Have You Ever Had Broken Heart? is a collection of essays that interrogate memory, loss, and grief through the intersection of personal narrative, films, the actress Frances Farmer, and woman saints and mystics from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries who were punished for daring to speak to G-d. The essays engage with autotheory and include a myriad of forms, such as segmented, one sentence, and hybrid works. The films discussed range from the philosophical, such as Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light (1963), to Graeme Clifford's biopic, Frances (1982), to catechize the grief of the persona losing her mother and sister to a hit and run car wreck in June 2022. The persona traverses the realm of the mystics and saints, including Marguerite Porete, Sor Juana Inez De La Cruz, and Joan of Arc, examining their respective quests to experience the unseen and often silent divine, while questioning her longing for G-d, and simultaneously believing G-d cannot exist. Yet, within this confusion, she finds herself immersed in memories which carry the presence of her mother's love.

As the New Deal order crumbled in the 1960s and 1970s and conservatism ascended, what happened to American liberalism? My dissertation finds the answer to that question in an unexpected place: Sesame Street. Created in 1969, Sesame Street became a template for a new liberal politics that maintained a fealty to individualism and opportunity, had a desire to be inclusive and represent a diverse body of Americans, believed in merit and social uplift, and was devoted to New Deal-era ideas about the government’s role in promoting social reform. I call this politics “fuzzy liberalism.” Understanding Sesame Street’s production of fuzzy liberalism contributes to an emerging historiography on post-1960s liberalism. My chapters explore how fuzzy liberalism operated by exploring themes of the urban crisis and revitalization, race and colorblindness, nonprofits and commercialism, family values and feminism, the culture wars and heteronormativity, and public television and privatization. Drawing on archival sources, like production documents and viewer mail, and a close reading of popular culture, my dissertation blends the cultural and the political in innovative ways to argue that we cannot understand the history of U.S. political culture since the 1960s without giving serious scholarly attention to the politics of Sesame Street. / History

Kamala Harris made history on November 7, 2020, when she was elected as the first female Vice President of the United States. In addition to being the first woman, she became the first African-American and Indian-American to attain this position. As a result, the media had to grapple with how to cover her historic campaign from the moment she was announced as the vice-presidential selection. This qualitative thematic analysis examined The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal's coverage of her campaign with significant analysis on important events such as the initial buzz surrounding her selection, the convention speech, and the vice-presidential debate. Specifically, this study examines 70 news articles total from both newspapers from August 11-November 3, 2020 to determine the recurring themes from her coverage. Results indicated that although traditional media frames and themes were not a significant focus, Harris's intersectionality brought about a new set of frames to explore, with subtle differences between the two newspapers. Implications of these results and future considerations for the media are discussed. / Master of Arts / Kamala Harris made history on November 7, 2020, when she was elected as the first female Vice President of the United States. In addition to being the first woman, she became the first African-American and Indian-American to attain this position. Throughout her campaign, the media had to learn how to cover an historic candidate effectively, since this moment had no precedent. This thesis chose to explore The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal's coverage of her campaign because of their influence in shaping the news around the country and they both represent different sides of the political spectrum. Important events that are covered include the initial announcement, the convention speech, and the vice-presidential debate. This study looks to determine if the stereotypical frames that the media places on female candidates are still seen with Harris. Results indicated that although traditional media stereotypes were not a significant focus, Harris's identity brought about a new set of themes to analyze, with each paper focusing on different aspects. Implications of these results and future considerations for the media are discussed.

