DCE Theses and Dissertations

The proliferation of environmental legislation since the 1972 Stockholm Declaration has not arrested the intensification of the triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. This thesis examines the extent to which regional and international instruments contribute to the crystallization of ecocide as a principle of criminal accountability for environmental destruction. Employing a qualitative comparative documentary methodology and drawing on transnational legal process theory and the Finnemore-Sikkink norm lifecycle model, the study analyzes five instruments, the Council of Europe 2025 Convention on the Protection of the Environment through Criminal Law, the EU Environmental Crime Directive 2024/1203, the African Union Malabo Protocol, the Escazú Agreement, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and traces their transposition across five domestic jurisdictions: France, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, and Kenya.

The analysis reveals three principal findings. First, regional instruments are functioning as norm laboratories that generate new legal architectures for the most serious forms of environmental harm. These instruments share a tendency to distinguish catastrophic environmental destruction from ordinary environmental offending, while differing over whether severity, geographic extent, duration, and irreversibility should operate cumulatively or through alternative limbs. Second, international organizations, transnational advocacy networks, and domestic legal innovators are operating as complementary drivers of norm diffusion, with the EU directive mechanism creating a distinctive forced-downloading dynamic that simultaneously transposes ecocide-like provisions across twenty-seven jurisdictions. Third, the ecocide norm is currently positioned at the transition between emergence and cascade in the norm lifecycle. The evidence points to convergence around the proposition that catastrophic environmental destruction warrants aggravated criminal treatment, but continued divergence over the precise threshold and mental element required for liability. This combination of normative agreement and doctrinal contestation is characteristic of a norm that has acquired substantial institutional traction without yet reaching a settled legal form.

The thesis concludes that the emerging combination of national, regional, and international instruments constitutes the normative infrastructure of a growing environmental criminal regime, characterized by partial convergence on gravity, liability, and enforcement, but continued disagreement over threshold architecture and mens rea. As such, institutional enforcement capacity remains the principal obstacle to its consolidation. Directions for future research include the investment law-criminal law interface, temporal doctrines for cumulative ecocide, non-human victimhood, and empirical assessment of deterrent and expressive effects.

The stories included in this collection confront the question of how life adjusts, evolves, and reimagines itself after tragedy, whether that’s the death of a spouse, an illness, or an unexpected divorce. Tragedy is a deeply contemplative theme, and it gives way to a wide variety of characters—mainly women—who must meet the continuation of life, even when a singular day feels impossible. While widowhood is featured in every piece, these stories do not all have a widow at their center. In “Maude,” an elderly man must face how the world has changed, leaving him explicably behind. “Filaments” and “Hockey Coach” feature widows who come to grief with anger and humor, understanding that life contains both. “Train Schedules” showcases a forgotten member of society—an elderly widow one passes by in the grocery store pushing a half-empty cart—but posits her rich, fulfilled, and unique inner life.

Emotion—from the blush of first love to the frustration of a long marriage, from instant attraction to the difficulty of divorce—is a deeply evolved character in each story. The ability to get to the core of each woman, even in the simple, quiet moments of her life (marriage, children, keeping a home), reveal a rich, varied, and deeply human expression. In short, these women feel as real to the reader as they do to the writer.

Cyber-attacks are a growing menace as more citizens’ daily lives are going online. The defense for these threats despite their increase due to threat actors becoming more sophisticated, has not kept pace and is even losing ground due to reductions in Federal funding. Increasingly the defense of a citizen in the cyber domain is falling to the States. States are now the leaders in defending its citizens from the comprehensive cyber threats that are challenging every layer of government and services that citizens want and need. The Whole-of-State (WOS) model for cyber defense for the citizenry is well established for some States and achieving degrees of success. The California Whole-of-State (WOS) model stands out because of the threats the State must curtail and the effort that the State has employed. This project assesses the current threat environment as it grows, assesses the California (WOS) model, and identifies some areas to improve the WOS model across the board. There are many more aspects of the Whole of-State (WOS) model that could be employed, like greater focus on sharing burdens and enlisting more volunteers to increase the capacity for the Whole-of-State (WOS) model to be most effective. Nevertheless, even these measures are only incremental benefits and the full protection for a citizen like a 911 for a cyber-attack is a very distant goal.

