VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Schooling in the Age of Austerity: Public Education, Youth, and Social Instability in the Neoliberal City
Keywords: neoliberal schooling
youth
security and securitization

This dissertation examines the dynamics of “security” and “insecurity” in U.S. public schooling within the context of neoliberal urbanism and austerity. It argues that the entrenched problems confronting urban public schools today can be attributed largely to systemic failure—a toxic mixture of global economic change and volatility, profiteering and corruption, stunted imagination, and misguided policies, values and priorities. This has contributed to deepening material insecurity and inequality in the urban sphere and the erosion of social commitments to public schools and young people, especially the most disadvantaged and vulnerable. This thesis analyzes these forces through an ethnographic case study in a neighborhood and public high school in Chicago: Ellison Square and Ellison High School (EHS). It asks: What are the pragmatic and imaginative limits of security in urban public schooling in a moment of escalating economic and social dislocation? Through the perspectives of those most affected, namely youth and their teachers, it documents the contradictions and effects of educational privatization, disinvestment, commercialization of curriculum, and the rise of a militarized culture of policing and securitized containment in urban schools and neighborhoods. It argues that these processes represent forms of enclosure that are undermining the democratic and ethical purpose of public schools and thereby making the daily lives and future of young people ever more insecure and precarious. Drawing inspiration from the perspectives of young people and their teachers, the thesis ultimately advocates for an educational vision that locates public schooling not as a commodity valued primarily for its role in shoring-up technical economic and military demands, but as a commons—a site critical to developing human security, economic justice and democratic life.
In Manuscript and Print: The Fifteenth-century Library of Scheyern Abbey
Keywords: printing
libraries
manuscripts
early modern

This dissertation explores the library of Scheyern Abbey through religious, artistic, bibliographical, and historical paths in order to articulate more clearly the history of book production and library growth during the revolutionary “book age” of the fifteenth century. I have reassembled the now scattered fifteenth-century books from the monastery and examined the entire collection to show how one institution adapted to the increasing bibliographic requirements of the period, first through manuscript and then manuscript and print together. Two sets of library shelfmarks from the fifteenth century, unrecorded until now, physically represent attempts at ordering the Scheyern collection and disregard any differentiation between manuscript and print, proving how the books were utilized by their contemporary audience. In the fifteenth century, Scheyern Abbey subscribed to the so-called Melk Reform, a monastic reform movement that emphasized literacy and the care of books as one of its primary elements. The introduction of the Melk Reform inspired Scheyern’s local book production, which shows a diverse system of both highly trained scribes and many anonymous scribes who worked on individual books as part of their round of monastic chores. The connections established between member monasteries of the reform brought Scheyern into contact with commercial Augsburg book producers, especially Hainrich Molitor, who produced several large and lavish manuscripts for the monastery. Importantly, he introduced Scheyern to other book producers in Augsburg, including illuminators, printers, and binders, who continued to have an impact on Scheyern production and the growth of the library through the end of the century. Scheyern was also an epicenter of Bavarian dynastic propaganda, because their foundational history as the original house-cloister of the ruling Wittelsbach dukes was visually marked around the monastery and textually deployed to other monasteries in the region through the Scheyern Fürstentafel. The unification of book historical and art historical concerns herein allows for a clearer and deeper examination of a fifteenth-century library than heretofore attempted, and this examination reveals important characteristics of fifteenth-century library development necessary to fully understand the multivalent contexts of historical book collections.
The Positioning and Function of Bazooka Polarity Landmarks
Keywords: Development
Cell Polarity

