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Singular upward flows and conformal limits in the Hitchin moduli space
No full textThe moduli space of Higgs bundles admits a -action, where taking the downward limits contracts the moduli space to the connected components of the fixed-point locus. Through a -fixed point, the locus which contracts to it is referred to as the upward flow through it. In this thesis, we construct a sublocus in the upward flow through a polystable fixed point called the central locus using the local Kuranishi model around the fixed point. We show that its intersection with the stable locus of the moduli space is a complex Lagrangian. When either the polystable -fixed point has a zero field or when its automorphism group is abelian, we prove that this intersection non-empty. Under the same assumption, we prove that the existence of the conformal limit of a stable point along the central locus. Finally, in rank two, we compute and give a concrete description of the central locus and the upward flow through a generic strictly polystable -fixed point. We compute the dimension of the upward flow and demonstrate that it has two components
The Paradox of Thinking about “People” as “Resources”: A Study of Employee Objectification and Employee Voice
No full textEmployee voice is vital for organizations—it helps in error detection, drives innovation, and improves performance. Yet, managers are often reluctant to encourage employee voice. To address this, researchers and practitioners often urge managers to think of employees as valuable resources for better decision-making. I argue that this perspective presents a paradox. Drawing from research on employee voice and employee objectification, I argue that thinking of employees as resources has a dual effect: it motivates managers to encourage voice but also increases the likelihood of treating employees as objects for organizational gain. I further suggest that when objectified, managerial encouragement of voice loses its impact on employees—employees no longer feel responsible to engage in voice. As a result, urging managers to think of employees as resources ultimately backfires and does not lead to employee voice. I test this idea across five complementary studies: a pilot archival study, three pre-registered experiments, and a field survey. I also highlight the theoretical and practical implications of my findings
Political Elite Competition and the Post-Conflict Status of Women
No full textMy book project research focuses on the status of women in post-conflict societies. Despitesubstantial international and local efforts to improve the status of women after civil wars end, we
see enormous variation in outcomes – with great strides for women’s rights and gender equality
made in states such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, and tepid progress in Chad and Sri Lanka, for
example. I propose a novel theory of the role of electoral politics plays in explaining variation in
gender equality outcomes in states emerging from civil conflict. I argue that electoral legislative
competition amongst political elites, often a mix of incumbent and new actors mobilized by
conflict, drives their incentives to address gender equality reform in post-conflict contexts as
they seek to win the votes of the electorate, particularly women. To evaluate this argument, I first
use cross-national, observational data to establish a relationship between elite political
competition and women’s rights. I find a positive and statistically significant relationship
between increased electoral competition and higher women’s rights levels, even when
accounting for alternative mechanisms of supporting women’s rights. I complement this analysis
by examining how elite competition has impacted expansion of inheritance rights and citizenship
rights with a qualitative case study of Nepal. In this chapter, I use qualitative evidence including
fieldwork interviews, newspapers, academic articles, and policy reports to demonstrate my
causal theory to demonstrate how political competition has been a significant mechanism for
securing gender equality outcomes in Nepal. Lastly, I examine barriers to the expansion of
gender equality outcomes in post-conflict states by examining cases when domestic political
competition incentivizes elites to shirk accountability for gender-based war crimes during postconflict
politics. Overall, my book project addresses a critical challenge for global politics today
and speaks to literature on gender and security, post-war political reform and politics more
broadly
THE RIGHT TO THE CLASSROOM: THE GEOGRAPHY OF SPECIAL EDUCATION IN BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
No full textIn 1984, Plaintiffs filed a lawsuit—Vaughn G. v Mayor and City Council of Baltimore—in U.S. District Court alleging that the school district was failing to deliver on new federal special education requirements. The case was immediately contentious, and its scale and scope quickly expanded beyond the fulfillment of legislatively mandated instructional requirements and the court’s initial solutions centered on bureaucratic practices and institutional priorities. Thirty years later the case came to a final, if uncertain, resolution that unevenly addressed the demands of students, families, and legal advocates that motivated the initial filing of the case. This dissertation explores the history of this sprawling, three-decade litigation, seeking to understand what transpired and, in doing so, explore the prospects and limits of court-based solutions to problems at the intersection of disability and public schooling. To do so, this dissertation situates Vaughn G. in historical contexts of institutional behavior, namely that of educational, medical, and political institutions in shaping special education policy and practice and analyzes those conditions by embracing what scholars have termed a “spatial turn” in educational research. Litigation remains a common path for families and students to pursue justice in education. While a great deal of scholarship has been published to understand school litigation in the context of racial desegregation and school finance, fewer pieces have addressed the impacts of special education litigation, particularly the the local impacts of special education consent decrees. The formative era of special education legislation and case law in the 1970s and 1980s is subject to increasingly creative scholarly historical treatment, as well as analyses that embrace what scholar Alfredo Artiles referred to as a “historical epistemologies.” Such cross-disciplinary approaches have opened new pathways to understanding relationships between historical schooling conditions, markers of identity including disability and race, and notions of justice. This dissertation situates Vaughn G. in a century of disability history in Maryland, proceeding on the understanding that special education law, like other legal fields, is inseparable from the historical, political, social, and spatial ecosystems in which the cases are filed.
