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    BRINGING OPERA TO SAXON AUDIENCES IN THE AGE OF NAPOLEON 1800-1817
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-12) Haugland, Kirby E.; Muxfeldt, Kristina PhD
    The Saxon cities of Dresden and Leipzig hosted musical theater throughout the Napoleonic era. Opera was simultaneously a form of mass entertainment, a political tool, and a business venture. In contrast to prior eras, when the region was a vibrant hub of opera composition, I argue that Saxon opera during this period was defined by the collision between local conditions and a cosmopolitan repertoire drawn from Paris, Vienna, and Central European theater networks. Saxon operatic institutions had long been entangled with the fortunes of the community and the state. These entanglements were even more evident as Saxony endured invasion, foreign domination, and eventually partition after the Congress of Vienna. Impresarios selected and adapted foreign compositions to fit their production capabilities and meet the demands of audiences, who ranged from middle-class intellectuals and rowdy Leipzig University students to visiting merchants, army officers, and monarchs. Two companies dominated the local musical theater industry: Andrea Bertoldy’s Italian opera at the Dresden Court, and Joseph Seconda’s itinerant German theater company, which alternated between a rustic theater outside Dresden and Leipzig’s more well-furnished city venue. Although they pursued different goals and had different resources, both companies relied on translations, musical substitutions, and more elaborate textual reworkings by local staff and outsiders. Their productions featured stage decorations and machinery from local artisans, who brought their own expertise and occasionally influenced audience reactions far more than the music. I provide focused explanations of each of these different aspects of adaptation through specific productions of operas by Joseph Weigl, Ludwig van Beethoven, Luigi Cherubini, Gaspare Spontini, and others. Drawing on performance materials, government documents, and a wide variety of contemporary periodicals and technical writing, I produce a vivid picture of what was required to bring opera to Saxon stages at a pivotal point in European history.
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    "YO DIGO 'ESTÁ' PORQUE... ": THE DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF THE SPANISH COPULA IN A STUDY ABROAD VARIETY IN CHILE
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-12) Evans-Sago, Travis; Geeslin, Kimberly Ph.D.
    This dissertation explores Spanish copular verbs, ser and estar (both 'to be' in English), in pre-adjectival contexts within two Spanish varieties: first-language (Ll) Chilean speakers from Santiago (N = 29) and second-language (L2) English-speaking learners studying in Chile (N = 31). Bridging sociolinguistics and second language acquisition, it delves into sociolinguistic competence acquisition in an immersive context, focusing on copula development and use. The study collected data through a picture-based oral elicitation task and a written contextualized preference task at three time points for study abroad (SA) participants and a single point for Ll participants. It analyzed both linguistic factors (Adjective Class, Animacy, Experience With the Referent, Frame of Reference, Resultant State, and Susceptibility to Change) and extralinguistic factors (Age, Gender, Grammar Score, Previous Experience Abroad, Parent Origin, Spanish Major/Minor, Study Abroad Site, and social network factors like Number of Ll Contacts, Number of Contact Hours, Reported Closeness With Ll Contacts) to understand how these factors influence copula development and use over time. The findings reveal a progressive alignment of SA learners' copula use with Chilean participants, especially in terms of linguistic factors, albeit surpassing target variety norms in rates of estar use in the oral elicitation task. SA learners' development and use were also shaped by extralinguistic factors like Previous Experience Abroad and Reported Closeness to L1 Contacts. Conversely, extralinguistic factors had no significant influence on estar selection in the WCPT for Chilean participants. However, Parent Origin significantly affected estar use in the PDT, showing Santiago natives whose both parents were also from Santiago favoring estar over their counterparts. Further exploration of these factors can provide valuable insights into language acquisition, sociolinguistics, and the intricate interplay between language and context.
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    BITING OFF MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW: GERMAN-BRAZILIAN CULTURAL CANNIBALISM
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-11) Morais, Nina Luiza de Oliveira; Robinson, Benjamin Ph.D.
