VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
From the Politics of Everyday Resistance to the Politics From Below: Migrant Care Worker Activism in Canada
Keywords: migrant workers, domestic work, care work, social movements, Canada, Filipino immigrants, Canadian public policy, activism, resistance

The purpose of this dissertation is to understand why, when, and how migrant care workers in Canada have engaged in political actions to resist their living and their working conditions. I do so by analyzing primary source documents at the National Archives of Canada and the Canadian women’s movement archives, conducting interviews with 103 migrant care worker activists across Canada and in various activist sites in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and Geneva, Switzerland and attending and observing various events sponsored by local and national organizations in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, by mainstram international organizations like the International Labour Organization (ILO) and by grassroots international organizations like the International Migrants Alliance (IMA). By assessing the multiple scales where migrant care worker activists resist their living and working conditions, I was able to trace the interlinkages between the ‘politics of everyday resistance’, of which migrant care workers’ individual and organizational forms of micro-rebellion are a part, and the ‘politics from below’ that characterizes the Canadian migrant care workers’ ‘movement.’ In doing so, migrant care workers counter academic and popular representations depicting them as being docile and compliant. They demonstrate their capacity to contest individual micro-aggressions at home and at work, to form ‘new’ transnational family arrangements to meet their needs, to shift the discourse on migrant care work, to faciliate important changes to Canada’s policies on migrant care work, to help ensure the passage of the landmark international “Convention on Domestic Work,” and to begin discussions on alternatives to labour migration and to sending countries’ economic dependence on receiving countries, among their many activities. Although the Canadian migrant care workers’ movement has key divisions – namely surrounding activist scope, strategy and normative inclinations – organizations representing migrant care workers are united in their conviction that migrant care workers’ interests matter and merit representation.
"Africa's Czechoslovakia": Internationalism and (trans)national liberation in Angola, 1961-1976
Keywords: United States Foreign Relations
Angola
Decolonization
National Liberation
Independence
Revolution
International Relations
Third Worldism
Transnationalism
Nationalism
Portuguese Africa
Empire

The list was found in a private archive in Lisbon. It recorded the names of a squadron of Angolan nationalist fighters, who throughout the 1960s and 1970s were embroiled in a protracted war of national liberation against the fading Portuguese empire. Little is known about these individuals, such as Commander Miguel Sebastião João or Commissioner João Constetavél, but their noms de guerre – “Che Guevara” and “Lumumba”, respectively – spoke volumes. By deliberately choosing such value-laden pseudonyms, Angolan nationalists invoked the revolutionary heritages of other Third World leaders, and situated their own independence struggle in a global battle against colonialism, racism, and minority rule. Despite British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s famous 1960 assertion that the “wind of change” in Africa was a political reality, Portugal fought steadfastly to remain the ‘last empire’. The ensuing battle for Angolan independence was many things: fifteen years of intense anticolonial struggle and the launch of almost three decades of civil war, a threat to white minority rule in southern Africa, and another battle on the long road to ending empire and colonialism. For some, Angolan independence represented the opening salvo in a period of renewed global competition, one that would take advantage of a weakened “west” to renegotiate the positions of power in the international system. The escalation of the crisis in 1975 cast doubts on the resilience of the bipolar cold war world order and indeed on the international system itself, drawing in actors from around the globe including the United States, South Africa, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. For others, Angola demonstrated how national liberation movements, as transnational actors, learned to operate within the international system to gain necessary material and moral support to help achieve their political goals. By studying Angola this dissertation addresses a constellation of neglected topics: the end of the Portuguese empire, the rise of Angolan nationalism, the roles of transnational actors, and the under-theorized relationship between the meaning(s) of liberation, revolutionary movements, and the wider international system.
The Politics of (Dis)Engagement: Coptic Christian Revival and the Performative Politics of Song
Keywords: Coptic Christian
Egypt
identity politics
popular song
martyrdom

This dissertation explores Coptic Orthodox political (dis)engagement through song, particularly as it is expressed through the colloquial Arabic genre of taratil. Through ethnographic and archival research, I assess the genre's recurring tropes of martyrdom, sacrifice, willful withdrawal, and death as emerging markers of community legitimacy and agency in Egypt's political landscape before and following the January 25th uprising in 2011. Specifically, I explore how Copts actively perform as well as sing a pious and modern citizenry through negations of death and a heavenly afterlife. How do they navigate the convergences and contradictions of belonging to a nation as minority Christian citizens among a Muslim majority while feeling that they have little real civic agency? Through a number of case studies, I trace the discursive logics of “modernizing” religion into easily tangible practices of belonging to possess a heavenly as well as an earthly nation. I begin with Sunday Schools in the predominately Christian and middle-class neighborhood of Shubra where educators made the poetry of the late Coptic Patriarch, Pope Shenouda III, into taratil and drew on their potentials of death and withdrawal to reform a Christian moral interiority and to teach a modern and pious Coptic citizenry. I also outline how one affluent choir from the comfortable neighborhood of Heliopolis, The Holy Family Choir, undertook yearly taratil service trips to the peripheries of popular religious festivals to make the interiority of their Christian citizenry more audible through public processions of taratil. Finally, I explore the ministry of one charismatic Orthodox singer, Maher Fayez, as part of a larger evangelical trend that advocates that a heavenly citizenship can be achieved right here on earth. Maher Fayez's revival contradicted Pope Shenouda's ascetic meditations and use of martyr motifs through counter-narratives of spiritual happiness, interdenominational worship, and the use of mediated taratil to effect visceral encounters with God. In the case studies presented throughout this study, I argue that Coptic (dis)engagement is not a form of passive political engagement but rather, is a public negotiation of faith and Egyptian civic identity in forms of spiritual service, song, and audible practices of piety.
CHAF1A Regulates PRC2-mediated Epigenetic Menory
Keywords: epigenetic
CHAF1A

During DNA replication both genetic and epigenetic information on DNA and nucleosomes needs to be faithfully reproduced. Although DNA replication is well described, the mechanism of nucleosome and epigenetic replication is not well understood. We studied this issue in the context of the IFNγ-responsive genes (ISGs). Previous work in our lab showed that in the BRG1-deficient SW13 adenocarcinoma cells, the Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) blocks IFNγ-induction of CIITA and a subset of other ISGs. We detected the repressive PRC2– mediated epigenetic mark, H3K27me3, across the CIITA locus and at the promoters of other PRC2-regulated ISGs. We hypothesized that other unknown factors collaborate with PRC2 in repression of ISGs. To identify the components of this repressive apparatus, we performed an siRNA screen using a BAC-CIITA vector containing all the remote elements crucial for CIITA regulation. The screen yielded an unexpected novel link between the histone chaperone, CHAF1A, and PRC2. We show that siCHAF1A rescues PRC2-repressed genes in a cell cycle dependent manner. Interestingly, siCHAF1A does not lead to a loss but a redistribution of H3K27me3. Therefore, we believe that CHAF1A coordinates repressive epigenetic memory by regulating the genomic positions at which PRC2 methylates histone H3K27 during DNA ii synthesis. Our study thus, for the first time provides important clues regarding how the epigenetic memory of this important PRC2-mediated mark is maintained in mammalian cells.
Identification and Validation of Novel Oncogenes and Tumor Suppressors in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma
Keywords: Pancreatic adenocarcinoma
Tumor suppressors and oncogenes

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is driven by somatic genetic alterations. Functional studies are essential to classify PDAC alterations as either drivers or passengers of this disease. In this work I hypothesized that integrative genomics and functional studies will identify and validate novel drivers of pancreatic carcinogenesis. In the first study I uncovered common and differential roles of cyclin Ds in PDAC. Results suggest that CCND3 is the primary driver of the cell cycle, in cooperation with CCND1 that integrates extracellular mitogenic signaling in PDAC cell lines. Furthermore, CCND1 plays a role in PDAC cell migration. In the second study I identified CCDC68 as a putative tumor suppressor gene in PDAC. Loss of CCDC68 resulted in increased in vitro proliferation and in vivo tumorigenicity of PDAC cell lines associated with amplified MAPK signaling. Loss of CCDC68 function in PDAC was documented through copy number loss and the expression of novel CCDC68Δ69-114 variant devoid of tumor suppressive function. Truncated in-frame protein CCDC68Δ69-114 was shown to be a result of exon skipping in 30% of patients harboring donor splice variant rs.1344011. I also report that the expressed ratios of CCDC68 wt/Δ69-114 variants fluctuates among different patients suggesting that the tumor suppressive function of CCDC68 might be regulated by a critical balance between two isoforms. The third study explored the molecular mechanism(s) of CCDC68 tumor suppression in PDAC. To this end, the biology between tumor suppressive CCDC68wt and non-tumor suppressive CCDC68Δ69-114 variant was compared in H6c7 and 293T cells. Analysis revealed that both isoforms associate with centrosomes in interphase, disappear in mitosis and interact with mother centriole protein CEP170. However, loss of 69-114 amino acids in CCDC68 variant significantly decreased its protein stability further shown to be associated with loss of the lysine acetylation site K94. These findings suggest that the CCDC68Δ69-114 variant is not a stable protein and also point to the significance of lysine acetylation regulating the tumor suppressive properties of CCDC68 protein. Overall, this dissertation reports cyclin D1, cyclin D3 and CCDC68 as genetic alterations playing significant roles in pancreatic carcinogenesis.
The Rules of Engagement: Understanding Evaluation from the Perspective of Book Critics
Keywords: Evaluation
Art/Culture
Books
Critics

