In this thesis I provide an additional perspective on the development of Rādhā- Kṛṣṇa who are regarded as the central divinity in many religious traditions in South Asia, by examining the primary sources of the Nimbārka Sampradāya. This school of the Hindu religious tradition of Vaiṣṇavism is unique in its identification of the ontological category of Brahman (the supreme being) solely with Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa, where both are conjointly understood to be the eternal deity, not an avatāra (incarnation) or vyūha (emanation). Previous scholarship on the early phases of this sampradāya has focussed on issues of philosophy and doctrine, with a few attempts beset by demonstrably deficient reasoning at positing a chronology. Although the later tradition has been documented in detail, owing to the absence of a settled chronology, mechanisms of Nimbārkī inter-sectarian relations at this stage of development in early modern Vraja (Braj) have not been satisfactorily established. In Part One, I provide a survey of the current theories on the development of Kṛṣṇa (who has received wide scholarly treatment) and Rādhā, re-evaluating Sanskrit and Prakrit textual and epigraphic sources with focus on the divinity of these two figures, positing that although there exist allusions to the godhood of Kṛṣṇa antecedent to the common era, the same cannot be said of Rādhā. Part Two discusses the sources available for Nimbārka and with a view to bringing to light any noteworthy findings, on the basis of comparative studies of the Brahmasūtra commentarial tradition I provide a new chronology for Nimbārka and his immediate followers. Following on from this, I discuss Nimbārka’s works in which is presented his innovation: the deification of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa. I then examine the rationalisation of this doctrine by Puruṣottama (third successor to Nimbārka), whose exegetical efforts diminish the impact of this teaching in the wider Vaiṣṇava context. In Part Three, I turn to the legacy of Nimbārka and in an important revelation for Vaiṣṇava studies, I show that whilst the early tradition reserved the theological identity of Brahman for the most eligible initiates, in 15th century Vraja a renaissance of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa devotion was instigated by Keśava Kāśmīrin, Śrībhaṭṭa and Harivyāsa Deva who influenced the contemporary and later sects which, in the modern period, have transported the phenomenon of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa devotion across the globe.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Susan Richmond, committee chair; Melinda Hartwig, Cheryl Goldsleger, committee members. Electronic text (56 p. : ill. (some col.)). Description based on contents viewed May 11, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-49).

Kara Walker is one of the most successful and widely known contemporary African-American artists today--remarkable for her radical engagement with issues of race, gender, and sexuality. Walker is best known for her provocative installations, composed of cut-paper silhouettes depicting fantastic and grotesque scenes of the antebellum South. This thesis examines Walker's work in silhouettes, text, and video in order to establish the unifying logic that unites her media. Walker's use of racist stereotypes has incited vehement criticism, and the debate over the political meaning of her work has been worked and reworked in the voluminous literature on her artistic practice. This thesis focuses on how Walker's defense and explanation of her own work functions as a performative and political component of the art itself. Walker's construction and performance of an artistic identity is an integral and intentional part of her overall practice and a key component to the interpretation of her work.