    Cultural cannibalism is an aesthetic practice and an analytical tool that can be used to look closely at (trans)cultural encounters that happen in the arts. From its modernist roots, the term inherited a bold spirit, a playful self-assertion in the face of the other, a refusal to submit to the “good taste” of the metropole. This dissertation situates cultural cannibalism within the field of cultural and transnational studies and in conversation with other concepts, such as Fernando Ortiz’s transculturation, the melting-pot metaphor (both in the US and in Germany), the European Willkommenskultur, and the now popular cultural appropriation. Through concrete examples – such as the literary encounter between the German ethnographer Theodor Koch-Grünberg and the Brazilian modernist Mário de Andrade, and the (trans)cultural performances by the Swiss theater director Milo Rau – I show how cultural cannibalism is a long-needed analytical lens in the field, as it not only brings the playfulness and power inversion characteristic of its roots, but it also evokes a special affect, an irreverence and aggressivity that are not present in other concepts, as well as the idea of “punching-up,” of recognizing the agency and intentionality of the less powerful culture in a (trans)cultural interaction.
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    MECHANISMS AND EVOLUTIONARY CONSEQUENCES OF CRYPTIC FEMALE CHOICE IN DROSOPHILA
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-11) Peckenpaugh, Brooke; Moyle, Leonie C. PhD
    Sexual selection is proposed to be a powerful driver of reproductive trait diversity, including in traits that act after mating. Extensive work in Drosophila, particularly D. melanogaster, has shown that variation in male postmating traits can be critical for determining reproductive success. However, much less is known about the adaptive significance of female reproductive diversity, especially in postmating traits. In my dissertation, I sought to expand our understanding of how sexual selection shapes postmating trait evolution by studying female postmating adaptations in Drosophila. In Chapter 1, I assessed potential mechanism(s) of cryptic female choice (CFC)—the physical and chemical factors that determine which sperm are used by females after mating—in Drosophila pseudoobscura. Females of this species that occur in sympatry with Drosophila persimilis are known to preferentially select against heterospecific sperm. By assessing matings among multiple populations, I tested three potential mechanisms of CFC: copulation duration, the number of sperm transferred, and female reproductive tract toxicity. I found that reduced copulation duration could play a role in CFC in this system. In Chapter 2, I sought to understand how females make decisions about sperm use. To do so, I assessed whether Drosophila melanogaster females adjust their sperm use in response to male genotype, male courtship effort, male pheromone alteration, and sperm length. Each effect was evaluated factorially across four different D. melanogaster populations. I found that while females generally preferred longer sperm, this choice was dynamic and could actively be altered by female genotype-specific responses to male variation. Finally, in Chapter 3 I assessed the relative contributions of intersexual and intrasexual selection on reproductive trait evolution. By examining behavioral and morphological trait variation across 15 diverse Drosophila species, and complementing these data with up to 15 additional species, I found that male and female postmating traits coevolve, but neither male nor female traits are evolving more rapidly. This result suggests that intersexual selection may be a more important force in driving postmating reproductive trait evolution than intrasexual selection. Together, these findings demonstrate the diverse contributions that female reproductive adaptations can make to postmating sexual selection in Drosophila.
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    SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT MODULATES THE FUNCTION AND NEUROENDOCRINE REGULATION OF ELECTROCOMMUNICATION SIGNALS ACROSS SPECIES OF APTERONOTID FISHES
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-09) Freiler, Megan Kate; Smith, G. Troy, Ph.D.
    Because communication is inherently social, signals and social behavior should coevolve. Physiological regulation of signal production and perception should also be linked to social evolution. South American weakly electric knifefishes are an excellent system for investigating neuroendocrine mechanisms that coregulate sociality and sensorimotor systems responsible for communication. Knifefishes produce electric organ discharges that they modulate to produce signals called chirps. In this dissertation, I first found that species’ sociality does not explain variation in chirp structure complexity. I next asked how context influences production and neuroendocrine regulation of chirps across three species that vary in sociality: territorial Apteronotus albifrons, semi-social Apteronotus leptorhynchus, and gregarious Adontosternarchus balaenops. I recorded fish overnight in isolation, in same-sex pairs, and in opposite-sex pairs. I collected blood and brains to measure circulating steroid hormones and gene expression for several neuromodulator receptors in electrosensory brain regions. Semi-social A. leptorhynchus chirped more than the other species. Males chirped more in A. leptorhynchus and in A. albifrons. Chirping was sexually monomorphic in A. balaenops. While chirping, hormone levels, and neuromodulator gene expression did not vary consistently with social context, they covaried with species and individual condition. Reproductive condition in A. albifrons and A. balaenops, but size in A. leptorhynchus, explained male chirp rates and gonadal steroid levels. Social cortisol levels were negatively correlated with individual condition in the territorial species. Abundance of eight neuromodulator receptor genes varied in two electrosensory brain regions across species. vi i Gregarious A. balaenops often had the lowest, while territorial A. albifrons often had the highest gene expression. Gene expression profiles and correlations among gene pairs were nonoverlapping across species and context. Despite the potential for social complexity, A. balaenops were less behaviorally and physiologically variable. Perceiving conspecific signals during the less predictable social interactions common in A. albifrons aggressive, territorial encounters or in A. leptorhynchus dominance hierarchies may be more critical for survival and reproductive success. Individuals may not need to be as responsive in stable groups of A. balaenops. This dissertation highlights that how variation in communication maps onto variation in social behavior differs across levels of biological control and is highly-context dependent.
