Dictating Manhood: Refiguring Masculinity in Haitian Literature of Dictatorship, 1968-2010 explores the literary representations of masculinity under dictatorship. Through the works of Marie Vieux Chauvet, René Depestre, Frankétienne, Georges Castera, Kettly Mars and Dany Laferrière, my dissertation examines the effects of dictatorship on Haitian masculinity and assesses whether extreme oppression...
The thesis contains all four chapters of my Ph.D. research on deep learning and text mining. The first chapter, "Temporal Topic Analysis with Endogenous and Exogenous Processes'', proposes a topic model which mines temporal economy-related documents with an exogenous economic indicator, and finds the relationship between document topics and the...
The discovery and tailoring of new useful organic molecules for applications such as medicine and materials science is highly driven by meaningful developments in chemical methodology, and some of the most impactful advances have invoked catalysis to increase efficiency and specificity. N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) have continuously occupied a prominent space...
Computational models greatly benefit metabolic engineering efforts by helping to elucidate experimental observations and predict engineering targets for improved cellular performance. Additionally, supplementing experimental efforts with computational modeling can reduce the loss of time and resources in the lab by narrowing down testing conditions. In optimal cases, computational models can...
This thesis reports on the use of optical antennas, and more broadly, metal optics for the engineered collection and enhancement of infrared photodetectors. These ideas would be useful in enhancing at other wavelengths and other types of detectors, but this work is specifically focused on the Quantum Well Infrared Photodetector...
Social media such as Twitter has risen as a powerful new communication medium for disseminating information on news, personal interests, experiences, and opinions. On social media, people talk about their lifestyle, health conditions and symptoms, search information on treatment options, and connect with people who have been through similar medical...
The rational and deliberate assembly of functional materials from nanoscale building blocks requires a fundamental understanding of interactions between individual components as well as their collective behavior. This thesis investigates the hierarchical organization of nanoparticles using DNA into well-defined three-dimensional materials on the micrometer and millimeter length scales. This assembly...
My dissertation explores the dynamics of Northeast Asia’s island disputes, specifically the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute between Korea and Japan and the Senkaku/Diaoyu dispute between Japan and China. I focus on three questions that are important for academic and policy purposes and are not well addressed by existing theories: 1) what explains...
This dissertation narrates the circulation and institutionalization of an emergent category of talk performance within the late-twentieth century US avant-garde through the career trajectories of three artists from disparate disciplinary backgrounds working in and around the 1970s: theatrical monologist Spalding Gray, poet David Antin, and dance artist and filmmaker Yvonne...
The purpose of the egg is to give rise to offspring in sexually reproducing organisms. Zinc thresholds became connected to egg quality from initial breakthrough discoveries in M. musculus which demonstrated that large-scale zinc fluxes occur during meiotic maturation, and these fluxes are required to maintain female egg viability. Numerous...