NCube/papyrus huggingface dataset:
Generative models for natural images

We discuss modern generative modelling of natural images based on neural networks. Three varieties of such models are particularly predominant at the time of writing: latent variable models such as variational autoencoders (VAE), autoregressive models such as pixel recurrent neural networks (PixelRNN), and generative adversarial networks (GAN), which are noise-transformation models trained with an adversary. This thesis touches on all three kinds. The first chapter covers background on generative models, along with relevant discussions about deep neural networks, which are currently the dominant technology for implementing powerful statistical models. In the second chapter, we implement variational autoencoders with autoregressive decoders. This removes the strong assumption of output dimensions being conditionally independent in variational autoencoders, instead tractably modelling a joint distribution, while also endowing autoregressive models with a latent code. Additionally, this model has significantly reduced computational cost compared to that of a purely autoregressive model with similar modelling assumptions and performance. We express the latent space as a hierarchy, and qualitatively demonstrate the semantic decomposition of latent causes induced by this design. Finally, we present results on standard datasets that demonstrate strongly competitive performance. In the third chapter, we present an improved training procedure for a recent variant on generative adversarial networks. Wasserstein GANs minimize the Earth-Mover’s distance between the real and generated distributions and have been shown to be much easier to train than with the standard minimax objective of GANs. However, they still exhibit some failure modes in training for some settings. We identify weight clipping as a culprit and replace it with a penalty on the gradient norm. This improves training further, and we demonstrate stability on a wide variety of settings (including language models over discrete data), and samples of high quality on the CIFAR-10 and LSUN bedrooms datasets. Finally, in the fourth chapter, we present work in development, where we consider the use of modern generative models as normality models in a zero-shot out-of-distribution detection setting. We evaluate some of the models we have discussed previously in the thesis, and find that VAEs are the most promising, although their overall performance leaves a lot of room for improvement. We conclude by reiterating the significance of generative modelling in the development of artificial intelligence, and mention some of the challenges ahead.

Keyphrases: Deep learning, Generative models, Neural networks, Machine learning
À la recherche de Proserpine : la loggia du palais épiscopal de Bagnaia au temps du cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi (1541-1550)

Located on the border between Tuscany and northern Lazio, Bagnaia has been an ideal holiday resort for the most eminent members of the Roman Curia throughout the whole 16th century. For this reason, this small village of Tuscia became from the 1540s an important political and artistic center. Several studies have focused on the Villa Lante and its famous gardens, whereas the Episcopal Palace – better known as the “Loggia Palace” – has been ignored by scholars for a long time. This dissertation proposes, for the first time, a thorough study of the exceptional decoration of this spacious loggia, built between 1541 and 1548 for the Florentine cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi, Lorenzo de' Medici's grandson. The analysis of style allows first to review an incorrect attribution, as well as to formulate new hypotheses about the authors of the painting cycle, of which all scenes have been identified and deciphered. The mythological cycle is dedicated to the story of Ceres, goddess of agriculture. The decorative system is admirable for originality and erudition, and interacts with the two fountains situated in the loggia, representing the rivers Arno and Tiber. Finally, this dissertation gives a detailed reading of the pagan iconography in the cultural and religious context of Cardinal Ridolfi's court.

Keyphrases: Bagnaia, Grotesques, Loggia, Agriculture, Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi, Grotesque, Aeneas, Counter-Reformation, Italian Renaissance art, Grottesche, Enea
La Danaé de Jan Gossaert (1527) : entre courtisane vénale et Vierge élue

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the ovidian story of Jupiter and Danae became one of the most popular mythological subjects for artists of the time. The first major work of the Renaissance illustrating this scene, entitled Danae, dating from 1527, is attributed to the Flemish artist Jan Gossaert. While researchers agree that, from the sixteenth century onwards, the character of Danae was chosen by artists as a model of the courtesan, the version by Gossaert still remains a source of disagreement between them. The different readings of the painting establish iconographic similarities, on the one hand with the Virgin of the Annunciation and, on the other, with the courtesans of the Renaissance. My thesis focuses on these two paradoxical positions without rejecting one or the other in order to rethink the painting from a new angle.

