VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Choteadora's Body in Performance: Carmelita Tropicana and the Intersectional Strategy of Choteo
Keywords: Carmelita
choteo
performance
politics
representation
Tropicana

This dissertation undertakes an analysis of Carmelita Tropicana’s body in performance as it enacts “self” across the representational strategy of choteo. Carmelita Tropicana is the performance persona of Cuban-American, queer performer Alina Troyano. Choteo is a representational strategy that irreverently subverts the context and content of its referent. This doctoral study proposes that Carmelita’s work activates choteo in an intersectional and disidentificatory manner that opens up a site of negotiation, wherein the politics of representation are queried, and identity is revealed as an eventness. Specifically, by outlining choteo as an intersectional, disidentificatory strategy, I formulate choteo as an act that mobilizes through and against the complex process of identification across intersectional axes. Drawing on performance scholar José Esteban Muñoz’s suggestion of applying choteo as an optic for reading Carmelita Tropicana’s performance work, I map out the terms of this practice of “critical Cubanía,” foregrounding the intersectional and disidentificatory potential of this representational strategy. Utilizing this methodological groundwork, the project analyzes two performances—Memorias de la Revolución/ Memories of the Revolution and Milk of Amnesia/ Leche de Amnesia. My analysis of Carmelita’s body in performance and its embodiment of choteo hopes to make visible the problematics of representation and the alternative modes of self-enactment that this choteadora’s body negotiates in theatrical space. The act of choteo subverts site, memory, and identity, as Carmelita’s body in performance enacts stereotypical iconography, and simultaneously resists this reductive process of identification through excessively self-ascribing it. Moreover, the choteo within these works finally turns its bite on itself, enacting a choteo of choteo, which subverts its own framework, reckoning with the limitations of representation. My application of the intersectional, disidentificatory hermeneutic onto Carmelita Tropicana’s body in performance is rooted in a commitment to engaging and elaborating on critical scholarship and spectatorship, and querying its own framework.
Synthesis and Applications of 3- and 5-Membered Azacycles: Natural Product Synthesis, Boron Heterocycles, and Molecular Probes
Keywords: amphoteric molecules
boron heterocycles
materials science
medicinal chemistry
total synthesis

Nitrogen-containing heterocycles (azacycles) are ubiquitous in nature and are essential for the existence of life. This dissertation explores the synthesis and applications of azacycles in natural product synthesis, exploratory fundamental chemistry, materials science, and medicinal chemistry. After an introduction to azacycles and amphoteric molecules (Chapter 1), the following three chapters explore the applications of amphoteric molecules developed in the Yudin lab. Chapter 2 outlines a three-component Petasis borono-Mannich (PBM) reaction of aziridine aldehyde dimers to furnish syn-diamines. The chiral scaffolds were applied to ring-opening studies where an intriguing case of anchimeric assistance was found to govern regioselectivity. Chapter 3 discusses further application of the syn-diamines in the total synthesis of a 6-hydroxyceramide natural product found in the human epidermis. This was accomplished via a Meisenheimer rearrangement, a Lewis acid-catalyzed regioselective aziridine ring-opening, and a selective N-O bond cleavage. A number of unnatural 6-hydroxyceramide analogues were prepared, which were found to be non-toxic to yeast. Chapter 4 details the synthesis and applications of α-boryl aldoximes derived from amphoteric α-boryl aldehydes. Borylated oxadiazoles and isoxazoles were prepared via nitrile oxide chemistry, as well as a number of β-boryl-hydroxylamine derivatives en route to the synthesis of an unprecedented boron-containing azacycle. The final two chapters outline collaborative projects. Chapter 5 details a comparative study of triaryl-substituted boratriazaroles and their carbon-based analogues, and explores the role of the B-aryl substituent on photophysical properties. With p-CN substitution on the B-phenyl ring, a large Stokes shift was observed, which exhibited positive solvatochromism. Finally, Chapter 6 outlines a medicinal chemistry project utilizing fragment-based drug design. Triazole-containing small molecules were found to bind in an N-acetyllysine binding region of epigenetic protein SETDB1. Synthetic efforts towards molecular optimization of various regions of a triazole-containing biaryl system enabled the understanding of the steric and electronic requirements of this unexplored binding region.
Consent to Rape? The Ambiguation of Sexual Consent in Contemporary World Literature
Keywords: consent
law
postcolonial
rape
sexual violence
transnational

