VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Guardians Entrapped: The Demise of the Turkish Armed Forces as a Veto-Player

This study examines how and why Turkey's civil-military relations regime transformed since the soft coup of 28 February 1997. It argues that major changes in the international security structure -the renaissance of democratic control of armed forces, the change of US foreign policy in the Broader Middle East and the process of Europeanization- opened a window of opportunity for demilitarization in Turkey. The recognition of Turkey's EU membership candidacy at the Helsinki Summit of December 1999 and the required alignment of Turkey's civil-military relations with that of EU best practices were the most important external factors that altered Turkey's domestic political opportunity structure in favor of change. Voter re-alignment in the November 2002 elections, the emergence of a single-party government with a strong will to change the domestic balance of power in its own favor, and the domestic mobilization of opposition to the military mediated between the EU's external pressure and domestic change. The military, in turn, failed to veto reforms that targeted its own prerogatives as such an action would generate substantial cost to its ideational interests including loss of prestige, credibility, and legitimacy as a result of being perceived as obstructing Turkey's century-old Westernization-cum-modernization process. An analysis of the behavioral, attitudinal, and institutional dimensions of democratic control shows that in the post-Helsinki period Turkey has not attained democratic control of the armed forces, but instead has shifted from the tutelary regime category to the defective democratic control category. Regarding the implications of this institutional change for the trajectory of Turkey's democratization, the study does not provide as optimistic a view as those advanced by the country's liberal and Muslim intellectuals. By conceptually differentiating between civilianization and democratization, this study argues that although the Turkish regime has become substantially civilianized in the last decade - i.e., political power has shifted markedly into the hands of civilians- the extent of the regime's democratization failed to match this level of civilianization.

Keywords: Civil-Military Relations
Europeanization
institutional change
Democratic Control of Armed Forces
Turkish Armed Forces
Justice and Development Party
Turkey
Advisor: Kopstein, Jeffrey
Romantic Authorship and the Failures of Familiarity

Focusing on familiarity in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, this dissertation examines how Romantic authors--especially those who published (semi-)autobiographical works--engaged both the complex legacy of sensibility and the rapidly changing literary marketplace. Exploring how and why authors' evocations of familiarity failed to encourage readers' and critics' sympathy brings to the fore how the desire to feel close to contemporary authors was haunted by anxieties about vulgarity and banality. I analyze the strategies that authors used to relate (semi-)autobiographical information in a critical climate concerned that literature was, in many ways, becoming all too personal. Assessing what Pierre Bourdieu terms 'the literary field' of the Romantic period, I demonstrate how fears about over-familiarity explicitly and implicitly shaped the content of Romantic texts and, just as important, their reading. My first chapter analyzes Charlotte Smith's Elegiac Sonnets. Smith's prefatory defences in Elegiac Sonnets offer one of the period's most detailed justifications of formulaic, familiar language, and I explore how Smith answered criticisms that her emotionally-repetitive works were insincere. My second chapter analyzes William Hazlitt's autobiographical work Liber Amoris in the context of the detailed theories of familiarity outlined in his essays and the moral philosopher Adam Smith's theories of sympathy. Examining Liber Amoris's representations of familiarity alongside Hazlitt's earlier theories of familiarity gives us a new perspective on both his essays and his most challenging work. Analyzing the negative reception of Lady Caroline Lamb's famous autobiographical novel Glenarvon, my third chapter demonstrates how notions of gender difference conditioned determinations of familiarity's proper limits. My final chapter argues that literary annuals sought to place readers on familiar terms with their famous editors and contributors by commercializing the culture of coterie manuscript exchange. I show that evocations of the type of familiarity associated with manuscript culture began to fail in the 1830s because the annuals became too common. Drawing on extensive archival research, this dissertation tracks the troubled reception histories of the works focusing each of its chapters. Overall, these case histories reveal familiarity and its failures to be key factors in the reception of literature in the Romantic period.

