VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Masks and Masked Performance in Giorgio Strehler's Vision of the Commedia dell'Arte

This thesis examines the role of solid and painted masks in Giorgio Strehler's successive stagings of Carlo Goldoni's "Servant of Two Masters" at the Piccolo Teatro of Milan between 1947 and 1997. Through my description and analysis of documentary evidence about these stagings, the Piccolo Teatro, Giorgio Strehler, his mask-makers Amleto and Donato Sartori, his actors, and lighting designer, I demonstrate that masks were used in the above-mentioned productions as rhetorical tools that expressed Strehler's relationship with Goldoni (the man and his work), communicated his political convictions on stage, partook in his attempted reform of the Italian theatre after World War II, displayed his vision of theatre history, proved his endorsement of the actors' potential in performance, and helped position the Piccolo Teatro within an Italian and pan-European artistic elite. My examination of video recordings and photographs of the productions, letters of personal correspondence, theatre reviews, transcriptions of interviews, and programme notes, among other documents, traces the evolution of Strehler's interpretative vision of the Commedia dell'Arte over fifty years. This vision, as I argue in the introduction and conclusion to my thesis, helped shape how other theatre directors, educators, as well as actors, mask-makers, and, arguably, academics have come to imagine Goldoni's work, Commedia dell'Arte, and masked performance. A close study of Strehler's successive stagings of "The Servant of Two Masters" and of the use of masks within them will therefore allow for a better understanding of Strehler's trajectory in the theatre, but will also exemplify how the use of a particular theatrical object (the mask) in a series of productions that were successful worldwide influenced how many of us now perceive a performance tradition (Commedia), a theatre (the Piccolo Teatro), and a play ("The Servant of Two Masters").

Keywords: Giorgio Strehler
Masks
Amleto Sartori
Donato Sartori
Piccolo Teatro of Milan
Carlo Goldoni
The Servant of Two Masters
Masked Performance
Performance History
Advisor: Pietropaolo, Domenico
Mereological Nihilism: Substance and Matter in Leibniz's Metaphysics

Central to Leibniz's philosophical system is his view that substances must have genuine unity, that they must be simple or indivisible. In this dissertation, I argue that Leibniz's well-known view that substances must be simple, i.e. without parts, follows from his commitment to mereological nihilism--the view that nothing with a plurality of parts is truly one being. I begin by offering a detailed analysis of Leibniz's view that matter or body is inherently plural. I argue that the reasons for this view have not been fully understood, and are rooted in Leibniz's claim that matter is discrete. I then defend Leibniz's commitment to the plurality of matter against what I call the 'Spinozistic Challenge' according to which the entire physical world is a single substance, a view sometimes attributed to Descartes. This challenge alleges that since the physical world is a plenum, the parts of matter can't exist without the entire physical world, and as such the physical world is really one thing, not many things. I argue that, for Leibniz, the sort of dependence involved here does not undermine the plurality of matter. After establishing the reasons for Leibniz's view that matter is inherently plural, I turn to Leibniz's frequent talk of composite, corporeal substances. How can Leibniz account for such substances given his views that matter is inherently plural and that no substance--no true unity--has a plurality of parts? I first examine Leibniz's view that composite substances have bodies that are actually infinitely divided. It seems that this view conflicts with Leibniz's explicit rejection of infinite number. I defend the claim that Leibniz can accept infinite pluralities without accepting infinite number. Finally, I analyze Leibniz's attempt to reconcile the existence of composite substances with his view that no substance has parts. Ultimately, I argue, this attempt fails to offer a real account of the per se unity of composite substances, and this leads Leibniz to a theory where only monads are genuine substances.

Keywords: Leibniz
Matter
Substance
Unity
Part
Whole
Mereology
Nihilism
Plurality
Metaphysics
Logic
Mathematics
Advisor: Rozemond, Marleen
Molecular insights into the mechanisms underlying the pleiotropic functions of Munc18-1 in dense-core vesicle exocytosis

