Staging polemics: Charles Palissot, Voltaire, and the theatrical event in eighteenth-century France

This dissertation explores the exciting world of eighteenth-century French dramatic writing, performance and criticism from the point of view of the theatrical spectator. Instead of focusing on one single genre or writer, I assemble the textual creation, performance, and criticism of certain “polemical” plays into what I term a “theatrical event.” This optic provides a holistic vision of theater and an accurate view of how drama underwent noticeable change due to playwrights’ political associations, public reactions to performance, and the emerging power of the periodical press. In sum, this project differs from previous studies by focusing on the increasing rhetorical and tangible significance of the theatrical spectator, and more specifically, on how he or she altered normative, established processes in dramatic writing, performance, and criticism. In the first three chapters of this dissertation, I closely examine Charles Palissot’s Les Philosophes, Voltaire’s l’Ecossaise (1760), and atypical critical reactions to both polemical comedies. Here, I focus on the way partisan dramatists and their cohorts fashioned “theatrical events” through pre-performance strategies, narrative effects, and performative ruses. Then, I inquire as to why critics emphasized audience reactions to and participation in performance, rather than summarizing the play’s narrative or weighing in on traditional literary subjects. Switching gears from a more synchronic study to a more diachronic analysis, in chapter four, I highlight a few “theatrical events” from the last years of the Ancien Régime in order to show how playwrights and critics borrowed both processes and themes from the original Palissot/Voltaire affair of 1760. With clear pictures of specific moments and more general shifts in theater history and criticism, this dissertation aims to reassess the way we think about dramatic production during the pre-Revolutionary period in France

Anomaly Detection in Time Series: Theoretical and Practical Improvements for Disease Outbreak Detection

The automatic collection and increasing availability of health data provides a new opportunity for techniques to monitor this information. By monitoring pre-diagnostic data sources, such as over-the-counter cough medicine sales or emergency room chief complaints of cough, there exists the potential to detect disease outbreaks earlier than traditional laboratory disease confirmation results. This research is particularly important for a modern, highly-connected society, where the onset of disease outbreak can be swift and deadly, whether caused by a naturally occurring global pandemic such as swine flu or a targeted act of bioterrorism. In this dissertation, we first describe the problem and current state of research in disease outbreak detection, then provide four main additions to the field. First, we formalize a framework for analyzing health series data and detecting anomalies: using forecasting methods to predict the next day's value, subtracting the forecast to create residuals, and finally using detection algorithms on the residuals. The formalized framework indicates the link between the forecast accuracy of the forecast method and the performance of the detector, and can be used to quantify and analyze the performance of a variety of heuristic methods. Second, we describe improvements for the forecasting of health data series. The application of weather as a predictor, cross-series covariates, and ensemble forecasting each provide improvements to forecasting health data. Third, we describe improvements for detection. This includes the use of multivariate statistics for anomaly detection and additional day-of-week preprocessing to aid detection. Most significantly, we also provide a new method, based on the CuScore, for optimizing detection when the impact of the disease outbreak is known. This method can provide an optimal detector for rapid detection, or for probability of detection within a certain timeframe. Finally, we describe a method for improved comparison of detection methods. We provide tools to evaluate how well a simulated data set captures the characteristics of the authentic series and time-lag heatmaps, a new way of visualizing daily detection rates or displaying the comparison between two methods in a more informative way

A Fitness Model For Pastors

Pastors struggle with weight and fitness to a greater extent than the average person. The results are a lack of credibility, a decrease in ability, and a shorter life span, all of which reduce service to God. This project will serve as a fitness model for pastors to improve health, fitness, and effectiveness in the ministry of the Gospel of Jesus Christ by giving simple diet, lifestyle, and exercise instructions and changes

Contradictions Between How Students Are Taught to Write And What They Are Expected To Read In General Education Courses

This study explored the relationship between how students are taught to write in first-year English composition classes and what they are expected to read as part of the general education requirements at a publically-funded large university in the southeast (PLUS), and then to determine whether a gap exists. If a gap is found to exist between the preparation of students and their ability to read material that has been assigned by the teaching faculty, these students are less likely to be considered information literate by any rubric. This study uses a mixed-methods approach. Content analysis is employed to examine the assigned readings students encounter, and interviews are conducted to explore how students make sense of the academic writings assigned in general education classes. Research questions included (1) What are the overall structures of both (a) instruction composition and (b) scholarly journal articles assigned for reading in subsequent general education classes in the disciplines of psychology and history at PLUS? (2) How can these structures be identified? (3) What are the top-level structural patterns of composition within these two academic disciplines and how do they differ? and (4) Do these differences create contradictions in how students are taught to write in freshmen composition courses and the composition of the journal articles they are expected to read in their required general education classes? Thirty-one texts taken from general education syllabi were analyzed for incidence and placement of specific structural elements such as topic sentences and signal words. This study also explored perceptions of these differences from the standpoint of college students. Interviews of twenty-two students were conducted using Dervin’s Sense Making Methodology. These interviews were analyzed in terms of situations, gaps, bridges, outcomes, as well as thematic concepts that consistently arose during the interviews. Significant differences existed between readings from English Composition classes and assigned scholarly journal articles in history and psychology in incidence and placement of topic sentences, use of signal words or phrases, and readability. In addition, thematic analysis of the interviews of students found that they experienced gaps between their expectations of text composition and their experience reading assigned journal articles

