VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Domestic Dialogue: The Language and Politics of Adoption in the Age of Shakespeare
Keywords: English Renaissance Drama
Shakespeare
Adoption

This dissertation examines the representation of adoption in early modern English drama in order to analyze the language of social and familial relations in early modern culture. I propose that although these plays often ultimately support the traditional idea of a birth family, adoption challenges conventional notions of the family by making artificial, non-consanguine relations appear natural, thereby exposing the family unit as a social construction. I suggest further that adopted characters complicate notions of biological inheritance through their negotiations of language, place, and power. My dissertation thus explores the connections between historical language use and social status in early modern England; it couples early modern rhetorical theories and treatises with modern linguistic theory, drawing upon recent sociolinguistic scholarship. The result is to show that understanding how language demarcates social position is essential to illuminating the cultural intricacies of the plays of the period. In Chapters 1 and 2, I investigate the social and economic repercussions of adoption. Chapter 1 discusses the previously overlooked cultural importance of horticultural metaphors of adoption in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, Cymbeline, and All’s Well That Ends Well. In this chapter, I explore the ways in which early modern culture explained adoption by depicting it in a particular kind of figurative language. Chapter 2 focuses on the economic consequences of, and motivations for, adoption in Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. In my final two chapters, I scrutinize the relations between the early modern family and linguistic practice. Chapter 3 explores the connections between genetics, physical likeness, and language in Lyly’s Mother Bombie and Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. Finally, in Chapter 4 I investigate familial relation as a source of linguistic and social power. Middleton’s Women Beware Women, I argue, suggests that kinship exists within language and grants particular speakers linguistic and social authority.
The Benefit of the Doubt: Regarding the Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art, 1966-1973
Keywords: Photography
Conceptual Art

This dissertation offers a reconsideration of the uses of photography under the aegis of Conceptual Art between 1966 and 1973 by analyzing the ways photography challenged epistemological limits, and, despite the claims regarding the medium’s inherent indexicality, emphasized experience over exactitude, and doubt in place of certainty. By focusing on four American practitioners, I argue for the “benefit of the doubt;” in other words, for the value of disbelief and hesitation, marking the reorientation of art at this time towards critical methods which oppose all orthodoxies, including but not limited to formalist dogmas, and instead are committed to the denial of autonomy in favor of understanding meaning as infinitely contingent. The dissertation is divided among four key case studies, including Mel Bochner (n. 1940), Bruce Nauman (n. 1941), Douglas Huebler (1924-1997), and John Baldessari (n. 1931). Each chapter argues for the unique contribution of photography in relation to conceptual art practices, while also situating the projects of these individual practitioners within the broader history of the medium of photography. I explore specifically the concepts of seriality, transparency and theory in Bochner; performance, “worklessness,” and failure in Nauman; portraiture, mapping and impossibility in Huebler; humor, didacticism, choice and chance in Baldessari. This project looks back continuously to significant precursors, in particular the work of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), as a means of engaging the status and function of art after the Readymade, particularly as concerns de-skilling, disinterest, affirmative irony, and nominalism, as well as the dialectic between inclusivity and inconclusivity.
Exploring Sources of Human and Environmental Fluorochemical Contamination
Keywords: Environmental Chemistry
Fluorochemicals

