Record linkage is the process that joins separately recorded pieces of information for a particular individual from one or more sources. To facilitate record linkage, a reliable computer based approach is ideal. In genealogical research computerized record linkage is useful in combing information for an individual across multiple censuses. In creating a computerized method for linking censuse records it needs to be determined if weights calculated from one geographical area, can be used to link records from another geographical area. Research performed by Marcie Francis calculates field weights using census records from 1910 and 1920 for Ascension Parish Louisiana. These weights are re-calculated to take into account population changes of the time period and then used on five data sets from different geographical locations to determine their robustness. HeritageQuest provided indexed census records on four states. They include California, Connecticut, Illinois and Michigan in addition to Louisiana. Because the record size of California was large and we desired at least five data sets for comparison this state was split into two groups based on geographical location. Weights for Louisiana were re-calculated to take into consideration visual basic code modifications for the field "Place of Origin", "Age" and "Location" (enumeration district). The validity of these weights, were a concern due to the low number of known matches present in the data set for Louisiana. Thus, to get a better feel for how weights calculated from a data source with a larger number of known matches present, weights were calculated for Michigan census records. Error rates obtained using weights calculated from the Michigan data set were lower than those obtained using Louisiana weights. In order to determine weight robustness weights for Southern California were also calculated to allow for comparison between two samples. Error rates acquired using Southern California weights were much lower than either of the previously calculated error rates. This led to the decision to calculate weights for each of the data sets and take the average of the weights and use them to link each data set to take into account fluctuations of the population between geographical locations. Error rates obtained when using the averaged weights proved to be robust enough to use in any of the geographical areas sampled. The weights obtained in this project can be used when linking any census records from 1910 and 1920. When linking census records from other decades it is necessary to calculate new weights to account for specific time period fluctuations.

Family history research on the web is increasing in popularity, and many competing genealogical websites host large amounts of data-rich, unstructured, primary genealogical records. It is labor-intensive, however, even after making these records machine-readable, for humans to make these records easily searchable. What we need are computer tools that can automatically produce indices and databases from these genealogical records and can automatically identify individuals and events, determine relationships, and put families together. We propose here a possible solution—specialized ontologies, built specifically for extracting information from primary genealogical records, with expert logic and rules to infer genealogical facts and assemble relationship links between persons with respect to the genealogical events in their lives. The deliverables of this solution are extraction ontologies that can extract from parish or town records, annotated versions of original documents, data files of individuals and events, and rules to infer family relationships from stored data. The solution also provides for the ability to query over the rules and data files and to obtain query-result justification linking back to primary genealogical records. An evaluation of the prototype solution shows that the extraction has excellent recall and precision results and that inferred facts are correct.

This project report accounts for my final MFA project, Traces of Existence. This body of work began as an exploration, partially borne of the love of genealogical research translated into visual art by exploring the things my ancestors touched, be it ephemera, the soil they lived on, or artifacts they left behind, and partly as a pathway through which I could learn to understand more about my own identity, all the while finding beauty in the mundane. Although the works are personal, it is my hope that the viewer will respond to them in his/her own way, and that considering them will create an interest in the viewer to discover more about his/her own lineage. I believe we are all a part of a global family, and because of this familial connection, it is my hope that many viewers will have a dual response; one of appreciation for the aesthetic qualities of the work, and a sense of belonging.

