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Routes and Networks of Mexican Abstraction Across the Americas (1958-1970)
No full textThis dissertation investigates the emergence and consolidation of abstract practices in Mexico City, exercised by a collective of artists driven by collaboration, intermediality, and experimentation, as an alternative to Muralism. In reevaluating the 1960s generation of artists, historically assessed by their rejection of social realism, this project highlights their evolving dialogues with Muralism and their negotiations with local and transnational institutions. Through analysis of cultural policies, museum studies, and Cold War-era politics, I explore the emergence of abstraction and other postwar avant-garde movements as the new language of modernity. Close study of cultural projects, exhibitions, and artist-led initiatives—such as the Mexican pavilions at the 1960s World Fairs, Mexico City’s Inter-American Biennial, and the Salón Independiente—reveals the rich hemispheric routes that shaped postwar Mexican art and, moreover, repositions its contributions to the construction of “Latin American art.” Contextualized in a historical moment of economic prosperity known as the Milagro Mexicano, abstraction both enabled artists’ individual expression and contested the state’s univocal definition of national art.
Through an analysis of an emerging network of artists, art critics, new museums and galleries, local and international exhibitions, mass media, and cultural policies, I argue that the 1960s intelligentsia systematically drew Mexican art into international spaces and, in so doing, challenged Muralism’s claim as the only acceptable national style. By including projects sponsored by institutions in Washington, D.C., Lima, and São Paulo, this dissertation reevaluates the contributions of Mexican abstraction to Latin American (and global) modernisms. These initiatives reveal the complexity surrounding both artistic creation under the oversight of the Mexican state and the integration of abstraction at home and abroad. The participation of the 1960s generation of artists in state-sponsored events exposed their ambivalent relationship with officialdom as well as their collective efforts to democratize cultural spaces. By illuminating these networks of artistic exchange that stretched across the Americas, this dissertation contributes new scholarship on the histories of Latin American and abstract art
Nanoconfinement Guided Synthesis and Assembly of Metal-2D Material Catalytic Heterostructures
No full textThis dissertation introduces novel strategies for the synthesis and assembly of 2D materials (2DMs) into functional heterostructures, leveraging metal ion interactions and nanoconfinement effects. It details the creation of noble metal ion (NMI)-crosslinked 2DM hydrogels and the development of NMI-complexed 2DM inks. A key contribution is the introduction of the Metal Ion Release Assembly (MIRA) process, a versatile and scalable method for depositing thick and uniform 2DM coatings on complex surfaces using metal ion-loaded gelatin hydrogels. This technique allows for tunable coating thickness by controlling parameters such as metal ion concentration and 2DM dispersion concentration.Furthermore, the dissertation presents a novel electrostatic assembly process guided by vacuum filtration for the synthesis of catalytic metal nanocrystals, specifically platinum (Pt), within the interlayer confined spacings of 2DMs like graphene oxide (GO) and MXene. This method enables controllable Pt loadings and influences the size, distribution, and morphology of the resulting Pt nanocrystals by manipulating the concentration of the tetraammineplatinum(II) nitrate (TPtN) precursor and water removal techniques such as air-drying and freeze-drying. The synthesized Pt–2DM heterostructures demonstrate substrate-dependent catalytic activities in reactions like 3-nitrostyrene and phenylacetylene hydrogenation.
Beyond catalysis, the dissertation showcases the broader applications of 2DM assemblies, including anti-counterfeiting technologies utilizing unclonable MXene topographies and the use of machine learning to accelerate the design of sustainable biobased packaging, ultrastretchable electronics, and nerve-on-a-chip platforms. This comprehensive work enhances the fundamental understanding of metal-2DM interactions and establishes new, scalable fabrication strategies for high-performance materials relevant to energy, environmental solutions, and advanced manufacturing
Source Attribution of Methane Using Clumped Isotopologues
No full textRising methane concentrations in the atmosphere have been studied using C2:C1 (ethane to methane ratios) and traditional stable isotopes. These tools are used to identify and attribute methane sources, but information about these tools is incomplete. Adding clumped isotopologues, methane molecules with more than one rare isotope substitution, can be used to reduce uncertainties and fill knowledge gaps of the other tools. Chapter 2 is a methane source identification study, where methane production in industrial steam is assessed, and clumped isotopologues reveal essential information about the methane production mechanism. Chapter 3 is a methane source attribution project, where methane sources are fingerprinted, and clumped isotopologues provide more refined information about methane sources and the processes that control fluxes. Both projects utilize clumped isotopologues as an additional tool to better understand and categorize methane sources, including both identifying new sources using compositions and attributing source signatures to known targets
Schematic Bodies: Housing, Status Property, and Sexuality in U.S. Literature
No full text“Schematic Bodies” examines literary representations of home in the context of housing policy and its transformative effects on sexual order in the United States. I develop a theory of status property that accounts for role of the family home in the naturalization of the “normal” as a racial and sexual category over time. I demonstrate how texts register concealed functions of economy in their depictions of home and the family by using representational strategies like spatial disorientation, narrative fragmentation, debt and value metaphor, and irony. Literary texts render what I call “spectral” processes in language. By reading literature alongside economic flashpoints of US housing policy such as the development of the Federal Housing Administration and mortgage-backed securities, “Schematic Bodies” develops an account of residential real estate’s influence on literary form and sexual categories over the course of the long twentieth century. Moreover, it explains how literature can function as a site for imagining kinship without property
Strongly correlated excitons in moiré semiconductors
No full textMoiré transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) bilayers have emerged as a versatile platform for exploring a wide range of correlated electronic phenomena. In optical studies of these semiconducting systems, excitons—bound electron-hole pairs—play a crucial role by linking electronic correlations to optical responses. This thesis develops theoretical frameworks to understand how excitonic behavior interplays with various correlated states in moiré TMD bilayers and the resulting implications for optical measurements.
