VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Ambivalence of Altruism: White Canadian Women in International Development in East Africa

This dissertation investigates what remains of ‘the white man’s burden’ – or, in this case, the ‘white woman’s burden’ – and how it continues to structure the ethos and everyday lives of white women Canadian development workers living and working in East Africa. While those who decide to work overseas often do so with a desire to ‘do good,’ once arriving in the field development workers are often caught between these altruistic ideals and the (neo)colonial and racial inequalities that make up the foundation of the development industry. This dissertation extends earlier works to more fully and empirically understand the subject position of development workers and how development workers reaffirm, negotiate, and contest their position of white and economic privilege within global and localized racial hierarchies as they are encountered and enacted ‘on the ground.’ Bringing together the methodological and epistemological frameworks of transnational feminism and critical race and whiteness studies, I draw from primary data collected onsite from September-December 2015 and May-June 2016, including twenty-one semi-structured in-depth formal interviews with self-identified white women Canadian development workers living and working in Nairobi, Kenya and Kampala, Uganda. I approach this inquiry through three primary research questions: (1) How are the subjectivities and lived encounters of white women Canadian development workers structured through (neo)colonial and racialized conceptions of ‘doing good’?; (2) How do these development workers simultaneously reinforce and seek to contest hegemonic development narratives?; and (3) How are the subjectivities of these development workers potentially (re)produced and (re)configured through encounters on the ground? Ultimately, I argue, the contemporary white man’s burden manifests in these women’s lives as a deeply profound yet fraught relationship to their sense of self and purpose in the world, an ambiguous positioning raising questions about the motif of ‘doing good’ and forcing a confrontation with the self as much as with the imagined Other.

Keywords: Canada
East Africa
international development
whiteness
Advisor: Lo, Marieme
Population–based Long–term Trends and Outcomes of Endovascular Versus Open Aortic Repair of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms

Introduction: Knowledge regarding the long–term outcomes of endovascular aortic repair is growing. However, data with more than 10 years follow–up remain sparse, and are lacking from population–based studies. This thesis sought to determine the long–term outcomes of endovascular versus open surgical repair of both elective and ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysms. Methods: A chart re–abstraction study was conducted to validate open and endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair coding in Ontario administrative health data from 2003 to 2015. The algorithm was used to identify cohorts of elective and ruptured open and endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm patients from 2003 to 2016. The temporal trends in the two repair approaches were analyzed using time–series analysis. Propensity score methods and survival analyses were used to determine the long–term outcomes of endovascular versus open repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm in elective and ruptured settings. Results: Administrative data codes identified open repairs with greater than 87% positive predictive value, and endovascular repairs with greater than 91% positive predictive value. Two thirds of elective and 90% of ruptured aneurysm repairs were by the open approach. The rate of elective open repair decreased nearly three–fold (P

Keywords: abdominal aortic aneurysm
endovascular aortic repair
open surgical repair
population-based research
propensity score methods
Advisor: Al-Omran, Mohammed
On the Path of China’s Social Security Reform: Envisioning Communities in Contemporary China through Social Service Delivery

Since the 21st century under the Hu-Wen leadership, China has generally been conceived as entering the "turning point" for national development directives, social welfare reform, and community management policy. China’s welfare regime in the making has been guided by evolving of high-level political discourses stressing towards scientific development, building a harmonious society, people-oriented governance, pursuing the China Dream, all of which regard the social welfare development and community building as parts of the comprehensive national development goal. China’s welfare regime has developed into a more organized and comprehensive social security system that shows a higher degree of inclusiveness. The strategy of “governing through community” has led the Chinese welfare regime to gradually move away from a direct government intervention model towards a model of structured self-governance. Given that the Chinese welfare state is always in the making, it is also something imagined, created, and continuously shaped by different social actors. Assuming that complex social realities are mainly formed by the production and consumption of discursive actions in particular contexts, this study asks how professional social workers are envisioning community through discourses produced during their social service delivery, which in turn has had an impact on different aspects of their social world.

Keywords: China
community
social security reform
social service organizations
social workers
welfare regime
Advisor: Falkenheim, Victor C.
Lingering Between Fiction and Reality: An Aesthetic Approach to the Legacy of Catastrophe in Turkey

Despite the passing of the one hundredth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in 2015 with no official recognition by the Turkish state, the output of artwork related to the event has increased considerably over the past ten years. The Genocide of Ottoman Armenians is a widely studied subject in the disciplines of History, Literature, Anthropology and Economics. An aesthetic approach to the Genocide is, however, non-existent—this despite an increasing amount of artistic production on the topic. My doctoral dissertation approaches the legacy of Armenian Genocide through an aesthetic lens and, following the trajectory of three contemporary artworks (Sarkis’ Respiro, İz Öztat and Zisan’s Catastrophe and Erhan Arık’s Remembering), investigates what the principles of aesthetic theory can offer to our understanding of genocide beyond the traditional historical perspective. To this end, tracing the parallelism between the debates around the possibility of the representation of the Armenian Genocide and the discussions within aesthetic theory regarding the representative capacity of art, my research explores the ways in which art could possibly be brought into dialogue with the concepts of reconciliation, recognition and reparation.

