Rice Undergraduate Theses

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    Mercy through the Ages: A Glance into the Window of Paradise - A Study of Surah al-Rahman with Six Exegeses, Dating from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century
    (Rice University, 2011) Sheikh, Selim
    This paper explores the distinctions in interpretation of surah al-Rahman of the Holy Qur’an based on the exegeses of al-Tabari, al-Huwwari, al-Qushayri, al-Qurtubi, al-Jalalayn, and al-Maraghi. These commentaries range in time period from the late ninth century to the late twentieth century and are also representative of different modes of thought, such as mainstream, Sufi, and modernist frameworks. Interpretations also reflect emphasis upon grammatical explanations or legal issues in some cases. The study first discusses a context for the time and location of each commentator, whereupon the paper moves into an analysis of the components and depictions of the surah, or chapter. The final section of the paper illustrates the timelessness of this surah and its significance to Muslims everywhere.
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    Kingship in the Age of Extraction: How British Deconstruction and Isolation of African Kingship Reshaped Identity and Spurred Nigeria’s North/South Divide, 1885-1937
    (Rice University, 2015) Williamson, Hurst; Staller, Jared
    To the outside observer today, Nigeria is a state whose political troubles are sunk in its oil wells. Yet in truth the difficulties facing Nigeria are reflective of colonialism’s alteration of Nigerian society, and in order to truly understand Nigeria’s complex landscapes, one has to understand the evolution of complex national identities. As modern states emerge, each of them are influenced, driven, or in some extreme cases formed entirely around ethnic, religious, and cultural histories. However within some states with sizable minority populations, a counter-cultural form of nationalism is created, whereby a specific group’s culture, beliefs, or history becomes a call for that group’s own state. Whether in the Basque region of Spain, in Iraqi and Turkish Kurdistan, in Quebec, or in Scotland, self-identity around a specific culture can directly lead to nationalist movements. These movements can either resu lt in violent struggles (Georgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions), prolonged postponement (Morocco’s Western Sahara region), or in independence referendums (Scotland in 2014). Yet regardless of the various effectiveness of identity-driven nationalist movements, states with large populations that share a common social cleavage eventually must deal with their identity crisis in some capacity. Nigerians, however, face an ongoing identity crisis whereby it can be difficult to conceptualize a singular Nigerian identity. Yet herein lies the value of understanding colonial influence on Nigerian identity: Islam and Modern Nationalism are so generationally ingrained that these two competing ideologies supersede all other social cleavages on a national scale. Nigeria’s north/south divide is a rift created as two supremely opposite regions were morphed into two distinct colonies and then abruptly joined together. As northerners of different ethnicities were coalesced into Northern Nigeria, Islam became the uniting identity category that grew in importance as the effects of colonial neglect grew more pronounced. On balance, the institutionalization of hundreds of groups of southerners as a result of a loss of traditional kingship placed southerners in colonial positions and institutions that would eventually lead to pan-Nigerianism. Rather than the single group counter-culture n ationalism prevalent in many states, Nigerians instead face a unique challenge as the ethnic, religious, and culture cleavages of several hundred groups have been consolidated and generalized into a north/south regional divide. As a result of direct rule through the deconstruction of kingship in the south and as a result of indirect rule and isolation of kingship in the north, Nigerians’ identities have been ideologically blended, but geographically placed into contention.
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    Remembering and Forgetting Salvador Allende: An Examination of Institutional Memories in Post-Authoritarian Chile
    (Rice University, 2016) Meléndez, Mónica Alicia; López-Alonso, Moramay
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    The Call of Higher Duty: How the Economy of Patriotism Extends from Real Civilians to Virtual Soldiers
    (Rice University, 2017) Johnson, Robert; Boyer, Dominic
    This project explores how military first-person shooter videogames serve as cultural artifacts grounded within the economy of patriotism. Essentially, the economy of patriotism is the system of exchange in which civilians are attempting to repay patriotic indebtedness that is enabled by perceptions of soldierly sacrifice, that forces conformity to and propagates an idealized patriotic narrative of sacrifice that is at odds with the real experiences of soldiers. Due to their crafted narrative’s mirroring of real civilian perception of soldierly duty, these videogames not only serve as part of these economic exchanges but extend them into virtual worlds. Focusing on the single-player modes within three recent Call of Duty titles, I explore first how these narrative simulations/simulated narratives invoke the sacrificial mythology of soldiers of the civilian public. Secondly, I detail how Call of Duty videogames expand experiences of the economy of patriotism. Ultimately, I bring attention to how these games may contribute to the civilian-military divide
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    The Long Brexit: Postwar British Euroscepticism
    (Rice University, 2018) Ratnoff, David; Caldwell, Peter C.
