This thesis describes the cloning and characterisation of two <I>Candida albicans</I> genes which were candidates for having a role in the phenotypic switching phenomenon of <I>C. albicans</I>. Phenotypic switching in <I>C. albicans</I> is a spontaneously occurring event whereby the surface morphology and several physiological processes of the <I>C. albicans</I> colony can change. These spontaneous switching events occur at high frequency and there are a range of up to fifteen different morphological forms that have been described. Switching is reversible and interconvertible (between the different phenotypes). The candidate genes chosen to investigate phenotypic switching were <I>RAD52</I>, a DNA double strand break repair gene and <I>H4</I>, a histone. <I>RAD52</I> was isolated following homologous probing of a <I>C. albicans</I> genomic library using a fragment of the gene sequence which was available on a public data base [http://alces.med.umn.edu/candida/html], as a probe. <I>H4</I> was isolated following PCR probing of a cosmid library. The switching repertoire of the <I>ura</I>- CAI4 strain of <I>C. albicans</I> was characterised. Attempts were also made to characterise switching frequencies. This strain was then used as the host for both knockout and overexpression studies of the candidate genes. The effect of overexpression of these genes on phenotypic switching was observed by recording growth rates, phenotypes and phenotypic switching frequencies. It was found that overexpression of <I>RAD52</I> affected the morphotype and growth of the yeast colonies compared the CAI4 parental strain. Overexpression of the H4 gene did not appear to affect growth, but a fourth morphological form named "root" appeared that had not arisen during characterisation of the CAI4 phenotypic switching repertoire. The degree to which the "root" phenotype was manifest appeared to correlate with the degree of overexpression of the <I>H4</I> gene. The effect of knocking out a single copy of <I>H4</I> was also observed. Growth was not affected. Observations of colony morphologies showed a preponderance of one particular morphology ("irregular wrinkle"). This data suggests that altering the wild type levels of expression of these genes can affect phenotypic switching in <I>C. albicans</I>.

The role of political discourse in the communication of security issues is fundamental to the Copenhagen School’s framework of securitization. In their work, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (1998), the Copenhagen School set out to challenge traditional International Relations theory by questioning the primacy of state-centric approaches that narrowly focus on military aspects of security. Whilst broadening the areas of security to include economic, societal, political and environmental threats, they also proposed that threats are articulated through the “speech acts” of mainly political elites. By signaling threats discursively via “securitizing moves”, political elites inform the audience of the existence of security threats. However, the Copenhagen School fails to address the political partiality of such pronouncements. The focus of this analysis is to examine the persuasive discursive practices employed by political elites to encourage audience consent with a specific focus on political elite portrayals of inward migration in relation to security. In their work, “Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe” (1993), the Copenhagen School outlined a nexus between security and transnational migration within a Western context. Using content analysis and critical discourse analysis methods, this analysis will provide a comparative cross-national study of how migration is constituted as a security threat. By analysing political elite discourse as presented in speeches and as recontextualised in media portrayals in two major South East Asian receiving countries, Malaysia and Singapore, this thesis assesses the applicability of the Copenhagen School approach in alternative locations. Adopting a thematic approach, it examines how migrants are depicted via political discourse as threats to societal, economic and political security and how the feminization of migration in recent years has been depicted as a security challenge. A cross-national comparison of political discourse relating to the migrant/security nexus reveals not only how discursive formulations of security by political elites are constructed in order to legitimise policy and practices, but how similar issues may be addressed differently. Both Malaysia and Singapore have a long history of immigration, which is reflected in their diverse multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-cultural societies. Geographically co-located and with a shared historical legacy, both have become increasingly dependent on migrant labour to support economic growth and receive relatively large intakes of migrants from neighbouring countries. Yet, there are significant differences in how migrants are depicted in relation to security. Challenges are proposed to the framework that the Copenhagen School propounds. Moreover, I contend that the constructed nature of political discourse allows the potential for a more nuanced and normative discourse that could desecuritize migration and focus more positively on its benefits and upon alternative non-elite perspectives of security.

