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Structural Heteropatriarchy, Sexuality, and Cardiometabolic Risk Among Black and White Young Adult Women
Get PDFRecent literature shows structural heteropatriarchy (SHP) is a determinant of women’s reproductive health, and that its associations with health are patterned by race/ethnicity and sexuality. Still, little is known about the role that SHP plays in shaping stress-related health outcomes among young adults, particularly for population subgroups of women. Using Waves I, III, and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 4,696), race-stratified analyses explore the relationship between SHP and stress-related physiological regulation—measured by an index of cardiometabolic risk—for young adult Black and White females, while also focusing on differences in the association by sexual minority status. Results indicate higher levels of exposure to SHP during adolescence and early adulthood are positively associated with cardiometabolic risk during young adulthood for both Black and White women. Findings support effect modification by race/ethnicity and sexuality. SHP is more strongly associated with cardiometabolic risk among White sexual minority young women than among White heterosexual young women. There is no evidence of effect modification by sexuality among Black women. This study advances the sociology of women’s health by developing our understanding of the ways that social inequality manifests in the bodies of multiply-marginalized women.Master of Art
When Classical Meets Jazz: An Analysis of Frédéric Chopin and Jon Batiste
Get PDFWhen pianist Jonathan “Jon” Batiste released a new work titled “Chopinesque” from his album, Hollywood Africans, in 2018, Batiste’s piece informed the world that his jazz album would incorporate classical composer Frédéric Chopin. Batiste’s choice to embed Chopin’s Nocturne in C-Sharp Minor within Batiste’s composition sparked my curiosity to uncover why Batiste named his work after Chopin and what Batiste’s overarching goal was for this piece. Based on a comparative analysis of Batiste and Chopin’s works, and drawing on the theories of the Third Stream, musical Signifyin(g), Kevin Fellezs’ examination of the “broken middle” in fusion, and “third space,” I argue that Batiste’s piece is an example of the broken middle, wherein it troubles any simple categorization as either “jazz” or “classical” music.Master of Art
The Politics of Aesthetics: Agential Elders and Ecological Entanglements in Xiao Hong’s Literary World
Get PDFThis thesis examines Xiao Hong’s (1911–1942) literary world from the perspectives of ecocriticism and critical age studies. I revisit the early twentieth-century intellectual sphere shaped by activity-centric speed culture to examine how Xiao Hong was perceived as an elderly writer and how she identified herself as an old woman in solidarity with marginalized elders. In contrast to Xiao Jun’s Village in August, I argue that Xiao Hong’s The Field of Life and Death unfolds an inter-affective universe in which elders and nonhumans exhibit historical agency derived from bodily contact and affect. Compared with Shen Congwen’s Border Town, I further investigate Xiao Hong’s dark-ecological aesthetics in Tales of Hulan River, which appropriates “myriad things” from Zhuangzi and resonates with Jane Bennett’s vital materialism in foregrounding the transformative power of quotidian objects. Overall, Xiao Hong’s writings disrupt geontological politics that distinguish humans from nonhumans and disempower elders and rural areas.Master of Art
Freedom and Repetition in German Strophic Song
Get PDFThis dissertation confronts the commonplace dismissal of German songs in strophic form, which is defined by a single repeated melody that supports all stanzas of a text. In German song history, this song form was incredibly popular between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, scholars of German music have refused to engage with songs in strophic form, resulting in a warped understanding of Central European song history that omits the eighteenth century almost entirely from scholarly consciousness. Chapter One identifies this lacuna and lays out the foundations of this critical and reparative study, introducing key concepts used throughout the dissertation.Chapter Two identifies and critiques the “strophic problem,” a pervasive anti-strophic attitude present in the scholarly literature of German song. I dissect the rhetoric of this literature, ultimately locating the source of the strophic problem in Wagnerian aesthetics. Richard Wagner’s musical philosophy, later adapted and extended by Arnold Schoenberg and Theodor Adorno, holds that structural repetition and classical forms limit aesthetic freedom. In deconstructing these attitudes, I argue that these received notions constrain scholars from approaching strophic songs productively, and that new techniques are necessary to redress their neglect. Chapter Three begins this ideological work by developing a new approach to repetition, combining historical evidence with philosophical theory to produce a liberatory aesthetics of strophic song. In this chapter, which attempts the composition of a strophic song in prose form, I center performance as the actualization of the virtual potential encoded in a strophic song’s repeat sign. Chapter Four offers a practical approach to the analysis of strophic song via the “mutability principle,” which posits that strophic form demands polysemic, multivalent music. I illustrate the principle by analyzing songs by C. P. E. Bach, C. F. Zelter, and Franz Schubert. Chapter Five concludes the dissertation with a reflection on further research that these innovations may support, exploring possibilities for the application of this dissertation’s concepts in areas such as eighteenth-century song, songs by canonic composers, popular music studies, music and politics, and video game music.Doctor of Philosoph
