VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Culture, Curriculum, and Consciousness: Resurrecting the Educational Praxis of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, 1875-1950

While Black educational history generally centers the infamous debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, this dissertation re-conceptualizes this framing through an innovative exploration of the work of Dr. Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950). Culture, Curriculum, and Consciousness analyzes Woodson’s argument that the ideological foundations of schools relied on a human history of the world that centered Whiteness and distorted the humanity of Black people. He not only advocated for a transformation that would supplant the ideological stronghold White supremacy had on Black education, but he simultaneously created an alternative model that centered Black humanity and cultural achievements. Coupling archival methods with critical text analysis and coding schemes, I examine how Woodson institutionalized his educational praxis through the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), self-published textbooks, and his close relationship with Black teacher networks. Most importantly, the dissertation exposes the theoretical, pedagogical, and curricular insights Woodson’s model of education offers for contemporary challenges in Black schooling./nI analyze letters between Woodson and key educational figures, sales documents regarding his textbooks and publishing company, annual reports published in Woodson’s Journal of Negro History, reflections by his past students and mentees, and pamphlets he disseminated amongst Black teachers. In building on these materials and more, the project utterly unmasks Woodson’s educational praxis and the findings present him as a pioneering scholar in Black educational reform./nWoodson’s absence in the historical narrative, despite his prominence amongst Black teachers, is evidence of the failures of the prevailing frameworks. To address this elision, Culture, Curriculum, and Consciousness writes Woodson and his iconic educational model directly into the historical narrative and, in doing so, reimagines the Black educational trajectory. The pinnacle of this study lies in the "Black Educational Heritage," a new analytical framework for studying schooling and Black life. This more expansive framing of Black educational history is born at the intersection of education, freedom, and affect./nCulture, Curriculum, and Consciousness presents Woodson as an educational theorist. His philosophy offers a counterweight against contemporary discourse on “the Black educational crisis,” which largely fails to engage the role of power, hegemonic culture, and racial ideology in facilitating what has been termed African American underachievement. This rigorous historical and theoretical engagement with Woodson’s educational model urges us to deal with the most pressing moral and intellectual challenges as it pertains to American schooling. The first step in any purposeful education is the recognition of a people’s humanity—the failure to do so only sustains schools as a site of Black suffering.

Advisor: Taylor, Ula Y
Genre Disorder: Autism and Narrative in American Popular Culture

Autism and empathy, as terms, both arose out of the fertile ground of American mass culture. Although both figured prominently in scientific discourse from the early 1900s on, neither was a focus of either feature film or critical discourse until well into the second half of the century. Genre Disorder argues that reading scientific, popular culture, and filmic treatments of autism together within the larger framework of film genres of mobility (the maternal melodrama, the detective film, and the road movie) exposes the circulation of autism as a way to shore up normative, disembodied, spectatorship./nTo support this claim, this project works through how feminist film theory and critical disability theory approach the way spectacle and narrative coalesce around and though the body. By looking at how disability and sentiment intersect in advertising, the project takes up the question of how the concept of the individual as commodity shifts between mass culture and neoliberalism. Following this, it looks closely at how autism and the individual are constructed within popular culture by tracing patterns of generic convention across primary scientific and filmic sources./nWithin these analyses, this project argues that, despite the positioning of empathy as objective, narrative framework and point of view work together to maintain the normate against bodies (and minds) of difference: women, people of color, and people with disabilities.

Advisor: Nesbet, Anne
Essays on Welfare State Retrenchment

This dissertation is comprised of several essays on welfare state retrenchment in advanced industrial democracies since 1990. The intent is to provide a strong empirical grounding for the theories of welfare state retrenchment using original data sets and state-of-the-art machine learning methods. It also goes beyond the causes of retrenchment to provide suggestive evidence for several effects of retrenchment on the economic behavior of individuals./nOverall, the dissertation finds that retrenchment events are most likely to occur when highly-indebted, labor-docile countries experience public fiscal crises, exemplified by rising sovereign debt yields, which are preceded by a weakening of the governing power held by incumbent politicians. Political weakness creates electoral uncertainty which, in combination with economic frailty, sets off a rise in the premium states must pay to issue further debt. This creates significant fiscal pressure for retrenchment. Once retrenchment is carried out, evidence suggests that its effects impact the behavior and mindset of individual consumers, potentially decreasing their expenditures and optimism over their short-term economic future.

