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Climate Change, Cities, and Insurance
Get PDFAs climate change intensifies, unprecedented climate risk increasingly strains markets and drives insurers to reassess coverage strategies. The insurance sector must navigate an evolving relationship between climate risk, cities’ needs, and emerging coverage strategies. This paper identifies five key functions of climate insurance and argues that insurance must evolve beyond reactive compensation toward proactive risk mitigation and investment in climate resilience. By fostering collaboration between insurers, municipalities, and financial institutions, the sector can play a pivotal role in redirecting global capital toward sustainable urban adaptation, securing equitable and long-term protection against climate-driven disasters.
Keywords: climate finance, insurance, climate ris
Tipped Wages for Housework: A Marxist Feminist Analysis of Front of House Restaurant Work
Get PDFWhat much philosophy about labor lacks is the perspective of those who actually perform the labor. As a result, we often talk about labor in generalizations unhelpful to organizing, petitioning, or legislating meaningful change.
This paper locates the particular issues faced by a particular group of laborers, front of house tipped wage restaurant workers, through analysis of oral history interviews with two bartenders in a New York City Restaurant rooted in the framing of their job as derivative of the feminized tradition of unpaid housework
Who Speaks: Ericka Beckman’s Super-8 Trilogy
No full textThis dissertation investigates the early films of Ericka Beckman made between the years 1977-1980 in the United States.
Collaborator of Mike Kelley and Dan Graham and colleague of James Welling and Tony Conrad, Beckman exerted influence in the art communities of New York and California. At the outset of her career, critics heralded Beckman as a vanguard filmmaker. Yet, she was also deposited outside of prominent discourses, such as Pictures, in art history and the New Talkies in cinema studies. Rather than constrain Beckman’s output to an extent genre, this dissertation argues that her films surpass and thus undermine discursive boundaries. A reader of child psychologist Jean Piaget, Beckman’s research led her to the potent and disciplinary force of children’s material.
Deploying lullaby, play, and reverie in 8mm, Beckman’s trilogy of films unsettle conversations about imagination, vision, and memory, which have long been the concerns of art history from the nineteenth century forward. Calibrating between the framework of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for a “minor artist” and the notion of Julia Kristeva that “major” accounts uphold specific, normative readers, I argue that Beckman transforms the gauges of advanced discourse and alters the subjectivity of her constituents in the process
In Vivo Delineation of Body-Part-Specific Cortical Topographies
No full textThe mammalian primary sensory cortex (S1) is well-known for its precise topographic representation of body parts, yet the detailed organizational structure of motor cortices, particularly the primary (M1) and secondary motor cortex (M2), remains challenging to discern. Traditional mapping techniques, such as cytoarchitectural analysis and invasive intracranial stimulation, have yielded only coarse and imprecise representations of motor cortical organization.
To address these challenges, we utilized high-speed, multi-spectral wide-field optical mapping (WFOM) integrated with simultaneous behavioral monitoring and advanced tracking. This approach enabled real-time analysis of cortex-wide neuronal activity and whole-body behaviors in awake, spontaneously moving Thy1-jRGECO mice. By observing the dynamic and collective behavior of cortical circuits and networks over extended periods, we derived two detailed topographical maps of M1 and M2, based solely on the cortex’s intrinsic activity.
We first characterized cortical representations during resting states, where we identified structured, spontaneous fluctuations that were rapidly changing, bilaterally symmetric, and spatially heterogeneous. These distinct fluctuation patterns were highly informative of motor organization, despite their suppression during locomotion.
Using resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) mapping, we discovered body-part–specific relationships between each S1 region and distinct areas of the medial frontal cortex, revealing a detailed M2 topography.
To map M1, we conducted retrograde tracing from the spinal cord to decorate corticospinal neurons (CSNs) with GCaMP. Real-time activity of these CSNs during locomotion provided precise evidence of forelimb and hindlimb M1 locations. Additionally, M1 regions can be consistently identified by an increase in coherence at lower frequencies (0–1.5 Hz) with S1 during transitions from rest to movement, allowing us to generalize M1 topography mapping in Thy1-jRGECO mice.
Within these mapped regions, we used the constrained least squares (CLS) method to “functionalize” the topographies of S1, M1, and M2. This allowed us to spatiotemporally unmix their unique contributions to cortical neural activity and afforded us the opportunity to investigate their distinct functional roles and dynamic interplay in generating a wide range of spontaneous behaviors. Through this investigation, we found M2’s anatomical activation became prominent only during complex and integrated movements, underscoring its critical role in higher-order motor control
Between Science and the State: Xenophobic Anti-Blackness in the CDC’s Early AIDS Science
No full textForty-three years and 43 million deaths after its initial discovery, the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to claim lives and perpetuate disproportionate suffering. Although the impact of the virus extends to almost every global region, no continent has seen more AIDS-related devastation than sub-Saharan Africa, followed by the Caribbean. Despite significant progress in combatting the epidemic, there exists no viable vaccine, and AIDS remains a leading cause of death in Africa and the Caribbean. Since the earliest days of the epidemic, AIDS has been explicitly racialized as a Black disease. This raises the question of how global health institutions have framed and responded to the social epidemiology of the disease.
