VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
At Home in the Adirondacks: A Regional History of Indigenous and Euroamerican Interactions, 1776 - 1920

This dissertation is a social history of Algonquian and Iroquoian people in the Adirondacks of New York State, a rural, borderlands region that shares geography and history with parts of Canada. My study is a microhistory that brings a local history into a larger national dialogue and debates about Indigenous people in colonial and nineteenth century North American history. It argues the Adirondacks have always been an indigenous homeland to Iroquoian and Algonquian peoples and that they contributed to the fabric of its culture there. It also examines and complicates the history of landscapes known as hunting territories or, as I have also called them, locations of exchange, defined as “a purposeful and occupied place where reciprocal acts occur, creating opportunities for entangled exchanges between people and the land.” These themes run throughout the thesis. My dissertation briefly investigates the pre-colonial relationship between Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking people with this place and then focuses on the entangled relationships that formed post-contact, over time, between Indigenous people and Euroamerican Adirondackers, as well as visiting urban sportsmen and tourists. My work examines nineteenth century relationships in the Northeast between men and women in both social and economic endeavours; it is also a history about labour, including performance. In addition to ethnicity, gender, and class, this study examines the nature of rural society in this time and place, to further complicate our understanding of Indigenous histories. I suggest that class relations and rural society are important lenses to view contact history during the nineteenth century and later, especially in the East where contact was longer and the trope of the “vanishing Indian” was privileged. Moreover, my dissertation demonstrates the ability and need to extend Native peoples’ history past the contact period in any historical narrative about place or culture in North America.

Keywords: First Nations
Native American
Iroquois
Algonquian
Abenaki
New York
borderlands
Quebec
Akwesasne
Odanak
environmental history
rural history
contact history
ethnically mixed
wilderness
hunting territory
family history
guiding
hunting
trapping
fishing
artefacts
frontier violence
boarding house
entrepreneur
class
performance
basket making
beadwork
acting
encampment
pageant
tourism
social history
microhistory
ethnohistory
Advisor: Morgan, Cecilia
Taphonomy and Community Analysis of the Tulip Beds (Middle Cambrian, Series 3, Stage 5), Burgess Shale Formation of Mount Stephen, British Columbia

The Cambrian (Series 3, Stage 5) Burgess Shale represents an exceptional window for examining the biodiversity and ecological structure of some of the earliest metazoan communities that evolved during the Cambrian explosion. Here the first description and quantitative analysis of the Tulip Beds locality (Campsite Cliff Shale Member, Burgess Shale Formation) on Mount Stephen in Yoho National Park is presented. Comparisons with the stratigraphically younger Walcott Quarry allow examinations of spatial and temporal patterns in the Burgess Shale biota. A comprehensive micro-scale analysis of fossiliferous layers revealed that the Tulip Beds was entirely composed of millimeter-laminated fine-grained event driven claystones. This depositional pattern is similar to the Walcott Quarry although a few distinctive thicker claystones and prominent carbonate interbeds occur in that section. The depositional environment of the Tulip Beds is interpreted as lower energy and more distal to the prominent Cathedral Escarpment iii than the Walcott Quarry. Despite such differences, both localities share a similar taphonomic history, and most of the assemblage is considered autochthonous or para-autochthonous. The Tulip Beds collection comprises almost 10,000 specimens representing 110 genera in at least ten phlya. Like the Walcott Quarry, the Tulip Beds is dominated by arthropod and sponge taxa, and both assemblages are mostly represented by epibenthic sessile suspension feeders. While the overall patterns of diversity and ecology are similar, these patterns diverge when examining relative abundances; the Walcott Quarry is dominated by arthropods, and the Tulip Beds by taxa of uncertain affinity. One of these taxa is Siphusauctum gregarium, an enigmatic stalked filter feeder unique to the Tulip Beds, representing one of the largest and most abundant taxa at this locality. Despite differences in abundance, the overall patterns suggest that the diversity and ecology of the Burgess Shale biota is maintained across local geographic and temporal scales.

