VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
The Rhetoric of Sincerity in Early Modern Epistemology

What does it mean to be true to oneself? This dissertation historicizes the question by examining how the epistemological and literary works of Francis Bacon, John Milton, and René Descartes negotiate the relationship between truth and self through the novel concept of “sincerity.” The modern fascination with this ideal has its origins in the well-worn Shakespearean adage, “this above all: to thine own self be true,” but we often forget the original motivation to be sincere so that “thou canst not then be false to any man.” In contrast to the individualism of contemporary “authenticity” culture, in the early modern period being true to oneself was not yet a worthy end in its own right, but a means of being true to others. I examine how and why these authors’ public arguments for new scientific, political, and philosophical epistemologies are staged in a surprisingly subjective voice. I argue that in the process of developing new ways of knowing they deploy a rhetoric of sincerity that draws on their culture’s social understanding of identity, but that anticipates and makes possible the premises of modern authenticity. Following the Introduction’s discussion of the historical emergence of sincerity, Chapter One considers Bacon’s subjective presentation of his theories for an objective empiricism, and argues that he stages his own suffering as a form of identity for the new science. Chapter Two examines Milton’s revolutionary political prose, analyzing in particular his appeal to seventeenth-century discourses of zeal, and his presentation of his anger as a model of political enfranchisement. Chapter Three considers the Discourse on the Method as a paradoxically anonymous autobiography, and reveals how Descartes frankly presents his own story as a philosophical liberation that is freely available to his reader. In each case, the candour and conviction of the writer exemplifies, is perhaps even constitutive of, the method described. These authors’ arguments for epistemology appeal to a social rhetoric of sincerity, even as their theories lay the groundwork for the authenticity to come. They provide an important corrective to our understanding of early modern identity, and the origins of our own sense of self.

Keywords: Bacon
Descartes
Epistemology
Milton
Rhetoric
Sincerity
Advisor: Stevens, Paul
Shame on Who: Understanding the Effects of Shame Proneness, Emotion Dysregulation, Language Processing Capacity and Trauma on Batterer Intervention Program Attrition

Abstract Batterer Intervention Programs experience high rates of attrition. Previous studies have examined explanatory factors including socio-demographic factors, intrapersonal and interpersonal factors, and system factors. This study examines the bivariate and multivariate effects of trauma, trauma symptomatology, shame-proneness, emotion dysregulation, language processing capacity, and substance misuse as well as demographic and systemic factors on both post-intake program enrollment and post-group start enrollment for men mandated to attend a Partner Assault Response (PAR) Program in Ontario. A convenience sample of 147 participants volunteered to participate in this observational study; 26 participants withdrew from treatment, 12 did so prior to starting group. Kaplan-Meier testing revealed the independent effects of the explanatory variables, Age Group, PTSD Likelihood and Relationship Status were all associated with attrition. Older men were more likely to complete the PAR program than younger men, while single men and men with indications of PTSD were less likely to complete. The multivariate model fitted to predict PAR program attrition (attrition post-intake) included only one variable, Age Group; when other variables in the model were controlled, younger men had 3.8 times the hazard of leaving the PAR program prematurely than older men. The multivariate model fitted to predict group attrition (attrition post-group start) included two factors: (1) Age Group and (2) PTSD Likelihood. For participants who attended group, younger men had 6 times the hazard of leaving group early than older men, and men with a higher likelihood of having a PTSD diagnosis had 3.7 times the hazard of withdrawing prematurely from the PAR program than those with a lower likelihood of having a PTSD diagnosis. Study participants reported elevated levels of shame proneness and emotion dysregulation. The study findings suggest the need for trauma-informed assessment for Batterer Intervention Programs. Service implications are discussed related to the elevated levels of shame proneness and emotion dysregulation identified in the study.