The term “reconciliation” has become ubiquitous in Canada, underpinning divergent commitments as much as leading to wide-ranging critiques. It has been used frequently in constitutional politics, in relation to both Canada’s relationship with Québec and Canada’s relationships with Indigenous peoples. Reconciliation’s discursive prevalence in Canada presents an intriguing phenomenon given that it means many different things, has varying uses outside of politics, and is widely contested when applied to political relations. To explore the ways these characteristics have shaped uses of reconciliation and the paths by which the term attained its contemporary omnipresence, this dissertation investigates when, how, and with what effects discourses of reconciliation emerged and developed in Canadian constitutional politics. The dissertation uses a genealogical approach to study the conceptual and contextual features of reconciliation discourses and the interplay between them, enabling assessment of different uses and of their operation in relation to each other and to the broad constellation of constitutional power dynamics in Canada. It draws on the insights of genealogical theorists, particularly William Connolly, Michel Foucault, Dalie Giroux, Quentin Skinner, and James Tully, to develop an approach that attends to the role of both actors and events as it explores the intersections of time, space, and power that shape the emergence and development of reconciliation discourses. Informed by Adrian Little’s work on contextualizing concepts and Norman Fairclough and Isabela Fairclough’s work on discourse analysis, the dissertation employs a series of distinctions put forward by Mark Walters, Bert van Roermund, Catherine Lu, and Sara Ahmed and Anna Carastathis to conceptualize different types of reconciliation and analyze a wide-ranging array of uses of the term covering three decades of constitutional politics, concluding with the House of Commons’s recognition of Québec as a nation and the provision to create the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2006. The analysis explores a mix of government documents, commission reports, court decisions, hearing transcripts, interviews, (auto)biographical accounts, news media, parliamentary debates, press releases, and other records to identify the points of emergence of different discourses and examine their development over time and across contexts as reconciliation came to be adopted in jurisprudence, government policy, and the creation of institutions. The dissertation advances a three-part set of propositions regarding the emergence and development of reconciliation discourses. When: Though there were occasional earlier uses, the term began to emerge in earnest in Canadian constitutional politics in the 1980s and early 1990s. Discourses of reconciliation relating to Québec largely faded after the late 1990s, though they have made periodic reappearances around key events such as the 2006 House of Commons motion, while those regarding relations with Indigenous peoples have continued to proliferate. How: Reconciliation discourses have been used, to differing degrees, in relations between Canada and Québec and between Canada and Indigenous peoples. Their emergence in both contexts was significantly, though not exclusively, shaped by the patriation of the constitution. In the period studied, the term was used both to promote state policy and existing constitutional structures and to challenge them or express doubt about their capacity to achieve reconciliation. Occasionally, the appropriateness of using the term in these constitutional contexts was called into question. Multiple meanings and types of application to politics, a lack of clarity and specificity, and the influence of power relations have marked the use of reconciliation discourses from the outset. These trends are visible in both cases. However, there is also variation between the cases, and uses of the term in relation to Québec did not become institutionalized as those pertaining to Canada and Indigenous peoples did. With what effects: All of these varying uses of reconciliation have the cumulative effect of risking conveying a misleading impression that parties using the term share a common commitment to an agreed-upon undertaking. Such an impression obscures how power relations shape the implications of differing discourses and the interactions between parties in which they are used. The genealogy presented in the dissertation counters this impression by taking stock of what kinds of political work is done by reconciliation discourses. Highlighting how they are marked by conceptual complexities and intertwined with relations of power, it reveals the tensions at the core of contemporary conversations about reconciliation in Canada.

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This dissertation, “Communicating Across Time: Female Genealogies in the Medieval Literary Imagination,” explores the range of genealogical forms, alternative to patrilineage, that British writers used to depict the transmission of women’s power across time in early-twelfth to late-fourteenth-century literature. By taking an expansive definition of genealogy and exploring romance and hagiography, it highlights a widespread and persistent interest in medieval literature in the ways female characters record their legacies and communicate these legacies to future generations. By examining genealogy in these literary terms, this study revises current understandings of a core aspect of medieval culture and expands current definitions of what constitutes medieval historiography. Though patrilineal genealogy has been widely studied, we currently have little vocabulary to talk about female genealogies. Broadly stated, genealogy in this study describes the author’s description of a deliberate communication from the past that explains, curates or contests contemporary social-political landscapes, and to make claims to the future. Patrilineage, which became the main system of genealogy from the twelfth century, idealized the transmission of power – name, land holdings, and the legend of a common ancestor – from father to son. Even the notion that women possessed power and stories to communicate threatened a system that relied on mothers as passive genealogical vehicles. Aristocratic women, as landholders, heirs, politicians and religious leaders, did of course have legacies to communicate. Because medieval women’s claims to land and power were more mobile and less standardized than men’s, this dissertation is less interested in what female protagonists communicate across time and more interested in how - the means and processes of communication. This study’s focus on alternative female genealogies also highlights new ways of understanding literary representations of medieval maternity. In the texts examined, motherhood is not limited to the domestic, bodily and momentary, but is a political and agential role that is actively managed by the woman herself, often in conjunction with other forms of written and verbal communication. Literary texts reveal the various, and often unexpected, means medieval writers and readers imagined for women’s cross-temporal communications. Female characters frequently employ alternative genealogical ‘bodies’ to that of a male child, actively revising the topos of women as simply the bodily matter and means for a male line. The characters inscribe their claims to land, power and spirituality through footprints in rocks, blood-impressed doors, tenderly-handled books, a mother’s exact resemblance imprinted in her child’s face. The intimacy and deliberateness with which these women create and manage their cross-generational communications both draws on and destabilizes traditional ideals of motherhood and genealogy. The four chapters read across French, English and Latin texts, as many English readers would have done, with a focus on the genres of hagiography, romance and chronicle from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries.