Moreover, it suggests the intriguing, and disturbing, possibility that the racialization of AIDS, rather than an effect of racial disparities in the incidence of the disease, has helped to cause them.This dissertation analyzes the scientific knowledge produced about HIV/AIDS in relation to affected Black populations across the globe. I focus on the racist narratives produced during the first decade of the epidemic (1981-1991). Expanding on the theoretical work of Cathy Cohen, Steven Epstein, Paul Farmer, Alexandre White, and other social scientists who investigate the relationship between institutions of public health and sociopolitical marginalization and domination, I demonstrate how the politics of blame and anti-Blackness influence the knowledge production process, and structure various public health policies and interventions to exacerbate what W.E.B. DuBois termed “the [global] color line.”
The empirical field for this work is presented in the form of a case study focused on one of the most influential institutions of AIDS science: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The data for this study is comprised of extensive archival research from both the CDC’s Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Reports (MMWR) and subject files from the National Archives, in addition to 50 oral history interviews from Emory University’s Global Health Chronicles archive, and seven in-depth, semi-structured interviews that I conducted with former and current CDC officials. The time frame for this study encompasses the entirety of the epidemic’s course, beginning with its initial discovery in 1981, to the present day. Because this study is centered on the knowledge produced by the CDC, the geographic focus is largely concentrated on the United States and Global North. However, the analysis—particularly in the later chapters—extends to sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean.
The findings of this study reveal: 1) as the leading institution of knowledge production during the early years of AIDS, the CDC strategically utilized historically-familiar tropes of Black sexual deviance to explain away trends and patterns in disease transmission that scientists did not yet understand 2) the urge to impart blame during a time of public health crisis yielded important public health mis-categorizations and distinctions (originally concerning Haitians, then expanded to West and Central Africans) that perpetuated xenophobic anti-Blackness and 3) the scientific racialization of AIDS extended beyond the first decade of the epidemic into the era of epidemic intervention and disease treatment via HAART; the research produced by the CDC was amplified globally as a result of international partnerships with U.S. allied-countries and the World Health Organization.
The structure of this dissertation proceeds as follows: Chapter 1 provides an overview of relevant literature as well as the theoretical contribution of this study. Chapter 2 presents the empirical data and methodology at the center of this study. Chapter 3, the first empirical chapter, explores the ways in which anti-Haitian and anti-African (and thus anti-Black) bias was cultivated within the CDC’s AIDS-related epidemiological reports. This chapter depicts how racist claims and narratives were integrated into the burgeoning science of the epidemic despite pushback from some academics and activists.
Chapter 4 links the CDC’s public health claims on Haitians and Africans to major changes in immigration policy, and explores how CDC officials today have come to make sense of the science they produced in the first decade of the epidemic, and the resulting policy impact. In this chapter, I engage a unique archive of oral history interviews conducted by and with former CDC officials in the HIV/AIDS division, in addition to my own in-depth interviews with some of these officials. The fifth and final empirical chapter of this study focuses on the CDC as a global actor, and the ways in which its international initiatives and the interventions that characterize them are rooted in the same anti-Black stigma featured in the agency’s early AIDS science.
Overall, I show that the CDC’s “dual-advantage” in two separate fields – the field of government and the field of biomedical science – helps to explain why and how the science of HIV/AIDS was racialized from its inception. Its position as a powerful political actor means that it sometimes de-prioritizes the upholding of scientific principles in order to align itself with the broader aims of the state. This may be particularly true in contexts of medical uncertainty when the agency faces pressure to respond to crisis and yet does not have clear scientific knowledge through which to orient its activity. In the context of the early AIDS epidemic, the CDC strategically deployed culturally-specific and historically familiar narratives of xenophobic anti-Blackness within the science it produced as a response to pressures it faced to fill the gaps of AIDS knowledge
American Libertarianism: A Philosophy, a Movement, a Sensibility, 1960-1995
No full textThis dissertation traces the development of American libertarianism as a philosophy, movement, and sensibility in the late twentieth century. Modern libertarianism first emerged amid the 1960s rights revolutions and anti-Vietnam war activism, when libertarian student protesters opposed the state as a war-making apparatus. Libertarians fused together several intellectual schools of thought—including Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, F. A. Hayek’s Austrian School economics, and Murray Rothbard’s anarcho-capitalism—into a unified philosophical tradition. This tradition holds individual liberty as its highest value and seeks to diminish the state by abolishing government intervention in the economy, ending interventionist foreign policy, and repealing laws about private conduct.
Combining methods from intellectual history and political history, this dissertation then examines how libertarians built movement organizations to cultivate, fortify, and disseminate their ideas. Over the course of the 1970s, libertarians quickly gained the financial backing of billionaires David and Charles Koch to establish movement organizations, such as the Libertarian Party, Reason magazine, and the Cato Institute. In the process, libertarians developed an intellectual culture characterized by uncompromising philosophical positions, yet a surprising ability to build bridges between anti-statists. Libertarians, moreover, forged a shared libertarian sensibility that transcended the movement’s ideological divisions—a sensibility defined by its individualism, contrarianism, dogmatism, but also a commitment to intellectual pluralism.
