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Life in Contemporary Fictional Worlds
No full textThis dissertation proposes a set of interpretive possibilities afforded by the privileging of fictional worlds as a site of primary analysis, particularly in 20th and 21st century American mass culture. Fictional worlds are more than a mental map or a network of facts; they are entities created or initiated by human imagination but then filled in by the semi-autonomous processes of implication, closure, and improvisation. By adapting theories about fictional worlds from narratology and metafictional modal philosophy and integrating these concepts with more traditional narratological and cultural analysis, I propose an interpretive method taking fictional worlds themselves as aesthetic objects which follow their own premises and offer their own insights. I "read" fictional worlds by tracking their internal consistency, genre-coded assumptions, ontological rules, and the ways in which they invite audience participation or hermeneutic labor. I also attend closely to the material and cultural conditions of their production—particularly within franchises, serialized media, and transmedia networks—looking for the ways in which ideas or points-of-view enter into fictional worlds as laws of nature. Such a method is more in line with the ways in which the everyday consumer encounters contemporary media, an environment in which every object must potentially be placed in a much larger narrative framework. I develop this argument over the course of three chapters. In the first chapter, I look at the economic and aesthetic function of fictional worlds for today’s massive media franchises. The rise of aesthetic interest in worlds may be the result of cultural trends, but the multibillion-dollar franchises that have filled up our movie theaters and streaming services in the past ten years have adapted the fictional world into a gimmick and labor-saving technology. From here, my second chapter singles out the fictional world formed by the accrued output of DC Comics—the first transmedia "multiverse.” DC’s narrative world is the product of tens of thousands of individual text objects collaboratively generated by innumerable human hands, but its size, open-endedness, and long timeline creates an excess of narrative, heaped so densely on top of itself that it has developed an inescapable gravitational pull. In my third chapter I assemble case studies in which the creation of a self-contained “world” is narrativized: where the world, its conditions, and its creator may be interrogated. These stories, however, are not metafictions; they do not look out of the page to challenge us as we read. Only when the world and its creator are integrated into the narrative can the characters in a story truly “talk back” to their conditions on terms of ontological equality and stage a meaningful allegorical debate about the ethics of worldmaking. Life in Contemporary Fictional Worlds tries to root out some of the operations of a kind of literalism in contemporary culture, where stories have come to seem almost as real as the real world. The fictional characters sliding across our many screens can feel more real than the lives of those immediately around us, or even the material conditions driving our own experiences. Our world has become too vast to grasp, too diffuse to hold in our minds, too systems-driven to rail against. Fictional worlds are a comfort: a comforting, comprehensible world that one can rent, invent, or buy
How Historical Collective Memories Shape State Behavior In Great Power Competition
Get PDFWhy does China, despite possessing growing military capabilities and global interests, maintain only one overseas military base while the United States operates approximately 800 bases worldwide? This puzzling divergence challenges dominant realist theories that predict uniform patterns of military expansion as states accumulate power. Through comparative historical analysis, this paper argues that institutionalization of collective historical memories, fundamentally shape state preferences in ways that material factors alone cannot explain. China's "Century of Humiliation" (1839-1949), marked by foreign military occupation and territorial violations, created deep institutional preferences for sovereignty and non-interference, crystallized in the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. In contrast, America's experiences as British colonial successor and Cold War victor institutionalized preferences for global military presence as natural expressions of security. These divergent memories became embedded in state institutions, fostering path dependencies that persist despite changing material conditions. The analysis reveals that traumatic versus triumphant historical experiences generate different strategic cultures; and that what scholarship presents as universal patterns of great power behavior actually reflects culturally specific experiences inappropriately generalized. This framework offers crucial insights for understanding contemporary great power competition and the possibilities for international orders that accommodate diverse historical experiences rather than assuming convergence toward a single model
Echoes of Conservation: Producing Biocultural Diversity and Cultivating Subjectivity in Ethnic China
