Having identified the roots of the anti-bravura in drawing-room performances by women at the turn of the nineteenth century, Morgan traces a host of connections between private musical culture in England and the virtuoso’s place of prominence on public stages throughout Europe in subsequent decades. Morgan shaped my dissertation around these connections, devoting three chapters to the musical activities of late Georgian-era women and a final chapter to the legacy of those women as embodied in the development of virtuosity. The relationship between amateur female keyboardists in late- Georgian England and the towering concert pianists of the mid-nineteenth century may seem like an unlikely alliance, but it was a tremendously fruitful one.

My background as a performer shapes how I write about music. I came to musicology after receiving my undergraduate and master’s degrees in piano performance at The Juilliard School. When I started graduate school in the Department of Musicology at UCLA, I gravitated toward studying issues related to performance, topics such as virtuosity and performance practice. Meanwhile, I noticed that the campus abounded with scholars whose interest in performance had inspired them to experiment in their writing, figures such as Sue-Ellen Case, Elisabeth Le Guin, Susan Leigh Foster, and Susan McClary. Common to their work is the absence of a boundary between their identities as performers and their identities as scholars; their understanding of the performing body spurs them to perform in their writing. Perhaps Susan Leigh Foster says it best: “I am a body writing. I am a bodily writing.”

The vastness of the ocean makes it difficult to study. This is compounded by regional differences in temperature, wind patterns, underwater topography, and primary productivity that extend from the ocean’s surface to depths of thousands of meters. Many organisms that inhabit the marine environment navigate many environmental changes as they move between regions in both the horizontal and vertical directions. The ability to navigate through different habitat types indicates that marine animals may be adaptable to multiple environments; however, it also suggests that they may be exposed to multiple hazards, including hazards of anthropogenic origin. Rates of anthropogenic inputs of chemicals and litter to the atmosphere and the ocean are increasing. However, many effects of anthropogenic compounds on marine life are only beginning to be understood. In this dissertation, I assessed foraging ecology, contaminants, and the effects of contaminants, in seabirds, which are unique among marine animals because they hunt for fishes and squid from the air, but breed on land. Land-based breeding enables them to be easily studied, and they are good samplers of the vast ocean because they travel tens to thousands of kilometers from the breeding colony to forage. I first tested the hypothesis that seabirds’ foraging behaviors are related to local oceanographic habitats, and that they exhibit behavioral plasticity to exploit the marine environment. GPS-tracking and remotely-sensed environmental data of four species of boobies (Sula spp.) demonstrated adaptable behaviors that changed depending on the type of oceanographic habitat in which boobies foraged (e.g. based on depth, sea surface temperature and topography). Second, I measured blood-based persistent organic pollutants (POP) and mercury contaminant concentrations in boobies and two species of frigatebirds (Fregata spp.) from four colonies in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea. I combined blood-based contaminant measurements with two measures of foraging ecology (blood-based stable isotopes and GPS-tracking). Boobies and frigatebirds were exposed to different contaminants depending on their foraging habitat (e.g. nearshore vs offshore). Though three of the study sites were remote and uninhabited, all birds had contaminants. Lastly, I tested the hypothesis that mercury would negatively affect seabirds’ breeding. I measured breeding in Flesh-footed Shearwaters (Ardenna carneipes) and Great-winged Petrels (Pterodroma macroptera) in the Southern Ocean (Western Australia). Though Great-winged Petrels’ blood mercury concentrations were the highest among all seabirds, I did not detect relationships between mercury and breeding in either species. Overall, seabirds are adaptive to their local marine environment. They traverse many habitat types while foraging, which influences the concentrations and types of contaminants that they encounter. However, they may be adapted, or tolerant, to some contaminants like mercury. Seabirds are good samplers of the marine environment, and continue to serve as good indicators of oceanographic processes and contaminants found in the ocean.