This dissertation seeks to understand institutional answers to a) What does a spatial framework reveal about relationships between law, disability, and public schooling? b) How is disability defined spatially in Baltimore’s schooling history? c) How was space constructed in the Vaughn G. case? and d) Who in Baltimore and Maryland asserted authority to define students? From the perspective of students and schooling, it seeks to understand who counts as a student in Baltimore schooling history and how students are defined in this case? To answer these questions, I analyzed a plethora of archival materials—including city and state documents and popular press reporting—with the case records of the Vaughn G. proceedings serving as the primary source.
Six main findings emerge from my historical investigation. First, policies in Maryland related to disability and schooling were subject to institutional turf wars between state education and health executives as well as private medical institutions between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These conflicts led to a second finding, that while there were forms of “special education” that pre-date the turn of the 20th century in Maryland public schools, the state nominally granted authority to its medical establishments, primarily through its racially segregated state hospital system, to provide education for disabled youth. However, these facilities never truly operated as educational spaces, as they were bereft of academic resources, and largely focused on instructing young, institutionalized people to labor rather than to read. Third, while the Vaughn G. case was premised on legal advocacy for individual rights for disabled youth long denied equitable educational opportunities, the case turned on state-centered bureaucratic solutions as a solution and, in turn, rarely addressed the unique needs of individual learners. Fourth, analysis of archival records in this case affirms what is becoming a consistent finding in educational research, that the increase in accessibility of public schools borne of legislation and judicial rulings did not necessarily result in just experiences and outcomes within schools. Fifth, the settlement of this case was as much about the political skill of key educational leaders as it was of the influence of policy development on the disposition of teachers and principals. Finally, this case significantly impacted the shape and structure of the school district. This finding is visible through the creation of a parallel bureaucratic structure of legal experts and a host of court appointed monitors and experts over its decades, in its influence on reshaping the structure of the city’s school board, and in the costliness—fiscal and educational—that defined it.
This case reveals, among other implications, how spatial frameworks enhance historical analysis by illuminating individuals and groups whose decision making authority are legitimated in defining and deploying disability labels, and in the ways that relevant publics make sense of those definitions. It demonstrates opportunities for teaching practice, particularly in the importance of school leadership from the perspectives of district headquarters or from principals’ offices. It offers opportunities for preservice, novice, and veteran educators to foster a place-conscious pedagogy, and a critical perspective for prospective educators to embrace the possibilities and limits of the law to address conditions of educational injustice. Finally, there are implications for understanding stories that laws may tell beyond the arguments of plaintiffs and defendants. In particular, this case reveals the host of individuals, institutions, and offices who were positioned as authorities and experts of the conditions of students, to the near exclusion of children, families, and guardians in its proceedings
DISRUPTING ANTI-BLACKNESS IN K-12 DEAF EDUCATION
No full textDiscussion of anti-Blackness in deaf education is limited and the experiences of Black Deaf students are significantly understudied. While existing research has explored the educational outcomes of deaf students, these studies often fail to incorporate a critical race analysis, resulting in a perpetuation of longstanding racial inequalities rather than efforts to dismantle them. This oversight marginalizes the complex lived experiences of Black Deaf students, whose experiences are influenced by intersections between race, deafness, and other identities. The purpose of this study was to examine how Black Deaf students navigate and interpret their lived experiences in schooling spaces