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Beyond Bars: Examining the Hidden Consequences of Carceral Expansion into Family Homes
Get PDFThe massive expansion of the U.S. carceral system over the last half century represents one of the most consequential exercises of state power, marked not only by a rapid increase in incarceration but also a parallel growth of mass supervision. Today, nearly six million people are under some form of carceral control—about 2 million in prisons and jails and 4 million under carceral supervision, primarily probation and parole. This expansion, however, is reflected not only in the increased number of people under carceral control, but also in a spatial extension, as the carceral system extends beyond prisons and jails and into domestic homes. Here, the state exercises surveillance, intrusion, and control in ways that transform family homes into new carceral spaces, representing a significant consolidation of state power. Through supervision policies and practices, the state exerts control not only over the home itself but also over other household members, including those not under formal supervision. Because family homes are typically viewed as non-carceral sites and carceral governance is presumed to apply only to those under formal supervision, the consequences of this expansion have largely remained hidden and underexplored. This dissertation examines the consequences of this hidden expansion into family homes by drawing on in-depth interviews with 92 people in Chicago—47 individuals on parole, probation, and electronic home monitoring, and 45 co-residing family members of someone under one of these forms of supervision. It is structured into three papers, each focusing on a distinct consequence of what I refer to as carceral home invasions—the disruptive and violent act of the state entering family homes and governing its occupants through carceral supervision. In the first paper, I employ the legal violence framework (Menjívar & Abrego, 2012) to examine carceral supervision statuses extend punishment beyond individuals to produce material and emotional hardships in the everyday lives of co-residing family members. I show how these hardships and the constant threat of incarceration disrupted these family members’ work and school lives in ways that negatively affected pay, opportunities for advancement, and academic trajectories. The second paper uses the homebreaking framework (Gurusami & Kurwa, 2021) to examine the “spying” and “raiding” of family homes as it traces how 42 individuals under supervision became separated from their families while under supervision. It identifies three aspects of supervision that led to these separations: supervision restrictions, supervision mandates, and enforcement practices. The third paper uses a state sexual violence framework to examine the context of 13 women who experienced sexual victimization by parole officers, police officers, and other supervisory staff while on parole. It explores the context of these abuses and how the women responded while also navigating their parole. Findings reveal patterns in the timing, spaces, and tactics used by state actors to target women alongside variation in women’s response strategies. Collectively, these papers make visible several collateral consequences of carceral supervision that have largely remained hidden and received little attention in supervision scholarship
Managing Ideological Tensions under Authoritarian Rule
No full textThis thesis examines ideology and morality, focusing on the ideological tension among Tibetans and the integrity of their moral self under China's authoritarian rule. One aspect highlights how a specific curriculum, infused with state ideology, creates noticeable tension between Tibetan Buddhism and secular Chinese Marxism for students and teachers within the school environment. Simultaneously, the thesis documents and reflects on family moral education in the daily life of contemporary Tibetans based on ethnographic research. Using multiple methods, my study finds that Tibetan students generally do not feel the need to reconcile these ideological conflicts or choose between the two belief systems. Instead, guided by their practical wisdom, they find ways to live with both opposing ideologies. For example, they practice tolerance to manage intolerance, avoid sensitive debates, and apply contextualization to dissolve apparent conflicts. They maintain their beliefs while understanding opposing views and set clear boundaries between personal beliefs and overt behaviors. Similarly, Tibetan teachers employ various tactics to navigate tensions arising from their diverse social roles and identities—being Tibetan Buddhists, instructors of Marxist ideology courses, and morality role models for the next generation. In this thesis, I interpret these tactics and describe their efforts using the theoretical concept of an “ideology tax,” which draws on a local Tibetan expression, ཁྲལ་འཇལ་འདོད་མེད་པ།, meaning “unwillingly paying tax.” Guided by this conceptual framework, the thesis aims to understand how Tibetans navigate an authoritarian regime while maintaining moral integrity, a stable, shameless, and consistent sense of self. From their perspective, paying the mandated ideology tax to a Chinese secular Marxist government seeking ideological control is seen as an opportunity to creatively exercise their own agency as subjects. The thesis concludes with reflections on both the universal and Buddhist-specific features of the Tibetan response to ideological domination
