VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Light in the Shadow of Empire: Visual Witnessing in France and the French Colonies, 1944-1962

This dissertation explores the role of the camera in ushering in what French historian Annette Wieviorka has called a mediatized, globalized "era of the witness" in the middle of the twentieth century. Examining post-Holocaust, colonial, and anticolonial desires to transform spectators into witnesses in the last years of empire in France, French West Africa, Indochina and Algeria, I examine how photographers, filmmakers, television figures, journalists, scholars, civil servants and missionaries strove to envision new futures out of the spectacular and often traumatic realities of the recent past. Combining close readings of photographic, cinematic and televisual images with newspaper and magazine collections and extensive findings from governmental, institutional and private archives, I offer the first detailed history of ideas and practices of visual witnessing. From the development of television programming and the psychological study of spectators in France after World War Two, to African soldiers' testimony of the war in Indochina, rural "ciné-bus" tours by French officials in Algeria and competing visions of the "reality" of Algeria's war of independence, the dissertation challenges the historiographical consensus that the "era of the witness" only emerged following the 1961 Eichmann trial. In its multimedia approach, the project provides both historians and visual theorists alike with new ways of thinking about the ethics and politics of looking. And by bridging metropole and colony, and the history of World War Two and decolonization, the dissertation animates the 'cuts' and 'dissolves' between the European and the global.

Advisor: Jennings, Eric T.
Developing and Utilizing Gas-phase Laser Spectroscopy Techniques to Study the Effect of Desolvation on Molecules

Mass spectrometry is a valuable analytical technique that has applications in diverse fields. One requirement of employing mass spectrometry (MS) as a technique is that analysis occurs in the gas phase. Many samples, however, are found in solution and therefore desolvation is required for the analytes to be introduced into the mass spectrometer. This process, and the gas phase environment may fundamentally change the properties of the analyte due to the removal of intermolecular interactions. On the other hand, gas-phase analysis can present opportunities to reveal the effects of these interactions on the analyte. In this dissertation, the effect of desolvation on the structure of biomolecules and the photophysics of chromophores is explored. Specifically, gas-phase laser spectroscopic techniques were developed and utilized to perform spectroscopic measurement of mass-selected gaseous ions to explore these effects. In Chapter 2, specific changes in the simple rhodamine scaffold, starting with rhodamine 123 are shown to induce changes in the dyes’ fluorescence excitation and emission spectral profiles in the gas phase. The possibility of these changes being indicative of the effect of solvent interactions on excited state relaxation pathway is discussed. Chapters 3 and 4 showcase the development in the use of Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) as a tool for structural analysis of gas-phase proteins, focusing on ubiquitin ions as a model system. FRET efficiencies of the ions suggest that their conformation can remain similar to what is known in solution. However, caution needs to be taken in order not to disrupt the structure. The photophysics of gaseous thioflavin T (ThT) in isolation and with select binding partners is examined in Chapters 5 and 6. The fluorescence enhancement (“turn-on”) response of ThT after binding, which is important in the effectiveness of ThT as a probe for amyloid fibrils in vitro, is investigated in the gas phase. Intermolecular interactions needed for the preservation of the turn-on response and the prevention of non-radiative relaxation pathways are postulated. Ultimately, this work demonstrates the power of gas-phase laser spectroscopy as a tool to study molecular behaviour of chromophores and macrobiomolecules in the gas phase.