Epithelial sheets line the surfaces of the body and our organs, acting as semi-permeable barriers between the internal and external environment. Epithelial polarity is critical for epithelial function. In Drosophila, epithelial polarity is established at the onset of embryogenesis by a network of polarity, cytoskeletal, and junctional complexes. The scaffold protein Bazooka (Baz; mammalian partitioning-defective (PAR)-3), localizes to the site of adherens junction (AJ) assembly, where it acts as an early polarity landmark to position downstream AJ components. My work addressed how Baz positions AJ components, and how Baz is localized and positioned within the apicolateral region. The focus of my first study was to understand how Baz affects AJ assembly and what precursors were involved. The quantification of Baz and AJ components in combination with a photobleaching analysis suggested that early AJs are subdivided into Baz clusters and cadherin/catenin clusters with independent protein numbers and dynamics. Consistent with this idea, we identified cadherin/catenin clusters forming between apical microvilli. The Baz clusters appear to engage these cadherin-catenin clusters to assemble early AJs. For my second project, I investigated how Baz is recruited to the plasma membrane (PM) during late embryogenesis. I performed a structure-function analysis to determine the importance of each identified Baz interaction domain in regards to its localization and function in the Drosophila embryonic ectoderm. I found that a multifaceted membrane association mechanism localizes Baz to the apical circumference. Although none of the Baz protein domains are essential for cortical localization, I determined that each contributes to cortical anchorage in specific ways. I proposed that the redundancies involved may provide plasticity and robustness to Baz polarity landmarks. For my third project, I identified the coupling of two mechanisms that remove Baz from the basolateral region of the cell. As cells first form during cellularization, basally localized Baz puncta demonstrate basal-to-apical transport. The removal of all three Baz postsynaptic density/discs large/zonula occludens (PDZ) domains inhibits this transport mechanism. However, by the end of cellularization Baz without its PDZ domains becomes correctly localized, suggesting an additional mechanism removes basolateral Baz. Investigation of the basolateral kinase PAR-1 suggests it is responsible for this second mechanism.
Canadian Literary Urbanism
Keywords: Urban
Canadian
City
Hipster
Cultural Nationalism
Literature

This dissertation provides the first sustained theorization of Canada’s urban literature. Critics have lamented the seeming absence of urban writing in Canada. A comprehensive reading of Canadian literature and criticism reveals that there is indeed a substantial body of city writing, and that critics have addressed Canada’s history of urbanization. The critical problem that demands reconciliation regards a pervasive geographical illiteracy. By historicizing and close reading Bertrand Sinclair’s North of Fifty-Three, Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, and Douglas Durkin’s The Magpie, I show that frontier, small town, and country places are effected by urbanization. In doing so, I encourage you to abandon “urban” as a worthwhile generic category and instead consider urbanism as a subject that relates to the building of cities, the amalgamation of populations within dense environments, the imposition of human geometry onto the landscape, and the “citification” of society, culture, and politics. By placing literary studies, geography, and historiography in critical exchange, I demonstrate that the “urban” typically serves as a decoy for a secondary concept. Canonical critics (Lionel Stevenson, Northrop Frye, and Linda Hutcheon) consistently summon a rural/Canadian-urban/American dichotomy to theorize a national identity that resists American imperialism. However, city-set texts are, paradoxically, represented by rural space, hence the urban has not been marginalized but misplaced metaphorically. Similarly, “Canadian literary urbanism” offers the first comprehensive analysis of the supposed “urbanization” of Canadian literature that occurred during the millennial years. By analyzing postmodern-hipster fiction, I argue that writers (Andrew Pyper, Russell Smith, Hal Niedzviecki, Lynn Coady, R.M. Vaughan, and Dionne Brand) have been using urban space to transcend the limits of “official” or “boutique” multiculturalism, and to fictionalize the rise of what Charles Landry dubbed the “creative city.”
Shakespeare in Another Sense: A Study of Physical and Textual Perception in Four Plays
Keywords: Shakespeare
Senses
Early Modern
Drama
Perception
Historical Phenomenology
Othello
Antony and Cleopatra
Hamlet
Macbeth

This dissertation investigates how the sensory body informs an audience’s reception, and perception, of Shakespearean drama. Specifically, I question the nature of subject/object relations through a comprehensive study of all five senses in Shakespeare. Positioned as mediators of knowledge between body and mind, the senses provide a means to examine the relationship between self-constituting subjects “in here” and exterior world objects “out there.” I believe that early modern authors, and Shakespeare foremost among them, used the liminality of the physical senses to test newly emergent ideas of inwardness and individual consciousness. My dissertation upends the sensory hierarchy assumed by Western tradition by arguing that smell, taste, and touch are crucial to theatrical experience; indeed, they invite a deeper form of theatrical receptivity through subject/object interpenetration than the senses of hearing or seeing. This is because sights and sounds distance the perceiving-subject from the perceived-object onstage, inviting us instead to reflect upon the theatrical medium that fills the divide. My project places the bodily senses and affective faculties in conversation in order to explore the sensory metaphors that motivate character judgements and plot understandings at a level of felt engagement. Braiding together early modern medical conceptions of the senses with literary analysis and stage history, my dissertation reconstructs bodily experience in the past on historically informed terms. Recognising the inherent diversity of perception, my chapters advance a set of original arguments: that palpation leads to jealous cognition through the skin-web in "Othello," that colonial tastes merge with the pleasures of speech on the double tongue in "Antony and Cleopatra," that the smell of blood harbours the infection of evil in "Macbeth," and that sensory intelligencers subtly couple two media – read script and heard play – in "Hamlet." In sum, by analysing how a modern appreciation of Shakespeare’s drama differs from the embodied perspective of earlier audiences, I hope to provide a new understanding of early modern subjectivity through early modern sensory experience.
Taking Love Seriously: Amor and Erotic Elegy in Vergil's 'Italian Iliad'
Keywords: Latin Literature, Latin Epic, Latin Elegy
Vergil, The Aeneid