The call of Pseudacris crucifer heralds the arrival of spring in Massachusetts. Its colloquial name of either the Northern Spring peeper or simply “peeper” comes from the small “peep” of the individual caller, which swells into a chorus as it calls with and to its conspecifics. This widespread frog species gets its scientific name from the characteristic “X” shape on its back, thus the Latin “crucifer”, meaning “cross bearer”, while its genus heralds from the Greek words for “false” and “locust” in reference to its insect-like call (Phinney, 2020). Frogs from the genus Pseudacris are also known as chorus frogs, given their propensity to vocalize in groups (Ethier et al., 2021). This amphibian is relatively small; the males could fit atop the head of a quarter while the females are roughly twice that size. However, it is only the diminutive male that makes the call that Robert McClung termed the “first voice of spring” (McClung & Lerner, 1977). Males attract females with calls during the breeding season, and female peepers have exhibited preferential phonotaxis for lower frequency and higher amplitude calls (Calsbeek et al., 2022; Forester & Czarnowsky, 1985; Schwartz & Gerhardt, 1998; Sullivan & Hinshaw, 1990; Wilczynski & Lynch, 2011). Females prefer to lay their eggs in shallow bodies of water where fish are not present, such as shallow ponds, wetlands, and vernal or ephemeral pools. Given the high prevalence of wetlands, ponds, and shallow pools formed from glacial depositions across Cape Cod, P. crucifer can regularly be heard through the beginning of Spring, with their peak acoustic season beginning roughly in March, contingent upon temperature and rainfall (Ethier et al., 2021; Teal & Teal, 1988). Cape waters face a mounting challenge with the increasing population and concomitant impact of both locals and tourists on the island. High numbers of septic systems and fertilizer runoff from landscaping and golf courses are causing high levels of nutrient loading in phosphorus, nitrogen, and resulting cyanobacterial blooms across the Cape’s fresh and saltwater reservoirs (APCC, n.d.; Center for Coastal Studies, n.d.; The Nature Conservancy, 2025). Given the documentation for anuran females exhibiting phonotaxis for acoustic choruses with lower mean frequency and higher amplitude, this study attempts to address the impacts of varying levels of nutrient loading and water quality parameters on acoustic choral metrics by recording choruses at six different Cape Cod vernal pools, and thereafter comparing the mean choral frequencies and amplitudes to water quality components. This thesis found that P. crucifer choral amplitudes and frequencies were significantly different across vernal pool locations. The results further indicate that peepers in vernal pools with higher temperature, pH, alkalinity, and dissolved oxygen, and lower total phosphorus and Chlorophyll a had choral traits that are more attractive to female Northern Spring Peepers, and can be extrapolated to indicate higher population density and individual fitness at those pools (Forester & Czarnowsky, 1985; Kron & Root, 2025; Navine et al., 2024).

Answering the Call is a collection of seven short stories set in the 2020s that explores the central theme of being seen. The pieces look at what people try to hide of themselves, be it a secret wish, an emotion, love, power, authenticity, or desire in order to maintain the status quo or because of their own limiting beliefs. In each story these characters are (consciously or not) on a quest for authenticity and healing transformation. These transformations bring in elements of the unseen, invisible, or spiritual worlds that exist alongside the physical one. While most of these stories take place in modern day reality, they each have a fairy tale quality, and the collection ends with a tale about how an entire city reacts when the citizens want to see something that remains a mystery to them. Does being seen/unseen protect, harm, or both? That is one of the many questions hidden within this collection—what other questions might you see? What answers will you find?

There are few concepts in international relations that are of more consequence, and yet more amorphous, than power. In the struggle for mastery among the great powers – on and off the battlefield – this study seeks to shed new light on the measurement, nature, and exercise of power since the introduction of the modern state system four centuries ago. The contributions and findings can be distilled as follows.

In utilizing recently developed data sets and new proxies for state power over a longer period than comparable studies, I put different measures of power to the test and find striking differences in their ability to predict war and dispute outcomes. Of particular significance, many of the representations of raw or gross might that are intuitively appealing and ubiquitous in international relations scholarship – like gross domestic product, the composite indicator of national material capability, military spending, and the size of the armed forces – are shown to perform no better than a coin toss in predicting the outcomes of great power conflicts. These results pose a challenge to the large body of analysis that emphasizes measures of raw might as rough but reliable guides to power and influence in the international arena. By contrast, measures of latent capability I refer to as ‘dual use power’ (spanning technology, trade, and finance) have accurately foreshadowed the outcome of around 80 per cent of great power conflicts.

In a case study of cycles and transitions in hegemonic power based on a novel systematic dating exercise, I also identify several stylized facts when breaking national capability down into its key elements. First, while dominant states have often enjoyed lengthy leadership cycles in individual sources of power lasting well over a century, periods of simultaneous leadership in these dimensions of power have been much shorter at around seven decades. Second, power transitions are best conceptualized as multi-stage phenomena rather than a singular cross-over event. Third, a peak in relative power rarely portends an imminent power transition. Fourth, global leadership in sea power is an early-cycle marker of hegemonic ascendency. And fifth, global leadership in finance and technology is typically more enduring than for trade, which could partly reflect stronger network effects in the former.

In concluding with a review of the limits of material power and predatory coercion, I argue that while the ability and willingness of the pre-eminent state to shape the international system differed across three hegemonic eras – Dutch, British, and American – each sought to make key tenants of the international order tolerable or attractive to a sufficiently large cohort of states that it boosted their influence beyond that possible by their material resource advantage alone.

As a new era of great power contestation dawns where competition is intensifying across a range of domains, the results in this study should be of more than historical interest. I conclude with several implications pertaining to the dynamics of power transitions, the integration of different elements of national power, and the conduct of modern economic statecraft incorporating dual use power.

