VictorJuiz/thesis huggingface dataset:
Against Humanity: Life, Violence, and Rebellion in an African Postcolony

This dissertation focuses on the lives and memories of former Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels in northern Uganda. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork from 2012- 2013, it dislodges master narratives about humanity. It illustrates the disconnect between the designation of certain forms of violence as opposed to humanity, and the actually lived experiences of those forms of violence by LRA rebels. While the LRA and their associated violence were often contextualized as brutal and inhumane, the stories and experiences of rebels spoke of that violence quite differently. Indeed, for many, including not only rebels but also civilians, the violence they had perpetrated and/or to which they had been subjected was neither wholly immoral nor simply `against humanity'. The meaning and complexity of that violence offered many more possibilities for and potentialities of life and could form the basis of both a subjectivity and an ethics. Under the cruel names given to practices such as `abduction' into and `captivity' within the LRA lay transformative experiences of sociality, conviviality, and kinship; reconfigured political understandings; changed spiritualities and relations to God; and a deep discontent with the everyday violence of peasant life in Acholi./nThe construction of `humanity' as a moral sentiment in line with the `humane' is revealed to be a peculiarly modern concept built against forms of `horrific' violence, including mutilation and forced marriage. `Humanity' as a form of being distinguished from `animality' is questioned through LRA experiences in the `bush' (lum). The Western concept of `rationality' as a key construct of the `human', particularly compared to the (African) `savage mind', is critiqued through LRA magic and science. The ethnographic evidence breaks down `humanity' in these and other iterations./nHere, being `against humanity' means beginning to think about the richness and diversity of human life that exists outside certain notions of the good. `Humanity' unsuccessfully attempts to monopolize control over compassion, justice, and the moral good. Indeed, under some of the most innocent and well-meaning uses of `humanity' lie moralizing agendas that obfuscate the experiences and social relations of life on-the-ground. A concept useful for simplification, binarization, and distillation, `humanity' loses its value when it denies meaning and value to experiences, thoughts, or actions that disrupt the smooth way in which it divides good from evil, purifying the complexity of experience through the lens of what are ultimately value-judgments.

Advisor: Scheper-Hughes, Nancy
Development and Applications of (Hetero)cycloisomerization Methodologies to Access Natural Product Scaffolds

The development of new heterocycloisomerization reactions as a tactic to access natural product scaffolds is an active area of research. Chapter 1 describes the development of a new heterocycloisomerization reaction of alkynyl-[4.1.0]-bicycloheptanones using W(CO)5•THF complex to access 4,5-dihydrobenzo[b]-furans and –indoles. Specifically, the methodology developed provides a unique entry into dihydro-benzofurans and –indoles that contain carbon substitution at the C4-position, which is a common motif in many biologically active indole alkaloid natural products (e.g. the ergot alkaloids). The unique reactivity of dihydro-benzofurans and –indoles as it pertains to accessing natural product scaffolds is also described./nChapter 2 describes a mechanistic investigation of the trace-metal catalyzed cycloisomerization of alkynyl-[4.1.0]-bicycloheptanones to access annulated aminopyrroles by heating the ketone substrates with p-toluenesulfonylhydrazide in methanol. From our mechanistic studies, we demonstrate that the cycloisomerization reaction, which was previously thought to have been metal free, is actually catalyzed by trace copper salts at parts-per-million loading. Furthermore, we demonstrate the presence of E- and Z-hydrazone intermediates and conclusively demonstrate that, the more sterically encumbered Z-hydrazone is initially formed in the reaction and is thermodynamically lower in energy than its corresponding E- isomer. These studies were carried out in collaboration with the Hein group at the University of California, Merced and the Tantillo Group at the University of California, Davis and are a testament to the importance and power of collaborative research./nChapter 3 describes our efforts to leverage a Pt(II)-catalyzed carbocycloisomerization reaction as a means for accessing functionalized tetrahydrofluorenes through the use of 2-substituted indene compounds. We were able to synthesize a variety of functionalized tetrahydrofluorenes using a Diels—Alder cycloaddition reaction of 2-vinylindenes and various dienophiles. We also describe our attempts to effect a double Diels—Alder cycloaddition reaction using bisketenes or bisketene equivalents with 2-vinylindenes to access the dimeric lomaiviticin natural products. Though we were unable to realize the desired double Diels—Alder cycloaddition reactivity, we discovered a new method for generating 3-oxidopyrylium ions from bis(1-cyanovinyl acetate). Furthermore, we were able to access a variety of 2-alkynyl indenes and utilize these substrates to access the carbocyclic core of the diterpenoid euphorbactin using Rh(II)-catalyzed cycloaddition chemistry.

