VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Locating Diaspora: Afro-Caribbean Migrations and the Transnational Dialectics of Race and Community in North America, 1910-1929

This dissertation examines the migration of West Indians from the Anglophone Caribbean to the U.S. and Canada in the early twentieth century. It focuses on the transnational negotiations of racial community and conceptions of blackness, a process enacted through Afro-Caribbean migration networks and the encounters between peoples of African descent in North America. The comparative element considers how conceptions of race, and specifically blackness, were differently constituted and expressed among communities in three different locales: New York, Montreal, and Toronto. The transnational dimension illuminates the connective elements between those sites and the mediation of ethnic and national difference among black Canadians, Americans, and West Indians. It proposes three scales by which to analyze formations of community and diasporic conceptions of race in North America. The first scale of analysis is the nation. In their migrations, Afro-Caribbean immigrants encountered different constructions of blackness within the respective national contexts; black peoples themselves expressed multiple and sometimes conflicting identifications with nation, state, and empire in Canada and the U.S. Second, this dissertation evaluates communities at the local level, identifying the characteristics of urban sites that framed the West Indian experience and the formulations of racial communities therein. The third scale of analysis is the transnational. Here, it focuses on how different expressions of race in the respective local and national contexts were mobilized between sites and across space, and how the terms of blackness traveled and translated across geographic, political, and cultural borders. Ultimately, this dissertation illustrates the process and practice of diaspora among peoples in the respective U.S. and Canadian cities, and their transnational engagements with a broader racial community. In the early twentieth century, the category of blackness had increasing resonance among an otherwise diverse, disparate, and ethnically heterogeneous community. Diasporic blackness was rooted in the North American experience, and routed through West Indian migration networks between New York, Toronto, and Montreal. It not only incorporated differences among peoples of African descent, it was contingent upon them. As a result of these cross-border encounters and interactions, racial, ethnic, and national communities were remade through diaspora.

Keywords: Afro-Caribbean
Diaspora
Migration
North America
Race
Transnational
Advisor: Kazal, Russell
Using Quantitative Synthetic Genetic Interaction Profiling in Escherichia coli to Investigate Bacterial Protein Synthesis

Bacterial protein synthesis depends on the coordination of a complex, multi-component machinery that processes ribosomal RNA, assembles ribosomes, and translates diverse messenger RNA transcripts to meet changing physiological and environmental demands. Despite decades of detailed investigations, which enabled basic mechanistic understanding of the core translation processes, the global functional connectivity and component memberships of this central system and its relationship to other biological pathways had remained unclear. Physical interaction data can suggest the biological roles and associations of gene products, but only genetic interaction (GI) screens can truly reveal pathway-level functional dependencies. For my Thesis, I performed quantitative

Keywords: conditional rewiring
genetic interaction
protein synthesis
ribosome biogenesis
synthetic genetic array
translational fidelity
Advisor: Emili, Andrew
Politcal Symbols of Climate: Bodin, Montesquieu, Rousseau

My dissertation studies the discursive and performative functions of climactic determinism, a theory that explains human diversity as the natural effect of geographical influence. In a corpus which spans the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, I discover a common idiom in the famous "climate theories" of early modern France: representations of climate in Bodin, Montesquieu and Rousseau act as rhetorical straw men in which the scientificity of the discourse creates a veil for the expression of political thought and its controversies. Following a trajectory which leads from absolute to popular sovereignty, the role of climates is to stylize and reorganize different sociopolitical forces of the French kingdom. Beyond relativism and scientific validity, they reveal meta-juridical finalities of which the complexity is clarified through external metaphors. I show how the diverse reconfigurations of the "geography of others" reveals a social commentary of the philosopher, who reduces the components of a society into an imaginative and experimental schema.

Keywords: Bodin
Climate Theory
Montesquieu
Natural law
Rhetoric
Rousseau
Advisor: Motsch, Andreas
A Duty to Minimize the Corporation's Environmental Impacts: Corporate Governance and Sustainable Development

The scale and scope of today's economic activity will impact the natural environment several generations into the future. Much of this economic activity is undertaken by corporations. The interests of future generations in the natural environment, which are not protected adequately by traditional forms of environmental regulations, require moving away from the shareholder primacy norm that currently dominates both academic writing and directors' understanding of corporate governance in North America. The nascent "responsible investing" movement may result in some changes to corporate behaviour, but it also is insufficient to protect the interests of future generations. For these reasons, a new legal duty imposed on corporate directors is proposed here. This duty should be enacted through the corporations statute in order to make clear the change in the duties of directors away from simply maximizing shareholder wealth. The duty would require the board of directors to minimize the corporation's environmental impacts. "Minimize" is defined as up to the point of causing "undue hardship" to the corporation's ability to generate a profit. The duty therefore requires directors to balance profitability and environmental sustainability. This balancing is inherent in the concept of sustainable development, and therefore asking directors to take on this task is necessary to achieve sustainable development. Although this proposal raises concerns regarding compliance, enforcement and accountability, these concerns are answerable.