TOWARDS BUILDING IMMERSIVE TELEPRESENCE EXPERIENCE
Get PDFRecently, we have seen significant potentials of AR/VR technologies in transforming theway people interact with the world. This dissertation is focused on one of the most promisingapplications, telepresence, which allows users to feel like they are present at a location different from their physical location and is widely used in areas including medical therapy, remoteconferencing, and video games, etc.Reconstructing humans and objects in the virtual environment are two essential tasks in building an immersive telepresence experience. First, for reconstructing humans, we need to capturethe user’s body and estimate the human pose. Current solutions require either external camerasfrom third-person viewpoints or cumbersome wearable capture devices. In contrast, we presentEgoGlass, a pair of glasses equipped with cameras, as our AR/VR device, which is portable andadds next to no extra burden to the user. From images captured by EgoGlass, we propose a novelalgorithm for egocentric human pose estimation, overcoming issues of self-occlusion and incomplete body coverage caused by the cameras’ proximity to the human body. Second, for 3Dreconstruction algorithms running on AR/VR devices with constrained computational resources,computational efficiency is a major concern. To improve the efficiency of 3D reconstruction ofthe virtual environment without sacrificing accuracy, we introduce MVPSNet, which utilizes bothcamera viewpoint variations and lighting direction variations for high-fidelity 3D object recon-struction in a generalizable way. Our algorithm runs more than 400× faster than state-of-the-artapproaches with only negligible accuracy degradation. Third, we propose NBVNet for Next BestView selection in 3D reconstruction, improving 3D reconstruction efficiency by selecting the most informative viewpoint among a set of candidates. Our method outperforms existing methods with respect to the reconstruction quality, without requiring any prior knowledge, per-scene optimization, or pre-captured RGB / depth images.Doctor of Philosoph
ATHLETIC TRAINERS’ EXPERIENCES WITH AND PERCEPTIONS OF IMPLEMENTING CONCUSSION RISK REDUCTION STRATEGIES
Get PDFABSTRACT Neely Christopher McGinty: Athletic Trainers’ Experiences with and Perceptions of Implementing Concussion Risk Reduction Strategies (Under the direction of Johna K. Register-Mihalik) There is limited research on collegiate and secondary school athletic trainers’ perceptions of and experiences with concussion risk reduction strategy implementation. Objective: Evaluate differences between college and secondary school Athletic Trainers’ perceptions of and experiences with concussion risk reduction strategies to inform and scale implementation of such strategies in the secondary school and collegiate settings. Participants: 124 valid responses were included in the current study (n= 44 collegiate athletic trainers, n= 80 secondary school athletic trainers). Methods: This cross-sectional and non-experimental study examined the experiences and perceptions among secondary school and collegiate athletic trainers in implementation of concussion risk reduction strategies. Results: This study observed significant differences in college and secondary school athletic trainers experience with (p = 0.024) and behavioral intention to engage with (p= 0.032) concussion risk reduction strategies where secondary school athletic trainers scores were higher for both constructs. No other differences were observed. Conclusion: The results from the study demonstrate secondary school athletic trainers report more experience with and higher behavioral intention to engage with concussion risk reduction strategies.Master of Art
Investigating the Reciprocal Within- and Between-Person Association Between Daily Physical Activity and Affect
Get PDFThe purpose of this study was to investigate the bidirectional within- and between-person associations between daily physical activity (PA) and affect. Ninety-one overweight/obese adults wore an activPAL accelerometer for 21 days, completed morning and evening daily diaries about affect, and completed evening reports about recreational moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) and strength-training. Higher average self-reported MVPA was associated with lower average evening negative activated affect (b=-0.01). Higher average levels of morning positive activated (PR=1.08) and deactivated (PR=1.12) affect were associated with greater average self-reported MVPA. Higher morning negative activated affect (PR=0.87) was associated with less average self-reported MVPA. On days when participants experienced higher negative activated affect than usual, they had 35% lower odds of participating in self-reported strength-training (OR=0.65). The results support a cyclical relationship between affect and physical activity, more positive people participate in physical activity and more active people have lower average negative affect.Master of Art
