A tale of two representations: Energy and time in photoabsorption

This essay is based on a talk at Advances in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Sciences 2020 (AAMOS20) in a symposium honoring Prof. S. T. Manson\u27s decades-long contribution to photoabsorption studies. Quantum physics introduced into physics pairs of conjugate quantities bearing a specific complementary relationship, energy and time being one such pair. This gives rise to two alternative representations, a time-dependent and a time-independent one, seemingly very different but both capable of embracing the same physics. They give complementary descriptions and insight, with technical questions, theoretical and experimental, determining which may be the more convenient and practicable at any juncture. Two recent topics, Cooper minima in photoabsorption in Cl- and Ar, and angular-momentum barrier tunneling of f photoelectrons from Se in WSe2, provide illustrative examples, also of the role that technological developments over the past five decades played in our approach to and understanding of phenomena

African adventure and metropolitan dissent in Thomas Hardy’s Two on a Tower (1882)

Recent studies of late 19th-century imperialism have challenged postcolonial arguments for the existence of a uniform imperial culture in colonial Britain that unquestioningly supported its overseas expansionist agenda. Through a cultural materialist reading of Thomas Hardy’s Two on a Tower (1882), this article extends these critical challenges to claims for a cohesive colonial society by exploring moments of textual and biographical dissent in relation to African adventure and travel writing. It demonstrates the way in which colonial pursuits in the African interior control and devastate metropolitan worlds. It additionally considers a range of oppositional responses that unite the novel’s metropolitan heroine and labourers against the African colonizer. Examples in Hardy’s tale of radical scepticism in relation to debasing representations of autochthonous cultures are likewise evaluated in this article for the riposte they offer to 19th-century travel writing about Africa

Carving the Perfect Citizen: The Adventures of Soviet Pinocchio in Text and on Screen

In 1936, Alexei Tolstoy’s The Golden Key, or The Adventures of Buratino was published, heralding the use of children’s literature and fairy tale structure as an ideological and transformative tool for children in the Soviet Union. The Adventures of Buratino, framed by Alexei Tolstoy’s alleged recreation from memory of Carlo Collodi’sThe Adventures of Pinocchio (1883), was a Soviet fairy tale, portraying Buratino as a hero for his fellow puppets in helping to free them from the corrupt and oppressive power of Karabas Barabas, the owner of the puppet theater. While Barabas serves as an embodiment of an exploiter and degenerate capitalist, Buratino is depicted as a true revolutionary, who is selfless, who fights for collective goals, and represents the liberator for the poor and oppressed. As a Soviet tale, Buratino has several incarnations: one, of course, being Tolstoy\u27s original text, another as a play, and two as film representations. For my project, I will track the change in visual representation of Buratino and the possible ideological implications and controversies that these changes might have as the story shifts from Tolstoy\u27s narrative to the Soviet 1939 (employing both animation and live action characters) and Soviet-time Belarussian 1975 TV musical for children. In addition, importance will be placed on the manner in which characters from Buratinoare present, absent, or simply transformed from the original Pinocchio. The Soviet film versions will be compared to American visual representations of Pinocchio in the 1940 Disney film that also presented an ideologically charged visualization of an old fairy tale

Away from the End of Motherhood: Sites of Haunting in the Social Imaginary in Lemonade and The Handmaid\u27s Tale

This thesis analyzes the television series adaptation of The Handmaid\u27s Tale, specifically the episode A Woman\u27s Place, and Beyoncé\u27s Lemonade: A Visual Album. I argue that these cultural texts leverage representations of women\u27s lived experiences to scrutinize contemporary American anxieties about motherhood and reproductive justice. Lemonade, a celebration of Black womanhood, presents a counterpoint to The Handmaid\u27s Tale\u27s preoccupation with white motherhood in way that speculates on the utopian potentials of a woman-centered society. Using bell hooks\u27 film analysis, Avery Gordon\u27s haunting, and Luce Irigaray\u27s mimicry, I examine two interconnected themes: feminist aesthetics and generational haunting. While The Handmaid\u27s Tale evokes the fear of possible descent into a dystopic society, Lemonade reaches for a feminist futurity. Each text re-inscribes a worldview that tracks a contradiction or reaffirmation of expectations of who is allowed to be a mother in contemporary society within the social imagination of reproductive justice inseparable from our current moment in American culture

Universal D-modules and stacks of \'etale germs of n-dimensional varieties

We introduce stacks classifying \'etale germs of pointed n-dimensional varieties. We show that quasi-coherent sheaves on these stacks are universal D- and O-modules. We state and prove a relative version of Artin's approximation theorem, and as a consequence identify our stacks with classifying stacks of automorphism groups of the n-dimensional formal disc. We introduce the notion of convergent universal modules, and study them in terms of these stacks and the representation theory of the automorphism groups.Comment: 61 pages. Version 1 had a gap: Artin's approximation theorem was misstated and the incorrect version was used. This gap has been fixed, using new material in sections 2 and 5. Section 8 has been added, to treat the dg-categorical version of the results. The paper has been restructured and the introduction has been expanded. Version 3: minor change

Non-commutative covers and the modular group

We use non-commutative geometry to study the bulk of finite dimensional representations of the modular group SL(2,Z). We give specific 2n-parameter families of 6n-dimensional representations obtained from the quotient singularity C^2/Z_6

The singularities of noncommutative manifolds

We present a faster method to determine all singularities of quiver moduli spaces up to smooth equivalence. We show that every quiver controls a large family of noncommutative compact manifolds