This dissertation studies that which divides rape from sex: the unstable line formed by the concept of sexual consent. It combines an exploration of the promises, paradoxes and problems associated with locating the liberal subject’s sexual consent at the heart of rape law with an analysis of contested representations of consent and nonconsent in several key literary texts about rape. These texts include the paradigmatic rape novel of the eighteenth century, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, and four twentieth century novels from Africa and North America: J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, Gayl Jones’s Corregidora, Assia Djebar’s Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade, and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. This interdisciplinary and transnational work connecting law and literature draws on the theoretical perspectives of feminism, postcolonialism and trauma theory to fill an important gap in literary analysis of what is constituted as the grey zone of sexual experience between rape and consensual sex. To explore this critical space, I attend to heterosexual representations of sexual violence that cannot be categorized as rape because nonconsent is ambiguous, and to representations that meet definitions of rape, but that critical and cultural commentary identifies as ambiguously consensual sex. Racial, sexual, colonial and national discourses among others overdetermine the female characters whose consent is at stake in these representations, obscuring their nonconsent to sex. An exploration of the problematics of the female subject’s sexual consent reveals that the liberal subject premised by rape law is an unattainable ideal compared to which actual individuals are found to be lacking. What emerges from my analysis is not just the power of rape myths, the rhetoric of seduction, and the denial of female sexual autonomy and desire, but the ambiguating force of narrative itself. The problem of representing rape is not encapsulated by a dialectic of speech and silence. Rather rape appears most indeterminable when it is represented in narrative as a sequence of events over time, for the female subject is treated as though she exists in a state of perpetual consent, and so nonconsent can only ever be a temporary action of no duration and little force.
Slave, Hero, Victim: The Child Soldier Narrative in Context
Keywords: Africa
African literature
childhood
child soldiers
human rights
war

This dissertation interrogates the newly prominent figure of the child soldier in African literature. I examine a number of recent texts narrating the child soldier experience, both memoir (Ishmael Beah, Emmanuel Jal, China Keitetsi, Senait Mehari, Grace Akallo, Tchicaya Missamou, Niromi de Soyza) and fiction (Uzodinma Iweala, Ahmadou Kourouma, Emmanuel Dongala, Chris Abani). The anthropologist David Rosen argues that the contemporary Western humanitarian narrative often makes an automatic assumption of innocence based on age that is not necessarily applicable in non-Western cultures. The danger of imposing such Western frameworks on non-Western cultures is that it risks engaging in the same colonial tropes of paternalism towards the native â childâ that were used to maintain dominance over colonized populations. Yet the hunger for narratives that portray the child soldier as an innocent victim who eventually is rescued and rehabilitated, as well as the fact that child soldier narratives are almost purely an African genre (even though there are substantial numbers of child soldiers in Asia, South America and the Middle East) suggests the kind of Orientalism that Edward Said warned us against: a desire to see Africa specifically as a place of violence and lost innocence that can be redeemed through Western intervention. This study takes a comparative approach, contextualizing the current literary trope of depicting the child soldier as lost innocent by comparing these contemporary narratives to a range of other texts. Chapter One examines the striking parallels between child soldier narratives and antebellum American slave narratives. Chapter Two juxtaposes child soldier narratives to the very different portrayal of South African youth involved in the militarized anti-apartheid movement. Chapter Three compares child soldier narratives to three texts narrating the experiences of young adult soldiers in the Zimbabwean war of liberation. Chapter Four questions why the child soldier is almost invariably imagined as African, while analyzing the one real exception to this rule, Niromi de Soyza's Tamil Tigress. Ultimately, through its examination of literary representations, my dissertation exposes the category of (African) child soldiers as highly problematic, allowing us to reconsider implicit myths of childhood and human rights.
Impressions of Innovation: Early Netherlandish Printmaking, 1520-1540
Keywords: etching
Low Countries
Lucas van Leyden
Netherlands
printmaking
visual culture

Printed images played an active role in the local visual and material culture of the sixteenth-century Low Countries. In the first half of the century, printmakers were not restricted by guild systems and patronage structures, and thus they had considerable freedom to adopt and innovate styles, subjects, techniques, and pictorial effects. In the Netherlands, Lucas van Leyden, Dirck Vellert, Frans Crabbe, Nicolas Hogenberg, Master AC, and Jacob Cornelisz. van Oostsanen produced printed images that engaged with and responded to contemporary areas of interest and anxiety, including antiquity, vernacular identity, ideal beauty, and local nobility. Their etchings, engravings, and woodcuts were not just important to the development of printmaking in northern Europe; the prints were also on the forefront of important artistic and stylistic developments, and they were in dialogue with art production in the region across media. Despite their local significance, early Netherlandish prints are viewed as derivative of developments in German-speaking lands, and Albrecht DĂźrerâ s residence in Antwerp in 1520-21 continues to be cited as the impetus for Netherlandish artists to take up printmaking. This study argues that Netherlandish printmaking in the first half of the sixteenth century arose from collaborative engagements with artistic traditions both local and foreign. Lucas van Leyden and his contemporaries drew on German and Italian prints that were circulating in the region, yet they adapted these models to suit local tastes and contexts. I view such changes and adaptations as innovations that held particular significance to the local visual milieu. All printmakers from the first half of the sixteenth century were active in other media (including panel paintings and stained glass), and I examine how their diverse artistic backgrounds informed their artistic and commercial strategies. Etchings, engravings, and woodcuts are examined separately in this study, for these print techniques originated from diverse artistic traditions, and therefore held distinct material, social, and cultural resonances. I examine emerging discourses of artistic identity and authority in the formation of the Netherlandish printmaker, and I argue that many of the artistic, commercial, and stylistic innovations introduced in the early sixteenth-century anticipated the expansion of the printmaking industry at mid-century.
Sex Crimes: Queer Engagements with the Criminal Law from the Street to the Prison
Keywords: criminal law
HIV non-disclosure
LGBTQ studies
policing
queer theory
trans studies