We begin by investigating the interaction between a single moiré exciton and Wigner crystal states formed by doped electrons. Focusing on systems with repulsive electron–exciton interactions, we discuss a scenario where excitons move within the complementary lattice of the charge-ordered electrons. As different Wigner crystal configurations emerge at specific electron filling fractions, the effective exciton lattice changes accordingly, giving rise to distinct spectral and topological features. These characteristics can serve as optical signatures of the underlying charge order, and we propose a momentum- and polarization-resolved reflection experiment to detect them.
Next, we turn to undoped bilayers hosting multiple moiré excitons. While prior work often models these systems using a Bose-Hubbard framework, we show that their commutation relations deviate from those of conventional bosons. Instead, the excitons obey algebra similar to that of angular momentum operators, resulting in a finite Hilbert space and limiting local exciton occupancy to two or three, depending on the bilayer's specific parameters. We demonstrate that this occupancy constraint could manifest in high-intensity optical pumping experiments.
Finally, we explore exciton dynamics in a doped heterobilayer where the topmost valence moiré band forms an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator. We present a theoretical model describing the coupling between the exciton and the spin background, revealing that spin fluctuations substantially narrow the exciton’s effective bandwidth—by orders of magnitude compared to its non-interacting counterpart. This suppression in mobility provides a measurable contrast, which we suggest can be probed through exciton diffusion experiments
“I’VE ONLY GIVEN YOU THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG”: EXPLORING QUARE LITERACIES OF K-12 EDUCATORS
No full text“The motivation behind every sentence is the wish to say something real to somebody real.” ― June Jordan, Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays
Quare, also known as Black Queer, culture is one of resistance. One of the many ways Black Queer individuals resist structural oppression is by literacies, the ways individuals portray their identities (e.g., fashion, movement, word choice, vocal inflections to name a few). However, when turning to K-12 literacy research, there is a significant gap in the literature illustrating how Black Queer educators use Black Queer literacies (BQL) in traditional schooling spaces. This dissertation investigates BQL as a tool of resistance to white supremacy and antiblackness by centering “self-definition, self-care, and self-determination” (Pritchard, 2017, p. 24). This critical narrative study utilized Quare Theory (Johnson, 2001) to understand BQL uses in creating liberatory spaces for K-12 Black Queer Teachers. The study highlights how BQL can shifting the current research understandings of teacher knowledges by including historically marginalized cultural knowledges, which support teacher retention and educational successes. Additionally, it complicates insights on teacher identity, teacher knowledge, classroom practices influence. The dissertation answers the following three questions:
1. How do Black Queer educators conceptualize BQL;
2. How have Black Queer educators experienced BQL in their educational experiences (including teacher education)?;
3. How do Black Queer educators utilize BQL in their own instructional practices?
Data was collected through Kitchen Table dialogues conversation (Haddix, McArthur et al., 2016) with five Black Queer, K-12 educators from the metropolitan area within the Mid-Atlantic. Our conversations underwent two cycles of data coding producing biographical narratives.
