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The Shape of Moral Understanding: Practical Reasoning Informed by Perception and Language
No full textIn this dissertation, I provide a novel account of moral understanding that demonstrates why moral understanding, properly construed, entails more than just a subject’s understanding that some moral reason q is why p.
On my view, moral understanding implicates a practical reasoning that entails, alongside deliberative thought, the theoretical thought involved in accurate comprehension of our circumstances and appropriate sensitivity toward the moral features of the world. The upshot of this view is that moral understanding implicates our perception of the world, the concepts we have to make sense of it, the language we have to express those concepts, and a general grasp of how everything fits together.
On that basis, I’m able to explore the second prong of my project: the significance of my account to moral inquiry and moral education. Methodologically, my dissertation employs philosophical analysis. I conduct conceptual analysis, as well as interpretive (also called hermeneutical or exegetical) analysis of philosophical texts. Over the course of nine chapters, I conclude that it is gestalts—as concepts, as our sense of the good life, as our world, as objects in the world—that constitute the shape of our moral understanding
Chinese Migrant Youths' Civic Identities and Practices of Belonging amid the U.S.-China Geopolitical Tension
No full textAsian Americans have long faced ostracized in the United States, with their experiences influenced by the relationships between the U.S. and different Asian states. In the current climate of escalating U.S.-China geopolitical tension, Chinese migrant youths in the U.S. must navigate particularly complex civic landscapes. However, there is limited research on how migrant youths caught between competing nationalisms experience social studies education and interpret their civic identities. This dissertation study addresses this gap by asking: How do Chinese migrant youths construct, experience, and practice civic identity and belonging amid the historical ostracization of Chinese Americans and the current geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China? What role does their social studies education play in this process?
Guided by Asian American Critical Theory and the theoretical framework of transnational citizenship, this interpretative phenomenological study involved three rounds of interviews with 12 Chinese migrant youths who were born in China and received secondary social studies education in the U.S. The findings revealed that these youths inhabited an in-between space where they developed hybrid identities that resisted both U.S. and Chinese nationalist narratives. They rejected normative citizenship discourses that demanded allegiance to a single state, instead interpreting citizenship as cultural practices. Although the youths shared a conflicted sense of belonging to the U.S., they negotiated this conflictedness through embracing unbelonging as a constant in life or cultivating close-knit communities. Their social studies education provided them with the skills to critically evaluate social media narratives, but it failed to make its content critically relevant to these youths. Ultimately, these participants practiced a stance of critical neutrality, which involved refusing to take sides between the U.S. and China, advocating for people-centered narratives, and engaging in alternative forms of civic participation that challenged hostile and exclusionary narratives
In-service geometry teachers’ technology use and beliefs: Developments catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textSecondary geometry’s emphasis on conjecturing, proof, and visuo-spatial reasoning skills makes it an important steppingstone for students’ mathematical journey. The COVID-19 pandemic caused notable learning loss in mathematics still felt to this day. However, it also increased technology use due to mandatory remote learning, some of which have shown promise in improving geometry learning outcomes. The dual need to redress students’ learning loss and better understand the impact of widespread technological integration into geometry teaching during COVID suggest there is value in understanding the impact of COVID-19 on secondary geometry teachers’ technology use. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in in-service secondary geometry teachers’ technology use and beliefs before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
This qualitative study investigated New York City secondary geometry teachers who had taught geometry before, during, and after COVID. Data collected consisted of survey data, teaching artifacts, and interviews, which were analyzed to come to a holistic understanding of what, how, and how frequently technologies were used, teachers’ beliefs about technology, and why technologies were chosen by participants. From this analysis, profiles of geometry teacher technology use and beliefs were generated to illustrate trends that resulted from the COVID pandemic’s influence.
The study found that secondary geometry teachers largely maintained their pre-COVID technology use patterns in post-COVID, with limited technological imports as a result of COVID. However, teachers during COVID used technologies in ways that favored direct instruction over exploratory learning. Teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs increased, but their belief in the efficacy of technology did not change. Five profiles of secondary geometry teachers’ technology use with varying levels of technology use and beliefs were generated.