A novel expectation-maximization approach to infer general diploid selection from time-series genetic data
Get PDFDetecting and quantifying the strength of selection is a major objective in population genetics. Since selection acts over multiple generations, many approaches have been developed to detect and quantify selection using genetic data sampled at multiple points in time. Such time-series genetic data is commonly analyzed using Hidden Markov Models, but in most cases, under the assumption of additive selection. However, many examples of genetic variation exhibiting non-additive mechanisms exist, making it critical to develop methods that can characterize selection in more general scenarios. Here, we extend a previously introduced expectation-maximization algorithm for the inference of additive selection coefficients to the case of general diploid selection, in which the heterozygote and homozygote fitness are parameterized independently. We furthermore introduce a framework to identify bespoke modes of diploid selection from given data, a heuristic to account for variable population size, and a procedure for aggregating data across linked loci to increase power and robustness. Using extensive simulation studies, we find that our method accurately and efficiently estimates selection coefficients for different modes of diploid selection across a wide range of scenarios; however, power to classify the mode of selection is low unless selection is very strong. We apply our method to ancient DNA samples from Great Britain in the last 4,450 years and detect evidence for selection in six genomic regions, including the well-characterized LCT locus. Our work is the first genome-wide scan characterizing signals of general diploid selection
Tisser l’intime et le collectif: Scénographie et transformation sociale dans <i>Elle était une fois… LA jupe !</i> de Mohamed Amin Boudrika
Get PDFCet entretien avec le metteur en scène marocain Mohamed Amin Boudrika explore sa pièce de théâtre Elle était une fois… LA jupe !, qui transforme l’affaire dite de « la jupe d’Inezgane » de 2015 en une interrogation théâtrale sur la société marocaine contemporaine. En juin 2015, à Inezgane, une ville du sud du Maroc, deux jeunes femmes ont été arrêtées après avoir été prises à partie par des passants en raison de la longueur jugée « indécente » de leurs jupes. Accusées d’« atteinte aux mœurs », elles ont été poursuivies en justice, suscitant un vif débat sur les libertés individuelles, le contrôle du corps féminin et des codes vestimentaires dans l’espace public. L’affaire a provoqué une mobilisation nationale et internationale, avec des manifestations et des campagnes de soutien exigeant leur acquittement. À travers une discussion détaillée de son processus d’adaptation de ce fait divers, Boudrika dévoile comment il a créé le personnage d’une couturière conservatrice aux créations avant-gardistes pour examiner la relation complexe entre choix individuels et conventions sociales. Notre entretien illumine l’évolution de sa pratique scénographique, influencée à la fois par les traditions théâtrales occidentales et l’héritage dramatique marocain, notamment la forja. Dans un contexte où les questions des libertés individuelles sont de plus en plus débattues dans la société marocaine, le travail de Boudrika montre comment le théâtre peut dialoguer avec les enjeux sociétaux à travers un entrelacement sophistiqué d’espaces, de sons et d’images. Cet entretien met en lumière les questions de dramaturgie de l’espace, l’usage du français dans le théâtre marocain, et la manière dont les techniques de mise en scène peuvent créer un dialogue autour de sujets sociaux sensibles. This interview with Moroccan theatre director Mohamed Amin Boudrika explores his work Elle était une fois… LA jupe!, a play that transforms the 2015 ‘Inezgane skirt affair’ into a theatrical reflection on contemporary Moroccan society. In June 2015, in Inezgane, a city in southern Morocco, two young women were arrested after being confronted by passers-by because the length of their skirts was deemed indecent. Accused of ‘atteinte aux mœurs’, they were prosecuted, triggering a heated debate on individual freedoms, control over women’s