Perfluorinated carboxylates (PFCAs) and perfluorinated sulfonates (PFSAs) are found almost ubiquitously in the environment, however their direct production and use is limited. The focus of this thesis was to explore connections between observed contamination with the manufacture and/or use of commercial fluorochemical materials. Perfluorinated sulfonamides (PFSAms) are semi-volatile materials used in the manufacture of commercial fluorochemicals. Investigations into the atmospheric fate of a model PFSAm found atmospheric lifetimes that allow transport to remote environments, potentially through a novel N–dealkylation product. A suite of PFCAs, as well as the PFSA from loss of the amide moiety, were also observed. This investigation demonstrated that PFSAm atmospheric oxidation will contribute to PFCA and PFSA contamination in remote locations, including the Arctic. The perfluorinated phosphonates (PFPAs) were used as defoaming additives in pesticide formulations. Using novel extraction and analysis methods, widespread PFPA contamination was detected in Canadian surface waters and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent. As fully fluorinated acids, the PFPAs are a new class of perfluorinated acid discovered in the environment. Uptake and elimination parameters determined in the rat demonstrate the potential for human PFPA exposure, as these chemicals are bioavailable. Processes governing the pharmacokinetics and disposition of perfluorinated acids in the body are poorly understood. Novel heteronuclear nuclear magnetic resonance experiments identified human serum albumin as the major site of interaction. Competitive binding experiments found the PFCAs displaced the endogenous human serum albumin ligand, 13C1-oleic acid, at lower concentrations than established ligands. The strong association observed between the PFCAs and human serum albumin may inform observed human toxic endpoints and long elimination half-lives. The polyfluoroalkyl phosphates (PAPs) are used in food-contact paper packaging. High PAP concentrations were discovered in human sera, waste paper fibres and WWTP sludge, establishing human exposure to these chemicals. Biotransformation from PAP to PFCA was investigated in a rat model. The serum kinetics and PFCA products observed, suggest PAP exposure may be a significant source of human PFCA contamination. The concerted approach of environmental monitoring with investigations of atmospheric and biological fate allowed strong associations to be made between commercial fluorochemical sources and observed contamination.
Repairing the Web: Spiderwoman's Children Staging the New Human Being
Keywords: Spiderwoman Theater
Storyweaving
Aboriginal Theatre
Poetics of Decolonization
Indigenous Knowledge
Actors' Process
Indigenous Story-work
Organic Dramaturgy

This dissertation documents and interrogates the process of Storyweaving, which has been authored and developed by Spiderwoman Theater, the longest running Native theatre company in North America and the longest running feminist collective in the world. Storyweaving is a distinct process that governs the dramaturgical structure and performed transmission of this company’s play texts on the contemporary stage. However, Storyweaving predates written history. It has been (and remains) specific to tribal storytellers across this continent. The reclamation, then, of this aesthetic legacy by contemporary Native storytellers is a crucial act of recovery, which imagines and architects a functional framework for a Poetics of Decolonization that may be adopted and adapted by tribal artists from myriad nations to create works (on the page and stage) that will effect the healing, transformation and survivance of their communities. Chapter One examines the early personal and professional histories of the Miguel sisters who are Spiderwoman’s founders. Through an exploration of their socio-economic positioning, their difficult home life, the racialized narratives by which they were defined outside the home and their artistic development within these impossible conditions, this chapter unpacks instances of personal and familial resistance to the forces of colonization and reveals the seamless weave that so inextricably binds art and life. Chapter Two documents the early history of Spiderwoman Theater and offers a processual analysis of its transformation from a multi-racial, feminist collective to an American Indian theatre troupe, charting the personal decolonization of the Miguel sisters and the intersection of this very personal transformation with the politically (re)vital(izing) creation of a decolonizing aesthetic. Chapter Three engages with this aesthetic to clearly demonstrate how it works within and through the living bodies who utilize it in the rehearsal studio. Next, I examine Spiderwoman’s published texts to reveal the ways in which the Storyweaving process has shaped the affects of these works on the artists and their audiences. Finally, Chapter Five names and evaluates the benefits of Spiderwoman’s legacy and estimates its future benefits as Spiderwoman’s heirs take up its process and adapt it to meet the needs of their communities.
Remixing Relationality: 'Other/ed' Sonic Modernities of our Present
Keywords: Afrodiasporic
Black Canada

Far from simply playing music, the turntable has, in recent decades, been transformed into a musical instrument. Those that play these new instruments, called Turntablists, alter existing sounds to produce new sonic arrangements, exceeding the assumed use value of the turntable. The turntable’s transformation from record player to instrument captures one of the ways in which Afrosonic sound making activities refuse to conform to existing paradigms of music making in the western world. Throughout the African diaspora, it has been the musics from various regions and nations that continually capture the attention of the world’s music connoisseurs. This dissertation examines the ways in which careful consideration of the sonic innovations in Afrodiasporic cultures produce alternative paradigms through which we might analyze contemporary life. The following chapters interrogate turntablism, remix culture and hip hop music as subtexts that elaborate a foundational narrative of Afrodiasporic life. These subtexts are used as tools to examine the various ethnoscapes of Black Canadian life, official multiculturalism and notions of home within the African diaspora in Canada. The dominant narrative of the African diaspora explored in this work, housed within the sonic, elaborates a relational conception of freedom and modernity born out of the particularities of Afrodiasporic life in the west. In this sonic narrative, participation becomes the key index by which freedom is understood, embodied and enacted. Consequently, a notion of relationality, deeply indebted to the Afrodiasporic experience, is utilized throughout this dissertation to access a conception of the human that lay outside of western Europe’s enlightenment definition.
Folate Absorption Across the Colon and the Modulation of Bacterial Folate Synthesis by Diet
Keywords: folate colon absorption
bacterial folate synthesis