VOICES IN EDUCATION: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF STAKEHOLDER FEEDBACK IN NORTH CAROLINA’S SCIENCE STANDARDS REVISION
Get PDFThis study explores the role of stakeholder voice in the most recent revision of North Carolina’s K-5 science standards. Specifically, it examines how feedback from various stakeholder groups was considered and influenced the decision-making process. Utilizing a qualitative content analysis approach, the research tracks changes across multiple drafts of the standards to assess the extent to which stakeholder input shaped the final version. The study is framed within the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, providing insight into governance structures, policy processes, and power dynamics in educational decision-making. Findings contribute to the broader discussion on stakeholder engagement in education policy, particularly amid increasing political tensions surrounding curriculum development and science education. By highlighting the mechanisms through which stakeholder participation is integrated into state-level policy, this research offers implications for future standards revisions and decision-making in education systems.Doctor of Educatio
Using Language for Efficient, Explainable, and Interactive Machine Learning
Get PDFLanguage is fundamental in human learning and pedagogy. We can use language to convey complex concepts, resolve ambiguities, and refine our understanding. In contrast, modern AI systems – especially large-scale deep learning models – rely on large datasets to deliver high predictive accuracies. Yet, their opaque decision-making processes limit interpretability and trust. In this thesis, we infuse language into key stages of the machine learning workflow, demonstrating how language explanations and interactions yield more efficient, transparent, and adaptive AI systems. First, we explore natural language explanations as an alternative to large-scale dataset annotations for classification. We introduce ExEnt, an entailment-based method that leverages these explanations for zero-shot categorization of novel concepts. To systematically assess model performance in this setting, we propose CLUES, a benchmark pairing structured classification tasks with human-written explanations for rigorous evaluation. Next, we use natural language to explain broader patterns in how trained classifiers make decisions. We introduce MaNtLE, a model-agnostic framework that generates rationales describing a classifier’s reasoning across different inputs. Unlike traditional attribution-based methods, MaNtLE explanations are more faithful to the classifier’s decision process and easier for users to understand. Beyond explanations, we also explore how language can diagnose and rectify systematic errors intext classifiers. We introduce DiScErN, a framework that detects and precisely describes error-prone data groups using natural language. These descriptions then guide targeted data augmentation, improving model performance in underperforming regions. Finally, we study how language interactions can be used to actively learn new concepts. Here, we present INTERACT, an interactive learning framework enabling large language models to acquire and refine concepts through question-driven dialogues with experts. Empirically, we demonstrate that language models achieve strong performance in just a few dialogue turns, highlighting the efficiency and effectiveness of interactive learning. Collectively, these contributions demonstrate that language – in the form of explanations or interactive queries – offers a versatile mechanism for guiding machine learning models. By embedding language into the machine learning pipeline, we enable AI systems that are not only adaptable butalso interpretable, trustworthy, and efficient in real-world settings.Doctor of Philosoph
Theology in the Medieval Public Sphere: Scholastic Theologians and the Franco-Papal Conflict
Get PDFIn the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Pope Boniface VIII and the French King Philip IV clashed over the demarcation of royal and papal jurisdiction. This dissertation examines the role of theologians trained in the University of Paris in that dispute. It argues that this role, as well as the broader conflict, should be understood in terms of a medieval public sphere. Contrary to the common stereotype of medieval society as a static feudal hierarchy, these theologians engaged in a dynamic public dispute about the nature of authority in their society. Both the pope and the king needed to convince people of their conflicting claims to authority, and scholastic theologians provided arguments for both sides of the conflict. Drawing on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, this dissertation argues that the theologian was a special ‘character’ in medieval society, a privileged narrator who provided stories of how a Christian society ought to function. As the Franco-papal conflict unfolded, theologians intervened on the various questions under dispute, the legitimacy of Boniface’s election after the resignation of his predecessor Celestine V, clerical exemptions from taxation, and the pope’s ability to intervene in temporal matters. In doing so, they crafted narratives which legitimized the actions of the king or the pope. The concept of the common good played an important role in these narratives, providing a theoretical framework for theologians to discuss the public sphere in which they were acting.Doctor of Philosoph