Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning; and, (M. Arch. in Advanced Studies)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1976. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Rotch. / Includes bibliographical references. / M.C.P. / M.ArchAS

Thesis. 1977. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography : leaves 188-190. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 196-197. / by Tracy Renée Smith. / M.C.P.

This thesis investigates the female labor force of the Lowell textile mills from 1820 to 1850. First, it describes the development of the Lowell system and the philosophy on which it was founded. Next, it examines the working conditions in the mills and the daily lives of the women who worked in them. Finally, it describes the circumstances that brought about labor unrest and ultimately a complete change in the work force at Lowell, from the young, single, New England farm women to immigrant laborers. A variety of primary sources, such as letters, diaries, essays and poems written by the mill workers themselves, provide insights into how these women viewed their work, their lives, and the events that transformed the factories and city of Lowell. / Master of Arts

Thesis advisor: Marilynn S. Johnson / Thesis advisor: Davarian L. Baldwin / Drawing on urban history methodologies that re-frame "white flight" as a racialized struggle over metropolitan space and resources, this dissertation examines the transition of Lawrence, Massachusetts to New England's first Latino-majority city between 1945 and 2000. Although the population of this small, struggling mill city has never exceeded 100,000, it is not unique in its changing demographics; low-tier cities have become important nodal points in transnational networks in recent decades, as racialized patterns of urban disinvestment and gentrification encouraged a growing dispersal of Latinos from large cities like New York. While Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Cubans gradually began to arrive in Lawrence in the 1960s, tens of thousands of white residents were already leaving the city, moving (along with Lawrence's industrial and retail establishments) out to the suburbs. As a result of this flight, the city was suffering from substantial economic decline by the time Latino settlement accelerated in the 1980s. Not all of Lawrence's white population fled, however. Instead, many white Lawrencians fought to maintain control in the city and to discourage Latino settlement. I focus on two nights of rioting between white and Latino residents in 1984, as a spectacular example of the racialized contestations that accompanied the city's social and economic transformations. Although the political power and public presence of Latinos dramatically increased in the years after the riots, half a century of uneven metropolitan development had left Lawrence without the resources or political clout to successfully confront the city's pervasive poverty. Lawrence's history demonstrates the expansion of urban crisis during the 1980s, and its impact on Latino communities in the Northeast. The building of a Latino majority in Lawrence was not simply a demographic shift; rather it was an uphill struggle against a devastated economy and a resistant white population. The transformation of Lawrence in spite of these obstacles highlights the energy and commitment that Latinos have brought to U.S. cities in crisis during the second half of the twentieth century. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: James M. O'Toole / This dissertation examines the religious environment in nineteenth-century Massachusetts created by church disestablishment and a theological schism. Congregationalists, bound to God and to one another with a sacred covenant, were the traditional beneficiaries of the state's constitutional requirement that towns raise tax revenue for "the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality." The nation's last church establishment system was not removed until a statewide referendum in 1833, but, in practice, it had eroded earlier as Congregational churches encountered internal and external religious dissent. The mechanics of the establishment system had often been used by residents, including those liberal church members who eventually adopted the name Unitarians, to obstruct orthodox Congregationalists from operating more than 100 local churches in Massachusetts. These changes compelled Congregationalists to voluntarily support their churches prior to formal disestablishment, effectively ending the establishment system town-by-town and removing those churches from the center of town life. The lived religious experiences dramatically changed. Laymen took advantage of Congregationalism's inherently decentralized structure and gained control of their local churches. They sought to maintain the purity of their individual covenants by expelling absent members and those espousing theological heresies. In the process, local ministers were marginalized and dismissed with increasing frequency. Tensions arose between many in the clergy elite, who advocated for denominational consistency, and the laymen, who defended the autonomy of their local church. The story of antebellum Congregationalism in Massachusetts, rather than being part of an emerging national denominationalism, was actually one of an inward turn, a type of atomization of the religious denomination. The uncoordinated actions on the local level helped prompt the first national gathering of Congregationalists in more than two centuries, but suggestions for the adoption of explicitly "Congregational" elements by local churches were rejected by the laity. Congregationalism emerged from the Civil War with these antebellum changes made permanent and entrenched as a parochial, laity-driven denomination. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: John C. Hepburn / The bedrock geology of the Maynard quadrangle of east-central Massachusetts was examined through field and petrographic studies and mapped at a scale of 1:24,000. The quadrangle spans much of the Nashoba terrane and a small area of the Avalon terrane. Two stratigraphic units were defined in the Nashoba terrane: the Cambrian to Ordovician Marlboro Formation and the Ordovician Nashoba Formation. In addition, four igneous units were defined in the Nashoba terrane: the Silurian to Ordovician phases of the Andover Granite, the Silurian to Devonian Assabet Quartz Diorite, the Silurian to Devonian White Pond Diorites (new name), and the Mississippian Indian Head Hill Igneous Complex. In the Avalon terrane, one stratigraphic unit was defined as the Proterozoic Z Westboro Formation Mylonites, and one igneous unit was defined as the Proterozoic Z to Devonian Sudbury Valley Igneous Complex. Two major faults were identified: the intra-terrane Assabet River fault zone in the central part of the quadrangle, and the south-east Nashoba terrane bounding Bloody Bluff fault zone. Petrofabric studies on fault rocks in two areas indicated final motion in those areas: the sheared Marlboro Formation amphibolites indicated dextral transpressive NW over SE motion, and the Westboro Formation Mylonites indicated sinistral strike-slip motion. Fracture characterization of entire quadrangle where attributes (orientation, trace length, spacing, and termination) of fractures and joints were used to identify dominant sets of fractures that affect the transmissivity and storage of groundwater. Orientations of SW - NE are dominant throughout the quadrangle and consistent with regional trend. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Geology and Geophysics.