As the second half of the Aeneid gets under way, Vergil offers a proemial invocation designed to introduce his maius opus, a poetic account of the war fought between the Trojan and Italian forces (A. 7.37-45). Vergil’s Iliadic narrative, despite its explicitly martial focus, features a number of episodes that contain the generic language and motifs of erotic elegy. Through these brief, but significant, elegiac episodes, Vergil articulates the connection between amor and the outbreak of arma, and identifies love as a potent force of genuine destruction. In the opening sequence of Aeneid 7 (A. 7.1-45), Vergil signals the programmatic inclusion of elegy among the generic constituents of his epic, and indicates the thematic importance of amor to the ostensibly martial narrative. Elegiac language and motifs punctuate Vergil’s account of the outbreak of war and underscore the conflicting passions that culminate in martial violence. Vergil employs the sermo amatorius in the erotic encounter between Venus and Vulcan (A. 8.370-406) to emphasize the importance of amor – both erotic and maternal – to the martial narrative, as the goddess wields her amatory power as protective genetrix to procure arma for Aeneas. In the dialogic exchange at the start of Aeneid 12 (A. 12.1-80), elegiac elements underscore the amatory motives of particular characters and reiterate the connection between passion and devastation programmatically established in Aeneid 7. Evidence of Vergil’s innovative redeployment of funerary and amatory motifs in the aetiological myth of Cycnus (A. 10.185-193) suggests the importance of further investigation of Vergilian experimentation with elegy as a sepulchral, as well as erotic, mode.
The Theory and Practice of Economic Democracy
Keywords: economic democracy
workplace democracy
democratic theory
financial democracy
investment democracy

This dissertation is a political-economic examination of the idea of economic democracy. The motivating impulse is the recognition that a deep asymmetry characterizes contemporary society in the Western world: social relations in the political sphere are organized democratically, meaning that political power is (theoretically at least) accountable to the citizenry. The economy, however, is organized on fundamentally different, and largely undemocratic bases. Workers do not elect their bosses; investment decisions are not generally accountable to the community; bank policy regarding the allocation of finance is not determined by elected representatives. This asymmetry constitutes the puzzle that my dissertation seeks to explore. In this thesis I seek to make the case that certain aspects of our economy are in vital need of democratization, and that such democratization is not only normatively important but also practically feasible. The thesis thus synthesizes normative political theory and empirical political economy investigating the degree to which workplaces, investment institutions, and the market system could or should be democratized.
The Strggle of the Struggling: Access to Higher Education for Physically Disabled People in Zimbabwe
Keywords: Disability
Access
Indiggenous Culture

Abstract This dissertation examines questions of accessibility in relation to physically disabled high school graduates in Zimbabwe who are seeking to further their education. The work aims at giving voice to those who have been rendered voiceless in society in matters affecting their lives while also attending to how cultural experts and educational officials make sense of the lack of access to education faced by these disabled students. The study builds on previous research on poverty alleviation in Zimbabwe by the author (Manyimo, 2005) that showed that disabled people are among the poorest in the country and that lack of education together with low societal expectations exacerbates their poverty. Employing a qualitative research methodology, one-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-two participants. The interviewees included 12 disabled high school graduates; selected 4 mothers of the graduates; two cultural experts; four senior administrators of universities and colleges; two members of associations of and for disabled people and eight government officials from ministries of education. Findings show that indigenous culture plays a significant role in determining how far disabled people can progress in education in Zimbabwe. The role of indigenous culture was characterized by the interviewees in relation to how they are marginalized by their own families, their own communities and the society. Due to the introduction of other cultures and religions in the country, the population suffers from competing cultural conceptions of disability that manifest themselves through societal attitudes toward disabled people. This dissertation, therefore, demonstrates the need to attend to indigenous knowledges as a framework for engaging and theorizing how students with physical disabilities can better achieve their educational aspirations. The work proposes an alternative model of disability based on indigenous cultural beliefs of the indigenous people in Zimbabwe. A set of recommendations was developed that reflect this need. Thus the dissertation makes significant contributions not only to Zimbabwe, but also to the field of disability studies research especially among societies with strong indigenous belief systems by documenting and attending to the usually unheard voices of students with physical disabilities.
Bernini as the Seicento Michelangelo: Imitation and Identity in Art, Architecture and Biography
Keywords: Bernini
Michelangelo
Imitation

