Monstruos, maniobras y mundos: Lo fantastico en la narrativa cubana, 1910--2010

Casanova-Vizcaino, Sandra M University of Pennsylvania 2012 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation examines the Fantastic mode in Cuban narrative between 1910 and 2010. Each chapter explores the work of a different author to explore the ways in which the Fantastic manifests and evolves vis à vis other literary modes present in Cuban literature, such as Naturalism and the Marvellous Real. In chapter one, "`El confesor de monstruos': Alfonso Hernández Catá y el fantástico-gótico," I suggest that in several of Hernández Catá's short stories in <italic>Los frutos ácidos </italic> (1915), <italic>Piedras preciosas</italic> (1924), <italic>Manicomio </italic> (1931) and <italic>Cuatro libras de felicidad</italic> (1933), grotesque and monstrous bodies are the site of horror and terror. These deformed bodies act like an infectious disease that spreads and threatens the notions of control and hygiene put forth by the sciences starting at the end of the Nineteenth-century. In the second chapter, "Grandes maniobras: Virgilio Piñera y el fantástico-sintáctico," I propose that the fantastic becomes a narrative strategy that erodes the narrative logic in a series of short stories written and published between 1942 and 1965 in <italic>Cuentos fríos</italic> (1956) and <italic> El que vino a salvarme</italic> (1970). This dissolution of logic is achieved by a displacement of the action and an emphasis on the description of bodies, objects and spaces so that the structure of the narrative text loses its coherence. In the third and last chapter, "Los mundos distantes: Abilio Estévez y el Künstlerroman," I explore the fantastic within the genre known as "novel of the artist." The chapter focuses specifically on <italic>Los palacios distantes</italic> (1998) and <italic>El bailarín ruso de Montecarlo</italic> (2010), in which the artists-protagonists (re)create fantastic worlds made out of ruins of an old marvelous place. The three chapters propose that bodies and objects are at the heart of the fantastic mode, and that it is through both the creation and disarticulation of these that the three authors are able to propose alternative worlds that emerge within a specific moment in Cuban history.

Molecular Strategies to Distinguish Key Subphenotypes in Sarcoidosis

Casanova, Nancy Gonzalez ProQuest Dissertations & Theses The University of 2020 해외박사(DDOD)

Sarcoidosis is a multisystemic disease of unknown etiology and unpredictable course, characterized by histopathological conglomerates of inflammatory cells defined as granulomas. These lesions however are non-pathognomonic, and in the absence of an identifiable etiologic agent, there are not specific diagnostic test for sarcoidosis. Despite the variable course of sarcoidosis, the lungs are affected in 90 percent of the cases. Approximately 25-30% of sarcoidosis patients progress to a complicated phenotype with progressive disease, leading to pulmonary fibrosis and organ dysfunction with increased mortality. These cases are in desperate need for biomarkers, conventional sarcoidosis biomarkers have proven to be insufficiently sensitive for implementation in routine clinical care. In this dissertation, I focused on the use of alternate strategies for biomarkers development utilizing genomic base approaches based on high-throughput molecular assays to characterize genotype, gene expression, and epigenetics that define sarcoidosis subphenotypes. Our results demonstrated that the integration of expression quantitative loci (eQTL) studies increase the power of Genome-wide association studies (GWAS). We identified SNPs that were associated to complicated sarcoidosis in African Americans (AA) and in European Americans (EA), and then we validated these SNPs by Massarray. Furthermore, at the transcript level, we identified the Peripheral Mononuclear Cells (PBMCs) responses to TNF-α exposure, a cytokine involved in the initiation of granulomas and progression of fibrosis in sarcoidosis and identified a differential dysregulation in pathways unique to complicated sarcoidosis. At the transcriptome level, we profiled microdisected granulomas from lung and lymph nodes, and identified a hub of genes that were dysregulated only in sarcoidosis in both compartments. Additionally, we compared the genomic profile of these granulomas in Sarcoidosis vs Tuberculosis (TB) and Coccidioidomycosis. We corroborated that some genes previously suggested as potential sarcoidosis markers were also present in fungal or mycobacterium granulomas, pointing to a common mechanistic origin. We also demonstrated a strong similarity at the transcriptional level between Sarcoidosis and TB. The contribution of the epigenetic mechanisms to the clinical presentation of sarcoidosis was assessed through DNA methylation analysis, complicated sarcoidosis reveled a hypo-methylated pattern in genes within HLA complex while the miRNA analysis derived a molecular signature consisting of 17 protein-coding genes, potentially regulated by 8 miRNAs dysregulated in complicated sarcoidosis.