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    FROM VIBRATION TO VISUAL AESTHETICS: POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF ATTENTION IN CAIRO’S CONTEMPORARY BELLY DANCE INDUSTRY
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-08) Morley, Margaret L.; Royce, Anya Peterson, Ph.D.
    This dissertation seeks to answer the question: how have foreign dancers come to seemingly dominate the belly dance industry in Egypt, in spite of most Egyptians’ negative evaluations of foreigners’ competence in the skills essential to Egyptian belly dance? Through answering, I also argue that the shifting values of the senses and beauty standards towards what sells best on social media exemplifies what I am calling “aesthetic colonization.” Foreigners are only dominating the parts of the industry visible to the general public — those whose marketing is entwined with social media — while Egyptians continue to predominate in venues operating largely outside of social media. In the latter, the aesthetic favors attunement to senses of vibration (sound, affect) and attention as interpersonal care is bought and sold, cultivating relational value. In the former, the visual aesthetics of Instagram prevail, and female beauty and attention are commodified to circulate online. The movement from prioritizing senses of vibration to a visual aesthetic is symptomatic of ongoing colonization processes, in particular the expansion and intensification of neoliberal capitalism and with it the increasingly onerous discipling of bodies. Due to the coloniality of power, proximity to whiteness and wealth are valued, putting foreign dancers at an advantage over Egyptians in contexts where the visual is more important than the vibrational. Furthermore, as discipline in the Foucauldian sense is based on the threat of possible attention and women in Egyptian society are generally supposed to avoid drawing attention to their moving bodies, the visibility demands of media capitalism and its attendant political economies of attention are dangerous to Egyptian women in ways that often don’t apply to foreign dancers. Thus, I argue that attention is both a resource and a weapon, and in both cases, is used to further discipline women’s adherence to gender norms and beauty ideals, intensifying as the visual becomes more important than the vibrational.
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    “THAT’S NOT HEAVY METAL”: EGALITARIANISM, ELITISM, AND WINNING ARGUMENTS IN THREE METAL MUSIC STUDIES CANONS
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-05) Landes, Nathan; Burkholder, J. Peter
    From the late 1980s to the 2000s, scholars in the academic discipline of metal music studies formed three canons in order to win scholarly arguments; I call these canons the Early Metal Studies Canon, “Serious” Extreme Metal Canon, and “Metal-as-Global-Culture” Canon. Scholars use these canons to defend metal music from its detractors, and they build their canons around the epistemological standards of the primary academic disciplines to which these scholars belong. The need for an academic defense of metal was established by scholars like Deena Weinstein and Robert Walser who created the Early Metal Studies Canon due to attacks on metal from other scholars, rock journalists, and political figures in the 1980s. Scholars who devised the latter two canons in the 2000s adopted this defensive stance as a convention, as there was no meaningful threat to metal at that time. The “Serious” Extreme Metal Canon, which draws from scholarship like Keith Kahn-Harris’s Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge, portrays metal music as complex art to defend it against those who would dismiss it as shocking noise. The “Metal-as-Global-Culture” Canon, an outgrowth of scholarship like that found in Jeremy Wallach, Harris M. Berger, and Paul D. Greene’s Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Music Around the World, portrays metal culture as resisting global forces that homogenize difference and suppress dissent. The two canons from the 2000s also had a secondary goal of promoting extreme metal, a collection of metal subgenres that feature complex music and transgressive viii lyrics and imagery. Non-scholar fans of extreme subgenres tend to promote their preferred music by marginalizing non-extreme subgenres. Further, some forms of extreme metal have adherents who are openly discriminatory toward marginalized identity groups, meaning that certain bands and fans of metal are excluded not only for their musical preferences but for their genetics or the circumstances of their birth. Scholars of the latter two canons almost exclusively reject discriminatory behavior, opting to take an ambivalent stance that praises the music while criticizing the objectionable politics. However, these scholars still overemphasize the importance of extreme metal and deemphasize non-extreme metal, either because they are fans of extreme metal or because they wish to produce scholarship that aligns with the stylistic preferences of metal studies for professional benefit. Due to the exclusionary nature of extreme metal and how it impacts arguments in metal studies, I propose that metal scholars should canonize bands that are musically significant and that model the egalitarian and inclusionary stance of the International Society for Metal Music Studies. In my conclusion I canonize Rage Against the Machine as an example of a band whose members are ethnically diverse and whose lyrics and imagery are anti-oppression.
