VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Leibniz and the Principle of Sufficient Reason
Keywords: Best of all possible worlds
Leibniz
Principle of sufficient reason
PSR

Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason (PSR) is the claim that everything has an explanation. It rules out brute facts, inexplicable primitives, and purely random events. On the usual view, Leibniz grounds the PSR in purely descriptive truths. On my view, Leibniz grounds the PSR in this being the best of all possible worlds. God only creates the best, and a world in which the PSR is true is better than a world in which it is false. For the PSR ensures that the world has an explanatory structure, the investigation of which facilitates human happiness. This way of grounding the PSR faces at least two problems. The first problem is that it presupposes that the PSR is a contingent principle, even though most commentators take it to be necessary. But I argue that Leibniz is indeed committed to the contingency of the PSR. I demonstrate this by showing how, for Leibniz, PSR-violating entities such as vacua, atoms, and indiscernible bodies are possible but not actual. I also argue that the contingency of the PSR does not conflict with Leibniz’s other modal commitments. In particular, it does not conflict with the modal status of his principle of the identity of indiscernibles, nor with the modal status of his theory of truth. The second problem is that this way of grounding the PSR seems to be circular. For the PSR cannot be partially grounded in God’s choice of the best if God’s choice of the best is itself grounded in the PSR. I argue that Leibniz avoids this problem by grounding God’s choice of the best not in the PSR, but in God’s aim to maintain his own happiness. A suboptimal world would compromise God’s happiness, so he only creates the best. This constitutes a novel interpretation of Leibniz’s view that God has created the best of all possible worlds.
The Nonsovereign Subject and Sexual Violence in Contemporary North American and Russian Culture
Keywords: feminism
negativity
psychoanalysis
queer theory
sexual violence
trauma

Through stories about sexual violence, societies confront the condition of nonsovereignty that underlies the reality of suffering, self- and other-inflicted, in the lives of sexed beings. Analyzing theoretical, fictional, and popular media texts, written in the United States, Canada, and Russia from the 1980s to the 2010s, this dissertation formulates a structural approach to narratives about sexual violence and nonsovereignty. This approach avoids naturalizing the opposition between the “progressive” West and “traditional” Russia, enabling more informed discussions of cultural narratives about sexual violence and a more critical use of the discursive tools available for dealing with it. I identify three modes of approaching the problem of sexual violence: reparative, radical and prosaic. These modes shape subject positions and patterns of power relations. Each chapter analyzes the structure of a particular mode, its manifestations in cultural myths and in specific texts, and ultimately, its limitations. Chapter 1 discusses the reparative mode, which aims to heal the subject or the world, and its manifestations: the Western speakout model in Sapphire’s Push (1996) and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak (1999), and the Russian ideal of kenosis in Viktor Astafiev’s “Lyudochka” (1989) and Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes (2015). Reparative projects can be totalizing and easily appropriated by neoliberalism and conservative nationalism. The radical mode, discussed in Chapter 2, seeks to avoid appropriation by foregrounding identification with trauma. I analyze its manifestations in North American discourses of feminist and queer negativity and the Russian “literature of evil.” Reading Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl (2011) and Vladimir Sorokin’s Marina’s Thirtieth Love (1987), I argue that the radical mode reinscribes abjection as a source of empowerment and supports identity politics and structures of inequality. Chapter 3 formulates the prosaic mode, which focuses on processes of adaptation and survival without resolution or liberation. Reading Lyudmila Petrushevskaya’s The Time: Night (1992) and Tamara Faith Berger’s Maidenhead (2012), I articulate a prosaic vision of the subject as headquarters for self-maintenance in a world both sustaining and hostile. Understanding the three modes as at once fundamental and mutable, I argue for their critical and pragmatic use in debates about sexual violence.
Irrational Realism: Creative Disruption in Eighteenth-Century English Faux-Memoir
Keywords: Creative writing
Critical Theory
Jacques Lacan
Marion Milner
Psychoanalysis
Writer-subject

