This dissertation takes a multi-scalar approach to exploring the environmental and human health hazards of plastics. The first and second studies explore global issues of plastics through environmental justice (EJ) and the United Nations plastics treaty negotiations respectively. The first study narrates the plastics “life cycle” through connecting existing literature and case studies of distributive, recognitional, and procedural injustices at each cycle stage. In addition to peer reviewed scholarship and grey literature, this chapter operationalizes the voices of those most impacted (...) as data commensurate to formal studies. The second study explores how the plastics industry and the global EJ coalition communicate opposing stances on “production reduction” in the plastics treaty. I share my research from attendance at the 4th UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee session (INC-4) in Ottawa, CA. The third study turns to the personal scale. Through autoethnography, I situate my personal experience with pregnancy, birth, and new motherhood in relationship with plastics through a critical, intersectional feminist lens. In this chapter, I explore the affect and anxiety around the paradox of questionable health and environmental repercussions of ubiquitous plastic, and the simultaneous feelings of ease and relief these plastics produce. Taken together, these chapters create a multidimensional analysis of plastics. I document the systemic, global nature of the environmental injustices of plastics, imbue readers with hope based on the EJ work of dedicated individuals working on the global plastics treaty, and provide a blueprint for those wrestling with the emotional tensions of a personal relationship with plastic materials. (shrink)

artifacts are entities without spatial locations brought into existence from intentional creative acts. Examples include fictional characters, musical works, stories, or languages. I argue that abstract artifacts can be causally active. I will demonstrate the validity of this claim with a case study: interactive fictional characters, or IFCs, which include non-playable characters and playable characters from tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Any theories about the nature of abstract artifacts must include this type of interactive entity. This paper (...) will present the various arguments regarding whether abstract artifacts have causal capabilities and determine if these arguments apply to IFCs. Any theory that considers how an abstract artifact may or may not be causally active must apply to all abstract artifacts. Ultimately, I argue that not all abstract artifacts can be causally inert because such entities as IFCs prove that there is a case for some causal activity. (shrink)

Taking a cue from recent discussions in postcriticism, this project develops a method of reading that views literary works as inherently theoretical, informed by the project of Pragmatics defined by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Whereas traditional modes of reading use a work of theory to unlock the hidden secrets of a literary text, I articulate a process of co-reading, where texts are instead used to illustrate and complicate one another. This style of reading asks how a fictional text problematizes (...) not only its own critical interpretation, but its relation to the circumstances under which it was created. I show how Ann Quin’s 1969 novel¸ Passages, experiments with many of the same themes explored later by Deleuze and Guattari. By reading these theorists alongside Quin, I argue that the theme of thresholds—between physical, emotional, and mental spaces—affords a look into the affective and perceptive experiences of life under what I call Spectacular Nomadism, an effect of late-stage capitalism wherein subjectivities are flattened into relations of images, turning individuals into alienated nomads, unable to either connect with others or themselves in any stable way. This conception of nomadism builds off and departs from a more positive conception of Nomadology as conceived by Deleuze and Guattari, illustrating the need to revisit its functionality as a possibility for liberation. (shrink)

In today's digital age, the widespread collection, utilization, and sharing of personal data are challenging our conventional beliefs about privacy and information security. This thesis will explore the boundaries of conventional privacy and security frameworks and investigate new methods to handle online privacy by integrating groups. Additionally, we will examine approaches to monitoring the types of information gathered on individuals to tackle transparency concerns in the data broker and data processor sector. We aim to challenge traditional notions of privacy and (...) security to encourage innovative strategies for safeguarding them in our interconnected, dispersed digital environment. This thesis uses a multi-disciplinary approach to complex systems, drawing from various fields such as data ethics, legal theory, and philosophy. Our methods include complex systems modeling, network analysis, data science, and statistics. As a first step, we investigate the limits of individual consent frameworks in online social media platforms. We develop new security settings, called distributed consent, that can be used in an online social network or coordinated across online platforms. We then model the levels of observability of individuals on the platform(s) to measure the effectiveness of the new security settings against surveillance from third parties. Distributed consent can help to protect individuals online from surveillance, but it requires a high coordination cost on the part of the individual. Users must also decide whether to protect their privacy from third parties and network neighbors by disclosing security settings or taking on the burden of coordinating security on single and multiple platforms. However, the coordination burden may be more appropriate for systems-level regulation. We then explore how groups of individuals can work together to protect themselves from the harms of misinformation on online social networks. Social media users are not equally susceptible to all types of misinformation. Further, diverse groups of social media communities can help protect one another from misinformation by correcting each other's blind spots. We highlight the importance of group diversity in network dynamics and explore how natural diversity within groups can provide protection rather than relying on new technologies such as distributed consent settings. Finally, we investigate methods to interrogate what types of personal data are collected by third parties and measure the risks and harms associated with aggregating personal data. We introduce methods that provide transparency into how modern data collection practices pose risks to data subjects online. We hope that the collection of these results provides a humble step toward revealing gaps in privacy and security frameworks and promoting new solutions for the digital age. (shrink)