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    INVESTIGATING THE COMPUTATIONAL PRINCIPLES OF NEURAL DYNAMICS USING DEEP LEARNING TECHNIQUES
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-08) Alipour, Abolfazl; Tom James; John Beggs
    One of the main goals of computational neuroscience is to explain why and how certain dynamics emerge in neural circuits. A promising approach to address this question is to train deep neural networks (DNNs) on ecologically relevant tasks and analyze their dynamics to see if they resemble the dynamics of their biological counterparts; and if they do, take this resemblance as supporting evidence that the modeled circuit is solving the same task. This approach allows us to understand why (for what task) and how (under what learning rules) specific dynamics arise. We have utilized this approach to test the proposed task-dynamics relationships in two of the most commonly studied systems in the brain, namely, the visual system and the memory system. In the visual system (chapters 1&2), we first performed a deep review of the two visual streams hypothesis (TVSH) and then tested the dorsal amnesia sub-hypothesis of this theory. According to this sub-hypothesis, the ventral visual stream has a longer memory compared to the dorsal stream, which stems from the tasks that this stream performs. To test this hypothesis, we trained identical networks to perform either dorsal stream or ventral stream tasks. We found that a DNN trained on orientation classification (a dorsal pathway task) develops a shorter memory while the same DNN trained on object classification (as a ventral pathway task) develops a longer memory, corroborating the dorsal amnesia sub-hypothesis. In the memory system (chapters 3&4), we first analyzed the predictive coding theory for the brain and argued that based on this theory, the entorhinal-hippocampal circuit must be tasked with the prediction of the inputs, and an autoencoder architecture is a reasonable first approximation for this circuit. We showed that a sparse autoencoder network that is tasked to reconstruct its inputs develops scale-invariant place cells, corroborating the hypothesis that hippocampal dynamics may emerge as a result of an input prediction/reconstruction and supporting the validity of the deep learning framework for neuroscience. Additionally, our results showed that it is crucial to investigate the constraints that give rise to the behavior of DNNs and neural circuits because it can explain why biology has chosen one solution among all other solutions for a specific task. In summary, we showed that the deep learning framework for neuroscience can offer valuable insights into understanding the computational principles of neural dynamics when informed by theory and biology.
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    MODELING THE GLOBAL FORMATION OF TROPICAL CYCLONES
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-08) Vu, The-Anh; Kieu, Chanh
    The first part of the thesis examines the large-scale factors that govern global tropical cyclone (TC) formation. Using idealized simulations for an aqua-planet tropical channel, we show that the tropical atmosphere has a maximum capacity for generating TCs, even under ideal environmental conditions. Regardless of how favorable the tropical environment is, the total number of TCs generated in the tropics has a cap across experiments. Analyses of daily TC genesis events reveal further that global TC formation is intermittent throughout the year in a series of episodes at a roughly 2-week frequency, with a cap of 8–10 genesis events per day. Examination of different large-scale environmental factors shows that 600-hPa moisture content, 850-hPa absolute vorticity, and vertical wind shear are the most critical factors for this global episodic TC formation. Once TCs form and move poleward, the total moisture content and the absolute vorticity in the main genesis region subside, thus reducing large-scale instability and producing an unfavorable environment for TCs to form. It takes ∼2 weeks for the tropical atmosphere to re-moisten and rebuild the largescale instability associated with the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) before a new TC formation episode can occur. These results offer new insights into the processes that control the upper bound on the annual global TC number. In the second part of the thesis, we examine the clustering of global TC formation from theoretical and numerical perspectives. Using an analytical model and idealized simulations, we find that global TC clusters can be produced by the internal dynamics of the tropical atmosphere, even in the absence of landmass surface and zonal sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies. Our analyses of a two-dimensional ITCZ model capture indeed some planetaryvii scale stationary modes whose zonal and meridional structures support the formation of TC clusters at the global scale. Additional idealized simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model confirm these results in a range of aqua-planet experiments. These numerical results are consistent with the ITCZ breakdown model and reveal some forcing structures that can support stationary "hot spots" for global TC formation beyond the traditional explanation based on zonal SST anomalies. The last part of this thesis examines possible future changes in TC lifetime for the northwestern Pacific basin. Using high-resolution dynamical downscaling, we show that TC lifetime appears to increase under both future emission scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. This is mostly seen at the tail of TC lifetime distribution with more long-lived TCs (lifetime of 8-11 days) and less short-lived TCs (lifetime of 3-5 days). Unlike previous studies, the correlation between TC lifetime and the Nino 3.4 index shows a mixed value in the future climate, with much less statistical significance. Analyses of the TC track distribution reveal instead more noticeable northeastward shifting of TC tracks by the end of 2050. This change in TC track climatology results in an overall longer duration of TCs in the open ocean, thus increasing TC lifetime. Such a shift in TC track pattern is ultimately linked to the strengthening of the Western North Pacific Subtropical High (WPSH), which retreats to the south during July and to the east during August-September in the future. These findings provide different insights into how large-scale circulations can affect TC lifetime in the northwestern Pacific basin under different climate projection scenarios.
