Women’s claims to their bodies, social space and knowledge in Early Modern Spain: Redefining gender relations in the seventeenth century novelas of María de Zayas y Sotomayor and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Marginalisation has many intersecting forms and historically, early modern Spanish women have suffered doubly. In their own time, they were silenced by the operations of patriarchy, subjected to control and surveillance in Renaissance manuals and centuries later, they are afforded liminal space in discussions of literature and culture in a European context. Considering that seventeenth-century Spanish women were marginalised in patriarchal society, they nevertheless found their bodies were placed at the centre of numerous discussions on women’s conduct, initiating a process of alienation between women and their bodies that persists in contemporary contexts. In order to understand the machinations of androcentric society, we can examine the fictional subtexts of women that can be found in the popular literature of the period. The short stories of seventeenth-century writers, María de Zayas and Miguel de Cervantes, contest the treatment of women and their bodies as occupied, patriarchal territory and they demonstrate how women could begin to claim back the right to their bodies, social space and knowledge. Zayas’s and Cervantes’s defiant female characters can be located within a broader tradition of women seeking radical strategies to free themselves from situations of powerlessness and assume greater autonomy over their bodies and destinies. Illuminated by the Marxist materialist theory of Maria Mies, this thesis will explore both the subtle and the more apparent, female resistance strategies that interlace Zayas’s and Cervantes’s novelas. Dismantling the largely invisible, patriarchal concepts that were built into the mental constructs of early modern Europe, the texts strive to highlight the coercive male-female relationship for their contemporary readers. The imaginary realm of their novelas, discussed within this thesis, created a space for their fictional female survivors to voice the injustices committed to them and their bodies, in a context where such spaces were not historically available to seventeenth-century Spanish women

Deep red emitting heteroleptic Ir(III) complexes that incorporate unsymmetrical 4?quinoline carboxylic acid derived ligands

Six disubstituted ligands based upon 2-(2¢-pyridinyl/pyrazinyl)quinoline-4-carboxylic acids have been synthesised, solvent-free, in one step from a range of commercially available isatin derivatives. These species behave as ancilllary chelating ligands for Ir(III) complexes of the form [Ir(C^N)2(N^N)]PF6 (where C^N = cyclometalating ligand; N^N = 2-(2¢-pyridinyl/pyrazinyl)quinoline-4-carboxylic acids). An X-ray crystallographic study on one complex shows a distorted octahedral geometry wherein a cis-C,C and trans-N,N coordination mode is observed. DFT calculations predicted that changing the N^N ligand from 2,2¢-bipyridine to L1-6 should localise the LUMO on to the Ln ligand and that the complexes are predicted to display MLCT/LLCT character. All complexes displayed luminescence in the deep red part of the visible region (674-679 nm) and emit from triplet states, but with little apparent tuning as a function of L1-6. Further time-resolved transient absorption spectroscopy supports the participation of these triplet states to the excited state character

Dual visible/NIR emission from organometallic iridium(III) complexes

A series of four substituted benzo[g]quinoxaline species have been synthesised and utilised as cyclometalating ligands for iridium(III). The ligands (L1-L4) were synthesised and isolated in good yield following the condensation of 2,3-diaminonaphthalene with benzil and three of its derivatives. The substituent modulated electronic properties of L1-L4 were dominated by intraligand π−π* transitions, with the fluorescence profile demonstrating vibronic features attributed to the highly conjugated nature of the chromophore. Iridium(III) complexes of the form [Ir(L)2(bipy)]PF6 were synthesised from L1-L4 in two steps. The electronic properties of the complexes reveal absorption in the UV-vis. region with spin forbidden metal-to-ligand charge transfer (MLCT) transitions possibly contributing at longer wavelengths to ca. 600 nm. Steady state luminescence (aerated, room temperature) on solutions of the complexes showed dual emissive properties in the visible and near-infra red (NIR) regions. Firstly, a vibronically structured emission in the visible region (ca. 525 nm) was attributed to ligand centred fluorescence (lifetime < 10 ns). Secondly, a broad emission peak in the NIR (ca. 950 nm) which extended to around 1200 nm was observed with corresponding lifetimes of 116–162 ns, indicative of triplet excited state emission

