VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Shadows and the Substance of Shakespearean Drama

England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries was the stage for explorations of the physics of light and its representation in art. Although much critical attention has been paid to this interest in light, there has not yet been sufficient attention to the concurrent fascination with its absence as epitomized by shadows. I argue in this dissertation that the phenomenon of the shadow existed as a powerful trope for artistic and literary expression in the period; I conceive of the Renaissance shadow not, however, just as a figure of negativity or privation, but also as one of doubling and of excess in English usage. My study identifies three prominent and interconnected senses of shadows that are of special importance to Renaissance dramatists such as Shakespeare, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Richard Brome, and John Webster. I investigate debates surrounding the nature of the “shades” of ghosts, familiars, and other supernatural phenomena as they are discussed by natural scientists and demonologists, and as they are staged in Hamlet, Macbeth, and The Late Lancashire Witches. The problems of imitation, subordination, and spectrality that haunt these plays also figure in staged relations of social “shadowing” that obtain between speakers and mediators in Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice, and between masters and servants in The Tempest and The Duchess of Malfi. As synonyms for the forms and practices of art, shadows are associated with popular denigrations of visual and rhetorical art; in Cymbeline and Philaster, they also evoke the anxiety surrounding art’s power to betray its objects with unfaithful semblances and to encourage scandalous acts of imitation. In examining these works, I show how the discourse of shadows reveals the liminal spaces and hidden undersides of early modern scientific, philosophical, and theatrical cultures. Attention to the shadow, its cognate terms, and its related phenomena engages debates that captivated dramatists at the turn of the seventeenth century regarding the operations of the mind; the unstable boundaries between science, magic, and art; and the social value of the theatre itself as a site of highly affective language and gesture.

Keywords: drama
early modern
renaissance
shadow
Shakespeare
Advisor: Harvey, Elizabeth D
Structure-Function Studies of CorA-Mrs2-Alr1 Superfamily of Magnesium Channels: Bacterial CorA and Yeast Alr1

Magnesium (Mg2+) plays an important role in many essential cellular processes, and its concentration in the cell is tightly controlled by the interplay between various Mg2+ transporters and channels. The ubiquitous CorA-Mrs2-Alr1 superfamily is the most widespread and the best studied family of Mg2+ channels to date. Nevertheless, the transport and homeostasis of Mg2+ in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells remain poorly understood. This thesis details the investigation of the structure-function relationship of the bacterial CorA and yeast Alr1 using biophysical, biochemical and bioinformatic approaches. Members of the CorA-Mrs2-Alr1 superfamily contain a canonical GMN motif located at the entrance to the ion translocation pore, which has been proposed to function as the Mg2+ selectivity filter. Using anomalous x-ray diffraction, we show that the CorA substrates, cobalt and nickel, which have similar physicochemical properties to Mg2+, are able to bind at the GMN motif in a manner similar to Mg2+. The CorA non-substrate samarium only binds at the periplasmic loops of CorA, while cobalthexaammine, a CorA inhibitor and an inert structural analogue of a hexahydrated Mg2+, binds at the periplasmic loops and slightly above the GMN motif. Altogether, our results suggest that the GMN motif selects for Mg2+ out of an indiscriminate pool of cations at the periplasmic loops region based on the ion’s size and the geometry of its first hydration shell. Moreover, we suggest a knock-on mechanism for ion transduction through CorA, with the cobalthexammine binding site slightly above the GMN motif marking the knock-on site for hexahydrated Mg2+. Alr1 structurally differs from other members of the CorA-Mrs2-Alr1 superfamily by a long N-terminal extension preceding the CorA domain. Bioinformatic analysis indicates that the N-terminal extension is mostly unstructured and contains multiple molecular recognition and phosphorylation sites, suggesting that it may participate in protein-protein interactions. Furthermore, we experimentally characterized the first 377 amino acids of Alr1 as intrinsically disordered. Truncation of up to 297 amino acids from the N-terminus resulted in no effect on Alr1 activity. We hypothesize that the intrinsically disordered region of the Alr1 protein may serve a function unrelated to Mg2+ uptake through Alr1, like protein regulation.