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    IN THE SYSTEM BUT NOT OF THE SYSTEM: UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE AND EXPERIENCES OF MENTAL HEALTH PEER SPECIALISTS
    ([Bloomington, Ind.]: Indiana University, 2023-08) Frieh, Ellis C.; Perry, Brea L.
    Certified peer specialists are mental health professionals who provide non-clinical mental health services to individuals in the community who may be struggling with mental health difficulties. They focus on providing support, hope, and the goal of recovery and do so by drawing upon their own lived experiences with mental illness or, to use non-psychiatric terms, distress, difficulties in living, and extreme states. The case of certified peer specialists allows for an investigation into how peer specialists carry out and experience their work and the implications of their unique approach. Specifically, I consider how peer specialists resist biomedicalization by emphasizing and prioritizing nonmedical, social environmental factors in the etiology and “treatment” of mental health problems. They identify trauma as a key contributor to individuals’ experiences of distress and push back against psychiatric labeling, which may contribute to stigma. Further, the professionalization of peer specialists lends insight into how new professions operate to seek and establish legitimacy, autonomy, and credibility. They must resist stigmatizing attitudes and uncertainty about the profession’s status to legitimize their expert knowledge from lived experience as lay professionals. Finally, peer specialists must engage in emotion work in their everyday work and must cope with their emotions through social support and personal coping strategies. Due to the mutuality, or even power differential, of peer support, what is considered appropriate emotion work for peer specialists may look different than what is appropriate for other professions, namely the ability to openly experience emotions with those receiving support. Using a combination of in-depth interviews with peer specialists, viii participant observation fieldwork at a peer-run nonprofit organization, and a survey of peer specialists across the United States, I investigate how peer specialists operate to demedicalize mental illness, legitimize their profession, and navigate emotions and boundaries at work. This research has meaningful theoretical and practical implications and contributes to a major gap in the sociological literature on peer support, professions, and resistance to biomedicalization.
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    INFERENCE OF HIDDEN HIERARCHIES FROM OBSERVABLE NETWORKS
    ([Bloomington, Ind.]: Indiana University, 2023-07) Pebes Trujillo, Miguel Raúl; Manrique-Vallier, Daniel
    In this dissertation I propose probabilistic models and computational estimation methods to infer the hierarchical organization of network systems from the observable patterns of interactions among their elements. My formulation is based on the general idea of statistical network reconstruction (Peixoto (2019a)). Current advancements in this area allowed us to infer some forms of system organization but not hierarchical. Hierarchical systems that manifest as networks are pervasive and statistical models dedicated to their characterization are scarce. This work fills the existing gap that prevents us from understanding several observable phenomena that might be naturally explained by the existence of a hierarchy among their components. Chapter 1 has two parts. First we go through the minimal algebraic and graph theory background on which the addressed problem builds up. We also discuss the general problem we are trying to solve, which is network reconstruction. The second part focuses on hierarchies, as we need clear understanding of what hierarchy means. We discuss why they are important within the network reconstruction framework. Chapter 2 goes through the specific characterizations for hierarchies and hierarchical systems I pick for this dissertation. We focus on those hierarchies, but will also have a high-level introduction to the observables those hierarchies generate. We discuss the general statistical framework that will be later used. Chapter 3 is totally inferential. We will learn how hierarchies can be treated as random objects to enable inference of them from network data. Computational estimation methods as well as hierarchy estimators are discussed. Chapter 4 focuses in one particular model for hierarchical observable networks that unipartite, which is dominance hierarchies. This is an intuitive problem that exemplifies how hierarchies can actually be reconstructed. We derive the theoretical model and fit it to data. Chapter 5 focuses in another particular model for hierarchical observable networks that are bipartite. This problem is more complex and requires more modeling tools. We derive the theoretical 1 model and fit it to data. Chapter 6 summarizes the statistical thinking that drove this dissertation. The main structural features of this family of models are discussed, The focus is on how the hierarchy drives the information passed to the likelihood on these models. This is key to understand all the possibilities this framework offer to explain a variety of real hierarchical systems. We will conclude discussing the contributions of this thesis and its future extensions.
