Much has been written about the work that a spectator does in direct physical relationship to live performance. Distinctions are made between active and passive spectatorship and these distinctions typically fall along the lines of the Cartesian mind/body divide. This project seeks to destabilize the binary distinction between physical participation and allegedly passive reception. Using the imagination of the spectator as the fulcrum upon which this allegedly passive spectatorship can be recast as an active co-creation of the performance event. Using the philosophical writings of Kendall Walton, as well as theories from spectatorship studies, reader response theory, and material culture, this project sets out to redefine the types of active participation that have heretofore been considered passive. By including close readings of several performances, as well as phenomenological experiences as an audience member, this study seeks to expand the ways in which practitioners and thinkers alike conceptualize and respond to the activated spectator.

The Santa Barbara Basin (SBB) fish assemblage over the last two millennia was examined using fish otoliths recovered from sediment cores. In Chapter 2, the hypothesis that otolith shape and elemental composition can be used to accurately discriminate between common southern California Current System fish taxa was tested. Digital images of 905 sagittal otoliths, representing 6 major taxonomic-based groups, were used to develop geometric (GEO) and elliptic Fourier (EF) shape measurements and a subset of 143 otoliths also analyzed for trace elements (ELM). Results indicate that random forest analysis was superior to discriminant function analysis and GEO features outperformed EF and ELM features for classification. Highest classification accuracy (96.3%) resulted from using the 10 strongest discriminatory features, which included a mixture of GEO, EF, and ELM features.

In Chapter 3, fossil otoliths (n = 1188) recovered from 3 Kasten and one box core sampled in the SBB were classified to taxonomic group by expert opinion (EO) and, after measuring shape and elemental features, by using the classification models developed in Chapter 2. Results of the EO and feature-based classification methods agreed strongly for the most abundant taxa and indicated that Myctophidae (52.7%) and Bathylagidae (31.5%) have dominated the forage fish assemblage in the SBB over the last two millennia. Less abundant taxa include Merlucciidae (6.9%), Sebastidae (4.8%), and Engraulidae (3.9%). Taxa displayed similar periods of variability on the decadal (50-90 years) and century scale (200 +/-50 years).

In Chapter 4, the relation of climate and SBB fish assemblage was investigated by comparing the otolith deposition rate (ODR) record with proxies of climate over the same period. Results indicate coherence between the ODR of Myctophidae, Bathylagidae, Engraulidae, and Sebastidae, which display significant correlation with temperature-based climate indices. The coherent pattern in several fish populations and basin-wide climate variability observed over off the coast of Southern California demonstrate the role of climatic forcing in regulating forage fish populations over the past two millennia. Our results provide baseline composition data and an increase understanding of natural variability of SBB fish populations.

• Nationally, students in their pre-clerkship years have been abruptly transitioned to a mostly or entirely virtual educational experience. In this research study, we explored the impacts of this radical and sudden change on medical student well-being.

• How does the COVID-19 pandemic affect this already staggeringly high burn-out rate? To our knowledge, this question has not been thoroughly explored in the literature.

• We hypothesized that the sudden changes in medical education—including the loss of many timed and anticipated traditions, such as physical exam sessions, shadowing, and preceptorships— may potentially have negative effects on the mental health of medical students.