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Contemplation and Action in Confucian-Christian Dialogue: Aloysius Chang's Chinese Catholic Adaptation of Neo-Confucian "Quiet-Sitting" (Jingzuo 靜坐)
Full text linkIn broad terms, this dissertation calls for more constructive engagement between the field of Confucian-Christian comparison and the study of Chinese Christian theologies articulated in Confucian terms, arguing that the latter have important insights to offer the former. More specifically, it explores the groundbreaking work of Aloysius Chang Chun-shen (Zhang Chunshen 張春申, 1929-2015), an influential yet understudied Chinese Jesuit who developed a form of Christian spirituality inspired by the Neo-Confucian practice of “quiet-sitting” (jingzuo 静坐). From a strictly historical perspective, Chang’s positive evaluation of Neo-Confucianism as a spiritual resource for Chinese Christians is significant in its departure from earlier, more critical approaches to the tradition by Catholic missionaries, typified by that of Chang’s prominent successor in the Jesuit mission, Matteo Ricci (1552-1610). This alone makes Chang’s work worthy of extended study. From a comparative perspective, however, equally significant is Chang’s view of the convergence between Catholic and Neo-Confucian perspectives regarding the dynamic relationship between contemplation and action—a perennial locus in both traditions, yet one which has figured little in comparisons between the two.
With this in view, the first half of the study sets necessary foundations, including by outlining major ways the contemplation-action relation has figured in the Catholic, and especially Ignatian, tradition of which Chang was an inheritor; by introducing quiet-sitting and its connection to comparable concerns within Neo-Confucianism; and then by situating this dissertation’s focus within the broader field of Confucian-Christian comparison. The second half turns to Chang, first situating his theological program against the backdrop of Catholic-Confucian encounter in Chinese history, and then providing a close analysis of his proposal for Chinese Christian quiet-sitting. In doing so, a number of Neo-Confucian-inspired elements are highlighted, including Chang’s appeal to what he calls the “category of unity” (yiti fanchou 一體範疇) and his treatment of the classic Great Learning (Daxue 大學) as a practical model for Christian quiet-sitting. Most importantly, however, Chang is shown to develop these elements in a way that manifests striking points of convergence between Catholic and Neo-Confucian perspectives on the contemplation-action relationship—points ranging from metaphysical foundations to hermeneutical, procedural, and moral considerations. Finally, the implications of Chang’s insights are drawn out by treating the prominent Neo-Confucian Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200) as a comparand, thereby demonstrating how Chang’s perspectives not only prompt new lines of inquiry vis-à-vis Zhu’s quiet-sitting, but also enrich and challenge a number of recent comparisons between Zhu and other Christian figures or contemplative practices. Most significantly, the comparative insights undergirding Chang’s proposal are found to challenge certain points of contention that have loomed large in Confucian-Christian comparison, with the most problematic being a persistent dichotomy between “transcendence” and “immanence.” Put simply, Chang’s insights regarding the two traditions’ convergent perspectives on the relationship between contemplation and action—and especially on the metaphysical foundations of this relationship—not only show such a dichotomy to be insufficient to the task of sensitive comparison, but also reveal more compelling points for comparative conversation. In this way, the study positions Chang’s Chinese Christian quiet-sitting as an invaluable resource for the dialogue between Christianity and Confucianism.Religion, Committee on the Study o
Electron–Phonon Coupling in Metal–Organic Frameworks
Full text linkMetal--organic frameworks (MOFs) are a promising class of materials that offer impressive tunability. They are thereby suitable for use as platforms for designing functional materials. However, navigating their design space is a rather Sisyphean task, with over 500,000 predicted MOFs in the literature.
If we can better understand the fundamental properties of MOFs, we can develop systems for more effectively tuning MOF functionality. In particular, their high crystallinity and relative softness provide opportunities for engineering electrical and optical properties. Further, electrical conductivity in MOFs is yet limited; understanding and improving their charge transport would greatly expand MOF applications.
This work seeks to advance our understanding of the MOF design space. It combines an interest in 1) applying physical theory to a traditionally chemical material platform, 2) studying transport in MOFs for practical applications, and 3) advancing the capabilities and accessibility of computational tools. In service of these goals, I implement a computational workflow for \textit{ab initio} calculations of three key determinants of MOF properties: electrons, phonons, and their coupling.
