VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
No Place Like Home: African Refugees and the Making of a New Queer Identity

For reasons of necessity, urgency, and sometimes choice, queer Africans cross borders and find their lives unfolding in diasporic spaces. Refugee claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity persecution make up 12% of all refugee cases in Canada, with queer African refugees constituting the largest group within this category. With this in mind, we now have to ask, “what kind of history will be written about the collision between queer Africans dislocated from post-colonial nations and the Canadian settler nation?” In this study, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted to explore the individual lived experiences of queer African refugees, with a focus on the intricate realignment of sexual orientation, sexual identity, sexual politics, and sexual desire that inevitably emerges through forced migration and the refugee process in Canada. The deep meaning of life experiences is captured in the participants’ own words, providing detailed, in-depth insights into the complexities of their lives, their reflections, and their subsequent responses. These narratives call attention to the specific features of queer African refugees, who test the limits of the current homonational refugee apparatus. Participants’ experiences of resisting social roles, structures, identities, and expectations that limit queer African refugees and keep them “in their place,” both in their countries of origin and in Canada, are interrogated. The construction of boundaries that decide who belongs and deserves protection within Canada and who does not provides a foundation for engaging in research as a practice of freedom, in order to counter the global narrative of refugee life that excludes queer Africans. The findings in this research require us to look at practices of exclusion and inclusion in the Canadian refugee system and the tensions that emerge for queer African claimants. In the end, we are left with strategies for how to engage with the politics of knowledge production and advocate for an agenda of social justice and transformation for queer Africans globally.

Keywords: African Studies
Anti-Oppression
Black Studies
Migration Studies
Queer Studies
Refugee Studies
Advisor: Bisaillon, Laura
Platform Feminism: Feminist Protest Space and the Politics of Spatial Organization

Platform Feminism: Feminist Protest Space and the Politics of Spatial Organization examines the relationship between platforms and feminist politics. This dissertation proposes a new feminist media theory of the platform that positions the platform as a media object that elevates and amplifies some voices over others and renders marginal resistance tactics illegible. This dissertation develops the term “Platform Feminism” to describe an emerging view of digital platforms as always-already politically useful media for feminist empowerment. I argue that Platform Feminism has come to structure and dominate popular imaginaries of what a feminist politics is. In the same vein, the contemporary focus on digital platforms within media studies negates attention to the strategies of care, safety and survival that feminists who resist on the margins employ in the digital age. If we take seriously the imperative to survive rather than an overbearing commitment to speak up, then the platform’s role in feminism is revealed as limited in scope and potential. Through a mixed methodological approach via interviews with feminist activists, critical discourse analysis of platform protest materials, critical discourse analysis of news coverage and popular cultural responses to transnational feminist protests and participant observation within sites of feminist protest in Toronto, this dissertation argues that the platform is a media object that is over-determined in its political utility for Feminist politics and action.

Keywords: Feminist Media Theory
Feminist Protest
Platforms
Advisor: Sharma, Sarah
The Complexity of Young Learners: Rethinking Assessment Methodologies to Model Cognitive, Metacognitive, and Psychological Traits

Rapid changes to student demographics and learning environments call for reconceptualization of what and how we assess. There is growing consensus on the importance of assessing students’ growth in multidimensional traits such cognitive, affective, metacognitive, and psychological characteristics. However, traditional assessment methods rely on selected-response formats, which are poorly equipped to support valid interpretations about complex learner traits. This dissertation seeks to address methodological challenges with multimodal data sources by probing ways to profile students’ reading competencies with fine-grained processing skills, track changes in self-regulated learning behaviours over time, and model students’ writing competence as a function of reading comprehension and self-efficacy. These issues were addressed through three distinct empirical studies. The first study explored the potential of cognitive diagnostic modelling for profiling students’ reading achievement focusing on cognitive reading processes instead of aggregated total scores. Five core reading processing skills were identified through the content analysis of the curriculum expectations and subsequently were mapped onto assessment item specifications called a Q-matrix. Results demonstrated the prospective of profiling using processing skills. This calls for further research on the appropriate granularity of processing skills to maximize their interpretability and pedagogical usefulness for teachers and students. The second study examined the dynamic nature of self-regulated learning in a technology-rich learning environment. Latent transition analysis was employed to investigate how self-regulated learning progressed across two time points. Findings showed that learners displayed different combinations of judgment of learning and content evaluation to regulate learning at different times, revealing the transitory characteristic of self-regulated learning. The third study approached a long-standing challenge of utilizing written responses for assessment by investigating the potential of machine learning applications for automated scoring. Multinomial naïve Bayes was applied to investigate whether this method can accurately evaluate written responses. Results demonstrated that reading ability and self-efficacy could be accurate classification labels of written responses. Collectively, this dissertation explored the utility of multimodal data including responses to reading items, process data of self-regulated learning strategies, and written responses of reading comprehension. By applying measurement-modelling approaches on multimodal data, this dissertation demonstrated a broader capacity to understand multivariate learning characteristics.