Advisor: Sarpong, Richmond
Algebraic Matroids in Applications

Algebraic matroids are combinatorial objects defined by the set of coordinates of an algebraic variety. These objects are of interest whenever coordinates hold significance: for instance, when the variety describes solution sets for a real world problem, or is defined using some combinatorial rule. In this thesis, we discuss algebraic matroids, and explore tools for their computation. We then delve into two applications that involve algebraic matroids: probability matrices and tensors from statistics, and chemical reaction networks from biology.

Advisor: Sturmfels, Bernd
Translation and History: The Development of a Kashmiri Textual Tradition from ca. 1000-1500

This dissertation investigates the Sanskrit works of four authors—Somadeva (fl. ca. 1080), Kalhaṇa (fl. ca. 1150), Jonarāja (ca. 1389-1459), and Śrīvara (fl. 1459-1505)—in the Valley of Kashmir. These authors produced a corpus of unique yet interconnected texts, writing in one of two particularly Kashmiri genres—either Kashmiri translational story literature, ślokakathā, or a regional poetic history, [rāja]taraṅgiṇī. The deployment and development of these two genres from the end of the eleventh to the early sixteenth centuries shows the development of a regionalized literature embedded in and adapting to changing social worlds. The first two works set the stage for this discussion. Somadeva’s eleventh-century Kathāsaritsāgara, a same-language translation of the Bṛhatkathā, is exemplary of the ślokakathā genre. It crystalizes a specific set of source critical techniques and attitudes that are necessary for the production of a Kashmiri Sanskrit historiography. Using Somadeva’s insights, Kalhaṇa fashions a new way of writing history in his twelfth century Rājataraṅgiṇī. Three centuries later in the much changed political and cultural landscape of the Kashmiri Sultanate, Jonarāja and Śrīvara continued Kalhaṇa’s historical project in their own (rāja)taraṅgiṇī-s. Finally Śrīvara translated Jāmī’s Persian romance the Yūsuf wa Zulaykhā into a ślokakathā, the Kathākautuka in 1505./nTo understand this development and the texts’ places in their moments of composition, this dissertation undertakes a series of contextualizations not to look for a homogenous or homogenizing “literary culture” of Sanskrit in Kashmir but rather to trace Somadeva, Kalhaṇa, Jonarāja, and Śrīvara’s creative engagement with Sanskrit texts and genres. This dissertation shifts discussion away from the dominant scholarly idiom of cosmopolitanism to see Sanskrit literary production as deeply imbricated in the changing historical context of second millennium Kashmir. In this way I speak not of Sanskrit as a totalizing literary culture but rather of regionally and historically situated authors shaping new modes of Sanskrit discourse in the world. Sanskrit then, in such an understanding, is not a static form or mode to which authors appeal but a vital voice taking part in the shifting elite spheres from the Lohara Dynasty to the Shāh Mīrī Sultans in Kashmir.

Advisor: Goldman, Robert P
Finding Feminist Affect in Italian Literature: From Sibilla Aleramo to Rossana Campo, 1906-2012

The project of nation-building is an affective one; it depends on shared sites of emotional investment and collective memory in order to produce a language that speaks to and for the subjects of that nation. In Italy this task has been at the heart of public debate since the turn of the century, coloring the content and form of literary narratives as well as political activism. Finding Feminist Affect in Italian Literature: From Sibilla Aleramo to Rossana Campo, 1906-2012, identifies parallels between political activism and narrative at different moments in the history of the Italian women’s movement; I begin with the suffragists and consider narratives of individual achievement and struggle, like Sibilla Aleramo’s (1906) Una donna, that echo the philosophical impulses and political efforts of that moment. Following this interplay of textual expression and feminist thought, I move from the turn of the century to the present day with each chapter focusing on a discrete period in modern Italian history. The second chapter explores connections between collaboratively authored manuscripts and practices of collective identification and group politics beginning in the 1970s. This is followed by an analysis of the academic turn among Italian feminists in the 1980s and 1990s, and its effects on both the style and content of the texts they authored. In the final chapter I ask how the current women’s movement is defining itself as Italian, and how those criteria have changed in light of the expansion of the European Union, increased immigration and demographic diversity, the rise of nationalist sentiment, and public displays of racism.