In Chapter 0, I provide a gentle and patient introduction to materials science, computational materials study, and MOFs. The discussion is intended to gradually paint a rich motivation for this work, at a level accessible to the lay reader. I discuss why MOFs are an interesting material platform from both chemical and physical perspectives, as well as why electron--phonon coupling is a particularly interesting problem to address.
In Chapter 1, I provide background on the theory necessary to appreciate this work. I begin with a technical review of the physics used herein to compute electron--phonon coupling. These include density functional theory, density functional perturbation theory, and Wannierization. I then provide a primer on topics in high-performance computing, which is important for understanding how I attempted to make expensive electron--phonon calculations attainable.
In Chapter 2, I discuss the details of how my computational workflow is implemented. This is the heart of the work, and should be read as a ``how-to'' handbook for performing the calculations explained in Chapter 1. Whereas the preceding chapter is physics-oriented, this chapter is particularly computation-oriented.
In Chapter 3, I provide sample calculations as a proof of concept for the computational workflow developed herein. In particular, I discuss results for the two-dimensional CuC7H6N4 MOF (CSD refcode DUKYAL), finding electronic features of interest and general alignment of phonon properties with the existing literature. I also note limitations in Wannierization.
Taken together, this work provides a computationally practical workflow for calculating electron--phonon coupling in metal--organic frameworks, while elucidating the need for improved automation of Wannierization to achieve high-throughput scale.Applied Mathematic
Analogy and Anomaly in the Continental Renaissance: An Intellectual History
Full text linkThis dissertation explores the tension between analogy and anomaly—two foundational concepts deriving from ancient grammatical and rhetorical traditions—and traces their intellectual afterlife in the Continental Renaissance. Focusing on the reintroduction and reinterpretation of these concepts by Petrarch, Bruni, and Montaigne, this dissertation argues that Renaissance humanists internalized ancient linguistic theory to negotiate evolving notions of authorship, language, and exemplarity. Through detailed case studies, it examines how Varro’s De lingua latina and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria influenced Renaissance thinkers in their effort to reconcile classical models with historico-linguistic subjectivity. Petrarch’s poetry enacts anomaly through iterative formal innovation; Bruni redefines translation theory by rejecting strict verbal equivalence in favor of sense and idiom; and Montaigne reorients language and thought around the idiosyncrasies of subjectivity, dissolving classical paradigms. Ultimately, the project reframes analogy and anomaly not merely as grammatical terms but as organizing principles for literary composition and intellectual identity. It reveals how the Renaissance humanist movement, often seen as paradigmatic in its return to antiquity, was also deeply engaged in conceptualizing rupture, irregularity, and linguistic historicism—thus offering a new model of how early modern authors situated themselves within, and against, inherited norms.Englis
Ignoring Silly Idle Talk: Gossip’s Moral and Narrative Implications and George Eliot’s Ethics of Sympathy in The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton
Full text linkGeorge Eliot’s ethics of sympathy and its various contradictions and complexities have been explored by many scholars. While many scholars have reckoned with the way that Eliot uses gossip in the construction of her narratives, the way that gossip is a basis for knowledge, one of the essential elements of Eliot’s ethics of sympathy, has been less thoroughly investigated. What counts as truth, knowledge, and which kinds of knowledge are valuable is a topic that can be seen at play in Eliot’s novella The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton. This particular novella helps to highlight the dangers of ignoring gossip and avoiding it altogether, and highlight its inevitability and therefore its value in self-preservation and in understanding others.Extension Studie
Loathe You Too: Abortion Salience, Partisan Affect, and Aggressive Politics
Full text linkThis research seeks to determine the causal linkage between affective polarization and the degree to which abortion is important to voters. Using quantitative data from the American National Election Studies and a combination of case studies and regression analyses, it finds that the degree to which voters think of abortion as an important issue does generate an increase in affective polarization, and that this relationship also exists for other social issues. Moreover, it finds that abortion salience has increased affective polarization specifically when politicians have engaged in both affective polarization and policy polarization around abortion. This relationship is concentrated within three movements in conservative politics: one guided by Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, one by the Tea Party in the early 2010s, and one by Donald Trump in the late 2010s.Extension Studie
Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances
No full textMost of Mae’s life is happening in their head. At sixteen years old, faced with challenges at school and at home, Mae finds solace in the world of Lena Connolly, a successful actor living in New York City, whose circumstances become more real to Mae than their own. As Mae grows up, coming into adulthood, they are forced to reckon with the gap between imagination and reality, and along the way, discover the beauty in both.Extension Studie
An Ecological Approach to Emotion Socialization in the Early Childhood Classroom: Examining Contextual Influences on Children’s Early Social and Emotional Development
Full text linkSocial and emotional competencies in early childhood are critical to young children’s educational success and holistic development (Greenberg et al., 2017). These skills are influenced by features of children’s contexts and relationships (Dunn, 2003; Jones et al., 2019) and are amenable to intervention early on (Murano et al., 2020). Yet, despite consensus on the importance of social and emotional skills in early childhood, much is still unknown about the developmental pathways by which early educational contexts affect the development of these skills. Research on emotion socialization in the classroom has illuminated specific teacher behaviors that contribute to children’s social and emotional development (Denham et al., 2012), but it is important to situate dyadic adult-child interactions within broader ecological contexts (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). My dissertation research applies an ecological perspective to classroom-based emotion socialization to examine how relational features of early educational contexts are related to children’s social and emotional development.
In Paper 1, I review existing literature on how relational processes relate to social and emotional development in the classroom and explicate a relational framework for capturing emotion socialization in preschool settings. In Paper 2, I use a large-scale dataset to investigate associations between relational socialization processes within the early educational setting and children’s social and emotional development. I find that teacher-child relationships and interactions are associated with children’s social and emotional skills, and classroom interaction supportiveness serves as a mechanism linking social and emotional instruction to children’s outcomes. In Paper 3, I document patterns of socialization processes in Head Start settings by using latent profile analysis to examine how features of preschool settings cluster together and relate to children’s developmental outcomes. I find evidence of five classroom profiles differentiated by dimensions of classroom relational climate and social and emotional instruction. Membership in particular classroom profiles is predicted by child emotion skills in the fall, and in some cases, predictive of children’s social skills in the spring. Taken together, these papers provide a framework to guide future study on emotion socialization in preschool settings and contribute empirical evidence on core features of classroom socializing contexts and their associations with children’s development.Educatio
Disruptive Innovation or Competitive Advantage? Generative AI and the Future of the Hollywood Studio System
No full textGenerative AI has been a global hot-button issue, but no more so than in the Hollywood film industry. Hollywood was blindsided when in 2022, AI technology such as DALL-E and later Sora, debuted, demonstrating how original images could easily be created solely from text prompts, or how traditional movie sets and locations for filming could be generated by AI, for a fraction of the cost to travel. The industry has since oscillated between states of panic, disbelief, and insurgency over the topic and its possible use to displace creative workers.
This innovative technology even triggered a new crop of AI-native and hybrid studios to appear in the entertainment industry. Many of these new entrants are promising, highly efficient workflow models utilizing AI that could reduce filmmaking costs and circumvent the traditional workflow processes and tools employed by the traditional studio incumbents. Other new AI studio entrants specifically target AI to disrupt the traditional studios and democratize the film industry.
But is GenAI really “disruptive technology”? Or could the incumbent studios use GenAI to gain a competitive advantage over their incumbent rivals, as well as fend off these new AI native challengers, while also better serving their consumers? If incumbent studios continue to resist this technology, is it possible for new AI studio entrants to disrupt and supplant their dominance over the entertainment industry?