Advisor: Pierson, Paul
The costs of believing emotions are uncontrollable: Youths’ implicit theories of emotion predict emotion regulation and depressive symptoms

As humans, we have a unique capacity to theorize about our experiences, including our emotions. We develop implicit theories about the nature of emotions, and these beliefs are consequential, guiding whether and how we try to influence our emotions and how we feel as a consequence. One fundamental belief about emotions concerns whether emotions are relatively controllable or uncontrollable. I propose that believing emotions are uncontrollable (entity beliefs) should reduce individuals’ use of emotion regulation strategies that could help them change their emotional experiences (e.g., cognitive reappraisal). This, in turn, could negatively influence psychological health (e.g., depressive symptoms). This model holds particular relevance during youth, when beliefs about emotions first develop and stabilize and when maladaptive beliefs could contribute to the rising depression rates that characterize adolescence. In the present investigation, a pilot diary study (N=223, aged 21-60) demonstrated that individuals’ entity beliefs predicted less use of cognitive reappraisal in everyday life. Then, two studies examined whether entity beliefs set youths on a maladaptive trajectory: In a cross-sectional study (N=136, aged 14-18), youths with stronger entity beliefs experienced more depressive symptoms because they used reappraisal less frequently. This pattern was replicated and extended in a longitudinal study (N=227, aged 10-18), where depressive symptoms were assessed using youth and parent reports 18 months after assessing beliefs. These results suggest that entity beliefs about emotion are risk factors for depression that act via emotion regulation. Because beliefs are still developing in youths, targeting youths’ beliefs represents an important avenue for prevention and intervention.

Advisor: Mauss, Iris
The Political Causes and Effects of Fiscal Adjustments

In this dissertation, I examine whether attributes of governments and political systems affect the accumulation of government debt in wealthy democracies, and whether voters hold governments accountable for fiscal outcomes. I begin by reevaluating the conclusions of prior research using alternative samples and model specifications. I find no consistent support for the hypotheses advanced in the most-cited papers on the topic. In the subsequent two chapters, I reexamine the electoral effects of macroeconomic and fiscal outcomes. I again find that the conclusions of the most-cited prior studies fail to reproduce out of sample and specification. However, I show that voters generally reward incumbent parties of the chief executive for economic growth and expansionary fiscal policies./nTurning from electoral effects to policy outcomes, I show that government cohesion has no non-negligible effect on changes in pension generosity in response to population aging. I then examine the relationship between fiscal constraints and welfare retrenchment. I show that support for welfare state expansion in the electoral manifestos of competitive and mainstream political parties increases with the government budget balance. To illustrate the importance of political and economic context in shaping the particular character of fiscal adjustments, I complete my empirical analysis with a case study of the austerity measures taken by the Cameron administration in the United Kingdom. I conclude the dissertation by advocating for greater research transparency. Researchers should acknowledge that many estimates presented in social-scientific studies are products of arbitrary or strategically chosen assumptions concerning sampling, measurement, and model specification.

Advisor: Zysman, John
Teacher Professional Development Organizations’ Interpretation of Educational Language Policy in California

Strong networks of professional development organizations serving teachers of English learners in California may enhance civil society as these organizations can democratize the policy implementation process. However, little is known about how they interpret and attempt to implement the state’s language policy. This two-part study addresses this research gap by first examining California English Language Development and English Language Arts Standards and Framework, asking how California’s official language policy has changed over time, perhaps reflecting an ideological shift towards culturally relevant literacy practices for English learners as compared to previous education language policy. Second, this research explores structures that enable or hinder professional development organizations’ ability to critically interpret and implement these education language policies and whether these structures are changing over time. Through interviews with leaders of these organizations and leading policy makers, this study provides a comprehensive analysis of state infrastructure for professional development that is crucial at a time of divestment. Methodologically, few comparative policy studies utilize an entire corpora—a large set of policy texts—pushing the boundaries of content and text analysis. This empirical case study employs content and text analysis of policies, organizational documents, surveys, and interviews of teacher professional developers through critical policy lenses./nProfessional developers in this study interpreted and implemented California’s Standards and Framework in various ways: (a) some professional developers were part of the process of authoring the current set of Standards; (b) others partnered with the state and therefore used their agency to interpret and implement these policies in nuanced ways; and (c) a smaller set of organizations advocated for primary language and bilingual education among other practices. Although these organizations are doing rigorous and important work, the statewide infrastructure for professional development has been weakened during a period of divestment in professional development. This is resulting in the loss of comprehensive evaluation of this work and a loss of efficiency and economies of scale. Importantly, across all organizations there were reports of increased time spent on revenue generation, which diminished time spent on developing and implementing robust professional development programs. Recommendations include incentivizing a coalition or network across these organizations to strengthen each organization and the overall system of professional development.