Keywords: desolvation
gas phase
laser spectroscopy
mass spectrometry
Advisor: Jockusch, Rebecca A
Natural Monopoly Regulation in Platform Markets

Technological change and digitalization have enabled a wave of multi-sided platform markets where network externalities, big data and algorithmic matching contribute to concentrated market structures and monopolistic tendencies. Yet the assessment of conditions under which such tendencies may be natural and efficient remains underdeveloped, and the consequential determination of the appropriate regulatory tools and institutions associated with natural concentration unexplored. This thesis evaluates the applicability of the natural monopoly framework to three case studies of platform markets: horizontal search engines, e-commerce marketplaces, and ride-hailing platforms. It demonstrates that technological change and the increasing predominance of multi-sided platforms overall increase the likelihood of natural monopolies, although natural concentration is neither inevitable, nor necessarily the consequence of multi-sided network externalities. On the contrary, natural monopoly conditions are often the result of a complex interplay between supply side economies of scale, access to data, and the strength of both direct and indirect network externalities, all factors that vary substantially across markets and that may be independent of the platform model. The thesis reaches this conclusion by placing the three case studies along a spectrum of natural concentration. At one extreme, it characterizes horizontal search as naturally monopolistic, due to high-fixed costs and low marginal costs, the value of data and direct externalities among users that generate such data. At the opposite extreme, it concludes that e-commerce marketplaces, while benefiting from scale economies and network effects, are not natural monopolies and instead benefit from the competitive advantage offered by efficient logistics. In between, ride-hailing platform markets are a more ambiguous case that may or may not give rise to natural monopolies depending on the specific conditions of each local market. Based on this framework, this thesis evaluates alternative regulatory instruments that can address market power while at the same time embracing efficient concentration. The dissertation in particular demonstrates how the institutional dimension of intervention critically affects the trade-offs between imperfect policy instruments, arguing that policy approaches require more complementarity between regulation and competition as opposed to clear-cut choices between ex-ante and ex-post approaches to market power.

Advisor: Trebilcock, Michael
Iacobucci, Edward
Investigating Slurry Behaviour During High Solids Enzymatic Hydrolysis via CFD

Enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic substrates is a promising process that converts cellulose into soluble sugars for the production of biofuels and added-value products. There is a potential to increase sugar titers and enhance downstream processes when the process operates at high solids loadings (≥ 15 wt%). However, the use of high-solids enzymatic hydrolysis (HSEH) for biofuel production is still not widely available at industrial scales due to limitations in mixing and mass transfer that reduce enzyme-solids interactions, decreasing product yields. This thesis focuses on investigating the fluid behaviour of HSEH to determine important parameters that can enhance enzyme-solids interactions and product yields using experimental and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approaches, under industrially relevant conditions. The experimental approaches made it possible to: i) Identify the rheological behavior of the slurry ii) Adopt fed-batch strategies that enable management of the viscosity changes in the slurry and increase glucan-to-glucose conversion iii) Determine a protocol to measure viscosity in situ iv) Understand the effect of physical properties of pretreated lignocellulose substrate on enzymatic hydrolysis and v) Obtain experimental data required to develop the CFD model. The CFD modelling described in the thesis is comprised of i) Modelling to represent the shear-thinning behaviour of the slurry ii) A two-phase model for the insoluble solids and slurry interactions iii) A simplified kinetics model for the enzymatic hydrolysis process and iv) A transient model to simulate behavior from points i to iii. The comprehensive CFD model predicts that sugar titers in the enzymatic hydrolysis system can be enhanced by a) Increasing the pseudo-cavern size and shape formed around the impellers; due to the shear-thinning behaviour of the slurry, this reduces stagnant zones in the reactor b) Using a combination of dual axial impellers and lower rotational speeds to rapidly distribute the insoluble solids within the reactor compared to using an upper axial and lower radial impeller configuration and c) Using biomass with moderate moisture content to reduce uneven distribution of cellulose. The results of this thesis enhance the current understanding about the performance of the high-solids enzymatic hydrolysis system, studying several operating parameters in concert that ultimately impact sugar titers.