Keywords: Romanticism
Reception History
Lady Caroline Lamb
William Hazlitt
Charlotte Smith
Literary Annuals
familiarity
Advisor: Lynch, Deidre
Just Do It! Self-Determination for Complex Minorities

This thesis explores how Indigenous and linguistic communities achieve self-determination without fixed cultural and territorial boundaries. An examination of the governance practices of Métis, Francophones and First Nations in Saskatchewan reveals that these communities use innovative membership and participation rules in lieu of territorial and cultural criteria to delineate the boundaries within which to exercise political power. These practices have allowed territorially dispersed communities to build institutions, adopt laws and deliver services through province-wide governance structures. In addition to providing an empirical basis to support non-territorial models of self-determination, this study offers a new approach to governance that challenges state-centric theories of minority rights by focusing on the transformative power communities generate through stories and actions.

Keywords: Self-Government
Métis
First Nation
Fransaskois
Minority Rights
Advisor: White, Graham
Williams, Melissa
The Role of Surfactant Protein D in Neutrophil Extracellular Traps-Mediated Innate Immunity

Neutrophils extracellular traps (NETs) efficiently trap and kill invading microbes, but also inflict damage to the host. However, the mechanisms and the host factors that regulate NETosis are not clearly understood. Surfactant protein D (SP-D) is a soluble innate immune molecule present on mucosal surfaces, and functions as a pattern-recognition molecule. For my doctoral research project, I hypothesized that SP-D augments neutrophil-mediated innate immune defense by regulating NETosis and also by enhancing the anti-microbial functions of NETs. There are two previously identified pathways for NETosis: NOX-dependent and NOX-independent pathways. The results show that the NOX-dependent pathway of NETosis requires the activation of Akt and JNK, which are downstream of ROS production by NOX, to suppress the pro-apoptotic pathway. Furthermore, SP-D redirects NETosis to apoptosis by suppressing JNK activation. SP-D does not, however, affect the activation of Akt, ERK or p38 kinases. Also, this suppression of NETosis by SP-D is dose dependent, and is subject to the availability of SP-D. The presence of other soluble ligands such as bacterial LPS attenuates the ability of SP-D to suppress NETosis. SP-D, thus, may act as a barometer to control the extent of NETosis/NETs required to combat infection while minimizing tissue damage. The NOX-independent pathway has also been described previously, but its mechanism remains poorly understood. This study shows that the NOX-independent pathway, shown by its insensitivity to the inhibition by DPI, is induced by the calcium ionophore, A23187. Moreover, the NOX-independent pathyway, unlike the NOX-dependent pathway, is mediated by the activation of the calcium activated small conductance potassium (SK) channel, and it requires intact mitochondrial potential. Also, Hepoxilin A3, a derivative of arachidonic acid, can induce both the NOX-dependent and -independent pathways. Experiments using mice show that the endotracheal instillation of LPS into the mouse airways results in NET release by the recruited neutrophils in the airways, in vivo. Once NETs are formed, SP-D simultaneously interacts with NET DNA and the carbohydrate targets, and enhances bacterial trapping by NETs. Collectively, the data show that SP-D regulates NETosis and also enhances the innate immune potential of NETs.

Keywords: Innate Immunity
Neutrophil
Neutrophil Extracellular Traps
Infection
Surfactant Protein D
Pulmonary
Advisor: Palaniyar, Nades
Grasemann, Hartmut
Molecular and Biophysical Targeting of Malignant Brain Tumours

