Le potentiel de décolonisation de l’art autochtone contemporain : la reproduction culturelle créative de Jordan Abel, Rebecca Belmore et Skawennati

Abstract: This thesis, “The Decolonizing Potential of Contemporary Aboriginal Art: Jordan Abel’s, Rebecca Belmore’s, and Skawennati’s Creative Cultural Re-productions,” investigates the power of contemporary Aboriginal art, to lead to the process of resurgence and sovereignty by looking at visual productions created by Jordan Abel, Rebecca Belmore, and Skawennati Tricia Fragnito. My research underlines Aboriginal artists’ abilities to transmit traditional cultural knowledge, as well as their creative resistance to ongoing settler colonialism within Turtle Island. Against colonial attempts to represent Indigenous peoples as a “vanished race,” I demonstrate that my selected artists’ political interventions against biased colonial history contribute to emphasizing Aboriginal “survivance” and indigenizing Western socio-cultural discourses and colonial representations in Aboriginal contexts. Within a comparative and interdisciplinary framework, Abel’s, Belmore’s, and Skawennati’s creative works act as cultural and social critiques that incorporate new narratives into ongoing Western-colonial paradigms. The artists I study highlight the relationships between literature, art, and new media technologies within the context of resurgence and decolonization. Abel’s erasure poetry, as it is derived from Western anthropological works, acts as a valuable medium to both unsettle colonial stereotypical images and ironically underline the presence of Aboriginal peoples and cultures. Belmore’s performance, centered on race, marginalization, and social injustice, function as political strategies for reconstructing Aboriginal self-determined identities and bringing about social change. And Skawennati’s new media artworks act as an effective medium for challenging dominant colonial ideologies and envisioning a sovereign future for Aboriginal communities. I conclude by discussing the role of agency of my selected artists in the reconstruction of Canadian cultural memory. I illustrate how the combination of traditional storytelling and contemporary platforms offers a unique opportunity for Abel, Belmore, and Skawennati to bring about change in the political, cultural, and archival memory of Canada and create new narratives in Canadian collective and cultural memory.Ce mémoire, intitulé : «Le potentiel de Décolonisation de l’art autochtone contemporain: la reproduction culturelle créative de Jordan Abel, Rebecca Belmore et Skawennati», se penche sur le pouvoir de l’art autochtone contemporain dans le processus de résurgence et de souveraineté des Premières Nations en examinant les productions visuelles créées par Jordan Abel, Rebecca Belmore et Skawennati Tricia Fragnito. Ma recherche met en évidence la capacité des artistes autochtones à transmettre des connaissances culturelles traditionnelles, ainsi que leur résistance créative au colonialisme actuel à Turtle Island. Contre les tentatives coloniales de représenter les peuples autochtones comme une «race en voie de disparition», je démontre que les interventions politiques de mes artistes sélectionnés dans l’histoire coloniale contribuent à mettre l’accent sur la «survivance» des autochtones et à indigéniser l’histoire et les représentations sociales et culturelles occidentales dans les contextes autochtones. Dans un cadre comparatif et interdisciplinaire, j’affirme que les œuvres créatives d’Abel, de Belmore et de Skawennati agissent comme des critiques culturelles et sociales qui incorporent de nouveaux récits dans les paradigmes coloniaux actuels. Mes artistes choisis soulignent les relations entre la littérature, l’art et les nouvelles technologies médiatiques dans un contexte de résurgence et de décolonisation. La poésie d’effacement d’Abel, comme elle est tirée d’ouvrages anthropologiques occidentaux, fonctionne comme un moyen précieux pour à la fois perturber les images stéréotypées coloniales et souligner ironiquement la présence des peuples et des cultures autochtones. Les performances de Belmore, centrées sur la race, la marginalisation et les injustices sociales, agissent comme des stratégies politiques pour reconstruire les identités autodéterminées des autochtones et entraîner un changement social. Et les productions artistiques des nouveaux médias de Skawennati opèrent comme un moyen efficace de défier les idéologies dominantes coloniales et d’envisager un avenir souverain pour les communautés autochtones. Je termine en discutant du rôle d’agentivité de mes artistes sélectionnés dans la reconstruction de la mémoire culturelle canadienne. J’illustre comment la combinaison des narrations traditionnelles et des plateformes contemporaines offre une occasion unique à Abel, Belmore et Skawennati de provoquer un changement dans la mémoire politique, officielle et archivistique du Canada et de créer de nouveaux récits dans la mémoire collective et culturelle canadienne