Keywords: biofuels
high-solids enzymatic hydrolysis
lignocellulosic biomass
multiphase CFD modelling
Advisor: Saville, Bradley A
Lawryshyn, Yuri A
Prisoners of Paradox: Ambivalent Trans-affirmation in the Canadian Prison

Based on twenty-four months of multi-sited anthropological fieldwork, this dissertation traces the conditions of possibility of recent Canadian trans correctional reforms and explores the outcome of their early implementation. Drawing from insights in legal and medical anthropology, critical criminology, and trans studies, it argues these reforms emerged from a wider shift through which trans subjectivity transitioned from being a pathological medical condition to becoming a self-determined, injury-based legal category. In the pre-reform era, Canadian correctional authorities cited pathologizing norms in trans medicine and security concerns in ‘gender-responsive’ women’s institutions to prohibit the placement of ‘pre-operative’ trans people in identity-concordant facilities. From the 1990s onward, trans advocates and their allies challenged the model of pathologization, asking for the inclusion of a broader range of gender-variant persons and for their entitlement to ‘self-determine’ their access to medical care and legal recognition. Correctional reforms were prompted by stories that various actors emploted about trans prisoners’ suffering, which were recuperable within a rights-based framework that posits that injury can be remedied through legal protections and accommodations. This ethnography argues that the quest for rights foreclosed more transformative projects for social change, also requiring advocates to elevate specific stories and silence others. Canada’s reforms thereby constrained trans personhood to a category of ‘virtuous victimhood’, which occluded that trans prisoners are, fundamentally, paradoxical figures: at once ‘victims’ and ‘offenders’. This would, in turn, have ambivalent consequences in the everyday of prison life, where self-determination’s inclusive and liberatory aspirations were in a chronic tension with correctional institutions’ punitive and rehabilitative logics. This dissertation suggests that the ambivalences that emerged through Canada’s trans prison reforms are not anomalies but, rather, that they provide a window to reflect on the ambivalent nature of Canada’s regime of governance, through which inclusion and exclusion are not polar opposites but co-constitutive potentialities. Following from other anthropologists’ concerns with how to write about suffering without producing totalizing, overdetermined narratives, this dissertation also considers what the case of trans prisoners demands of ethnographic writing and what it suggests about the (mis)uses of storytelling in the everyday pursuit of social change.

Advisor: Dave, Naisargi N
Proposing an Integrated Mindfulness and Affirmative Intervention for LGBTQ+ Youth: The LGBTQ+ Youth Affirmative Mindfulness Project

Objective: Sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY) experience disproportionate mental and sexual health disparities, and are often overlooked in practice and research; leaving a notable gap in the study of empirical interventions for SGMY. As there is no systematic study of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for SGMY, The LGBTQ+ Youth Affirmative Mindfulness Project aimed at helping address this gap by examining the potential utility of an adapted affirmative MBI for SGMY by introducing core mindfulness skills to SGMY as a simulated MBI, and developing an adapted MBI. Methods: SGMY (n = 30) participated in four focus groups and six individual interviews in Toronto, Ontario. SGMY also completed the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) at the beginning and end of the study to provide insight into intervention development, and determine its feasibility for use in future studies with SGMY. A paired sample t-test was conducted to test SCS scores pre-sample to post-sample intervention. This study ultimately sought to determine what were the experiences of SGMY while participating in a sample affirmative MBI, what mindfulness coping skills and LGBTQ+ affirmative content would SGMY want to utilize in an affirmative MBI, and what specific adaptations to mindfulness coping skills would provide greater support for SGMY participating in an adapted affirmative MBI. Results: Quantitative results revealed that SGMY displayed low to moderate levels of self-compassion and mindfulness. Additionally, participants reported significantly increased mindfulness and self-compassion at post-testing. Several themes emerged, such as: 1) The importance of psychological safety when practicing mindfulness; 3) The necessity of an explicit focus on self-compassion. Conclusion: Taken together, this dissertation provides an emergent conceptual and practical picture of the effective adaptation of MBIs for SGMY. The findings of this study suggest that SGMY found mindfulness-based practices beneficial, acceptable, and feasible. The overarching themes of this study suggest that: 1) SGMY may benefit from an affirmative MBI; 2) they can be engaged and participate in an affirmative MBI; 3) they would like to utilize mindfulness coping skills to help address stressors and to foster a sense of calm and self-compassion. Future social work and mental health research, practice, and education considerations are discussed.