Exocytosis refers to a cellular process in which an intracellular vesicle fuses its membrane with the plasma membrane to release its contents to the extracellular space. This process underlies diverse physiological processes such as communication between neurons, hormonal regulation, and immune responses. Munc18-1 is an indispensible protein that regulates exocytosis during neuronal communication and hormonal signaling. It is known to specifically interact with one or more SNARE proteins (syntaxin-1, SNAP-25, and synaptobrevin-2) through diverse binding modes. Multiple lines of evidence suggest the pleiotropic functions of Munc18-1 although they are sometimes contradictory: as a molecular chaperone of syntaxin-1, in priming of dense-core vesicles (DCVs) to fusion competent state, and in docking of DCVs to the plasma membrane. Munc18-1 consists of multiple domains: domain-1, -2, -3a, and -3b. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the functions of Munc18-1 in exocytosis remain unclear. It was hypothesized that the multiple roles of Munc18-1 occur through its distinctive binding modes with SNARE proteins, which in turn are mediated by its specific domains. The structure and interactive properties underlying its essential roles were investigated through detailed phenotypic analyses of various domain-specific Munc18-1 mutants upon re-expression in Munc18-1/-2 double knockdown PC12 cells through lentivirus mediated infection. The results demonstrate that domain-1 and domain-3a of Munc18-1 are critical for a high affinity binary interaction with the closed form of syntaxin-1, which is crucial for syntaxin-1 trafficking and consequently in DCV docking and secretion. Furthermore, domain-3a of Munc18-1 additionally plays a crucial role in priming exocytosis by regulating SNARE complex interaction, which occurs independently from its role in syntaxin-1 stabilization and trafficking. Taken together, we postulate that Munc18-1 sequentially adopts distinctive binding modes at different stage of exocytosis that enable it to regulate each step through highly specialized mechanisms. The findings from this study provide novel insights into the obscure mechanisms underlying the functions of Munc18-1 in regulated exocytosis.

Keywords: Munc18-1
exocytosis
dense-core vesicle
Advisor: Sugita, Shuzo
MicroRNAs as Biomarkers in Mantle Cell Lymphoma

Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is diagnosed through its distinctive immunophenotype and recurrent t(11;14)(q13;q32) translocation. This translocation causes the juxtaposition of CCND1 and the IGH promoter leading to cyclin D1 over-expression. MCL is incurable with conventional chemotherapy however survival varies significantly and ranges from 1-10 years. Accurately determining patient prognosis would enable tailoring of therapeutic regimens to individual patients. Although the presence of the t(11;14) translocation and subsequent up-regulation of cyclin D1 is found in a majority of MCL, it is not necessary for disease development, as evidenced by the existence of cyclin D1-negative MCL, and also because in vivo MCL animal models demonstrate that further cellular pathway deregulation is required for pathogenesis. We wanted to determine whether microRNAs (miRs) could be used to determine MCL prognosis and pathogenesis. Our study examined a quantitative real-time PCR-based platform for miR expression profiling in both fresh-frozen and formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissues. We demonstrated that miR expression profiles of FFPE samples are comparable to those of fresh-frozen samples, with a correlation of up to 0.87 (p<0.001), when examining all miRs, regardless of RNA extraction method used. We also wanted to examine miR profiles in aggressive and indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) to generate a signature that defines aggressiveness and to see whether or not this could predict prognosis in MCL patients. Using our platform, we determined that eleven miRs are differentially expressed between aggressive and indolent NHL. Two miRs were associated with overall survival in MCL and were combined with clinical prognostic factors to generate novel prognostic data for MCL patients. Finally, we wanted to determine if a miR signature characteristic of MCL could be discovered by comparing the miR profiles of MCL to those of aggressive and indolent NHL. Our study discovered an 8-miR signature characteristic of MCL, consisting of 3 miRs under-expressed relative to aggressive NHL and 5 miRs over-expressed relative to indolent NHL. These miRs may be involved in transcription regulation, protein kinase signaling, cell survival and proliferation, cellular senescence, and regulation of cell migration and invasion, suggesting the need for further study into these pathways and their roles in MCL pathogenesis.

Keywords: microRNA
lymphoma
mantle cell
non-Hodgkin
prognosis
biomarker
pathogenesis
Advisor: Kamel-Reid, Suzanne
When Beruriah Met 'A'isha: Textual Intersections and Interactions Among Jewish and Muslim Women Engaged with Religious Law

This study explores various understandings of religious authority, law and empowered textual interpretation among two distinct yet inter-related groups of Jewish and Muslim women: contemporary academics and laywomen in North America who are engaged in the study of classical religious texts. There are two modes through which I examine these interpretive activities by women: the first approach involves a comparative textual analysis of academic writings on religious texts by women, while the second utilizes feminist ethnography to zero in on the textual experiences of Jewish and Muslim laywomen who spent time studying religious texts together. Although the entitlements offered to women under secular laws in North America generally surpass those granted to them under Jewish and Islamic law, rather than abandoning religious laws entirely, Jewish and Muslim laywomen and exegetes continue to grapple with religious legal texts and praxis, since these are bound up with notions of identity, community and belonging. But rather than accepting the status quo, this highly-educated subset of Jewish and Muslim women empower themselves to reinterpret traditional texts and adapt communal practices to better reflect more inclusive and egalitarian values. Through their academic works, scholars such as Amina Wadud, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Judith Hauptman, Fatima Mernissi, Kecia Ali and Rachel Adler revisit religious law and succeed in broadening the communal spaces, leadership roles and personal status entitlements available to Jewish and Muslim women. Similarly, when Toronto-based laywomen challenge the ideas coming from the pulpits of their local mosques and synagogues, or use their own knowledge of texts and other extra-textual sources to redefine how they eat, dress and pray as Muslims and Jews, they are pushing the boundaries of how each community views women, traditional praxis and authority, forcing us to confront what it means to be a Jewish or Muslim woman scholar in the twenty-first century. These acts of empowered interpretation and religio-legal reform among both laywomen and exegetes arise from a similar source: a "textual confidence", which is a strange alchemy of a solid traditional and secular education, strong familial and communal supports, but is equally related to one's geography, conceptions of gender and perceptions of authority.