Building on literature that suggests that there are both benefits (e.g., increased empathy and social cognition) and risks (e.g., psychological discomfort during or after emotionally intense practices) related to the practice of acting, this study addresses a gap in psychology research by investigating cognitive control and emotion regulation processes that could be involved in creating emotional states in acting. Using a mixed-methods design, this project aims to examine whether “inside-out” acting training is associated with interoceptive awareness, emotion regulation, and theory of mind, as well as with any potential short- and long-term unwanted psychological discomfort felt by actors. The study is divided into quantitative and qualitative parts. In the quantitative phase, participants completed the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) questionnaire, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET), the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), and a modified version of the ERQ. As the original ERQ tests for the ability to down-regulate emotions, and I hypothesized that up-regulation would be used in acting, the modified ERQ contained questions that were inverted to inquire about up-regulation in acting contexts. Analyses examined associations between acting experience (class level and years of study) and these measures. The primary finding was that the MAIA total score increased significantly with both class level (F(2, 65) = 49.03, p .001) and years of study (F(4, 63) = 46.26, p .001), after Bonferroni, whereas the RMET and ERQ measures did not show significant associations. These results suggest that interoceptive awareness may increase with acting training, while other measured scales either may not be sensitive to acting training or may not be the appropriate measures, due to limitations such as the ceiling effect. In the qualitative phase, phenomenological interviews were conducted to help understand the findings of the quantitative phase. The participants were ten professional actors (ages 27–81) with training in inside-out techniques, all of whom had more than ten years of experience, representing multiple approaches (such as Method Acting, Meisner, Stella Adler, Uta Hagen, and mixed methods). Actors described multiple pathways to triggering emotional states (such as autobiographical memory, imagined future outcomes for the self, and imagined memories/futures for the character), and reported somatic sensations as markers of emotional arousal. They also reported that emotions could arise when they focused on the character's responses to circumstances, objectives, relationships, and environment, but less so when they consciously strived for a specific emotional state, suggesting that a loosening of top-down control may facilitate emotional experience during acting. Together, the mixed-method findings suggest that acting may cultivate interoceptive awareness and that actors rely on a number of personally tailored strategies to alter their emotional states, which could be better understood through future research controlling for specific acting techniques and situational contexts.

Melville and Mannerism argues that the deformation of inherited form in Moby- Dick is organized by a Mannerist problematic in which measure, matter, and telos pass through a literary order of disproportion, tension, incompletion, and re-formation. The thesis—beginning with the European art made available to Melville and the text’s own sustained attention to painting, sculpture, and architecture—reads Mannerism less as a period in art history and more as a recurrent working method in which a preconceived order endures through stretch, strain, distortion, and unfinishedness. Critics have long recognized Melville’s art-historical engagements; what has yet to be developed is the Mannerist mode by which these concerns gather around deformation. The thesis follows the logic through three primary modes—i.e., disproportion, tension, and incompletion. It is in Chapter II where I argue that disproportion emerges when the whale strains past every available measure, converting scale, ekphrasis, and perception into signs of representational failure. From measure, I then turn to matter in Chapter III, to demonstrate how Ahab’s bronze-cast body—through Cellini, the figura serpentinata, enargeia, and metamorphosis—turns mutilation into Mannerist tension. Chapter IV then takes incompletion—through roughness, indistinctness, and lack of finish—as Melville’s deformation of telos, arguing that he transforms the absence of completion into a positive Mannerist mode. I then conclude the study by arguing that Mannerism names the formal logic through which Moby-Dick deforms scale, matter, telos, relation, and belief in order to make re-formation possible.

My Father’s Daughter follows Laura, a young woman who flees a patriarchal village where storytelling is punished as sin, to a city where she intends to write a novel that will prove her stories are true. The world she enters operates on dream-logic: mermaids, crows, and boarding houses where oblivion is served teacups and publishing contracts are linked to the Devil’s Grandmother. The obstacles she encounters are simultaneously external and psychological—the city, a projection of the self that was shaped by suppression. At its center, the novel is a study in creative paralysis. Laura carries everything like a live thing in a drawer in her chest. What she’s learning to do is act. My Father’s Daughter traces the unbridgeable distance between the hunger for recognition and the terror of the blank page. Drawing on the tradition of feminist surrealism and the fairy tale rewritten from within, the novel asks whether a woman can stop living inside the stories for which she was punished for believing long enough to write her own.

This study investigated whether a brief mindset-reframing intervention could influence perceived energy and state focus. Drawing upon previous mindset-placebo research, the study tested if reframing the perception of daily work tasks would produce immediate shifts in self-reported energy and focus. An online experiment was conducted with 41 adults who worked in customer service roles that are in-person with face-to-face customer/client interactions. Participants were randomly assigned to either an intervention or control condition. In the intervention condition, customer service work tasks were framed as energizing and focus-enhancing, while the control condition presented neutral, customer service information. Pre- and post-intervention measures of subjective energy and state focus were completed by all participants. Results indicated a significant Time x Condition interaction for both outcomes. Participants in the intervention group reported immediate increases in perceived energy and focus. Participants in the control group did not report comparable increases. These findings contribute preliminary evidence that the way a task is framed and subsequently perceived may shape felt experience, even when the task itself remains unchanged.