While Autism research is interdisciplinary, a review of the research offers a monocultural understanding of how autism impacts family development. Most studies use a homogenous population sample of White middle-class families and/or omit intersectional factors such as race and developmental disability in both the design and analysis of the study. Additionally, while the literature on the effects of parental advocacy on the diagnosis and treatment of children on the autism spectrum does offer a more nuanced perspective of the role and identity of such parents, it does so with the exclusion of race and gender from much of the analyses. The experiences of Black mothers of children with Autism are either absent or presented from a deficit point of view ignoring the long-standing advocacy work from this population. Therefore, if we are to better understand the differences in experiences that produce advocacy development for Black parents of children on the autism spectrum, additional studies are needed. Consequently, using a Critical Race Theoretical (CRT) framework, we conducted critical empirical investigations with the aim to explore and understand the pathway to becoming autism parent advocates for populations with intersectional oppressed identities such as race, gender, and class. The first study conceptualized types of resources (i.e., community cultural wealth) that Black mothers of Autistic children (N=5) used to navigate school systems. Published in the British Journal of Sociology of Education (Morgan & Stahmer, 2021), we found that Black mothers were more likely to use advocacy to navigate special education systems when schools engaged in family-centered practices. The second study explored the variables associated with parent advocacy development in Black mothers (N=7) of children on the autism spectrum across three states: California, Pennsylvania, and New York. Findings include three key phases of development that occur over time for Black mothers to cultivate the advocacy for their children and for families they coach in their communities.

ABSTRACT

The Palladion and National Identity

by

Morgan Elizabeth Hunter

Doctor of Philosophy in Classics

University of California, Berkeley

Professor Mark Griffith, Chair

This dissertation takes its start from the observation that people of Sixth and Fifth Century Athens, the Hellenistic Troad and Pergamon, and Republican Rome with its Latin Colonies all made use of stories and symbols taken from the Trojan War in the process of creating an acceptable national identity for their states. The Homeric Cycle of epics and their derived tragedies at Athens, the Iliad’s Mount Ida and Temple of Athena Ilias in Pergamon’s Ilion, the legends of Aeneas at Rome all became central to the way people in Athens, the Troad, and Roman Italy came to see their community. These elements of an imagined Trojan past became part of the complex of activities and formal behaviors that being a member of a socio-political community entails, and especially the symbolic associations of these activities to that community, what Abraham Lincoln called the “mystic chords of memory.”

My particular focus is on three very odd stories about women that I show lie at the beginning of this process in each case: the story that a tall woman, dressed like Athena and riding in a chariot with Peisistratos, tricked the Athenians into making him tyrant; the story that for a thousand years a small city in Greece annually sent two aristocratic maidens to Troy to be tortured and work as slaves for the rest of their lives; and the story that the Roman Senate ordered two sacred Vestal Virgins to be ritually executed after Hannibal won the battle of Cannae.

I identify a specific sacred component from the heroic past that lay at the heart of all three stories: the Palladion, the cult statue of Athena from ancient Troy itself. I demonstrate, by a close examination of all available evidence from literature, art, and archaeology, that this cult statue was a significant symbolic element in the identity of each community. It provided a tangible, visible link to the Homeric world, and thus was a central component in the creation of three separate national identities.

In the course of the dissertation, I also compare these ancient processes of identity creation with more modern examples, taken from Elizabethan England, Imperial France, and Stuart Britain. In each case there are remarkable parallels with the ancient cases I have examined, showing that this process of national identity creation is deeply rooted in human social and political behaviors.

In eutherian mammals, dosage compensation between XX females and XY males is achieved by the transcriptional silencing of one X-chromosome in each female cell. The choice of which chromosome will be silenced is random in that both X chromosomes have an equal probability of being silenced. Despite nearly fifty years of research, the mechanisms that enable a cell to designate precisely one active and one inactive X chromosome remain elusive. What follows is an investigation into how X chromosomal fate is assigned. I present evidence that the two X chromosomes in a female cell adopt distinct states and that these states correlate with fate. I also explore the role of Xist's A-repeat in this process. The A-repeat is a highly conserved Xist element that is necessary for Xist-dependent silencing. The work within this thesis shows that the A-repeat is also required for random choice. I demonstrate that the A-repeat is important for post-transcriptional processing of Xist RNA and that the A-repeat binds the essential splicing factor ASF/SF2. In combination, these findings provide the foundation for a model in which regulation of Xist RNA splicing in ES cells is part of the stochastic process that determines which X will be inactivated in wild-type cells.