This paper examines the relationship between income inequality and the homicide rate in 59 geographic areas in New York City known as Community District Tabulation Areas (CDTAs). The premise for this paper is that community members in each CDTA share similar social characteristics and therefore these areas provide a useful lens through which to analyze ecological social phenomena such as homicide. The main hypothesis for this paper is that the homicide rate in the CDTAs will vary directly with the level of income inequality within each CDTA. The outputs from several models testing this hypothesis do not support this hypothesis. The models failed to produce a result showing a relationship between income inequality and the homicide rate that is statistically significant. However, the models did produce results showing a strong relationship between a composite of several indicators of disadvantage and the homicide rate in the CDTAs. The model also produces results that show a moderate relationship between the homicide rate and the racial makeup of CDTAs along with a moderate inverse relationship between voter turnout and the homicide rate. / Master of Science / The causes behind fluctuations in violence rates has been the subject of much scholarship over the past several decades. Policymakers can use the results of these studies to design effective intervention programs. This study investigates to what extent there is a link between inequality and the homicide rate in New York City. This study uses several social theories such as social disorganization, strain theory, and collective efficacy to analyze homicide rates in 59 geographic areas throughout New York City known as Community District Tabulation Areas (CDTA). I use data from several sources to form variables that represent social phenomena in each CDTA, such as relative disadvantage, absolute disadvantage, and collective efficacy. I then explore the relationships between these variables against the homicide rate in each CDTA. This study concludes with findings on the relationships and discussion about the results.

All street hawkers are not the same in many Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs) of the global south as often portrayed by the media and documented in extant literature. This perception has created a gap in knowledge as researchers explore street hawking activities in NICs. In this study, I investigated a new informality trend of street hawking is coming into being within the capital city of Accra, Ghana. As governance is increasingly becoming entrepreneurial, informal activities are gradually becoming formal. Formal and registered businesses are increasingly capitalizing on hawking activities to occupy public spaces. The advent of the informality trend, I term corporate street hawking opens up new issues for the political economy, labor, and urban studies. By employing semi-structured interviews with 47 street hawkers in Accra, this paper sought to investigate three broadly interrelated questions. First, how do neoliberal policies impact the production of public space in Accra? Second, is corporate street hawking a form of creative destruction? Finally, how do corporate street hawkers practice agency within Accra?

Thesis (MEd)--University of Stellenbosch, 2001. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: There are an estimated 10 000 children in and around the streets of South Africa, with the speculation that this could be higher, given the difficulties surrounding the counting of the street children. Not all street children live on the streets permanently: many spend their days there mainly for economic reasons earning an income, then spend their nights at their homes or those of friends and relatives. Others go to the street as an alternative to going to school or, in an effort to avoid parents or caregivers who show little interest in their lives, or who force them onto the street to earn money. It is particularly children that have not become permanent residents of the street and that are part of community-based home schools, that are the focus of this study. A· qualitative approach is used to establish the experiences of these children in a residential area in the northern suburbs of Cape Town. The study revealed the following: • Community-based home schools provide children with basic needs like food, clothing and importantly, a trusting relationship with an adult. • Children's lives are restored in a non-threatening environment, assisting them to regain their dignity, establish healthier selfconcepts as well as higher self-esteem. Once these basic needs are fulfilled, it became evident that children are able to return to the experience of mainstream school and in so doing face the world with renewed fervour. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Na beraming is daar omtrent 10 000 straatkinders in Suid Afrika. Daar word gespekuleer dat die getal hoër kan wees as gevolg van die probleme met die tel van straatkinders. Nie alle straatkinders leef permanent op die strate nie. Baie spandeer hul dae op straat slegs vir ekonomiese gewin waar hulle 'n inkomste verdien, en slaap snags by hul huise óf by vriende óf familie. Ander leef op die straat as 'n alternatief om skool toe te gaan. Hulle doen dit ook om hulouers of voogde te vermy wat min aandag aan hulle skenk of wie die kinders forseer om geld op die straat te verdien. Dit is veral kinders wat nie permanent op die straat lewe nie, en deel is van huisskole, wat die fokus is van hierdie studie. 'n Kwalitatiewe benadering is gebruik om die ervarings van hierdie kinders in 'n gemeenskap in die noordelike voorstede te bewerkstellig. Die studie het die volgende getoon: • Gemeenskapsgebaseerde huisskole voorsien kinders met die basiese benodighede soos kos, klere en baie belangrik, die vertroue van 'n verhouding met' n volwassene. • Die kinders se lewens word herstel in 'n omgewing wat nie bedreigend is nie en wat hulle help om hul waardigheid te herwin en om 'n gesonde selfkonsep en hoër selfbeeld te vestig. • Wanneer hierdie basiese benodighede vervul is, het dit duidelik geword dat hierdie kinders kon terugkeer na die hoofstroom-skool ervaring en op hierdie manier kon hulle die wêreld met hernuwe ywer aanpak.