Primary malignant brain tumours are notoriously difficult to treat due to their infiltrative nature, unrelenting proliferative capacity, tumour heterogeneity, and the inability of novel drug or molecular targeted therapies to efficiently cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Using cell line and xenograft models of glioblastoma (GBM) and medulloblastoma we have studied the therapeutic potential of blocking the kinase activity of Aurora kinase B, a master regulator of multiple processes in mitosis. We demonstrate that the growth of intracranial xenografts of p53 mutant GBM or Myc amplified medulloblastoma can be impaired by Aurora B inhibition, while sparing normal neural tissue and thereby allowing prolongation of survival. Mechanism of action studies have further informed our in-vivo dosing strategies and indicate possible new synthetic lethal gene targets for Myc amplified medulloblastoma. Targeting biologically active macromolecules to achieve tumour control at the invasive margins, where recurrences are most often observed, may enhance the therapeutic efficacy of anti-mitotic agents. We developed a novel technology for the delivery and targeting of multi-functional nanoparticles to the invasive front of intra-axial tumours. Transient, safe, and reversible BBB disruption was achieved with MRI-guided transcranial focused ultrasound to deliver spherical gold nanoparticles to normal brain parenchyma or tumour margins. Furthermore, we characterized the interaction of multi-functional gold nanoparticles with glioblastoma cells using surface enhanced Raman scattering spectral microscopy, live fluorescence microscopy, electron microscopy, and in-vivo imaging. Lastly, we were able to demonstrate the targeted delivery of anti-epidermal growth factor antibody modified NIR-SERS capable silica encapsulated gold nanoparticles to regions of transcranial ultrasound mediated blood-brain barrier disruption. This serves as a stepping stone to future combination therapy in which mitotic inhibitors selected by genetic profiling of malignant brain tumours may be used in conjunction with MRI-guided trancranial focused ultrasound delivery of multifunctional nanoparticles targeting invasive and proliferating cells.

Keywords: glioblastoma
medulloblastoma
nanotechnology
Aurora kinases
tumour biology
focused ultrasound
Advisor: Rutka, James
From “Moron” to Maladjusted”: Eugenics, Psychiatry and the Regulation of Women, Ontario, 1930s-1960s

In the early 1900s, the eugenics movement spurred a number of major developments in Ontario, among them the committal of large numbers of women to the Ontario Hospital, Cobourg under diagnoses of mental defect. A tool of reproductive control, institutionalization was meant to inhibit “feebleminded” women’s procreative capacities. Despite the absence of enabling legislation, evidence suggests eugenic sterilizations also occurred in the province. Drawing on the detailed patient case files of women confined to the Cobourg facility from the mid1930s to mid1960s, this dissertation re-examines the history of eugenics in Ontario to demonstrate not only its profound impact in the decades prior to the Second World War, but also its enduring effects in the postwar era. To illustrate eugenics’ lingering impact, the study explores the interconnections between diagnoses linked to intellectual disabilities and emergent postwar psychiatric classifications of personality disorders to show how eugenics and psychiatric regulation were re-framed after the 1940s and applied to broader groups of women. Examining disability as both a category of analysis and a discursive construct, the dissertation argues that eugenicists re-scripted the notion of mentally ‘unfit’ into a concept of ‘maladjustment’ in the postwar years, and then applied it more broadly to justify and advance inequitable social relations across a range of social identities. Eugenics operated both materially and discursively as a mechanism through which particular configurations of gender, race, class, and sexuality, along with disability, were established and regulated. It was ultimately in and through early-twentieth-century eugenics that the ‘bio’ and ‘social’ collided, facilitating new notions of citizenship, modes of state governance, and the emergence of the modern bio-political state.

Keywords: 0453
Advisor: Iacovetta, Franca
Bazooka and atypical Protein Kinase C regulate dynamic actomyosin networks during Drosophila amnioserosa apical constriction

