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Consider the Dove a Bird of Prey
No full textConsider the Dove a Bird of Prey is a collection of lyric poems that explore a female speaker’s implication in misogynist systems and the damaging psychological outcomes of this implication. The speaker is aware of her complicity—how her social gains have come at the cost of her own subordination as well as the subjugation of others. The resulting ambiguity defines her existence, manifesting in her need to acquire male attention and material goods, and in her use of substances as a means of consolation. Ultimately, solace is found within the speaker’s private belief system, a faith that, as poet Rebecca Tamás expresses of the occult, “challenges what power and knowledge might be.” The speaker’s faith is like the faith of the deeply religious, a belief that an unnamed, divine something will intervene to lift her beyond worldly limitations. Faith is represented as a means of both defense and transcendence from the gendered systems of power that seek to contain and control female bodies. While most of the poems are semi-autobiographical—the speaker is a persona, but the experiences are based on my own—the final poem is a research-driven piece about the figure of the camp follower during Joan of Arc’s time. Camp followers were women who travelled with armies, providing nursing, laundering, cooking, and sexual services. The poem takes its name from a painting titled “Joan Drives Away the Camp Followers.
A Machine Learning Model for Predicting the SOFR Term-structure
No full textThe Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) has emerged as the leading benchmark for U.S. dollar-denominated interest rate derivatives, replacing LIBOR due to its transparency and robustness. This thesis develops a comprehensive framework for modeling and forecasting the SOFR term structure using machine learning methods, with a particular focus on CME SOFR futures. We first apply the official CME methodology to construct a daily, piecewise-constant SOFR forward rate curve, incorporating policy-driven discontinuities at Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) dates. The curve is then fitted to the dynamic Nelson–Siegel (DNS) model, extracting time series of level, slope, and curvature factors. To capture and predict the evolution of these factors, we implement recurrent neural networks (RNNs), including Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) architectures, and integrate a Kalman filter for state-space estimation. The performance of the proposed model is evaluated through out-of-sample forecasts under various loss functions, including mean squared error (MSE) and mean absolute error (MAE), and benchmarks against curve persistence. Our results show that the machine learning approach provides robust short-term forecasts for the SOFR term structure. However, accurately modeling and forecasting abrupt changes around monetary policy announcements remains a challenge, highlighting an important direction for future research. This research offers a practical and robust modeling strategy for interest rate risk management, with direct applications in the pricing and risk assessment of SOFR-linked financial products
History As a Playable System: Modeling the Late Bronze Age Collapse in The Jagged Time
No full textGames based on historical themes are incredibly common but also divisive among both game scholars and historians. This project was an attempt to bridge that divide by adapting historical argumentation directly into gameplay mechanics, using the procedural rhetoric of games as a uniquely powerful tool to conveying the academic rhetoric of historians. The resulting game, The Jagged Time, tells the story of a fictionalized civilization modeled on New Kingdom Egypt over the course of several hundred years of history, ending in an analogue to the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Using its mechanics, the game advances the argument made by the historian Eric Cline – namely that the Collapse was due to a perfect storm of factors and not any one cause. It also advances these arguments in a novel way from a design perspective, taking an approach to gameplay and history that is conventionally done through 4X-style strategy games and instead adapting it to the logic of a deck-building card game. The affordances and limitations of this approach are assessed, as well as the process of adapting historical argument into gameplay mechanics. A case study scenario in the game is then briefly analyzed using Brian Upton’s criteria of playfulness
Robot-Supervised Intelligent Workload Reallocation Based on Stress-Aware Human Performance Monitoring in Human-Robot Teams
No full textThe integration of humans and artificial intelligence-based robotic systems in collaborative environments is transforming teamwork across domains. These human–robot teams, which include both physically embodied robots and intelligent virtual agents, require careful coordination to ensure effective task performance. A critical factor is the dynamic allocation of workload, which must consider the distinct characteristics of humans and robots. Human performance, influenced by stress and other physiological states, contrasts with the algorithmic and cognitive nature of robotic behavior. This disparity highlights the need for adaptive workload allocation strategies that safeguard human well-being while sustaining overall team efficiency.
This research investigates a robot-supervised, stress-aware workload allocation framework that continuously monitors human stress levels and reallocates tasks in real time to maintain optimal performance. Leveraging advancements in wearable technology and affective computing, the study explores multiple physiological (EEG, f-NIRS, ECG, EDA, EOG) and behavioral (facial expressions, speech, eye movement) indicators to assess stress. It further considers contextual factors such as task complexity, time of day, and individual differences in skills and knowledge.