Keywords: Intrinsically disordered proteins
Ion channels
Magnesium channels
Membrane proteins
Structural biology
X-ray crystallography
Advisor: Pai, Emil F
Being Within and Without: Cases of Phenomenological Embodiment in Art Education

Intrigued by the body’s place within education, I investigate the diverse ways that embodiment manifests in secondary school visual arts classrooms. This thesis presents a multiple case study analysis of two school residency projects, which were part of a multi-year research-creation project, The Pedagogical Impulse (TPI) led by Dr. Stephanie Springgay (PI) and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The data used in this thesis was generated within the larger TPI project. The two case studies were conducted in two different visual arts classrooms in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) during the 2012 academic year. I was the lead research assistant at the two school sites. TPI engaged with transpedagogy, a term noted by Pablo Helguera (2011), meaning that the focus of the study is not on the refinement of artistic techniques but on the creation of artwork through processes and experiences. The research-creation projects worked with social practice artists, Hazel Meyer and Sarah Febbraro, who took up residency in two secondary schools. Students from grades 10, 11, and 12 and their art teachers participated in these case studies. For my thesis research, I focus on delineating elements of embodiment experienced throughout the case studies. I observe a time lapse/incubation period in the development of certain embodied processes in myself, the teachers and the students in the two cases. Using various theories of embodiment, phenomenology and practitioner research, I develop a theory of embodiment, body-in-the-making, to support my analysis. I engage in and examine the inside and outside spaces that enfleshed the TPI study, and how they have interjected themselves into spaces in teaching and learning systems. Although there have been numerous studies related to the phenomenology of embodiment within arts education, there is a lack of clarity about what embodiment looks like in visual arts education from the perspective of the visual arts teacher. My study demonstrates the many intricacies that exist in education as an institution and how making changes to the concept of the body in schools may alter the many institutional structures that exist around the Cartesian divide in schools.

Keywords: Art Education
Embodiment
Phenomenology of Embodiment
Teacher Research
Advisor: Springgay, Stephanie
Activity-Dependent Calcium Dynamics in Spinal Cord Lamina I Neurons

Lamina I of the spinal cord is an essential hub for pain transmission, whereby nociceptive information is processed and transmitted up to the brain. Lamina I neurons become potentiated in chronic pain conditions, displaying maladaptive plasticity. Calcium plays a critical role in the excitability and plasticity of neurons through regulation of receptor function and gene transcription. Despite this possible link between lamina I plasticity and calcium, understanding of how activity could be encoded into calcium signals in these neurons is lacking. Therefore, I characterized changes in intracellular calcium concentration ([Ca2+]i) at subcellular resolution in lamina I neurons, and determined the mechanisms through which [Ca2+]i changes during neuronal activity. I first established that action potentials (APs) increased [Ca2+]i in the somatic cytosol, nucleus, dendrites, and dendritic spines of lamina I neurons, graded to number and frequency of AP firing, and detectable with as little as a single AP. Unlike all other subcellular compartments which were rapid onset and fast decaying, nuclear calcium responses exhibited long rise and decay times. Influx through voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs) was necessary for all AP-induced calcium responses, and calcium-induced calcium release (CICR) specifically boosted nuclear responses, contributing to their elongation. Furthermore, the peak and rise time of calcium responses was non-decremental in dendrites, indicative of dendritic VGCCs. In all compartments, ~60% of the peak calcium response was mediated by T-type VGCCs. The remainder was mediated by L-type and R-type VGCCs, with differential contribution depending on compartment. This is the first systematic study of activity-induced calcium dynamics in lamina I neurons, defining the encoding of APs into calcium signals. Given calcium’s role as a second messenger, this provides a mechanism through which activity-induced increases in [Ca2+]i could contribute to maladaptive plasticity. Specifically, I found evidence for lamina I dendritic and synaptic VGCCs, which could contribute to excitability through aiding summation of inputs or through spike timing-dependent plasticity. I also found that APs increase nuclear [Ca2+]i, which could aid the initiation of calcium-dependent gene transcription. My findings therefore suggest that blockade of T-type, L-type, or R-type VGCCs, or CICR could counteract lamina I plasticity underlying chronic pain.