Keywords: Aesthetics
Catastrophe
Contemporary Art
Fiction
Genocide
Representation
Advisor: Georgis, Dina
Forgers and Critics of the corpus Paulinum: Manuscripts and Critical Scholarship from Ancient Alexandria to the Republic of Letters and Beyond

Since the turn of the nineteenth century, scholarship on the writings of Paul insists that he did not write all letters attributed to him in the New Testament. Whereas this consensus represents a distinctly modern conclusion concerning the shape of the authentic corpus Paulinum, “Forgers and Critics of the corpus Paulinum” shows that people have constructed limits of various kinds on the corpus through critical practice, not just in the modern period but in antiquity as well. Criticism is frequently understood as an activity of reconstruction or discovery of an author’s textual output, undertaken to reverse intentional or unintentional changes to an author’s literary corpus. This dissertation argues, however, that the production of the authentic corpus Paulinum is the accomplishment of criticism, and not a function of authorship. This argument draws on two theoretical moorings. Adapting Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of distinction to the practice of criticism, the dissertation treats authenticity as a distinction conferred upon the corpus Paulinum tied to critical techniques and the identity of the critic within a field of cultural production. The dissertation analyzes the politics of distinction with a special focus on the role of manuscripts within critical practice, informed by recent scholarship on the history of the book that takes a materialist approach to the study of texts and textuality. Two chapters document the emergence of Pauline criticism in antiquity, including the struggle for the Pauline writings to occupy the socio-economic spheres of Roman Egypt in which criticism was typically conducted (Ch 2) and the convergence of criticism and heresiology in the third and fourth centuries as a response to the perceived textual threat of the Marcionite scriptural corpus (Ch 3). Two other chapters investigate how modern critics have responded to the (re)discovery of manuscripts, from two new manuscripts of an unknown Pauline correspondence (Ch 4) to the considerable wealth of manuscripts of Pauline corpus that contain numerous variant readings (Ch 5). The dissertation concludes with a reflection upon the variable significance of Paul within the critical production of an authentic corpus Paulinum.

Keywords: authenticity
criticism
distinction
Paul
Advisor: Kloppenborg, John S
The Holocaust and Mass Violence in the German-Occupied City of Rostov-on-Don, 1941-1943

Abstract The city of Rostov-on-Don came under the control of German military forces twice during World War II. Rostov was also the site of the largest massacre of Jews on Russian soil during the Holocaust—an estimated 15,000 to 18,000 people were killed at the Zmievskaia ravine in August 1942. With an evolving regime of violence, the German occupiers also killed thousands of Soviet prisoners of war and civilian residents of Rostov, as well as subjecting the female citizenry of Rostov to a barrage of sexual violence. Although its forms and dynamics changed from the initial violence that accompanied invasion to that of the occupation, and later retreat, violence suffused all aspects of occupation. It acted as a source of terror, a form of communication, and a means of control, with devastating and deadly consequences for the occupied people. This study focuses on German uses of violence during the two wartime occupations of Rostov-on-Don, and how this violence was experienced by the Soviet people who were subjected to it. It argues that the Holocaust in Rostov-on-Don cannot be understood outside the wider context of German occupation policies and the course of frontline fighting, both of which influenced how perpetrators, witnesses, and victims of violence interacted. By integrating the events of the Holocaust into the framework of war and occupation, this study expands the existing picture of World War II in the Soviet Union and reveals how genocidal and non-genocidal violence influenced and shaped one another. It also deepens existing historical knowledge of the Soviet Union, Germany, and the Holocaust by incorporating new information about events that took place in the Russian Federation of the Soviet Union and by examining the role of the German military in occupation-era violence. Finally, it documents the largest massacre of Jews in a Russian city, as well as reconstructing forgotten or overlooked moments of violence, including events that targeted Soviet POWs, patients in a psychiatric institution, Soviet women in a military brothel, and local Communist Party members, as well as the destruction of Rostov-on-Don’s Jewish community. This dissertation is based on Russian- and German-language materials from local and national archives in Russia, Germany, the United States, and Israel, along with an extensive set of published memory sources. Other sources include Soviet wartime and post-war investigative commissions, newspapers, newsreels, videotaped oral history interviews, memoirs, German military reports, letters, photo albums, and West German war crimes investigations. Taking these sources together, this study examines the fundamental role that mass violence played in the occupations of Rostov-on-Don between 1941 and 1943.