Advisor: Spackman, Barbara G
Acts of Conversion: Sister Gertrude Morgan and the Sensation of Black Folk Art, 1960-1982

Sister Gertrude Morgan (1900-1980) has been variously celebrated as a unique voice of the southern United States, an “outsider” genius, a “black American” artist, and a quintessentially “American folk” artist of the twentieth century. We might grant these interpretative rubrics a few grains of validity: Morgan was born and raised in rural Alabama, spending her early adulthood in Columbus, Georgia before arriving in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her membership within African American Baptist and Holiness-Pentecostal churches endowed her with a religious vocabulary and expressive repertoire practiced by this worshipping community. Furthermore, her art demonstrates a preoccupation with her status as a “Bride of Christ,” replete with exuberant colors and gestural immediacy intended to induct viewers into otherworldly, biblical realms about which Morgan preached. These categories, however, sustain a rhetoric that hinges upon a boundary between an implied center that names and a hyper-visible periphery that is named. Unifying these terms are slippery questions of social identity and authenticity./nRather than offer the final word about Morgan’s art, this dissertation argues for the very permeability of the categorical boundaries that have been employed to understand her artistic production. Throughout my account, Morgan’s life as a preacher, gospel performer, and painter is an exemplary case of modernity’s vexed and reciprocal relationship with “the folk.” First, it establishes Morgan as a creatively savvy artist who employed visual culture that was deeply informed by her Holiness-Pentecostal belief—rather than the isolated genius mainstream narratives construed her to be. Second, it argues for the central role of religion in constructing the Otherness endemic of Morgan’s reception as a producer of “heritage,” especially in the context of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festivals in the 1970s. After establishing a social and religious history for her expressive repertoire, I attribute her art’s movement within the post-WWII market to the multiple meanings audiences drew from Morgan’s painterly expressionism, visionary speech, and performances of traditional culture. Third, I narrate Morgan’s intersection with two other New Orleans artists—Noel Rockmore and Bruce Brice—to explore how these men’s social positions inflected the designation “self-taught” with divergent meanings. My study concludes with a re-consideration of the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980 exhibition that brought “black folk artists” into visibility in the 1980s. Through analyzing artworks and visual culture, sound recordings, oral history, and exhibition archives culled from collections throughout the American South, my dissertation ultimately argues that religious experience in “black folk art” was a form of visual modernity for African diasporic subjects that could dovetail with, but not be absorbed fully by, modernism’s insistence on singular authorship, visual formalism, and secular values.

Advisor: Lovell, Margaretta M
Essays on Crime, Unemployment and Health

This dissertation is composed of three chapters and studies issues related to crime, unemployment and health. The first chapter looks at the effect of funding for public safety on drug related violence. The second chapter, which is joint work with Santiago Guerrero, examines the effect of unemployment on crime during the latest great recession. The third chapter examines the effect that the introduction of ultra-low sulfur diesel has had on infant mortality./nThe first paper develops a simple framework to describe the effect of increases in fighting capacity on violence and uses a large program in Mexico to empirically estimate the effect of funding for public safety on violence, specifically drug related violence. Starting in 2008, Mexico implemented a large program designed for the strengthening of the municipal police, the assignment of which was based on an index. The main areas of allowed expenditures for these funds were: the purchase of fighting equipment, technology infrastructure and training of the police force. Instrumenting funding with the arbitrary initial eligibility cutoff, I find that the funds led to large increases in drug related violence. Evidence is consistent with the funds allowing the police to fight criminal organizations which weakened organizations and in turn led to turf wars. The effect is not higher for PAN municipalities, the party whose main platform during the study period was to fight organized crime. Also, there does not seem to be an increase in violence in politically stable municipalities as a result of the program, but there is a decrease in areas with low land productivity. Consistent with theory, I also find suggestive evidence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between baseline funding for public safety and the effect of the program./nThe second paper estimates the effect of unemployment on crime in Mexico. This study uses the variation in unemployment across metropolitan areas in Mexico induced by the latest great recession. Areas that were highly dependent on the US economy experienced the largest increases in unemployment, thus we instrument unemployment with the initial manufacturing and tourism labor share interacted with US GDP and find that increases in unemployment have led to decreases in crime in Mexico. The results are consistent with the decrease in potential targets due to the increases in unemployment outweighing the positive effect coming from the decrease in the opportunity cost of engaging in criminal activities as unemployment increases./nThe third paper estimates the effect of the introduction of ultra-low sulfur diesel on infant health in Mexico. In 2006 the Mexican government began the rollout of ultra-low sulfur diesel in metropolitan areas, starting with border municipalities. Using a difference in differences approach, I find that, despite its potential to improve health outcomes, there is no evidence that sulfur regulation had a substantial effect on infant mortality outcomes.