Abstract My project is a Lacanian examination of the writer-subject and the creative act. I look at eighteenth-century British faux-memoir as it both affords me literature in which the narrator is explicitly conceived as a writer-subject and an epoch in which literary genre is seen to shift from Romantic (enchanted) modes to representational (empirical) ones. Working at the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and art-practice discourses, I argue that, as the realist novel is being invented, writers preserve space for the ineffable through disruptions to language: textual fissure, poetic device, substantive collapse, elision, and aposiopesis. Psychoanalysis understands that as we are initiated into society through language, we develop a chimerical sense that we have lost a pre-Oedipal wholeness. This wholeness, which Lacan calls the real, is conceived as an ineffable, retroactively imagined, infinite and eternal non-state (itself conceived as alternately blissful and terrifying). Barred from the real by our inauguration into language, we are nevertheless consistently and repetitively seduced by it. The subject hurtles into the inchoate real when confronted by irrational discontinuities in language. It is likewise in the real that the reader is afforded the possibility of co-creation since she must negotiate her way back from it and into the symbolic through language. Psychoanalytically, the real is connected to desire (we yearn for the real’s imagined wholeness), psychosis (the real thrusts us outside society’s limits), melancholia and mourning (we revel—aphasic and lonely—in the real) in ways that are legible in the literature I investigate. In Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, romantic tropes and the everyday comingle to highlight writing as a melancholic enterprise. Through metaphoric breakdowns in language, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe produces the desire in Crusoe (and in some readers) to narrate. Through its insistent elision, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy sets itself up as a labyrinthine work of mourning and in so doing beckons the reader to actively co-create. I contend that early realist writers conserve the irrational as a new kind of enchantment, one in which the creative act is intrinsically replicated in order to offer the reader the opportunity for her own creative reparation.
The Mismatch Repair System Control Proliferation and Differentiation of Colon Epithelial Cells by Sensing Microbial Induced Oxidative DNA Damage
Keywords: Butyrate
Colon cancer
Microbiota
Mismatch repair
Reactive oxygen species

The etiology of colorectal cancer (CRC) has been linked to deficiencies in mismatch repair and adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) proteins, diet, inflammatory processes, and gut microbiota. However, the mechanism through which the microbiota synergizes with these etiologic factors to promote CRC is not clear. We found that altering the microbiota composition reduces CRC in APCMin/+MSH2-/- mice, and that a diet reduced in carbohydrates phenocopies this effect. Gut microbes did not induce CRC in these mice through an inflammatory response or the production of DNA mutagens but rather by providing carbohydrate-derived metabolites such as butyrate that fuels hyperproliferation of MSH2-/- colon epithelial cells. Further, we provided evidence that the mismatch repair pathway has a role in regulating β-catenin. Although colon epithelial cells (CECs) use butyrate to proliferate, the increased proliferation observed in MMR-deficient CECs was not expected, suggesting a unique interaction between MMR genes within CECs and the cell’s environment. Therefore, we investigated why MSH2-deficient cells hyperproliferate in the presence of butyrate. We show that MMR-deficient CECs have higher basal levels of reactive oxygen species than MMR-proficient CECs. Butyrate further increases oxidative stress in CECs, inducing DNA damage that arrests CEC proliferation in MMR-proficient but not in MMR-deficient CECs. Indeed, scavenging ROS increases proliferation only in MMR-proficient CECs. Our results uncover a mechanism by which gut microbiota control cell proliferation and differentiation in conjunction with the MMR system. The protective effect imparted by MMR in CECs allows for utilization of butyrate and maintenance of a healthy hypoxic environment.
The Summa de penitencia of John of Kent: Study and Critical Edition
Keywords: Canon Law
Critical Edition
Latin
Medieval England
Palaeography
Penance

This dissertation presents for the first time a critical edition of John of Kent’s Summa de penitencia and an accompanying study of the text. The Summa is a thirteenth century manual for confessors, informing them of the canon law of the Church and advising them on how to properly hear confessions. The dissertation has four introductory chapters before offering the edited text. The first chapter explains the contribution this critical edition will make to the scholarly community. The second chapter offers a general view of the scholastic milieu and pastoral reforms of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It likewise examines the genre of pastoralia, within which the Summa may be included. The third chapter offers all the known biographical details of John of Kent, including several newly discovered details that are discussed here for the first time. It also details the circumstances in which the Summa was written. The fourth chapter is an introduction to the edition itself. Descriptions of the five extant manuscripts are here offered, as well as my stemmatic hypothesis, editorial choices and formatting decisions. The remainder of the dissertation is the critical edition of the Summa, which John of Kent divided into three books. The first book primarily addresses clerical issues, such as excommunication, simony and certain sacraments. The second book primarily addresses lay issues, such as marriage, tithes and oaths. The final book is a fictional priest/penitent dialogue where the penitent is depicted confessing various matters in the confessional and the priest responding appropriately.
Brainstem Seizures and Associated Cardiorespiratory Depression Following Intrahippocampal 4-AP Application in Freely Moving Rats
Keywords: 4-aminopyridine
Brainstem seizures
Cardiorespiratory depression
Cerebral originating seizures