Over the past three decades, debates in Canada surrounding the introduction of human rights protections, benefits for same-sex couples, and relationship recognition have tended to invoke a new legal subject, one draped in the garb of respectability. When members of queer communities have sought access to legal protections, they have tended to predicate their claims on respectable familial arrangements. Largely absent from this turn to respectability, however, is engagement with the criminal law, particularly in cases where queer people cannot be easily read as the victims of crime. Sex Crimes: Queer Engagements with the Criminal Law from the Street to the Prison returns to the criminal law to examine its continued use as a tool that disciplines â and, at times, fails to discipline â those who cannot be read in terms of respectability. The project weaves together the practices of policing on the street, stories about HIV non-disclosure from the courtroom, and the experiences of queer people in prison. This project argues that when queer people become ensnared in the repressive aspects of criminal justice, the contemporary legal system stops addressing the hardships they face due to their sexual and gender identities. While norms of substantive equality are now well entrenched in the fields of human rights law, family law, and constitutional law, these standards are cast aside when it comes to the administration of punishment. The project concludes by developing a theory of the law and order queer movement, arguing that when queer people code themselves as respectable victims of crime seeking protection from the punitive apparatuses of the carceral state, they run the risk of instantiating law and order agendas. As a result, they may inadvertently breathe new life into systems that continue to be used to discipline the most vulnerable members of queer communities.
The Effects of Diminished Pulsatility in Long-Term Continuous-Flow Left Ventricular Assist Device Recipients
Keywords: left ventricular assist device
heart failure

Continuous flow left ventricular assist devices (CF-LVADs) are used as mechanical support to improve or replace the functions of the failing heart. However, little is known of the long-term effects of the non-physiological, low-pulsatile blood flow of CF-LVADs. To address some of the potential effects that CF-LVADs have on the cardiovascular system, we conducted a set of studies to examine the levels of inflammation in CF-LVAD recipients and compare them to those of healthy controls and to heart failure patients who were candidates for CF-LVAD support. We found that inflammatory markers were generally elevated in CF-LVAD recipients. Importantly, several of these inflammatory markers were significantly higher in the CF-LVAD group compared to both the heart failure and healthy control groups. In another study we conducted, we found that despite elevated levels of the inflammatory marker C-reactive protein (CRP), which tends to inhibit cGMP production, the levels of cGMP were significantly elevated in CF-LVAD recipients. We found that cGMP levels were significantly associated with gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding but not bleeding in general. This increase in cGMP may be related to a higher incidence of GI bleeding in CF-LVAD recipients as cGMP impairs platelet aggregation. Additionally, we observed that following CF-LVAD implantation, both exercise capacity and chronotropic responses continued to be impaired. The novel finding of the study is that high levels of inflammation were significantly associated with impaired exercise capacity. The mechanisms by which inflammation contributes to impaired exercise capacity in patients supported with CF-LVADs should be further investigated. In a longitudinal study, we documented increased levels of chemokines and cytokines at 3, 6, and 9 months post-CF-LVAD implantation compared to those of healthy controls, suggesting that the high levels of inflammation in CF-LVAD recipients may be the result of both the heart failure condition prior to implantation and the long-term device support. We conclude that since elevated levels of inflammation may be detrimental to CF-LVAD recipients, further studies should investigate the source of inflammation and the clinical outcomes of anti-inflammatory treatment in these patients.
Prisoner Society in the Terezin Ghetto, 1941-1945
Keywords: Holocaust
Central Europe
Jewish history
nationalism