Keyphrases: Renaissance, Profane, Jan Gossaert, Danae, Mythology, Renaissance, Sacred, Profane, Jan Gossaert
Le féminin et le diable : possessions et exorcismes comme manifestation de la répression sexuelle féminine

This paper examines the correlation between female sexual repression in American society and the production of possession films. It is a matter of seeing how this repression affects the way in which the possessed woman is represented on the screen. Using the psychoanalytic approach and feminist theories, I examine the subtext of the exorcism films as the manifestation of the return of the repressed. These films are the symptom of a patriarchal society that is still deeply anxious about the emancipation of women. This study looks at the analysis of the repetition of common characteristics between possession films produced following the success of The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Derrickson 2005) to finally make the observation that the body in revolt of young women struggling with a demonic entity is the very expression of the sexuality that is denied to them. Finally this essay is interested in the question of the spectacular attraction of the scene of exorcism by analyzing the staging and the physical performances that unfold there.

Keyphrases: possession, Diable, Vagina dentata, horror movie, exorcist, Horror movies, Exorcism, Women, Gender
La « cinématisation » des séries télévisées contemporaines : le cas inédit du parcours de la série française Kaamelott (Alexandre Astier, M6, 2005-2009)

Contemporary television is undergoing profound changes within a media landscape in which the boundaries between television and cinema are gradually disappearing. This research offers a study of these changes through the concept of “cinematization”. It will be first of all a question of analyzing the discourses on this complex notion. More than a merging of small and big screen, cinematization refers to a process whose effects remain visible in the creation, criticism, analysis and act of spectatorship of the television series. It will further be necessary to study the authorial and spectatorial figure of television. Finally, the unique process of the French series Kaamelott (Alexandre Astier, M6, 2005-2009) will serve as an example for illustrating the transformations that this audiovisual form undergoes at the level of narrative structure, aesthetics and viewing habits.

Keyphrases: Kaamelott, Television, Cinematization, Seriality, Narrative complexity, Orality, Authorship, Spectatorship
Tomboys and Crossdressers de Sadie Lee, vers une esthétique butch

This thesis explores the butch aesthetic of the painter Sadie Lee’s series of portraits, Tomboys and Crossdressers. Using masculine codes as a yardstick, definitions of butch lesbian identity frequently lack nuance, failing to attend to fine, yet crucial, distinctions that manifest within that identity. In order to provide a corrective to this heavy-handed approach, I tease out the subtleties of butch lesbian identity by bringing Sadie Lee’s works into dialogue with photographs by Del LaGrace Volcano and Catherine Opie. My cumulative consideration of these works, which each manifest butch aesthetics in distinct ways, pays particular attention to gesture as it contributes to the performance of masculinity, and also as it functions as a vehicle for communicating emotion. I then contextualise my analyses of gesture through an examination of trauma. My focus on trauma is rooted in the desire to counter a positive turn in queer studies that tends to erase longstanding denigrations of queer existence. My consideration of different media, namely painting and photography, permits me to highlight differing narratives of this trauma. My readings of the works of Volcano, for example, enhance understanding of the role of photography in the historical construction of images of sexual and gendered deviancy. The centrality of corporeality in Volcano’s artistic work offers a valuable means to appreciate the versatility of butch identity as an expression of gender and also demonstrates that butch aesthetics has numerous points in common with transgender aesthetics. In their turn, Catherine Opie’s self-portraits destabilise my prior conclusions. Opie redefines butch identity – and, concomitantly, the butch aesthetic – moving beyond trauma and offering, instead, an image of pleasure. Through these differing case studies, I demonstrate that the butch aesthetic is always dynamics, continually resisting the essentialisation of gender and sexual identity.