No full textSince the early 2000s, biocultural diversity conservation has emerged as a response to environmental challenges, extending beyond the preservation of ecosystems to include the cultural knowledges that sustain them, such as traditional ecological knowledges. The key assumption in biocultural diversity is that cultural diversity—in all its forms, including linguistic diversity—and biodiversity are inherently linked and that conserving one helps sustain the other. Southwest China has figured prominently in the discourse of biocultural diversity, having been identified as a global biodiversity hotspot with a high level of ethnic and cultural diversity. As national and international conservation efforts unfold in this region, community-engaged conservation methods highlight the value of local ethnic cultures, leading to a recognition of local people’s unique ways of perceiving the world that contribute to sustaining diversity on the planet. Camera-mediated audiovisual self-representations, often referred to as community video (shequ yingxiang), have emerged as a prominent conservation method to capture the subjectivities of ethnic people and document their diverse natures and cultures. This was facilitated by the commercialization of digital cameras, which transformed video-making into a prevalent mode of self-expression and representation at the turn of the century, now evolving into an explosion of visualization driven by video-based social media platforms. This dissertation focuses on the interconnected knowledge practices involved in biocultural diversity conservation. How have ethnic groups become embodiments of distinct knowledges that translate into conservatory value not only meaningful to local communities but also to the entire planet? What kinds of subjects are being cultivated within them? What other adjacent knowledge practices are shaping their perspectives? By answering these questions, this dissertation examines the nature of conservation as a social and epistemic practice contextualized within political, intellectual, and discursive histories. It is based on a multisited and multimodal methodology that incorporates ethnographic fieldwork and archival research from 2017 to 2023 across three spatial and temporal sites of conservation in the Southwest: 1) the historical creation of biocultural diversity in and from the region, 2) the conservation efforts that portray local ethnic groups as conserving subjects and aim to cultivate their subjectivity through film training, and 3) a Donyu ethnic community whose culture and subjectivity navigate the politics of recognition and erasure within conservation efforts. Bridging anthropology, environmental studies, media studies, and the history of science, this dissertation theorizes conservation as a modern practice for sustaining diversity: recognizing objects worthy of prolonged existence on the planet and enabling them to sustain their existence against an otherwise anticipated disappearance, which reflects a temporal imaginary of collective ending that characterizes the contemporary world of man-made destruction. It argues that conservation produces a new subject position that I refer to as the conserving subject. Conserving subjects are those whose subjectivities, often assumed to have originated from their unique cultural traditions, are recognized as distinct and valuable (diverse) for sustaining the planet, with their distinct subjectivities defining their subject position. These subjectivities, or ways of experiencing and knowing the world, are expected to differ from those of modernity; this difference is deemed significant in sustaining other forms of diversity, such as cultural diversity or biodiversity on the planet. This approach examines how marginalized communities engage with conservation, cultivating themselves as conserving subjects with valuable traditional knowledges. It also highlights the epistemic violence (Spivak 1999) present in conservation that perpetuates imperial legacies of what is deemed knowable and conservable
Are parents as great as they think they are? A longitudinal study of parent–child perceived parenting discrepancies on adolescent depressive symptoms in U.S. families of Chinese origin
Get PDFA developmental perspective is needed to reveal the long-lasting influence of perceived parenting discrepancies on youth depressive symptoms from early adolescence to emerging adulthood. This is particularly important for U.S. families of Chinese origin, an understudied U.S. population in research on perceived parenting discrepancies. The current study used an 8-year longitudinal dataset of 444 youth (Mwave1.age = 13.51, SD = 0.64; 54% girls) and their mothers (N = 393) and fathers (N = 374) from U.S. families of Chinese origin to examine how convergent and divergent perceptions of parenting in early adolescence relate to depressive symptoms in emerging adulthood (Mwave3.age = 21.39, SD = 0.62). Response surface analysis revealed that when mothers, but not fathers, reported lower (versus higher) levels of hostility than adolescents in early adolescence, youth reported higher levels of depressive symptoms in emerging adulthood. The finding highlights the need for early adolescent interventions to address parent–child perceived parenting discrepancies when mothers reported less hostility than adolescents, given their lasting impact on youth depressive symptoms in U.S. families of Chinese origin