The development of tools and guidelines for surfing resource management

Surfing is a mainstream pastime and competitive sport in many countries and provides a full range of economic, social, physical, and mental health benefits. Maintaining the integrity of surf breaks has proven to be a challenge, with a litany of degraded or destroyed surfing locations worldwide. This is attributed to a deficiency in expertise and experience in implementing surf science and management within governing authorities, associated consultants, or stakeholder groups; combined with a lack of value recognition and identification. This work considers how surf breaks as coastal resources could be better managed. A literature review of technical reports, published articles, statutory instruments, evidence, and consents, along with interactive stakeholder workshops and surveys to identify key considerations, are combined with complex numerical modelling and machine learning methods to develop tools for effective surf break management. In Aotearoa New Zealand, a surf break is described in policy as having various geophysical components in the vicinity of locations where surfing takes place and the areas offshore. Given the wide range of benefits associated with surfing, and the complexities of managing a natural resource, albeit in some cases anthropologically modified, the term ‘surfing resource’ was established and defined as a major outcome of this work and as a step in the process of developing a set of Management Guidelines for Surfing Resources (the Guidelines). The Guidelines, which are a world first, consider what aspects of the environment are the most important to surfing resources management, provide direction, as implementable steps, to authorities and proponents of activities in the coastal environment that can impact surfing resources, and include identification and monitoring strategies as well as a novel risk assessment framework which is underpinned by a surf break’s sensitivity as a function of geomorphological composition. The Guidelines are supported by research streams that required field data collection and monitoring system development, numerical modelling, and machine learning to improve our understanding of surf break functionality and/or better our management strategies. This work emphasises the role of bathymetric features outside the surf zone that contribute to surfing wave quality, and the value of establishing swell corridors for management purposes. An automated system has been developed to monitor the key surfing wave quality indicator of peel angle through both space and time. Effective surfing resource management requires a holistic, inclusive, case-by-case approach, that may require cultural, social and geophysical assessment, which is best implemented proactively with the identification of surfing resources and the establishment of environmental baselines

Contributions to Efficient Machine Learning

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetic Play in Diasporic Iranian Visual Literature: Neshat, Satrapi, Bashi, Soltani

Does the study of aesthetics create response-ability or have tangible effects in the real world? Does the ambivalent form of word/images created by diaspora artists change our gaze toward the Other and the landscape of the possible? In the age of a global march against abstract terror which seems to be only reinforcing terrorism, the sign “Muslim-woman” along with the concept of democracy have become rallying cries for novel civilizing-missions. Leaving aside the failed efforts of littérature engagée, I resonate with Jacques Rancière that the study of aesthetics is intertwined with that of politics. Gayatri Spivak, too, asserts that an education in humanities creates an ethical bond which aids in training the imagination to trace the complicity of the self in the plight of Others. Emanuel Levinas sees ethics as a call for responsibility in which the vulnerable face of the Other is the condition of discourse. The exposure to the Other’s naked face incites an urge for violence which is immediately hampered by a call for ethical responsibility. Despite the surge in the publication of Iranian memoirs, their visual production’s contribution to countering the war-machine against abstract Terror and their role in ushering Democracy (through dissensus and ethical engagement with the enemy) remain unstudied. I argue that by fostering “aestextasy,” Shirin Neshat, Marjane Satrapi, Parsua Bashi and to a lesser extent Amir Soltani are able to bring the face of the Other to intimate proximities, create an ethical bond with radical alterity, and in so doing puncture the lethal cycle of xenophobia which purges the self by blaming one evil, external, enemy. The practice of reading for interlocking knots of ethics, aesthetics and politics, or what I call aestextasy, forms a constellation of perception in which—as Judith Butler argues—the pleasure/pain of one body is interlinked to the wellbeing of all else in the life-chain of this precarious world. It refers to an aesthetic/perceptual awakening to being in the world and simultaneously feeling empathically connected to Others in an ethical life-circle. These authors effect a displacement of the exhausted affect of indignation in order to move across invisible borders of proximity/distance, self/Other, and outside/inside to envision a Democracy to come. Keywords: Iranian diaspora visual literature, graphic novels, Muslim women in art; photgraphy, Marjane Satrapi, Shirin Neshat, Parsua Bashi, Amir Soltani, Jacques Rancière, aesthetics and politic

Childhood Abuse, Body Shame, and Addictive Plastic Surgery

Childhood Abuse, Body Shame, and Addictive Plastic Surgery explores the psychopathology that plastic surgeons can encounter when seemingly excellent surgical candidates develop body dysmorphic disorder postoperatively. By examining how developmental abuse and neglect influence body image, personality, addictions, resilience, and adult health, this highly readable book uncovers the childhood sources of body dysmorphic disorder. Written from the unique perspective of a leading plastic surgeon with extensive experience in this area and featuring many poignant clinical vignettes and groundbreaking trauma research, this heavily referenced text offers a new explanation for body dysmorphic disorder that provides help for therapists and surgeons and hope for patients