Presented findings challenge siloed discussions of language, race, gender, and sexuality of Black educators, and create a space within K-12 educational research for BQL. The study concludes with recommendations for teacher education and institutions to begin to affirm and sustain BQL practices of in-service and pre-service educators. Ultimately, the dissertation explores and emphasizes the practices of Black Queer teachers and the need for acknowledgement in traditional K-12 educational spaces
EXPLORING LONELINESS THROUGH COGNITIVE PROFILES: UNDERSTANDING EXECUTIVE FUNCTION AND MENTALIZING IN AUTISTIC AND NON-AUTISTIC YOUTH
No full textAdolescence is a transitional period of development where rates of loneliness increase. Autistic youth are more likely to experience loneliness than their non-autistic peers, making adolescent youth on the spectrum particularly vulnerable to poor social outcomes. Difficulties with executive function (EF) and mentalizing are well-documented in autistic youth; these challenges may contribute to social difficulties. Given the heterogeneous presentation of autism symptoms, particularly executive functioning and mentalizing abilities, we conducted a latent profile analysis (LPA) to determine if distinct cognitive profiles emerge around 2 executive functioning and 2 mentalizing variables. We then examined whether these profiles are associated with loneliness outcomes. Results demonstrate that none of the 4 cognitive variables of interest: Flanker, DCCS, Faces, and STOMP are significantly related to loneliness when variance in age, overall IQ, and diagnostic group are accounted for, thus suggesting the need for a heterogeneous approach to understand cognitive skills. LPA analysis revealed that a 3-profile solution best fits the data. The profiles were significantly related to loneliness outcomes, with the profile characterized by poor flexibility reporting the highest rates of loneliness. However, this result did not hold when we controlled for diagnostic group membership. When diagnostic group membership was accounted for, Profile 1 (the higher cognitive performance) and Profile 2 (the average cognitive performance) were marginally significantly different on loneliness outcomes. These results, although preliminary, demonstrate that a profiles approach to cognitive skills provides more explanatory power to loneliness outcomes compared to a linear approach
DISTRIBUTED AND SELECTIVE ATTENTION IN BILINGUAL AND MONOLINGUAL PRESCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN
No full textThis study investigated the effects of early bilingualism on selective and distributed auditory attention in preschool-aged children. Using an online, asynchronous preferential-looking paradigm, 48 children (24 bilingual, 24 monolingual), aged 2.98-4.89 years, were presented with trials in which two speakers simultaneously named familiar objects. Selective attention was measured by children’s fixation on targets named by the primary speaker, while distributed attention was measured by recall of targets previously named by the secondary speaker. Contrary to the hypothesis, no significant effect of language group was observed in either task. While children showed a weak significant effect of looking at target objects vs. distractor objects in selective attention trials, no group differences emerged, and performance in distributed attention tasks was near chance for both groups. Importantly, variability in bilingual participants’ language dominance, as reported through measures of children’s language experience, suggests group comparisons may obscure individual differences in bilingual experience. The absence of robust bilingual advantages in attention may also reflect limitations in task design, particularly for measuring distributed attention in young children in remote testing environments. These findings highlight the complexity of measuring bilingualism in early childhood and call attention to structural barriers that limit representation of non-English dominant families in developmental research. Future research should employ more refined measures of bilingual experience and address environmental and methodological constraints in remote child language studies
Online Surrogate-Based Multi-Objective Design Optimization using Generative Adversarial Networks with Constraint Assistance
No full textMulti-objective design optimization problems can be computationally expensive, such is the case with many engineering optimization problems, due to the original objective and/or constraint functions of the problem being costly to evaluate. A method established in current scientific literature to reduce the computational cost for such optimization problems involves the implementation of a surrogate or a lower-cost model to be used in the optimization process in place of the computationally expensive objective/constraint functions. The approach developed in this thesis uses an online surrogate-based optimization method in which the surrogate is developed and iteratively updated as the optimizer converges to a solution.
The primary contribution of this work is the proposal of a new approach for online surrogate-based multi-objective design optimization using generative adversarial networks. A constraint boundary-informed support vector machine facilitates the approach to predict whether the generated solutions are feasible or infeasible. The performance of the proposed approach is evaluated and compared to two other methods from the literature. The comparison of these methods is carried out using several quality metrics and using numerical and engineering test problems. The engineering test problem is based on the optimization of the operating conditions of an unmanned surface vessel. The results from these test problems indicate that the proposed approach is able to outperform the other approaches for most of the quality metrics and test problems
Discrepencies in Anxiety-Reporting in Autism: Correlating Self-Reports with RMSSD
No full textAnxiety is one of the most common co-occurring conditions in autistic youth. Anxiety can manifest differently in autistic compared to non-autistic populations, making it difficult to identify anxiety in autistic youth. The Screen for Child Anxiety-Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED; Birhmaher et al., 1997) is considered to be a gold-standard measurement tool that aims to provide a dual-informed perspective (Behrens et al., 2020). However, discrepancies between parent and child reports have been observed, suggesting a need for an objective indicator of anxiety such as low levels of heart rate variability, which can be quantified via root mean square of successive differences (RMSSD) (Shaffer & Ginsberg, 2017). This research aimed to investigate the discrepancies between parent- and child-reported anxiety within an autistic and non-autistic sample and examine whether parent and/or child reports are more closely aligned with biological indicators of anxiety (i.e., low RMSSD). We hypothesized that there would be statistically significant discrepancies between the parent and child-reported anxiety symptoms, and that child-reported anxiety would more closely align with RMSSD values (a negative correlation). Participants included 44 adolescents (21 nonautistic, 23 autistic) aged 11-14 years old (Mage = 12.9 years) recruited from a larger study investigating associations between anxiety and heart rate variability. A paired-samples t-test revealed a significant difference between parent and child reported anxiety symptoms, t(43) = -3.22, p < .01, such that youth reported significantly higher anxiety (M = -7.84) than their parents. When utilizing a difference score between parent and child reported anxiety symptoms, an independent-samples t-test revealed a significant group difference, t(42) = 2.43, p = .02, such that the nonautistic group had a larger discrepancy between parent and child scores (M = 13.71) compared to the autistic group (M = 2.48). Finally, a trend toward a negative correlation between parent-reported anxiety symptoms and RMSSD values were observed, r = -.29, p = .06, and a significant correlation between child report and RMSSD value was found, r = .47, p = .02.Research reported in this poster was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award number K08MH133879 to Dr. Yarger. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH