VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Fraternity on the Front Lines: Siegfried Sassoon, Fictive Kinship, and the First World War
Keywords: fictive kinship
First World War
Siegfried Sassoon
twentieth century
war-writing

Fraternity on the Front Lines examines the relationship between kinship and commemoration in the Great War diaries, poetry, and autobiographical prose that Siegfried Sassoon composed between 1915 and 1945. I contend that Sassoon’s account of his front-line service first developed as a direct consequence of the fictive kinship bonds that united fighting men together in France, to the exclusion of the Homefront civilians from whom these soldiers felt themselves irreparably exiled. These men perceived their shared combat experience as forming the foundation of their interdependent relationships, and of the war narrative that they soon produced. That narrative’s publication in their war-poetry and memoirs in turn supplied vivid details of the war that had remained otherwise inaccessible to most civilians even after 1918. Whatever its hostility to non-combatants, then, Britons began to adopt much of the combatant- writer’s seemingly unimpeachable account nearly verbatim: soldiers’ writings retroactively redefined the nation’s larger relationship to the war so that the collective British war narrative after 1930 came to over-emphasise the figure of the soldier-poet, around whom it began to build a canon of war-books. While recent scholarship has worked to rediscover writings by the very groups that soldier-kin sought to exclude—women, conscientious objectors, colonial subjects, and others still—it has so far missed how the once-dismissive Sassoon was himself forced to radically reconsider his earlier ideas of what “qualifies” one to testify to wartime sufferings. As I show in my last chapter, Sassoon experienced another great war, this time as a superannuated non-combatant at home in England. My reading of the long-ignored autobiographies that he began as this Second War approached (and only finished in August 1945) will update the reputation of one of the First World War’s best-known writers, now beginning to suffer from the success of his earlier, exclusionary writings. By showing how the older Sassoon finally expanded his conception of valid, experience-informed testimony well beyond his combatant kinship group, therefore, Fraternity on the Front Lines supports scholarship working to extend the Great War library beyond the received handful of soldier-poets that includes the young Sassoon and his closest comrades.
When Citizens Judge: Democratic Judgment in the Courts and Theater of Athens
Keywords: Ancient Law
Athenian Democracy
Attic Tragedy
Democratic Theory
Judgment
Political Theory

Abstract In When Citizens Judge, I compare judgment in the popular courts and in the theater of democratic Athens, examining how citizens reflect on questions of inclusion, political identity and the public good in these alternative sites. The Athenian case provides a particularly useful occasion for theorizing democratic judgment in theatrical settings, where citizens are brought together in a congregation of leisured listening, and legal arenas, where citizens as jurors must reach a definitive decision that carries the weight of penal sanction. My project proceeds along two tracks simultaneously: I argue that both the courts and the theater were spaces in which citizens reflected upon and reconstituted their common project; at the same time, I challenge the perceived unity of the Athenian public sphere. The dominant view is that Athenians learned vital lessons at the theater (about the excesses of empire, the instability of civic boundaries, or the tragic limits of human agency), and that these lessons informed their political judgment in the popular courts and in the Assembly. My research challenges this view both at a historical level and by rethinking the theory of judgment that undergirds it. I draw attention to the puzzling disunity of the Athenian public sphere, and in particular the dissonance between judgment in the theater and in the courts. Instead of theorizing judgment as a faculty or capacity that one develops in one site and then exercises in another, I argue that we should theorize judgment as a situated political practice. This requires attending to what I call “institutional charge,” including the political and institutional pressures placed on the judge, the required outcome or telos of a given judgment, the institutional constraints on narrative, and the civic role and relationship between the judges and those judged. Theorizing judgment in this way helps to explain the puzzle of the Athenian public sphere and is a resource for studying judgment in the contemporary context.
The “Silent” Shrew: The Taming of the Shrew in Text, Adaptation, and Performance
Keywords: adaptation
feminist performance
performance studies
Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew
theatre history

This dissertation writes a new performance history of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew that considers the play in a range of social, political, and historical contexts. I analyze the play’s texts, adaptations, and performances through theories of adaptation, while also deploying abject theory in response to my observation that, in order to insist on its real-world relevance in challenging injustice, the play has staged deeply unsettling epistemic and systemic violence as a way of mobilizing audiences to take action. My methodology also involves theories of the anecdote: Shrew actors have been received as enacting their notorious lives on stage, bringing the play to life, and giving it real-world efficacy. The first of this project’s four chapters addresses Shrew and its early responses, showing how nascent intertextualities in the discourse of Shrew and non-dramatic texts of the seventeenth-century gender debate resonated across modes in a way that I argue brought the debate to life. Chapter 2 explores how Katherine has been a defining role for the actress; I contend that Katherine-focused Shrews depended upon an idea that the actress was enacting her real persona, and that this made the role into a star-vehicle. Chapter 3 focuses on notorious and married couples who have played Katherine and Petruchio; I argue that anecdotes connected to leading actors were deliberately fashioned in service of transforming the play into a story about actors’ offstage relationships. The final chapter discusses how violence and the abject have been staged in radical adaptations, contending that these productions implicated audiences and demanded they acknowledge their privilege and reconsider their contributions to unequal and harmful power systems. My conclusion uses a production of an all-female Shrew I directed in 2013 in Saudi Arabia in order to reflect on what my performance history has demonstrated about Shakespeare’s play: Shrew has worked in the world as a reflection of real relationships and actual domestic violence, in turn functioning as an agent for challenging oppressive systemic structures. When audiences leave the theatre believing they have witnessed real violence, Shrew gains pressing real-world relevance, with audiences compelled to actively participate in social change.
Plautinopolis: Imagination and Representation in Plautus' Roman Comedy
Keywords: Latin drama
metatheater
performance criticism
Plautus
Roman comedy
Secondary Worlds

Scholarship on self-referentiality in Plautus’ Roman comedy has historically concentrated upon metatheater, highlighting the artificiality of performance conventions but largely taking the content of his plays as reflective of contemporary Greco-Roman reality, however stylized. By identifying a broader range of self-referential effects at work in his plays, including metageneric commentary upon the characters and plots of the New Comic tradition, I demonstrate that Plautus calls attention to the artificiality not only of their performance but also of their content. Plautine comedy is not set in the real world, I argue, but in a made-up, conventional location, “Plautinopolis.”Informed by scholarship on the worlds of science fiction and fantasy media, my first chapter offers a systematic model of Plautine generic conventions, conceptualizing them as the rules of an imaginary world in which all Plautus’ surviving plays are set. My second and third chapters propose that in emphasizing Plautinopolis’ artificiality, the plays’ self-referential effects encourage spectators to gain competence in the generic and theatrical conventions that define it; approaches from fan studies, theater semiotics, and narratology elucidate the processes through which viewers do so. Readings of Mercator in Chapter 2 and Poenulus in Chapter 3 illustrate how characters, too, may gain competence, and I argue that by habitually giving happier endings to more competent characters, Plautus shows spectators the stakes of understanding his play-world. With a reading of Curculio’s choragus speech, my final chapter argues that the imaginative worldbuilding that Plautine comedy encourages creates immersive effects through which spectators may participate as co-creators in playmaking. Recognizing the role that metagenre plays in reinforcing Plautinopolis’ artificiality reveals Plautus’ innovation in the representative dynamics of the New Comic tradition, which he casts as distinct from other theatrical genres in its aesthetics and relationship to its spectators. The imaginative demands that Plautine comedy makes of its viewers show Plautus’ persistent concern with their appreciation of drama as not merely a representative project, but a creative one, as well. The implications of this new model of Plautine representation extend from theater history to historicist work on Roman comedy to reception studies.
A Protective Role for Breast Cancer 1 (BRCA1) in Fetal Brain Development
Keywords: Breast cancer 1
DNA damage
ethanol/alcohol
Fetal brains
NADPH oxidase
reactive oxygen species

Physiologically produced reactive oxygen species (ROS) optimize CNS activity. Enhanced ROS production by alcohol (ethanol, EtOH) consumption during pregnancy via multiple pathways, including fetal NADPH oxidase (NOX) induction, and EtOH metabolism, may contribute to disordered development, including behavioural disorders. ROS may alter signal transduction and/or oxidatively damage proteins or DNA, the latter acting as epigenetic modifications altering gene expression. The breast cancer 1 protein (BRCA1) regulates multiple DNA repair and possibly antioxidative pathways. Additional to ROS-mediated effects, acetaldehyde production via EtOH metabolism can result in DNA damage capable of stalling and collapsing replication forks to generate enhanced DNA strand breaks (DSBs) in BRCA1-deficient cells. Studies herein used a Brca1 knockout mouse model to determine the impact of BRCA1 on the susceptibility of the fetal brain to ROS, modulated by a NOX inhibitor/free radical spin trap (phenylbutylnitrone, PBN), and a ROS enhancer (EtOH). Multiple markers of oxidative stress (enhanced NOX, antioxidative and proteasomal activities, DSBs) in the untreated +/- Brca1 fetal brains, were worsened by saline exposure and blocked by PBN, as were cognitive deficits, suggesting a pathogenic potential for physiological ROS production. In utero EtOH exposure further exacerbated markers of oxidative stress, including DNA (8-oxoG, γH2AX, DSBs) and protein (males only) damage, and NOX, antioxidative and proteasome activities in +/- Brca1 fetal brains. EtOH also enhanced postnatal behavioural deficits in +/- progeny, compared to +/+ controls. Both molecular and behavioural findings were partially blocked by PBN, suggesting ROS-mediation. EtOH also reduced BRCA1, enhanced most markers in +/+ fetal brains and induced postnatal anxiety-related behaviour in +/+ progeny. A Brca1 gene-dose dependent sensitivity to EtOH was also evident among embryos and postnatal progeny, where a larger BRCA1 deficiency resulted in enhanced DNA damage and postnatal deficits. The enhanced ROS-mediated DNA damage and impaired behaviour in +/- Brca1 fetal brains and progeny, exacerbated by EtOH suggests that BRCA1 plays a major role in protecting the embryo and fetal brain from physiological and drug-enhanced levels of ROS production. These results provide the first evidence of BRCA1 deficiency enhancing risk for behavioural disorders and highlight important underlying mechanisms/targets for preventive strategies.
Towards an Ethics of Reading: The Canadian Documentary Long Poem
Keywords: Canadian Literature
Canadian Poetry
Documentary
Ethics
Historiography