Cinco hipóteses explicam a permanência do trabalho informal nos espaços públicos do Centro de São Paulo como ocupação precária e vulnerável: 1- Incapacidade estrutural do mercado de trabalho formal de absorção de mão-de-obra: informalidade como processo mundial e exceção permanente no formato do capitalismo brasileiro; 2- Desconhecimento do comércio informal de rua como produção do espaço urbano: modificação de atributos espaciais: valorização, competição, posse, etc.); 3- Exploração oportunista da clandestinidade dos trabalhadores na forma de corrupção e clientelismo; 4- Marketing urbano e Segregação Espacial: articulação entre as elites locais, Poder Público e agências multilaterais no intuito de promover a revitalização do perímetro estudado, expulsam ou isolam sistematicamente os trabalhadores de rua; 5- Inoperância das políticas públicas: o conhecimento insuficiente ou parcial do comércio de rua resulta na formulação de políticas públicas descoladas da realidade e, portanto, inoperantes. A partir dessas hipóteses,foi possível pensar parâmetros para políticas públicas que superem a polarização entre intolerância e permissividade em relação à atividade. / Five hypotheses explain streetvending in downtown Sao Paulo as a precarious and a vulnerable occupation: 1- Structural impermeability of formal labor market: informal sector as a global process, and as a permanent exception in brazilian capitalism; 2- Lack of awareness of streetvending as a production of urban space: transformation of spatial attributes - profit, competitiveness, ownership, etc.; 3- Opportunist exploitation over clandestine street vendors: corruption and patronage; 4- Urban marketing strategies and Spatial segregation: partnership among government, ruling elite and multi-lateral financial agencies in order to improve urban renewal, frequently isolate and gentrify against street vendors; 5- Innefective public policies - lack of understanding of streetvending results in unlikely public policies. Assuming these hypotheses, this research built public policies directions in order to overcome contradiction between intolerance and permissiveness.

by Lam Wing Cheong. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1996. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-146). / Some music examples in Chinese. / Abstract --- p.iv / List of Tables and Figures --- p.v / List of Music Examples --- p.vi / Maps of Hong Kong --- p.vii / Chapter Chapter One --- Introduction / Chapter 1.1 --- Definitions of Context and Customization --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Conceptual Framework --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- The Field --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4 --- The Structure of Cantonese Operatic Song --- p.5 / Chapter 1.5 --- Source Materials and Methodology --- p.12 / Chapter 1.6 --- Scope and Limitations --- p.14 / Chapter 1.7 --- Translation and Transliteration --- p.16 / Chapter Chapter Two --- History of Street Performance and Cantonese Operatic Song Groups at Temple Street / Chapter 2.1 --- A brief history of Chinese street performance --- p.18 / Chapter 2.2 --- A brief history of street performance in Hong Kong --- p.22 / Chapter 2.3 --- The organization of the groups --- p.29 / Chapter 2.4 --- The financial system and its function --- p.31 / Chapter 2.5 --- Concluding Notes --- p.33 / Chapter Chapter Three --- "Performers, Performing Style, and Programming" / Chapter 3.1 --- From ambulatory to sedentary performers --- p.38 / Chapter 3.2 --- Performing style of the song groups --- p.39 / Chapter 3.3 --- The performance programming created by song groups --- p.41 / Chapter 3.4 --- Concluding notes --- p.45 / Chapter Chapter Four --- Roles and Functions of the Audience and the Interlocking Relationship between Audience and Performers / Chapter 4.1 --- Historical background --- p.48 / Chapter 4.2 --- The audience at Temple Street --- p.51 / Chapter 4.3 --- The interlocking relationship between audience and performers --- p.56 / Chapter 4.4 --- Concluding notes --- p.67 / Chapter Chapter Five --- Customization of Performance / Chapter 5.1 --- Customization of the instrumental section --- p.71 / Chapter 5.2 --- Customization of repertoire --- p.74 / Chapter 5.3 --- Concluding notes --- p.87 / Chapter Chapter Six --- Conclusion --- p.90 / Tables --- p.97 / Figures --- p.100 / Music Examples --- p.102 / Glossary --- p.129 / References --- p.138