Identifying Autoregulatory Properties of the Nucleic Acid Binding Domains within the Yin Yang 1 Transcription Factor and Investigating the Regulatory Implications of H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 Chromatin Marks
Get PDFGene expression is a tightly regulated system critical to defining cellular identity. Of the many regulatory components governing gene expression, this thesis looks at two specific components that can influence both transcriptional activation and repression. First, I investigate the pleiotropic transcription factor (TF) Yin Yang 1 (YY1). Although this TF is developmentally essential and functions in many fundamental cell processes, there is still confusion regarding what contextual aspects dictate its function. I utilize protein biochemistry and biophysical assays to interrogate the interfaces responsible for RNA binding, a recently discovered capability of this TF. I reconcile previous studies claiming that different regions of the protein confer these nucleic acid interactions by demonstrating that there are multiple domains of YY1 that can bind RNA. My work also uncovers a previously unannotated intramolecular inhibitory mechanism that YY1’s N-terminus can impose upon its zinc finger module. Second, I look into the nucleosomal-existence of activating (H3K4me3) and repressive (H3K27me3) chromatin marks, in the context of the bivalency model. An entire field of chromatin biology has canonized bivalent chromatin as a functional co-occurence essential for cellular differentiation. In this thesis I address specific pitfalls of the conventional way that chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is performed and present methodologies developed by the Ruthenburg lab (ICeChIP and ReICeChIP) that rigorously address these drawbacks and provide quantitative insight to the distribution of these chromatin marks. With these observations, we directly call the bivalency model into question as we assess the chromatin states of mouse embryonic stem cells through differentiation to neuronal precursor cells. Maintaining the balance between gene activation and repression requires multiple layers of regulation. This work provides frameworks for deeper investigations of gene regulation in the future.</p
Contextual and paradigmatic effects on suspended contrast across generations: The case of Cantonese pinjam revisited
Get PDFSuspended contrast refers to the phenomenon whereby sound change brings two phonemes into such close approximation that semantic contrast between them is suspended for native speakers of the language, without necessarily leading to complete merger or neutralization. The existence of suspended contrasts not only raises questions about the nature of the phonetics-phonology interface, but also for theories of sound change that assume sound change is biased toward selective maintenance of phonemes that contribute more to distinguishing existing lexical items in usage. Small differences supporting a suspended contrast are expected to disappear quickly given that they do not serve any apparent communicative functions. It remains a question whether a contrast can be suspended for a considerable period of time. This study revisits a case of suspended contrast in Cantonese between the lexical high rising tone and the high rising tone derived through morphological tone change (pinjam). We use an apparent-time approach to investigate the diachronic trajectory of this neutralization by comparing the distribution of this suspended contrast along both F0 and durational dimensions across two generations of Hong Kong Cantonese speakers. While this case of suspended tonal contrast has been in circulation for almost a century, our findings suggest that the distinction might be disappearing among the younger speakers. Only older speakers maintain a distinction between the lexical and derived rising tones, albeit in very restricted tonal contexts. The fact that this suspended tonal contrast exhibits great sensitivity to contextual and morphological influences may help explain the progression of this case of merger-in-progress
Dissociation in skin picking disorder and trichotillomania
Get PDFIntroduction: Dissociation involves a lapse in normal perception of reality or awareness; it has Q6 been associated with multiple psychiatric disorders and has been suggested as a contributing factor in trichotillomania and skin picking disorder. This study aimed to explore the relationship between dissociation and trichotillomania and/or skin picking disorder. Methods: Three hundred and seventy adults with trichotillomania, skin picking disorder, or both (aged 18-65 years) were enrolled as part of an online survey. Participants completed a questionnaire on demographics, clinical characteristics, comorbidities, medications, and suicidality. Participants completed the Generic Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRB) Scale-8 (GBS-8) and the Dissociative Experience Scale (DES). Regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between DES scores and GBS-8 scores, as well as clinical characteristics. Results: DES scores significantly predicted GBS-8 impairment scores, suicidal ideation, non-suicidal self-injury, and suicide attempts. Discussion: Dissociation may be either a driving force for many with hair pulling or skin picking, or pulling and picking may create a dissociative trance-like state. These findings suggest that dissociation is associated with greater impairment and worse clinical outcomes. Further research may elucidate whether there is benefit in treating dissociation in these patients.</p