bodies and dress codes in public spaces. A national and international mobilization ensued, with demonstrations and support campaigns demanding their acquittal, which ultimately led to their release. Through a detailed discussion of his creative process, Boudrika reveals how he uses the character of a conservative dressmaker with avant-garde creations to highlight the complex relationship between individual choices and social conventions. Our conversation unpacks the evolution of his scenographic practice, influenced by both Western theatrical traditions and Moroccan performance heritage, particularly the ‘forja’. In a context where questions of individual freedoms are increasingly a subject of debate in Moroccan society, Boudrika’s work demonstrates how theatre can engage with societal issues through a sophisticated interplay of space, sound, and image. This interview explores questions of theatrical space and dramaturgy, the use of French in Moroccan theatre, and how staging techniques can create dialogue around sensitive social issues.</p
Accounting for Goodwill
Get PDFA significant portion of a merger's purchase price is allocated to goodwill. Currently, goodwill is not amortized but rather tested annually for impairment. When managers of acquiring firms care about earnings, goodwill's accounting treatment can have large effects on future earnings and may influence how much a manager will bid for a target company. We quantify the effects of goodwill accounting by estimating a structural model of corporate takeovers. Our estimates suggest accrual accounting increases buyout premia by an average of approximately 11 percentage points. If firms needed to amortize goodwill over 10 years, we estimate premia would reduce by 4.9 percentage points and M&A volume would shrink by 4.1% or $67 billion per year. Furthermore, the fraction of private equity acquirers would increase by 6.9 percentage points, shifting control over productive assets to the private and financial sector. Our results suggest the accounting treatment for goodwill has a meaningful effect on the market for corporate control
“LE MUSE SON DONNE”: SESSUALITÀ, COMUNITÀ E LETTURA AL TEMPO DEL 'DECAMERON'
No full textThe present dissertation investigates the role of women in Boccaccio's The Decameron, establishing a connection between the philosophical, historical and fictional levels. The Decameron is a book that was first circulated around 1350 in Florence, in the aftermath of the Black Death. The narrative is composed of two constituent elements. Firstly, a frame story in which a group of ten youths escape a plagued city, and secondly, a collection of one hundred novellas that the youths tell each other in order to entertain themselves. Historically, the high concentration of speaking female characters in the book has been tied to the rise of vernacular literature. I argue instead that the opposition of the male and female gender works as a structuring device on which Boccaccio bases his imagination of the reconstruction of civic community all the while rethinking courtly love and the institution of marriage. I propose a gendered reading of Roberto Esposito’s philosophy of community, through which I connect a biopolitical reading of the role of women and a reading of Boccaccio’s political interest in Florence, which has been the object of recent critical attention. The core chapters of my dissertation contextualize the representations of prostitution and female pleasure in the time of Boccaccio, showing how the stern treatment of prostitution in The Decameron is connected to its lack of value for the civic community and how the indulgence on a subtle representation of female pleasure is instead condoned in view of its crucial role in conception according to late-medieval medicine. The final chapter looks at the reading practices that shape both the reception and the narrative structure of the book, taking as a paradigm a famous epistle to Boccaccio’s friend Mainardo Cavalcanti, whose family, I argue, offers a negative model of reading. Novellas analyzed include, among others: 5.10 (Pietro di Vinciolo the homosexual and the voluptuous wife); 7.2 (Peronella in Naples); 8.1 (Ambruogia the failed prostitute in Milan); 8.2 (Belcolore the peasant and the priest); 9.3 (pregnant Calandrino and wife Tessa); 9.10 (Donno Gianni turns Pietro’s wife in a mare)
Judeo-Christianity and Its Fates: Jewishness, Blackness, and the Racial Politics of Religion in Postwar French Thought