Bernini as the Seicento Michelangelo: Imitation and Identity in Art, Architecture and Biography Carolina Mangone Doctor of Philosophy, History of Art Department of Art University of Toronto 2012 Abstract This dissertation examines how Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), acclaimed the “Michelangelo of his age,” constructed his identity by imitating the art, practices and persona of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). Buonarroti’s “inimitability,” a disputed sixteenth-century notion that became ever more contentious as newly critical seventeenth-century perspectives of his work and practice questioned his worth as a model for imitation, furnishes the point of departure for investigating how Bernini became Bernini through and against his predecessor. By analysing Gianlorenzo’s formal, stylistic, theoretical and conceptual references to Buonarroti in his early narrative sculpture (ch.1), his sculpted self-portraits (ch.2), his work at St. Peter’s (ch.3), his architectural ornament (ch.4) as well as the intertextual strategies attending the literary uses of the association between the two artists (ch.5), I shed light on various imitative modes –ranging from emulation, allusion and paraphrase, to repetition, quotation and bricolage – that Bernini and his biographers employed to shape the artist into Michelangelo’s worthy “son” rather than his burdened epigone. In positing a filial model as a flexible framework for understanding Bernini’s life-long relationship to Michelangelo, I take a cue from early modern art writers who suggested that the way to overcome Buonarroti’s inimitability was to resemble him faintly, the way a son resembles a father. Yet while the latter saw filial likeness as fixed, I show that the son’s (Bernini’s) resemblance to his chosen father (Michelangelo) changed by degree and in demeanor over time, according to discipline and, sometimes, from subject to subject. And by reconstituting the respective prisms through which Bernini and his biographers regarded the work and life of Buonarroti, I show that each perceived Michelangelo differently based on the manifold representations of him, his work and his practice that existed in critical, biographical, theoretical and pictorial sources. In turn, multiple constructions of Bernini’s identity as the seicento Michelangelo emerge. This dissertation ultimately suggests that to imitate Michelangelo successfully was not only to inscribe oneself into history but to rewrite the past by altering the perception of Buonarroti from an inimitable vanguard to a fecund “father” of a new generation.
Sodium Leak Current through a Non-selective Cation Channel Regulates Spontaneous Activity of Pacemaker Cells
Keywords: Neuroscience
Cardiovascular
Pacemaker
Electrophysiology

Pacemaker cells are involved in regulating numerous essential biological functions. These cells exhibit spontaneous activities in isolation, due to the various membrane ion channels. Background conductances (ILeak) are responsible for the depolarized resting membrane potential of numerous pacemaker cells, largely due to a high sodium component (INa Leak); however, their molecular identity remains unclear. NALCN is a non-selective cationic channel that was suggested as a major contributor to the background Na+ conductance in some neurons. This thesis investigates whether and how NALCN contributes to the INa Leak of two major pacemaker systems: neurons and heart. Chapter 4 utilizes the benefits of a simplified respiratory pacemaker neuron of L. stagnalis to determine whether NALCN has a functional role in regulating pacemaker cell activity and function. Using an acute gene silencing approach, reduction of endogenous NALCN orthologue expression in isolated respiratory pacemaker neuron hyperpolarized the resting membrane potential, due largely to the reduction of INa Leak, which partially affect respiratory behavioural output. Chapter 5 further determined that the NALCN orthologue of is a major contributing current to the pacemaker neuron subthreshold conductance. By using a computation model, developed in collaboration, simulation of spontaneous pacemaker activity was shown to be more sensitive to Na+ leak than K+ leak conductance. Together, these studies indicate that NALCN codes for a fundamentally important INa Leak that is capable of robust regulation of spontaneous activity. Chapter 6 investigated the role of a NALCN-like conductance in the establish pacemaker model of the murine sinoatrial node cardiomyocyte. Given the lethality of NALCN knockout, a combined pharmacological and eletrophysiological analyses were performed. Results suggest a novel INa Leak that is highly sensitive to Gd3+ and Co2+, which is similar to biophysical properties of NALCN channels. Furthermore, functional NALCN-dependent INa Leak requires an auxiliary subunit co-expression. Interestingly, regional regulation of NALCN-associating subunits correlates strongly with my electrophysiological observations. These findings indicate an important role for the NALCN channel in regulating the spontaneous activity of at least two pacemaking systems.