Pilot Study: Effectiveness of System Dynamics based Interactive Learning Environment SD/ILE as an interdisciplinary educational tool in K-12 classrooms

Systems thinking is a methodology used to explore and understand the interrelationships within complex systems. One of the key concepts in systems thinking are the feedback loops. This research aims to assess the effectiveness of an SD/ILE (System Dynamics-based Interactive Learning Environment) as an interdisciplinary educational tool for K-12 students, to help them develop systems thinking skills and build lateral understanding on feedback loop processes. While the concept of feedback loops is far-reaching and present in many disciplines as well as day-to-day life, this ILE references the carbon cycle as a complex system. In this study we chose to develop a lesson about “Carbon Cycle” for two reasons: first, it is part of the US high-school biology curriculum, and second, due to the current environmental crisis, it is important to learn about climate feedbacks and to provide a real-world context. This is an empirical research project based on observation of students’ learning outcomes in a pilot session. During this session, students were provided with guidelines, the online links to the ILEs and challenges to complete both individually and in teams under their teacher’s supervision. The session took place in a US high-school biology class. The obtained results through the pilot test and analyzed data, show promising increase in students’ learning curve after playing the Carbon Cycle games in comparison with the pre-test results. Evaluation of students’ understanding, and page time tracking data reveals that learning curve has a high correlation with the average time that each student spent playing the game. Moreover, the data supports the positive impact of animation-based design in the students’ learning curve along the game. Also, this pilot session provides a useful overview of challenges for real-world experiment setup and limitations of available systems thinking skills measurement tools in real-world classroom experiments. The challenges are related to different aspects of the experience, such as the teachers’ role, interactive and engaging level of the ILE (game) design, appropriate timing for playing the game, easy instruction, and suitable assessment tool for measuring individual knowledge development. Among the strongest lesson learned from the classroom experiment, time management, and students’ engagement can be underlined.Master's Thesis in System DynamicsGEO-SD351INTL-KMDMASV-SYSDYINTL-HFINTL-JUSINTL-PSYKINTL-MNINTL-MEDINTL-S

Structure-Property Relationships of Polymer Gels and Concentrated Suspensions Modified with Anisotropic Nanoparticles

Soft materials are ubiquitous in every aspect of our daily life. These materials composed of a wide range of subfields including surfactants, foams, emulsions, pastes, slurries, polymers, gels, and colloidal suspensions. In recent years, there has been a great interest focusing on the understanding of the macroscopic properties of various types of soft materials as a function of their microstructures. For example, the structure-property relationship of physically-associating triblock copolymer gels can be controlled by selecting different types of solvents and changing the temperature. In these systems, gelation occurs due to the significant changes in the solubility of one or more of the blocks with temperature compared to the other blocks. Therefore, changing the temperature can lead to the structural transitions and macroscopic properties. The other strategy that can be used to modify the macroscopic performance of polymer gels is through the incorporation of nanoparticles, such as graphene nanoplatelets and nanotubes. The addition of nanoparticles can also affect the mechanical properties of concentrated suspensions in which, understanding the structure/flow properties is vital for processing and manufacturing of a product. Despite significant advances in the field of soft materials, our understanding in linking the structure-property relationships of polymer gels and concentrated suspensions is incomplete. With this perspective, in this dissertation, shear-rheometry and scattering techniques were used to understand the structural changes of the self-assembled triblock copolymer gels over a wide length-scale and broad temperature-range. Graphene nanoplatelets have been incorporated into this system to investigate the self-assembly behavior and mechanical properties as a function of graphene concentration. On the other hand, in concentrated suspensions of functionalized nanoparticles in a low-molecular- weight polymeric media, the effect of nanoparticles on the rheological properties were investigated. The present work provides a better understanding of the nanoparticles’contributions on microstructure and mechanical behavior of soft materials