This thesis explores the current entertainment industry landscape in the shadow of rapidly emerging AI technology and dissects the historical complexity of the Hollywood studio system to identify historic themes and patterns, macroeconomic trends, and business model design elements. These are analyzed through the lens of grounded business theories, including Clay Christensen’s Theory of Disruptive Innovation. My aim is to gain insight into the industry’s behaviors and the studios’ institutional beliefs in order to better understand the scope of how AI could be a benefit or detriment to their strategic positioning and business offering.Extension Studie
Mechanisms of Nucleosome Engagement by Superfamily 2 ATPases
No full textThe nucleosome acidic patch, a highly conserved surface composed of negatively charged residues on the H2A–H2B dimer, serves as a key docking site for a wide variety of chromatin regulators. Proteins that engage this patch often use basic “arginine anchor” motifs to form electrostatic contacts that stabilize their association with the nucleosome. Although several histone and DNA modifying proteins have been shown to use this interaction mode, the full diversity and mechanistic consequences of acidic patch recognition remain poorly understood. This dissertation explores the structural and functional roles of acidic patch binding across three studies, highlighting how this interaction modulates chromatin engagement and activity.
In Chapter 2, I investigate how the human chromatin remodeler CHD1 uses a conserved “anchor element” to engage the nucleosomal acidic patch. Using cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), I captured multiple conformational states of the CHD1-nucleosome complex, revealing a stepwise nucleosomal recruitment mechanism and regulatory pause states. These findings show how CHD1 couples recognition of the acidic patch and extranucleosomal DNA with directional DNA translocation, offering new insight into how remodelers achieve specificity and control during chromatin remodeling.
Chapter 3 expands on the concept of acidic patch binding by introducing a structure-based in silico screening platform. Using AlphaFold-Multimer, we predicted interactions between the H2A-H2B dimer and over 7,000 human nuclear proteins, identifying 41 previously uncharacterized acidic patch interactors. This screen provides a scalable approach to mapping nucleosome interactions and establishes a new framework for identifying potential chromatin interactors.
Finally, in Chapter 4, I focus on one of the high-confidence hits from our screen:
the E3 ubiquitin ligase and SF2-type ATPase SHPRH. I visualize the SHPRH-nucleosome complex by cryo-EM and show that SHPRH binds the acidic patch using multiple arginine anchors. Interestingly, SHPRH adopts a unique conformation distinct from other ATPase-containing chromatin factors and interacts with additional nucleosomal features including the H4 N-terminal tail. We explore how these interactions coordinate SHPRH’s activity and regulate its ATP hydrolysis.
Together, these studies highlight the acidic patch as a critical hub for chromatin regulation and demonstrate how a combination of structural biology, computational prediction, and functional analysis can uncover new mechanisms of genome regulation. The work presented here not only advances our understanding of chromatin remodeling mechanism but also provides new tools and concepts for investigating the interactions of chromatin-associated factors with nucleosomes.Biological and Biomedical Science
Regulation of IFN-γ expression in reprogrammed regulatory T Cells through IL-23 receptor and Ifng distal cis-regulatory elements
No full textRegulatory T (Treg) cells are critical for maintaining immune homeostasis, but they also contribute to immune suppression and hinder antitumor immune responses and immunotherapy in the tumor microenvironments of human cancer patients and mouse models of cancer. However, based on our lab’s previous work, the inflammatory cytokines IL-18 and IL-12 can synergistically reprogram a fraction of tumor-infiltrating Treg cells to adopt a Th1-like phenotype and secrete IFN-g, and this process is greatly amplified by disruption of TCR signaling via the Carma1/Bcl10/Malt1 (CBM) signalosome. The molecular mechanisms governing this transition remain poorly understood. Here, we investigate the role of the IL-23/IL-23R axis and the epigenetic regulation of the Ifng locus during Treg reprogramming.
We demonstrate that IL-23R is preferentially expressed on Treg that do not secrete IFN-γ, and its overexpression reduces IFN-γ production in IL-12/IL-18 driven reprogrammed Tregs dependent on its signaling function. By deleting cis-regulatory elements (CREs) of the Ifng gene, we furthermore identify several distal elements that contribute to its transcriptional regulation in reprogrammed Tregs. Most notably, deletion of CNS -34 and CNS +40 significantly reduce IFN-γ production. CUT&RUN-qPCR analysis reveals distinct recruitment patterns of RelA to these CNS regions, suggesting differential transcriptional control of Ifng in Th1 and reprogrammed Treg cells. Our findings provide novel insights into the mechanisms controlling IFN-γ expression in Tregs and highlight potential targets for modulating Treg in tumor immunotherapy.Graduate Educatio