Scholars have primarily examined libertarians as key allies of conservatives and have investigated libertarians’ linkages with the far right. This dissertation, by contrast, understands libertarianism as a cross-cutting impulse in American life that defies left-right distinctions. Modern libertarianism, at its core, is most concerned with individual liberty over market liberty, which lends it appeal to a broad range of constituencies beyond the Right.
This dissertation demonstrates how libertarians have maneuvered across the political spectrum, working with liberals, leftists, conservatives, and far-right actors to augment individual liberties and dismantle the state in a variety of ways, from the creation of cryptocurrency to the privatization of the federal government. While the movement dispersed in the 1980s, libertarians took the sensibility that they had cultivated within the movement into many intellectual pursuits, policymaking endeavors, and activism. By tracing the diffusion of libertarian ideas, this dissertation explains how a libertarian sensibility has since flourished in American life
Norms of Dialectic: Plato’s Dialectical Requirement in the Meno and Beyond
No full textMy dissertation seeks to answer the question of how we can help each other gain knowledge through conversation. In particular, I am looking at a piece of text presented in Plato’s Meno, known as the “dialectical requirement.” My core argument is that the dialectical requirement encapsulates norms of dialectic that facilitate conversations that are epistemically productive. Further, we can find and apply these norms beyond the context of the Meno.
In doing so, I analyze the dialectical requirement and provide an account of three norms it proposes: the requirement of gentle-friendship, the truth-requirement, and the requirement that interlocutors use shared concepts. I then turn to focus in detail on the requirement of gentle-friendship, arguing that it is a relationship that Plato emphasizes throughout his corpus as a crucial component in successful conversations. I also look at Aristotle’s Topics and trace how Aristotle responds to the dialectical requirement in formulating his own norms of dialectic.
Finally, I examine where Plato’s norms of dialectic fit into contemporary work on virtue argumentation theory and social epistemology. This dissertation addresses a gap in existing scholarship which has not taken the dialectical requirement seriously in a way to better understand ancient dialectic, as well as arguing for the importance of norms that are perhaps more basic than ones previously explored. Overall, I argue that understanding Plato’s norms for dialectic provides an important reference point for thinking about what makes some conversations more successful than others
Design and development of point-of-care diagnostic technologies for a pandemic age
No full textThe COVID-19 pandemic necessitated an unprecedented global scale-up of diagnostic testing. To meet this demand, innovative point-of-care (POC) solutions were required to support widespread decentralized testing. Key advances spanned assay chemistry, microfluidics, connected instrumentation, and integrated data analytics. This dissertation presents the development of novel tools and technologies for POC diagnostics designed in response to the pandemic and aimed at enabling decentralized testing.
First, we developed a microfluidic, plasmonic RT-PCR platform for pathogen detection in decentralized settings. Leveraging optics, nanoparticles, and microfluidics, we engineered a compact device capable of rapid thermocycling and detecting SARS-CoV-2 within 16 minutes using an integrated fluorometer. Second, we designed lateral flow assays (LFAs) for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and antigens, incorporating novel capture and detection reagents to enhance sensitivity. Lastly, we built a companion smartphone application to augment self-testing experiences for COVID-19 and HIV, and evaluated its utility through field trials.
Collectively, these technologies represent a next-generation suite of point-of-care diagnostic tools that advance decentralized testing and strengthen preparedness for future pandemics
Unpacking the Child Penalty Using Personnel Data: How Promotion Practices Widen the Gender Pay Gap
No full textWe estimate the child penalty using detailed personnel records that allow decomposition into distinct pay components. The penalty initially arises from reductions in time-based pay after childbirth. Over time, job-rank-based pay becomes increasingly significant, becoming the dominant factor by the 15-year mark. These effects are interconnected: reduced working hours lead to lower performance evaluations, which subsequently limit promotion opportunities. Our model demonstrates that current promotion practices, which reward extended hours at entry-level positions, can generate production inefficiency. This finding suggests that addressing promotion practices could simultaneously reduce gender inequality and improve talent allocation, making a business case for organizational reform
Bringing the Canon to the Periphery: Using Fanfiction in the Classics Classroom
No full textThis paper discusses how using the lens of fan fiction and reception theory in the Latin classroom can not only bolster student engagement but also provide a means of teaching canonical texts in a way that focus on peripheral ancient identities. This talk will be based on my own experience of teaching an intermediate Latin course on Dido, in which two authors, Vergil and Ovid, were read. Despite using two canonical texts, I tried to ‘break’ the canon in two ways: by focusing on a ‘side character,’ and using the idea of fan fiction to frame class discussions. Students felt they got a different view of the ancient world by focusing on the peripheral, ‘side character’ perspective, while the focus on fan fiction allowed them to explore ways in which these peripheral characters speak to modern audiences while creating a personal connection with the text