    The 2016 British vote to exit the European Union (“Brexit”), was greeted with global dismay as the very project of Europe was called into question. The phenomenon of Euroscepticism in postwar European politics has been regarded as a function of party politics. Existing frameworks of Euroscepticism, which have regarded it as a fringe political belief, did not hold up in the British case. Periodicals, political speeches, party literature, and government documents were used to examine how British politicians across the ideological spectrum described the country’s role in Europe. Chronicling how new political actors honed and refined Eurosceptic arguments, the conversion of European integration from a technocratic to a domestic political issue was documented. The decision to hold the 2016 referendum resulted from the ways that political parties discussed Europe at different stages of EU integration. Similarly, contradictory arguments that activated diverse groups of voters to unite against Europe and David Cameron’s inability to move his party beyond the issue of Europe carried Eurosceptics to success in the polls.
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    A Phenomenological Critique of Irene McMullin's Formulation of Heideggerian Temporality
    (Rice University, 2019) Barton, Jason; Crowell, Steven
    This paper aims at differentiating Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology from Emmanuel Levinas’s phenomenological ethics on the experiential level of encountering otherness. In addition to drawing from each author’s seminal texts, I will contextualize the disagreement between Heidegger and Levinas to Irene McMullin’s Time and the Shared World: Heidegger on Social Relations. McMullin, in her response to Jean-Paul Sartre’s criticism of Heidegger’s ontology, provides a formulation of Heideggerian temporality that markedly deviates from Heideggerian ontological commitments in Being and Time. I present and develop two deviations: (a) McMullin positions Dasein’s original encounter with the Other before the establishment of Dasein’s ontological structures (i.e., Being-in-the-world and Being-with-others) and (b) McMullin attributes Dasein’s inauthenticity to the Other’s limitation of Dasein’s temporalization of Being. I contend that both deviations correspond with Levinas’s phenomenology of temporality more than Heidegger’s phenomenology of temporality. It is through McMullin’s deviations, therefore, that distinctions can be drawn between Heidegger’s ontological articulation of Being-guilty, the call of conscience, Being-towards-death, and Angst on one hand and Levinas’s metaphysical articulation of conscience, shame, and death on the other.
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    Early Campaign Contact and Voter Turnout in the 2018 Texas State Senate District 6 Special Election
    (Rice University, 2019-04) Wilson, Chloe; Stein, Robert
    The creation of early in person (EIP) voting periods has been a popular policy implemented by state legislatures seeking to increase voter turnout through decreasing the costs of going to the polls. The efficacy of EIP voting has been questioned in the literature. EIP voting has, however, changed the way in which campaigns are run (Burden et al 2014; Hamel et al 2018). Using individual-level, paid phone-bank call data from the Ana Hernandez campaign for the Texas State Senate District 6 special election held on December 11, 2018 and district-wide voter history data I examine the efficacy of campaign contact under early voting conditions. I find this contact to be ineffective, once vote history is taken into account. A history of voting in the 2018 primary election and 2018 bond elections is a much stronger predictor of turning out in the election studied. This analysis indicates that contacted voters who turned out were more likely self-motivated to vote rather than mobilized through contact, complicating Arceneaux and Nickerson’s (2009) contingency model of campaign contact, which states that high propensity voters are the most cost effective to turn out through campaign contact. These findings have important implications regarding the status quo model of campaign contact currently implemented and how it can be modified to be both more effective in turning out voters in low salience elections.
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    A Crisis of People or Politics? : Revisiting the Impact of Narrative Framing of Immigration in German Newspapers in 2018
    (Rice University, 2019-05) Schumacher, Erika; Hamm, Keith
    In 2017, a report (Georgiou & Zaborowski) traced the media portrayal of the 2015 refugee crisis and of immigrants in European countries. The authors reported a general negative portrayal of immigrants in the news. Additionally, they showed a shift: the refugee crisis was initially described as a humanitarian issue that transcended boundaries; by the end of 2015, each country viewed migrants as an issue of national security. My research revisits the media narrative around the migrant crisis in 2018, specifically in Germany, which accepted an exceptionally large number of refugees. My research categorizes newspaper articles written on the topic of immigration over the course of 2018, finding that the issue of immigration has shifted narratives once again. While not necessarily making value statements on immigrants themselves, German print media presents positive images of immigrants in an economic context and negative images of immigrants in a societal context. Further, immigration is overwhelmingly an issue of politics and policy. In this way, the print media talks around immigrants, showing them as an issue of electoral politics instead of societal participants.
