### No Shock Waves through Wall Street? Market Responses to the Risk of Nuclear War

David Andrew Finer
Do investors correctly price extreme events that they have never seen occur? To shed light on this question, I examine market responses to the risk of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I find evidence that investors indeed priced firms’ exposures to nuclear destruction: Firms headquartered in areas that American national-security experts and the general public perceived more at risk of nuclear destruction experienced lower returns. Such discrimination is plausible given contemporary survey evidence...

### Essays on the Econometrics of Dependent Data

Jianfei Cao
This dissertation studies the estimation and statistical inference of a few methods that are commonly used in empirical studies of economics, when the data is dependent. Chapter 1 studies the linear IV models with clustering dependence, which are widely used in empirical studies. The common solution, the cluster covariance estimator, often produces undesirable inferential results, especially with weak instruments. I propose a method that is robust to both weak IV and (potentially heterogeneous) clustering dependence....

### The Derived Category of the Abelian Category of Constructible Sheaves

Owen Finn Barrett
We show that the triangulated category of bounded constructible complexes on an algebraic variety $X$ over an algebraically closed field is equivalent to the bounded derived category of the abelian category of constructible sheaves on $X$, extending a theorem of Nori to the case of positive characteristic. The coefficients are allowed to be finite of torsion, a finite extension of $\mathbf{Q}_\ell$, or the ring of integers of such. A series of reductions due to Nori,...

### Public Works and Private Work on the Threshold of Complexity: The Production and Use of Space at Late Chalcolithic 1 Tell Surezha, Iraq

Samuel Lee Harris
The 5th and 6th millennia in the Near East, falling “between the revolutions” represented by the emergence of sedentism & domestication on the one hand, and urbanism and complex society on the other, are important for understanding changes in human social, economic, and political organization in the region. Tell Surezha in northern Iraq was inhabited from at least the Ubaid period of the 6th millennium through the Late Chalcolithic of the 5th and 6th millennia,...

### Design Principles For Non-Equilibrium Self-Assembly

Michael Nguyen
Self-assembly is a process in which components in a system organize themselves into structures and patterns without human intervention. Though design principles for self-assembly for systems at global or local equilibrium have seen many advances recently, there has not been much progress for self-assembly far from equilibrium. Indeed, many essential processes in biophysics and chemistry occur far from equilibrium. The self-assembly of lipids into membranes, the growing of nanowires using the VLS technique, the making...

### From Collective Sovereignty to Autocracy: The Evolution of the Mongol Empire, 1227-1251

Michael J. Bechtel
When Činggis Qan died in 1227, the Mongol Empire was a confederation of steppe peoples engaged in conquests over other steppe societies as well as civilizations of Central Eurasia. By the time of the election of Činggis Qan’s grandson, Möngke, to the office of qa’an in 1251, the Mongol Empire had become a loosely allied group of states that recognized the qa’an as the head of an administration whose main duties were the collection and...

### Architecting Quantum Computer Systems in the Presence of Noise

Yongshan Ding
Quantum computers may solve some problems far beyond the reach of classical digital computers. However, emerging quantum systems are typically noisy and difficult to control. These noises create significant difficulties for the practical usage of quantum systems, leaving a substantial gap between the requirements of quantum applications and the realities of noisy devices. Bridging this gap is crucial – the dissertation shows that the system software can adapt to the constraints of large applications and...

### Every Changing Thing: Natural Continua in Aristotle's Physics VI

Arnold Robert Brooks
I show that in Physics 6, Aristotle presents a theory of the metaphysics of natural continua. I argue that this theory is a revision of an older view found in Physics 3-4 on which time and change are said to be continuous because magnitude is so, while in 6, Aristotle argues that changing bodies are the basis for the continuity of everything else. I discuss several longstanding problems in the interpretation of the Physics including:...

### $T{\bar T}$ and Holography

Asrat Demise
In recent years, there have been two independent but related developments in the study of irrelevant deformations in two dimensional quantum field theories (QFTs). The first development is the deformation of a two dimensional QFT by the determinant of the energy momentum stress tensor, commonly referred to as $T{\bar T}$ deformation. The second development is in two dimensional holographic field theories which are dual to string theory in asymptotically Anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetimes. In this...