This dissertation explores the prisoner society in Terezín (Theresienstadt) ghetto, a transit ghetto in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Nazis deported here over 140,000 Czech, German, Austrian, Dutch, Danish, Slovak, and Hungarian Jews. It was the only ghetto to last until the end of the Second World War. A microhistorical approach reveals the dynamics of the inmate community, shedding light on broader issues of ethnicity, stratification, gender, and the political dimension of the “little people” shortly before they were killed. Rather than relegating Terezín to a footnote in narratives of the Holocaust or the Second World War, my work connects it to Central European, gender, and modern Jewish histories. A history of victims but also a study of an enforced Central European society in extremis, instead of defining them by the view of the perpetrators, this dissertation studies Terezín as an inmate society. This approach is possible because the SS largely kept out of the ghetto. Terezín represents the largest sustained transnational encounter in the history of Central Europe, albeit an enforced one. Although the Nazis deported all the inmates on the basis of their alleged Jewishness, Terezín did not produce a common sense of Jewishness: the inmates were shaped by the countries they had considered home. Ethnicity defined culturally was a particularly salient means of differentiation. The dynamics connected to ethnic categorization and class formation allow a deeper understanding of cultural and national processes in Central and Western Europe in the twentieth century. The society in Terezín was simultaneously interconnected and stratified. There were no stark contradictions between the wealthy and the majority of extremely poor prisoners. Rather, this dissertation shows a nexus of ethnicity, linked to culture and habitus, and power and class -- we can view the ghetto as a social space. Thanks to a dominant master narrative, the Terezín community was inclusive and coherent, even if various groups had very different access to resources. Therefore, we should view society in ghettos and concentration camps, as a society in its own right, rather than a deviant version of our own with atomizing social ties.
An Investigation of Bifocal Display Design Parameters for Improving Performance in Minimally Invasive Surgery
Keywords: Human Factors Engineering
Minimally Invasive Surgery
Information Visualization
Distortion Oriented Display
Bifocal Display
Keyhole
Augmented Reality
Focus plus Context

In minimally invasive surgical procedures, limited access to the surgical site, in combination with high magnification and a narrow field of view, create a challenging operating environment for the surgeons. In particular, it has been observed that surgical instruments are not in the surgeons’ field of view at all times, forcing them to manoeuvre the instruments without direct view of the instruments’ tip position and trajectory, which poses a risk of inadvertently causing injury to internal tissues or organs. This thesis investigates the effectiveness of Bifocal displays for addressing this problem, by displaying a wide field of view to facilitate instrument manoeuvring while concurrently providing the high magnification necessary for performing detailed surgical manipulation tasks. Furthermore, the two design parameters that define the nature of the Bifocal transformation function were explicitly defined and their impact on task performance was systematically investigated. These parameters are the maximum magnification level and the detail-to-total ratio – the latter being the proportion of the screen allocated to the magnified view. An experimental platform was developed to evaluate operator performance in both instrument insertion and detailed manipulation type tasks while using the Bifocal display in an environment analogous to minimally invasive surgery. The results show that the Bifocal display significantly improves performance for instrument insertion. Furthermore, it was found that varying the display detail-to-total ratio significantly impacts performance in both instrument insertion and detailed manipulation tasks, regardless of the magnification level, with performance improving in each task in an asymptotic manner. More importantly, it was confirmed that there exists a performance trade-off between these two types of task as a function of varying the detail-to-total ratio. These findings have important design implications for not only minimally invasive surgery but also analogous applications such as microsurgery or remotely operated space or underwater vehicles.
Calligraphers, Illuminators and Patrons: Mamluk Qur'an Manuscripts from 1341-1412 AD in light of the collection of the National Library of Egypt
Keywords: calligraphy
Egypt
illumination
Mamluk
Medieval

The Mamluks of Egypt and Syria excelled in most arts, especially architecture and Qur’an manuscript production. While their architecture is heavily studied, very little in depth research has been done on their Qur’an manuscripts, especially the collection kept at the National Library of Egypt (Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya). This dissertation examines and analyzes the illumination and calligraphy of the Mamluk Qur’an manuscripts produced after the death of the Mamluk sultan al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun (d. 741/1341) until the death of the second Circassian Mamluk sultan Faraj ibn Barquq (d. 815/1412), that are kept in Dar al-Kutub. This period in Mamluk history was a turbulent one with socio-political calamities, yet Qur’an manuscript production was not affected. Illumination and calligraphy workshops have been identified using stylistic similarities in conjunction with the information found in the rich chronicles and biographical dictionaries of the Mamluk period. Biographies of artists, mostly calligraphers, were reconstructed and their modes of learning were investigated to shed light on their training process depending primarily on the calligraphy treatises of the period. Patrons, especially in their capacity as supporters of workshops, were also studied in light of the primary sources and to a lesser extent through their architecture.