In this article, one will find a friendly introduction to several orixás, the archetypal forces of nature in Yoruban and Afro-Brazilian cosmology, in order to explore the applicability of their teachings within the realm of student affairs. With each orixá comes a teaching story, series of reflection questions, and a tangible pedagogical practice. When employed with reverence to their origin and context, these tools can catalyze self-development, sense of purpose, and breadth of perspective for both for our students and ourselves.

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of ‘lenses’ and ‘tensions’ to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the ‘mess’ of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

From 19th century insane asylums to state sponsored eugenic programs in the 20th century, the state has been an incongruous leader and provider of mental health policy and practice. Current practices that include such treatments as confinement, restraints, forced medication and electro-convulsive therapy continue to raise issues of social justice and humane treatment. Since the 1970s a diverse group of consumers of mental health services from political and radical emancipatory movements to consumer and family initiatives have emerged to question, inform (...) and influence federal and state policies and services. Today state administrators and consumer-advocates meet in formal settings in which they exchange ideas as they work to affect and develop mental health policy and practice. However, such exchanges have raised new questions regarding the relationship between these two groups and their ability, in light of past practices to effectively work together to develop mental health policy and practice. The purpose of this study is to compare how state administrators and consumer-advocates perceive mental illness and how these perceptions impact policy and practice. Through a qualitative research study, the researcher compared and contrasted the perceptions of five consumer-advocates and five state administrators who are involved in major mental health policy in a rural state in order to consider how their perceptions of mental health affect policy and treatment. This study shows an emerging relationship between state administrators and consumer-advocates but a relationship that lacks communication and trust as their discourse attempts to span the gap between their two symbolic universes. The focus of consumer-advocates on the importance of their role in battling pervasive stigma and the need for people with lived experience to be central in the mental health system can be seen as an effort to overcome a historical pattern of coercion and abuse of mental health patients by the state. The focus of state administrators to remain relevant in a mental health system in which consumer-advocates challenge the status quo can be seen as their effort to retain legitimacy as well as their historic control over the mental health system. State administrators and consumer-advocates know that they exist in a new, shared world of mental health care and both groups agreed that the relationship between them needs to improve. (shrink)

This thesis examines how different types of connection – intimacy, community, and compassion – can positively impact the cultivation of well-being and ways of knowing. Using Scholarly Personal Narrative methodology I describe my journey from the 15-years I lived as a monastic yogic nun, followed by a period of heartbreak, to my recent experience as a tip-toeing Buddhist and mid-life graduate student who yearned for community, a place to belong, and an opportunity to be heard, seen and valued. I explore (...) how the pain and suffering of loneliness, grief, loss, and change, when met by presence, patience, awareness, care and flexibility, can help to strengthen one's relationships with the self, others and surrounding environment. I close by outlining how contemplative pedagogy can help to create new ways of knowing, improve cognitive functioning and well-being, and cultivate compassion. I demonstrate how these three connections can transform the higher education learning experience from an abstract, impersonal view of reality to an authentic, interconnected, and intimate one that help students develop long-lasting and meaningful relationships well beyond the classroom walls. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The premise of my thesis is to approach poetics anew, using psychoanalysis and other related theoretical disciplines to help answer the often overlooked but fundamental question: 'What is poetry?' This thesis is based on the notion that Freud's insight into the unconscious is itself the key to unlocking the essential function of poetry as it has come to be understood in the 20th century, throughout the modernist period; and that Lacan, as a rewriting of Freud, specifically developed a theory (...) of language that provides the beginnings of a psychoanalytic poetics. Another component of this thesis involves the claim that, of all the modernists, Wallace Stevens particularly embodies a poetic style that most closely embodies the theoretical position of psychoanalysis. In the first chapter of this study my aim is to draw out thoroughly the relationship to Freudian psychoanalysis and poetry'and to make the specific argument that Freud's technique for dream interpretation is essentially the one that we use to interpret or to read modern poetry. The second chapter deals with repetition, a favorite of psychoanalysis and poetry, in order to make the claim that the ultimate form of metaphor is repetition, which, more than just a rhetorical technique, has much to do with the human psyche and the formation of subjectivity proper. (shrink)