Keywords: Palaeoecology
Burgess Shale
Tulip Beds
Cambrian Explosion
Taphonomy
Walcott Quarry
Advisor: Caron, Jean Bernard
Life Histories: Ontogeny, Phylogeny and Narrative Structure in the Modernist Bildungsroman

This thesis offers new perspectives on the modernist bildungsroman, a genre currently enjoying much attention in Modernist Studies. Though modernist deformations of the Bildung plot are typically read symptomatically, I propose that in several cases these deformations are structural innovations reflecting contemporary discoveries in embryology, genetics and evolutionary theory. These discoveries offered models for exposing and subverting the bildungsroman’s historical (aesthetic, political, scientific, ideological) association with recapitulation—the theory that an individual’s development (ontogeny) replays the evolution of its species (phylogeny). Chapter One reads Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a clear example of a Bildung plot in which the traditional parallel between ontogeny and phylogeny is broken: Stephen Dedalus’s artistic maturation is obstructed by repeated returns to the personal, national, mythical and prehistoric past. Chapter Two considers Forster’s Howards End as a bildungsroman stretched beyond the realm of Bildung into that of genetic transmission. Exploiting Mendelism’s naturalization of atavism, Forster counters the genre’s inherited associations with recapitulation, progressivism and entropy. Chapter Three examines Aldous Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza, a bildungsroman remarkable for its extreme anachronies. Huxley’s rewriting of the Bildung plot is informed by research, by his brother Julian and others, on the possibility of inducing metamorphosis in a strange amphibian, the axolotl, which usually fails to reach morphological adulthood. Chapter Four proposes Woolf’s Orlando as a missing link between the seemingly esoteric biological engagements of the three aforementioned novels and the organicist aesthetics that characterize modernist theories of the novel. Relating Orlando’s metafictionality to criticism by Henry James, Forster and others, I corroborate current attempts in Modernist Studies that read the bildungsroman as a privileged testing ground for modernist aesthetics, ethics, politics and historiography. Connecting the four chapters is the common strategy of decoupling individual development from historical change and celebrating some kind of anti-chronology that I call reversion; informed by new biological theories of growth and evolution, reversion is enacted formally through manipulations of temporal structure. Thus the modernist bildungsroman enlarges, with help from biology, the range of possible and acceptable developmental trajectories.

Keywords: Modernism
Bildungsroman
Narrative theory
Recapitulation theory
James Joyce
Aldous Huxley
Virginia Woolf
Edward Morgan Forster
Advisor: Schmitt, Cannon
Roma letteraria in D'Annunzio, Moravia e Pasolini. Una lettura semiotica

Nel "Il piacere" di Gabriele D’Annunzio, i "Racconti romani" di Alberto Moravia e "Ragazzi di vita" di Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roma si pone come ‘altro’ da un semplice scenario davanti al quale si svolge la narrazione. La città interloquisce con il lettore, contribuendo alla costruzione di una forma alternativa di discorso poetico e critico che si muove tra etica ed estetica, tra condizione esistenziale e percezione della forma. Questo studio mette a dialogo semiotica e critica letteraria. La città, la sua topografia e le sue forme architettoniche dirigono il percorso interpretativo e conoscitivo del lettore, ponendosi come sistema semiotico intorno al quale la narrazione è organizzata. Qui lo spazio è geografico, bidimensionale e topografico ma è anche quello tridimensionale del volume architettonico, e infine quadridimensionale, quello del cronotopo bachtiniano. Bachtin difatti chiarisce che solo attraverso il cronotopo è possibile comprendere “l’interconnessione sostanziale dei rapporti temporali e spaziali dei quali la letteratura si è impadronita artisticamente...Nel cronotopo letterario ha luogo la fusione dei connotati spaziali e temporali in un tutto dotato di senso e di concretezza” (Estetica e Romanzo 231). Se Michail Bachtin pone il tempo come principio guida nella forma artistica, Yuri Lotman si concentra sullo spazio come sistema semiotico, spazio culturale. Egli concepisce il testo artistico come un universo semiotico che non si fonda su uno schema dicotomico; non è possibile aumentare la conoscenza attraverso strutture che si basano esclusivamente su contrapposizioni polarizzate. L’universo semiotico per Lotman è uno spazio culturale con una struttura costituente in divenire dinamico: “Vanno distinte due sfere fondamentali della semiotica cittadina: la città come spazio e la città come nome” (“Il simbolismo di Pietroburgo e i problemi della semiotica della città”, La semiosfera 1985: 225). Si studiano quindi le modalità con cui lo spazio urbano di Roma si manifesta in testi narrativi diversi, dal romanzo dannunziano ai racconti moraviani, ai frammenti culminati poi nella forma del romanzo pasoliniano. All’interno dello spazio culturale ‘città’, il legame tra personaggi e spazio topografico e architettonico, riflette rapporti immobili o che anelano all’immobilità, al rifiuto del cambiamento (D’Annunzio), ma anche incompatibilità con un modello storicamente dato (Moravia e Pasolini).

