VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
L'Acadie Postnationale: Producing Franco-Canadian Identity in the Globalized Economy

Language is at the center of much debate in l’Acadie, a Francophone community in what has always been a peripheral region of, first, European Empires, and next, the North American market. Now, mobilizing neoliberal ideologies, Acadian community leaders and the Canadian federal government are striving to develop the global commodification of Acadian culture, through arts and tourism, as a way to ensure the reproduction of Acadian identity in a global economy. The Acadian art scene, first institutionalized as a space for the protection of Acadian culture and the French language by community organizations and the State, has long been a privileged space for the production and reproduction of nationalist understandings of Acadian culture. The commodification of culture is a site of ideological tensions on questions of nationalism as, simultaneously, increased urbanization and the democratization of the media is challenging the nationalist understanding of Acadian identity, as artists and community organizations claim a space of multilingualism in their work. In this presentation, I will draw on data I collected in a multisited ethnography, to show how the push for commodification is a source of tension for the Acadian community. I track ideologies of language from the government decision-making to the production and circulation of Acadian art, to analyze the tensions Acadian artists and community organizers experience as they try to enter or maintain themselves in the global economy, through the use of web-based media, alterglobalizing networks or government and private sponsorships. I will show how the institutionalization of languages as homogeneous is constraining the field of Acadian art, as actors are deploying diverse strategies to participate within or critique the existing networks.

Keywords: linguistic minorities
state
globalization
Advisor: Heller, Monica
Artwork/Streetlives, Street-involved Youth in Thunder Bay: A Community-based, Arts-informed Inquiry

Artwork / Streetlives is a community-based, arts-informed, research project which addresses harm reduction amongst street youth in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Nine street-involved participant researchers (supported by a team of researchers and community organizations) used art making and storytelling as ways of understanding the risks specific to street-involved youth in Thunder Bay. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the participant researcher group and a majority of Aboriginal research participants, a novel approach was used to create principles of research collaboration, in pursuit of the principles of ownership, control, access and possession for ethical research with Aboriginal peoples. The participant researchers found that their most common experience was their vulnerability to governmental social services and law enforcement personnel and policies. They further agreed that the risk of losing their children to child protection services is a source of increased vulnerability and a barrier to accessing treatment. They all agreed that the process of art making was fruitful and were surprised by the clarity and evocative nature of their artwork, finding that meeting weekly to do art is gratifying and therapeutic. They were interested to discover that the art they created, just by telling their stories, contained strong prevention messages they would have been influenced by as younger people. As such the participants want to continue making art, and showing their work, particularly to young people, social service providers, and law enforcement officers, who they think are in the best position to learn from it. This project is building capacity in the community (by teaching artmaking, group work, organizing, critical thinking, and presentation skills), is contributing to scholarship, and significantly and positively impacting the lives of the participant researchers. This work is represented in traditional academic prose and as collaborative fiction.

Keywords: HIV
Aboriginal
Indigenous
Street-Involved
Thunder Bay
Harm Reduction
Street drugs
Decriminalization
Sex Work
Drug Use
Advisor: Knowles, J. Gary
Fretboard Harmony for University Study: Method and Historical Context

Fretboard harmony is essential in any thorough approach to the education of classical guitarists yet no effective method or materials for teaching a course in fretboard harmony is currently available. This dissertation aims to remedy this state of affairs by providing a method book intended for use in an upper-level undergraduate course. The design of the method book is informed by the study of historical documents and by the examination of recent theory and keyboard harmony texts. In Chapter I, materials from the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical guitar traditions are examined to assess the historical conception and use of the guitar as an harmonic instrument. These include Matteis’ The False Consonances of Music, Sor’s Méthode pour la guitare and Horetzky’s Preludes, Cadences and Modulations. Having established some historical context, the dissertation proceeds in Chapter II to examine theory and keyboard harmony texts to determine if there is a consensus on the ordering of presentation of concepts. The type of exercises given and their deployment are also assessed. The fretboard harmony method which emerges from these studies adapts this information to the particular exigencies and constraints of the guitar, resulting in a text which is intended for use in a full-year, upper-level undergraduate course. It comprises Chapter III and consists of a progressive arrangement of over 250 exercises along with written instruction. It begins with fretboard orientation and proceeds through single-note exercises, intervals, triads, chords, chord function and chord progression and modulation. The derivation of barre chords and “common” or “familiar” chords is explicated through a systematic method of chord formulation. Melody harmonization and figured bass realization are employed as pedagogical tools and are objectives in themselves in learning to actualize harmony on the fretboard. The harmonic scope of the method is confined to the vocabulary of the common-practice period. The use of secondary dominants, Augmented and Neapolitan 6th chords are final goals. Chapter IV is a conclusion of the study with a discussion of potential areas of future research.