Get PDF“Judeo-Christianity and Its Fates: Jewishness, Blackness, and the Racial Politics of Religion in Postwar French Thought” tracks the relationship of Blackness and Jewishness to conceptions of race and religion in French thought to destabilize a question that continually emerges in American politics, and which reverberates globally: are Jews white? Delving into the politics of this formulation, I trace out how race and religion, deeply intertwined in the nineteenth-century figure of the Jew in France, are separated and placed in opposition through a new conception of the Jew that emerged in twentieth-century France as the basis for political critique. It discusses three textual conversations: the comparison of Blackness and Jewishness in work by Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon; the substitution of religion for race as what defines Jewishness in Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot, and Jacques Derrida’s writing on Jean Genet, Judaism and philosophy in Glas, along with Genet’s own controversial representation of Blackness, Jewishness, and Palestine. Through archival research on these authors and close readings of key works, I ask how race and religion were redefined in twentieth-century theory, and what this history can tell us about the roles of race and religion in current discourses on whiteness, colonialism, and Zionism
3,1-Benzoxazepines: A Common Mode of Activation for Single-Atom Skeletal Editing of Azaarenes
Get PDFThis dissertation explores single-atom editing of azaarene substrates enabled by a common mode of skeletal activation: photochemical generation of 3,1-benzoxazepines. Chapter 1 presents selected case studies of high-impact design elements and the corresponding synthetic practices, eventually leading to the motivation for pursuing skeletal editing transformations in drug discovery. Then, the definitions and classification schemes of single-atom editing are introduced, and the prior art of carbon deletion and carbon-to-nitrogen exchanges of azaarenes are discussed in detail, highlighting key reactive intermediates and mechanisms. The last section of Chapter 1 focuses on classical photochemistry of quinoline N-oxide, which contains various pathways to secondary photoproducts and hydrolysis products due to the harsh, broadband irradiation of mercury lamps. Chapter 2 reports a process of wavelength optimization using LEDs to achieve selective excitations of azaarene N-oxides substrates, and subsequent in situ acidolysis accomplished net C2-selective carbon deletion. Chapter 3 explores a direct replacement of carbon with a nitrogen atom that bypasses deletion-insertion heuristics of transmutation. Inducing oxidative cleavage on the enol ether moiety of 3,1-benzoxazepines generates “sticky end” intermediates that incorporate the nitrogen atom and simultaneously excise the replaced carbon atom as labile leaving groups. Finally, Chapter 4 reports the serendipitous discovery of HFIP-promoted, reagent-controlled selective deletion of C3 or C2 carbon atom of azaarenes, enabling divergent single-atom editing. Distinctive kinds of skeletal editing discussed throughout Chapters 2-4 are unified under a common activation strategy; in this way, a rapid diversification of the parent azaarene skeleton is achieved through parallel synthesis
Molecular and Solid-State Chemistry Synergy in the Synthesis of 2D Transition Metal Carbide MXenes
No full textThe secret of Van der Waals materials and 2D materials lies in their layers. Layered transition metal carbides and nitrides (MXenes) are a family of rapidly developing materials that hold great promise for interdisciplinary research. We believe that a synergistic contribution from branches of chemistry will greatly accelerate the development of interfacial platforms like MXenes. Advancing MXene synthesis is currently the key step in promoting sustainable MXene research. The currently dominant top-down etching approach benefits from its simple protocols and scalability but inevitably faces challenges in sample quality and reproducibility. Direct bottom-up approaches are expected to address the issues and advance MXene science by providing high-quality samples for fundamental physics and cutting-edge research. In Chapter 2, we introduced the first direct synthesis of MXenes. We show that Ti2CCl2 and Ti2NCl2 MXenes can be directly synthesized from Ti metal, titanium chlorides (TiCl3 or TiCl4), and various X sources, including graphite, CH4, or N2. Besides convenience and scalability, the direct synthesis routes offer synthetic modalities complementary to traditional top-down methods. For example, we demonstrate chemical vapor deposition (CVD) synthesis of extended carpets of MXene sheets oriented perpendicular to the substrate. Such orientations make MXene surfaces easily accessible for ion intercalation and (electro)chemical transformations by exposing edge sites with high catalytic activity. We later generalized the direct MXene synthesis. In Chapter 3, we used organohalides, a family of halogenated hydrocarbons (e.g., C2Cl4, CH2Cl2, and CH2Br2), as general precursors that can be combined with different transition metals to produce various MXenes (Ti2CCl2, Ti2CBr2, Zr2CCl2, Zr2CBr2, Nb2CCl2), including a new Nb2CBr2 MXene phase not accessed by other routes. These