Ligand tuneable, red-emitting iridium(III) complexes for efficient triplet-triplet annihilation upconversion performance

A series of substituted 2‐phenylquinoxaline ligands have been explored to finely tune the visible emission properties of a corresponding set of cationic, cyclometalated iridium(III) complexes. The electronic and redox properties of the complexes were investigated using experimental (including time‐resolved luminescence and transient absorption spectroscopy) and theoretical methods. The complexes display absorption and phosphorescent emission in the visible region attributed to MLCT transitions. The different substitution patterns of the ligands induce variations in these parameters. TD‐DFT studies support these assignments and show that there is likely to be a strong spin‐forbidden contribution to the visible absorption bands at 500‐600 nm. Calculation also reliably predict the magnitude and trends in triplet emitting wavelengths for the series of complexes. The complexes were assessed as potential sensitizers in triplet‐triplet annihilation upconversion experiments using 9,10‐diphenylanthracene as the acceptor, with the methylated variants performing especially well with impressive upconversion quantum yields up to 39.3 %

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

A Woman’s Worth: Liminality, Litigiousness, and Luxury in the Early Modern Iberian Atlantic World

After 1492, the Iberian woman was directly impacted by shifting frontiers; her life, family and identity were often dynamically split across the Atlantic Ocean. With the expansion of the Spanish Empire, the early modern Iberian woman similarly pushed at the boundaries of her body and contested her spatial occupation of society. This woman sent letters to her relatives in the colonies, used “New World” products in her beauty regime and wore newly acquired dyes, fabrics, and jewels from across the Atlantic. She could also file her own will, used to bequeath these new commodities, and in some cases, pursue a lawsuit against those perceived to have infringed against her property. Moving away from concerns with the aristocracy that has dominated early modern Iberian scholarship in recent years, this thesis uses literature, poetry, theatre, painting, letters, judicial lawsuits, and wills, among other sources, to garner a holistic understanding of what was at stake for the proto-bourgeois Iberian woman. In essence, by taking control of their bodies (that is to say, their appearance and their means of communication), proto-bourgeois Iberian women had a very particular kind of agency that only they shared and truly understood as a collective unit. Such a corporeal focus on the early modern Iberian woman will reveal hidden narratives of beauty, commodities, fashion, and law in the Atlantic realm

Romantic Ekphrasis and the Intellectual Culture of Sensibility

This thesis examines the intersection of poetry about art, the culture of sensibility, and eighteenth-century aesthetic thought in Romantic literature. These converging discourses allowed poets to suggest insights into the necessary conditions of sympathetic exchange, and the limits of what sympathy can accomplish. This thesis proposes ambitious changes to our understanding of Romantic ekphrasis in order to offer a subtle but crucial change to our understanding of the culture of sensibility. It considers a broad range of Romantic ekphrases – some well-known poems by Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley, and some largely unstudied poems by Cowper, Mary Russell Mitford, Henry Hart Milman, Barry Cornwall, and others – reading these texts against multiple historical contexts. One of these contexts is the eighteenth-century idea that the visual arts represent only a single, “pregnant” moment, whereas literature represents successions of events. Moral philosophy and the philosophy of the sister arts are bound up with one another throughout the eighteenth century; David Hume’s formulation of sympathy as instinctive and visual comes to be associated with painting and sculpture, while Adam Smith’s formulation of it as an imagined reconstruction comes to be associated with literature. Another key context is the ekphrastic tradition, especially its understudied eighteenth-century portion. This thesis is the first study to adequately investigate the archive of eighteenth-century ekphrasis. In the light of these contexts, it argues that Romantic ekphrasis was a site of ongoing intellectual activity within the culture of sensibility. Romantic thinkers inherited a set of questions about the role of emotion and affect in ethical conduct, and about the role of the arts, not only in producing emotion, but also in shaping how we grapple intellectually with emotion. This thesis brings to light some of the intellectual tools that early nineteenth-century poets brought to bear on these questions.Ph.D

Disraeli : the romance of politics /

Includes bibliographical references (pages 561-572) and index

An instruction manual for the angiocardiography control unit mark II

NRC publication: Ye