Keywords: Jewish Studies
Islamic Studies
Gender Studies
Law
Scriptural Interpretation
Ethnography
Advisor: Gibbs, Robert
Analysis, Systematicity and the Transcendental in Hermann Cohen's System of Critical Idealism

The dissertation provides a systematic, critical analysis of Hermann Cohen's System of Critical Idealism. The first chapter establishes Cohen's reading of the a priori of Kant's Transcendental Aesthetic as founding the possibility of intuition in mathematics, rather than the possibility of mathematics in intuition. The second chapter then investigates the problem of the unity of the transcendental object, or, more specifically, the conditions under which the intelligible predicates of the functions of judgement can be applied to an objective unity. Chapters three and four compare the idealist responses of Salomon Maimon and G.W.F. Hegel to the problem of objective unity. Both Maimon and Hegel attempt to provide a logic (and a manifold of reality) grounded in the Spinozistic principle of determinability. Ultimately, this leads to the conflation of the totality of intuition with the domain of the intelligible thereby reducing Kant's infinite judgement to a positive assertion. Cohen, however, rejects this solution, and insists that the manifold of reality (or the real continuum of calculus) is the product of continuous thinking. Cohen's principle of production implies an indeterminably determinable manifold, thus providing the intelligible foundations for the eventual set-theoretic foundation of arithmetic and analysis. The final chapter of the dissertation investigates the consequences of Cohen's innovation for the prospects of systematic idealism as a framework within which normative, theoretical and aesthetic claims may be raised and justified. Since logic does not determine a priori the structure of the intelligible whole, Cohen cannot assume a convergence between natural and ethical representations. The free production of laws, Cohen argues, is the practice of jurisprudence, or, the construction and reconstruction of assertoric statements (universal claims) with the aim of limiting contradictions. If, in the natural sciences, we call this aim truth, in ethics, we call it the good, guided by the idea of the end of humanity.

Keywords: Idealism
Cohen
Neo-Kantianism
Advisor: Franks, Paul
Gibbs, Robert
Investigations Of The Determinants of Functional Outcomes In Schizophrenia: Cross-sectional And Longitudinal Examinations Of The Role Of Negative Symptoms

Despite significant advances in the field, functional impairment continues to be a characteristic feature of schizophrenia. Negative symptoms, and in particular motivational deficits, along with cognitive dysfunction have consistently been linked with functional impairments in schizophrenia. However, most investigations of functional outcomes have focused on discrete symptoms, or alternatively on broad symptom domains. Further, recent findings have suggested that a lack of motivation may contribute to the cognitive impairment seen in schizophrenia. This series of investigations sought to: 1) advance our understanding of the determinants of cross- sectional and longitudinal community functioning in schizophrenia by examining the concurrent contribution of negative symptoms, cognition, and other important symptoms to longitudinal functioning in schizophrenia over one year; and 2) clarify the relationships between motivation, effort exerted during cognitive testing, and cognitive performance in schizophrenia. We hypothesized that: 1) motivational deficits would serve as the most important and stable determinant of community functioning, with cognition offering additional predictive value; and 2) motivational deficits would exhibit a differential relationship across various cognitive domains, with those exhibiting reduced effort during testing evincing more severe motivational deficits. Seventy stable adult outpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder underwent clinical, cognitive, and functional evaluations at baseline, 6 months, and 12 months. Using stepwise and hierarchical regression analyses, motivational deficits emerged as the most predictive and reliable determinant of cross-sectional and longitudinal community functioning, accounting for up to 58% of the variance in functioning. Other symptom domains exhibited substantially less predictive value for functioning. Motivational deficits also exhibited a differential relationship across cognitive domains, with a particular relationship with verbal fluency. Further, effort during cognitive testing appeared to be related to both cognitive dysfunction and motivation, suggesting that the use of performance validity tests in schizophrenia may not be an appropriate index of mental effort. Overall, these findings highlight the central role motivational deficits play in determining outcomes in schizophrenia, as well as their impact on cognitive dysfunction in this illness. Importantly, in spite of advances in treatment, this work points to the essential need for interventions to address these motivational deficits if we hope to improve outcomes in schizophrenia.