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    STATUS AND THE PSYCHE: HOW MENTAL HEALTH PARADOXES CHALLENGE THEORIES OF INEQUALITY
    ([Bloomington, Ind.]: Indiana University, 2023-07) Coleman, Max E.; Perry, Brea L.
    Social scientists have documented a set of unexpected sociodemographic patterns they call health paradoxes or epidemiological paradoxes. Like all paradoxes, such findings compel scholars to reconsider their assumptions about the social world—findings are only “paradoxical” when viewed from a certain perspective. This dissertation centers on mental health paradoxes, cases in which persons deemed low-status (less educated individuals, racial minorities, immigrants) report better mental health despite greater marginalization. I examine three paradoxes: (1) elevated rates of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITB) in socioeconomically advantaged college students, (2) greater risk of psychiatric disorders in White vs. Black Americans (the Black-White mental health paradox), and (3) higher rates of mental health problems among the native-born (the healthy immigrant paradox). For each paradox, I test a range of potential mechanisms including social support, stressors, and identity measures. I leverage data from two national studies: the Healthy Minds Study (HMS) of college and university students (2009–2019) and the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions–III (NESARC–III, 2012–2013). Findings challenge the distributive paradigm inherent in dominant approaches such as the stress process model and fundamental cause theory, both of which are limited by a similar focus on material and psychosocial “resources.” Taken together, my results highlight the resilience of groups deemed low-status and suggest that structural and cultural arrangements imposed by high-status groups (including an individualist focus on success and self-advancement) may harm well-being.
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    PERFORMING ANDALUSIAN IN POLITICAL SPEECH: POLITICAL PARTY AND SOCIOPHONETIC PATTERNS ACROSS PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION
    ([Bloomington, Ind.]: Indiana University, 2023-07) Pollock, Matthew; Díaz-Campos, Manuel; Obeng, Samuel
    I examine Peninsular Spanish politicians’ use of performative style, a sociolinguistic variable permitting identity formation, using a sociophonetic approach. While all speakers style-shift between prestige and non-prestige variants, politicians in particular use language both to reflect social position and to appeal to voters. Using quantitative and qualitative methodologies, I examine variation in Andalusian and Madrid Spanish, determine how style-shifting occurs at the individual level, and consider how Andalusian voters perceive political speech. Using a composite approaches, I determine that speakers’ use of linguistic resources differs by political affiliation and gender. Stage one of the analysis tracks how 32 peninsular politicians produce ten regional phenomena associated with Andalusian Spanish. While geographic and linguistic factors condition variation, additional social factors including speaker gender, political party, interlocutor gender, and age also explain variation. In Stage two, politicians were examined using Lectal Focusing in Interaction, tracking regional variation and style-shifting over time. Liberal politicians used moments of regional peaks as a means of emphasizing working-class solidarity, while conservatives used regionalisms more performatively to convey southern and friendly indexical meaning. Finally, the perceptual instrument in stage three showed how Seville listeners applied different criteria to community and political speech, evaluating regional variants positively, and associating them with female liberal and male conservative voices. The composite results suggest the rising populism in Spain is leading to a change, whereby conservative voices produce more Andalusian features than liberals, and young listeners associate ix regional speech with the political right. Meanwhile, female politicians navigate a web of indexical meaning, avoiding the stigma of overly vernacular speech while using regionalisms to craft unique identity. While there is an automaticity to the unmarked register of political speech that follows pre-established norms and expectations, politicians can also agentively sidestep them at times to perform identity work. This finding deepens our understanding of political discourse and Andalusian Spanish, presenting a methodology for in-depth examination of a speech community. This dissertation offers a means of generalizing beyond geographical and linguistic contexts, offering insight into stance accumulation and the connection between perception and production.