Dans un travail réalisé au Centre de Robotique et à l'Institut VEDECOM, nous nous sommes intéressés aux systèmes robustes de localisation visuelle en milieu urbain pour la voiture autonome. Obtenir une pose exacte à partir d'une mono-caméra est difficile et insuffisant en terme de précision pour la voiture autonome actuelle. Nous nous sommes concentrés sur l'utilisation de Systèmes d'Information Géographiques (SIG) pour concevoir une approche fiable, précise et absolue de localisation en milieu urbain.Le développement de SIG publics nous a apporté un nouvel horizon pour résoudre le problème de la localisation, mais ses informations, telles que les cartes topologiques, sémantiques, métriques, les Street Views, les cartes de profondeur, les cartes cadastrales 3D et les cartes en haute définition, doivent être bien analysées et organisées pour extraire les informations pertinentes pour une voiture autonome. Notre première tâche consistait à concevoir une base de données hors ligne accessible par un robot à partir d'un SIG public dense, à savoir Google Maps, qui a l'avantage d'avoir une couverture mondiale. Nous générons une représentation topométrique compacte de l'environnement urbain en extrayant quatre données utiles du SIG, y compris : les topologies, les géo-coordonnées, les Street Views panoramiques et les cartes de profondeur associées. Dans le même temps, un ensemble de données en ligne a été acquis par une mono-caméra équipée sur les véhicules de VEDECOM. Afin de rendre les Street View sphériques compatibles avec l'imagerie en ligne, une transformation basée sur l'interpolation d'image est introduite pour obtenir des images rectilignes à partir de Street Views.Nous proposons deux méthodes de localisation : l'une est une approche de vision par ordinateur basée sur l'extraction de caractéristiques, l'autre est une méthode d'apprentissage basée sur les réseaux de neurones convolutionnels (convnet). En vision par ordinateur, l'extraction de caractéristiques est un moyen populaire de résoudre le positionnement à partir d'images. Nous tirons parti de Google Maps et utilisons ses données topo-métriques hors ligne pour construire un positionnement grossier à fin, à savoir un processus de reconnaissance de lieu topologique puis une estimation métrique de pose par optimisation de graphe. La méthode a été testée en environnement urbain et démontre à la fois une précision sous-métrique et une robustesse aux changements de point de vue, à l'illumination et à l'occlusion. Aussi, les résultats montrent que les emplacements éloignés de Street Views produisent une erreur significative dans la phase d'estimation métrique. Ainsi, nous proposons de synthétiser des Street Views artificielles pour compenser la densité des Street View originales et améliorer la précision.Cette méthode souffre malheureusement d'un temps de calcul important. Étant donné que le SIG nous offre une base de données géolocalisée à l'échelle mondiale, cela nous motive à régresser des localisations globales directement à partir d'un convnet de bout en bout. La base de données hors ligne précédemment construite est encore insuffisante pour l'apprentissage d'un convnet. Pour compenser cela nous densifions la base d'origine d'un facteur mille et utilisons la méthode d'apprentissage par transfert pour faire converger notre régresseur convnet et avoir une bonne performance. Le régresseur permet également d'obtenir une localisation globale à partir d'une seule image et en temps réel.Les résultats obtenus par ces deux approches nous fournissent des informations sur la comparaison et la relation entre les méthodes basées sur des caractéristiques et celles basées sur le convnet. Après avoir analysé et comparé les performances de localisation des deux méthodes, nous avons également abordé des perspectives pour améliorer la robustesse et la précision de la localisation face au problème de localisation urbaine assistée par SIG. / In a work made at Centre de Robotique and Institut VEDECOM, we studied robust visual urban localization systems for self-driving cars. Obtaining an exact pose from a monocular camera is difficult and cannot be applied to the current autonomous cars. We mainly focused on fully leveraging Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to achieve a low-cost, robust, accurate and global urban localization.The development of public GIS's has brought us a new horizon to address the localization problem but their tremendous amount of information, such as topological, semantic, metric maps, Street Views, depth maps, 3D cadastral maps and High Definition maps, has to be well analyzed and organized to extract relevant information for self-driving cars. Our first task was to design a robotic accessible offline database from a dense public GIS, namely Google Maps, which has the advantage to propose a worldwide coverage. We make a compact topometric representation for the dynamic urban environment by extracting four useful data from the GIS, including topologies, geo-coordinates, panoramic Street Views, and associated depth maps. At the same time, an online dataset was acquired with a low-cost camera equipped on VEDECOM vehicles. In order to make spheric Street Views compatible with the online imagery, an image warping and interpolation based transformation is introduced to render rectilinear images from Street Views.We proposed two localization methods: one is a handcrafted-features-based computer vision approach, the other is a convolutional neural network (convnet) based learning technique. In computer vision, extracting handcrafted features is a popular way to solve the image based positioning. We take advantages of the abundant sources from Google Maps and benefit from the topometric offline data structure to build a coarse-to-fine positioning, namely a topological place recognition process and then a metric pose estimation by a graph optimization. The method is tested on an urban environment and demonstrates both sub-meter accuracy and robustness to viewpoint changes, illumination and occlusion. Moreover, we demonstrate that sparse Street View locations produce a significant error in the metric pose estimation phase. Thus our former framework is refined by synthesizing more artificial Street Views to compensate the sparsity of original Street Views and improve the precision.The handcrafted feature based framework requires the image retrieval and graph optimization. It is hard to achieve in a real-time application. Since the GIS offers us a global scale geotagged database, it motivates us to regress global localizations from convnet features in an end-to-end manner. The previously constructed offline database is still insufficient for a convnet training. We hereby augment the originally constructed database by a thousand factor and take advantage of the transfer learning method to make our convnet regressor converge and have a good performance. In our test, the regressor can also give a global localization of an input camera image in real time.The results obtained by the two approaches provide us insights on the comparison and connection between handcrafted feature-based and convnet based methods. After analyzing and comparing the localization performances of both methods, we also talked about some perspectives to improve the localization robustness and precision towards the GIS-aided urban localization problem.