Keywords: Schizophrenia
Negative Symptoms
Motivation
Apathy
Cognition
Functional outcomes
Advisor: Remington, Gary
Authoring Death: Mourning Masculinity in American Autobiography

This dissertation investigates the anxiety surrounding identity and notions of selfhood in contemporary American life writing. Male corporeality is too often conflated with robust health, and treated as an afterthought in the analyses of gender and identity. My work addresses this critical lacuna by probing the “unhealthy” male bodies that permeate American autobiographies. I scrutinize the many instances in American life writing where the male subject experiences his own corporeality as diseased or dying. The autobiographical treatment of death and decay, this thesis argues, relieves the life writer from an individualistic relationship with his body, and contributes to the decomposition of the very boundaries that separate the self from the other. My work thus pivots on a paradox: even though the autobiographer’s corporeality frees him from isolating notions of singularity, the autobiographical “I” cannot help but be capricious and inconsistent, since his desire for freedom is so profoundly mired in convention. By exposing the different ways the autobiographical text manifests the writer’s failing corporeality—even when he struggles to conceal it—I look to challenge the myth of the self-made and invulnerable man of American autobiography. Through a reading of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast (1964), Chapter One considers how silence and omission are sometimes the only ways traumatic memories can be represented. The second chapter examines the leaky and diseased bodies that permeate Tennessee Williams’s Memoirs (1975), connecting the playwright’s nausea with the gendered contradictions that undermine the coherence of “masculine” subjecthood. Chapter Three explores the “subterranean” presence of women in Roth’s The Facts (1989) and Patrimony (1991) that undermines the writer’s discrete self. I conclude my dissertation with a discussion of filmic life “writing,” and the political potential of “adapted autobiographies.” This chapter studies Julian Schnabel’s Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) as a form of “death writing,” and explores the ways the filmmaker transforms the corporeal boundaries that initially separate self and other into the connective tissue that links the many “I”s/eyes of the film.

Keywords: masculinity
disease
autobiography
death
gender
corporeality
body
Hemingway
Tennessee Williams
Roth
Schnabel
Advisor: Morgenstern, Naomi
Aspects de l'écriture du moi chez Loti et Leiris : problématique du moi et de l'autre dans La Mort de Philae et Journal 1922-1989

Les écritures du moi et l’altérité sont deux champs d’études qui paraissent à première vue opposés. Cette thèse part du constat que la rencontre du moi et de l’autre favorise une interaction, voire une osmose entre ces deux entités. Nous examinons cette tension dialectique du sujet autobiographique tiraillé d’une part, entre son moi et l’autre et d’autre part, entre lui-même et ce moi devenu autre. Et ce, à travers deux récits problématisant cette question sur les plans narratif, discursif et iconique : La Mort de Philae de Loti et Journal 1922-1989 de Leiris. Malgré les affinités qui lient ces écrivains, leurs œuvres divergent a priori quant aux degrés d’implication du sujet d’énonciation au sein de ces textes autobiographiques. Si le narrateur lotien a tendance à l’extraversion, le sujet leirissien est porté à l’introspection. Cependant, l’expression du moi dans le journal de Leiris n’est guère dissociable de l’influence qu’exerce le regard d’autrui sur l’image que le diariste se fait de lui-même. En fait, le changement opéré chez les deux écrivains s’inscrit dans le temps quoique de manières différentes. Quant aux images insérées dans lesdites œuvres, elles sont majoritairement des photographies. Cependant, leur mode d’insertion dans le texte de Loti relève de l’illustration, pratique qui intervient après la création verbale de l’œuvre, alors que les images introduites dans le journal de Leiris ont été choisies par le diariste pendant le processus de la création. D’ailleurs, Loti se distingue par ses descriptions poétiques qui constituent des images textuelles rivalisant avec les images iconiques insérées par l’éditeur. Toutefois, ces images sélectionnées dans la collection iconographique léguée par Loti illustrent pertinemment son livre. Pour sa part, Leiris insère dans son journal des images dont la diversité est représentative de la nature de l’œuvre diaristique elle-même et dont la majorité trace obliquement le portrait du sujet diaristique. En bref, notre thèse vise à étudier les mécanismes textuels et visuels qui sous-tendent la construction d’une image de soi et de l’autre, tout en mettant l’accent sur les stratégies discursives mises en œuvre dans ce processus de découverte de soi, de l’autre et de soi à travers l’autre.

Keywords: Loti, Leiris, La Mort de Philae, Journal 1922-1989
écriture autobiographique, journal personnel/intime, récit de voyage,
l'altérité, l'énonciation, rapports texte-image
morphologie du moi diaristique, l'image textuelle, la prose poétique
Advisor: LeBlanc, Julie