Cardiorespiratory dysfunction during or after seizures may contribute to hypoxic brain damage or, in some cases, sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). Disruption of lower brainstem cardiorespiratory systems by seizures are postulated to impair respiratory and cardiac function. Here, I explored the effects of brainstem seizures on cardiorespiratory function using a rat model of intrahippocampal 4-aminopyridine (4-AP)-induced acute recurrent seizures. I hypothesize that seizures, focally initiated in the hippocampus, become generalized and propagate into the brainstem, disrupting brainstem function leading to cardiorespiratory depression. Animal mortality is associated with brainstem seizures which cause respiratory arrest followed by cardiac arrest. Hippocampal, cortical and caudal dorsomedial brainstem electrographic recordings together with cardiorespiratory monitoring were conducted in freely moving rats. Increased respiration rate but unchanged heart rate occurred during the seizures in the hippocampus and cortex. Status epilepticus (SE) without brainstem seizures increased respiration and heart rates whereas SE with intermittent brainstem seizures induced repeated cardiorespiratory depression leading to death. Respiratory arrest prior to asystole was a terminal event. Phenytoin (100 mg/kg, i.p.) terminated brainstem seizure-induced cardiorespiratory depression and prevented death in 5/6 rats. Focal electrical stimulation of the brainstem also suppressed cardiorespiratory parameters. I conclude that seizure propagation to the brainstem produces cardiorespiratory depression related to mortality. Although cardiorespiratory depression was observed during SE, I hypothesize that the mechanisms causing death in my model are shared with spontaneous seizures associated with SUDEP. Finally cross frequency coupling and phase coherence features were able to identify different seizure states. These variables may help elucidate the network mechanisms that lead to brainstem seizure generation.
Differentiating the Drug Normalization Framework: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Substance Use Among Undergraduate Students in Canada
Keywords: Cannabis
Drug Normalization
Gender
Mixed Methods
Nonmedical Prescription Stimulant Use
Substance Use

This study investigates substance use trends, norms, and the social integration of drugs among undergraduate students in Canada through application of the drug normalization framework. This framework is designed to assess shifts in recreational substance use patterns, attitudes, and practices. In this dissertation, I focus on two prominent psychoactive substances in the university context: (1) cannabis as the most commonly used illicit drug in Canada, and (2) the nonmedical use of prescription drugs commonly prescribed for Attention Deficit Disorder. In Chapter Two I provide a multivariate analysis of a survey of 1,713 undergraduate students attending university at three campuses in Canada: the University of Toronto, the University of Guelph, and the University of Alberta. This chapter provides insight into cannabis normalization as differentiated by social location predictors. It illustrates the gendered character of cannabis acceptability attitudes and use rates, and provides evidence for a substance use acculturation effect experienced by students who were born abroad. In addition, this chapter evidences a complex relationship of peer network cannabis use prevalence to cannabis acceptability attitudes, where high network prevalence is associated with lower acceptability attitudes than "some" network prevalence, indicating a threshold effect for cannabis acceptability. In Chapter Three I apply a "doing gender" analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews with 58 students from the University of Toronto to investigate the salience of gendered norms and stigma with respect to cannabis use rates, accessibility, and acceptability attitudes. I show how the gendered differentiation of cannabis normalization remains significant despite gendered convergence in lifetime use rates of cannabis. In Chapter Four I investigate acceptability evaluations of the nonmedical use of prescription medications through analyzing a subset of 36 interviews with students from the University of Toronto. The findings of this chapter are used to critically engage with and expand the drug normalization framework's construct of drug acceptability. To conclude, I identify areas for future research and discuss the implications of these results in light of impending changes to drug policy in Canada which will render cannabis a legally regulated commercial product for recreational consumption.
Perjury and False Witness in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Keywords: early Middle Ages
false witness
Late Antiquity
perjury