This dissertation explores the ethical reading strategies at play in and impelled by the Canadian documentary long poem. I consider the ways in which poets encode and engage with the ethical problematics occasioned by their reconstruction of historical figures and events, arguing that documentary long poems encourage the reader to undertake a similar engagement—one that may result in the reader reaching drastically different conclusions than those apparently posited by a given work. Questions pertaining to appropriation, representation, and poetic license abound—questions that rarely, if ever, have stable answers. I contend that this indeterminacy is key to the ethical dimensions of the documentary long poem, as it generates open-ended dialogue regarding the recuperative work and potential harm that can result from the genre’s interrogative approach to historiography. In Chapter One I consider how Stephen Scobie’s McAlmon’s Chinese Opera invites the very ethical scrutiny that it thematizes via its representation of an historical subject who did not want aspects of his personal life transformed into literature. Chapter Two examines the documentary long poem’s capacity to offer the reader a dubious sense of historical veracity by looking to Patricia Young’s All I Ever Needed was a Beautiful Room and Douglas Burnett Smith’s Sister Prometheus, two works that link this capacity to the genre’s utilization of conventions associated with auto/biography. In Chapter Three I address the paucity of attention paid to Indigenous oral histories in critical engagements with the genre, reading Colin Morton’s The Hundred Cuts and Louise Bernice Halfe’s Blue Marrow as works that explore the damage wrought by a broader privileging of material evidence in historiographic considerations of Indigenous Peoples. Chapter Four reads Phinder Dulai’s dream / arteries and Jordan Abel’s Un/inhabited as works that outline different strategies by which archival holdings may be used to seek redress from the institutions and nation-states typically responsible for their maintenance. Throughout this dissertation, I frame the historiographic interventions of documentary poets as acts that invite scrutiny of not merely the contexts surrounding the production of historical records but also the uses to which such records are put by the poets themselves.
Characterizing Social Determinants of Nutrition among Late Adolescent Girls in Rural Pakistan
Keywords: adolescent
diet
empowerment
micronutrient deficiencies
social determinants of health
undernutrition

Although recognition of the importance of the adolescent period to both current and future health and well-being has increased, there is an acknowledged need internationally for more data to fully understand the complexities around growth and nutrition during this sensitive life stage. In Pakistan, adolescent girls are considered to be at greater risk for poor nutrition between their increased physiologic demands to support maturation, general poor dietary intake, and potential vulnerability given cultural and social norms; yet, limited data exists. Understanding the social determinants of nutritional status could serve to further elucidate where inequalities occur and shape the development of interventions. This dissertation aimed to describe the nutritional status of non-pregnant, late adolescent girls enrolled in the Matiari Empowerment and Preconception Supplementation (MaPPS) Trial, regardless of marital status, using cross-sectional data collected at enrolment. To characterize nutritional status, multiple measures were employed, including anthropometrics (n = 25,447; height, weight, and middle-upper arm circumference); dietary intake (n = 390; dietary diversity score from three repeats of a 24-hour recall); and biochemical markers (n = 3,461; hemoglobin, ferritin, retinol, and 25(OH)D concentration). A conceptual framework of social determinants of health was used to guide the development of hierarchical models for the respective nutritional status outcomes. Nearly half of participants were found to have a divergent body mass index (underweight: 36.9%, overweight: 7.9%, obese: 2.3%) and 9.2% were stunted. Only 13.5% achieved minimum dietary diversity. The overall prevalence of anemia was high at 53.6%, and, after adjustment for inflammation, 65.9% of participants were iron deficient and 38.0% had iron deficiency anemia; vitamin A and D deficiency affected 31.8% and 81.1%, respectively. At least one micronutrient deficiency was experienced by 91.0% of participants. Within the hierarchical models, variables related to poverty were more likely to lend to the greatest inequalities in nutritional status. In this population, reducing the observed triple burden of malnutrition and addressing the underlying factors that lead to nutritional inequalities will be critical. Collectively, the findings demonstrate that late adolescent girls in Pakistan would benefit from the implementation of evidence-based direct and indirect interventions to improve nutritional status and reduce poverty.
Tail-anchored Triphosphate Tunnel Metalloenzymes in Arabidopsis thaliana: An Investigation into the Molecular Mechanisms underlying their Biological Functions
Keywords: ABA
MAP kinase
Programmed cell death
Senescence
TTM