Politics of Belonging: Families and Communities Building Power to Transform Schools

Casanova, Cassandra Diana University of California, Berkeley ProQuest Disser 2023 해외박사(DDOD)

The past decade of California's education policy landscape has been shaped by two significant events and the interaction between them. First, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), signed into law in 2013, shifted the way that the state distributes money to local school districts and implemented mandatory stakeholder engagement in allocating the funds. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic was a shock to the public school system, and though there is ample research underscoring how difficult it is to change institutions, this crisis may have created the necessary conditions for enacting consequential change. The LCFF created the potential to restructure relationships between multiple stakeholders-district leadership, school site-level administrators, families, and communities-and we can examine how groups navigated a landscape of nascent education finance reform and implemented a new process of state-mandated stakeholder engagement. The COVID-19 crisis represented a much deeper and more destabilizing shock to the relationships between families and schools. During the initial onset of emergency stay-at-home orders, the global pandemic blurred the division between home and school-living rooms became classrooms with many parents and caregivers acting as de facto teaching assistants and school coordinators. These two events offer the opportunity to study ways that the relationships between families and educators may have changed and to evaluate the extent to which these changes have allowed families to influence local education policy discussions and share in decision-making.This dissertation project consists of three substantive chapters and uses qualitative methods to examine how, if at all, a process of state-mandated stakeholder engagement in district-wide decision-making builds power for families to influence local education policy. Additionally, I illustrate how engaging in this process impacts both the micro-level experience of the individual and the organizational level of the district. Drawing on theories that examine institutional stability and change, collective action, and the role of families in schools, the overarching questions guiding my research are the following: (a) In what ways, if any, have school finance and accountability reform changed the balance of power between families and district administrators?; (b) In what ways, if any, has state-mandated stakeholder engagement expanded participation in decision-making and the process by which decisions are made?; and (c) How has participating in mandatory stakeholder engagement during various crises and shocks shifted the role and influence of families and communities in district-wide planning and decision-making?In Chapter 1, I conduct a research synthesis that analyzes the literature on family and community engagement, with a focus on the policies and practices that empower diverse stakeholders to participate in discussions and decision-making related to education policy. The synthesis is guided by a framework used to map school-community literature along two dimensions-social stance and power and control. These dimensions help identify the extent to which families claim ownership of physical or symbolic spaces of engagement, author and control the agenda for engagement, and co-construct or shift the norms and beliefs of the education system. Based on a review of the literature, I conclude that conflict, not collaboration, is the status quo and that rather than mitigating conflict, family engagement may create structures and support venues for open negotiation of power. Additionally, although when families own engagement spaces and author agendas, they build political power to challenge status quo policies, there is minimal evidence to suggest they shift the norms and values of the existing education system.The case study in Chapter 2 is a micro-level analysis of the parents who participated in a district-wide advisory committee; the chapter presents the motivations that drove parents to act collectively as they sought to impact the planning process. Drawing from interview data and parents' reports, I investigate how parents conceptualized and framed what it means to build power to influence change and to engage in the process and how this framing contributed to the collective identity and shared understandings of the parent members of the advisory committee. Based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted in a diverse urban school district in California, this study shows how families engage in local-level decision-making and build power to influence the policies and institutions that structure their lives; the findings speak to the limitations and affordances of state-mandated stakeholder engagement.Finally, in Chapter 3, I conduct a field-level analysis of a diverse urban school district in California to explore the implementation of school finance and accountability reform and the influence of democratic participation in expanding inclusion within policy discussions and to identify potential shifts in the balance of power between stakeholder groups seeking to impact district-wide planning. Based on participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis, my findings describe how school reform created and protected a relatively vague structure and process of mandated stakeholder engagement. It is because this engagement was codified into law that when conditions were ripe, the community could push and exert force. Therefore, while the law did not guarantee community power, it codified a process and created potential for collective action to push back against the status quo.