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    Competing Claims: An Analysis of References to the Past Made to Justify Ownership of the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba
    (Rice University, 2019-05) Panitz, Abigail; Wildenthal, Lora; Irish, Maya Soifer
    Competing claims of ownership to the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, a popular tourist site, have emerged in the twenty-first century. The Cordoban Chapter of the Catholic Church was permitted to register the space as its formal property in 2006. Some politicians, particularly members of Spain’s Socialist party, the PSOE, dispute the law that allowed this registration. In their view, the law was passed as part of the conservative People’s Party’s strategy to protect privileges afforded to the Church. The thesis analyzes two reports to demonstrate how two groups, the state and the Church, relied on distinct episodes of Spanish history to support their claims. A 2014 local Church report used nineteenth- and twentieth-century property laws to defend its claims to ownership. A 2018 local government report used the medieval legal code Las Siete Partidas to argue for restoring the space to state control. The dispute in Córdoba is a microcosm of the challenges affecting church-state relations in the post-dictatorship era of secular democracy in modern Spain.
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    Glacially-controlled variations in the biological pump of the Ross Sea in the Mid-to-Late Pliocene
    (Rice University, 2020-05) Nirenberg, Jared; Ash, Jeanine; Masiello, Carrie
    The mid-to-late Pliocene (~3.3 – 2.5 Ma) is an intriguing period for investigating Earth’s past climate dynamics as a potential analogue for future warmth due to anthropogenic climate change. In the Southern Ocean, the Ross Sea and the adjacent West Antarctic Ice Sheet exert significant influence on global climate through their roles in carbon cycle processes, deep ocean circulation, and eustatic sea level. Previous ocean drilling records have shown that the marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet exhibited highly dynamic behavior in the Pliocene and responded to cyclical variations in Earth’s orbital geometry. However, fundamental questions remain regarding the biogeochemical response of Southern Ocean marine productivity to changes in ice sheet dynamics and sea ice cover. The International Ocean Discovery Program’s Expedition 374 to the Ross Sea (2018) recovered multiple sediment cores, including those from Site U1524 on the continental rise. I present a 900,000 year record of the carbon and nitrogen content in bulk sediment in the Pliocene-aged cores from Hole U1524A. This record shows the response of carbon export from the Ross Sea continental shelf to orbital and longer-term forcings of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and global climate. From 3.3 to 3.0 million years ago, I observe a gradual, non-monotonic increase in organic carbon to nitrogen ratios, followed by a decrease from 3.0 to 2.8 million years ago. Sediment color reflectance measurements, implying changes in surface water productivity, are tightly anti-correlated with organic carbon to nitrogen ratios between 3.3 and 3.0 million years ago, but are positively correlated between 3.0 and 2.8 million years ago. I discuss these trends in the context of concurrent sedimentology, physical oceanography, and ice-sheet dynamics. Finally, I note that potential diagenetic effects limit interpretation of this record, and I suggest that bulk carbon and nitrogen stable isotope measurements combined with compound-specific analyses may provide more insight into carbon and nitrogen cycle dynamics during the mid-to-late Pliocene.
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    Critical Theory, Normativity, and Catastrophe: A Critique of Amy Allen’s Metanormative Contextualism
    (Rice University, 2020-05) Rehman, Bilal; Crowell, Steven
    Critical theory is an approach to philosophical and cultural analysis that focuses on oppression and liberation. In this essay, I consider the prospect of moral-political progress in critical theory, focusing primarily on Amy Allen’s position of metanormative contextualism as described in her 2016 work, "The End of Progress." I first consider Allen’s arguments against Jurgen Habermas' theory of communicative action, and then explore how metanormative contextualism is rooted in the thought of Theodor Adorno and Michel Foucault. Lastly, by showing how postcolonial studies reminds us of the deeply political stakes of critical theory, I argue that ideas about moral-political progress can be grounded in the urgent need to “avoid catastrophe.”