Keywords: Music
Guitar
Advisor: Walter, Cameron
A World More Intimate: Exploring the Role of Mobile Phones in Maintaining and Extending Social Networks

While there are exemplary studies on the relationships between social networks and media such as television and the Internet, less is known about the social network consequences of mobile phone use during life-stage transitions. This study investigates the roles that mobile phones play in supporting the relationships of young people as they transition to and through their first-year of university in Toronto, Canada. Focussing on information practices during a transition that tests the resilience of support networks, this study queried the extent to which mobile phones play a role in keeping relationships intact, enabling students to maintain a sense of social cohesion and belonging. Data were collected from November 2007 to September 2008 through a longitudinal research design. Socio-technical concepts and network analysis techniques were applied to analyze the ways in which mobile communication is embedded in the everyday social life of young people aged 17-34. Set within the culturally-specific context of urban Canada, the data provided substantial evidence that mobile phones foster social cohesion within intimate relations but provide a more tenuous platform from which to nurture new relationships. First-year undergraduates have integrated the mobile phone into the way they engage with their social networks to a considerable degree, with commuter students experiencing additional tensions in negotiating relationships from home and on-campus. Findings showed that mobile phones were the devices of choice to mitigate feelings of loneliness, with deleterious consequences for the development of new relationships. Furthermore, the mobile phone was a key contributor to a rising sense of empowerment and autonomy for young adults as they negotiated identity transformations during their rite of passage into adulthood. Issues of trust and reciprocity in forming new relationships were mediated through a continuum of social media of which the mobile phone was the most intimate. Evidence of continuous access to social networks has broader implications for how mechanisms for coping with being alone and disconnection are acquired in this generation. Finally, observations of ritualistic interaction practices involving mobile phones may be theorized as small-scale evidence of larger societal shifts from collective constructs of community to that of networked individuals.

Keywords: mobile phones
cell phones
social networks
youth
relationships
loneliness
constitutive entanglement
Advisor: Caidi, Nadia
The Language of Real Life: Self-possession in the Poetry of Paul Celan, T. S. Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Paul Valéry

In his “Letter on Humanism,” Martin Heidegger conveys the importance he attributes to poetry when he states: “Language is the house of being” (“Letter” 239). In response to his early Jesuit education, he developed a secular alternative to theology with his existential phenomenology. Theology, poetry, and phenomenology share the basic concern of explaining the foundations of being. For Heidegger, ownership characterizes being in a fundamental way; in Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), he establishes the “Ereignis” (“event of appropriation”) as the foundation of being. Ownership lies at the core of being in his thinking following Being and Time. Yet his philosophy ignores the material circumstances of ownership. By way of a materialist critique of Heidegger’s Idealist phenomenology, I expose how property-relations are encoded in the modern poetry and philosophy of dwelling with the question: who owns the house of being? The answer lies in “self-possession,” which represents historical subjectivity as the struggle for the means of production. Paul Celan, T. S. Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Paul Valéry are all poets who address the relationship between being and ownership in expressing what Marx and Engels call the “language of real life” in The German Ideology (26). In 1927, Eliot converted to Anglicanism and found solace in the realm of faith; by opting for the theology of dispossession, he surrendered his historical subjectivity. Rilke thought that he could find refuge from the marketplace in aesthetic beauty and pure philosophy but eventually disabused himself of his illusion. Similarly, Valéry sought refuge in the space of thought; basing reality in the mind, he forsook the social realm as the site of contestation for gaining ownership over being. As a poet who distinguished himself from the Idealism of his predecessors, Celan developed a structure of dialogue based upon shared exchange on common ground. A materialist approach to the poetry and philosophy of dwelling exposes property-relations as the foundation of the house of being.

Keywords: poetry
modernism
Marx, Karl
Heidegger, Martin
enowning
Ereignis
materialism
phenomenology
appropriation
dwelling
Celan, Paul
Eliot, T. S.
Rilke, Rainer Maria
Valéry, Paul
property relations
Advisor: Chamberlin, J. Edward
The Canadian Wheat Board and the Creative Re-constitution of the Canada-UK Wheat Trade: Wheat and Bread in Food Regime History