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    MILNOR’S INVARIANTS FOR KNOTS AND LINKS IN CLOSED ORIENTABLE 3-MANIFOLDS
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023) Stees, Ryan; Orr, Kent E.
    In his 1957 paper, John Milnor introduced a collection of invariants for links in S3 detecting higher-order linking phenomena by studying lower central quotients of link groups and comparing them to those of the unlink. These invariants, now known as Milnor’s µ-invariants, were later shown to be topological link concordance invariants and have since inspired decades of consequential research. Milnor’s invariants have many interpretations, and there have been numerous attempts to extend them to other settings. In this thesis, we extend Milnor’s invariants to topological concordance invariants of knots and links in general closed orientable 3-manifolds. These invariants unify and generalize all previous versions of Milnor’s invariants, including Milnor’s original invariants for links in S3.
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    “AMERICANS ALL?” – MESSAGES IN MINIATURE
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-07) Bennett, Janna Merrill; Robertson, Nancy Marie
    A small white-collar project of the Works Progress Administration project called the Museum Extension Project (MEP) operated in the latter half of the 1930s in at least twenty-four states including Indiana. A product of this visual aid program was the twelve-inch miniature figure dressed in clothing to reflect periods in US history or countries or cultures throughout the world. Museum and Indiana school educators used the MEP figures, as part of a broader intercultural learning agenda, to demonstrate or encourage ethnic appreciation and inclusion, while also fostering “otherness”–all in the safety of classrooms and informal educational settings. The figures simultaneously expanded the definition of membership in a majority white cultural group by adding and validating recent white immigrants while they continued to differentiate “the other”– Black and Native Americans as well as non-European immigrants through the cultural construct of race. These miniature figures allowed students to learn about the ethnic populations of their state and made the world available to all. At the same time, they prescribed the role of “other” to Indigenous Peoples throughout the world, the inhabitants of South and Central American countries, and those perceived as “non-white” peoples in places like Palestine and Egypt. This research examines educational philosophy in the first quarter of the twentieth century combined with the material culture analysis of these figures to demonstrate how three-dimensional objects were powerful educational tools.
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    TOPICS IN HAKHA LAI NOMINAL MARKING
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-05) Wamsley, James Christian; Berkson, Kelly
    This dissertation investigates the formal and functional properties of discourse deictics, morphemes which provide information to help interlocutors identify nominals, mark their discourse status, and highlight them for pragmatic purposes. Discourse deictics remain understudied, despite serving varied and complex functions. This work investigates Hakha Lai, a South Central (formerly Kuki-Chin) Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Chin state in Burma and in diaspora communities worldwide. Hakha Lai discourse deictics are derived from the spatial deictic markers of the demonstrative paradigm, where they encode information about the spatial location of discourse referents in relation to speaker and addressee location. In non-demonstrative contexts, they mark discourse-level properties of nominal referents (e.g., topic status; prior discourse reference) and aid in semantic and pragmatic interpretation. This dissertation investigates elicitation data collected in collaboration with three fluent speakers of Hakha Lai. Elicitation materials, carefully designed to control discourse context information, were adapted from three questionnaires which tested the role of nominal markers in encoding: 1) the spatial deictic properties of demonstratives (Wilkins 1999); 2) the information status of the nominal (Aissen 2015); and 3) other referential properties of the nominal (Jenks 2015). Methodological innovations employed to address the difficulty inherent in investigating discourse/pragmatic markers through elicitation included providing discrete narrative contexts in which target utterances were used, eliciting target utterances appropriate for the context, and conducting followup judgement tasks with modified utterances containing discourse deictics. In the judgement tasks, speakers judged not only the grammaticality of nominals marked with discourse deictics but also viii their acceptability in the given discourse context, thus providing data on the nature of their functional properties. This investigation contributes to ongoing research on the morphosemantics of discourse information marking, and informs future work on nominal reference, topic and focus, differential case marking, and the unique properties of South Central Tibeto-Burman languages.
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    THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF THE NEUTRON ELECTRIC DIPOLE MOMENT EXPERIMENT AT LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-06) Wong, Douglas; Liu, Chen-Yu
    The neutron electric dipole moment (nEDM) experiment that is currently being developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) will use ultracold neutrons (UCN) and Ramsey’s method of separated oscillatory fields to search for a nEDM with a statistical uncertainty of 2 × 10−27e cm in 5 calendar years of running. This dissertation presents the following: (1) a description of the LANL nEDM experiment, control systems, and data acquisition system, (2) measurements and analysis of data taken during the commissioning of experimental components and the UCN beamline, (3) an analytical model that provides a simple parameterization of the input UCN energy spectrum on the beamline, and (4) Monte Carlo simulations of UCN transport from the LANL UCN source into the experimental apparatus.
