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The Terracotta Altars of Morgantina: A Study of the Form, Production, Use, and Development of Arulae from Hellenistic Sicily
Get PDFThis dissertation establishes the first systematic and comprehensive study of cylindrical terracotta altars, often referred to as arulae. Arulae are considered characteristic of the material culture of Hellenistic Sicily and thought to represent a significant body of evidence for domestic cult practice. However, no comprehensive treatment has been published, and critical information about their use has not been securely established. As a result, arulae have not been fully incorporated into research on Hellenistic religion, and assertions about their ritual function remain conjectural. This study focuses on the complete corpus of arulae from Morgantina, comprising more than 300 fragments, but examples from other sites are also included. The material under consideration substantially increases the previously available dataset and clarifies impressions about their form, production, decoration, context, and chronology. Arulae are first discussed with respect to their range in size in Chapter 2 with a view to developing a new typology across sites. Using statistical analysis, I distinguish four types made in standardized sizes and propose functional differences between them. Chapter 3 addresses production, both in terms of the manufacturing process and decorative practices. The former highlights the skills and technical knowledge involved in the production of arulae, while the latter analyzes ornamental motifs and sequences to propose workshop groupings and identify regional decorative preferences. In order to evaluate more critically the use of arulae, Chapter 4 applies formation theory to welldocumented deposits and revisits the composition of their assemblages. I demonstrate that arulae were used in households, sanctuaries, and public spaces and argue that they served as cult furnishings in these settings. Chapter 5 establishes a chronology of Sicilian arulae through stylistic and contextual analysis and discusses changes in their form, decoration, and use. I argue that arulae first emerge in the late fourth century B.C.E. and exhibit more uniform decorations and production techniques over the course of the next century. They decline sharply after the Roman conquest of Sicily in 211 B.C.E, but a few late examples from the first century B.C.E. attest to some degree of cultural continuity in domestic settings
Exotic Phenomena in Dimension Four
No full textThis thesis is a comparison of the smooth and topological categories in dimension 4. We first discuss lists of homeomorphic 4-manifolds with non-equivalent “exotic” smooth structures, and show that any finite list of smooth, closed, simply-connected 4-manifolds that are homeomorphic to a given one X can be obtained by removing a single compact contractible submanifold (or cork) from X, and then regluing it by powers of a boundary diffeomorphism. Furthermore, by allowing the cork to be noncompact, the collection of all the smooth manifolds homeomorphic to X can be obtained in this way. The existence of a universal noncompact cork is also established. The results in the second half of the thesis illustrate the difference between the smooth isotopy, smooth equivalence (by a diffeomorphism), and topological isotopy of smoothly embedded surfaces in a 4-manifold. We construct infinitely many smooth oriented 4-manifolds containing pairs of homotopic, smoothly embedded 2-spheres that are not topologically isotopic, but that are equivalent by an ambient diffeomorphism inducing the identity on homology. These examples show that Gabai’s recent “Generalized” 4D Lightbulb Theorem does not generalize to arbitrary 4-manifolds. In contrast, we also show that there are smoothly embedded 2-spheres that are both equivalent and topologically isotopic, but not smoothly isotopic
Designing a learner-centered digital literacy curriculum: Opportunities and Challenges
No full textEducators, researchers and institutions recognized the importance of digital literacy and regarded digital competencies as essential skills for life and for employability. In India the development of digital literacy curriculum and course offerings remain in traditional modes, focusing on Information Communications Technology (ICT) knowledge. This paper will share learnings from conducting a digital literacy course in the liberal arts institution in India and discuss opportunities and challenges of adopting blended learning and designing the course to be learner-centered
Blended Learning: Student and Faculty Perspectives in the Five Colleges
Get PDFIn the Five College Consortium, the perennial question when introducing digital objects into the classroom is: how does one improve the student’s experience without jeopardizing the core of current practice and success? In an effort to answer this question, the Five Colleges Blended Learning and Digital Humanities program (5collBLDH) surveyed faculty across our consortium as well as students at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who have experienced classes with blended technologies. Our paper will describe these surveys, our methods, and the data generated as well as suggesting some interpretations about student and faculty perspectives on Blended Learning