The implications of these findings suggest that post-COVID geometry teaching has added asynchronous supports for struggling students, but that teachers are split regarding using technology tools for geometry specific tasks, some favoring the collaborative affordances offered by analog technologies, especially for developing proof and conjecture skills, while others appreciate the visuo-spatial reasoning support that comes from digital technologies. The five profiles can serve to inform school administrators and teacher educators how to approach improving technology use for specific groups of secondary geometry teachers
"The Enemy Is Within": Essays on Elite Affective Polarization in American Politics
No full textAntipathy toward members of the opposing political party has risen in recent years in the United States.Partisan hostility in American legislatures has escalated to the point that some legislators fear violence from their peers across the aisle. Amid this increase in partisan tension, bipartisanship in lawmaking has declined. Existing theoretical frameworks of legislative behavior struggle to explain the extent of inter-partisan animosity, however. This dissertation examines whether affective polarization, hatred of the opposing party and warmth toward one's own, can explain increasing partisan conflict among politicians. In particular, using experiments embedded in original surveys of American politicians, I explore the consequences of partisan animus among politicians for democratic governance. I also probe the causes of partisan hostility among political elites.
In the first empirical chapter of my dissertation, I argue that, due to the hyper-salience of legislators' political identities, partisan identities may be important in shaping the behavior of American politicians. Results from a conjoint experiment in an original survey of state legislative candidates show that politicians discriminate against members of the opposing party when selecting partners in the policy-making process. Affectively polarized politicians are especially likely to choose to work with a co-partisan legislator over an out-partisan. While policy information appears to account for much of this partisan discrimination, more affectively polarized candidates are more likely than their less polarized peers to choose a co-partisan partner---even when a great deal of policy information is provided. These results have important implications for the study of legislative politics, affective polarization, and American democracy.
Next, I turn to the causes of affective polarization among politicians. While previous research evaluates the individual-level or intergroup drivers of affective polarization, less work has considered the intragroup social determinants of partisan animosity. The second empirical chapter of this dissertation demonstrates how intra-party social norms constrain and shape affective polarization at the mass and politician levels. I focus on norms against the expression of partisan incivility. Using original surveys of elected officials and the American public, I show that there is a strong norm against partisan incivility among politicians, but the norm among the mass public favors partisan incivility. Within my surveys, I embed experiments to evaluate the causal effects of priming this social norm on affective polarization. I find tentative support for the idea that social norms around partisan incivility can influence hostility toward the opposing party. In addition, inparty norms increase warmth toward the inparty, suggesting a potential normative basis for inparty identity. My findings shed light on the social roots of affective polarization, offering a deeper understanding of the causes of partisan animosity in American politics.
Finally, in my third empirical chapter, I show that politicians are most hostile toward out-party activists, followed by politicians and finally, by voters. My survey highlights an asymmetry in politicians' perceptions of the parties: politicians' feelings toward the out-party are closest, on average, to their feelings toward out-party activists, while politicians seem to distinguish their own party from its activists. This gap in attitudes toward the parties appears to increase affective polarization among politicians
Transnational Afterlives of the Haitian Revolution: Between History and Fiction
No full textMy dissertation engages with the fields of Caribbean History and Literature, Theater and Performance Studies, Women and Gender Studies and Critical Translation Theory. It examines the global afterlives of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) in the 20th and 21st centuries. It contributes to Haitian Revolutionary Studies through an interdisciplinary lens that traces reciprocal influences that connect historical and imaginative approaches to the past. I also highlight the transnational circulation of Haiti as a symbol of resistance and independence across different time periods and geographies. Renowned authors such as Edouard Glissant, Aimé Césaire, Alejo Carpentier, Langston Hughes and Maryse Condé all turned to the events of the Haitian Revolution in their works, and in scholarship grounded in diverse views of historical forces and the role of the historian. The anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot famously wrote about the “silencing” of the history of the Haitian Revolution, not just through omission but also through banalization (i.e., misleading and trivializing representations that amount to a form of silencing) but since the 1990s, a lot more attention has been given to this history. My dissertation analyzes these recent directions and considers whether and in what sense we can observe Silencing.
The Haitian Revolution is the site of numerous historiographical questions that I address through my study of works of history and literature: What is the relationship between the Haitian Revolution and the French Revolution? What makes the Haitian Revolution a world-historical event? Does the Haitian Revolution need a hero? How has Toussaint Louverture been singled out as a charismatic leader? How can we reflect and respond to the limits of archival traces of the lives of subaltern subjects, including enslaved women and free women of color? I show that the Haitian Revolution is a world-historical event that lies at the crossroads of history and literature, by engaging with authors like CLR James or Aimé Césaire who oscillate between historical and fictional accounts of this revolution and by considering its afterlives in world literature from the wider Caribbean, Africa, the Americas and Europe.