### tap

Theodore Stuart Moore
tap for percussion trio, tape, DMX lighting instruments, and video was commissioned by Line Upon Line Percussion Ensemble (Austin, TX) and is scored for three percussionists. Percussion 1 performs on tom, snare, splash cymbal, and G#6 crotale. Percussion 2 performs on tom, snare, splash cymbal, and a G6 crotale. Percussion 3 performs on a small cardboard box, wooden frog, guiro, two woodblocks, crotales F#6 and A6, and a bird whistle. The technology components of the...

### Of Inclusion, Value, and Roman Elegy

Jenna Sarchio
Contemporary critiques and modern criticism of Roman elegiac poetry and its distinctly transgressive lifestyle align in casting its practitioner on the outside of Roman cultural values. It is a notion that has crystalized in the topos of erotic exclusion and the figure of the exclusus amator doomed to suffer it, which have become both the indelible image and the governing metaphor of the genre of Roman elegy as a whole. This project amplifies the conversation...

### Poetics of Unease: Affect and Labor in Ancient Greek, Near Eastern, and Indic Poetry

Claudio Sansone
In this dissertation I examine the role played by “unease” in the Homeric epics, the Ancient Near Eastern Gilgamesh texts, and the Indian Rigveda. I position unease as an affect that the texts can provoke in their audiences through poetic devices that interrupt the narrative, drawing attention to ideological ambiguities, marginalized voices, and other details that endanger their over-arching values. Representations of labor and laborers are the focus of my analyses, since articulations of human...

### Containing 'Suicide': Scientific, Public and Political Aspects of a Moral Problem

Sanja Miklin
In my dissertation, I seek to understand contemporary ‘suicide’ as a scientific and a political object. In this endeavor, I focus on the features of suicide that make it morally and socially problematic, and the way the discourse on and knowledge production about suicide work to ‘contain’ moral concerns and emotions that arise around it. I conduct my investigation in three parts, paying attention to different structures that participate in the social construction of ‘suicide’—...

### Sciences of São Paulo: Universal Health and Logistical Reason from a Brazilian Metropolis

John O'Donnell Mullee
This dissertation is an ethnography of the social as it is imagined, constructed and critiqued by public healthcare professionals in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo (RMSP), Brazil. These professionals are the builders and operators of the world’s largest universal healthcare system, the Unified Health System, known by the acronym “SUS”. Set in the metropolitan context of RMSP, and the democratic context of post-1985 Brazil, this ethnography is a meditation on the reasoning practices through...

### Pricing on Two-Sided Market of Ride-Sharing Platform

Chien-Yu Lai
Ride-sharing platforms match riders and drivers by setting two prices. One price is what riders pay, the other is what drivers receive. There is no bargaining process between riders and drivers and there is also no direct transaction between these two sides. Thus, we may think of this market as two-sided. We model equilibrium in this two-sided market by endogenizing the number of riders and drivers and the two prices. In this paper, we study...

### Essays in the Regulation of Digital Markets

Filippo Maria Lancieri
This dissertation addresses a number of issues in the regulation of digital markets by means of three different essays. The first essay studies the political economy of antitrust enforcement across the Atlantic. Many believe that the EU’s enforcement actions against US companies are a form of digital protectionism. This essay looks at the foundations of data protection and antitrust policies to propose an alternative explanation. Europeans associate data protection with inalienable rights, Americans treat data...

### Acting After the New Wave: The Political Aesthetics of Performance in France, 1968-1981

Matthew Tyler Hubbell
This dissertation explores the role of performance, gesture, and the body in post-’68 French film in order to examine the intersections of cinematic form, politics, and everyday experience. The period covered in my dissertation – the long decade bounded on one side by the ultimately unsuccessful student protests and mass strikes of May 1968 and on the other by the election of François Mitterrand, the first socialist president under the Fifth Republic, in May 1981...