Keywords: Adaptation
Intervention
LGBTQ+ Youth
Mental Health
Mindfulness
Self-Compassion
Advisor: Craig, Shelley L
Living Legends: Performing a Queer Past through Drag

This thesis analyzes the ways that drag performs queer cultural memory. I examine the works of six performers from Canada and the United States that serve as exemplars for the ways that drag presents a performative vision of the past. I argue that drag gives shape to ideas and concepts found in queer temporal theory, queer historiography, and memory theory. In my first chapter, I examine how Jinkx Monsoon and Major Scales’ The Vaudevillians builds a narrative out of the skeleton of queer-coded music. By doing so, Monsoon and Scales create fictional, unified origins to queer-coded culture. The Vaudevillians also presents a reflexive vision of the past that echoes Robert Scholes’ and Lawrence Kimmel’s theories of fabulation. In my second chapter, I analyze the 2016 remake, The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again, and examine the ways in which Laverne Cox’s presence exposes racial coding in the original that uses blackness as a metaphor for otherness. I also argue that Cox draws attention to the gaps and conflations of the original’s use of trans iconography and highlights Rocky Horror’s function as a performative collage. In chapter three, I examine how Miss Conception’s show, The Wonderful World of Miss Conception, and Lucy Flawless’ performance of “Country Roads, Take Me Home” responds to the erasure of queer childhood, particularly male effeminacy, as well as pervasive issues of gay shame. Their performances serve as examples of Gilad Padva’s concept of femininostalgia and my own concept of retroactive cultural memory. In my fourth and final chapter, I examine how Rose Butch, a non-binary performer navigates their entry into the world of “legendary drag.” I argue that their performances of Christina Crawford and Charlie Chaplin queer cis gay diva worship and create a durational representation of gender-fluid identity. Through their reflexive and meta-theatrical dramaturgies each of my case studies offer an affective vision of queer past—from a presentist model. While each of these chapters take different case studies as points of entry, they draw from a common dramaturgical vocabulary of drag performance and overall dramaturgy of queer historiographical desire.

Keywords: Drag
Memory Studies
Nostalgia
Queer History
Queer Temporality
Theatre
Advisor: Johnson, Stephen
Development of a Novel Detection Technique for Rare Freshwater Fishes

Underwater cameras are extensively used to detect and quantify fishes in marine ecosystems and are becoming increasingly popular in fresh waters. However, due to the differences in optical properties of these aquatic ecosystems, freshwater-specific studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this method for freshwater fishes. Underwater cameras are of specific interest for rare fishes as conventional sampling methods may cause stress, harm, and mortality from handling. This thesis investigates the use of underwater cameras in freshwater systems to detect, quantify, and study the ecology of rare freshwater fishes. In Chapter 2, I compare the detection probabilities of underwater cameras and conventional sampling methods and assess the optimal sampling procedure for cameras in headwater streams. I found that underwater cameras are as good as conventional sampling methods in detecting rare fishes. In Chapter 3, I compare the ability of two visual observation methods, underwater cameras and snorkel surveys, to detect and quantify fish communities in tributaries in remote watersheds and evaluate the pros and cons of both methods. I found that the visual observation methods have different capabilities in detecting the full fish community but have equal detection probabilities for detecting two IUCN-listed fishes. In Chapter 4, I use long-term monitoring data collected using visual observation methods to investigate the recovery of endemic fishes after eradication of an invasive fish. The visual observation methods revealed that the two endemic Threatened fishes, have fully recovered in density and population stability, while the Endangered endemic fish has recovered in density but it is still unstable. I suggest that invasive species eradication should not be the only management strategy for the conservation of endangered animals, but other strategies, such as habitat restoration, are necessary. In Chapter 5, I used empirically derived data to validate a novel 3D random-encounter equation that theoretically estimates fish density. I found that when the assumptions of the model are met, the equation accurately and precisely estimates densities. However, the assumptions are likely to be violated in natural systems. Together, these studies show that underwater cameras are a powerful sampling method that should be incorporated into standardized sampling protocols.