Cell shape changes drive tissue remodeling. Polarized activity of actin and myosin drive apical constriction, as seen for example in Drosophila embryonic amnioserosa cells during dorsal closure (DC). My first aim was to characterize interactions between apical actomyosin networks and the cell polarity regulators Bazooka (Baz, the Drosophila Par-3), Par-6, and atypical Protein Kinase C (aPKC) (the PAR complex) during Drosophila DC. I found that both actomyosin networks and the PAR complex are enriched at the apical surfaces of amnioserosa cells and that actomyosin contractility is driven by cyclical assembly and disassembly of actomyosin networks. The pulsatile actomyosin networks translocate across persistent apical surface PAR complex puncta. To assess whether the PAR complex interacts with actomyosin, I characterized myosin dynamics with PAR loss- and gain-of-function perturbations. Baz enhances, whereas Par6/aPKC inhibits actomyosin. These studies suggest that PAR proteins regulate pulsatile apical actomyosin networks mediating constriction of amnioserosa cells. My next aim was to characterize actomyosin networks during a shift in their dynamics. Amnioserosa constriction transitions from pulsatile to persistent from early to late DC. Since oscillatory networks result from delayed negative feedback, I examined whether such regulation exists in these actomyosin networks. The actomyosin inhibitor aPKC is recruited to the apical surface by actomyosin and, in turn, aPKC recruits Baz. To examine the significance of Baz – aPKC dynamic interactions, I ectopically stabilized their interactions. This served to inhibit the antagonism of actomyosin networks by aPKC, suggesting that Baz can act as a competitive inhibitor of aPKC. I found that interactions between Par-6 and Baz increase during DC, suggesting an increase in aPKC inhibition during DC progression. To examine whether decreased inhibition can tune oscillatory actomyosin networks, we collaborated with Qiming Wang and Dr. James Feng (University of British Columbia) to test this oscillation in silico. Computer modeling suggests that decreasing delayed negative feedback can transition actomyosin oscillations towards stabilized constriction. Together, these results demonstrate the requirement of Baz – aPKC interactions for their localization and for dynamic regulation of aPKC by a competitive inhibitor. Finally, my research reveals a regulatory circuit to tune actomyosin behaviour during development.

Keywords: Cell biology
actin and myosin
Par complex
polarity
drosophila
morphogenesis
development
dorsal closure
amnioserosa
Advisor: Harris, Tony
Feedback-mediated Regulation of Human Hematopoietic Stem Cell Fate

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) cells fill a clinical need for hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC) transplantation, and the ex vivo expansion of these cells provides an approach to increase their clinical relevance. Ex vivo HSPC expansion has been limited by a poor understanding of the interplay between stem cell autonomous and feedback mediated regulators. We hypothesized that developing strategies to modulate the HSPC microenvironment would enable enhanced expansion of these cells and a greater insight into the underlying biologic mechanisms. We developed a system for the optimized delivery of the transcription factor HOXB4 to human hematopoietic culture and revealed new insights into the context-dependent potentials and limitations of HOXB4. We investigated approaches for the global reduction of inhibitory feedback signaling and developed a fed-batch system that minimizes endogenously produced factors to create a more supportive environment for HSPC self-renewal. This strategy led to an 11-fold expansion of long-term repopulating HSCs in a clinically relevant bioreactor, producing a novel system for ex vivo expansion and generating a platform to assess HSPC enhancing factors. By combining the fed-batch system with the Notch Delta-1 ligand (DL1), we identified a mechanism whereby DL1 initiated a conversion from IL-6 cis-signaling to trans-signaling, resulting in the modulation of mature cell population production. This demonstrated the impact of cell lineage skewing on microenvironment regulation and the expansion of HSPCs. This work demonstrates how cell-cell interactions and feedback mediated signaling are critical regulators of HSPCs and the manipulation of these regulators can be used both to engineer HSPC expansion processes and to identify novel mechanisms within the hematopoietic system. This provides an important step towards the development of robust methods for the ex vivo expansion of UCB-derived cells and the ultimate goal of achieving cures in hematologic disease.

Keywords: Stem cell bioengineering
hematopoiesis
Advisor: Zandstra, Peter
Death in a New Key: The Christian Turn of Roman Sarcophagi