Keyphrases: Sadie Lee, Catherine Opie, Del LaGrace Volcano, art queer, Butch aesthetic, Queer art
La symbolique des couleurs dans un livre d'Heures du maître de Jean d'Albret (XVe siècle)

In this master’s thesis, it was mainly a question of the study of colors in a Book of Hours crafted in the late Middle Ages by the master of Jean d'Albret. This type of document was a book of prayer for the laity. Since, this is still a topic that isn’t really studied, it was decided to analyze illuminations found in this Book of Hours. The themes of these are: the Virgin and the Child, the Adoration of the Magi, Bathsheba in her Bath and Saint Michael against Satan. The main objectives of this study were to identify and demonstrate the origins and cultural buildings of the symbolic of colors in these four images. From this research, it came out that the most important and most used colors in the manuscripts are blue, red, gold, green, white and black. First of all, the symbolic of the color blue is love and it comes from the Virgin Mary. Red is the color of the blood of Christ and it most certainly means strength and courage. However, it can symbolize sin as in the case of King David and Satan. For gold, it represents light, therefore, God himself. In the case of the Magi, it is clear that green symbolizes youth through its association with vegetation and spring revival. White represents the purity of Bathsheba and black on the armor of Saint Michael means humility, because of its link with the clothing of monks.

Keyphrases: Color, Symbolic, Illumination, Book of Hours, Master of Jean d'Albret, Middle Ages
Unsettling Expo 67 : developmentalism & colonial humanism at Montreal’s world exhibition

At Expo 67, Canada’s Centennial Celebrations marquee event held in Montreal, three different sites grappled with the legacies of colonialism from multiple perspectives. The first site under study is the Indians of Canada Pavilion, which was replete with anticolonial messages about Canadian land theft to criticism of residential schools and Indian agents. At the opposite end of the Canada Complex stood the Canadian Pavilion, which retained a colonial discourse of reimagining Canadian and Indigenous representations within a wider discourse of global humanism. Canadian Pavilion representations of Indigenous peoples were continually used as a backdrop to a supposedly superior, more ‘developed’ settler society. The third site, the Du Pont of Canada Auditorium, played host to members of an international cohort of global intelligentsia during the Noranda Lectures and the Maclean-Hunter International Forum. The two speakers series featured articulations of western neocolonial ambitions on how best to reorganize local, national, and international societies, peoples, and cultures. At these three Expo 67 sites, colonial and neocolonial views on ‘development’ contrasted sharply with the anticolonial rhetoric of the Indians of Canada Pavilion and speakers such as Karl Gunnar Myrdal, Kushwant Singh, and Gabriel-Marie D’Arboussier. Analysing the three sites along the colonial/anticolonial dichotomy demonstrates how Expo 67 served as a site of localized discourse of colonial humanism and developmentalism in which each participating pavilion and presenter added their own perception of colonialism and development to a wider array of interlocking discourses on the value of human beings in globalizing societies.

Keyphrases: Expo 67, Canada, anticolonialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, Indigenous peoples, Canada, humanism, developmentalism, globalization
Analyse textuelle et comparée de la pensée du Tunisien Rached Ghannouchi (1941 – ) sur la liberté de religion dans l’État islamique