In my dissertation, I think of literature as a different (complementary but also contestatory) site of engagement with archival traces. I consider, notably, how writers in several historical moments, national and linguistic contexts and genres have sought to ‘flesh out’ the lives and psychological experiences of women in the orbit of the Haitian Revolution. In my first chapter, I focus on a corpus of plays by Bernard Dadié, Aimé Césaire, Ina Césaire, Edouard Glissant and Maryse Condé to distinguish the dramatization of the Haitian Revolution from its narrativization.
My second chapter examines the ambivalent construction of Toussaint Louverture as a heroic yet dictatorial figure to show that Toussaint is simultaneously a historical actor and a mythical legend. My third chapter focuses on the question of whether and on what terms we can depict and comprehend the intimate physical and mental experiences of women living in a system of legally-sanctioned rape to show how authors like Evelyne Trouillot mobilize invention as a way to respond to archival silences. My last chapter studies the phenomenon of cultural translation as writers and artists from Poland, the United States and the wider Caribbean return to the Haitian Revolution as a symbol for their own struggles for freedom and independence to reveal the ethical and political stakes of exporting the Haitian Revolution outside of its original context. My methodology for this project combines close readings with theoretical reflections on historiography, race and gender and the conceptualization of the archive
Technologies for Patient-Specific Drug Screening, Monitoring and Treatment Towards Precision Medicine
No full textPrecision medicine has traditionally focused on personalized cancer therapeutics, however patient-specific tools are needed to optimize diagnosis and treatment options for a variety of conditions beyond cancer. In this dissertation, we develop patient-specific technologies that can improve patient outcomes across diagnosis, drug screening and treatment.
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is among the most deadly forms of malignant brain tumor and is characterized by profound intra-tumoral heterogeneity. While chemotherapy can be effective against proliferating GBM cells, we need patient-derived models that recapitulate the full diversity of GBM phenotypes. In Aim 1, we developed a microfluidic device that can be used to culture or screen drugs on thick, intact GBM slices while preserving GBM microenvironmental cues. The platform enables a single cell-specific drug readout and preserves native drug responses to a better degree than standard culture platforms.
More than 30 million Americans have diabetes and are at higher risk of developing peripheral artery disease (PAD). Advanced PAD can manifest as chronic limb-threatening ischemia (CLTI), which affects approximately 2 million Americans over the age of 40 and is associated with higher risk of limb loss. Many of these patients do not have viable options for revascularization using traditional surgical or endovascular methods, which carry their own risks of adverse events. As such, there is a clear need for therapeutics that can rapidly restore blood perfusion in end-stage CLTI patients. In Aim 2, we used iPSC-derived endothelial cells to generate pre-vascularized organoids as an injectable therapeutic for revascularization. We demonstrated growth of capillary-like structures when cultured in vitro and showed that the secretome of organoids increased endothelial cell migration and tube formation, key hallmarks of angiogenesis, compared to single-cell equivalent suspensions. Finally, we showed that organoids increased vascularization in the chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) assay.
Chronic wounds are characterized by dysregulated healing and affect millions globally. The incidence of chronic wounds is expected to increase due to the increasing number of individuals with diabetes, obesity and cancer. Current methods to study wound healing progression are limited, expensive, and require bulky equipment. In Aim 3, we demonstrated the utility of a non-invasive ultrasound probe to accurately provide information regarding the progression of complex wounds. We used a handheld, commercially available and inexpensive ultrasound probe to take images of fast- and slow-healing chronic wounds on diabetic mice and were able to discern differences in wound healing between groups by analyzing these images.
Taken together, the technologies in this dissertation present a range of tools for optimizing healthcare at various steps of the patient’s journey, from diagnostics to drug-screening through to therapy
The Child and the Norm: Psychoanalysis and Maladapted Childhood in Postwar France
No full textThis dissertation traces the psychoanalytic critique of rehabilitation in child psychiatry, education and special education in France from the 1950s to the 1970s. More specifically, it examines how and why psychoanalytic ideas were used by various thinkers working in these fields to counter the adaptive and normative tendencies of the social maladaptation model developed in child psychiatry during the interwar period and institutionalized under Vichy.