The Triphosphate Tunnel Metalloenzymes (TTMs) superfamily is a group of proteins that contain a tunnel-shaped β-barrel structure, called a TTM domain. They exist in all domains of life where they act on a range of triphosphate substrates. However, the biological function of most TTM proteins is not well understood. The Arabidopsis genome encodes three TTM proteins named TTM1, 2, and 3. Our research group previously found that both TTM1 and TTM2 are involved in different types of programmed cell death (PCD), dark-induced senescence and immunity, respectively. It was concluded that this functional differentiation was governed by their transcriptional regulation. In this thesis, I show that the knockout mutant of TTM1 (ttm1) also displays delayed natural and ABA-induced senescence, indicating its universal role as a positive regulator of senescence-related PCD. I further found that TTM1 undergoes multiple phosphorylation events at three major sites upon perception of senescence cues (i.e. ABA or dark treatment). One of the sites, S437, shows a strong increase in phosphorylation after dark treatment and I have shown that phosphorylation at S437 is crucial for TTM1's function in senescence. Our extensive in vitro kinase assays identified two MAP kinases that phosphorylate TTM1 at S437, connecting these kinases to senescence via TTM1. I also identified a set of MAP kinases that phosphorylate TTM1 at two additional sites, S10 and S490. My data suggest that phosphorylation of these additional sites regulates TTM1 protein turnover via the 26S proteasome. These data provided the first mechanistic evidence connecting the mitochondrial outer membrane-localized protein TTM1 with ABA and leaf senescence. Further, to understand the transcriptional regulation which determines the biological functions of TTM1 and TTM2, a combination of a yeast one-hybrid assay and various in silico analyses were performed. Based on my analyses, I propose fivet ranscription factors that potentially regulate TTM1 expression during senescence and two transcription factors that likely contribute to the transcriptional down-regulation of TTM2 upon pathogen infection. In summary, my thesis work describes a mechanism for the post-translational regulation of plant TTM1 and also identifies possible transcriptional regulators of TTM1 and TTM2 for future study.
Diversification of Riverine Cichlids: Phylogenomic, Locomotor and Habitat Patterns using Natural History Collections
Keywords: Comparative Phylogenetics
Ecological Opportunity
Fishes
Macroevolution
Museum Studies
Phylogenomics

Documenting biodiversity and uncovering the adaptive and non-adaptive mechanisms involved in its generation are major goals in evolutionary biology. Insular oceanic island and lake environments have long been the focus of diversification studies, especially from the perspective of adaptive radiation. However, most of life’s diversity originated and diversified across broader continental scales, where large geographic areas and coexistence of various unrelated taxa complicate niche availability and diversification opportunities. Macroevolutionary studies in mainland taxa are therefore also needed to achieve a more general understanding of how adaptive and non-adaptive processes contribute to the formation of biodiversity. Cichlid fishes are an ideal system in which to study continental diversification, as the family is species rich, ecologically and phenotypically diverse, and inhabits multiple large continental areas. In this thesis I use several sources of data from museum collections and emerging molecular, phylogenetic and comparative approaches to investigate the evolution of functional locomotor phenotypes across cichlid fishes, with a focus on continentally distributed riverine lineages in the Neotropics and Africa. I develop robust higher level phylogenetic hypotheses for African cichlids, which have posed several longstanding taxonomic challenges, and for the whole family. Riverine cichlids exhibit diverse locomotor phenotypes and this diversity arose through selective constraints towards multiple distinct adaptive optima, consistent with adaptations to diverse diets and habitats. Shifts to new adaptive optima occurred early in some clades, such that early bursts consistent with adaptive radiation are detected for African Great Lake cichlids and two riverine tribes, the Neotropical Geophagini and African Chromidotilapiini. For other riverine clades, evolutionary patterns are instead consistent with allopatric or constrained diversification. Evolutionary patterns also vary between the Neotropics and Africa, and between continentally distributed riverine and lacustrine groups, indicating local influences on the evolutionary trajectory of these lineages. Using a novel transformation approach to extract ecological data from archived field notes I provide evidence for an association between locomotor phenotypes and habitat use, thereby supporting habitat as one ecological driver of cichlid locomotor diversity. Overall, this thesis reveals that riverine cichlid diversity was shaped by a mosaic of adaptive, non-adaptive and contingent evolutionary processes.