Run-time Variability with First-class Contexts

Software must be regularly updated to keep up with changing requirements. Unfortunately, to install an update, the system must usually be restarted, which is inconvenient and costly. In this dissertation, we aim at overcoming the need for restart by enabling run-time changes at the programming language level. We argue that the best way to achieve this goal is to improve the support for encapsulation, information hiding and late binding by contextualizing behavior. In our approach, behavioral variations are encapsulated into context objects that alter the behavior of other objects locally. We present three contextual language features that demonstrate our approach. First, we present a feature to evolve software by scoping variations to threads. This way, arbitrary objects can be substituted over time without compromising safety. Second, we present a variant of dynamic proxies that operate by delegation instead of forwarding. The proxies can be used as building blocks to implement contextualization mechanisms from within the language. Third, we contextualize the behavior of objects to intercept exchanges of references between objects. This approach scales information hiding from objects to aggregates. The three language features are supported by formalizations and case studies, showing their soundness and practicality. With these three complementary language features, developers can easily design applications that can accommodate run-time changes

A Statically Typed Logic Context Query Language With Parametric Polymorphism and Subtyping

The objective of this thesis is programming language support for context-sensitive program adaptations. Driven by the requirements for context-aware adaptation languages, a statically typed Object-oriented logic Context Query Language  (OCQL) was developed, which is suitable for integration with adaptation languages based on the Java type system. The ambient information considered in context-aware applications often originates from several, potentially distributed sources. OCQL employs the Semantic Web-language RDF Schema to structure and combine distributed context information. OCQL offers parametric polymorphism, subtyping, and a fixed set of meta-predicates. Its type system is based on mode analysis and a subset of Java Generics. For this reason a mode-inference approach for normal logic programs that considers variable aliasing and sharing was extended to cover all-solution predicates. OCQL is complemented by a service-oriented context-management infrastructure that supports the integration of OCQL with runtime adaptation approaches. The applicability of the language and its infrastructure were demonstrated with the context-aware aspect language CSLogicAJ. CSLogicAJ aspects encapsulate context-aware behavior and define in which contextual situation and program execution state the behavior is woven into the running program. The thesis concludes with a case study analyzing how runtime adaptation of mobile applications can be supported by pure object-, service- and context-aware aspect-orientation. Our study has shown that CSLogicAJ can improve the modularization of context-aware applications and reduce anticipation of runtime adaptations when compared to other approaches

Digging the Well Deep: The Jewish “Ultra-Orthodox” Relationship with the Divine Explored through the Lifeworld of the Breslov Chasidic Community in Safed

The Jewish Charedi (“ultra-orthodox”) community is an example of a contemporary social group whose lifeworld is dictated almost entirely by the tenets of its religious beliefs. This thesis seeks to illuminate the physical, psychological, social and metaphysical structures of that Charedi world, using the Breslov Chasidic community in the town of Safed, northern Israel, as its ethnographic anchor. Following an introductory theoretical background to Judaism, Kabbalah, the Chasidic movement, and the Breslov group, a descriptive account is given of the Breslov lifeworld across many of its facets, including demographics, dress, prayer and study practices, the venerated position of the head Rabbi of the community, various religious practices, connection to and meditation in nature, attitudes towards non-Jews, pilgrimage, and the use of psychoactive drugs. This ethnographic material forms the basis for subsequent deeper analyses. The Charedi aspiration towards “zero degrees of freedom”, in terms of that society’s extreme application of the myriad prescriptions and proscriptions of Halakhic Law, is discussed, as well as Charedi society’s emphasis on constituting its own identity through what it is not; namely the “goyim” (non-Jews) and non-religious Jews. The parallels between Judaism and the anthropological category of shamanism are considered, with the argument made that much of the Jewish tradition is essentially shamanic, yet that this aspect of the religion has been relegated to a relatively minor position in the contemporary Jewish religious (including Charedi) milieu. A functional analysis is then given regarding certain Jewish practices, demonstrating that Judaism contains within it sophisticated mechanisms, acting in affective, cognitive and social domains, to ensure replication of the religion—and specifically its core “template”, the Torah—from generation to generation. This analysis is followed by an exploration of the phenomenology of the religious experience and the Torah lifeworld, seeking to penetrate and document the experience of “being Breslov”. The final chapter ties all of the previous material together, presenting several psychoanalytic perspectives on the Charedi phenomenon

