Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal: Vol. 7 No. 1 (2014)
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Cover art by Krista Young
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Item Open Access Letter From the Editor(University of Oregon, 2014) Rheingold, CharlotteItem Open Access Artist's Statement: "Watercolor Cassowary"(University of Oregon, 2014) Young, KristaItem Open Access Guest Editorial: "Undergraduate Research and the Pursuit of a Meaningful Career"(University of Oregon, 2014) McNeely, Ian F.Item Open Access Art Feature: "Realization" and "Photon Translation #9"(University of Oregon, 2014) Crowley, WilliamItem Open Access Psychoanalysis and Noir's American Nightmare(University of Oregon, 2014) Zahariev, Albena VladimirovaSigmund Freud’s work on psychoanalysis offers relief from the void left by World War II and accompanying frustrations with the American Dream. In acknowledgement of Freud’s exposition of the danger of repression, noir permits the articulation of impulses repressed in the interest of war efforts through a narrative that functions as a nightmarish psychological expression. Furthermore, noir engages with Freud’s work on unconscious motives to creatively and psychoanalytically explore potential motives behind behavior considered disordered according to American principles – such as crime and self-destructive behavior. Noir demonstrates the strong influence of a disordering environment on a protagonist’s actions and motives, and promotes the value of a critically thinking “detective” who can explain disorder, encouraging the audience to fill this role themselves. Noir’s demand for active audience interpretation works in contrast to World War II war efforts, which demanded complete faith in government propaganda. In this way, noir inspires the audience to themselves challenge the feasibility of achieving the American Dream through an American work ethic, the hardboiled tradition, the ideology of individualism, and American values and traditions as a whole.Item Open Access The Real Consequences of Property Tax Compression for Oregon Public Schools(University of Oregon, 2014) Vedder, Andrea; Davis, MattSince Oregon's stringent property tax reforms in the mid-1990s, tax limitations have created a complex and somewhat unpredictable levy system for local public service administrators who rely on property taxes to fund their operations. School districts, in particular, have hit the tax limitations and been forced to reckon with expected but uncollected ("compressed") property tax revenue. This study examines the relationship between property tax compression rates and school production in Oregon, which we measure with the district-wide percentage of eighth grade students who meet or exceed state standards in the mathematics assessment. From the Oregon Departments of Education and Revenue, we've compiled a panel data set on 147 school districts over the six academic years from 2006-2007 to 2011-2012. We've created an Ordinary Least Squares model designed to control for demographic, financial, and fixed district and year effects that may affect a district or year's overall level of student achievement, and attempt to isolate the effect that property tax compression has on district production. Our results indicate that there is a significant quadratic relationship between property tax compression rates and student achievement, such that while low levels of compression have positive effects on achievement, compression rates above 17.33 percent will negatively affect production. Simply put, our results indicate that a small amount of tax compression paradoxically benefits school districts, but the high tax compression rates bring down a district's percentage of students who pass state mathematics exams.Item Open Access The Psychological Mechanisms of Oppression: Empathy, Disgust, and the Perception of Group Membership(University of Oregon, 2014) Harris, AlexanderFrom a psychological standpoint, the oppression and marginalization of certain groups can be understood on the basis of two emotional mechanisms, empathy and disgust. This essay seeks to illuminate how both emotions are heavily modulated by the perception of group membership and how both show the capability to be heavily influenced by social and cultural contexts. This cultural prejudice works by determining what markers of difference (such as skin color or religion) are socially salient, which allows groups to build hierarchies based on those differences that would otherwise remain irrelevant. This paper does not seek to justify group domination as an organic product of psychology, but rather to merely give an account of how the psychological phenomena of disgust and empathy accentuate and collapse, respectively, the borders between people on the basis of in-group and out-group perception. Using the results of psychological tests, the author draws out certain arguments that are philosophically telling as well as politically relevant. Taken together, the social and psychological construction of differences between racial groups in the United States has altered how and when empathy and disgust have been elicited, and has thereby facilitated the reification of extraordinarily oppressive and atrocious group biases into a strict hierarchal system. With this understanding of how group oppression is able to take place on a psychological level we can better understand what can be done to mitigate the negative effects of in-group, out-group interaction.Item Open Access Curiosity as Object: Egyptian Mumia in Early Modern Europe(University of Oregon, 2014) Kales, SpencerThroughout human history, people have maintained beliefs and practices that were meant to sustain health even though they seem, to the modern inquirer, to be quite ridiculous. A common source of medicinal material throughout history (even as recent as the 20th century in some cases) was human remains, either long dead or freshly deceased. One of these human-based ‘panaceas’ was mumia, the pulverized or tinctured extract of human corpses—mummies—mostly from Egypt. A variety of products fell under this designation, and could be found in wide temporal and geographical range. The paper will address the procurement, manufacture, sale, and distribution of this macabre cure in order to argue that its ubiquitous nature led to its eventual fall from popularity.