In this dissertation, I examine how book critics establish the literary value of new books through their reviews. And I do so with an analytic focus on the fact that, contra ideals regarding objectivity and dispassionate review processes, critics are real people embedded in real social, cultural, and epistemic contexts which shape how they understand their role as evaluators and ultimately how they review. The dissertation is comprised of three interrelated studies prepared and presented as stand-alone articles. Data come from quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 265 book reviews and interviews with 30 book critics who have published reviews in major American newspapers such as The New York Times, The LA Times, and The Washington Post. And although the terms “novelist”, “books”, and “fiction” proliferate the text, this dissertation does not belong squarely to the sociology of literature. It is in more natural dialogue with cultural sociological work on legitimation, economic sociology, and sociological interest in inequality/stratification. In this first study, I consider how critics, writing for American audiences, impute broader understandings of ethnic and racial difference to their evaluation of books by foreign and racial minority writers. In the second study, I identify four epistemic strategies by which critics hope to turn transform their immediate subjective responses to books into reasoned and inter-subjectively valid appraisals of new books, which they inscribe in their reviews. In the third and final study, I focus on how book critics are structurally embedded in the American literary field with many reviewers themselves being working writers reviewing their peers. And I detail the myriad of professional, interpersonal, and moral tensions that arise from this arrangement, which has direct consequences for what critics put in their reviews.
Morality of personal punishment: Deterrence and revenge
Keywords: ethics
personal punishment
private punishment
revenge
payback
retribution
reactive attitudes
moral anger
evaluative anger
resentment
moral hatred
fighting back
honour
emotional maturity
moral maturity
deterrence
boycotts
quasi-punishment
disincentive agreement
remorse
apology

It is a fact of daily life that individuals punish other individuals for harms or offences that are not against the law, by means that are also not against the law. But the moral legitimacy of this practice is rarely questioned. Moral critiques of punishment are typically directed at institutional punishment, not personal punishment. This dissertation takes initial steps toward answering the question of whether personal punishment is morally permitted. In it, I examine two kinds of personal punishments. The purpose of one is to deter, and the other, to obtain some kind of payment, a “payback”. I ask whether either of those purposes is also a sufficient moral reason for punishing. I conclude that neither is, with qualifications, leaving other plausible justifications of personal punishment, such as reciprocity, education, and communication, for future research. I argue that while deterrence can remain a purpose without being a sufficient moral reason for personal punishment, it is doubtful whether receiving payment can even be a purpose, since personal punishment as “payback” is unable to fulfill it. To demonstrate the latter, I begin by explaining first that receiving certain kinds of payments cannot constitute punishments, and second that payment received in virtue of the other’s suffering is most likely to be an emotional satisfaction of some sort. After examining the roles of relevant psychological states, for or against the permissibility of personal punishment, I single out resentment, particularly because of its association with self-esteem and sense of honour, as the most relevant state. I then argue that the proper satisfaction of resentment requires payment of a remorseful apology. Therefore the suffering of the other that satisfies resentment is distinct from the suffering caused by punishment. I argue that satisfying resentment, fully or partially, is a moral reason for some actions that would constitute alternatives to personal punishment, but not for personal punishment itself. Moreover, if punishment cannot satisfy resentment, the payment of resentment-satisfaction cannot even be a purpose for personal punishment.
Epigenomic Studies of Twins and Brain Diseases
Keywords: Epigenetics
Major Depressive Disorder
Alzheimer's Disease
Monozygotic Twins
DNA modification
Complex Diseases

It has been generally accepted that complex diseases are caused by genetic and environmental factors; however, both genetic and epidemiological research programs are facing significant difficulties in explaining the etiopathogenesis of complex diseases. It has been suggested lately that inclusion of putative epigenetic disease mechanisms may enable one to bypass the limitations of the traditional research strategy and allow the integration of genetic and environmental risk factors into a new theoretical framework. In this thesis, we analyzed normal human twins to demonstrate that monozygotic twins exhibit numerous epigenetic differences, not all of which were caused by environmental factors. We also showed that dizygotic twins were epigenetically even more divergent than monozygotic twins, which suggests that heritability may not be an exclusive function of DNA, but may also extend to epigenetic factors. In order to address the role of epigenetic factors in diseases, we performed large-scale epigenomic studies of singletons and twins who were discordant for major depressive disorder and Alzheimer's disease. We investigated DNA modification patterns across multiple tissue types and applied a series of innovative analytical techniques to explore the various aspects of DNA modification differences between normal and diseased individuals. In the major depressive disorder study, we investigated the confounding effects of disease heterogeneity and the age-dependent changes in variation of DNA modification. We uncovered several unknown epigenetic facets, such as long-range epigenetic effects, epigenetic outliers, and changes in the epigenomic networks. In the Alzheimer's disease study, we found evidence for loss of epigenetic uniqueness in the aging brain, which progresses faster in patients with dementia. This work adds to the notion that epigenomic studies can transform our understanding regarding the origin of complex diseases.
For the Love of Metaphysics: From the Revolution in Thinking towards the Renewal of Thinking
Keywords: transcendental arguments
freedom
reason

