VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Asian and Latina Migrants in the United States and the Invisible / Visible Paradigm of Human Trafficking

Asian and Latina Migrants in the United States and the Invisible / Visible Paradigm of Human Trafficking addresses a critical question: who is seen as trafficked? And who is rendered invisible? How the trafficked person has come to matter in the 21st century is a function of the diversity of discourses that extends beyond the legal definition of human trafficking. In order to make sense of "who" is visible as a trafficked person necessitates a method that is interdisciplinary. Narratives produce who is categorized as the trafficked, the trafficker, and the anti-trafficker. Structural and cultural factors solidify categories of human trafficking, further perpetuating what I refer to as an invisible / visible paradigm of human trafficking. I develop an understanding of human trafficking as an invisible / visible paradigm of human trafficking in order to enable a nuanced critique of the erasures that currently exist in narratives of exploitation and labor migration. To address who is visible and invisible when trafficked I examine comparatively Asian and Latinas trafficked into the United States./nAsian and Latina Migrants offers an interdisciplinary approach. The methodology is informed by sociological methods of participation and participant observation as a scholar activist (2005 - present). Between 2009 and 2011 I worked with over 70 organizations and advocated for and / or assessed over one hundred human trafficking cases as a caseworker, programs coordinator and technical assistant provider to anti-trafficking organizations. The fieldwork enabled me to examine how victims of human trafficking are constituted. The legal and social imagining of human trafficking manifests in legal systems, in the representation of the policy and legal cases in the media and in campaigns. And human trafficking is continually redefined by discourses of freedom, labor migration, and sexual economies. Therefore, I also employ a cultural studies lens to unpack the discourse of human trafficking. Who this person is inextricably linked to gendered and raced perceptions of illegality and victimhood./nAsian and Latina Migrants examines transnational labor that bridges Asia-Pacific to the Americas. Chapter two maps the scholarly discourse about human trafficking as intertwined with discourses about freedom, labor and migration, and sexual economies. Chapter three describes the method of Asian and Latina Migrants as drawing upon sociology, legal analysis, and cultural studies. Chapters four through six offers a qualitative analysis of Asian and Latinas trafficked through homo-social relations (women trafficking women). In particular, I study Koreans, Filipinas, and a Peruvian trafficked into domestic work, servitude, sexual slavery, and massage parlors. Chapters four through six focus on feminized labor (domestic worker and sexual economies) and exploitation. Chapter seven concludes with situating resistance and human trafficking; in spite of the violence as systemic and naturalized, survivors are always resisting.

Advisor: Glenn, Evelyn N
Contesting Nationalisms: Gender, Globalization, and Cultural Representation in Nigerian Beauty Pageants

Over the last five decades, Nigeria has moved from being a nation enjoying its new post-colonial independence to a nation self-consciously placed within the international political economy. In this dissertation, I show how the complexity and tensions of this shift have helped shape, and are reflected in the Nigerian beauty pageant industry. Drawing on a case study of three beauty pageants, two national and one international, I compare the production, symbolism, and political controversies surrounding each pageant and the way it represents the Nigerian nation. I use these cases to argue that national identity exists at multiple levels and is constructed through and towards both national and international audiences. Organizers, contestants, corporate sponsors, fans and opposition groups manage and present the nation through pageants. They negotiate between highlighting cultural diversity within the country and displaying a shared national culture in a global world. The Nigerian beauty pageant industry has been influenced by social divisions within Nigeria and by its place within the international political economy; it is caught up in the dual process of navigating national unity and asserting global dominance./nI focus on how Nigerian beauty pageants: (1) project a cohesive national identity in a multiethnic and multi-religious society; (2) craft a narrative of unique nationhood while being part of the global arena; and (3) manage local adaptation and resistance to globalization. By comparing these contests--their content, structure, and associated discourses--I theorize nationalism as a multilayered process informed by local and global processes. I posit that the first contest, "Queen Nigeria," represents cultural-nationalism through its emphasis on the unity of the nation and retaining Nigeria's unique cultural heritage in the face of rapid globalization. The second pageant, "The Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria," embodies cosmopolitan-nationalism, stressing Nigeria's compatibility with an international community. The third case, "Miss World 2002," highlights global-nationalism through the intersection of Nigeria's local political situation and responses from the international community. I account for how local and international agendas play out through the trajectory of a nation.

Advisor: Ray, Raka
Bearing Class: Citizenship, Status, and the Maternal Body

This dissertation compares the health-enhancing projects of lower- and middle-class U.S. women during pregnancy and postpartum. Current social stratification scholarship pays scant attention to the role of the body, while the literature on reproductive labor--which shows bodily carework to be a highly gendered activity--often disregards class. In my dissertation, I argue that the maternal body serves as a key site of class inequality at both structural and individual levels, simultaneously reflecting class differences and reproducing them through the techniques mothers adopt to cultivate their own health and their children's. Such projects (especially changes in diet and exercise) are common in mothers across racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic locations, even as their contents vary. Yet, while women's bodily practices may affect their physical wellbeing, such habits also are saddled with a range of social and moral meanings that are reinforced through the institutions in which mothers participate. Revealing the lie in oversimplified rhetorics of "good" versus "bad" mothers, my research shows how class mediates the near-universal efforts of new mothers to maximize their own health and their children's./nBased on interviews and ethnographic observations I conducted with middle-class mothers and in offices of the federal Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program in California and Florida, I present four main findings. First, WIC, a federal program for low-income women, aims to supplant traditional knowledge about the maternal body with medical authority. It also works to induct participants into what I call "neoliberal citizenship," emphasizing self-control and decreased reliance on public health services. Second, informal institutions popular among middle-class mothers--"mommy groups" and online message boards--offer members support and information, but also a space in which to assert mastery over body care habits and to engage in status contests with other mothers. Third, I suggest that differences in material, cultural, and institutional circumstances lead mothers to adopt divergent forms of agency with regard to the care of their bodies; while both groups in my study seek to make the right choices for their children's health and development, poor and working-class mothers' constrained choices tend to be misrecognized as lacking agency. Fourth, while recent research has fixated on mothers' self-care habits during pregnancy as determinants of children's physiological and developmental outcomes, I suggest that the modes through which they cultivate their children's bodies serve to transmit class-specific bodily knowledge and ethics, constituting children as classed subjects and reproducing both privilege and disadvantage across generations.

Advisor: Ray, Raka
Consequences of non-trivial band topology in condensed matter systems

The commonly adopted classification of the electronic phases of matter as metals, insulators, semimetals, semiconductors and superconductors can be refined by studying the topological properties of the band structure in these phases. This unveils a rich and diverse substructure, and helps to conclude the existence of topological phases -- phases whose properties are robust against perturbations, possibly with the requirement that the perturbations preserve certain symmetries. In this dissertation, several topological phases are studied, and predictions are made for some unusual physical phenomena involving these phases. Some of these phenomena may be observable using current experimental techniques. Topological phases often carry unconventional surface states; experimental signatures for the surface states of a strong topological insulator are presented as well./nWe begin by systematically discussing the gapped phases, including some topological insulators and topological superconductors, proximate to a three-dimensional Dirac node. Studying topological defects in these phases reveals interesting duality relations between them, which provide potential routes for unconventional or non-Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson continuous phase transitions between them. Topological textures, on the other hand, can lead to very different physics, and we show that a bulk superconductor vortex in a topological insulator -- a texture with a non-trivial Hopf index -- acts like a fermion. As a corollary, we show that if the vortex string is terminated by a surface, the resulting dangling end traps a Majorana zero mode. The Majorana mode is found to be stable against doping the topological insulator, provided the doping is below a critical value set by Berry phase properties of the Fermi surface of the doped insulator. Importantly, several existing superconductors such as Cu-doped Bi2Se3 and TlBiTe2 are predicted to host surface Majorana modes. In the absence of superconductivity, the surface of a topological insulator has gapless, spin-momentum locked states. This locking leads to an interesting response to circularly polarized radiation, with the dominant photocurrent being tied to the Berry curvature of the surface bands./nHaving studied several theoretical and experimental implications of gapped topological phases, we turn our attention towards a gapless topological phase -- the Weyl semimetal. We investigate transport in this phase in the presence of Coulomb interactions or disorder at finite temperature, and compare our results to experimental data on the candidate Weyl semimetal Y2Ir2O7 , finding encouraging agreement.

Advisor: Vishwanath, Ashvin
Pathways to self-harmful behaviors in young adult females with and without ADHD: A longitudinal examination of risk and mediating factors

Accumulating evidence suggests that rates of suicide attempt and non-suicidal self-injury ([NSSI]; e.g., cutting, burning) peak in adolescence and early adulthood. Females and those with psychiatric symptoms/diagnoses appear to be at particular risk. Recent findings reported by Hinshaw and colleagues (in press) revealed that young adult women with childhood ADHD diagnoses (n = 140) reported higher rates of suicide attempts and NSSI than non-diagnosed, comparison women (n = 88). The current study aimed to expand on these preliminary findings in order to more thoroughly understand the pattern of suicide attempts and NSSI in this all-female sample. ADHD subtype differences and effects of diagnostic persistence (versus transient and non-diagnosed classifications) on self-harmful behaviors were explored. Crucially, possible mediating effects of impulsivity and comorbid psychopathology, ascertained in early/mid-adolescence, were investigated. Results indicated that young adult women with a childhood diagnosis of ADHD-Combined type (ADHD-C) and those with a persistent ADHD diagnosis (e.g., in childhood and young adulthood) were at highest risk for suicide attempts as well as the most varied and severe forms of NSSI. Mechanism analyses indicated unique pathways from childhood ADHD status to self-harmful behaviors in young adulthood. First, a lab-based measure of impulsivity, along with comorbid externalizing symptoms, emerged as simultaneous, partial mediators of the ADHD-NSSI linkage. Second, internalizing symptoms emerged as a partial mediator of the ADHD-suicide attempt linkage. Results underscore the elevated risk for self-harmful behaviors among young women with ADHD. Limitations, future directions, and implications for prevention and intervention efforts are discussed.