Biochemical Profiling of Phenolic Compounds in Lentil Seeds

Lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) is an annual cool-season legume with a variety of seed coat colours. Seed coat colour is an important grading factor that affects the market value of lentils. In lentil, two independent loci gray ground colour (Ggc) and tan ground colour (Tgc) determine the four basic seed coat background colours; brown (Ggc Tgc), gray (Ggc tgc), tan (ggc Tgc) and green (ggc tgc). The zero tannin locus (tan) is epistatic to the tgc locus, producing clear seed coats. Lentil is a good source of protein, carbohydrates, dietary fiber components, minerals, vitamins, and secondary metabolites that include phenolic compounds. Phenolic compounds produce different pigments in plants and bring health benefits to humans. The overall objective of this study was to determine the relationship between seed coat colour and phenolic compounds in lentil. In the first study, comparison of the phenolic profiles of four seed coat background colours in lentil (i.e., brown, gray, tan, and green) was performed using an optimized liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) method. The results showed that for the levels of various phenolic compounds in lentil seeds varied with the seed coat colour. Specifically, seed coats of lentil genotypes carrying the homozygous recessive tgc allele (green and gray seed coats) had higher amounts of flavan-3-ols, proanthocyanidins, and some flavonols. In the second study, a comparison was made between the phenolic profiles of lentil seed coats that do not express the Tgc phenotype (genotype Tgc tan) and those that express Tgc (genotype Tgc Tan). The LC-MS analysis detected several compounds that were not influenced by tan, notably the phenolic acids, flavones, some flavonols, and some of dihydroflavonols. In contrast, myricetin, dihydromyricetin, and flavan-3-ols, and proanthocyanidin oligomers were detected only in Ggc Tgc Tan lines and therefore appear to be controlled by tan. The molecular analysis showed that tan is a basic-helixloop- helix (bHLH) transcription factor that could interact with the regulatory genes in the phenylpropanoid pathway for the enzymes flavonoid-3’,5’-hydroxylase (F3’5’H) and dihydroflavonol reductase (DFR). The third study measured the effect of long term storage on specific changes in phenolic compounds in lentil seeds. Increases in phenolic acids and flavones occur in green lentil seeds during storage, possibly because of the breakdown of more complex species into smaller subunits. More interestingly, a significant decrease in 27 flavan-3- ols and proanthocyanidins also occurs. Polymerization of flavan-3-ols and proanthocyanidins and their conjugation to cellular constituents could reduce their extractability and produce dark pigments in long stored lentil seeds. In conclusion, these studies determined that there is a relationship between phenolic compounds, specifically flavan-3-ols and proanthocyanidins, and seed coat colour genes tgc and tan in lentil. The findings of this study will help to develop future breeding strategies for lentil cultivars with aesthetic properties and nutritional benefits that appeal to consumers

Stem Cells Applications in Regenerative Medicine and Disease Therapeutics

Regenerative medicine, the most recent and emerging branch of medical science, deals with functional restoration of tissues or organs for the patient suffering from severe injuries or chronic disease. The spectacular progress in the field of stem cell research has laid the foundation for cell based therapies of disease which cannot be cured by conventional medicines. The indefinite self-renewal and potential to differentiate into other types of cells represent stem cells as frontiers of regenerative medicine. The transdifferentiating potential of stem cells varies with source and according to that regenerative applications also change. Advancements in gene editing and tissue engineering technology have endorsed the ex vivo remodelling of stem cells grown into 3D organoids and tissue structures for personalized applications. This review outlines the most recent advancement in transplantation and tissue engineering technologies of ESCs, TSPSCs, MSCs, UCSCs, BMSCs, and iPSCs in regenerative medicine. Additionally, this review also discusses stem cells regenerative application in wildlife conservation

CONSUMERS’ WILLINGNESS-TO-PAY FOR LOCAL SOURCING IN ALTERNATIVE RESTAURANT FORMATS

This dissertation consists of three essays that contribute to the research on local food purchase and consumers’ preferences and willingness-to-pay. Essay I examines whether there are differences in consumers’ willingness-to-pay for local food across alternative restaurant formats and provides a justification for using a system to legitimate local sourcing in restaurants. Essay II studies consumers’ preferences for local sourcing in restaurants in rural and urban communities and elaborates on where there is a significant willingness-to-pay for local food in rural communities. Lastly, essay III examines consumers’ purchase frequency of local food across direct and intermediated markets and provides results on differences between consumers’ local sourcing from these channels