As a Trawlwoolway artist from Trouwunna, also known as Tasmania, I seek to challenge Western constructs of Australian colonial histories. I work to liberate Palawa cultural objects from their hidden status, often combining them with Western manufactured materials. I make art in response to legacies of colonial oppression and towards a full acknowledgement of Palawa presence.

Tasmanian bull kelp and industrially produced steel wool are signature materials in my practice. Bull kelp becomes an expression of Palawa presence, while steel wool denotes erasures and the attempted colonialist “scrubbing out” of Palawa identity. Both materials transform over time, referencing how, as Palawa people, we are adaptable and able to incorporate change as a part of our strong cultural continuum.

When installing my works in galleries and museum spaces, these sites often become my secondary studio. I use my signature materials in these spaces to literally and metaphorically disrupt colonial and institutional architecture. Such disruptions leave room for personal narratives to be formed. Some installation strategies that I employ include denying viewers access to my work and creating voids and dark spaces. These actions are utilised in the hope that they might ultimately inspire social and political change.

Recent scholarship has underscored the need for a new paradigm in university foreign language programs and put forward literacy as a necessary curricular goal (e.g., Byrnes, Maxim, & Norris, 2010; Kern, 2000; Paesani, Allen, & Dupuy, 2016; Swaffar & Arens, 2005). In light of the high percentage of courses they teach, non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) are instrumental to implementing new curricular paradigms. As such, knowing how they understand literacy and its role in foreign language education is essential to advancing the implementation of literacy-based pedagogies. This study reports on how non- tenure-track faculty conceptualized literacy during a 2.5 month Professional Learning Circle (PLC). Sociocultural and cognitive dimensions of literacy dominated the ways in which participants conceptualized literacy and its associated pedagogies; linguistic dimensions were backgrounded. Findings suggest that in order for a literacy turn to take hold, NTTF need opportunities to define relationships between language, culture, texts, and cognitive processes, and to differentiate literacy pedagogies from Communicative Language Teaching practices.

Composing fantasy fiction necessarily alters the perspective from which an author considers experience. The following discussion centers on the experience of music, and how said experience may be approached by analysis. All forms of writing may be considered performances, as the present inquiry aims to demonstrate. Writing about music obliges one to craft a musical experience. Thus, presented in writing, the experience of music is not that of the author-as- listener but of the author-as-author, where the latter makes record of an experience which she has constructed in order to make a point. Hence a written description of John Cage’s 4'33" is not equivalent to the experience of 4'33" in a concert hall. One may write “silence,” but one cannot write silence. Rather, the construction in writing of a musical experience (“silence, with some creaking of chairs”) is the composition and performance of said musical experience. Even as musicological writing must describe and criticize compositions and performances and experiences of other writers, description and criticism are themselves performance and composition when they constitute musicological writing.

Epigenetic regulation, changes in gene expression without alterations to the genetic material, has brought to light another layer of regulatory mechanisms that control immune effector processes in response to immune threats such as viral infection, cancer, and autoimmunity. Elucidating epigenetic regulators driving immune cell differentiation and modulation of effector processes are critical to our understanding of endogenous immune responses. Our studies aim to delineate mechanisms driven by an X-linked epigenetic regulator, UTX, in regulation of natural killer (NK) and T cells, two cell types important in the innate and adaptive arms of our immune system.Viral infection outcomes are sex-biased, with males generally more susceptible than females. Paradoxically, the numbers of anti-viral NK cells are increased in males. We demonstrate that while numbers of NK cells are increased in male mice, they display decreased effector function compared to females in mice and humans. These differences were not solely dependent on gonadal hormones, since they persisted in gonadectomized mice. Kdm6a (UTX), an epigenetic regulator which escapes X inactivation, was lower in male NK cells, while NK cell-intrinsic UTX deficiency in female mice increased NK cell numbers and reduced effector responses. Furthermore, mice with NK cell-intrinsic UTX deficiency showed increased lethality to mouse cytomegalovirus (MCMV). Integrative multi-omics analysis revealed a critical role for UTX in regulating chromatin accessibility and gene expression critical for NK cell homeostasis and effector function. Collectively, these data implicate UTX as a critical molecular determinant of sex differences in NK cells. Low oxygen levels, or hypoxia, has been associated with immune defects in multiple contexts. Hypoxia is associated with higher levels of H3K27me3 in CD4+ T cells. T cell-specific deletion of the histone demethylase is sufficient to recapitulate multiple features of hypoxia, including increased H3K27me3 accumulation and decreased production of IFN-γ+ CD4+ T cells in response to IL-12 cytokine stimulation. T cell specific UTX deletion has functional consequences, as mice are more susceptible to colon cancer and is not responsive to IFN-γ-dependent checkpoint therapy with anti-PD-1 treatment. However, mice with loss of UTX in T cells protected from colitis in which IFN-γ production has been tied with pathogenesis. Concomitant RNA and H3K27me3 CUT&Tag sequencing demonstrate an important role for UTX in removing repressive H3K27me3 marks to promote upregulation of IL12/STAT4 pathway genes including Il12rb, Tbx21, and Ifng. Together, these data demonstrate that UTX functions through its demethylase activity to promote Th1 cell differentiation and suggest that hypoxia’s HIF-independent effects on Th1 effector function may be mediated through UTX.