This dissertation traces the historical transformation of the Canada-UK commodity chain for wheat-bread as a lens on processes of local and global change in agrofood relations. During the 1990s, the Canadian Wheat Board (Canada’s monopoly wheat seller) and Warburtons, a British bakery, pioneered an innovative identity-preserved sourcing relationship that ties contracted prairie farmers to consumers of premium bread in the UK. Emblematic of the increasing importance of quality claims, traceability, and private standards in the reorganization of agrifood supply chains, I argue that the changes of the 1990s cannot be understood outside of historical legacies giving shape to unique institutions for regulating agrofood relations on the Canadian prairies and in the UK food sector. I trace the rise, fall, and re-invention of the Canada-UK commodity chain across successive food regimes, examining the changing significance of wheat- bread, inter-state relations between Canada, the UK, and the US, and public and private forms of agrofood regulation over time. In particular, I focus on the way in which changing food regime relations transformed the CWB, understood as the nexus of institutions tying prairie farmers into global circuits of accumulation. When in the 1990s, the CWB and Warburtons responded to structural crises in their respective industries by re-inventing the Canada-UK wheat trade, the result was significant organizational and industry change. On the prairies, the CWB has shown how – contrary to expectations -- centralized marketing and quality control may help prairie farmers adapt to the demands of end-users in the emerging ‘economy of qualities’. In the UK, Warburtons has led the ‘premiumisation’ of the bread sector, traditionally defined by consumer taste for cheap bread, over the last 15 years. The significance of the shift towards quality chains in the wheat-bread sector is analyzed in light of conflicts over the proposed introduction of genetically engineered (GE) wheat to the Canadian prairies.

Keywords: political economy
agriculture and food
Canada
food regimes
Canadian Wheat Board
genetically engineered crops
Advisor: Friedmann, Harriet
Bone Graphs: Medial Abstraction for Shape Parsing and Object Recognition

The recognition of 3-D objects from their silhouettes demands a shape representation which is invariant to minor changes in viewpoint and articulation. This invariance can be achieved by parsing a silhouette into parts and relationships that are stable across similar object views. Medial descriptions, such as skeletons and shock graphs, attempt to decompose a shape into parts, but suffer from instabilities that lead to similar shapes being represented by dissimilar part sets. We propose a novel shape parsing approach based on identifying and regularizing the ligature structure of a given medial axis. The result of this process is a bone graph, a new medial shape abstraction that captures a more intuitive notion of an object’s parts than a skeleton or a shock graph, and offers improved stability and within-class deformation invariance over the shock graph. The bone graph, unlike the shock graph, has attributed edges that specify how and where two medial parts meet. We propose a novel shape matching framework that exploits this relational information by formulating the problem as an inexact directed acyclic graph matching, and extending a leading bipartite graph-based matching framework introduced for matching shock graphs. In addition to accommodating the relational information, our new framework is better able to enforce hierarchical and sibling constraints between nodes, resulting in a more general and more powerful matching framework. We evaluate our matching framework with respect to a competing shock graph matching framework, and show that for the task of view-based object categorization, our matching framework applied to bone graphs outperforms the competing framework. Moreover, our matching framework applied to shock graphs also outperforms the competing shock graph matching algorithm, demonstrating the generality and improved performance of our matching algorithm.

Keywords: Shape Matching
Advisor: Dickinson, Sven
Fleet, David J.
The Role of the Carotenoid Lycopene as an Antioxidant to Decrease Osteoporosis Risk in Women: Clinical and in vitro Studies

Lycopene is a potent carotenoid antioxidant shown to decrease the risk of chronic diseases associated with oxidative stress and has recently begun to be studied in relation to osteoporosis. However, studies specifically associating intervention with lycopene and a decreased risk for osteoporosis have not yet been conducted, and the mechanisms by which lycopene affects bone have yet to be elucidated. The purpose of this thesis was to explore the hypotheses that supplementation with lycopene would increase antioxidant capacity while decreasing oxidative stress parameters; subsequently decreasing bone turnover markers, and thus the risk of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women. Specifically, experiments were designed to determine whether lycopene acts in its antioxidant capacity to improve bone health, and to delineate the mechanisms of these effects. These hypotheses were investigated through a cross-sectional study, a randomized controlled clinical study, and in vitro studies on human osteoblast cells. The results presented in this thesis demonstrate that intervention with the potent antioxidant lycopene significantly increased concentrations of the 5-cis isomer and resulted in significantly decreased oxidative stress parameters in postmenopausal women. This decrease in oxidative stress parameters resulted in significantly decreased concentrations of the bone resorption marker crosslinked N-telopeptides of type I collagen (NTx). The typical diet of participants included a relatively low intake of lycopene, and the corresponding serum lycopene concentrations were not as effective in decreasing biomarkers of oxidative stress and bone resorption as those obtained from supplementation with lycopene to increase 5-cis serum lycopene. Studies on the paraoxonase enzyme suggest that lycopene is most effective in quenching oxidative stress to decrease bone turnover markers when the internal antioxidant defenses are insufficient or decremented. Mechanisms demonstrated by the in vitro findings suggest that cis lycopene is capable of both preventing and repairing the damaging effects of oxidative stress in osteoblasts. Overall, this thesis provides evidence that lycopene acts through its antioxidant capacity to decrease oxidative stress parameters and bone turnover markers, and may, therefore, reduce the risk for osteoporosis. Based on these findings, the consumption of lycopene by women to improve overall bone health should be considered.