that are often shaped by systemic anti-Blackness. Given Black Deaf students' intersecting identities, a single conceptual framework cannot fully capture their unique K-12 schooling experiences. To address this gap, I developed Black Deaf Critical Theory as a new framework to examine how power structures and racial inequality in deaf education, influenced by anti-Blackness, Whiteness, and hearingness, manifest through pedagogical practices, curricula, and policies that uphold White supremacy. A narrative inquiry approach was utilized to center the voices of former Black Deaf students by exploring their schooling experiences. Through interviews and a focus group, Black Deaf participants shared schooling experiences that often failed to acknowledge or address their unique needs and challenges. The findings highlight the urgent need for educational practices, policies, and curricula that are explicitly Black Deaf-centered. These approaches must actively challenge and dismantle the entrenched systems of anti-Blackness, Whiteness, and hearingness within deaf education. This study seeks not only to elevate the voices of Black Deaf students but also to advocate for transformative changes in deaf education
The Relationship Between Violence Exposure and Perceived Cognitive Difficulties in Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Mental Health
No full textThe goal of this study was to investigate the relationship between violence, mental health problems, and perceived cognitive difficulties among U.S. high school students, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing data from the Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey (ABES), this study addressed two primary questions: 1) Is involvement in or exposure to violence associated with perceived cognitive difficulties in adolescents? and 2) To what extent does mental health mediate this relationship? Findings identified several factors related to violence that were associated with perceived cognitive difficulties in adolescence, including weapon-carrying at school, feeling unsafe at school, being threatened or injured with a weapon at school, physical fighting, and exposure to community violence. Mental health significantly mediated these relationships, although the magnitude and influence of this mediation differed across the examined variables. These findings highlight the nuanced interplay between violence exposure, mental health, and cognitive functioning in adolescents
A Covert Script: The AMA's fight against racial inclusion in US healthcare
No full textIn 2008 the American Medical Association (AMA) formally apologized to African American Physicians for 150 years of racial discrimination. The report sparked attempts to remedy injustice by establishing an equity committee and by denouncing AMA leaders and AMA events that led to discriminatory practices. By 2008 the AMA lacked control over the medical establishment that it had largely created, and its admission of wrongdoing barely mentioned the very core of the AMA’s Zeitgeist constructed through the scientific debasement of African American bodies, an edifice that exists even today.In this paper I will argue that American healthcare grew and prospered by relying on a medical-racial script that relegated African American bodies to the realm of dangerous alterity while degrading African American medical providers. This script germinated during the colonial and liberal epochs of American history and blossomed after the AMA seized regulatory control over the cogs of American medicine in the early 1900’s. The marginalization and exclusion of African American medical providers from mainstream orthodox medicine constituted not a series of racist acts by people within defined moments, but rather a foundational building block of modern healthcare. During its Progressive rise, and especially after the publication of the Flexner Report in 1911, the AMA silently used racial exclusion as a means of elevating the status of its white members and its own organizational hegemony.
To understand the fabric of racial caste in healthcare provision requires us to transcend demonizing certain individuals and isolating certain moments in time during which the AMA engaged in racist acts. The AMA did not create the nation’s medical-racial script, but nor did it dispute it, relying on it throughout its existence to establish its own scientific status and to bring white orthodox doctors under a singular dogmatic roof. It is not possible to understand the rise of corporate, scientific, and academic medicine in this country without placing our gaze on its racial roots.