Advisor: Fuller, Bruce
GABAA Receptor-Expressing Neurons in Drosophila melanogaster Promote Consumption of Appetitive and Non-Appetitive Substances

Animals must regulate the amount of food consumed to ensure the appropriate intake of nutrients. This decision making process is highly plastic, heavily influenced by the internal state of the animal, external sensory signals most prominently from taste and olfactory input, and associations with past food-related experiences. Often times, these cues are competing and contribute different weights toward the feeding decision process. The neural mechanisms by which taste detection, internal states influence feeding are under heavy investigation. Here, I used Drosophila melanogaster as a model system to study the underlying neural mechanisms by which feeding behavior is regulated./nPrevious studies indicate that four GABAergic interneurons (DSOG1) in the Drosophila melanogaster brain are necessary to inhibit overconsumptive behavior. This thesis examines the role of GABAergic receptors and GABAergic receptor expressing neurons in consumption behavior. Here we find Resistance to dieldrin (RDL), a GABAA receptor, is required for proper control of ingestion in Drosophila. Knockdown of Rdl in VT16839-Gal4 neurons causes overconsumption of tastants, indicating that the line contains a set of neurons that regulates consumption in Drosophila melanogaster. These neurons are sufficient to drive consumption, as acute activation promotes consumption in flies. Complementary, acute silencing of these neurons causes decreased consumption of appetitive substances in motivated flies. Additionally, we find that there are VT16839-Gal4 neurons in the higher brain region that are responsive to sucrose and water stimulation. Our study identifies neurons that are necessary and sufficient for Drosophila ingestive behavior.

Advisor: Scott, Kristin
Fabbed to Sense: Integrated Design of Geometry and Sensing Algorithms for Interactive Objects

Task-specific tangible input devices, like video game controllers, improve user speed and accuracy in input tasks compared to the more general-purpose touchscreen or mouse and keyboard. However, while modifying a graphical user interface (GUI) to accept mouse and keyboard inputs for new and specific tasks is relatively easy and requires only software knowledge, tangible input devices are challenging to prototype and build./nRapid prototyping digital fabrication machines, such as vinyl cutters, laser cutters, and 3D printers, now permeate the design process for such devices. Using these tools, designers can realize a new tangible design faster than ever. In a typical design process, these machines are not used to create the interaction in these interactive product prototypes: they merely create the shell, case, or body, leaving the designer to, in an entirely separate process, assemble and program electronics for sensing a user's input. What are the most cost-effective, fast, and flexible ways of sensing rapid-prototyped input devices? In this dissertation, we investigate how 2D and 3D models for input devices can be automatically generated or modified in order to employ standard, off-the-shelf sensing techniques for adding interactivity to those objects: we call this ``fabbing to sense.''/nWe describe the capabilities of modern rapid prototyping machines, linking these abilities to potential sensing mechanisms when possible. We plunge more deeply into three examples of sensing/fabrication links: we build analysis and design tools that help users design, fabricate, assemble, and \emph{use} input devices sensed through these links. First, we discuss Midas, a tool for building capacitive sensing interfaces on non-screen surfaces, like the back of a phone. Second, we describe Lamello, a technique that generates lasercut and 3D printed tine structures and simulates their vibrational frequencies for training-free audio sensing. Finally, we present Sauron, a tool that automatically modifies the interior of 3D input models to allow sensing via a single embedded camera. We demonstrate each technique's flexibility to be used for many types of input devices through a series of example objects.

Advisor: Hartmann, Björn
The Politics of Innovation: Institutional Change in Organizational Fields

This dissertation draws on organizational theory and the sociology of knowledge to explore of the politics surrounding innovations. I examine three cases of innovation within organizational fields: laboratory biology in nineteenth-century Germany, alternative medicine in the antebellum United States, and the contemporary global market for asset-backed securities. Institutionalist theories suggest that change is set in motion by exogenous shocks, whereas relational theories treat change as the product of endogenous shifts in patterns of interaction. For each case, I bring together archival sources and quantitative analysis to investigate how organizations’ environment and networks predict the emergence of new field positions. I find that exogenous shocks can disrupt existing field positions, but new positions only coalesce when innovators are linked together through shared networks. The results carry implications for organizational theory, economic sociology, and the sociology of science.