This dissertation, ‘Perjury and False Witness in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’, investigates changing perceptions of perjury and false witness in the late antique and early medieval world. Focusing on primary sources from the Latin-speaking, western Roman empire and former empire, approximately between the late third and seventh centuries CE, this thesis proposes that perjury and false witness were transformed into criminal behaviours, grave sins, and canonical offences in Latin legal and religious writings of the period. Chapter 1, ‘Introduction: The Problem of Perjury’s Criminalization’, calls attention to anomalies in the history and historiography of the oath. Although the oath has been well studied, oath violations have not; moreover, important sources for medieval culture – Roman law and the Christian New Testament – were largely silent on the subject of perjury. For classicists in particular, perjury was not a crime, while oath violations remained largely peripheral to early Christian ethical discussions. Chapter 2, ‘Criminalization: Perjury and False Witness in Late Roman Law’, begins to explain how this situation changed by documenting early possible instances of penalization for perjury. Diverse sources such as Christian martyr acts, provincial law manuals, and select imperial and post-imperial legislation suggest that numerous cases of perjury were criminalized in practice. Chapter 3, ‘Peccatization: Perjury and False Witness in Latin Patristic Literature’, investigates analogous developments in the Latin Christian church. Chapter 4, ‘An Early Medieval Case Study: Perjury and False Witness in the Visigothic Church and Kingdom’, studies the effects of these developments on one early medieval society. A concluding chapter suggests a class-based dimension to these changes; interrogates the nature of perjury; and proposes further avenues for research. Conceived as a thesis in the history of law and religion, this dissertation doubles as an investigation of a prominent feature of late antique and early medieval culture.
Half Way to Freedom: The Role of Halfway Houses in Canada's Penal Landscape
Keywords: Prisoner Reentry
Punishment
Reintegration
Supervision

Each year in Canada, roughly 6,500 individuals are released from federal prisons. Ex-prisoners face a range of challenges as they rejoin the community, including finding employment, reconnecting with family and friends, receiving care for physical and mental health issues, and navigating parole conditions. Not surprisingly, former prisoners tend to identify the weeks and months immediately following prison release as particularly overwhelming and daunting. The Parole Board of Canada often mandates that federal prisoners (i.e., those sentenced to a prison term of at least two years) spend the first six months of release at a community-based residential facility, commonly known as a halfway house. These transitional, NGO-operated institutions are officially tasked with providing reentry support (e.g., basic social services and rehabilitative programming), as well as ongoing supervision of individuals on conditional release. Despite their central role in ex-prisoner reintegration/supervision, little is known about how these penal institutions work and operate in ex-prisoners’ lives, and the role they occupy in broader penal processes. I seek to fill this gap by examining the perceptions and experiences of halfway house residents and workers in a north-western Canadian city. My analysis focuses on how halfway houses workers seek to govern halfway house residents during the early stages of reentry, and how former prisoners, in turn, experience, navigate, and make meaning of their time at the halfway house. I show that the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, perceptions of both halfway house residents and workers call for varied conceptualizations of halfway houses as penal sites. Specifically, I propose three ways to think through the role of halfway houses in Canada's penal system; those are (1) halfway houses as liminal sites; (2) halfway houses as mobility-producing sites; and (3) halfway houses as open prisons. These conceptualizations provide a more nuanced understanding of the different ways in which halfway houses impinge on ex-prisoners’ lives in both repressive and productive ways. Drawing on studies of punishment and prisoner reentry, I reflect on what these conceptualizations reveal about the lived realities of ex-prisoners and workers of the Canadian penal state.
Models of Professionalism: Post-WWI Strategies and Ideologies Towards a Canadian Professional Theatre
Keywords: Canadian theatre
interwar theatre
Ontario theatre
professionalization
professional theatre
theatre history

The prevailing historical narratives of twentieth-century Canadian theatre have generally pinpointed a few particular post-WWII theatre companies in Ontario as the first professional companies in the province, if not in the whole country. These narratives apply the label of professional as though its definition and implications were self-evident and not historically-contingent. This study unpacks the professional status of Ontario’s first post-WWII professional theatre companies by first examining the interwar theatre community, models, and discourse which preceded the post-war companies. Using Bourdieu’s field theory and studies of professions/professionalism, this study argues that a collection of professional signifiers best serves an analysis of these post-WWII Ontario companies and the source of their professional status. Through this foundational framework this study illuminates professionalization as a purposeful process that is not always beneficial and for which exclusion is necessary; the interwar Ontario theatre community is analysed in this study through its prioritization of certain aesthetic tastes, class and political ideologies, and culturally and historically-contingent standards of theatrical competence. Through case studies and analysis of historical and rhetorical trends, this study will then examine the post-WWII professional companies in Ontario, including the New Play Society, Jupiter Theatre, and Crest Theatre of Toronto, the Stratford Festival, and the Canadian Repertory Theatre of Ottawa, and their use of theatrical models, professional signifiers, and rhetoric from the interwar theatre discourse to establish and reinforce their status as both Canadian and professional. It was necessary for these companies, as I will argue, to signify both their professionalism and Canadian-ness in order to distance themselves from older failed models of professional theatre and to create a new, sustainable model. This study will also explore how a growing anxiety in the Ontario theatre community over seemingly-unknowable audience tastes and encroaching American commercialism characterized the interwar discourse and the founding principles of the post-WWII professional companies, so much so that these anxieties are still undercurrents of contemporary theatre criticism.