While assessment of folate requirements has been based only on dietary intakes, folate produced by the colonic microflora can exceed amounts consumed in food. Bacterially synthesized folate is absorbed across the rat and piglet colon. In vitro studies suggest, but direct evidence is lacking that folate is absorbed across the intact human colon. If indeed folate is absorbed, the amount synthesized may be susceptible to manipulation by fibre and prebiotics intake. We therefore performed two studies to investigate folate absorption across the colon. To confirm absorption across the intact human colon, in our first study, 684 nmol (320 µg) 13C5-glutamyl-[6S]-5-formyltetrahydrofolate was infused into the cecum of six adults and blood samples were collected. Tandem mass spectrometry confirmed folate absorption across the colon by appearance in plasma of 13C5-[6S]-5-methyltetrahydrofolate, at a rate of 0.6±0.2 nmol/h versus 7±1.2 nmol/h after intravenous injection of 172 nmol 13C5-5-formyltetrahydrofolate. Since bifidobacteria are potent folate producers, in our second study we evaluated the influence of bifidogenic oligosaccharides on colonic folate production and host folate status, using a piglet animal model. Piglets (n=12) were randomly assigned a milk-based formula with 5g/L inulin + 5g/L galactooligosaccharides, or 5g/L maltodextrin (control). After 28 days, the weights of colon contents (178 %) and colon tissue (37.9 %) of piglets fed oligosaccharides were greater than controls (P=0.0003, P=0.0044, respectively). The bacterial load and folate contents in the colons of piglets fed oligosaccharides were greater than controls (P=0.0022, P=0.0218, respectively). Body weights, blood folate status and liver and kidney folate concentrations did not differ. In conclusion, folate is absorbed across the human colon. Supplementation of the piglet diet with 5g/L inulin and 5g/L galactooligosaccharides increased the amounts of microbial folate, and the weights of colon tissue and contents, but folate concentrations in colon contents, blood and organs were not affected.
Iraq and the Assyrian Unimagining: Illuminating Scaled Suffering and a Hierarchy of Genocide from Simele to Anfal
Keywords: Iraq
Assyrians
Genocide
Syriac
Minorities
Ethnic Cleansing
Nationalism
Nation-Building
Kurds
Aramaic
Anfal
Simele

The 1933 genocidal attacks on Assyrians in the Simele region defined the birth of the nascent Iraqi nation and identity. Iraq has ever been in the spotlight of ethnic and cultural strife, especially concerning Sunni-Shia animosity, and more recently in dealing with the Kurdish people and Iraqi Kurdistan. In most cases, however, the Assyrians are completely neglected from scholarship concerning Iraq and its peoples. This work reinserts the Assyrian people into the fabric of Iraq and discusses the violent and non-violent suppression of Assyrian identity and culture through genocide, cultural genocide, and ethnic cleansing. Three fundamental factors emerge from this reinsertion with respect to Iraq and genocide. First, this approach introduces an often-neglected element in Iraqi studies: the inclusion of minorities, or micro-minorities, within the existing discourse on Iraqi studies. Second, it contributes to genocide studies by examining the impact of the non-physical, or cultural, aspect of genocide. Further, it discusses the importance of the Assyrian case in Iraq for understanding Iraqi history, and serves as a case in point of scaling suffering and for understanding how and why a hierarchy of genocide exists.
Sulfate Resistance and Properties of Portland-limestone Cements
Keywords: Portland-Limestone cements
Sulfate Resistance
Thaumasite
Hydration