Advisor: Fligstein, Neil
Variational and Dynamical Perspectives On Learning and Optimization

The problem of learning from data is prevalent in the modern scientific age, and optimization provides a natural mathematical language for describing learning problems. We study some problems in learning and optimization from variational and dynamical perspectives, by identifying the optimal structure in the problems and leveraging the parallel results between continuous and discrete-time problems./nWe begin by studying the class of accelerated methods in optimization from a continuous-time perspective. We show that there is a Lagrangian functional that we call the Bregman Lagrangian, which generates a family of dynamics via the variational principle of least action, and these dynamics are related via speeding up time. Furthermore, we provide a systematic methodology for discretizing the dynamics into the family of accelerated higher-order algorithms with matching convergence rates in discrete time. Our work illuminates two classes of natural dynamics for optimization, the gradient and Lagrangian dynamics./nNext, we study the problem of approximate inference in graphical models. We analyze reweighted Kikuchi approximation for estimating the log partition function, which approximates the entropy in the variational representation with a region graph decomposition. We establish sufficient conditions for the concavity of the objective function in terms of weight assignments in the Kikuchi expansion, and characterize the polytope of concavity in terms of the cycle structure of the region graph. We also provide an algorithm to find the global optimum and simulations to demonstrate the advantages of the reweighted Kikuchi approach./nFinally, we study the problem of minimax option pricing as an online learning game between Nature and an Investor. Whereas the classical Black-Scholes model assumes the price fluctuates continuously following the geometric Brownian motion, we consider a worst-case model in which Nature chooses a sequence of price fluctuations under a cumulative quadratic volatility constraint, possibly with jumps, while the Investor makes a sequence of hedging decisions. We show that even in this adversarial, non-stochastic framework, the value of the game converges to the Black-Scholes option price, and the Black-Scholes hedging strategy is near-optimal for the Investor.

Advisor: Jordan, Michael
Electro-Mechanical Devices for Ultra-Low-Power Electronics

The proliferation of mobile electronic devices and the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) have brought energy consumption to the fore of challenges for future information processing devices. Digital logic integrated circuits (ICs) implemented with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) transistors have a fundamental lower limit in energy efficiency because transistors are imperfect electronic switches, having non-zero OFF-state current (IOFF) and finite sub-threshold slope. In contrast, electro-mechanical switches (relays) can achieve zero IOFF and perfectly abrupt switching characteristics; therefore, they have attracted growing interest for ultra-low-power computing applications. A challenge for electro-mechanical relay technology is to reduce operation voltage and improve energy efficiency./nThis dissertation addresses this challenge through relay design optimization for operation with an applied body bias voltage. The effects of body biasing on relay characteristics are systematically investigated by analytical modeling, simulation, and experiments. It is found that body biasing is an effective way to reduce the relay operation voltage, improve the energy-delay tradeoff, and ease fabrication challenges. By designing a logic relay to have relatively large structural stiffness and to operate in non-pull-in mode, less than 70 mV hysteresis voltage is experimentally demonstrated. A relay-based inverter circuit is demonstrated to operate reliably with a supply voltage below 100 mV, representing a significant milestone toward ultra-low-power mechanical computing./nThis dissertation also includes an initial investigation of a more compact mechanical switch design for non-volatile memory application. The mechanical switch potentially can be used as a selector device in a cross-point memory cell array architecture, due to its zero off-state leakage current and non-linear current-vs.-voltage characteristics. Preliminary experimental results are shown and remaining challenges are discussed.

Advisor: Liu, Tsu-Jae King
Force Generation by Cytoplasmic Dynein and Development of PhotoGate Microscopy

Cytoskeletal motors play key roles in the organization and division of eukaryotic cells. Although detailed mechanistic understanding has been achieved for motors in the myosin and kinesin families, the mechanochemical cycle of cytoplasmic dynein remained a subject of debate. Understanding the mechanism of dynein motility has been difficult due to its large size, unusual architecture, irregular stepping pattern, and complex regulation by a number of auxiliary proteins. In my doctoral work, I showed that the two heads of dynein utilize a load-sharing mechanism that allows them to work against hindering forces larger than the maximal force produced by a single head. Next, I demonstrated that the regulatory proteins dynactin and Bicaudal-D homolog 1 (BICD) dramatically increase the force production of human dynein and allow it to defeat a human kinesin-1 motor in a tug-of-war competition./nIn addition, I developed the PhotoGate method for imaging single fluorescent molecules in the crowded environment of a living cell. This method eliminates the need for fluorophore photoactivation, enabling longer single-particle tracking times and direct measurement of stoichiometry of macromolecular complexes. This technique was used to measure ligand-induced dimerization of epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptors on the cell membrane at densities of >50 molecules per μm2. It was also applied to monitor the arrivals and departures of single Adaptor Protein Phosphotyrosine Interaction PH domain and Leucine Zipper-containing-1 (APPL1) molecules at early endosomes. PhotoGate will be broadly applicable to the study of macromolecular complex formation in the densely packed conditions of the cytoplasm.

Advisor: Yildiz, Ahmet