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    Public Libraries as Social Infrastructure in Disaster Resilience and Recovery: Houston Libraries and Hurricane Harvey
    (Rice University, 2020-05) Yelvington, Allison; Elliott, Jim
    Current work in the social sciences highlights social infrastructure and its role in communities, especially in cases of disaster resilience and recovery. This study furthers that body of work by examining the role of public libraries in flooding recovery
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    Empathetic Blame: Moral Evaluation in the Face of Luck
    (Rice University, 2020-05) Tugendstein, Gabriel; Sher, George
    In this thesis I offer a new interpretation of blame and criticism rooted in P.F. Strawson's distinction between the subjective and objective points of view. In Part I, I use the problems presented by circumstantial moral luck to expose the inadequacy of standard intuitions about what's required to blame another. Proposed solutions to these issues, I argue, fall into the trap of viewing blame as the outgrowth of a metaphysical status instead of an action that cannot be detached from interpersonal relationships. In Part II I generate a novel interpretation based on the projects of Hume, Strawson, and Scanlon, which posits blame as an attitude forming out of self-reflection and empathy, and criticism as a belief forming out of comparison to a rigid standard. I then elaborate on the phenomenology of such a blame act and go over the consequences my interpretation would have, including a world with substantially less blaming that would eschew vague metaphysical questions and recognize the limitations of imposing moral standards on those who have faced different circumstances.
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    When is Drone Photogrammetry Useful for Flood Risk Assessment?
    (Rice University, 2021-05) Sheldon, Jessica; Siebach, Kirsten
    Drone technology and the high resolution datasets it enables stand to revolutionize our understanding of the Earth’s surface. This research is Houston specific, and studies how drones can be used to systematically collect photogrammic data to detect environmental changes, and how that data is valuable for flood planning purposes. This data is the culmination of three years of research. Prior to this year, the focus has been learning to fly the drone, learning the image processing Pix4D and ArcMap 10.5, and creating a workflow for accurate image collection processing. This study has collected three separate datasets of the study area at Buffalo Bayou using a DJI Phantom 4 Pro drone. This data was then processed and modeled in Pix4D to create digital elevation models (DEMs). The DEMs were calibrated and analyzed in GIS, and compared to the publicly available 2018 LIDAR data. Our research catalogs high resolution change over time of our study area, and documents the process of how drones can be used to systematically observe change over time. Additionally, our data highlights the difference in resolution between a low elevation drone flight versus a higher elevation LIDAR scan.
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    Affection: Essays on Affect, Empathy, and the Politics of Feeling
    (Rice University, 2021-05) Li-Wang, Jennifer; Comer, Krista
    Often, we view feelings as squishy—personal and subjective, therefore private and apolitical. Even within ourselves, our feelings can often seem reflexive and out of our own control. This thesis represents my attempt to hold these squishy feelings and look at them up close, from different angles. In doing so, I hope to see how our affects may not only be personal to ourselves, but also highly communal, performative, and regulated by and within communities. Affects—our feelings, emotions, and moods—are a matter of political and intellectual concern. Different political aims often mobilize our affects and manipulate them to conform to certain desirable shapes. Thus, paying attention to affects—the ways they are evoked, politicized, and ascribed (un)desirability—may help us stay close to our own needs and the needs of our community.
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    The Impacts of Concrete on pH and Calcium Concentration in Houston’s Bayous
    (Rice University, 2021-05) Hale, Meagan; Torres, Mark
    As the human population grows, so does the percentage of people living in urban areas. This means that an increasing amount of landmass must be used for urban infrastructure and housing to accommodate a greater number of people. The environmental impacts of urbanization are not completely understood. However, one important aspect that may be impacted is water quality. For instance, the concrete used to construct water transport and drainage systems can leach Ca2+ions into urban rivers and increase water pH. These changes are of concern because pH range is a major factor in determining the toxicity and bioavailability of chemical compounds. Additionally, many aquatic microorganisms can only thrive within certain ranges of pH and Ca concentrations. To investigate how the concrete used in urban infrastructure impacts water quality, I studied two major rivers in Houston, TX, USA. The first, White Oak Bayou, is lined with concrete; the second, Buffalo Bayou, has a natural river bottom. These two rivers were compared with the non-urban but still geographically similar Trinity River, since river chemistry may be affected by the presence of concrete anywhere within a river’s watershed. I collected water samples from Buffalo and White Oak bayous and analyzed their major anions and cations using ion chromatography (IC) and inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) methods, respectively. In addition, I analyzed roughly 50 years’ worth of public water quality data for each bayou and the Trinity River. The data suggest that the concrete-lined White Oak Bayou has a higher Ca concentration and pH value than Buffalo Bayou. The results of this research expand our knowledge of the environmental impacts of water transport and drainage systems.