This thesis provides a critical analysis of Rached Ghannouchi’s thought and methodology in regards to the concept of the freedom of religion. This critical analysis is done on the basis of a comparison between his thought and that found in major works reflecting the four traditional Sunni schools of jurisprudence. The research question is how to identify the degree of conformity between his intellectual stance and those of traditionalist sources concerning the freedom of religion in the Islamic society. After having presented why Rached Ghannouchi is an important contemporary thinker and religious leader especially in Tunisia, we explain why it is difficult to categorize him in one or another current of thought among current Muslim thinkers and researchers of contemporary Islamic thought.    This thesis begins with a documentary analysis of Ghannouchi’s writings on the problématique of freedom of religion in the Islamic State. It then compares his thought on that specific topic to that of five major scholars of the traditionalist school of Sunni thought, four classical representing Maliki, Hanafi, Shâfi’i and Hanbali schools and one contemporary representing a Maliki Tunisian thinker, Al-Habîb Ben Tâhir (1958 — ). Finally, this thesis presents an analysis of the methodology by which Ghannouchi extracts his legal opinions from religious texts (Qur’an and Sunna), comparing it with the methodology used by those above five specialists of the foundations of Sunni Muslim law. This thesis reaches the conclusion the methodology Ghannouchi used to derive his concept of the freedom of religion is analogous to the premodern traditionalist school of Sunni thought, although it differs on three important methodological points: the reading of scriptural texts in light of a new contemporary context, the rereading of juridical laws according to the current interest in the Muslim community, especially in Tunisia, and the broadening of the research corpus to current knowledge both internally and externally to Muslim communities worldwide.

Keyphrases: Rached Ghannouchi, Apostasie, Islam, Rached Ghannouchi, Islamic State, Religious Freedom, Freedom of Choice, Apostasy, Equal Citizenship, Religious Minorities, Islam, Traditional Schools of Thought, Islamic Jurisprudence
Les variétés de l'expérience ascétique : étude de la psychologie des pratiques de renoncement dans les textes du monachisme chrétien ancien et du bouddhisme Theravada

This thesis explores how psychology can bring a deeper understanding of different motivations likely to influence the way asceticism is experienced. An exploration of important texts of the ascetic tradition from two religions will allow us to understand how the phenomenon takes form in a theistic religion like Christianity and in a non-theistic tradition like Theravada Buddhism. Those texts will be analyzed from four angles. First, we will describe potential pathological motivations based on the DSM-5 diagnostic criterion to then contrast this reading with a healthier one based on positive psychology and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). We will then get out of this dichotomous vision to explore the impact of other dimensions which could influence the underlying motivations to asceticism. With regard to a theistic religion like Christianity, we will use attachment theory to analyze how the relationship with a significant figure or with a divine figure can have an impact on renunciation practices. To understand other factors that could be at stake in the case of a non-theistic religion, we will explore asceticism in Theravada Buddhism to see how this practice can lead to the development of a specific status in the renunciant’s membership group and to some advantages from an evolutionary standpoint. This analysis will give us a more nuanced understanding of the motivations in play in the case of religious behavior like asceticism.

Keyphrases: Asceticism, Christianity, Buddhism, Schizoid personality disorder, Acceptance and commitment therapy, Positive psychology, Attachment theory, Evolutionary psychology
Innovation in tradition : women's voices in hellenistic literature

This study looks at poems about women written by Greek female poets, so that we can have a better comprehension of the image of women. Greek female poets are very few and the majority of them appear during the Hellenistic period. Their work is mostly written in the form of epigrams. Anyte from Tegea, through her funerary epigrams about dead unmarried girls, draws attention to the relationship between daughter and parents. She depicts original scenes of mourning parents who find consolation in the memory of the qualities of their daughter, such as beauty and wisdom. In the Distaff, Erinna offers us an authentic image of the strong bond between herself and her friend Baukis, and gives a new dimension to marriage, which is linked to death. Nossis from Locri writes about feminine sexuality and creates a new image of a woman who openly praises the delights of Eros, yet she rejects the notion that sexuality should serve as a criterion for her honor and respectability.

Keyphrases: Epigrams, Funerary, Hellenistic poetry, Women poets, Femininity
Approches du regard-image dans Auschwitz et après, Aucun de nous ne reviendra de Charlotte Delbo 
et Écorces de Georges Didi-Huberman