This paper will explore America’s medical-racial script from its origins in the colonial period, its growth during the liberal period, and its ascension during the Progressive period. The AMA became the singular architect of our current corporate healthcare system, and for over 50 years after it crafted the Flexner Report in conjunction with corporate entities, its overseer. During its entire existence it promoted the medical-racial script, but aside from a singular moment in 1870, it never uttered racial depredations, nor did it ever interact with a growing African American professional medical class, relying instead on silences and neglect to construct its medical juggernaut. The science of racial degradation had become so normalized by the time even of the AMA’s birth in 1847 to render it as scientific fact, freeing the AMA from discussing it even as its leaders utilized it to build its base of power. This is not a tale of a few bad players or deplorable events, as the AMA apology suggests, but rather one of persistent racial alterity that catalyzed orthodox medicine’s triumph in the twentieth century and beyond
"It Feels Like I'm Receiving a Letter from the Past": Improving the Usability of an Indonesian Special Collections Repository to Enhance Library Users' Search Experiences
No full textKhasanah Pustaka Nusantara (Khastara) is a special collections repository built by the National Library of Indonesia to provide access for digitized special collections. The items of Khastara reflect the diverse ethnicities, languages, and histories of Indonesia. This constitutes a strength in Khastara, but it also comes with challenges in search experiences and discovery of content. Therefore, data gathering is required to provide accurate picture of user search experi-ences, focusing on user perceptions about usability of Khastara and their information search pro-cesses. A mixed-methods approach was employed, specifically convergent research design. The selection of procedures is informed by HCI research, with the quantitative part being System Us-ability Scale Questionnaires (SUS) distributed to Khastara users (n = 166). For the qualitative portion of the research, interviews based on contextual inquiry paradigm were conducted with users (n = 10), with additional interviews with librarians (n = 3). The aggregate SUS study score was 61.72, signifying lower than average usability perceptions in Khastara users. Interview data resulted in a list of usability problems for the Khastara platform. Interview data was also ex-plained using Kuhlthau’s (2018) information search process model, highlighting challenges that users faced at stages of their search experiences and their feelings throughout the search pro-cesses. The interview data was visualized through a user journey map, highlighting the usability problems and challenges in the search processes in a typical Khastara user. Both quantitative and qualitative data were joined in mixed-methods data displays. The results were then summarized in a list of design implications. Design deliverables were created to demonstrate these design implications in the form of low-fidelity wireframes for Khastara’s user interface and metadata application profile for Khastara’s metadata. The study results suggest that Khastara’s user inter-face should enable users to explore items through category displays instead of relying on user-typed queries. Metadata descriptions should be expanded with information about languages, top-ics/subjects, and collections, as well as additional physical descriptions, summaries/abstracts, notes, and relations with other documents. This research about Khastara demonstrates overlaps between human-computer interaction and information behavior, and further research needs to be conducted to achieve universal usability and accessibility in digital special collections and cul-tural heritage experiences
Pierrot Sketches
No full textPierrot Sketches is comprised of nine short movements of varying instrumental combinations and length, from 50 seconds to three minutes. The compositional goal was to focus
on the complexities of form and development on a smaller scale. This aspect of compression
allows for focus on clear, directed melodic lines, strong emotionally packed gestures, repetition
and divergence, and the different instrumental combinations of texture and timbre and their
contribution to form. The title of this work is taken from Arnold Schoenberg’s well known
chamber work Pierrot Lunaire, which is now a standard reference to this instrumentation—
“Pierrot ensemble” (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and, in this case, the addition of
percussion). “Sketches” refers to the nature of the work—a collection, a book of rough drawings
that may or may not relate to each other, but can be taken as a whole. While each movement is its
own sound world, together these individual works are written to form a complete landscape
Sawubona (I See You): Black Women Principals in Urban Schools, Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS), and Well-being
No full textSecondary traumatic stress (STS) is an understudied topic in the education field (Luciw, 2024; Ormiston et al., 2022; Simon et al., 2022; Walker, 2019). This qualitative, grounded theory, methodological study hypothesized that STS negatively influences the professional and personal well-being of Black women principals in urban schools. Four research questions sought to understand: 1) STS experiences, 2) coping, 3) intersectionality, and 4) retention, attrition, and district-level support. The intersectionality framework undergirds this study to offer insight into the dual historical experiences of being Black and a woman and how the roots of gendered racism make Black women more vulnerable to the symptoms of STS than other groups. In three phases, data was collected from twelve Black women, current and former principals, in urban schools in the United States through the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) survey, semi-structured interviews, and a post-reflection activity. Ten themes emerged in the study, and four core findings surfaced: 1) The experiences of Black women principals in urban schools in this study have more in common negative experiences with STS than different. 2) Left unsupported, STS may result in a health crisis for Black women principals in urban schools. 3) Urban school districts have a social justice responsibility to create a healthy workplace with culturally responsive supports; self-care alone is insufficient to address STS. 4) This study suggests that STS negatively influences the retention and attrition of Black women principals in urban schools and that short reassignments to other responsibilities could offer some promise. The researcher introduced the R.E.A.C.T. conceptual framework to address STS in urban schools. Given the documented positive impact of Black women principals on the academic success of Black students (Jang & Alexander, 2022) and the rapidly declining rate of the current 7% of Black women principals in the nation (Lomotey, 2019), absent attention to STS will result in long-lasting physical and mental effects for Black women principals’ well-being, a negative impact on student achievement, and a decline in schools and communities overall.
Keywords: Black women principals, burnout, compassion fatigue, compassion satisfaction, gendered racism, intersectionality, leadership, mental health, attrition, retention, ProQOL, secondary traumatic stress (STS), trauma-informed, urban schools, well-bein