Keywords: Assessment
Cognition
Innovative Methodologies
Metacognition
Multi-modal Data
Self-Efficacy
Advisor: Jang, Eunice E
The Transformation of Three Colleges to Institutes of Technology and Advanced Learning in Ontario

This qualitative, exploratory study focuses on the transformation of three of Ontario's public colleges as they became Institutes of Technology and Advanced Learning (ITALs) with the capacity to offer up to 15 percent of their programming as baccalaureate degrees. The data were gathered through interviews with 11 past and present policy and institutional leaders, as well as 21 current ITAL administrators and faculty members. In addition, a document analysis provided insight into the manner in which the transformation was reflected through publications and documents. The theoretical framework that grounds this study includes historical institutionalism, legitimacy theory, as well as Burton R. Clark’s theory related to hierarchy and power in post-secondary institutions. These theories provide a view to understanding the incremental manner in which the ITALs changed and offer insight into the challenges that the ITALs face as they build legitimacy related to their new degree offerings This study found that as the ITALs transformed incrementally, there was a shift in their institutional identities. As they began to offer degrees, in addition to their traditional credentials, the ITALs changed. They introduced new regulations, policies and processes, resulting in a change to the manner in which the institutions operated on a daily basis. In expanding their degree provision, the ITALs were required to create a degree culture, including the introduction of an applied research infrastructure, a staffing policy for the hiring of PhD-prepared faculty and a rigorous degree quality assurance framework. The study found that the ITALs continue to address challenges related to building legitimacy among internal and external stakeholders, critical to the persistence and success of degree offering. As they transformed, the ITALs experienced challenges as the new rules, regulations and responsibilities of degree offering were introduced and layered on to their traditional program offerings. At the same time, the transformation provided meaningful opportunities for the ITALs as their mandate evolved to include degree offerings. This study addresses the transformed mandate of the ITALs and contemplates the possibility of an alternate post-secondary system design in Ontario.

Keywords: college
degrees
Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning
Ontario
post-secondary
transformation
Advisor: Wheelahan, Elizabeth
Rearing the Family, Moving Society: Rethinking Gender, Kinship, and Work through Japan’s Fathering Movement

Based on fieldwork conducted in Tokyo from 2015 to 2016 around the non-profit organization “Fathering Japan”, this ethnography follows the practice of fatherhood among participants of ikumen movements. Often translated as “childrearing man”, ikumen refers to fathers who actively engage in chores and childcare. Ikumen movements emerged as Japan’s powerful corporations weakened following the economic downturn of the early 1990s. Neoliberal restructuring across the following decades has further undercut the financial stability of households as secure fulltime positions with a “family wage” are replaced by precarious contract work. With dual income homes becoming the norm, ikumen have become a key figure in the renegotiation of the gendered division of labour. While originally a grassroots effort led by activist fathers campaigning for the recognition and legal protection of paternity leave, the ikumen concept has since been adopted by the state and industry. Recent state initiatives promote ikumen as national heroes shoring up the nation’s sagging birthrate and economy, while branded “masculine” lifestyle publications hail ikumen as fashionable consumers. In this context, how do ikumen movement participants negotiate the existing middle-class masculine norm of the salaryman – a salaried corporate worker – and this emerging model of nurturing fatherhood? By closely attending to the complexities and nuances of the everyday practice of fatherhood among ikumen, this dissertation documents how these men weave their experience as fathers and employees together with family history and memory. In this process, they cultivate diverse forms of relationality beyond the parent-child bond. By enacting caring fatherhood in their homes, communities, and workplaces, they also compose fluid and flexible masculine identities. The dissertation argues that the “fathering” or “rearing” of a child is a practice that not only changes men’s relationship with children and spouses, but also forges new kinds of relationships with neighbors, “papa” friends, co-workers, and society.

Keywords: Care
Fatherhood
Gender
Japan
Kinship
Masculinity
Advisor: Satsuka, Shiho
Bamford, Sandra
Knowledge and Anxious Thought

This dissertation is about the epistemological dimension of anxious thought. That there is an epistemological dimension to anxious thinking seems clear upon reflection, but not much work in epistemology has focused on trying to understand anxiety and its role in our epistemic lives. I undertake three broad tasks in the dissertation. The first task is primarily a project in philosophical psychology; its aim is to achieve a descriptive understanding of the epistemological machinery that underlies anxious thinking. I begin by arguing that attention to the phenomenon of “insight” into obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) helps to illuminate some restrictions on an adequate theory of the epistemic attitude underlying anxious thinking. Next, I develop and defend a positive characterization of anxious thinking—the Autodiscursive Model of Anxious Thought—which satisfies the restrictions generated by the considerations related to “insight”. The theory that I offer models anxious thoughts as certain kinds of question-asking conversational moves directed at oneself. The second task is a project in normative epistemology; its aim is to offer a way of distinguishing the epistemically permissible anxious questioning from the epistemically prohibited. I argue here that anxious questioning is impermissible just in case one’s epistemic situation is first-personally secure: roughly, if one’s evidence is such that one can permissibly self-attribute knowledge that p, then one shouldn’t worry that ¬p. The third task is a project in extracting lessons from the study of anxiety with respect to more traditional issues in epistemology. This part of the dissertation has two main threads. First, I argue that the theory of anxious thought defended in the first two parts of the dissertation can offer us a new perspective on some well-known paradoxical patterns of knowledge-attributions. In particular, I argue for a Moorean approach to what are sometimes called “lottery propositions”: people can and do know, e.g., that their tickets in a fair lottery have lost. Second, I argue that attention to anxious thought cases helps to elucidate an infrequently considered kind of epistemic obligation, namely an epistemic obligation to know which is distinct from and not reducible to an epistemic obligation to believe.

Advisor: Nagel, Jennifer
Printed Digital Microfluidics for Diagnosis of Disease

Digital Microfluidics (DMF) is a liquid handling technology comprising the manipulation of discrete droplets using electrostatic forces. Droplets are sandwiched in between a counter-electrode top plate and a bottom plate bearing an array of insulated driving electrodes. In this configuration, individual droplets, each serving as micro-reactors, can be dispensed, mixed, merged, and separated making DMF a powerful sample handling and chemical processing technique. Complex multi-step operations can be performed in an automated fashion, and since droplets are individually addressable on a generic device geometry, experiments can be reconfigured on-the-fly. These properties make DMF an increasingly popular tool for lab-on-a-chip applications. While DMF has proven to be a useful technology, one of its leading challenges is fabrication—devices are typically manufactured on glass substrates with slow and expensive photolithography, wet-etching, vapour deposition, and spin-coating techniques that often require cleanroom facilities. There have been previous efforts forming DMF devices using cleanroom-free methods over the years, but the performance of the devices was limited, and the techniques were not scalable for mass manufacturing. This thesis introduces the development and use of tools for low-cost disease diagnosis at the point-of-care using a combination of microfluidic and printing technologies compatible with mass manufacturing methods. Chapter 2 demonstrates a novel method for forming DMF devices using a consumer-grade inkjet printer and a roll-coating technique compatible with mass manufacturing. The new devices were compared with those made using traditional cleanroom techniques, and their usefulness assessed by performing an infectious disease immunoassay. Chapter 3 describes the application of DMF devices in a point-of-care setting for the first time, with low-cost devices used to detect infectious diseases in a pair of field trials in Africa. Chapter 4 describes a DMF sampling interface allowing, for the first time, whole blood samples to be directly introduced to DMF devices for in-line and downstream analysis without pre-processing. Chapter 5 describes an integrated DMF and microchip electrophoresis device that uses low-cost materials and clean-room free fabrication techniques to allow for combined sample preparation and electrophoretic analysis. The developments in this thesis represent important steps towards facilitating DMF becoming a useful point-of-care diagnostic tool.

Keywords: clinical diagnostics
digital microfluidics
inkjet printing
lab-on-a-chip
Advisor: Wheeler, Aaron R
A “Consultation Dance” for Legitimacy: The Supreme Court and The Duty to Consult in B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Process

The duty to consult is an Aboriginal right under s. 35 of Canada’s Constitution Act, 1982. Under the duty, the Crown must consult with Indigenous nations if their asserted or recognized rights may be negatively impacted by a proposed Crown action. The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has explained that all parties in consultation need to act in good faith and that the Crown is expected to act honourably in order to discharge the duty. This dissertation posits a framework to evaluate whether the Crown upholds its honour throughout decision-making. The framework of input, throughput, and output legitimacy can demonstrate whether the Crown is acting legitimately towards Indigenous peoples’ and their concerns throughout various stages of decision-making. The dissertation then applies this framework to B.C.’s Environmental Assessment (B.C. EA) process in order to assess how the duty to consult is implemented. I find that the Crown does not attain some key aspects of input, throughput, and output legitimacy. In particular, Indigenous parties perceive that they do not have adequate resources to participate effectively in consultation activities; there is a lack of accountability and transparency regarding the Crown’s decision-making throughout the EA process; and the Environmental Assessment Office does not sufficiently explain how its preferred course of action provides superior protection for Aboriginal rights over alternative actions. The Crown exhibits these shortcomings because it prefers to fulfill the duty in a way that is least disruptive to existing norms and practices, even when doing so increases the risk of Indigenous peoples pursuing litigation to challenge the Crown. Consequently, contentious politics and expensive, time-consuming legal challenges continue, ultimately casting doubt on the duty to consult’s ability to advance reconciliation between the Crown and Indigenous peoples.

Keywords: Aboriginal rights
Canadian constitutional law
Duty to Consult
Indigenous politics
Public Policy
Advisor: Olive, Andrea
Schertzer, Robert
The Surgical Management of Severe Aortic Stenosis In the Era of Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement

Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has emerged as a treatment option for severe and symptomatic aortic stenosis across the spectrum of surgical risk and has potentially transformed the surgical management of aortic stenosis. The objectives of this dissertation were: (1) To determine if the widespread introduction of TAVR had an impact on valve selection trends in those undergoing surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR); (2) To compare valve-in-valve TAVR to redo surgery for a failed biological prosthesis; (3) To determine the safety and efficacy of adjunctive aortic root enlargement (ARE) to SAVR; (4) To determine the impact of various hypothetical scenarios of TAVR valve durability on the life expectancy of low-risk patients. Our piece-wise regression of 214,390 patients undergoing isolated primary mechanical or bio- logical SAVR from 2004-2016 in the United States estimated that the proportion of mechanical valves was decreasing more quickly during 2004-2009 (-2.81%/year, 95% confidence interval [95% CI], -3.03% to -2.60%), compared with 2010-2016. This suggest that the widespread introduction of TAVR did not, in of itself, accelerate the decline in mechanical valves. In a propensity-score matched analysis of 131 patient-pairs undergoing either valve-in-valve TAVR or redo surgery for a failed biological prosthesis, 30-day mortality (absolute risk difference: -7.5%; 95%CI: -12.6% to -2.3%), permanent pacemaker implantation, and blood transfusions were significantly lower with valve-in-valve. A multi-institutional propensity-score matched analysis showed that the addition of ARE to isolated SAVR was safe and did not confer additional early mortality or morbidity in 809 matched patient-pairs. Overall, these two analyses suggest ARE should be performed when necessary and may facilitate future valve-in-valve procedures, which may be the preferred approach for a failed biological prosthesis. Finally, in our discrete event simulation model, the durability of TAVR valves must be 70% shorter than that of surgical valves to result in reduced life expectancy in patients with similar demographics to those enrolled in the low-risk trials. However, in younger patients, the threshold for TAVR valve durability was substantially higher. These findings suggest that durability concerns should not influence the initial treatment decision regarding TAVR versus SAVR in older low-risk patients based on current evidence.

Keywords: aortic stenosis
aortic valve replacement
decision analysis
discrete event simulation
health technology assessment
transcatheter valves
Advisor: Fremes, Stephen E.
A Performance History of Tempo and Timing in Claude Debussy’s Préludes, Book I

Claude Debussy (1862-1918), a highly original and influential composer at the turn of the twentieth century, is one of the few from that era who recorded his own compositions. His piano recordings, including five Préludes, received considerable attention from performers and musicologists since their transfer on compact disc in the 1990s. The present research investigates the performance history of the tempo aspect in three Préludes from Book I--Le vent dans la plaine, La Cathédrale engloutie and La danse de Puck, based on Debussy’s recording and a selection of thirty recordings made between 1912 to 2017. The aims of this research are to identify the changing traditions in tempo fluctuations, to observe their impact on expressiveness, and to categorize the different trends based on the relationship of teacher and student, national school characteristics, period and personal style. The final goal of the research is to offer varied interpretive possibilities to pianists who intend to learn Debussy’s Préludes. This dissertation is composed of six chapters. The first chapter explores Debussy’s compositional aesthetics, his piano playing and his Welte-Mignon recordings. Chapter two discusses the current literature on Debussy’s recordings, the methodology of the present research study, and the use of the software Sonic Visualiser. Chapters three, four and five are dedicated to the analysis of the three preludes. Each of these chapters begins with a brief structural overview of the prelude under consideration and a general examination of recorded performances of it. The core of these chapters consists of a study of tempo fluctuations at the beat-level of each artist’s performance and observations on how tempo affects performance expressiveness. The final chapter discusses the results based on the analysis across the three preludes. Observed trends based on the teacher-student relationship, nationality school, period and personal characteristics are further interpreted with relevant textual sources and each artist’s background. The chapter concludes by revealing some limitations of recording technology and their impact on the present study.

Keywords: Claude Debussy
Piano performance
Preludes
Recording Analysis
Rubato
Tempo
Advisor: McClelland, Ryan