Keywords: lycopene
antioxidant
osteoporosis
bone turnover markers
oxidative stress
paraoxonase
bone
reactive oxygen species
Advisor: Rao, Leticia G.
“On the Pawprints of Terror": The Human Rights Regime and the Production of Truth and Subjectivity in Post-authoritarian Chile

In 1990, Chile made a successful transition from the authoritarian dictatorship that had ruled the country since 1973 to a democratically elected government. The authoritarian regime was characterized by massive and systemic practices of human rights abuses, and it left an official toll of 5,000 deaths, about 2000 of which constitute “detained and disappeared people”, and an additional 27,000 people who have been officially recognized as victims of torture. These figures do not take into account the unknown numbers of Chilean exiles, or those who were internally displaced or who lost their jobs due to their suspected political affiliations. The human cost of the military regime has continued to be one of the most enduring issues confronting the post-authoritarian Chilean nation. This thesis builds on the work of critical researchers who locate the Chilean authoritarian regime in the transnational politics of the Cold War and their effect in implementing neo-liberalism in Chile. This literature demonstrates that terror was a constitutive, rather than an incidental, element of neo-liberal governmentality: governmentality that inscribed itself on Chilean bodies through terror practices and that remains unscathed through the transition to democracy. With that premise in mind I explore, through a historical analysis of major conjunctures in the history of human rights debates in Chile, how the post-authoritarian nation accounts for the human rights legacies of authoritarianism while obscuring the continuity of authoritarian governmentality. I propose that human rights constitute a biopolitical governmental regime that in a manner comparable to the authoritarian terror captures human life within the realm of state power. As a regime, human rights submit experiences of terror to specific power-knowledge technologies that render terror intelligible, manageable and governable. Rather than promoting essential values of truth and justice, the human rights regime produces specific discourses of truth and justice as well as specific discourses of subjectivity and nation. In concrete terms, this thesis explores how the post-authoritarian nation and it subjects use the human rights regime to discursively construct a national truth in order to promote and protect specific governmental arrangements.

Keywords: Human rights
Chile
Latin America
Governmentality
Biopolitics
Foucault
Torture
Truth commissions
Athoritarianism
National reconciliation
Agamben
Advisor: Razack, Sherene
The Molecular Characterization of Head and Neck Cancer in Young Patients

Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) most commonly develop in older patients (≥60 years of age) with a history of tobacco and alcohol use. However, young individuals (≤45 years of age) can also develop HNSCC, often without common risk factors. Increasing evidence shows that Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection is associated with particular HNSCC sites (e.g. oropharynx). We assessed the Roche Linear Array HPV Genotyping Test in several lesions and then examined the prevalence of HPV in HNSCCs from young and older patients. HPV infection was most prevalent in oropharyngeal cancers (16/22, 73%), rarely found in oral cavity cancers (2/53, 4%), and other head and neck sites (1/17, 6%). HPV positive tumors were associated with patients that were >40 and <60 years old (p=0.02). The absence or shortened time of carcinogen exposure from common risk factors and the development of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) at an early age suggest aberrant genetic events that are different than those in OSSCs from older patients. We used Affymetrix SNP 6.0 arrays to genomically profile oral tumors from young and older patients. Tumors from young patients showed different regions/genes of copy number alterations than those from older patient tumors. An increase of regions of loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in tumors from older patients was observed, and there was a high prevalence of copy number neutral LOH on chromosome 9 in tumors from young and older patients. These data suggest different genetic mechanisms in these patient groups. We have previously shown that HNSCCs from younger patients exhibited a high incidence of microsatellite instability (MSI), a marker of defective mismatch repair (MMR). Deregulated mRNA levels of hPMS1, hPMS2 and hMLH1 were observed and absent/low expression of hPMS1, hPMS2 and hMLH1 protein levels were observed in >50% of OSCCs. No mutations were observed in hPMS1 and hPMS2 and no significant differences of MSI or LOH were observed across genomic loci between tumors of young and older patients. The role of these genetic mechanisms in oral cancer appears complex; studies such as ours should further improve our knowledge of the molecular mechanisms leading to early-onset oral carcinomas.

Keywords: Head and Neck Cancer
Young Patients
Oral Cancer
Human Papillomavirus
SNP Array
Mismatch Repair
Advisor: Kamel-Reid, Suzanne