Electronic cigarettes (E-cigarettes) were originally designed in 2003 as smoking cessation devices intended to deliver nicotine without the need for combustion. E-cigarettes, also known as electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), have since gained widespread popularity across the globe among both current and former tobacco smokers, and those who have never smoked before. Concerningly, e-cigarette popularity has also spread to adolescents with recent estimates that over 2 million middle and high school students currently use e-cigarettes. The efficacy of e-cigarettes as smoking cessation aids is highly contested, and the FDA has not yet approved any e-cigarette device for this purpose. There exists an ever-expanding body of knowledge regarding the potential health hazards of continued e-cigarette use. E-cigarettes, which exist in many forms, or ‘generations’, that vary in design and efficiency at aerosolizing nicotine, share three core elements: a power source (battery), heating element (coil or atomizer) and a reservoir containing e-liquid (composed of the humectants propylene glycol (PG) and vegetable glycerin (VG), nicotine and flavoring chemicals). Aerosols, generated by heating of the coil to aerosolize e-liquid, are known to contain numerous toxic chemicals that are also found in cigarette smoke. In particular, research has consistently shown e-cigarette aerosols contain carbonyls, metals, free radicals, and nicotine by-products. Popular e-cigarette devices, called third-generation devices, allow users to adjust device settings like coil temperature and power, and can be used with low resistance “sub-ohm” coils made from numerous different metals and in many different coil configurations. Popular fourth-generation devices are less customizable but use highly bio-active nicotine salts, which increase nicotine delivery to users. E-cigarette research is challenging and complex due mostly to the numerous model types of e-cigarette devices available on the market, which evolved from first- to now fourth- generation, with over 2,800 different models from 466 identified brands, and to the selection of more than 16,000 distinct e-liquid flavors. In addition, each combination of e-liquid variables (humectants, flavors, nicotine concentration) and device operating conditions (wattage and temperature settings) is unique and produces a specific toxicity profile. In humans, e-cigarette use has been shown to cause acute adverse respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, and neurologic health effects, among others. Evidence has also emerged that e-cigarette users can experience immunological disturbances leaving them at increased risk for respiratory infections, such as COVID-19 or influenza. Studies in vitro and in vivo in rodents have implicated e-cigarettes in disruption of pulmonary immune homeostasis leading to aberrant cytokine and chemokine production and altered immune cell functions. However, the exact mechanisms of action and the long-term health consequences of these changes are still largely unknown. Notably, vulnerable populations like fetuses, infants, children, pregnant women, and older adults may be uniquely vulnerable to immune related health risks associated with e-cigarette use. Herein, we review the effects of e-cigarettes use on both maternal and fetal health outcomes, as well as consequences of early-life e-cigarette exposures in infants and children. We then investigate the effects of increased coil temperature on the chemical composition of aerosol from a third-generation e-cigarette device, and on pulmonary inflammation in murine lungs. We find that increased coil temperature does not significantly increase carbonyl compound concentrations, but that exposures to aerosols generated at higher temperatures can more significantly dampen pulmonary cytokine production and macrophage recruitment to lungs. We then investigate progressive exposure to e-cigarette aerosols and compare this to traditional cigarette smoke exposure in mice. We find that progressive e-cigarette exposure induces a unique, acute inflammatory response compared to cigarette exposure, characterized by transient macrophage infiltration to lungs. We also find that progressive e-cigarette exposure reduces cytokine gene expression indicating a potentially immunosuppressive effect. Lastly, we investigate the effects of e-cigarettes on the pulmonary immune system and host responses to influenza A viral infection in both young and aged mice. We find that viral titers are reduced, viral clearance is impaired, and mortality from infection is decreased in e-cigarette exposed mice. We find that e-cigarette exposure caused significant shifts throughout infection in both innate and adaptive immune cell populations and cytokine profiles which persisted after resolution of infection, underscoring the potential health risks associated with e-cigarette use. Of note, during early infection, Natural Killer (NK) cell populations were significantly increased in both mouse strains and both ages, indicating a consistent phenotype which to our knowledge has not been reported previously. The studies contained herein further the current understanding of the impacts of e-cigarettes on pulmonary immune homeostasis and underscore the need for continued regulation of e-cigarette sales to minimize negative public health outcomes.