Keywords: calcium imaging
calcium-induced calcium release
lamina I neuron
pain
spinal cord
voltage-gated calcium channel
Advisor: Salter, Michael W
Temporal Trends in Home-based Palliative Care: Evidence from Ontario, Canada

With health care restructuring in Canada and a general preference by patients and their families to receive palliative care at home, attention to home-based palliative care continues to increase. However, little is known about the changing temporal trends in home-based palliative care in Canada during the past decade. This dissertation assessed three aspects of the temporal trends of home-based palliative care: the use of formal palliative care service, the relationship between informal and formal care, and place of death among patients receiving palliative care. The dissertation focused on informal care provided by relatives and friends, and three types of home-based formal palliative care services: home-based palliative care physician visits, nurse visits, and care by personal support workers. Using survey data collected in a home-based palliative care program by the Temmy Later Center for Palliative Care in Ontario from 2005 to 2016, a two-part utilization model was built to analyze home-based palliative care service utilization and the relationship between informal and formal home-based palliative care. A multivariate logistic regression model was used to assess the temporal trends in the place of death. The findings demonstrated increased use of home-based palliative care and a shift (or substitution) in care away from nurses to less expensive care provided by personal support workers over the last decade. Informal care was a substitute for care by personal support workers, but a complement to home-based physician visits and nurse visits. In the case of nurse visits, an increased complementary effect was observed in more recent years. The place of death for patients receiving home-based palliative care changed over time, with more patients dying at home over 2006-2015 when compared to 2005. Understanding the temporal trends in home-based palliative care is essential for effective improvements in home-based palliative care programs and the development of palliative care policies.

Keywords: Formal care
Health service use
Home care
Informal care
Palliative care
Place of death
Advisor: Coyte, Peter
"Moving Graces": Forms of Religious Persuasion in Early Modern Drama

How does one reach the hearts of others? This thesis situates the question in early modern England by investigating the activity of persuasion on the commercial stage, contending that, when plays sought to represent persuasion or be persuasive themselves, many of their tactics were borrowed from religious sources. The ongoing process of Reformation in England required an investment in persuasive methods for the purposes of religious education and conversion. Protestant reform may have instigated the persuasive practices, but the ensuing heterogeneity of belief enabled multiple confessional perspectives to compete for hearts and minds, creating a “culture of persuasion” that profoundly influenced early modern modes of communication, including dramatic ones. While religious conversion strategies could not be reproduced directly on the stage, I claim that playwrights made use of the form of such strategies. Overlaying these various forms with content relevant to the play, they capitalized on the persuasive meanings inherent in the forms without offending the censors or derailing the story. Chapter One begins with an investigation into the evangelical metrical psalms. I argue that the shape, sound and meaning of a musical psalm reverberates in a drinking song in The Shoemaker’s Holiday, evoking an exploration of the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in the creation of community identity. In Chapter Two, the Duke’s interactions in the jail in Measure for Measure follow the same scripts as the private conferences associated with the Jesuits, prompting questions about the ethical limits of efficacious persuasion. Chapter Three explores the goodnight ballad, considering the appearance of one in Eastward Ho as central to the play’s ongoing negotiation between sincerity and satire. My historical formalist examination of theatrical appearances of now-unfamiliar forms of religious persuasion contributes to conversations about the operation of religious meaning on the stage and the role of the commercial theatre in a religious culture. When found in various theatrical guises on the stage, these forms retain their persuasiveness and act as dramatic agents of political, social, institutional and personal strategy, deployed both within the dramatic arc of the story and beyond to work on the emotions of the audience.

