http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39102 Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:16:43 GMT 2013-06-19T18:16:43Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79252 Underneath Harrison, Aimee (Aimee C.) Underneath is a full-length novel that follows Maggie Lawrence, a twelve-year-old girl growing up in the late 1970s, through the first eight months of her parents' divorce. To escape their fighting, Maggie crawls under her bed. There, she is transported to the Forest, a place where all the animals who were in the tree when the tree was cut down to make Maggie's bed are trapped. Maggie helps her friends attempt to escape the Forest, a place where nothing can change or grow, while struggling with the feeling that, in her real world, Maggie doesn't want anything to change or to grow. In an attempt to remain thin enough to fit under her bed and visit the Forest, Maggie develops an eating disorder, which eventually places her in the hospital. Through recovery, Maggie must learn to adapt to new changes in her life and accept her parents as they are, while also finding her own reasons to want to grow up and reflect these adults who aren't always perfect. Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, 2012.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79252 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79028 Catalogue of a Loss Berger, Larisa (Larisa A.) Catalogue of a Loss is a collection of sixty-two prose poems written within the past year and half. The work is printed on 4x6 cards. Each poem may be read individually from a single card or the poems can be read in sequences. Each poem maps to at least one prescribed sequence that is visually indicated on the card(s). In the case that the poem maps to multiple sequences that poem is reprinted so that each subset it belongs to may be individually represented. Within this document, I've provided re-printings of the cards along with four of the larger possible sequences I have framed for the reader (indicated by red / violet / cyan/ gold). There are no duplicates within this set therefore the described cross-referencing in which a single poem maps to multiple sequences is not represented. The reader is encouraged to make what he will of the sequences: my intention is that the relationships suggested by the proposed reading-sequences do not establish a single structure designed to constrain the reader but offer, instead, multiple structures that will inspire new relationships of the reader's own making. The work is a memoir-of-sorts. I began working on this piece in January 2011 knowing that I would write about my father who died in January 2007-ten years after he first began experiencing symptoms of dementia. In that time I took off the Fall semester and lived in San Francisco. Writing this work caused my own re-examination on life with my parents, life at MIT and life out in the world. The work examines my life at an intimate distance. Even the colors that I used to encode the poems are taken from our family portrait. The card-form emulates exactly how I was remembering my past: connections were formed and then blurred; random details were vivid and unforgettable while others completely disappeared. The resulting work explores the lines between art and life, between art-making and life-making, between past and present, between solitude and loneliness, between intellectual exile and the comforts of home, between "family" self and "independent" self. In the sixty-seven cards represented within this document are the past five years of my life. Thesis (S.B. in Humanities and Engineering)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, 2012.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 83). Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79028 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79024 The shield Iglesias, Brian (Brian M.) A young boy grows up in a future world buried under snow, a great factory and research lab with his father at the head. As he grows he is torn between the desire to be like his beloved father and the equally strong desire to get out from under his shadow in the eyes of those around him, in a world where there is nowhere else to go. Between chapters of this story, a trio of smaller stories set in the present day tells the tale of how the world reached the state shown in the future. Each is the same basic story of the invention of the titular shield that brought about mankind's collapse, told from the perspective of a different observer: once from the shield's inventor, once from a government agent who helped make it a weapon, and once from a former spy recalling parallels to historical events. In viewing parallel events from each of these smaller pieces the reader is able to see how all of the individual actions are rational despite the wholly catastrophic result, and the works also fill in the blanks in each other's stories of what happened as a whole. Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, 2012.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/79024 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77473 The twitcing eye : REM sleep and the emotional brain Beck, Taylor McGowin Sleep and emotion have been linked since the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep sixty years ago. Sleep, in particular REM sleep and the dreams it harbors, seems to modulate mood, restoring stability to the weary mind. Scientists have struggled to understand this link through the biological study of the brain, the psychological study of dreaming, and the clinical study of how sleep is affected by psychiatric illness. This thesis examines the history of sleep research in terms of its relationship to emotional processing, both from the physiological and the psychological perspective. We are introduced to the scientists who discovered REM in 1953, to those who tracked the links between the biochemistry of mood and of sleep, and to contemporary researchers who are exploring the link between sleep and mood using brain-scanners and electrodes to study the dreaming brain, and the sleep and dreaming of patients with mood disorders. On our journey we will experience both the progress sleep research has made this century, and the enduring mystery of why humans sleep and dream. Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2012.; Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 43-47). Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/77473 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z