Keywords: board of directors
corporate governance
future generations
sustainable development
Advisor: Fadel, Mohammad
Lee, Ian B
Explaining Institutional Change: Local Special Purpose Bodies in Ontario, 1810-2010

This dissertation examines the institutional histories of local special purpose bodies in Ontario from their origins in the nineteenth century to the present. The analysis is organized around two research questions. First, how have the institutional structures of special purpose bodies changed over the long term? Second, what can an analysis of the long-term dynamics of these institutions contribute to our present theories of institutional and policy change? The dissertation is divided into two parts. In the first part, I focus on special purpose bodies in the midsized city of Kitchener, Ontario. This part tracks a wide range of ABCs - from water commissions to conservation authorities to police commissions, among many others - through the course of Kitchener's history. In the second part, I examine changes to school boards, boards of health, and hydro commissions in municipalities across the province of Ontario. I make three general arguments in this dissertation. First, I argue that changes to local special purpose bodies have a distinctly patterned character, with just one or two kinds of change occurring again and again for long periods of time. Second, I argue that we can explain these patterns, and the shifts from one pattern to another, using a synthetic theoretical approach that I call "Policy Fields". This approach focuses our attention on the institutional and cultural structure of the environment or "field" in which policy decisions occur, as well as the wider interaction among those fields over time. Finally, I argue that we can understand the timing of institutional changes within the broader patterns using a typology of policy fields. This three-part typology enables us to understand the factors that tend to trigger changes within different kinds of fields.

Keywords: Institutional Change
Kitchener
Local Government
Ontario
Policy Change
Special Purpose Bodies
Advisor: White, Graham
Identification and Characterization of Novel Small Molecules Using Caenorhabditis elegans as a Model System

Small molecules are useful tools to probe biological function using chemical genetic approaches. Unlike genetic mutations, small molecules are readily transferable reagents that can be screened in multiple organisms or systems. Data from multiple systems allows for a detailed profile of small molecules that target more than one organism, suggesting that the target is potentially conserved, or molecules that likely act species-specifically, representing potential drug leads such as antifungals. I, along with collaborators, screened a total of 98,898 small molecules in multiple species. I used the model organism C. elegans to identify a dauer-inducing molecule called dafadine whose target is functionally conserved in mammals. In addition, molecules that likely act in a nematode-specific way were discovered as potential anthelmintic drug leads. Using genetic and biochemical techniques, we identified the target of dafadine as the cytochrome P450 DAF-9. DAF-9 is required in the production of dafachronic acids that are crucial for normal reproductive development. Exploiting the transferability of small molecules, I, together with my collaborators, showed that dafadine was able to inhibit its mammalian functional homolog, CYP27A1. I used dafadine to understand more about daf-9's role in aging since previous genetic data was not clear, and found that DAF-9 functions in the adult worm to restrict lifespan. C. elegans has been previously proposed as a potentially useful model for parasitic worms. To test C. elegans as a model for anthelmintic discovery, I found 279 C. elegans lethal small molecules and found that compared to a random set of compounds, molecules that caused lethality in C. elegans were at least 19 times more likely to cause lethality in the parasitic worms Cooperia onchophora or Haemonchus contortus. Importantly, screening the chemicals in multiple systems such as zebrafish, identified that 68 molecules likely act in a nematode-specific way. C. elegans genetic screens for resistant mutants of two nematode-specific lethal molecules, wact-11 and 12, indicate that their likely target is succinate dehydrogenase of the electron transport chain. Both dafadine and the discovery of potential anthelmintics demonstrate the benefits of C. elegans as a chemical genetic system.