#MenToo: Men's Experiences of Sexual Harassment Within a Woman-Dominated Setting

Casanova, Allura University of Michigan ProQuest Dissertations & Th 2023 해외박사(DDOD)

Sexual harassment is a serious problem in many different contexts and can result in a multitude of negative outcomes. It is an issue that many workplaces need to be aware of because it can lead to low retention rates, decreased job performance, and poor employee mental health (Cortina & Areguin, 2021; Magley et al., 1999; Willness et al., 2007). However, a large amount of sexual harassment research has focused primarily on women's experiences, while men have been mostly viewed as perpetrators. Though there has been more progress in researching men's experiences of sexual harassment, most of the research has focused on predominately white- and man-dominated contexts while hinting at-but never confirming-the role gender and masculinity play. I seek to understand men's experiences of sexual harassment within the woman-dominated profession of nursing by investigating 1) what percentage of men in nursing experience harassment, 2) what leads men to label their experiences as "gender" or "sexual harassment," 3) whether gender context (gender workplace breakdown) and culture (masculinity contest culture) is correlated with experiences of harassment, and 4) whether marginalized men report higher rates of masculinity contest culture and harassment.The current study uses data collected in 2019 from nurses at a U.S. university hospital in the Midwest. Men were asked about negative workplace experiences of sexual harassment from July 2018-July 2019 and negative outcomes associated with sexual harassment (e.g., poor mental health). Men were shown harassment scales that focus on behaviors that connotate different aspects of harassment (e.g., have people told sexual stories or dirty jokes?). Exploratory findings: My results indicate that men in nursing experience high rates of gender harassment from coworkers and patients/patients' families (50-75%). Other forms of harassment were not as frequent but still significant, including sexual advance harassment (12%-15%), heterosexist harassment (21-28%) and racialized sexual harassment (26-31%). I found that patients/patients' families were frequently reported as perpetrators (36-40%). When looking at the gender of the perpetrators, both men (47%) and women (48%) were harassers. However, when it came to labeling their experience, only 8% of men labeled it as "sexual harassment" and 12% labeled it as "gender harassment." Explanatory findings: A binary logistic regression analysis revealed factors that led men to label their experiences of gender harassment. These included women perpetrators and gender harassment from patients/patients' families. Experiences of sexual advance harassment from coworkers or patients/patients' families were the sole predictors of men labeling their experiences as "sexual harassment." Linear regression showed that a greater presence of MCC and a more woman-dominated workplace were correlated with more experiences of gender harassment. MCC also predicted higher rates of heterosexist harassment and racialized sexual harassment. In the last analysis, I tested for moderation to determine if MCC was associated with harassment and whether marginalized identities moderated this relationship. I found that marginalized identities did not moderate this relationship but had a direct relationship with racialized sexual harassment.These findings speak to the importance of understanding men not solely as perpetrators of harassment and to the importance of the role gender has within the workplace. Organizations that want to increase their gender diversity should acknowledge that as men continue to enter non-traditional jobs, they are targeted for doing "women's work." Future qualitative research is needed to fully explore men's experiences in nursing to move towards an inclusive work environment.