Keywords: Holocaust
occupation
Russia
Soviet Union
violence
World War II
Advisor: Viola, Lynne
Receiving Rhetoric: Language and Democratic Politics

This dissertation is a study of the political significance of rhetoric in democratic contexts. I explore both the uttering of language (the domain of rhetoric) and the interpretation of language (the domain of hermeneutics), to examine the discursive power of rhetoric and the role that rhetoric might play in facilitating acknowledgment, critical reflection and evaluative judgment in audiences. I distinguish three interpretive frames, which I call dissonant, resonant and disruptive, through which audiences receive rhetoric and consider how rhetoric might differently prompt those frames. I highlight dissonant rhetoric – rhetoric that marries aesthetic attunement with affective turbulence. Dissonance, I argue, has the transformative capacity to spark moments of critical reflection – potentially emancipatory instances of transcendence from conventional discourses and perspectives. Dissonance, thus, has a role to play in a robust rhetorical democracy, prompting audiences to actively question or acknowledge what was once taken for granted. The first chapter of this dissertation argues for a hermeneutically informed conception of rhetoric as world-disclosure and looks to the critical implications of this view. Chapter two provides an exegesis of Nietzsche’s reflections on rhetoric and attends to its actual deployment in Nietzsche’s works. I argue that Nietzsche’s rhetoric is often intentionally dissonant and oriented toward facilitating receptive effects. In the third chapter, I situate the argument between rhetorical theories that call for prejudicial attunement, the “systemic approach” to deliberative democracy and Arendtian judgment theory, to propose a theory of rhetorical democracy that foregrounds rhetoric’s receptive effects. I argue that the contemporary literature insufficiently engages with the receptive dimension of rhetoric and therefore does not capture the full range of world-building effects of rhetoric. The fourth chapter draws on Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the self to examine the reception of rhetoric. Using the NFL “take a knee” protests as a case study, I point to the transformative potential of the act of “kneeling” against injustice and consider the different ways this protest may be received by audience members: as a dissonant, resonant or disruptive form of rhetoric. Chapter five looks to comedic rhetoric as particularly promising for soliciting dissonant responses in audiences.

Keywords: Democratic Theory
Dissonance
Hermeneutics
Political Theory
Reception
Rhetoric
Advisor: Kohn, Margaret
Prehistoric Human Ecology along the Turkish Black Sea Coast

The Black Sea region of Turkey has received relatively little attention by archaeologists. Because of this, there remain a number of issues and perspectives that need to be confronted before research in the region can progress. Three studies are presented to this end. The first takes head on the use of the Black Sea flood Hypothesis as an explanation for why there are no Early Holocene sites in the region. Using Bathymetric data to simulate the paleoshoreline, I argue that it is simply too improbable that Neolithic sites would only be found in the area now covered by water. Instead, we should look to the abudnant mid-Holocene occupaitons in the region. The second study uses GIS techniques to model access and control in northern Turkey. The role of routes and pathways are explored using Least Cost pathway analysis. Territorial control is modeled using Site Catchment Analysis to identify habitually used zones around sites using both Effort and Idealized catchment areas. These areas would have been used to feed residents of the mounds, and the potential productivity and maximal population estimates are provided. These figures suggest that resources and agricultural productivity in the region could have supported large aggregations of indivduals. However, unlike almost every other part of Turkey at the time, the Black Sea does not provide any evidence for larger sites that could be associated with urbanism. I suggest that inhabitants of the region were likely “middle-range”societies and resisted the momentum towards more complex and regionally integrated forms of socio-political organization. The last study focuses on the controversial cemetery at the site of İkiztepe on the Bafra Plain. Originally, a late third-millennium BC (EB II-III) date was proposed. Recent scholarly work has tried to revise this, favouring a date sometime in the fourth-millennium BC. Relying on digitized plans and bronze weapon typologies, I argue that the initial assessment of a third-millenniium BC date remains the most plausible one. More exactly, I locate the beginings of use in the EBII or mid-third-millennium BC, which contrasts with both the original exacavator’s postion and more recent work.