One of Kant’s most original insights is the notion that we can construct a philosophical argument—a transcendental argument—whose central premise makes a first-personal appeal to our moral sentiments. Kant characterizes the epistemic force that accrues to the concepts and ideas that are justified by this form of philosophical argument as “moral belief” or “moral certainty,” and he calls the propositions that are demonstrated by such arguments “postulates of practical reason.” My dissertation has two interrelated aims. First, to exhibit the most significant repercussions of this basic Kantian insight for philosophical methodology, for our conceptions of human freedom and moral agency, and for the possibility of religious belief. Second, to show that Franz Rosenzweig’s theism is supported by what we may regard as a transcendental argument that reveals the conditions of possibility for understanding ourselves as beings endowed with ethical value. Because the repercussions of Kant’s discovery of a “moral proof” came into focus in the two decades after the publication of the first Critique, my dissertation starts by interpreting the philosophical significance of the early reception of Kant’s Critical philosophy. I argue that two of Kant’s earliest critics, Salomon Maimon and F. H. Jacobi, compelled the post-Kantian idealists to broaden the scope of Kant’s “moral proof” and transform his original insight into the idea that philosophy as a whole should be established on a practical foundation. My dissertation then examines how J.G. Fichte and F.W.J. Schelling appropriated Kant’s idea of a “moral proof” and transformed the idea into the more radical view that reason, as a whole, is practical. The final part of my dissertation brings the discussion about the nature of transcendental arguments to bear on topics in the philosophy of religion. I show how the metaphysical and theological framework that Schelling develops in his 1809 Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and in his 1811–1815 Ages of the World fragments grounds his conception of freedom and moral agency, and I argue that Schelling’s theology is the main source of inspiration for that developed by Rosenzweig in the Star of Redemption.
Oxidative Stress Mechanisms in Alcohol Developmental Toxicity
Keywords: oxidative stress
fetal alcohol spectrum disorder
teratogenesis
embryology
methanol
ethanol

Consumption of alcohol (ethanol, EtOH) during pregnancy can result in a spectrum of anomalies termed the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD), characterized by structural and behavioural deficits, while in utero exposure to methanol (MeOH), a structurally similar alcohol, enhances structural malformations in rodents. The mechanisms underlying these toxicities are unclear, however reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been implicated. I hypothesize that prenatal exposure to EtOH or MeOH enhance the formation of ROS, which oxidatively damage fetal cellular macromolecules (DNA, protein, lipids) and/or alter fetal redox-sensitive signal transduction, causing structural birth defects and postnatal neurodevelopmental deficits. If so, then altering the balance of pathways of ROS formation and detoxification, and repair of oxidatively damaged DNA, should determine teratological risk. This hypothesis was tested using the free radical spin trapping agent phenylbutylnitrone (PBN), and pharmacological and genetic modulations of the ROS-forming enzyme NADPH oxidase (NOX), the antioxidative enzyme catalase and the DNA repair enzyme oxoguanine glycosylase 1 (OGG1). Embryonic EtOH exposure oxidatively damaged embryonic DNA and enhanced structural malformations, which were: (1) blocked by the free radical spin trapping agent PBN; (2) decreased in transgenic mice expressing human catalase (hCat); (3) exacerbated in acatalasemic (aCat) mice; and, (4) exacerbated in OGG1 knockout mice in a genotype-dependent fashion. Fetal EtOH exposure enhanced fetal brain DNA oxidation and postnatal behavioural deficits in CD-1 mice, and in OGG1 knockout mice in a gene dose-dependent fashion; both effects were blocked by PBN. Interestingly, untreated OGG1 knockout mice exhibited a learning deficit compared to wild-type littermates, constituting the first report of a phenotype for these mice. Embryonic MeOH exposure enhanced embryopathies, embryonic protein oxidation and upregulated mRNA and protein expression of embryonic ROS-initiating NOXs in CD-1 embryos, providing the first evidence of NOX involvement in MeOH embryotoxicity. Embryopathies were respectively decreased and increased in hCat and aCat embryos. These results suggest that ROS are involved in the teratological mechanism of EtOH and MeOH, and that embryonic catalase, NOX, and DNA damage and repair are determinants of risk.