Through the lens of my disability I am exploring dialogue in medical and education settings. Diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis, I have explored the concept and notion behind: “What quantifies or qualifies ‘illness’ or ‘cure’?”. As an arthritic autoimmune condition, it is chronic and can be debilitating. Through course work in the College of Education and Social Service's Interdisciplinary Program, many more questions arose than answers. A 2012 study by Reveille, et al. shows conditions like AS, grouped as Axial Spondylarthritis or (...) SpA, may affect up to 1% of the population. Classes like Beyond Medical Models expanded perspectives on ‘care’ and ‘treatment modalities.’ Are we as a society and world fully engaged to usher in the next generation of ‘healing’ and ‘care’ in medicine and education paradigms? Can genomic expression, such as mine, be ‘cared’ for through proper nutrition, mindful exercise, a healthy living environment, and communal support; not just chronic and acute pills, needles or surgeries? Obviously, there is no ‘one size fits all approach.’ Arthritic lower back pain or ‘Chronic Pain’ is leading the nation in claims for social security disability payments. It is one of many ‘conditions’ categorized along with other physical and mental health concerns, including addiction recovery as “Invisible Disabilities”. I will speak to further advocate for dialogue and collaboration in healing modalities for choice in treatment, care and education. In conclusion, more research, communication and action are needed for positive transformative global change. (shrink)

As the record industry’s fortunes decline, consumers experience increasing access to the world’s recorded music, legally and otherwise, through digital technologies. At the same time, recordings not only take up less physical space , they are compressed — not just as data, but in terms of dynamic range. While it allows for constant audibility in noisy environments like cars and offices, dynamic range compression has frustrated many listeners for limiting the impact of the music and causing “ear fatigue.” These listeners (...) long for access to the purity of the original recording before it was “squashed,” but the problem is that the original recording does not, in a sense, exist. Producers and mastering engineers assemble the tracks recorded and create a particular sonic product that can later be revisited and “remastered.” Ostensibly this process is meant to get closer to the original sound, but in reality it simply comprises a different manner of interpreting the existing recording. Theodor Adorno had written of surprisingly similar phenomena more than half a century ago in essays like “The Radio Symphony” and the notes collected in Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction. Though infamous for his hostility toward popular music and its “infantile” listeners, Adorno’s writings on music contain much that is valuable for an understanding of how pop works in the digital age. Combined with a consideration of works on music and postmodernity by Fredric Jameson, Jacques Attali, François Lyotard and others, Adorno’s work helps one to consider how reification continues to work in an era where music is seemingly no longer a “thing.”. (shrink)

The Grande Bibliothèque du Québec , the merger of the National Library of Québec with the Central Municipal Library of Montréal in a ninety-million dollar construction project which opened in the spring of 2005, serves as the point of departure and as a model and metaphor for reflection on the significance of libraries in the cultural life of a society and in the construction of social identity. The province of Québec is unique, not only because it is the sole province (...) in Canada where the citizens are a French language majority, but also because it is the only province to have established its own national library. The Bibliothèque nationale du Québec and other significant libraries around the world collect and preserve memory in ways that create a context for cultural recall. Government and religious leaders have, for a long time, recognized the potential that libraries have in influencing popular thought and ideas of citizens. In societies where democratization of information is fostered, libraries are promoted as a source of pride and cultural achievement in buildings that are constructed as architectural monuments. In war-torn regions or in areas under authoritarian control, library materials are censured and cultural epochs are erased or destroyed. The heated debates that took place at the turn of the late 19th and early 20th century over the creation of a public or municipal library in Montréal and in the struggle between religious and secular forces over control and direction of public reading characterize a lengthy discourse that parallels the development of the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec and of public libraries in Québec. The various stages of evolution and current metamorphosis of the Bibliothèque nationale / Grande Bibliothèque can be viewed as a reflection of the evolution and metamorphosis of society and cultural memory in Québec throughout the nineteenth century to the present. (shrink)

The province of Québec, the sole province in Canada where the citizens are a French-language majority, is also the only province with its own national library. The Bibliothèque nationale du Québec and other significant libraries around the world collect and preserve memory in ways that create a context for cultural recall. The first part of this article traces the heated debates that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries over the creation of a public or municipal library (...) in Montréal. The second part traces the events leading to the development of the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec and its subsequent merger in 2005 with the Bibliothèque municipale de Montréal to form the Grande Bibliothèque, or "the new national library of Québec." The stages of evolution of the Bibliothèque nationale/Grande Bibliothèque, in parallel with the development of public libraries in Québec, can be viewed as a reflection of the evolution and metamorphosis of society and cultural memory in Québec throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the present. (shrink)