The ethnic studies movement: The case of the University of Wisconsin Madison

Casanova, Stephen The University of Wisconsin - Madison 2001 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation examines the origins of ethnic studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1960s and it addresses the central role played by Black students in developing the Department of Afro-American Studies. This thesis also reviews the history of ethnic studies and provides a synopsis of the ethnic studies struggle at San Francisco State College, which initiated the ethnic studies movement. The ethnic studies movement is the struggle for educational reform that seeks to establish and advance the cause of ethnic studies in colleges and universities. While the roots of the ethnic studies movement are found in the various ethnic minority communities themselves, minority student activists initiated the movement for ethnic studies in predominantly white universities and colleges during the late 1960s. In an effort to organize the somewhat unwieldy history of ethnic studies, I suggest four distinct phases or periods of time for viewing the development of ethnic studies. The history of ethnic studies is explored through a discussion that examines the first two of the four phase—(1) the foundation phase, 1954 to 1967, which laid the groundwork for the emergence of the ethnic studies movement, and (2) the ethnic studies phase, 1968–1972, which saw the greatest degree of student activism and accounted for the establishment of the largest numbers of programs. My investigation of the ethnic studies movement confirms the central role played by minority students in the development of ethnic studies. The minority power movements of the 1960s and 70s sparked the creation of the minority student movement and a widespread struggle to establish ethnic studies. At UW-Madison, Black students were inspired by the Black Power movement to create their own organizations and to struggle for the establishment of an Afro-American Studies department. Ethnic group identity and pride were strong motivations that led minority students at Madison and elsewhere to strive for ethnic studies programs that taught them about their histories and cultures. An important factor that contributed to the emergence of the struggle for ethnic studies was the ideological conflicts that arose between the minority students attending predominantly white campuses and the “high risk” compensatory education programs established to recruit these students. Minority students were strongly influenced by the minority power principles, which stressed self-determination and separate or autonomous institutions. By contrast, the compensatory education programs that recruited minority students often promoted integration and assimilation. The case of UW-Madison, which in the late 1960s, experienced considerable conflict between Back student activists and the compensatory education program's director, suggests the possibility that compensatory education programs were an important site of struggle in the movement for ethnic studies. Finally, my investigation suggests that faculty and administrators at Madison and campuses throughout the nation were willing to establish ethnic studies programs and departments, but that they sought to depoliticize these programs by eliminating aspects of the minority student demands for ethnic studies that were not in accord with traditional academic norms.

Modernity and tradition in Catalan Noucentisme: Rafael Maso's regionalist architecture, 1911--1917

Casanovas, Jordi Falgas The University of Wisconsin - Madison 2011 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation examines the work of Catalan architect Rafael Maso (Girona, 1880--1935), in particular the buildings, furniture, and other objects he designed between 1911 and 1917, within the context of Catalan Noucentisme and European regionalist architecture. Noucentisme was a bourgeois cultural movement that dominated Catalan visual arts and literature during the second decade of the century that promoted the country's modernization while fostering Classicism and a robust sense of national identity. Like many artists and architects elsewhere in Europe at this time Maso and the noucentistes shared a concern for the vernacular while seeking a modern form of expression. In his buildings and urban plans, and in the rooms and fittings he designed, Maso adopted a series of materials and techniques drawn from vernacular architecture, such as the ceramics, wrought iron, stone, wood, and stucco used in rural areas. He employed them in ways unprecedented in Catalan architecture up to that time, through the introduction of formal and functional elements he found both in Classical Greco-Roman and in modern German and British architecture. While anchored in a conservative vision of society, Maso's architecture and Maso as a public figure exemplify modernity in several ways: the design and production of modern craft; the creation of non-academic exhibition and education centers for the arts; the design of housing and furniture for the new urban classes; the introduction of the garden-city model; the conscious expression of certain moral and cultural values through interior design; the recovery and protection of the vernacular architectural heritage; and a new formulation of Classicism as an clement of modern art. Maso's development of a modern architectural language embodies Noucentisme's attempt to reconcile the tension created by the adoption of international modernism and the simultaneous preservation of local identity and traditions. Within a revised and broader definition of modernism, it is argued here that Noucentisme must be understood as a significant movement even though it has generally been perceived as provincial, chauvinistic, backward-looking, and therefore opposed to what was considered relevant within the canon of the modern movement.