Missing the forest for the trees: Considerations for the use of nature in consumer spaces
Get PDFIn the primary article of this research dialogue (Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2025), we outlined the social, cognitive, and affective benefits of interacting with nature and briefly discussed the relevance of this work to consumer psychology. In their commentary to our primary article, Haws and Yamim approached nature purely within the marketplace setting and discussed how consumer exposure to natural elements may activate semantic networks that will predictably influence consumer behavior. We contextualized the current response to this commentary under the umbrella of sustainability and sustainable consumer decisions. First, we clarify attention restoration theory, stress reduction theory, and assumptions regarding the preference for nature. Second, we discuss definitions of nature from an interdisciplinary perspective. Building upon this, we speak to the potential semantic activations suggested by Haws and Yamim in response to nature exposure, probing potential individual and group-level variations and the relevance of these differences in the consumer space. Finally, we discuss potential conflicts of utilizing nature in the marketplace embedded within the perspective of sustainability goals. In this sense, we question the consequences and ethical considerations of employing nature as a mechanism to influence consumer behavior
Moralized Licensing Laws: Accumulating Advantage through Fuzzy Boundaries
No full textMy dissertation explores how groups maintain privileges by keeping unclear boundaries between insiders and outsiders. Contrary to the conventional view that advantages are secured through sharp borders, I argue that fuzzy boundaries, created through ambiguous membership criteria and unsystematic application, can serve as a flexible tool for exclusion and advantage accumulation. Through case studies of occupational licensing laws in the nineteenth-century United States, I show how elite groups utilized fuzzy boundaries to defend status, secure privileges, and gain social respectability, while also creating space for exclusion. This approach highlights a subtle yet persistent source of social inequalities, as fuzzy boundaries can endure due to their ambiguity and resistance to legal contestation. By exploring the instrumental use of fuzzy boundaries, this research illustrates a strategy that powerholders can activate to maintain control over resources in environments that are moving toward formal principles that prohibit categorical exclusion
Essays on Economic and Prosocial Behavior
Get PDFThis dissertation addresses the relationship between prosociality and economic behavior. The study of prosociality (and related concepts like altruism) has long been intertwined with broader concerns about the accumulation and circulation of material resources, from the empirical literature on the management of common pool resources and public goods, to the theoretical literature on social dilemmas. The chapters of this dissertation shed new light on the relationship between prosociality and economic behavior through empirical studies and mathematical modelling. The introductory chapter begins with a theoretical critique of what I call "consequentialist prosociality", the conception of prosociality that is most commonly used in the literature: actions taken by one set of agents that cause another set of agents to experience some benefit. After exploring the paradoxes of this approach, I propose that we reconceptualize prosociality as a set of local and dynamic relations between persons, relations that involve the extension of an agent's self-concern to include other agents. This reconceptualization lays the groundwork for the remaining three chapters. The first chapter uses network data collected from 75 villages in Karnataka, a state in southwestern India, to assess the relationship between individual villager-level bank account ownership and the likelihood that villagers report ties that cross caste boundaries. The results of this chapter provides evidence that more market-integrated villagers are more likely to establish relations across caste boundaries. The second chapter contains the results of a pilot study for a social exchange experiment: I randomly assign Prolific participants to participate in two forms of dyadic exchange (reciprocal and negotiated) and then randomly re-pair them to play an iterated prisoner's dilemma. Given that different forms of economic organization differentially prioritize these two forms of dyadic exchange, the results of the full experiment will give us some indication of what mechanisms may drive the relationship between changes in economic organization and changes in social patterns of trust and cooperation. Finally, the third chapter contains an analysis of a formal model of social preferences. I prove that if agents in a group can have utility functions that weigh the outcomes of themselves and other group members, and if those weights sum to unity and obey transitive closure, then certain structural properties of the matrix of weights lead to sociologically interesting equilibrium distributions of other-regard in the group. All of these chapters push forward a research agenda for prosociality that emphasizes the mechanisms that drive local patterns of concern, trust, and cooperation