My research focused on understanding how viceregal authority was accepted in Mesoamerica. Rather than approaching the problems from the perspective of institutional history, I drew on prosopographical techniques and the court-studies tradition to focus on the practice of government and the affinities that bound indigenous and non-indigenous political communities. In Chapters two and three I investigate how particular notions of nobility informed the ‘ideals of life’ of the Spanish and indigenous elites in New Spain and how these evolved up to 1535. The chapters also serve to establish a general context to the political situation that Mendoza faced on his arrival. Chapters four to seven explore how the viceroys sought to increase their authority in New Spain by appropriating means of direct distribution of patronage and how this allowed them personally to satisfy many of the demands of the Spanish and indigenous elites. This helped them impose their supremacy over New Spain’s magnates and serve the crown by ruling more effectively. Viceregal supremacy was justified in a ‘language of legitimacy’ that became increasingly peculiar to New Spain as a community of interests developed between the local elites and the viceroys who guaranteed the local political arrangements on which their status and wealth increasingly depended. I conclude by suggesting that New Spain was governed on the basis of internal arrangements guaranteed by the viceroys. This led to the development of what I define as a ‘parasitic civic-nobility’ which benefitted from the perpetuation of the viceregal system along with the crown. The internal political logic of most decision making and a defined local identity accompanied by increasingly ‘sui generis’ ‘ideals of life’ qualify New Spain to be considered not as a ‘colony’ run by an alien bureaucracy that perpetuated Spanish ‘domination’ but as Mexico City’s sub-empire within the Habsburg ‘composite monarchy.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Historians of photography have generally represented colonial photography as a predictable and oppressive genre. Taking the Belgian Congo (1885–1960) as its subject, this dissertation argues that the medium has also been the instrument of a rapprochement between metropole and colony, not only in the hands of Europeans, but also in those of Africans, as the consequence of a long-lasting reaction against the worldwide diffusion of the so-called “Congo atrocities” pictures (1904–1908). Chapter One explores this pivotal episode in the history of photography. The exceptional violence of these images prompted the counter-development of a representational ideal—the colonie modèle—that was deployed at two historical moments: first, in the interwar period with the illustrated magazine L’Illustration Congolaise, and after World War II with the governmental photographic service InforCongo. In Chapter Two and Three, the studies of L’Ilustration Congolaise and InforCongo trace how this colonial rapprochement was encouraged by increasingly representing Congolese décor and subjects as the mirrored image of Belgium, until it peaked in the late colonialism’s concept of a “Belgian-Congolese community.” Chapters Four and Five turn to Congolese family albums and queries how Africans’ self-representations sought to integrate—or not—the model colony. Based on research carried out in Belgium and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this dissertation is the first in-depth study of a history of photography in the Congo and the first comprehensive history of photography within a single colonial regime. Similarly, this project presents the first in-depth study of African family albums, examined in the multiple aspects that make up the significance of the photographic subject’s experience. Photography in the Belgian Congo developed in three contexts: European, African and colonial, which overlap but have usually been explored separately. This dissertation aims to weave together these different aspects, fully appreciating and integrating the vivid racial tensions inherent in a colonial system, but ultimately aspiring to complicate the visual colonial relations materialized in photography by taking into consideration parameters of assimilation and collaboration, co-authorship, or again, seduction.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1999. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-150). Also available on the Internet.

Diss.--Letteren--Mainz--Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, 1999. / Bibliogr. p. 153-167.

Texte remanié de : Thèse de doctorat : Lettres : Université Yaoundé 1 : 2002. / Titre provenant de l'écran d'accueil. Bibliogr. p. [315]-327. Notes bibliogr.

Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Architecture : Paris 8 : 2006. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Le complément de titre connaît plusieurs variantes. Le complément de titre retenu est celui de la thèse imprimée et non celui indiqué sur l'écran-titre : "les cas des centres en Kabylie du Djurdjura, 1857-1899, une illustration de la plaine vers la montagne". Bibliogr. [20] p. en fin du tome I. Notes bibliogr. Lexique.