The central contribution is a stress-sensitive reallocation algorithm that enables robots to adapt task assignments when stress affects human performance. The scope of this thesis is intentionally limited to single-human, single-robot, single-task scenarios to provide a controlled foundation for stress-aware workload redistribution. This focused scope allows a systematic investigation of how human stress influences task execution and how robots can intervene effectively. Within this boundary, the thesis offers a generic stress-sensitive framework and a structured methodological approach validated through simulation
Interstitial Listening: Hearing “Voices” in the Scene of Translation
No full textThis thesis sets out from a partial translation of Willy Apollon’s 1976 book, Le vaudou: un espace pour les “voix.” Apollon is a psychoanalyst from Haiti who has been developing the psychoanalytic treatment of psychosis in Quebec since 1981. In addition to the translation, it offers a theoretical reflection on translating that derives from concepts of voice and writing developed in Apollon’s book, which are then brought into relation with Henri Meschonnic’s notion of hearing and Pier-Pascale Boulanger’s notion of an “érotique du traduire.” The theoretical section threads a concept of the drive through the work of these three theorists to arrive at a perspective on translation that situates it in alignment with Apollon’s theory of the voice by way of Boulanger’s notion of the erotic. Meschonnic’s demand that the translator hear “the poem”—an inherent quality in a text that indicates the presence of the subject—is considered alongside Apollon’s demand that the “voice” be heard in a text. Finally, with the intention of incorporating Apollon’s concept of voice into a form of writing that reflects key ideas in the book, a research creation section takes the form of associative, intratextual writing that responds to the experience of translating Le vaudou: un espace pour les “voix,” while also working from the concept of voice theorized by Apollon, as well as concepts and methods taken from psychoanalysis that reflect Apollon’s later work in the field
No Light at the End of the Tunnel: Limited Mammal Use of Unmitigated Bridges and Large Water Culverts to Cross Under Roads in the Laurentides
No full textRoads are a barrier to mammal movement, yet wildlife passages are infrequently implemented. Alternatively, some species are reported crossing through more common road infrastructure such as bridges and water culverts. I aimed to better understand how mammals use these structures to connect their habitats by investigating potential predictors of their use. My research focused on the Laurentides region in Quebec, where two parallel major roads bisect every ecological corridor linking two national parks. From June 2022 to December 2023, I installed trail cameras to monitor mammals at two bridges and eight large box culverts and placed track boxes in the surrounding habitat for 20 concurrent weeks. Mammals associated with urban landscapes were the most prevalent among the 20 different species or groups of species identified across all sites, of which only 11 made at least one full crossing. Many species from the region were notably absent, particularly large mammals. Six species were often observed in water and were the only species who crossed through sites that had no continuous dry ledge. Minimum water depth to cross a site was the strongest predictor to deter mammals, as the sites with the highest water depths were rarely or never crossed even by water-tolerant species. Much greater bridge use shows that unmitigated culverts are largely unsuitable for mammal movement. I strongly recommend adding dry ledges or shelves to the structures to mitigate the roads’ impacts on connectivity, and wildlife fencing to prevent road mortality and guide animals to sites with these features
Fairbanks
No full textFairbanks is a coming-of-age novel following the historical Sallie Fairbanks and her sisters, set ten years after their uncle Jason’s execution for a violent crime against their neighbor in 19th century Massachusetts. The novel makes use of recognizable tropes and conventions of 19th and early 20th century coming-of-age, marriage plot, and gothic fiction for and by women—such as the bumbling clergyman, the haunted house, the inseparable set of sisters—to explore dynamics of gendered and sexual violence within communities and between family members, trauma, and dysfunctional families. As Sallie brushes up against familiar scenarios she is confronted again
and again by the limitations of her situation and her conflicting desires as a young woman who seeks connection, safety, and freedom. In this way, Fairbanks unravels and interrogates typical and enduring narratives about women which invariably end in romance and marriage, revealing the potential for alternative configurations and outcomes within and beyond these plots
Video Games and their Affective Intensities: Locating and Exploring the Emotional Intensities in Online Communities and Project Zomboid