Thesis advisor: Alan Rogers / Until the late 20th century marriage in the United States meant "the legal union of a man and a woman as husband and wife." In 2003, this was forever changed when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found a state law barring marriage between two individuals of the same sex unconstitutional in Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health (2003). The case triggered a legal and social transformation for LGBT civil rights. Same-sex marriage has become one of the most widely discussed legal topics in the past ten years. This thesis examines the content, context, and significance of this particular case and the effect it has had on the American legal and cultural landscape. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: Yvette Kuiper / 40Ar/39Ar single-grain total-fusion ages of muscovite and biotite and one 40Ar/39Ar furnace step-heating age of hornblende from the Tadmuck Brook Schist, Nashoba Formation, and Ball Hill mylonite zone are used to reconstruct the late tectonic and metamorphic history of the Nashoba terrane in eastern Massachusetts. The data fall into three age populations. Age population I (~376-330 Ma) is interpreted as cooling after a migmatization event in the Nashoba terrane, population II (~300 Ma) may be associated with normal movement on the Clinton-Newbury fault, and population III (~267 Ma) is possibly related to cooling of the Rocky Pond Granite. No younger Alleghanian overprint was observed. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Thesis advisor: Marvin Kraus / Thesis advisor: Matt Rutledge / The state of Massachusetts implemented a health care reform in 2006 that induced a number of changes to its health care system. Studies regarding this reform bear a certain degree of predictive power on the national scale because the reform was used as a model for the Affordable Care Act, the highly controversial national health care reform law passed in 2010. Most of the research on health care reform focuses on the costs, not the quality, of health care. I utilized a difference-in-differences statistical design to isolate the impact of the Massachusetts reform on the state's asthma mortality rate, a health care quality indicator. Given certain assumptions, my empirical results indicate that the reform led to a 45.38% reduction in asthma mortality in Massachusetts. Due to the similarity between the Massachusetts and the national health care reform laws, I drew the conclusion that national asthma mortality rates will decrease after 2014 when certain key provisions of the national reform come into play. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.