<p>In his important work, The Beginnings of Jewishness, Shaye J. D. Cohen has argued that what it meant to be a Jew underwent considerable revision during the second century B.C.E. While previously a Jew was defined in terms of ethnicity (by which Cohen means biological descent), in the wake of Judaism's sustained encounter with Hellenism, the term Jew came to be defined as an ethno-religion--that is, one could choose to become a Jew. Nonetheless, the recent work of scholars, such as Christine E. Hayes, has demonstrated that there continued to exist in early Judaism a strain of thinking that, in theory at least, excluded the possibility that Gentiles could become Jews. This genealogical exclusion, found in works such as Jubilees, was highly indebted to the "holy seed" theology evidenced in Ezra-Nehemiah, a theology which defined Jewishness in genealogical terms.</p> <p>This dissertation will attempt to contribute to a greater understanding of differing conceptions of circumcision in early Judaism, one that more accurately describes the nature of Jewish thought with regard to Jewishness, circumcision, and conversion. In terms of methodology, my dissertation will combine historical criticism with a literary approach to the texts under consideration. The dissertation will focus on texts from the Hebrew Bible as well as Jewish texts from the Second Temple period as these writings provide windows into the various forms of Judaism from which the early Christian movement arose.</p> <p>Beginning with the Hebrew Bible, I will argue that there is no evidence that circumcision was considered to be a rite of conversion to Israelite religion. In fact, circumcision, particularly the infant circumcision instantiated within Israelite and early Jewish society excludes from the covenant those not properly descended from Abraham. In the Second Temple period, many Jews did begin to conceive of Jewishness in terms which enabled Gentiles to become Jews. Nonetheless, some Jews found this definition of Jewishness problematic, and defended the borders of Jewishness by reasserting a strictly genealogical conception of Jewish identity. Consequently, some Gentiles who underwent conversion to Judaism in this period faced criticism because of their suspect genealogy. Our sources record such exclusion with regard to the Herodians, Idumeans who had converted to Judaism. </p> <p>Additionally, a more thorough examination of how circumcision and conversion were perceived by Jews in the Second Temple period will be instrumental in better understanding early Christianity. It is the argument of this dissertation that further attention to a definition of Jewishness that was based on genealogical descent has broader implications for understanding the variegated nature of early Christian mission to the Gentiles in the first century C.E.</p> / Dissertation

This dissertation examines the history of humanitarianism in international relations by tracing the relationship between moral obligation and sovereignty from the 16th century to the present. Its main argument is that moral obligations and sovereignty are mutually constitutive, in contrast to a widely held assumption in international relations scholarship that they are opposed to each other. The dissertation’s main theoretical contribution is to develop a framework, using a genealogical method of inquiry, for understanding the relationship between sovereignty and the shifting boundaries of moral obligation during the Westphalian period. This approach makes it possible to identify both elements of continuity and change in the history of humanitarianism and practices of sovereignty. The first chapter demonstrates how the extant literature on sovereignty and humanitarianism fails to adequately account for how states have participated in the construction of new moral boundaries even as they have sought to assert their own sovereignty. Chapter two lays out the dissertation’s theoretical framework, first by outlining an identity-based understanding of sovereignty in relationship to moral obligation, and then discussing the genealogical method that is used in three case studies. The following three chapters contain the dissertation’s empirical contributions, which are three historical cases that represent pivotal moments in the history of moral obligation and sovereignty. Chapter three examines the assistance offered by Elizabeth I to Huguenot refugees from 1558-1603, and relates England’s moral obligations towards Huguenots to the emergence of a sovereign English confessional state. Chapter four examines the relationship between British abolitionist arguments against slavery in the 19th century, and justifications for the extension of empire. Chapter five examines the emergence and evolution of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine since 2001, whose advocates posit a modified conception of sovereignty that is explicitly tied to moral obligation. The concluding chapter discusses how the dissertation accounts for both the rise of humanitarianism and the persistence of sovereignty in international relations, as well as provides some reflections on areas for future research.