Keywords: Pasolini
Rome
D'Annunzio
Moravia
Literary Rome
Rome and Literature
Advisor: Capozzi, Rocco
Marshall Plan Metropolises: The Transatlantic City in Postwar American Fiction

This dissertation explores Cold War U.S. fiction’s complex engagement with a nascent culture of state-based foreign aid inaugurated by the Marshall Plan. Marshall Plan funds exceeded all previous U.S. overseas aid combined, establishing a precedent for subsequent Cold War foreign assistance projects like Truman’s Point Four program. The authors treated in my project—Joseph Heller, William Faulkner, James Baldwin, and Paule Marshall—reformulate the unique affective and social technology of Cold War compassion associated with Marshall Plan aid to postwar Europe. In their texts, the Marshall Plan subtly configures imaginings of distant, needy others on the part of an affluent America but also reveals the tolls of conditional giving—the exactions made by foreign aid that arrives with twinned humanitarian and geopolitical, expressly anticommunist aims. However, the Marshall Plan, by framing a unique relationship between U.S. money and destroyed European cities in these texts, also acts as a fulcrum upon which American authors imagine U.S. urban decline through the war-torn cityscapes of Western Europe. Marshall Plan Metropolises thus also revises scholarly accounts of Cold War U.S. culture by arguing that the literature of America’s postwar “urban crisis” can only be fully understood when read against European wartime urban annihilation. By intertwining programs of U.S. governmental support for urban restructuring on both sides of the Atlantic, the dissertation reimagines both money-saturated scenes of compassion in U.S. Cold War fiction and literary depictions of “urban renewal” of the time. Chapter one argues that Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 conceives of “reconstruction” across both time and space, linking the shattered infrastructure and political community of World War II Rome to the fraying seams of U.S. Cold War urbanity. Chapter two asserts that William Faulkner’s post-WWII corpus locates at the heart of Cold War political-discursive formations a complex relationship between geography, architecture, and sound, disclosing strategies for imagining political collectivities in spaces of ruin. Chapter three musters an unconventional reading of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room as a text that meditates upon the singular affective, ethical, and geopolitical complexities of American tourism during the high Cold War. Finally, chapter four explores how Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones elaborates a triangulated spatial sphere encompassing America, war-wracked Europe, and “third world” Barbados, staging a distinctly Cold War mode of bildungsroman that critiques U.S. rhetorics of “freedom” and “modernization.”

Keywords: Twentieth-Century American Literature
Transnational American Studies
Cold War Studies
Advisor: Cobb, Michael
Transcriptional Priming for Intrathymic Dendritic Cell Development