Keywords: Batterer Intervention Program
Emotion Dysregulation
Intimate Partner Violence
PTSD
Shame
Treatment Attrition
Advisor: Shlonsky, Aron
Developmental Plasticity of Tonotopic Maps in Chinchilla Auditory Midbrain

Sensory areas of the brain have the remarkable ability to reorganize following changes in peripheral input, especially during early development. Cortex of altricious species (post-natal hearing onset) is often investigated. It remains unclear whether neural connections in auditory midbrain reorganize when precocious subjects (hearing onset in utero; e.g., chinchilla laniger) are reared in an enhanced acoustic environment. Neonatal chinchillas were chronically exposed to a moderately-intense (70 dB SPL) narrowband (2 ± 0.25 kHz) sound stimulus for 4 weeks. No difference in tone-specific auditory brainstem response thresholds, hair cell morphology, neural thresholds, and bandwidth 10 dB above threshold were observed around 2 kHz, suggesting the exposure stimulus was non-traumatic. Sound frequency maps in central nucleus of inferior colliculus (IC) were defined with microelectrode recordings. We observed a significant decrease in the proportion of neurons dedicated to octave bands centered at 2- and 8- kHz. Changes were not limited to sound-exposure frequencies: increases in low-frequency representation (below 1 kHz) were observed. We describe a c-fos immunolabelling protocol for chinchilla. Bands of neurons observed following 90-min, 6-kHz stimulation lay ventro-medial to those present following 90-min, 2-kHz stimulation, consistent with the known tonotopic organization of IC, and verified herein by electrophysiological recordings. Interestingly, we observed decreased labeling adjacent to these bands, which we suggest represent inhibitory regions. Following sound exposure, then 90-min, 2-kHz sound stimulation, the number of labeled cells both in the 2-kHz region and throughout IC was increased. Sound-exposed subjects who received no further sound stimulation had c-fos expression patterns similar to silence controls, suggesting sound-exposure does not alter basal levels of c-fos expression, but changes the way neurons respond to prolonged (90-min) tone stimulation. This study contributes to a growing body of literature that suggests that sound frequency representation in auditory midbrain is altered following passive peripheral input during development.

Keywords: c-fos immunohistochemistry
enhanced acoustic environment
inferior colliculus
multi-unit electrophysiology
neuroplasticity
precocious animal model
Advisor: Harrison, Robert V.
The Role of Smaug in Post-transcriptional Regulation

Smaug is a sequence-specific RNA-binding protein (RBP) and a multifunctional post-transcriptional regulator. In this thesis, I have used genome level analysis to gain a panoramic view of regulation by Smaug during early Drosophila embryogenesis. I show that Smaug plays a direct and major role in the translation and stability of a large set of maternal mRNAs. Smaug’s target transcripts function in a diverse array of processes including metabolism, lipid droplet function, protein folding and protein stability, suggesting previously uncharacterized functions for Smaug. I also performed detailed analysis of Smaug’s regulation in the embryo’s germ plasm and found that Smaug sits at the top of a posttranscriptional regulatory cascade that controls primordial germ-cell number by attenuating synthesis of the embryonic germ plasm. In the germ plasm, Smaug binds to arrest mRNA to repress the translation of Bruno (BRU) protein. BRU potentiates the production of Oskar (OSK) protein and germ plasm, Thus, repression of Arrest/Bruno (Bru) by Smaug is required for the establishment of the correct number of germ cells during early embryogenesis.

Keywords: Arrest/Bruno (Bru)
Germ plasm
Polysome gradient
Primordial germ cell
RIP-Chip
Smaug
Advisor: Lipshitz, Howard D
Smibert, Craig A
Knockabout and Slapstick: Violence and Laughter in Nineteenth-century Popular Theatre and Early Film