The field of engineering continues to be highly male dominated, with women receiving only 20% of undergraduate degrees in the US and comprising only 15% of the workforce. Barriers to entry are experienced by girls as early as age five, when children become cognizant of the stereotype that girls are worse than boys at math. This dissertation sought to understand the barriers to entry and success faced by women in engineering, as well as the types of inclusive instructional pedagogy, from elementary school to college, that could help remove those barriers. We identified the most common barriers through survey data collected from 176 undergraduate engineering students at a university in Southern California. We subsequently analyzed the impact of a novel partnership program developed between a freshman mechanical engineering course and after school elementary program on the participating undergraduates and elementary students. We relied on pre-post student interviews, video-recorded program sessions, and documentation of student work to investigate the elementary students’ engineering identities and the undergraduates’ self-efficacy beliefs, as they developed over the course of the 10-week program. Three themes emerged from our analysis. First, barriers to entry and success in engineering for women began early and were unrelenting (Chapter 2). Women were introduced to engineering later in their lives and once enrolled in undergraduate programs, women were significantly more likely to have low beliefs in their engineering abilities and expectancies for future success, even after controlling for ability. Second, well designed undergraduate engineering curricula can substantially help boost engineering students’ self-efficacy beliefs (Chapter 3). Scaffolded project-based learning helped novice students develop the mastery experiences necessary to feel confident in their abilities and client-led design gave students the opportunity to identify as engineers. Elementary children proved to be ideal clients for freshman engineering students because they simulated the engineer-client relationship in a low-stress environment. Third, highly collaborative engineering programs which leverage peer groups, role models, and inter-group collaboration can help elementary students develop identities as engineers; this was especially impactful for girls (Chapter 4). Working with peers on a collaborative project encouraged students who were initially uninterested in engineering to engage in the activities and engineer role models helped students better identify as engineers. Our work supports and extends the literature by identifying common barriers for girls and women in the field of engineering and analyzing the link between well-designed engineering education and both elementary and undergraduate students’ ability beliefs. Our results suggest that to narrow the gender gap in engineering young girls need more regular exposure to engineering in highly collaborative environments and undergraduate engineering programs should be designed to support women’s development of engineering competence beliefs through mastery experiences with clear connections to engineering as a career.

Introduction: Cisgender Black women comprise 67% of new human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) diagnoses among women in the South and are 11 times more likely to become HIV positive than White women in Texas. Optimal progress toward ending the HIV epidemic requires strategies that will interrupt transmission pathways in hotspot locations like Harris County, TX. Researchers are calling for public health interventions that can prevent HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI) transmission; thus, we launched the first video log (vlog)-based, pilot HIV prevention intervention. 

Methods: In a prospective. randomized controlled trial of two educational intervention strategies delivered as vlogs eligible participants were randomized to either 1) an interactive gaming, education-based strategy, or 2) a storytelling, education-based strategy. Eligible participants were cisgender Black women being seen in the emergency department (ED) for a non-emergent condition who reported recent condomless heterosexual sex, were ages 18-45, and had social media access. Enrolled women completed a screening assessment, informed consent, randomization, and 10-item pre-and-post assessments with true/false statements before and after viewing a brief vlog on a tablet device to identify changes in knowledge before and after being educated on HIV/STI transmission. 

Results: Twenty-six women were randomized to the Taboo group, an interactive gaming, education-based strategy, (14 [53.8%]), or to storytelling, an education-based strategy using non-fictional and fictional case scenarios (12 [46.2%]). Taboo participants self-identified as African-American (12 [85.7%]), Black (1 [7.1%]) or “other” (1 [7.1%]), were younger (28.6% were ≥ 30 years), single (57.1%), reported a previous STI (8 [57.1%]), and were likely employed (57.2%). Storytelling participants self-identified as African-American (7 [58.3%]) or Black (5 [41.7%]), were older (49.9% were ≥ 30 years), in a relationship but not married (50%), and half were unemployed. Highest level of education and monthly income varied. The storytelling strategy increased knowledge in two areas and the Taboo strategy increased knowledge in one. No intervention effect was identified in three areas, and a significant decrease in knowledge (P < .0001) was discerned in eight areas for Taboo and six areas for storytelling.

Conclusion: Further research is necessary to confirm whether delivery of HIV prevention interventions with vlogs is a useful approach for HIV-vulnerable populations. Findings suggest that vlogs are a feasible approach to brief behavioral interventions during an ED visit.

Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas identifies some of the more incoherent aspects of American political conservatism, which continues to cause puzzlement among thinkers on the Left. I argue that Frank and others on the Left are attempting to understand a complex movement in terms of a simplistic version of Marxism. I explicate a contemporary alternative to orthodox Marxism: the Postmarxism of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, the centerpiece of which is their theory of hegemony. I demonstrate the explanatory value of their theory by means of two applications: first, I describe Stuart Hall's hegemonic analysis of Thatcherism in Great Britain; and second, I apply the theory to American conservatism--both to the phenomena that Frank describes, and to the recent health care debates.