precursors can be easily handled under ambient conditions because of their stability and low corrosivity. We systematically studied the mechanism and thermodynamics of the reactions, so that the synthesis of MXenes became predictable and programmable. The use of molecular precursors enables precise control of their reactivity, which allows the direct synthesis of solution-processable MXene nanostructures. We demonstrate that nanometer-scale MXenes show higher surface reactivity compared to MXenes with micron-sized flakes. After achieving a breakthrough in MXene synthesis, in Chapter 4 we switched our focus to another unique dimension of MXene research – surface chemistry. MXenes are naturally capped with surface terminal groups that can be replaced, grafted or eliminated via post-synthesis modification. The wide chemical tunability of MXene surfaces makes them ideal modular platforms for catalysis. However, the investigation of MXene surfaces as catalytic platforms is limited. We introduce novel organometallic MXenes synthesized via electrochemical surface alkylation. These newly formed organometallic MXenes bridge solid-state materials with classic organometallic molecular motifs. In line with their unique structure, these organometallic MXenes display fundamentally new reactivity; alkyl-terminated Nb2C MXenes are catalysts for C–C activation and C≡C deletion reactions of terminal alkynes. The novel structure and reactivity of these new organometallic species, combined with the innate structural and compositional tunability of MXenes, make them a unique and emerging catalytic platform
A Nurse's Touch: The Evolution of Caregiving Labor, Education, and Touch in Modern Japanese Nursing
Get PDFFrom the beginning of Japan’s medical modernization during the early Meiji period, the nurse (kangofu)—literally translated as “women who watch and protect”—cared for the sick and wounded. She was a fixture in hospitals and clinics, caring for strangers in a time when it was not common for women to engage in labor in which they were paid to touch strangers. In Japan, the modern medical experience was foreign in many ways, including moving to designated medical spaces called hospitals rather than in homes or at religious sites. As the number of hospitals expanded, so did the need for trained nurses to assist physicians and facilitate the experience of modern medicine for patients. From the 1880s, Japanese nurses engaged in nursing pedagogy in a tactual manner. They debated how to better care for the needs of a diverse range of patients through medical journals and their own textbooks. Their written teachings were brought into communication with others that were being produced at the same time throughout the world. These nurses also participated in international organizations dedicated to the interests of their labor, including the International Council of Nurses and in organizations such as the Red Cross. Considering this active participation in- and contribution to- their profession, treating Japanese nursing as an adaptation of a western mode ignores their long history of caregiving labor. Nurses touched, moved, manipulated, comforted, and controlled patient bodies in a way that was different from physicians and surgeons. Utilizing textbooks, nursing publications, photographs, government documents, and even popular culture such as women’s magazines, nurses advanced medical knowledge about bodies, framing their experiences in terms of touch. This dissertation employs these sources to examine the intellectual and social history of Japanese nursing through nurses’ own words from the 1880s to the late 1970s. Through an analysis of the caregiving labor of nurses as well as the ways in which that labor was taught to other nurses, we see how touch was framed as a tool not just for teaching and learning, but for affective communication between nurses and patients. The ways in which touch was disambiguated as a medical technique different from other kinds of touch reframes the manual labor of nursing into a skilled process, one that can be analyzed as a means for better understanding the history of nursing. This dissertation recenters the narrative of Japanese nursing history on Japanese women themselves through an emphasis on productions of their own handwork. Through this study of Japanese nurses, we understand the link between touch and care not just as communicating information, but as communicating a sense of care: a sphere of human interaction in which women produce knowledge and teach others transitively through human bodies. Understanding the ways in which Japanese nurses historically learned and developed medical touch as a skill demonstrates how rigid cultural conditions of society are regularly broken down by the physical and emotional labor of women, even as technological innovation and concerns around disease are rendering that labor resource scarce