Keywords: Black Sea
Landscape Archaeology
Spatial Analysis
Turkey
Advisor: Banning, Edward B.
The Role of Digital Sexual Communication in the Sexual Health of Forcibly Displaced Adolescents Living in Informal Urban Settlements of Kampala Uganda

This three-paper dissertation explores the importance of digital sexual communications (DSC) for the advancement of sexual health among forcibly displaced adolescents living in the informal urban settlements of Kampala, Uganda. The first paper examined the prevalence of different patterns of sexting, a DSC strategy that involves sending and receiving sexually explicit materials via digital technologies and their association with technology use, gender norms, and sexual health factors. Results from this paper indicate that there are three-groups of sexters: “non-sexters”—individuals who did not engage in sexting (n = 205; 84.7%), “receivers, but reluctant senders”—individuals who received words-only texts and nudes, but only sent words-only texts in return (n = 13; 5.4%), and “poly-sexters”—individuals who sent and received both words-only texts and nude pictures (n = 24; 9.9%). Differences between sexting patterns emerged on technology use (mobile phone usage and mobile app usage), gender norms, and sexual health indicators (condom use, condom self-efficacy, and access to sexual and reproductive health services). The second paper adapted items from a subscale of Helweg-Larsen and Collins’ Multidimensional condom attitudes scale—embarrassment to negotiate and use—to incorporate sexting and tested the psychometric properties. The results indicate that the modified subscale is valid, reliable, gender-sensitive, and relevant for predicting recent condom use among urban forcibly displaced adolescents living in informal urban settlements in the Ugandan context. The third paper examined the mediating role of text-based condom negotiation in the relationship between predictors (sexting patterns, gender and dating relationship status) and condom practices (knowledge of where to access condoms, recent condom access, and recent condom use). Results indicate that text-based condom negotiation plays a mediating role between the predicting variables and condom practices. As a mediator, text-based condom negotiation was more critical in improving knowledge on where to access condoms for adolescent girls vs. adolescent boys and improving recent condom access for participants who engaged in sexting. Digital sexual health interventions tailored for forcibly displaced adolescents need to consider sexual empowerment, including negotiation, decision making, and assertive skills. The conclusion of the dissertation includes a summary of results, the unique contribution of papers, implications for social work practice, education, and research.

Keywords: condom negotiation
digital sexual communications
forcibly displaced adolescents
sexting
sexual health
Uganda
Advisor: Newman, Peter A
The Tortious Liability of States for Combatant Activities

This thesis examines whether it should be possible for civilians to hold states liable for losses states inflict on them during warfare. Answering this question requires turning into two bodies of laws that appear to be incompatible and unable to yield clear conclusions. First, the laws of war, which regulate states’ conduct in combat, but do not provide individuals with a private law claim-right against states or impose duties of compensation on states towards civilians. Second, tort law, which offers civilians a cause of action, yet its structure seems difficult to apply in the battlefield, and its availability is frustrated in many common law jurisdictions by a special immunity. Consequently, arguments relating to the liability of states tend to be polarized, advocating for either complete immunity or total liability, and are divorced, to various degrees, either from the laws of war or from tort law. In this thesis, I develop a novel account of the tortious liability of states for wrongs they inflict during combat that is informed by the laws of war, tort law theory and doctrine, and substantive rule of law principles. My central claim is that by examining the laws of war, it is possible to articulate the rights and duties of states and civilians during war, including what amounts to an imposition of wrongful losses for which corrective justice duties arise. Only losses that are inflicted while violating the laws of war are wrongs for which liability can and should be imposed, as such actions are outside the scope of states’ authority. By exposing the nexus between the laws of war and tort law and defining which losses amount to belligerent wrongs, the framework I offer illuminates how tort doctrines can apply in the battlefield and why tort liability should be available for civilians against states.

Keywords: Combat
International Humanitarian Law
Jus In Bello
Liablity
Tort Law
War
Advisor: Ripstein, Arthur
“Welfare-For-Weapons”: Race, Criminality, and Somali Arrival in Neoliberal Times

The 1990s in Canada were marked by neoliberal campaigns that stigmatized recipients of welfare. Elected officials and media suggested that welfare fraud was rampant, and every person on welfare needed to be surveilled. At the same time, fears of “illegitimate” refugees with no identification documents, dominated public discourse. As a result, every potential refugee was scrutinized for signs of fraud and criminality. Somali communities in Canada bore the brunt of this discourse. Utilizing the methodological and analytical frameworks of document analysis and critical discourse analysis, this dissertation is a study of 1990s welfare and immigration fraud discourses in Canada, and their continued effects on Somali communities in Canada today. Realized through a Black Muslim analytic, I engage popular print media and government archives, to examine how power manifests in discourses, the formation of knowledge, and the marginalization of Somali subjects – particularly in the construction of the racial imaginary of Canada in the 1990s. Additionally, I argue that the vilification of Somalis during the 1990s, were foundational to “war on terror,” discourses and the continued policing of Somali communities today. This study reveals the social, political and pedagogical implications of media and government documents on the lives of Somalis, as a relatively recent Black diaspora in Canada. Alongside, print media and government archives, this dissertation explores the community archives of Somali organizations and allied groups, to provide a counter-narrative to official and dominant discourses on Somali people, centering the stories of resistance by Somali communities.

Keywords: Black Muslim Analytic
Canada
Criminality
Immigration
Somali Refugees
Welfare
Advisor: McCready, Lance T
Walcott, Rinaldo