Este trabalho apresenta uma plataforma para coleta e análise de imagens urbanas, que integra Interfaces de Programação de Aplicativos \"Application Programming Interfaces\" (APIs) de sistemas de busca de imagens, Sistemas de Informações Geográficas (SIGs), mapas digitais e técnicas de visão computacional. Esta plataforma, INACITY, permite que usuários selecionem regiões de interesse e capturem elementos de relevância para a arquitetura urbana, como, por exemplo árvores e buracos em ruas. A implementação da plataforma foi feita de maneira a permitir que novos módulos possam ser facilmente incluídos ou substituídos possibilitando a introdução de outras APIs de mapas, SIGs e filtros de Visão Computacional. Foram realizados experimentos com as imagens obtidas através do \"Google Street View\" onde árvores são capturadas em áreas de bairros inteiros em questão de minutos, um ganho significativo quando comparado com o procedimento manual para levantamento deste tipo de dado. Além disso, também são apresentados resultados comparativos entre os métodos de visão computacional propostos para a detecção de árvores em imagens com outros métodos heurísticos, em um conjunto onde as árvores estão marcadas manualmente e assim as taxas de precisão e de redescoberta de cada algoritmo podem ser avaliadas e comparadas. / This project presents a platform that integrates Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), image retrieval systems, Geographical Information Systems (GISes), digital maps and Computer Vision techniques to collect and analyse urban images. The platform, INACITY (an acronym for INvestigate and Analyse a City), empowers users allowing them to select a region over a map and see urban features inside that region that have relevance to the urban architecture context, for instance trees. The implementation is extensible and it is designed to make it easy to add or replace new modules, for instance, to add a new API to present a map, different GISes and other Computer Vision filters.