Advisor: Magruder, Jeremy
Discrete Element Multiphysical Models for Additive Manufacturing in conjunction with a Domain Specific Language for Computational Mechanics

In this dissertation, two main topics will be discussed. First, a novel approach to computational mechanics via a Domain Specific Language(DSL) with a syntax to facilitate new model development will be presented. Second, discrete element multiphysical models will be proposed to study powder based additive manufacturing processes./nThe DSL presented is a tool for computational mechanics which is designed to allow an engineer to focus more on model development and investigation by providing a syntax which makes it easier to define new discretizations and test different constitutive models. In order to achieve this, a system for managing data and specifying models is created around the Python development environment. There are three powerful features of the DSL. First, the language provides a syntax for creating objects which describe the fundamental physical objects and numerical elements in the problem and facilitates the allocation, management and modification of the data allocated for these objects. Second, all constitutive models are input using symbolic notation allowing for the language of math, rather than raw code, to be used to describe interactions. Third, low level code is automatically generated for the models and their gradients(via symbolic differentiation) for use with linear and non-linear solvers and time-stepping methods, both explicit and implicit. Also, Python wrappers are automatically generated so the high performance implementations can be used in the Python environment without additional work by the user./nThe discrete element method is a Lagrangian technique which uses interactions of spherical elements to model material behaviors. In the past, it has been most commonly used in the study of granular media such as sands and soils. Here, extensions to the method to model heat transfer, thermal expansion and interactions with non-spherical objects will be discussed for simulating additive manufacturing processes. The formulation, implemented with the DSL, is used to study powder packing in a manner that is physically consistent with Selective Laser Sintering/Melting machines. Also, the dynamics of powders subjected to a heat source are investigated. Additional multiphysics behavior is incorporated through a temperature dependent bonding model to create an efficient simulation for studying Laser Metal Deposition. Finally, a method for using discrete elements to enhance Eulerian finite elements to efficiently prevent advection welding is proposed.

Advisor: Zohdi, Tarek I.
Stress effects on astrocyte communication and regulation of adult hippocampal neural stem cells

The generation of new neurons in the hippocampus in adult mammals, or adult hippocampal neurogenesis, is a potent source of plasticity in the brain. Adult neurogenesis is highly regulated by the organism’s environment, and stress is a powerful regulator of neurogenesis. Understanding the molecular basis of this stress-induced regulation helps us better appreciate the mechanisms and functional relevance of this fascinating process. Neurogenesis depends on the development of neural stem cells, which are tightly controlled by their surrounding cellular microenvironment, especially by a cell type of the brain that has shown to be highly important in regulating brain function, the astrocyte. The following studies describe how astrocyte-based signaling imparts key molecular regulatory mechanisms that are modulated by stress in the adult rat. Chapter 2 describes how an acute stressor enhances neural stem cell proliferation via astrocytic FGF2 signaling. Chapter 3 describes the suppression of stem cell proliferation by chronic stress via a late-onset astrocytic increase of BMP signaling. Taken together, these studies further advance our understanding of stress modulation of brain plasticity, and take into consideration an understudied cell type in stress biology, the astrocyte.

Advisor: Kaufer, Daniela
Feller, Marla
From MetroII to Metronomy, Designing Contract-based Function-Architecture Co-simulation Framework for Timing Verification of Cyber-Physical Systems

As the design complexity of cyber-physical systems continues to grow, modeling the system at higher abstraction levels with formal models of computation is increasingly appealing since it enables early design verification and analysis. However, it is very challenging to analyze and verify timing at the early design stages, as the design representation is still abstract and trade-offs have to be made between the performance requirements defined in terms of system functionality and the cost of the feasible architecture that can implement the functionality. In this work, we present Metronomy, a function-architecture co-simulation framework that integrates functional modeling from Ptolemy and architectural modeling from the MetroII environment via a mapping interface. Metronomy completely separates the function and architecture modeling. It allows the function and the architecture of the system to be modeled in the most suitable design environments. At the same time, Metronomy allows designers to do timing verification and design space exploration at early design stage by exploiting contract theory and co-simulation. Two case studies on an electrical power system and a paper-feed sub-system for a high speed printing press demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.

Advisor: Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, Alberto L.
...who can recall the past lives..., for large ensemble

...who can recall the past lives… is a musical composition for large mixed ensemble with/noptional amplification. The work explores the idea of translating a personal aesthetic of/ntransformation, reincarnation and hybridity into music./nIn this work, different types of harmonic materials, such as spectral, microtonal, and equal-tempered harmonies, are superimposed and juxtaposed while transforming as they constantly move into each other’s harmonic domain. Pure sounds and complex sounds also intertwine with instrumental sounds and real sounds from the world, thus creating a kind of sonic hybridity. Sonic materials are also composed in such as way that, strangely, they are reincarnated./n…who can recall the past lives… is inspired by the film “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His/nPast Lives” of Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Advisor: Ueno, Ken