It has been conclusively shown that conventional dendritic cell (DC)-restricted precursors are generated in the bone marrow and migrate through the blood to the spleen and lymph nodes. However, the origins and developmental programs of thymic DC subsets remain obscure. Here, I have established unique transcriptional profiles for splenic and thymic DC subsets and I have used this information to identify candidate precursors in the thymus that are transcriptionally primed towards the DC lineages. I have also shown that DCs can develop in the presence of moderate levels of Delta-like-4 (Dll4)-Notch signaling, consistent with development of these cells within the thymic medulla, and that these levels of Dll4 are restrictive for myeloid development. The addition of Fms-like tyrosine kinase 3 ligand (Flt3L), exclusively, to DC cultures enables greater DC development in the presence of medium or high levels of Delta-like-1 (Dll1) or Dll4 ligand. Similarly, transient overexpression of inhibitor of DNA binding 2 (Id2) can enhance DC development in vivo from thymocyte precursors without significantly perturbing T cell development. Thymic DC populations are severely disrupted in recombination activation gene (RAG)-deficient mice, which lack medulla, and interleukin 7 receptor α (IL-7Rα)-deficient mice, which have reduced cellularity, indicating that a properly structured thymus and developing T cell pool are required for optimal thymic DC development or maintenance. Finally, I have demonstrated that early T cell progenitor (ETP), double negative 1 d (DN1d) and DN1e subsets have the capacity to generate thymic DCs in vivo in the context of a fully structured thymus. Our data supports a model in which the expression of chemokine (C-C motif) receptor 7 (CCR7) and chemokine (C-C motif) receptor 4 (CCR4) on DC-lineage primed ETP, DN1d and DN1e thymocyte subsets allow them to preferentially migrate to the medulla after entering the thymus, where they are exposed to a microenvironment that favors DC development.

Keywords: thymic dendritic cells
development
Delta-Notch signaling
transcription factors
thymocyte precursors
chemokines
Advisor: Anderson, Michele K.
Role of VHL in DNA double-strand break repair and genomic instability in renal cell carcinoma

DNA repair is essential for maintaining genomic stability and defects in this process significantly increase the risk of cancer. Clear-cell renal cell carcinoma (CCRCC) caused by inactivation of the von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) tumour suppressor gene is characterized by high genomic instability. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the association between loss of VHL and genomic instability remain unclear. Here, we show that suppressor of cytokine signalling 1 (SOCS1) promotes nuclear redistribution and K63-ubiquitylation of VHL in response to DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). Loss of VHL or VHL mutations that compromise its K63-ubiquitylation attenuates the DNA-damage response (DDR), resulting in decreased homologous recombination repair and persistence of DSBs. We further demonstrate that the 30kDa and 19kDa isoforms of VHL have opposing roles in the DDR. Upon induction of DSBs, VHL30 activates the DDR, while VHL19 attenuates this response and is actively degraded through the proteasome to alleviate its inhibitory effect. Finally, we show that VHL30 binds heterochromatin protein 1 alpha (HP1 alpha) in the presence of DSBs and this interaction is required for the full activation of the DDR. VHL binding to HP1 alpha transiently releases it from chromatin to induce chromatin relaxation, which is predicted to allow for the access of DNA repair proteins. Remarkably, the DDR defect in VHL-null and VHL mutant cells deficient for HP1 alpha binding could be rescued in the presence of a histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACI), suggesting that VHL activates the DDR by inducing chromatin decondensation to promote the recruitment of DNA repair factors to the lesion. Collectively, these results identify VHL as a component of the DDR network, inactivation of which contributes to the genomic instability associated with CCRCC.

Keywords: DNA repair
VHL
cancer
SOCS1
Advisor: Ohh, Michael
Body National in Motion: The Biopolitics of Dance in Twentieth-Century Iran