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    SEX DIFFERENCES IN THE EFFECTS OF ACUTE OZONE EXPOSURE ON PRIMARY HUMAN BRONCHIAL EPITHELIAL CELLS
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-06) Rousselle, Dustin; Silveyra, Patricia
    Sex differences have been observed in the formation of respiratory diseases and disorders as well as the response to air pollutants. Women tend to develop respiratory disorders such as asthma and COPD more often than men, as well as have worse health outcomes when exposed to air pollutants such as ozone. Prior studies have shown that there may be genetic and hormonal components to the disparities seen in these responses; however, these specific pathways are not known. This study plans to investigate the sex differences in inflammatory pathways and cellular responses to acute ozone exposure using male and female primary human bronchial epithelial cells grown at the air-liquid interface. In this research, we found sex differences in the cellular response to ozone exposure in that female cells exhibited a loss in cytotoxicity as well as viability ozone compared to male cells. According to our data, there are several genes related to inflammation that displayed sex differences in regulation when exposed to ozone as well as differences in basal expression. In addition to this, we have observed significant differences in protein secretion into cellular media that were dependent on the sex of the cells.
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    PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION OF ENGLISH VOWEL LENGTH MODULATION DUE TO VOWEL IDENTITY AND THE IDENTITY OF THE FOLLOWING CONSONANT BY KOREAN LEARNERS OF ENGLISH
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-06) Chung, Juyeon; Jong, Kenneth de
    This dissertation examines whether EFL and ESL Korean learners of English are able to produce and perceive two English phonological contrasts that depend on vowel duration differences, coda consonant voicing contrasts and the tense-lax distinction in vowels. For production, it examines differences in vowel duration and vowel quality associated with both contrasts. Also, for the voicing contrast, it investigates whether Korean coda neutralization influences Korean speakers’ performance by incorporating environments where neutralization occurs in Korean (in final, coda position) and where it does not occur (in medial, inter-vocalic position). For perception, it further examines these learners' abilities to perceptually identify and discriminate these same contrasts. Finally, it examines the relationship between production and perception of the two English contrasts by Korean speakers via cross-subject analysis. In production, all speakers exhibited durational correlates for both contrasts. However, both EFL and ESL Korean learners failed to produce the spectral cues effectively. In perception, all speakers were good at perceptually distinguishing English consonant voicing contrasts whereas they had more difficulty in perceptually differentiating English tense/lax vowel contrasts. Cross-subject analysis does not indicate a correlation between vowel length differences in production and perception scores and the different individuals have different production and perception processes in English language acquisition. EFL and ESL learners of Korean exhibited no systematic differences in skill in either production or perception, thus not indicating any effect of exposure to English in an English-speaking country. Altogether, these findings imply that the production and perception skills associated with each contrast are independent.
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    ‘SHE CAME THROUGH ME’: Situating Birth Stories and Women’s Embodied Wisdom in Folkloristics
    ([Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2023-07) Azmy, Janelle; Jackson, Jason Baird
    The mainstream image conjured in the American imagination of birth goes something like this: There is a clean, bright hospital room. In it is a laboring woman, she is on her back, her legs in stirrups. Beside her is her anxious, perhaps nauseated, husband. A masked doctor is seated between her legs, offering instructions. Perhaps there is a nurse or two present. This is the fantasy of birth that has been neatly packaged and presented to the American public over and over again. But it is hardly reality. Even in the reality of a similar scene the image conjured obfuscates the nuances of a necessarily individualized experience. Does the woman have an epidural? A fetal heart rate monitor (internal or external)? An IV? What is she feeling? Did she and her partner take childbirth classes (if yes, what style)? The doctor is usually only present for the pushing stage or emergencies. The birth world is full of counter-movements, ulterior motives, harmful policies, unscientific medicine, technology, tradition, and outlaw practitioners. While this scene is what the late 20th/early 21st century American imagination has conjured, the reality is much more complex and individuated. Those initiated to the birth world find so much depth that it would take a lifetime to explore all of its corners and learn all of its practices. At the center of this web are women and their babies, navigating one of the oldest and most universal rites of passage.