The McCartys Flow is a 3.9-ka vesicular porphyritic basalt lava flow in the Zuni-Bandera Volcanic Field (ZBVF) near Grants, New Mexico. The Lava Falls area on the southern part of the flow is dominated by pahoehoe sheet flows. Topographic features such as plateaus, depressions, monoclines, escarpments, and en-echelon cracks are interpreted as being formed by inflation. Using detailed observations of the Lava Falls area and differential GPS (DGPS) transects, the crack systems of these topographic features were constrained to three different crack patterns. Particular crack patterns were constrained to flow margins and depressions. Analysis of crustal and structural widths along transects indicates that up-swelling was likely responsible for crack formation, though this extension was not necessarily constant. A model of emplacement is suggested to explain the progression of inflation along the flow in a plateau-like fashion of decreasing elevation from the McCartys vent. Finally, the results of the McCartys Flow fieldwork and analysis are discussed as a possible approach examining suspected inflation features in the Elysium Volcanic Province on Mars.

This project analyzes the Brooklyn Zen Center as a case study in order to complexify our understandings of cultural capital, gentrification, the modern American mindfulness movement, and geographic scale. Through an analysis focused at the local scale, we see how the Brooklyn Zen Center both reflects/reproduces and challenges the socio-racial-economic tension associated with gentrification and the mindfulness movement. Through an analysis focused at the scale of the individual/interpersonal, we see how cultural capital both reflects/reproduces and challenges the socio-racial-economic tension associated with the mindfulness movement.

Black women's trauma, which is largely unclaimed, un-mediated and unrecognized, is transgenerational. The physical, social, and psychological effects of holding on to a racialized history of trauma, caused by systematic and structural racism and sexism, continue to effect the identity formation and social conditions of Black women in the United States today. My thesis is an investigation into the relationships between historical trauma, silence, voice, and political organizing. I aim to analyze Black female agency and the politics of survival and conclude that Black women's trauma and vulnerabilities—although painful and wrought with shame—ultimately serve the deeper purpose of facilitating a space for Black women to speak back to the traumas of violent enslavement, sexual violence, destruction of communal bonds, and infringement on their rights to survive. Thus, Black women's survival is nothing less than sheer brilliance. Their distinct knowledge arises from the navigation of transhistorical histories of trauma and embodies the epitome of modernist projects of survival.

In this thesis I argue that despite the traditional gender roles assigned to women members of the Nation of Islam, these women are able to assert and employ their power both within and outside of the domestic sphere. Essential to understanding their roles is to identify these women and their narratives as told by them. Who are the women of the Nation of Islam? What do these women do? How are women members viewed by men in leadership roles? How are these women viewed by women who are not members of the Nation of Islam? How do these women view themselves?More specifically, what do these women see as their contribution to Nation-building historically and in the present? In closing, I attempt to examine and imagine the ways in which traditional notions of womanhood as outlined by the Nation of Islam can survive in the twenty-first century.

The diminishing of temporal and spatial boundaries in the contemporary age of connectivity has fully realized Beck, Giddens and Nash's "reflexive" modernity. This reflexive modernity refers to the diminishing control of traditional institutions on individual lives. In the shift towards loosely bounded networks as the operant mode of socialization, I propose that both collective and self identity become individualized choices. People are able to pick and choose the different aspects of their formative identity as well as the elective communities to share and consume those aspects. Using a convenience sample, I perform a case study on reddit.com to explore how biographical experience and individual performance are critical in navigating online networks and representing the self in discursive cyberspace. I approach identity through the lens of queer theory to develop a fluid understanding on identity formation and practice. I argue that the exchanges that take place in discursive cyberspace are not only meaningful in terms developing networks of alternative knowledges, affective support, and social capital, but are also foundational to reproducing reflexivity and its tendency towards individualization.