This thesis examines laughter that attends violent physical comedy: the knockabout acts of the nineteenth-century variety theatres, and their putative descendants, the slapstick films of the early twentieth-century cinema. It attempts a comparative functional analysis of knockabout acts and their counterparts in slapstick film. In Chapter 1 of this thesis I outline the obstacles to this inquiry and the means I took to overcome them; in Chapter 2, I distinguish the periods when knockabout and slapstick each formed the dominant paradigm for physical comedy, and give an overview of the critical changes in the social context that separate them. In Chapter 3, I trace the gradual development of comedy films throughout the early cinema period, from the “comics” of 1900 to 1907, through the “rough house” films of the transitional era, to the emergence of the new genre in 1911-1914. Chapters 4, 5, 6 and 7 present my comparative analyses of the workings of four representative “tropes,” ubiquitous in various forms of knockabout performance and in various representative slapstick films: i) The burlesque prize fight (in variety theatre, in the Ethiopian sketches of blackface minstrelsy and in Keystone’s “The Knockout”); ii) the Pete Jenkins act (in nineteenth-century circus) and the “Wild Ride” (a sub-subgenre of chase film); iii) the “One-Two-Three-Switch motif” in knockabout song and dance and in the slapstick pie fight; and iv) The “White Night” of the Ethiopian sketches and the “Inn Where No Man Rests” of early film. Chapters 8 and 9 present my attempt to synthesize my findings and come to a conclusion by concretely theorizing what this comparison teaches us about knockabout and slapstick performance. Slapstick has a twofold nature: as a performance style, it is a quasi-verisimilar acting “anti-technique,” incorporating acrobatic elements. As a film genre, slapstick represents an intervention in the superfluous violence of everyday life: it functions to recuperate the spectator’s sense of his/her own potential freedom from complicity in social violence; and to make reconciliation with others possible. Nevertheless, the spectator may well reject these functions and use the slapstick film as a pleasurable outlet for his/her own sadistic energies.

Keywords: Ideational Mimetics
Innervation
Knockabout
Laughter theory
Rough-House
Slapstick
Advisor: Johnson, Stephen
Keil, Charlie
From the Inside Out, from the Outside In: Devising in Canadian Puppet Theatre

The ultimate goal of my dissertation is to address one deceptively simple question: Does the focus on the object in puppet theatre restrict the spontaneity and physical freedom that are so central to theatrical devising? Toronto-based Puppetmongers Theatre is my primary case study. Before I can begin to answer this question, I must chart a course through the history, practice, and theory behind each of the two axes of this study. These threads begin to come together as I identify a style of puppetry that is particularly compatible with devising: tandem puppetry. Practitioners of this style telescope the distance (semiotic and physical) between puppets and themselves and foreground their role as actors in their own right. They are therefore literally in an ideal position to act on any spontaneous creative impulses that they might experience. A devising performer is trained to respond to such impulses and to suggestions from others, but there is always a border between two principal spaces: that which is located within the body and that which is located without. This results in a kind of bondage, one from which the puppet theatre artist is freed. The puppet always exists outside of the live body or bodies onstage, even if only conceptually, such as when a performer “puppetizes” part of her body and presents it as a separate character. Manipulators therefore have, in one sense, considerably more control over wholly inorganic puppets than devising performers have over their own bodies, as they both see and control them from the outside. This power of control has its limitations, however, as while the body of the devising performer can react almost instantly to any impulse, the manipulator has an additional step to complete, as her reaction must be channelled through the puppet. In the end, a spirit of (ultimately serious) play is necessary if one wishes to take full advantage of the “flexibilities” offered by devising: collaborative, narrative, design, movement, and space flexibilities. All of these are transformed once they pass through the object-centred prism of puppetry, and yet all still obtain in the world of devised puppet theatre.

Keywords: devising
dramaturgy
Puppetmongers
puppetry
semiotics
theatre
Advisor: Barton, Bruce
The Abbasid Caliphate of Cairo (1261-1517): History and Tradition in the Mamluk Court

This dissertation investigates the two-and-a-half century evolution of Islam’s most prominent leadership institution, the Abbasid caliphate, after its restoration in Cairo following the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258. Kept under the supervision of the Mamluk sultans of Egypt and Syria (1250-1517), modern scholars tend to conclude that this so-called Abbasid “shadow” caliphate merely legitimized Mamluk rulers and little else within their society. Despite having shed much of its original power by the Mamluk period, the Abbasid caliphate of Cairo retained a definite measure of religious authority and enjoyed the reverence of significant sectors of the Cairene population including religious scholars, chroniclers, chancery scribes, poets, travelers, and, it seems, enjoyed even wider resonance among the masses of the local Muslim citizenry. A dynastic study of the Cairo Abbasids combined with analysis of contemporary opinions of the caliphate and its Mamluk sponsors rendered from juristic writing, advice literature, historiography, bureaucratic literature, and administrative documents allows the present study to move toward a comprehensive delineation of the significance of the revived office to the society in which it functioned. Although the caliphs as individuals were largely disposable and powerless, the office they held retained importance throughout the Mamluk period and contributed to larger civilizational understandings of “Caliphate” that allowed the inclusion of the Mamluk regime and its various administrative subdivisions.

Keywords: Abbasids
Cairo
Caliphate
Legitimacy
Mamluks
Medieval Egypt
Advisor: Northrup, Linda S
Theorizing Pathways to Resilience among LGBTQ Youth: A Grounded Theory Study

This three-paper dissertation seeks to advance the conceptual understanding of resilience among lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. Interviews with service-providers (n = 16) and LGBTQ youth (n = 19) were conducted and analyzed, using Grounded Theory (GT) methodologies. The first paper conceptualizes how participants understand the construct of resilience and the associated concepts (i.e., adversity, positive adaptation). Three relevant categories are reported: (1) facing adversities across contexts, (2) growing up in the age of marriage equality, and (3) “doing well” while still in pain. Provided extensive adversities LGBTQ youth experience, participants endorsed a context-dependent understanding of “doing well” (e.g., “battling through”) rather than using normative criteria of health and wellbeing (e.g., absence of psychopathologies, presence of socially desirable outcomes). The second paper reports a substantive theory of resilience emerged in the GT study. The core category, paving pathways through the pain, suggests that youth build on their experiences of marginalization and the concomitant emotional pain to carve out personalized pathways to resilience. All youth employed the following five processes: (1) navigating safety across contexts, (2) asserting personal agency, (3) seeking and cultivating meaningful relationships, (4) un-silencing social identities, and (5) engaging in collective healing and action. While the degree of which and the ways in which youth made use of these resilience processes varied, youth focused their attention to the areas of their individual life circumstances that inflicted emotional pain and engaged more deliberately in one or more of the resilience processes related to the origins of pain. In the third paper, results of the GT study, along with other relevant literature, inform the application of a social ecological framework of resilience in working with LGBTQ youth. This framework conceptualizes that the role of social workers is to promote not only the internal capacity of LGBTQ youth but also the capacity of their social ecologies to better support them. A youth case is discussed to inform interventions across the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of practice. Discussion sections for each paper and the dissertation conclusion summarize study results, limitations, and implications for social work and further research.

Keywords: Grounded Theory
LGBTQ
Resilience
Youth
Advisor: Newman, Peter A
Phylogenetics and Dental Evolution in Sphenacodontidae (Synapsida)

Paleozoic sphenacodontid synapsids are the oldest known fully terrestrial apex predators, distinguished by strong heterodonty, massive skulls, and well-developed labio-lingually compressed, recurved teeth with mesial and distal cutting edges (carinae). Dimetrodon is an Early Permian (295–272 Ma) sphenacodontid known from southern USA, Canada, and Germany. Dimetrodon is of exceptional importance as it is the most abundant and speciose sphenacodontid, providing valuable information on issues related to the origin of therapsids. Thirteen species of Dimetrodon are currently recognized from hundreds of specimens, but many of these taxa are primarily identified on the basis of size, stratigraphic, and geographic locations. Therefore, little is known about the relationships among species of Dimetrodon or the role they and other sphenacodontids played as apex predators in shaping Early Permian ecosystems. A robust, species-level phylogeny of sphenacodontids will allow for the examination of evolutionary patterns within the clade. The first in-depth description, including histological analyses of several species of Dimetrodon, reveals that the dentition is diverse and bears species-specific morphology. Tooth morphology includes simple carinae with smooth cutting edges and elaborate enamel features, including the first occurrence of cusps and true denticles (ziphodonty) in the fossil record, and the first description of plicidentine in synapsids. The first species-level time calibrated phylogenetic analysis for sphenacodontids, including the enigmatic Bathygnathus borealis, indicates that significant changes within the clade are related to the dental apparatus. This suggests that the morphological changes in sphenacodontids are associated with changes in feeding style and trophic interactions in these ecosystems. The results presented in this thesis are the first steps towards a more comprehensive understanding of evolutionary changes within sphenacodontids and highlights innovations in the group, including the first adaptations towards hypercarnivory.

Keywords: Dentition
Dimetrodon
Teeth
Therapsid
Advisor: Reisz, Robert R
Evans, David C
Aristotle on Spontaneity

Ordinary living beings, according to Aristotle, are generated by parents of the same kind. They are exemplary instances of substances, and their generation is a paradigmatic application of his theory of causality. Yet Aristotle believes that numerous organisms are not generated by parents of the same kind, but are spontaneously generated. Many commentators tend to dismiss these cases as phenomena that fall beyond what in nature occurs ‘always or for the most part’. I argue that this is incorrect: spontaneous generation is as regular, common, frequent, and predictable as the generation of living beings by parents of their own kind. Some authors have claimed that the regularity of spontaneous generation is such as to threaten Aristotle’s general theory of causality and the metaphysical principles on which it rests. I show the fallacies behind this position, and argue that Aristotle emphasizes the ontological peculiarity of spontaneously generated creatures and provides appropriate principles to justify their existence in the natural world. Other authors have argued that the account of spontaneity presented in Historia Animalium and De Generatione Animalium is inconsistent with the analysis of spontaneity offered in the Physics and the Metaphysics. I argue that this view rests on the mistaken assumption that the Physics and the Metaphysics present a univocal account of τὸ αὐτόματον. I then read Physics B 4-6 and Metaphysics Z 7-9 independently of one another, and show that τὸ αὐτόματον is, in Aristotelian terms, an equivocal phenomenon. I argue that while the Metaphysics offers an account of the spontaneous generation of individual organisms, which Aristotle endorses in his biological works, the Physics presents an account of the chance generation of entire species of organisms, which he rejects.

Keywords: Ancient
Chance
Generation
Luck
Nature
Teleology
Advisor: Whiting, Jennifer
Murder, Myth, and Melodrama: The Theatrical Histories of Jack the Ripper

In 1888, several murders in the London boroughs of Whitechapel and Spitalfields became the first modern serial killings reported by mass-circulation daily media. These were identified with “Jack the Ripper,” a name that still resonates in popular culture and entertainment. This dissertation looks to the theatrical culture of London, arguing that theatre and drama provided models for the creation of this figure, which has the cultural status of a “myth” in the sense defined by Roland Barthes. Drawing on the vocabulary of Barthes and on Diana Taylor’s idea of the “scenario” as a unit of enacted narrative with mythic cultural force, four case studies from a variety of London stages trace how ideas and anxieties about urban modernity were taken from the stage and used by newspaper writers and the public to imagine the Ripper. The first looks at a production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that took place at the same time as the murders, showing how these modeled the killer for a middle-class audience. The second describes an illegal basement theatre in the East End that used representations of the murdered women as one of its variety of entertainments, arguing that these both resisted and confirmed definitions of the murders, the victims, and Whitechapel itself as “obscene.” A third case looks at London Day By Day, a successful 1889 melodrama, arguing that this was the first representation of the Ripper on a legitimate stage, albeit in a conflicted and partially-obscured way that nevertheless reveals how crucial melodrama and its iconography was to popular understandings of the murders in the first place. The final case study looks at The Lodger, a 1914 novel that was adapted to stage and screen, tracing how urban legends about a possible killer functioned to consolidate the image of the murders in the 20th century. In conclusion the contemporary practice of “Jack the Ripper Walking Tours” is briefly surveyed to argue that contests over visuality, poverty, obscenity, and urban space that had important currency in the late-Victorian theatre are an integral part of the Ripper myth and remain relevant to this day.

Keywords: cultural history
late-Victorian
London
melodrama
myth
visual culture
Advisor: Johnson, Stephen