Mapping Global Theatre Histories

Tanks to all at Palgrave Macmillan who encouraged and shaped this project, especially Nicola Cattini, Tomas Rene, Vicky Bates, and the anonymous readers of the proposal. Tanks to the colleagues who gave me insights, including Dean Adams, Allison Amidei, Bruce Auerbach, Hala Baki, Tomas Burch, Carlos Cruz, Kaja Dunn, David Fillmore, Andrew Hartley, Jorge Huerta, Rick Kemp, Chuyun Oh, Kaustavi Sarkar, Dylan Savage, Joanne Tompkins, Robin Witt, Amanda Zhou, and members of the “Pedagogy of Extraordinary Bodies” working group at the American Society for Teatre Research conference in fall 2017. Tanks also to Chuyun Oh and Kaustavi Sarkar for help with illustrations here. And thanks to the authors and editors of Wikipedia, who have made many details of theatre history quickly accessible online, with further references given as well. Tanks to the colleagues who responded to my e-mail query in summer 2017 about a potential theatre history textbook, especially Sarah Bay-Cheng, Cheryl Black, Sara Ellen Brady, David Carlyon, Teresa DurbinAmes, Susan Kattwinkel, Maiya Murphy, John O’Connor, Felicia Ruf, Shannon Blake Skelton, and Nathan Tomas. Tanks to the artists I have met, who gave me insights about their work. Tese included Kazimierz Braun (who directed me in Te Card Index at the University of Notre Dame in 1982, welcomed my visit to his theatre in Poland, and co-wrote a play with me that he staged at Swarthmore College in 1986), Herbert Blau (my dissertation mentor, 1988–1992), Ola Rotimi (who lectured in one of my classes), William Sun (who discussed playwriting with me and introduced me to others), Richard Schechne

Imago Pauli: memory, tradition, and discourses on the real Paul in the second century

The following dissertation is a theoretical and methodological examination of the legacy of the Apostle Paul in the second century. It explores the way he was remembered in the century after his death, as well as the discursive practices that accompanied claims about the real Paul in a period in which apostolic memory was highly contested. Five questions drive the inquiry: 1) How do we measure Pauline influence in the second century? (methodology); 2) How did various second-century writers imagine Paul and what resources were employed to produce a given interpretation of the Apostle? (exegesis); 3) What is meant, from a theoretical standpoint, by the language of tradition and memory, concepts often invoked by Pauline scholars, but hardly ever defined or explored? (theory); 4) What interests stand behind ancient discourses on the real Paul? (ideology); and 5) How did Paul become the Apostle for so many different kinds of Christian communities in the second century? (history). The connection between these questions is not ultimately logical or sequential. Each is part of a larger hermeneutical conversation. Chapters One through Three provide the methodological and theoretical foundation for the exegesis of Chapters Four and Five, which work through the Pauline tradition of 3 Corinthians and Irenaeus’ Adversus haereses, respectively. The latter texts serve as test-cases for the thesis that Christians of the second century had no access to the real Paul. Rather, they possessed mediations of Paul as a persona. These idealized images were transmitted in the context of communal memories of the Apostle. Through the selection, combination, and interpretation of pieces of a diverse earlier layer of the Pauline tradition, Christians defended images of the Apostle that were particularly constitutive of their collective cultures. As products of tradition and memory, each imago Pauli exhibits a unique mixture of continuity with and change from the past. Consequently, ancient discourses on the real Paul, like their modern counterparts, are problematic. Through a whole host of exclusionary practices, the real Paul, whose authoritative persona possessed a certain delegated authority, was and is invoked as a wedge to gain traction for the conservation of ideology

Transmigration of Object Identity

The object-oriented paradigm is one of the central programming paradigms of our time. The following description is a generally accepted characterization of that paradigm: “An object has state, behavior, and identity”. The concept of object identity plays an important role here insofar it is the only characteristic element that is not available in purely declarative programming languages without further effort. Purely declarative languages also incorporate behavior via functions or rules, and state via immutable values that are passed around to such functions and rules. Objects localize state and behavior, and the single means to access state and behavior of objects are their identity. In other words, the major achievement of objectoriented programming languages is to provide constructs for unambiguously mapping object identities to storage locations and procedures that act on those storage locations. Early discussions of the notion of object identity have found strong connections between changes of state and equality predicates for objects. Object identity lies at the center of such discussions: when the state of an object is changed by way of its identity the new state is (re)observable via that same identity; when the same object identity is stored in two different variables it is always the same state that is observable via those variables. Later on, various authors have implicitly or explicitly kept that same basic idea. Now, this thesis shows that an alternative perception of object identity is possible when an analysis starts from a description of the usage scenarios for object identity. These are reference on the one hand – an object is able to refer to other objects – and comparison on the other hand – two variables may refer to the same or to different objects. These usage scenarios can be separated both on the conceptual level of an object model as well as on the practical level of the implementation of a programming language and run-time environment. From this modified view on object identity new operations can be derived. Especially dynamic object replacement is probably the most intriguing operation that is enabled by the approach taken in this thesis. This operation has the potential to address usage scenarios from the emerging field of unanticipated software evolution. This shows that this thesis is not only of a theoretical nature but also gives insight into possible practical applications. Still, the traditional notion of object identity is kept as a special case of the broader conceptual framework presented in this thesis. This thesis presents a historical perspective on the concept of object identity by illustrating central notions through summaries of seminal publications on the topic. It then develops the essential ingredients of the Gilgul model – one of the important results of this thesis – and demonstrates these ingredients as extensions of the Java programming language. Furthermore, the intricacies of the replacement of active objects are analyzed – objects with methods executing at the time of their replacement – and extensions of the Gilgul language are presented that help to deal with these intricacies. Finally, the implementation of the Gilgul language and run-time environment are discussed and evaluated, and usage examples are given