Portland-limestone cements (PLC) have been used in practice for a considerable period of time in several countries. In 2008, the CSA A3000 cements committee approved the addition of a new class of cement with up to 15% interground limestone. The CSA A23.1 concrete committee also approved the use of PLC in concrete in 2009. However, to date, due to uncertainty about the performance of Portland-limestone cements in sulfate environments, their use has not been allowed in sulfate exposures. In this study, the sulfate resistance of five different Portland-limestone cements and their combinations with various amounts of supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) were examined. Besides the standard tests performed at 23 °C, a modified version of the ASTM C1012 test was developed in this study (adopted in 2010 as CSA A3004-B) and used to investigate the possibility of thaumasite form of sulfate attack at 5 °C. It was found for tests conducted at 23 °C that while 100% cement mixes deteriorated in sulfate exposure due to conventional sulfate attack, partially replacing the Portland cements and Portland-limestone cements with 30% or 50% slag was effective in making the mixes highly sulfate-resistant. In sulfate exposure at 5 °C, all of the 100% cement mortar bars failed the test and had completely disintegrated due to the formation of thaumasite. Partially replacing cement with 30% slag was effective in controlling the deterioration at 5 °C only for Portland cements and not Portland-limestone cements. However, all the combinations of the cements with 50% slag were resistant to the thaumasite form of sulfate attack. In a parallel study, the hydration of Portland-limestone cements and the relationship between strength and porosity of mortar samples were examined. The results of hydration studies revealed that the limestone portion of Portland-limestone cements reacts with the alumina phases and produces carboaluminates, which contributes to the strength. As the limestone content of the cement increased, the shift in the optimum level of SCM providing maximum strength and minimum porosity was attributed to the availability of more alumina, which allowed more limestone to participate in the hydration reactions, forming additional carboaluminate hydrates.
The Challenge of Web Design Guidelines: Investigating Issues of Awareness, Interpretation, and Efficacy
Keywords: Guideline
Design

Guidelines focusing on web interface design allow for the dissemination of complex and multidisciplinary research to communities of practice. Motivated by the desire to better understand how research evidence canbe shared with the web design community, this dissertation investigates the role guidelines play in the design process, the attitudes designers hold regarding guidelines, and whether evidence based guidelines can be consistently interpreted by designers. Guidelines are a potential means to address the knowledge gap between research and practice, yet we do not have a clear understanding of the relationship between research evidence, guideline sets and web design practitioners. In order to better understand how design guidelines are used by designers in the practice of web interface design, four sequential studies were designed; the application of a guideline subset to a design project by 16 students, the assessment of ten health information websites by eight designers using a guideline subset, a web based survey of 116 designers, and interviews with 20 designers. The studies reveal that guideline use is dependent on the perceived trustworthiness of the guideline, its source and the alignment between guideline advice and designer experience. The first two studies found that guidelines are inconsistently interpreted. One third of the guidelines used in the second study were interpreted differently by participants, an inconsistency which represents a critical problem in guideline use. Findings showed no difference in the characteristics of guidelines which were consistently interpreted and those for which interpretation was the most inconsistent. Further, research evidence was not a factor in guideline use, less than half the designers are aware of evidence-based guideline sets, and guidelines are predominantly used as memory aids. Ultimately alternatives to guidelines, such as checklists or pattern libraries, may yield the best results in our efforts to share research knowledge with communities of practice.
The Effects of Cultural and Economic Capital on both Formal and Informal Learning for the Workplace
Keywords: education
adult education
informal learning
self directed learning
social class
Bourdieu
Social Reproduction Theory
continued education
post secondary education

The aim of the thesis was to explore the magnitude of inequity in accessibility to initial formal education, continuing adult education, and work-related informal learning for the workplace. The two main issues that the thesis attempted to determine is whether social background characteristics that affect initial educational attainment continue to influence participation in adult education and work-related informal learning. More specifically, this research focused on three main questions: First, to what extent does parents’ social background influence educational attainment levels for Canadians from different generations? Second, to what extent does parents’ social background influencing participation in adult education for their offspring beyond the effects of an individual’s own social background? And, third, to what extent does parents' social background have on their offspring’s participation in informal learning for the workplace beyond the effects of an individual's own social class background? A secondary data quantitative analysis was carried out on the data collected in the 2004 Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) survey. Both crosstab analysis and structural equation analysis were used to obtain an overview of inequities in participation in formal education and informal learning and to test the applicability of Bourdieu’s social reproduction theory. Overall, the findings of this thesis indicate that social reproduction occurs not only through the formal education system, but also through the adult education system. More specifically, parents’ education continues to be a good predictor of the level of education attained by offspring. Moreover, one’s level of education continued to be a predictor of participation in adult education. Social reproduction was not present for work-related informal learning. In fact, those from low incomes were more likely to engage in informal learning than those from high incomes. These findings indicate that despite level of cultural and economic capital, the majority of Canadians engage in a learning activity. It is apparent that structures that are present in our formal education system continue to advantage students with high cultural and economic capital; however, work-related informal learning is accessible to all.