Digital Health and Wellness as a Digital Competency
No full text“Safety” in the context of digital competencies often refers to protecting devices and personal data. We want to expand our definition to include the intersections of digital technologies with physical and psychological well-being. In this workshop, we will explore together and create a list of topics in digital health and wellness that might be included as part of a digital competency in safety, such as cyberbullying, distraction, and ergonomics. We plan to continue this conversation by forming a working group for other small liberal arts colleges with programs in digital competency
Deportability and manifestations of suffering of immigrants and their families / Deportabilidad y manifestaciones del sufrimiento de los inmigrantes y sus familias
No full textIn this study, I examine the way in which deportation inflicts different forms of suffering upon both immigrants themselves and their families. Drawing on a series of open-ended interviews with Mexican immigrants in the United States, as well as children of immigrants, and deportees, I examine not only the subjective condition of immigrants’ deportability status but also how living in a constant state of fear affects every member of the family. In each of the cases, I document the circumstances that contribute to the suffering of immigrants and their families. Finally, although all the stories presented here were forged through pain and anxiety, ultimately, these narratives demonstrate resistance and resilience within the migrant community.
En este estudio, examino la manera en que la deportación inflige diferentes formas de sufrimiento tanto a los migrantes como a sus familias. A partir de una serie de entrevistas abiertas con migrantes mexicanos, hijos de inmigrantes y deportados, examino no solo la condición subjetiva del estado de deportación de un migrante, sino también intento comprender el persistente miedo que tal condición inflige a cada uno de los miembros de la familia. Por lo tanto, en los casos presentados se intenta documentar las circunstancias que contribuyen a dicho sufrimiento. Por último, aunque todas las historias presentadas en este trabajo reflejan una dosis del dolor y ansiedad de las familias, también retratan, en última instancia, historias de resistencia y resiliencia dentro de la comunidad migrante
Hemimethylation of CpG dyads is characteristic of secondary DMRs associated with imprinted loci and correlates with 5-hydroxymethylcytosine at paternally methylated sequences
No full textBackground
In mammals, the regulation of imprinted genes is controlled by differential methylation at imprinting control regions which acquire parent of origin-specific methylation patterns during gametogenesis and retain differences in allelic methylation status throughout fertilization and subsequent somatic cell divisions. In addition, many imprinted genes acquire differential methylation during post-implantation development; these secondary differentially methylated regions appear necessary to maintain the imprinted expression state of individual genes. Despite the requirement for both types of differentially methylated sequence elements to achieve proper expression across imprinting clusters, methylation patterns are more labile at secondary differentially methylated regions. To understand the nature of this variability, we analyzed CpG dyad methylation patterns at both paternally and maternally methylated imprinted loci within multiple imprinting clusters. Results
We determined that both paternally and maternally methylated secondary differentially methylated regions associated with imprinted genes display high levels of hemimethylation, 29–49%, in comparison to imprinting control regions which exhibited 8–12% hemimethylation. To explore how hemimethylation could arise, we assessed the differentially methylated regions for the presence of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine which could cause methylation to be lost via either passive and/or active demethylation mechanisms. We found enrichment of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine at paternally methylated secondary differentially methylated regions, but not at the maternally methylated sites we analyzed in this study. Conclusions
We found high levels of hemimethylation to be a generalizable characteristic of secondary differentially methylated regions associated with imprinted genes. We propose that 5-hydroxymethylcytosine enrichment may be responsible for the variability in methylation status at paternally methylated secondary differentially methylated regions associated with imprinted genes. We further suggest that the high incidence of hemimethylation at secondary differentially methylated regions must be counteracted by continuous methylation acquisition at these loci