Global climate models demonstrate that temperate ecosystems are likely to serve as carbon (C) sinks in the coming decades, however any realized increase in C storage on land will also require increases in the availabilities of plant essential nutrients such as nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). Additionally, nutrient limitation to plant productivity remains one of the most uncertain factors to global climate projections. Our understanding of how nutrient biogeochemistry is altered under different climatic conditions is unclear. Using a combination of field, laboratory, and advanced analytical techniques, I show P biogeochemistry is intrinsically related to soil development in a semiarid (White Mountains Elevational Transect) to Mediterranean (Southern Sierra Nevada Critical Zone Observatory) climatic gradient. Specifically, P stock increases, inorganic P transitions from calcium to iron and aluminum association, and organic P proportionally decreases with increasing climate-driven weathering. With increasing precipitation, soil and aboveground foliage became progressively more P-limited, whereas the microbial biomass and fine roots are more N-limited and enzyme activity is largely unaffected. Overall, the transition from a semiarid to Mediterranean climate creates more chemically weathered soil that is able to retain P that may not be readily bioavailable. These relatively more weathered soils appear to be relying on faster cycling organic P species to support ecosystem development. Furthermore, using three-dimensional resin capsule pots in a Mediterranean forest site, I characterized how nutrient fluxes under more biological (PO43-, NH4+, NO3-) or geochemical (Ca2+, Mg2+, and Na+) control are impacted by water year, seasonality, and depth to form hot spots (HS) or hot moments (HM). A multi-year drought occurred during the study, causing geochemically controlled nutrient fluxes to be transient over time and characterizing them as HM. Alternatively, biologically controlled outliers formed HS and HM. Macronutrient HS and HM are found at higher concentrations relative to the surrounding soil matrix, and co-occur in discrete spatial locations where belowground biomass can detect, proliferate, and exploit these resources. Overall, water flux controls nutrient biogeochemical cycles in these drylands. Therefore, nutrient HS and HM will likely play a disproportionate role in supporting ecosystem development in these temperature drylands under a changing climate.

Climate change poses multiple threats to human health, including changes in the burden of infectious diseases. Rising temperatures and shifts in precipitation patterns may reshape the geographical distributions of pathogenic organisms and disease vectors, potentially placing new communities at risk. Projections of environmental infectious diseases in response to climate change will help public health officials create disease surveillance programs and mitigation strategies. A precursor to modeling these projections is a basic understanding of the relationships between each infectious disease and the environment.

My dissertation examined how climate conditions influence two different environmental infectious diseases in the United States: coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever) and West Nile virus. In my first study, I examined the climate and environmental conditions that structure the spatiotemporal dynamics of Valley fever incidence. To do so, I compiled a Valley fever case dataset for the southwestern U.S. From this study, I found areas endemic to Valley fever are described by hot and dry climate thresholds. In my second study, I used these climate thresholds to create a predictive model of the area currently endemic to Valley fever. Then, I used climate projections to create the first maps of future Valley fever endemicity. In my third chapter, I used machine learning to explore which climate conditions structure West Nile virus incidence throughout the U.S. I found the highest disease incidence in the northern Great Plains, which is categorized by dry and cold winters. This predictive model of disease incidence may be used for future projections of West Nile virus risk in response to climate change.

The collective results of my dissertation help us understand how climate conditions influence two of the most important environmental infectious diseases in the U.S. and how climate change may affect the future burden of each disease. I am now sharing the results from my dissertation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, state health agencies and epidemiologists, and physicians in hopes to alleviate the future burden of disease.