### Marx's Naturalism: A Study in Philosophical Methodology

Dustin Lawrence Dallman
The dissertation is a study of Karl Marx's reflections on philosophic method. In it, I argue that Marx’s early writings are best understood as contributions to a mid-19th-century effort, among German followers of Hegel, to develop a tenable naturalistic method for philosophy. Marx’s method undergoes a series of definite, well-reasoned changes during the period 1841-46, culminating in a methodological naturalism concerned to explain rival theories away as illusions given rise to by misleading appearances. I...

### Multidimensional Health: Applications across Cultures, Cohorts, and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Winnie Tong
The conceptualization of health has been evolving, especially with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, broadening beyond a singular definition of complete well-being to incorporate individual characteristics as well as contextual factors. In this dissertation, I propose a multidimensional model of health that applies to three disparate contexts: Chinese medical residents in Wuhan, a cohort comparison of two generations in the United States, and U.S. older adults who delayed medical care during the...

### Confessions, Confessions: Reading Augustine and Rousseau after Foucault

This dissertation is a close comparative analysis of two landmark texts of self-writing. The first, the Confessions of Augustine of Hippo, presents a narrative of his early life until a fundamental shift occurs in his conversion scene. No longer the young pear thief, the author describes taking up and reading the text of Paul in a dramatic scene. In the second part of the text, the bishop of Hippo exegetes passages of Scripture. The second...

### Interplay of Structure, Mechanics, and Dynamics in Reconstituted Actin

Danielle Robin Scheff
Cells dynamically control their material properties through remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton, an assembly of cross-linked networks and bundles formed from the biopolymer actin. Actin thus serves as an ideal model system to study mechanical adaptation of the cytoskeleton towards understanding both the functioning of cells and inform the creation of novel materials. In this work, I reconstitute networks in vitro to investigate the interplay of three aspects of actin: structure, mechanical properties, and dynamics.First,...

### Coordinated Respiratory and Brain Rhythms during Spatial Navigation and Learning

Andrew Sheriff
Rhythms are ubiquitous in nature. Brain rhythms coordinate large populations of neurons within and between different brain regions. The respiratory rhythm is an ongoing process controlled by brainstem networks. Olfaction depends on respiration at a fundamental level, as do the robust neural oscillations generated by the olfactory system that are important for perception and learning. More centrally, hippocampal circuits, which receive input from all sensory modalities and most directly from the olfactory system, are a...

### Post-Translational Control of BNIP3 and Mitophagy by ULK1 Kinase

Logan Patrick Poole
BNIP3 is a mitochondrial cargo receptor that specifically targets mitochondria for degradation at the autolysosome through a specialized form of autophagy called mitophagy. BNIP3 is transcriptionally upregulated in response to a number of stressors, including hypoxia, where it functions to decrease mitochondrial mass, limit ROS, and promote the efficient use of limiting metabolites and oxygen. ULK1, the catalytic component of the autophagy initiation complex, is best known for its role in stimulating general autophagy, however...

### The Discursive Construction of Chinese Nationalism in Online Communities: Taking Douban as an Example

Wenmiao Wu
Chinese nationalism has been widely explored by scholars for good reason. With the advent of the information age, people gradually gave up taking up the street and begun to occupy the social media to realize their political goals. Internet became the main battlefield of Chinese nationalism shortly. Yet little is known about those “cybernationalists” and their expressive forms in different social situations. This study therefore shifts the gaze from the inquiry about “what Chinese nationalism...

### Late Sun at Mid-Century: Empire, Modernist Aesthetics, Forms of War

Sophia Ikegami Sherry
This project is about four cosmopolitan writers, foreigners to one another, who lived through and wrote about the long mid-twentieth century. Metropolitans apart, they are Evelyn Waugh, Marguerite Duras (Donnadieu), Samuel Beckett, and Hayashi Fumiko. Each writer was born to modern British, French, Irish, and Japanese nation-state formations. But, as global writers, each also traveled—both imaginatively and in embodied ventures—beyond native spaces. Collectively, though at a distance from one another, they used the resources of...

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#### Affiliations

• Ghent University
1
• Philipp University of Marburg
1
• Charles University
1
• University of Chicago
1
• University of Haifa
1
• Hebrew University of Jerusalem
1
• Paris 8 University
1