Advisor: Swanson, Erika N
C0Rigidity in Hofer Geometry and Floer Theory

This dissertation explores two instances of C0 rigidity in symplectic geometry: First, we prove that continuous Hamiltonian flows as defined by Oh and M\"uller have unique generators. Second, we study the behavior of certain Floer theoretic invariants of Hamiltonian flows, called spectral invariants, under C0 perturbations of Hamiltonian flows.

Advisor: Weinstein, Alan D
Theory of Topological Phenomena in Condensed Matter Systems

Topological phenomena in physical systems are determined by topological structures and are thus universal and protected against perturbations. We theoretically establish exotic topological phenomena and their consequences for experiments in crystalline systems such as topological insulators and topologically ordered phases. We show that protected one-dimensional fermionic modes may be associated with the line defects such as dislocations in three-dimensional topological insulators, and strong electron-electron repulsion may lead to topological Mott insulators via spontaneous spin-orbit correlations in three dimensions. We also predict anomalous Aharonov Bohm conductance oscillations maximized at half integer multiples of a flux quantum in a topological insulator nanowire with strong surface disorder, arising from surface curvature induced Berry phase. In addition, we classify three-dimensional inversion symmetric insulators and their quantized responses./nQuantum entanglement provides a promising probe to the properties of many-body systems, especially topological phases not captured by local order parameters. We present a characterization of topological insulators using entanglement spectrum based only on bulk ground-state wave function. Further, by studying entanglement of trivial partitions, we establish topological order in candidate Gutzwiller projected wave functions for gapped spin liquids and Laughlin states; and with entanglement's dependence on the ground states for bipartition of a torus into two cylinders, we demonstrate a method to extract the modular matrices and statistics and braiding of quasiparticle excitations. Our method helps to determine the topological order with only the set of ground-state wave functions on a torus. Our variational Monte Carlo calculations of topological entanglement entropy agree well with theory. We also find a violation of the boundary law for a critical spin liquid of Gutzwiller projected Fermi sea on the triangular lattice, where the entanglement entropy's enhancement by a logarithmic factor reflects the presence of emergent fermions in a bosonic wave function.

Advisor: Vishwanath, Ashvin
Modes of Nutrient Transport Across the Chlamydia trachomatis Inclusion

Chlamydia trachomatis is a gram-negative obligate intracellular bacterium that has a significant public health toll. During infection, the bacteria alternate between a metabolically inert, infectious form (elementary body, EB), and a metabolically active, non-infectious form (reticulate body, RB). The process through which the bacteria alternate between the two forms, called the developmental cycle, occurs within the confines of a parasitophorous vacuole termed the inclusion. The inclusion represents an important aspect of chlamydial pathogenesis as it is the mediator between the host cell and the bacteria./nIn order to establish and maintain infection, all pathogens must be able to acquire nutrients from the host. Vacuolar intracellular pathogens have developed three ways in which to acquire nutrients: (1) intercept vacuoles from the endosomal/lysosomal pathway or through the autophagosomal pathway, (2) have open channels that allow for free exchange between the host cytoplasm, and (3) possess a transport system. The inclusion of C. trachomatis does not acquire nutrients via fusion of host vesicles within the endosomal/lysosomal or autophagosomal pathways. It also does not possess an open channel as studies have shown the inclusion to exclude molecules larger than 520Da. These studies demonstrate that the two previously mentioned methods of nutrient acquisition are not utilized by C. trachomatis and suggest there exists a transport system within the chlamydial inclusion. No transport system within a bacterial vacuole has been reported, although it has been documented in parasitic vacuoles. It is intriguing to note that RBs align themselves along the inner inclusion membrane. Specifically there is a unique structural morphology indicative of a large macromolecular complex located at the junction between RB and integral to the inclusion membrane. This leads to the hypothesis that the chlamydial inclusion possesses a nutrient transport complex that links the RBs to the inclusion that is essential for nutrient acquisition./nMethionine and glucose analog localization was monitored in C. trachomatis infected HeLa cells. It was found that each analog exhibited a unique localization pattern that was dependent upon host and bacterial factors. Methionine was sequestered in the bacteria, while glucose was found in the lumen of the inclusion. This work was carried out in conjunction with the development of a novel protocol to isolate inclusions from the host cell. This would provide a means for direct manipulation of the inclusion, allowing for more detailed analysis of nutrient acquisition.