Charlotte Delbo’s and Georges Didi-Huberman’s works are related to each other in some aspects. In Aucun de nous ne reviendra, the poetic testimony attests to Delbo’s experience at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, as well as it specifies in an unique way what to see and perceive. At the very heart of Delbo’s situation as a concentration-camp victim lies the question of knowing how to set up space and perspective. Should one look around and understand (and consequently survive)? Or not to look around and not see one’s fellows (thus also oneself) die? In Écorces, a work punctuated by photographs, the historian of art and philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman peers around, searching for traces from the past that have survived, looking for “the” place where his grand-parents were executed. He compares what he can see today to what he knows could be seen yesterday. It is also from four photographs taken by members of the Sonderkommando, a group of Jewish prisoners assigned to the crematoria as forced laborers, and themselves dead men on leave, that Didi-Huberman challenges our minds. Because of their overriding importance, the photographic heritage as well as what these images show, hide or unveil, open up our thinking. By questioning the scope of both poetical testimonies, and the creative use of the imagination in aesthetics, we aim at closely examining how looking at these images produce image-based literary or pictorial forms which turn out to be key threads in recollecting and transmitting the past.

Keyphrases: Charlotte Delbo, Georges Didi-Huberman, Shoah, Auschwitz, mémoire, image, testimony, memory, gaze, 20th century French Literature
Droit de cité: représentations de Paris et expériences de l'altérité dans Le syndrome d'Ulysse de Santiago Gamboa et Black Bazar d'Alain Mabanckou

This memoir aims to show how Santiago Gamboa’s Le syndrome d’Ulysse (2005) and Alain Mabanckou’s Black Bazar (2009) contribute, each in their own way, to the development of a "new narrative identity" of Paris (Régine Robin) through the description of the socio-cultural alterity experienced by the depicted characters. Both novels present "foreigners" who live in Paris and have a different perception of the cultural codes, conceptions of history and social practices prevailing in their new home town. If their situation leads them to take a critical look at these codes and practices, it also often confines them to the margins of society and underlines the communities' worrying tendency to isolate themselves from one another. Situated in the field of sociocriticism, this study explores the various rhetorical, narratological and semiotic processes by which these texts criticize or reject different discourses proposing problematic conceptions of social life that oppose, ignore or compete with each other.

Keyphrases: Paris, Alain Mabanckou, Santiago Gamboa, Black Bazar, literature, sociocriticism, city
De l'économie de la mélancolie du scholar : figures du pharmakon chez Robert Burton

An unrivaled summation of erudition, intelligence and humor in which all knowledge is stored and linked, Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621, 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651) is still today an object of research of great value for the history of medicine as well as for social and cultural history and the history of ideas. Composed in this particular period of in-between ages, The Anatomy constitutes a unique point of articulation between the still current authority of the hippocrato-galenic medical discourse, tributary of an indissociable union between a natural and a moral philosophy, and the advent of the remarkably modern spirit of labour/work and economics which the "Protestant ethic" opens up and which rather takes part in a gradual separation of the fields of science and morals. If Robert Burton, through the publication of his book, certainly intends to perpetuate the Greek tradition of melancholia as it was instituted, among others, by the Letters of the pseudo-Hippocrates, an aspiration which he reveals from the outset by the choice of his pseudonym: "Democritus Junior", we shall see that he is, however, not its most faithful disciple. The present paper will indeed examine how Burton lays the foundation of an ethic that no longer relies on the serenity of the wise man (as incarnated by Democritus of Abdera), who succeeded to eradicate, by the sole means of his reason and his will, his melancholy, but rather on the resignation of the gentleman devoted to the professional, civic and domestic task, capable of enduring indefinitely, and even profiting from, his ambivalent melancholy. A vocational posture characteristic of a distinctly modern ethic and which is ideally exemplified, in Burton’s book, by the more "positively" melancholic figure of the scholar. Particular attention will be paid, in the first part of this paper, to Burton's relationship with his book and his reader in order to identify the therapeutic/pathological potential of The Anatomy itself as a book. Then, we will look at the more implicit or peripheral healing strategies that are deployed in the text and which are attached to the more properly vocational dimension of the scholar's intellectual work and life.

Keyphrases: Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, repentance, vocation, scholar, melancholy, book, self-help, intellectual work, calling, Protestant ethic