Keywords: anthelmintics
C. elegans
Chemical genetics
dafadine
nematodes
Advisor: Roy, Peter J
Elucidating Disease Modifying Roles of Radio-resistant, CNS Resident Cells in a Rodent Model of Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory disease of the central nervous system that can manifest as relapsing-remitting MS or progressive MS. Autoreactive T cells play a dominant role in inducing disease. However the contribution of other cell types such as B cells or central nervous system (CNS) resident cells as disease modifiers is less clear, as are the factors that establish the local inflammatory microenvironment within the CNS. Two overarching themes studied in this thesis use a relapsing-remitting rodent model of MS to examine: 1) the disease modifying factors that contribute to exacerbated disease severity in the SJL/J mouse; 2) the cellular and molecular players that govern formation of brain meningeal infiltrates and their contribution to disease propagation. Here, using the mouse model of MS (Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis - EAE), I demonstrate that genetic disease modifiers in the radio-resistant CNS compartment contribute to exacerbated clinical EAE severity in the SJL/J mouse strain. Moreover, with respect to meningeal infiltration and disease progression, my studies reveal discrete mechanistic steps whereby CNS-infiltrating Th17 cells, interact with and remodel the meningeal stroma to induce chemotactic and survival factors that retain infiltrating immune cells. While lymphotoxin-beta receptor signaling, a pathway involved in organization of lymphoid-tissue architecture is not required for the structural remodeling of the stroma, secretion of B cell survival factors and consequent B cell accumulation are lymphotoxin-sensitive, as is the skewing of subsequent waves of T cell infiltration towards a pro-inflammatory Th17 phenotype. Taken together, these studies contribute towards our understanding of immunological and genetic disease modifiers as well as the mechanisms for meningeal follicle formation in the SJL/J EAE model of MS.

Advisor: Gommerman, Jennifer L
Towards a Radical Republican Conception of Power

What is social power and when is it acceptable? In this dissertation I argue for a radical republican solution to this question. My solution is republican in that it understands power to be acceptable when it does not involve domination (or when it is not arbitrary). My solution is radical, however, in that it involves a much more expansive understanding of the basic nature of power than is typically found in contemporary republican political philosophy. My dissertation has two main parts. The first part develops an analytically rigorous account of social power that overcomes two shortcomings common to contemporary accounts of power. The first shortcoming is that many views of power do not adequately take into account the distinction between an agent exercising power and an agent's power manifesting itself. Such `activist' views of power deny that an agent's power can manifest itself when he does not exercise it (or when he is not actively involved in bringing about the outcome). In contrast I argue that an agent's power can manifest itself - or make a difference in the world - even when he does not exercise it. The second shortcoming is that, due to their focus on exercises of power by agents, many views of power do not pay adequate attention to the ways in which (structures of) social relations confer powers on agents, without the agents' involvement and sometimes even against their will. The second part of my dissertation works out an account of how to understand domination (or unacceptable power). I begin with the contemporary (civic) republican understanding of this notion found in the political philosophy of Philip Pettit, but I argue that this understanding of domination needs modification because it is based in a broadly activist view of the basic nature of power. My suggestion for reinterpreting the republican understanding of domination is based on the structural differences between three different ways that power can be exercised. I suggest that dominating or arbitrary power is in essence power that can be exercised over (and so not with) others without also being exercised for them.

Keywords: Power
Republicanism
Advisor: Heath, Joseph
Regulators of Shh Signaling in Limb Patterning and Development

The embryonic limb is one of the best understood examples of pattern formation in vertebrates. Patterning, along its anterior-posterior (AP) and proximo-distal (PD) axes, has been studied almost exclusively within the framework of positional information - the idea that the fate of individual cells is determined by their positional value in an embryonic field. This value is conferred through signaling molecules, called morphogens, in a concentration dependent manner. This idea is best illustrated in the chick wing whose AP pattern is imposed by an organizing center called the "zone of polarizing activity" (ZPA), through secretion of the morphogen Sonic hedgehog (Shh). Studies over the past 20 years show that Shh regulates patterning and growth through regulation of Gli-family transcription factors. The mouse has been an excellent genetic model for the study of Shh-mediated limb patterning and signal transduction, as well as the pathway's role in development and disease. However, these studies have also revealed critical differences between the mouse and chick models resulting in a need to re-evaluate positional information as a universal framework for vertebrate development. In this thesis, I propose the two-population model as a complimentary framework that allows us to reconcile the discrepancies of existing models. Using genetic models in the mouse, and pharmacological manipulation in the chick, I demonstrate that specific changes in Gli activity produce a defined spectrum of limb malformations and I utilize this spectrum as a tool to study a previously uncharacterized component of the Shh signal cascade, the receptor Ptch2, demonstrating that it is a critical, context-dependent regulator of the Shh signaling receptor Smoothened. This body of work illustrates that the vertebrate limb remains a prescient model for the study of signal transduction, development and disease and opens the door for the study of universal mechanisms of patterning in vertebrate organisms.