Keywords: Detection probability
Endangered fishes
Occupancy modeling
Population dynamics
Underwater cameras
Visual observation methods
Advisor: Mandrak, Nicholas E
Weyl, Olaf LF
The Salmonella Effector SopD Promotes Plasma Membrane Scission by Inhibiting Rab10

Salmonella utilizes translocated virulence proteins (termed effectors) to promote host cell invasion. The effector SopD contributes to invasion by promoting scission of the plasma membrane, generating Salmonella-containing vacuoles. SopD is expressed in all Salmonella lineages and plays important roles in animal models of infection, but its host cell targets are unknown. Here we show that SopD can bind to and inhibit the small GTPase Rab10, through a C-terminal GTPase activating protein (GAP) domain. By inhibiting Rab10, SopD promotes scission of plasma membrane invaginations, which form at the base of invasion sites. These studies also identify an unexpected role for Rab10 in regulating deep tubular invaginations of the plasma membrane, through its effectors MICAL-L1 and EHBP1. Together, our study uncovers an important role for Rab10 in regulating plasma membrane dynamics, and identifies the mechanism used by a bacterial pathogen to manipulate this function during infection.

Keywords: Bacterial Infection
Effector
Plasma membrane scission
Rab GTPase
Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium
Type 3 secretion
Advisor: Brumell, John H
Zebrafish Models of Idiopathic Scoliosis: Cilia, Cerebrospinal Fluid Flow and Neuroinflammatory Origins of Pathogenesis

Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (IS) is a spine disease characterized by three-dimensional curvatures of the vertebral column that arise in the absence of observable physiological or anatomical defects. Although there has been investigation into genetic components of IS, the cell biological and molecular mechanisms underlying disease progression remain unclear. Our lab has previously described the first genetically defined developmental model of IS in ptk7 mutant zebrafish. Zygotic ptk7 mutant zebrafish display hallmark phenotypes of the human disease, including 3-dimensional rotational spinal deformities, late onset for curve formation and sexual dimorphic bias in phenotype severity. These fish are defective in a key modulator of Wnt signalling, implicating this pathway in the onset of disease. Wnt signalling controls the biogenesis, localization and polarized architecture of motile cilia, which are essential for proper cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow. I found that ptk7 mutants display a late-onset ependymal cell motile cilia phenotype that was directly associated with spinal curve formation. Live imaging of CSF dynamics within the brain ventricles revealed uncoordinated flow, transgenic re-introduction of Ptk7 in motile ciliated lineages prevents scoliosis in ptk7 mutants, and mutation of multiple independent cilia motility genes also yield IS phenotypes. To identify underlying mechanisms of disease, I used lineage tracing, conditional genetic methodologies and next generation sequencing to define a spatial and biological origin of spinal curve formation in ptk7 mutant zebrafish. Strikingly, I found that ptk7 is expressed and specifically required within the brain for normal spine development and CSF homeostasis. Downstream of brain-derived CSF regulation, I uncovered an unexpected upregulation of immunogenic factors suggesting that spinal curvature may be due to a neuroinflammatory response to defective CSF homeostasis. I found that focal activation of proinflammatory signals within the spinal cord is sufficient to initiate idiopathic-like spinal curvature. Together, these data suggest that Wnt-directed motile cilia function is required for proper adolescent spine development, and that neuroinflammatory signals downstream of disrupted homeostatic CSF integrity can initiate spinal deformity.

Keywords: Cerebrospinal Fluid
Cilia
Disease modelling
Idiopathic scoliosis
Wnt signalling
Zebrafish
Advisor: Ciruna, Brian G