Magnetic Fields as a Source of Anisotropy: Mapping Magnetic Fields

Gonzalez Casanova Gallegos, Diego Fernando ProQuest Dissertations & Theses The University of 2019 해외박사(DDOD)

The interstellar medium (ISM) is a key part of our universe, affecting star formation, particle acceleration, and galaxy evolution. Furthermore, magnetic fields play a critical role in the ISM. It is therefore paramount to study magnetic fields and develop theoretical tools to characterize them. Turbulence, like magnetic fields, is ubiquitous to the ISM. In this thesis I will use our current understanding of turbulent magnetohydrodynamic theory, expand on it, and develop observational tools to measure magnetic fields. Velocity centroids are the only observable that give information about the velocity field in the ISM using spectroscopic information. In this thesis, I explore some of their properties and how they are affected by the magnetic fields in the ISM. Based on the properties of the velocity centroid, I introduce a new technique to map the plane of the sky (POS) magnetic field, the "velocity gradient technique" (VGT). I then expand the VGT to cover not only diffuse media but also molecular media. Finally, I use the VGT to obtain the 3D structure in position-position-velocity (PPV) of the POS magnetic field in the galaxy and I corroborate the analysis with stellar polarization measurements.For the second part of the work I study the effects of magnetic fields on star formation. In star formation, the torques from the magnetic field can disrupt the proto-stellar disk formation. I find that solely the properties of turbulence can produce the observed proto-stellar disk. I also expand the use of the VGT in the early stages of star formation, providing a second tool in addition to dust polarization.Finally I study the turbulent properties and magnetic fields in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). I use our current understanding of turbulence and spectroscopy obsrevations to explore on the sources of turbulence.

Design, synthesis, and characterization of beta-sheet peptides and proteins

Carulla-Casanovas, Natalia University of Minnesota 2001 해외박사(DDOD)

A new strategy for the design and construction of peptide fragments that can achieve defined, native-like secondary structure is presented. The strategy is based upon the hypothesis that ‘core elements’ of a protein, synthesized in a single polypeptide molecule, will favor nativelike structure, and that by incorporating a cross-link, nativelike core structure will dominate the ensemble as the more extended conformations are excluded. ‘Core elements’ are the elements of packed secondary structure that contain the slowest exchanging backbone amide protons in the native protein. The ‘core elements’ in BPTI are the two long strands of antiparallel β-sheet and the small β-bridge. To test this design strategy, we synthesized an ‘oxidized core module’ (CM), which contains the antiparallel strands connected by a modified reverse turn (A27 replaced by D), a natural disulfide cross-link at the open end of the hairpin, and <italic>N</italic>- and <italic>C</italic>-termini blocking groups. The conformational behavior of the peptide was examined using <super>1</super>H NMR spectroscopy. We conclude that the ensemble of CM conformations samples both nativelike 4:4 and non-native 3:5 β-hairpin structure. The next step was to explore the hypothesis that the energies of nativelike conformations, relative to other possible conformations, could be decreased further by covalent linkage of two CMs. Optimized syntheses of six ∼50-residue CM dimers are reported, featuring appropriate monomer modifications followed by oxime-forming ligation chemistry to create covalent cross-links at various positions and with differing lengths. All six synthetic CM dimers were characterized by 1D <super>1</super>H NMR; three of them showed considerable chemical shift dispersion and one of them, BetaCore, was chosen for further structural characterization. BetaCore is a designed protein in which two core modules, CM <italic> I</italic> and CM <italic>II</italic>, are connected by a 22-atom cross-link. At low temperature and pH 3, homo and heteronuclear NMR data report a dominant folded (‘f’) conformation that is a four-stranded antiparallel β-sheet with non-symmetrical and specific association of CM <italic>I</italic> and CM <italic>II</italic>. The BetaCore ‘f’ conformation undergoes a reversible, non-two state thermal transition to an equilibrium ensemble of unfolded ‘u’ conformations. This is the first designed four-stranded antiparallel β-sheet that folds in water.