Christian sarcophagi were produced in Rome during a long fourth century for a narrow audience. Their iconography marks a discontinuity in a centuries-old medium, a turn away from pagan and profane themes towards biblical narratives and Christian ideas. Following their patrons and viewers, these sarcophagi “converted” to a new religion and visually expressed its novel conception of death. This dissertation approaches these monuments as autonomous historical documents that merit examination on their own terms, which is not to deny the importance of social, economic, religious or artistic developments. Some of these extrinsic elements of context are addressed in the initial chapters. In particular, inferences are drawn concerning the cohort of individuals who bought, occupied and saw these sarcophagi based on estimates of cost and the Roman income distribution. Visibility, conditions of access and the circumstances of reception are also examined. Following these contextual considerations, the study focuses on two distinct and chronologically separated groups of Christian sarcophagi. The first consists of monuments with the Jonah theme, the single most popular form in the period before 350 CE. Jonah sarcophagi are representative of the widespread use of scriptural symbolic narrative, combining Old and New Testament allusions with other potential associations. The second group are sarcophagi displaying the so-called traditio legis (a modern Latinism), an important example of the late-century “conceptual” forms that allude to religious tenets without any specific scriptural anchor. This complex and controversial form of representation suggests a composite design, a conflation of images into a single form. Through a close reading of both the Jonah and traditio legis sarcophagi, the discussion elucidates various facets of reception and a range of over-determined and alternative meanings. The conclusion considers how the fourth-century Roman sarcophagi contributed to the construction of a Christian imaginaire of Christian death among their viewers.

Keywords: sarcophagi
Christian sarcophagi
early Christian art
funerary art
Jonah
traditio legis
late antiquity
refrigerium interim
reception
visibility
Christian number
Advisor: Caskey, Jill
Negotiating Pakistan: A Genealogy of a Post-colonial Islamic State

This dissertation explores the possibilities of Islamic statehood in post-colonial Pakistan through the works of three figures involved in framing the idea of the Islamic state: W.C. Smith, Muhammad Asad, and Muhammad Munir. Each of these three thinkers owes their position and prestige to the dynamics of colonialism, either as one employed in colonial educational institutions and the western academic study of Islam (Smith), or one involved in the critique of empire (Asad), or one tasked with adjudicating the new post-colonial state and its relationship to Islam (Munir). Although their projects embraced to some extent an extension of the colonial state's hegemonic practices of domination and control, the state was seen by these thinkers as a space in which liberal values could be impregnated with Islamic authenticity. Each of them would find ready opponents amongst the `ulama and the Jama'at, who imagined the creation of Pakistan as an opportunity to return to a precolonial past. In exploring these stories, I aim to complicate the genealogy of the Islamic state idea as it was conceived in Pakistan and to provide a perspective from which to understand the ongoing struggles of the Pakistani state to come to terms with both its religious and secular heritage.

Keywords: Colonialism
Islam
Islamic State
Pakistan
Post-colonial
Advisor: Fadel, Mohammad
I testi della paura e dell'incubo

Between 1960 and 1970 Italy undergoes a major anthropological change, triggered by the mass migration to the industrialized cities of the North from the rural areas that had been the cradle of an old and profoundly rooted culture. In this historical frame, the Italian film industry becomes the most powerful and successful in Europe, starting a period of dominance and unparalleled growth that lasted almost twenty years. Genre films represent the backbone of the industry, and horror films, even though not the majority in numeric terms, become a significant section of the Italian production; Italian horror films establish and define new trends for the genre, largely imitated and admired. The thesis analyzes and discusses these films against the broader background of the years spanning from 1960 to 1980. The most important theoretical issues concerning the subject of the research are dealt with in Chapter one, where intertextuality is viewed as the most stimulating characteristic of the genre. Through the analysis of the Gothic tradition and the enumeration of several semantic elements linked to the genre, the thesis finds in the concepts of authorship and parody its essential critical tools for the following chapters. The evolution of the genre through the period 1960-1980 is examined in Chapter two. Films and directors are discussed not simply for the aesthetic value of their works, but mainly the for the contribution brought to the setting of the trends of the genre. This chapter examines also the influence of other media (the comic books and the television) on the process. The career of the two most important masters of the period, Mario Bava and Dario Argento, is explored and discussed in detail in Chapters three and four. The originality of their work marks the entire evolution of the genre. The Italian horror cinema cannot be conceived or thought of without the films made by Mario Bava and Dario Argento in the period examined by the research.

Keywords: Italian Cinema
Horror genre
1960-1980
Popular Cinema
Advisor: Capozzi, Rocco