Keywords: limb development
mouse models
organizing centers
patterning
signal transduction
Sonic hedgehog signaling
Advisor: Hui, Chi-chung
Behind the 2009 Tamil Diaspora Protests in Canada: A Critical Analysis of the Production of Race, Resistance, and Citizenship across Borders

Critical social workers emphasize activism for social justice, and acknowledge that global justice movements can inform the evolution of social work practice. Yet, scholarship on community practice and citizen participation has shown varying levels of attention to the interests and context of racialized populations. This dissertation engages this discussion by developing an understanding of what activism comes to be for migrant communities who experience social injustices across local, national and transnational scales. I draw upon a framework of citizenship, racialization and spatiality to problematize conditions of resistance through the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests in Canada. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of print media and key informant interviews, I explore the following: (1) What are the ideologies underlying media representations of the movement in Canada? (2) How can social work researchers ethically represent the resistance movements of others? (3) Why and how does race frame the production of suffering and spectacle through protest? (4) How can we unpack representations of racialized local groups who protest an issue unfolding elsewhere? This project highlights the challenges experienced by racialized communities' in their struggles towards citizenship, social justice and decolonization. Chapter 1 presents the context of the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests, the conceptual framework, and methodology guiding this study. In accordance with the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work's 3-paper dissertation format, Chapter 2, 3 and 4 are stand-alone papers geared towards different peer-review journals. Chapter 2 problematizes how we should represent contested resistance movements in the age of terrorism. Chapter 3 examines how racial logic frames the expression of protesters' suffering, and the construction of the Canadian public's racial apathy. Chapter 4 explores how national media discourses racially and spatially mark protesters as "others," "outlaws," and "outsiders." The findings of this interdisciplinary study demonstrate how resistance by racialized groups in a white settler state is distorted by the indirect and direct representational politics imposed by a hegemonic West. In Chapter 5, I offer implications for social work theory, practice and education to reconsider the boundaries of social justice, incorporate a conceptualization of transnational activism as citizenship, and forefront the politics of protest.

Keywords: citizenship
protest
race
social activism
space
Tamil diaspora protests
Advisor: Bhuyan, Rupaleem
Heterogeneous Encounters: Tolerance, Secularism and Religious Difference at Turkey's Border with Syria

This dissertation is an ethnographic investigation into the politics of religious difference in Turkey. Drawing on fieldwork in Antakya, a city near Turkey's Syrian border populated by Arabs and Turks of Sunni, Alawi, Jewish, and Orthodox Christian backgrounds, it explores the mundane, political, and aesthetic representations of religious difference and demonstrates how such difference is constructed, lived, and configured in everyday realms of sociality. Four such realms are focused on: a multi-religious choral ensemble, Antakya's historical marketplace, domestic and communal sitings of guesthood (misafirlik), and places and discourses of common worship. Official representations of Antakya's religious diversity imply a pluralist and "tolerant" form of national citizenship as compared to Turkey's Republican secularist model. I argue, however, that daily practices, artistic expressions, and networks of exchange between different denominations of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish residents of the city inhabit a more heterogeneous field characterized by interpersonal relations of negotiation, hospitality, intimacy, and hostility. These interrelations are further informed and delimited by structures of power embedded in local, national, and transnational regimes of diversity management and implicated in the minoritization of non-Sunni and non-Turkish communal identities. Nevertheless, they also rework and transcend such regimes of governance. In illustrating what it means to cohabit an interreligious milieu near a national border, this dissertation is positioned among other anthropological explorations of religious diversity and the growing literature on secularism, as well as anthropological studies of borders and marginality. It shows that religious difference is produced at the intersection of multiple discourses, practices, and boundaries, and as such it evades both pluralist (multi-community) and dualist (i.e. religion vs. secular) models of religious co-existence.

Keywords: border
religious diversity
secularism and the secular
tolerance
Turkey
Advisor: Boddy, Janice
Orienting Attention to Object Representations in Short-term Memory

Sounds unfold and disappear across time, implying a crucial role of auditory short-term memory (STM) in coherent discourse comprehension. Yet, few studies have examined how sounds are represented and selectively attended within STM, particularly when multiple sound representations coexist in STM. Thus, the goals of my research were: 1) to elucidate the neural processes and networks involved in reflective attention (i.e., orienting attention to auditory representations with STM), 2) to determine if the feature used to access a representation modulates these processes/networks, and 3) using both visual and auditory stimuli, to assess the contribution of supramodal and/or modality-specific networks involved in orienting attention to STM. The results revealed that the feature used to access a representation (e.g., spatial, semantic, or sensory modality) can modulate the neural underpinnings of reflective attention. In addition to these feature-specific effects, feature-general correlates of reflective attention were observed, suggesting the role of a general attentional control process in reflective attention. The implications of these findings on current theories of how concurrent sounds are represented and attended in STM are discussed.

Keywords: attention
auditory
EEG
fMRI
memory
visual
Advisor: Alain, Claude