neopaganism, particularly online. The aim of this thesis is to look at how cultural appropriation became such a central topic in the witch and neopagan community and to see what can be learned about the community as a whole from this discourse. Definitions, neutralization techniques, and the development of alternative practices and terminologies are all discussed, as well as how cultural appropriation relates to the history of witchcraft as a whole. Seven witch/neopagan members of the popular blogging platform tumblr.com were interviewed for this study to examine how …

Alleviating Social Isolation And Food Insecurity Through Community Gardening: How The Orono Community Garden Impacts Seniors, Sarah Mullis

Honors College

Senior food insecurity and social isolation are potentially two serious issues within Maine communities. The Orono Community Garden (OCG) is a local effort to combat both of these issues. The OCG relies on volunteer workers, who donate the food they produce to low-income seniors living in three neighboring housing complexes in Orono, Maine. This project uses participant observation, surveys, and personal interviews as the basis for a qualitative analysis, to assess how seniors’ food security is influenced due to the food from the OCG, the ways in which the OCG provides a sense of community and social integration for the …

Bridging Gaps And Building Solidarity, Shannon Brenner

Honors College

Real innovation for a more sustainable and inclusive food system requires collaboration based on resilient relationships between a diverse range of community partners and across socio-economic boundaries. SNAP incentive programs at farmer’s markets are bridging gaps in food access and sovereignty for thousands of individuals across the country, but what are the far reaching implications of these programs in terms of a sustainable food system, especially in an uncertain economic landscape? Using the findings of a quantitative, interdisciplinary and community inclusive research project of the Community Supported Farmers’ Markets (CSFM), a SNAP incentive program organized by Food and Medicine in …

Between “Student” And “Athlete”: The Academic Institution’S Role In The Self Identification Of Division I Student-Athletes, Helaina Sacco

Honors College

The present study was designed to investigate the role of the academic institution on the self-identification of Division I student-athletes. While acknowledging the importance of various forms of socialization for the development of the self, this study focuses on the importance of the academic institution as an external force on the student-athlete experience. A voluntary online survey, powered by Qualtrics, was administered to all 410 student-athletes at the University of Maine. A basic analysis of the survey results revealed that particular conduits of the academic institution may play an important role in the balance between “student” and “athlete,” including …

The Framing Of Animal Cruelty By Animal Advocacy Organizations, Cary Williams

Honors College

The purpose of this research project was to explore similarities and differences in framing activity of animal cruelty by animal advocacy organizations and to fill some of the gaps within the current literature. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Humane Society of the United States, and American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals were selected for study, as they are the largest and most widely recognized animal advocacy organizations. Sections of the organizations’ websites (about us, positions, and frequently asked questions) and pamphlets from the organizations were analyzed using content analysis to see how the organizations define …

A Study Of The Attitudes Of Parents In Relation To The Behavior Of Their Children In Nursery School, Rose Marie Baron

Honors College

The behavior of 13 children enrolled in the Psychology Department Nursery School was observed and recorded on a behavioral checklist in terms of social isolation, parallel play, cooperation, aggression, social contact with children, and social contact with adults. The Parental Attitude Research Instrument was administered to their parents which studied three factors: maternal/paternal control, maternal/paternal hostility, democratic attitudes toward child-rearing.