Keywords: Early modern drama
Religion and literature
Renaissance drama
Shakespeare
Theatre
Advisor: Magnusson, Lynne
Role of the GIRK2 channel in conferring susceptibility to Infantile Spasms

Infantile spasms (IS) is a childhood seizure disorder characterized by extensor and/or flexor spasms, cognitive deterioration and an electroencephalographic (EEG) pattern of a spike-wave followed by an electrodecremental event (EDR). The mechanism/circuitry contributing to the disorder is unknown. Children with Down Syndrome (DS) are especially vulnerable to IS. In this regard, a mouse model of DS, the Ts65Dn mutant mouse (Ts) treated with a GABAB receptor (GABABR) agonist -butyrolactone (GBL) was used to create an animal model of IS in DS (Cortez et al. 2009). One of the genes triplicated in Ts mice is the kcnj6 gene which codes for the G-protein inwardly rectifying potassium channel 2 (GIRK2) protein. In Chapter 3, I demonstrate that a genetic knockdown and pharmacological reduction of GIRK2 in Ts mice rescued the spasms and EDR to wild type (WT) levels (Joshi et al. 2016b). Therefore, excess GIRK2 is necessary to confer susceptibility to IS in GBL-treated Ts mice. In chapter 4, I showed that kcnj6 triploid mice did not show increased spasms or EDR compared to WT mice. Therefore, excess GIRK2 is necessary, but not sufficient to confer susceptibility to IS in DS. It is therefore likely that GIRK2 is working in concert with other factor(s) in Ts that produce the IS phenotype. In chapter 5 I identify a part of the circuitry responsible for IS by implanting depth electrodes in the Primary Motor Cortex ,Ventrobasal Thalamus and Dentate Gyrus of the Hippocampus. The results confirm aberrant EEG activity in the corticothalamic loop wherein the Spike-wave discharges (SWD) in the thalamus lead the cortex, which feeds back to the thalamus. The SWD in the thalamus and cortex both lead that of the hippocampus, which feeds back to cortex, and to the thalamus via the cortex. This study is important, because it helps us elucidate the mechanism of IS in DS, thereby providing potential therapeutic interventions in the future. In addition, it sheds some light on the circuitry of IS, paving the way for future experiments regarding the role of the brainstem and the corticothalmic loop, leading to a more thorough understanding of IS.

Keywords: Down's Syndrome
Electroencephalography
Infantile Spasms
Ts65Dn
Advisor: Snead, O.Carter
Identities-at-Intersections: The Case of Racialized Female Migrant Teachers in Canada

This research focuses on the unemployment and underemployment of racialized female migrant teachers in Canada, particularly in Ontario. It investigates how the social categories of the identities of female migrant teachers affect their access to the labour force. Identity is conceptualized as produced by the meanings of difference placed upon these social categories, through the power relations one navigates. The research asks: how have the identities of racialized female migrant teachers in Canada, as embedded within the social categories of race and ethnicity, sex and gender, economic class and political status, language/s spoken and linguistic accents, affected their access to the Canadian teaching workforce? The main argument is that the racialized female migrant teachers’ identities are identities-at-intersections. These identities greatly affect their access to the teaching workforce, place them in politically challenging positions, and are produced by and through their navigation within the intersections. Intersections are the created, perceived, visible, and invisible links between and among the social categories that form an identity. The social spaces within the intersections affect the positioning of minoritized subjects, such as racialized female migrant teachers, within education as a polity and other structures of hegemony. Narratives of 17 female migrant teachers, registered with the Ontario College of Teachers, from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ontario, are utilized as standpoint epistemologies to support the main argument. In examining how racialized female migrant teachers face barriers in their access to the teaching workforce and political contexts, the conceptual analysis draws on the concept of identities-at-intersections to consider: (1) the global process of feminization of migration instigates social reproduction mechanisms and inequality; (2) the practices of racialization in societal structures, in education as a polity, in the labour market, and within Canadian nation-building, further complicate the exercise of employment and citizenship rights of minority groups, such as racialized immigrant women; (3) the persistence of neo-colonial and capitalist practices results in the continuous segregation and racialization of immigrant women; (4) despite the structural forces that work against racialized female migrant teachers as identities-at-intersections, their lived experiences manifest the use of agency and forms of resistance.