What could psychoanalysis accomplish that other approaches to childhood could not? What role did psychoanalysis play in subverting and undermining the ideas and methods of the maladapted childhood sector? What was the impact of psychoanalysis on educational and psychiatric practices and institutions in the aftermath of the Second World War? To answer these questions, I consider four individuals whose innovative work with children was marked by a seminal engagement with various forms of psychoanalysis: Françoise Dolto, Maud Mannoni, Fernand Oury and Fernand Deligny.
The study of these figures reveals that psychoanalysis provided a dynamic understanding of the child’s psychic development, in contradiction with the finalistic categories and quantitative understanding of intelligence of maladaptation. However, the notion of adaptation, and the possibility of adapting the child to society, as well as the role of the analyst in this process, elicited contradictory perspectives and was problematized differently across the psychoanalytic field, thus highlighting the protean nature of psychoanalysis and its variety in postwar France. In contact with antipsychiatry and the New Education movement in France, psychoanalytic ideas also gave rise to alternative educational and therapeutic practices oriented towards the emancipation of the child and not towards his social reintegration
The Quilted Lives of Career Change Science Teachers of Color: A Narrative Inquiry on Identity, Race, and Community Cultural Wealth
No full textIn light of the continuing teacher shortage, non-traditional populations have grown in popularity to meet the needs of school staffing demands. Career changers, in particular, have emerged as a solution for science teacher vacancies and presently make up nearly one in every three secondary science teachers. While much seems to be known about this subgroup of non-traditional teachers, literature has focused largely on a singular kind of career changer—career changers who are predominantly White and from former professional science or elite careers (e.g., bankers, lawyers, and engineers).
The goal of this study was to detail the lesser-known lived experiences of five career change science teachers of Color and to examine how the layers of race, culture, and power played a role in their transitions. Using a narrative inquiry approach, life history details were captured through various texts that explored their former careers, transitions to teaching, and present-day instructional practices. Thematic analysis then took place to explore how each of their teaching identities was conceptualized and proceduralized, how social markers aided and impeded their transitions to teaching, and how participants utilized aspects of Community Cultural Wealth to support their place in teaching.
The analysis revealed six themes across their narratives around their entries into teaching and their instructional approaches in the science classroom, as well as the barriers that hindered their transitions and the resources that supported them through these hindrances. Implications for preparing, recruiting, and supporting career change science teachers of Color are discussed
Essays in Macro-Finance
No full textThis dissertation focuses on three broad questions at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance which are (a) What are the sources of inflation? (b) What are the causes and implications of banks' information technology investments? (c) How do loan covenants transmit monetary shocks to firm investment?
Chapter 1 (joint with Emilio Zaratiegui) answers the first question by using high-frequency asset price movements around CPI announcement in the US to extract market-perceived sources of inflation. Chapter 2 (joint with Nicola Pierri, Yannick Timmer and Maria Martinez Peria Soledad) constructs a novel measure of banks' IT investment and studies its drivers and implications on monetary policy and mortgage markets. Chapter 3 merges covenant-level data from Dealscan with firm-level data from Compustat to study whether covenants interact with monetary policy to have heterogeneous effects on firm investment.
For the first question, I find that supply shocks played an increasingly important role since the pandemic. For the second question, I find that fintech competition had a causal impact on banks' IT investments and resulting in potentially more market power for high IT banks, and higher financial inclusion for lower-income borrowers. For the third question, I find that a firm that is farther away from violating its interest coverage covenant invests more with an expansionary monetary shock
Data: Regional contribution of anthropogenic carbon monoxide in the Asian summer monsoon upper troposphere and lower stratosphere
No full textThe dataset includes the key variables that were used to generate the figures in "Regional contribution of anthropogenic carbon monoxide in the Asian summer monsoon upper troposphere and lower stratosphere" submitted.
We study the regional contribution of anthropogenic carbon monoxide (CO) to the Asian summer monsoon upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS) region by using a tagged CO model experiment. We find that, in climatological mean of 1980-2022, surface emission from South Asia (SAS) makes the largest contribution to the UTLS anthropogenic CO, followed by East Asia (EAS), with smaller contributions from North America, Europe and other regions. Furthermore, for the UTLS CO that is emitted from EAS and SAS, the year-to-year variability is large, and there are years in which the contributions from EAS and SAS are comparable, even though the SAS contribution is always larger. Composite analysis is performed to understand the dynamical mechanism underlying the inter-annual variability