No full textThe purpose of this thesis is to understand better the relationship between the experiences of games and their emotional contexts: that is, how emotions and feelings impact how gamers experience and conceive of their play. Project Zomboid, a multiplayer horror zombie-survival game, provides a setting and history charged with emotion and feeling, on top of which the human-survival drama plays out. Using ethnographic methods, including participant-observation in a Project Zomboid Discord server, play experiences and five semi-structured interviews, this thesis explores the affective nature of Project Zomboid as an expression of the zombie genre: as collections of bodies, containers, and surfaces for emotions, feelings, and ideas. It explores how players of Project Zomboid utilize game mechanics and player-made modifications to harness the game’s ability to foster affectively intensive experiences, including game settings as well as adding, removing or changing ones already present. The thesis also explores how communities adjacent to video games like the Project Zomboid Discord perform the role of sustaining those affective relationships between players/users and the game: how players, users, and developers experience the Project Zomboid Discord community as an “emotional ecosystem,” an ecology of feeling and sentiment that informs discourses and interactions surrounding the game and its community. Whether they are deemed good or bad, and whether there are high or low stakes activities involved, these values and opinions reflect encounters, experiences, and emergences of the sociocultural dimensions of emotion in social interaction
Afterlives of the SNES/SFC
No full textThis dissertation explores the informal practices, technologies, and industries that have proliferated alongside the Super NES/Super Famicom (SNES/SFC) videogame console since its initial release. The SNES/SFC was manufactured and distributed by Nintendo in the early nineties and remains an important cultural touchstone due to its prominent role in the so-called console wars, its status as Nintendo’s last 2D television console, and its large and influential library of games. My research joins a growing number of academic projects that expand the platform studies archive by decentring corporate narratives and interrogating the central role of user-driven activities in negotiating a console’s meaning and its multifarious media imaginaries.
In this dissertation, I adopt a post-humanist media archaeological methodology that combines hands-on tinkering, hybrid ethnography, and collaborations with material communities. My approach is inclusive of areas of study that are typically excluded from historical accounts due to their status as unauthorised, unofficial, or even illegal. I chronicle the emergence of informal SNES/SFC emulators in the nineties; collaborate with citizen archivists who restore the Satellaview’s abandoned software ecosystems; create bespoke reproduction cartridges to uncover the origins of bootleg games; and leverage hacker-made tools to interrogate diverse fan localisation and ROM-hacking efforts. In addition to generating insights about the console itself, my research ties the SNES/SFC into broader debates concerning intellectual property law, creative labour, and media obsolescence. Throughout Afterlives of the SNES/SFC, I broaden, complicate, and accentuate existing media historical analyses of the residual videogame console
Parametric Heat Exchanger Sizing Model for Early Aircraft Design Phases
No full textThe aviation industry aims to reduce its environmental impact, and alternative propulsion architectures,
including hydrogen-based, hybrid-electric, or all-electric systems, are seen as promising
pathways. However, these novel designs have raised new requirements and feasibility questions
regarding thermal management. Electric Propulsion Aircraft (EPA) and Hybrid-Electric Propulsion
Aircraft (HEPA) fundamentally change the Thermal Management System (TMS) landscape by
relocating heat loads from the nacelle to inside the fuselage. Consequently, new design and development
methods for TMSs are necessary, beginning at the component level. These systems are
typically comprise of Heat Exchanger (HX)s, headers, distributors, pumps, pipes, ducts, valves, and
nozzles. Heat exchangers serve as the core component, facilitating heat transfer between materials.
This thesis presents research on the development and validation of a parametric sizing methodology
for heat exchangers intended for early aircraft design phases within a Multidisciplinary Design
Analysis and Optimization (MDAO) framework, i.e., for cryogenic heat transfer. The method is
based on physical equations, combined with validated empirical relationships for heat exchanger
design with iterative solver algorithms for sizing purposes. Since design problems typically involve
multiple variables and possible solutions, the methodology employs constraint-based optimization
techniques alongside a weighted sum solution selection method. The methodology is validated experimentally
by comparing its results with a commercial heat exchanger, and cross-validated with a
cryogenic HX. The research examines an all-electric hydrogen fuel cell aircraft architecture with a
7.6 MW propulsion system. Results show that the methodology successfully characterizes heat exchanger
performance across multiple operating conditions. The study reveals that idealized assumptions
overestimate system cooling potential by approximately 10%, with pressure losses reducing
liquid hydrogen cooling capacity by 60 kW and single-stage expansion further decreasing it by 38
kW. This methodology advances aircraft design by providing a parametric framework for evaluating
TMS requirements and feasibility during conceptual design. It enables more precise assessment
of hydrogen-based propulsion systems integration challenges while supporting the development of
efficient, sustainable aviation technologies.
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