Keywords: Education as a Polity
Marxian Analysis of Labour
Migrant Teachers in Canada
Teacher Employment in Ontario
Advisor: Bakan, Abigail
D’un corps à l’autre, le genre sexuel en question dans les poésies française et québécoise depuis 1990

Cette thèse étudie la représentation du genre sexuel et sa mise en question dans six œuvres poétiques contemporaines québécoises et françaises. Elle expose comment le motif du corps constitue dans le poème l’empreinte à la fois d’une chair modelée par l’identité sexuelle et d’un corps neutre, signe de déprise lyrique. Le premier chapitre interroge l’articulation entre poésie et genre sexuel dans une approche féministe et poétique, visant à comprendre selon quelles modalités l’émergence d’un sujet éthique – fidèle à une circonstance d’écriture (Jarrety, 1996) – est possible en poésie et à montrer que le corps en signifie l’expression sensible (Pinson, 1995 ; Collot, 1997 ; Maulpoix, 2009). La performativité du poème (Rabaté, 1996 ; 2013 ; Combe, 1996) répond à la performativité au coeur du constructivisme social (Butler, 1990 ; 1993 ; 2004) : le corps genré se matérialisant dans le poème est redevable à un processus énonciatif imprégné de normes, que l’écriture poétique cherche à resignifier. À ce parcours théorique succèdent trois chapitres d’analyse de textes. Les corps masculins dans Peau d’Antoine Emaz (2008) et dans Des ombres portées (2000) de Paul Chanel Malenfant témoignent d’une délicate perméabilité, qui octroie la réalité la plus tangible à l’émotion. Les écritures des chairs au féminin de Dormans (2006) de Marie Étienne et de Musée de l’os et de l’eau (1999) de Nicole Brossard engagent un mouvement existentiel qui dépersonnalise l’écriture et invite à toucher l’intime porosité du soi. Enfin, Cœurs, comme livres d’amour (2012) d’Hélène Dorion et en laisse (2005) de Dominique Fourcade présentent des corps qui empêchent la cristallisation de l’ordre binaire de la différence sexuelle. Cette thèse met en valeur la tendance de la poésie contemporaine à mettre en dialogue la pensée de l’identité, ici figurée par le genre sexuel, et la recherche d’intersubjectivité.

Keywords: Body
Contemporary poetry
France
Gender
Lyrical enunciation
Québec
Advisor: Havercroft, Barbara
Defining Détente: NATO's Struggle for Identity, 1967-1984

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) defined détente as one of its central tasks with the Harmel Report of December 1967, alongside the Alliance’s traditional mission of defending the West. After a series of historic improvements in the early 1970s, however, détente’s fortunes faded. East-West relations deteriorated over the second half of the 1970s and into the 1980s, leading many to dub the period a “Second Cold War.” What, then, did this mean for the Atlantic Alliance and the double philosophy of détente and defense staked out in the Harmel Report? Defining Détente: NATO’s Struggle for Identity, 1967-1984 explores détente’s contested nature and its various meanings for policy-makers and publics in the United States, Canada, and across Western Europe. Détente was an ongoing source of tension in transatlantic relations, but neither allied disagreements nor the marked deterioration of East-West relations changed the Alliance’s overall strategy. Détente and defense remained vital to NATO’s posture for the remainder of the Cold War and well into the post–Cold War era.

Keywords: Cold War
détente
NATO
transatlantic relations
Advisor: Bothwell, Robert