Advisor: Stephens, Richard S.
Graphs and Combinatorial Representations of Stochastic Processes

This thesis covers two distinct topics connected by their use of graphs. First is a theoretical analysis of graph Laplacians and locally linear embedding (LLE) on manifolds using tools for diffusion processes. The implications of this analysis are (1) a better understanding of the relationship between graph Laplacians and LLE, (2) understanding how a graph construction method affects the limit operator, and (3) obtaining a graph has nice properties such as sparsity or a well-behaved spectrum given a desired limit./nIn the second topic we examine random graphs and their relationship to nonparametric Bayesian methods. We give combinatorial processes describing several nonparametric hierarchical Bayesian models. These processes lead to the development of new MCMC samplers and provide a new perspective on the models. We introduce the idea of discrete coagulation and fragmentation processes to describe various hierarchical models and identify a particular model of interest using coagulation-fragmentation duality. We consider these random graphs in the more general context of random combinatorial objects and give an application of random trees to drawing a random sample without replacement from a distributed stream.

Advisor: Jordan, Michael I
The Study of Disorder in Amorphous Silica, Alkali-Silica Reaction Gel and Fly Ash

Significant progress was achieved with the application of Rietveld method to characterize the crystalline, and nanocrystalline phases in portland cement concrete. However, to obtain detailed information on the amorphous phases present in concrete, it is necessary to analyze the total scattering data. The pair distribution function (PDF) method, that takes the Sine Fourier transform of the measured structure factor over a wide momentum transfer range, has been successfully utilized in the study of liquids and amorphous solids. The method provides a direct measure of the probability of finding an atom surrounding a central atom at a radial distance away. The obtained experimental characteristic distances can be used to validate the predictions by the theoretical models, such as, molecular dynamics simulations. This research focuses on obtained results of PDF analysis on silica fume, rice husk ash, fly ash, alkali-silica reaction gel, and opals.

Advisor: Monteiro, Paulo J.M.
Ostertag, Claudia P.
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of Choosing Treatment

Despite the existence of many effective treatments for mental health conditions, services are underused. This treatment gap has resulted in substantial psychological, social, and economic costs (Wang, Simon, & Kessler, 2003). Extant research argues that the stigma pervading mental health categories is a significant barrier to seeking needed care (Corrigan, 2004; Link & Phelan, 2006). The current investigation elucidates the psychological processes underlying people's willingness, and reluctance, to seek treatment. Across six studies, employing observational/correlational and experimental designs, evidence converged on a specific psychological process model. Attributing human qualities to (or humanizing) mental illness evokes compassion toward such individuals, which in turn increases perceivers' own willingness to seek treatment, should such care become needed. These results build on previous research--which has examined the differential attribution of humanity in interpersonal and intergroup contexts--by showing how humanizing a stigmatized social group may influence perceivers' own healthcare decision-making. Implications for (de)humanization, emotion, stigma reduction, and promoting wellness are discussed./nKeywords: (de)humanization, stigma, compassion, treatment-seeking

Advisor: Mendoza-Denton, Rodolfo
Investigations of Tunneling for Field Eﬀect Transistors

Over 40 years of scaling dimensions for new and continuing product cycles has introduced new challenges for transistor design. As the end of the technology roadmap for semiconductors approaches, new device structures are being investigated as possible replacements for traditional metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs). Band-to-band tunneling (BTBT) in semiconductors, often viewed as an adverse effect of short channel lengths in MOSFETs, has been discussed as a promising current injection mechanism to allow for reduced operating voltage for beyond MOSFET technology./nThis dissertation discusses the proposal of BTBT for tunneling feld effect transistors (TFETs). Some early work is briefly reviewed to better appreciate the academic research landscape regarding BTBT. Then, experimental observations of a steeply switching enhanced-Schottky-barrier MOSFET are analysed in detail and the steep characteristic is plausibly explained by metal impurity trap states near the source tunneling junction. Next, follow-up experiments to investigate the role of traps in BTBT are reviewed with a likely explanation that traps in close proximity to the tunneling junction can lower the activation energy for BTBT. Finally, a source design study for a planar homojunction germanium-on-insulator TFET finds that a static reverse bias can dramatically alter the optimal doping profile for the source tunneling junction and highlights the importance of tight electrostatic control for improved ION/IOFF in TFETs.

Advisor: King Liu, Tsu-Jae