This transdisciplinary historiographical dissertation elucidates the ways in which dancing bodies have provided evidence for competing representations of modernity, urbanity, and Islam throughout the twentieth century. Linking the sociopolitical discourses on performance with the staged public dancer, this study interrogates the formation of dominant categories of “modern,” “high,” and “artistic,” and the subsequent “othering” of cultural realms that were discursively peripheralized from the “national” stage. Through utilizing and probing a wide variety of textual and visual sources, this inquiry offers a history of corporeality centered on the transformation of the staged dancing body, its space of performance, and its spectatorial cultural ideology. The process of gender modernity in early twentieth-century Iran led to the heteronormalization of theatrical space and the emergence of a public female performer of the genre “national dance” (raqs-i milli). Often depicted as an angel or a princess, this ideal female construct enacted the narratives of the nation on the prestigious “national” stage of the Pahlavi period (1926–79). Her contrasting counterpart was the provocative “cabaret dancer” (raqqas) who rose to prominence in the then expanding private-sector entertainment industry. The cabaret dancer’s “enticing” presence prompted the wide circulation of social narratives that identified her with prostitution and led to the construction of a widely depicted dancer-prostitute character type in Iranian pre-revolutionary cinema. Symbolizing “degeneration” (ibtazil) and “eroticism” (shahvat) in the revolutionary discourse, she became an emblem of the “social ills” under the Pahlavi regime. The 1979 Revolution eliminated all forms of dance from the public stage until the genre “rhythmic movements” (harikat-i mawzun) introduced a chaste theatrical dancing subject. Purged from the corporeal characteristics of the pre-revolutionary cabaret dancer that signified degeneration and eroticism, the performer of rhythmic movements has been enacting the narratives of Islam and the state on the post-revolutionary stage.

Keywords: Iran
biopolitics
dance
20th century
Advisor: Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad
Performative Language and Social Status in Shakespeare's Plays

This dissertation attempts to clarify some aspects of the operation of speech acts as they relate to power, authority, status, and rank in Shakespeare’s plays. At its core, it consists of three arguments. The first is that the ultimate index of power is the ability to have one’s words felt. That power then may translate – in terms that are neither simple nor fixed – into authority, rank, and status. The second is that such assertions or deployments of power (unless authorized by broad cultural consensus) are almost always met with resistance, and that consequently the assertions most likely to succeed are those that are least visible. The third point brings the first two together. If speech acts are often a means of asserting and exercising power, then paradoxically those speech acts that are least overt will be those most likely to succeed in that assertion: speech acts that are indirect, off-record, ambiguous, or perlocutionary. Bearing these arguments in mind, I will consider the operation and either the frustration or fruition of social ambition in Shakespeare’s plays, particularly his comedies. The plays bear out the pattern that speakers who make subtle, incremental assertions of status, by means of exploiting expectations of speech acts and genres, can then consolidate those incremental assertions into more enduring changes in status.

Keywords: Shakespeare
drama
performative language
social status
speech act theory
Advisor: Magnusson, Lynne
The Role of TRAF1 in Signaling Downstream of 4-1BB on CD8 T Cells

4-1BB is a T cell costimulatory member of the TNFR superfamily known to regulate T cell responses. Engagement of 4-1BB contributes to T cell proliferation, cytokine production, and cell survival. Elucidating how 4-1BB induces these responses in T cells is crucial for understanding how these responses can be manipulated for immunotherapy. Upon engagement with its ligand, 4-1BB recruits TRAF1 and TRAF2 to its intracellular domain to induce downstream signaling pathways that influence the T cell's biology. 4-1BB had previously been shown to require TRAF2 to activate the canonical NF-kappaB pathway. I extended these findings to show that TRAF1 was also required, as well as either cIAP1 or cIAP2, to activate the canonical NF-kappaB pathway. I also showed that 4-1BB is capable of inducing TRAF3 degradation to induce activation of the non-canonical NF-kappaB pathway. T cells activated in the absence of costimulation do not show activation of the non-canonical NF-kappaB pathway. However, I showed that loss of TRAF1 or cIAP1 results in the unrestrained activation of the non-canonical NF-kappaB pathway, even in the absence of costimulation, resulting in hyperproliferation and excess cytokine production that normally requires costimulation. I also showed that TRAF1 expression was required in activated T cells during 4-1BB signaling in nutrient stressed T cells to stabilize TRAF2 expression. This suggests a mechanism of limiting 4-1BB costimulation only to activated T cells that are responding under optimal conditions. I conclude with a current model of the signaling that occurs downstream of 4-1BB to induce its biological effects on T cells.

Keywords: TRAF1
4-1BB
Advisor: Watts, Tania