Cette étude a pour objet l’ensemble de l’oeuvre de l’artiste afro-américaine Kara Walker, de 1994 à 2009. Fondé sur une approche pluridisciplinaire qui fait intervenir les Études américaines, les Études afro-américaines, l’histoire de l’art et l’esthétique, ce travail met au jour la récurrence de la violence dans l’oeuvre. Mettant en concurrence les propos de l’artiste et ses créations, il tente de dégager les constantes et les évolutions d’une oeuvre qui s’appuie sur une esthétique de la cruauté, et repose sur l’équilibre fragile entre la beauté et l’horreur. L’oeuvre de Walker ayant fait l’objet d’une controverse qui a joué un rôle important dans l’exégèse prolifique produite sur les créations de l’artiste, les tenants et les aboutissants de cette réception polarisée sont examinés. Compte tenu du succès immédiat de Walker, devenue en quelques années seulement une star sur la scène artistique établie, il était nécessaire de réfléchir aux conditions et aux causes de ce succès. À partir de la notion de stratégie figurative, ce travail se concentre sur les différentes manières dont l’artiste explore les représentations produites et relayées par la culture dominante. Les œuvres du début de sa carrière, ses installations de papiers découpés, sont ainsi analysées comme la mise en question du principe même de représentation. Utilisant la figure humaine et l’histoire comme des trompe-l’œil pour souligner la persistance de ces représentations dans l’imaginaire collectif et particulier, les installations jouent sur l’écart entre le désir d’interprétation du regardeur et sa frustration constante. Au milieu des années 2000, un infléchissement de l’oeuvre de l’artiste se produit ; il nous paraît particulièrement saillant dans les créations réalisées dans le sillage de la rétrospective de milieu de carrière de Walker (2007-2008). Il se traduirait par une réflexion sur la possibilité de représenter la violence exercée contre des disparus réels sans la transformer en spectacle. En conséquence, la construction du corps noir en tant que site spectaculaire dans la culture occidentale, ainsi que certains exemples de réponses, de ripostes émanant de Walker et d’autres artistes contemporains, sont envisagés dans ce travail. Ce dernier aboutit à l’examen des oeuvres où la figuration est mise en crise par le risque du spectacle ou compensée par l’incorporation de l’artiste, dans des oeuvres à la fois exceptionnelles et emblématiques du parcours de Walker, lequel atteste une tension constante entre la conscience du gouffre entre les sphères artistique et sociopolitique, et la tentative de créer un art politique. / This work presents a survey of the work of African-American artist Kara Walker, from 1994 to 2009. Based on a multidisciplary approach conjoining American Studies, African-American Studies, art history and aesthetics, it underlines violence as a recurrent feature in Walker’s work. Confronting the artist’s statements and her works, we try to expose the constant threads and the evolutions of a work grounded within an aesthetics of cruelty, and precariously balanced between beauty and horror. Because Walker’s art has been the object of a controversy, which significantly impacted the prolific exegesis on her work, the tenets of such polarized reception are analyzed here. Given Walker’s immediate success – she became a star on the mainstream art scene in but a few years – a reflection on the conditions and causes of her success were also required. Starting from the notion of figurative strategy, this work focuses on the different ways in which the artist has explored representations produced and circulated within dominant culture. Her early works – her paper cutouts – are thus analyzed as questioning the very notion of representation. Using the human figure and history as illusionistic devices in order to expose how such representations endure within the collective and particular unconscious, Walker’s installations work within the gap between the viewer’s desire for interpretation and its constant frustration. In the mid-2000s, a new orientation within Walker’s work may be witnessed – most obviously in the pieces made in the aftermath of her mid-career retrospective (2007-2008). According to us, such a turn shows through a reflection on the possibility of representing violence as perpetrated on the bodies of actual beings without turning it into a spectacle. Thus, both the construction of the black body as a spectacular site in Western culture and the responses and counterstrategies from Walker as well as other contemporary artists to that issue, are also the objects of our investigation. This enables us to understand how the specter of the spectacle looms over some of Walker’s pieces between 2007 and 2009, throwing figuration into crisis. Both emblematic of and discrepant within Walker’s general practice, those pieces testify to the way her work evinces a constant tension between the awareness of the gap between the realm of art and the sociopolitical sphere, and the attempt to make political art.

Kara Walker, winner of the MacArthur “Genius” award and the Smithsonian Lucelia award, is one of the most critically acclaimed contemporary African American artists. Her work, especially her cut-paper silhouettes depicting grotesque antebellum scenes, has inspired as much outrage from an older generation of Black artists as acclaim from the mainstream media. This thesis gives an overview of the artist’s life, analysis of some of her works, and an examination of the controversy her work has caused. In the conclusion, I introduce the next generation of Black American artists, self-proclaimed “Art Stars,” including Atlanta artist Fahamu Pecou.

The enzyme α-isopropylmalate synthase (IPMS) catalyses the reaction between acetyl coenzyme A (AcCoA) and α-ketoisovalerate (KIV) to produce free coenzyme A and α isopropylmalate (IPM). This reaction is a key control point in the biosynthesis of a leucine, a pathway absent in animals but present in plants, fungi and bacteria. As a result, IPMS is a antibiotic and herbicidal target that has been validated by knockout studies for M. tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis. Engineered IPMSs have also been used in the fermentative production of long chain alcohols for use as fuels. IPMS belongs to a family of related enzymes called α-ketoacid: AcCoA re-aldolases (KARAs), with each subfamily differing in the specific α-ketoacid that AcCoA is reacted with. The known KARA subfamilies are IPMS, citramalate synthases (CMSs), homocitrate synthases (HCSs), methylthioalkylmalate synthases (MAMSs) and re-citrate synthases (RCSs), respectively involved in the biosynthesis of isoleucine, lysine, glucosinolates and TCA cycle intermediates. This thesis describes work aimed at improving understanding of both specific subfamilies of KARA enzymes and also the genetic and functional relationships between the subfamilies. A particular emphasis is placed on relating primary structure to function, allowing the inference of function from a very small subset of residues. IPMSs are divided into two classes, the Mtu-like IPMSs and the much less studied Eco-like IPMSs. Chapter 2 details the expression and characterisation of the Eco like IPMS from N. meningitidis (NmeIPMS). Overall NmeIPMS showed similar properties to MtuIPMS, but unlike that enzyme NmeIPMS is inhibited by high divalent metal ion concentrations, does not require monovalent metal ions, and shows some activity with the α-ketoacid 3-methyl α ketovalerate. Several previous results showing inhibitory activity of Zn2+, Cd2+ and bromopyruvate were also found to be the results of interference with the assay system and all three were found to be much weaker inhibitors than previously determined.   Phylogenetic analysis of the different KARA subfamilies revealed certain specific positions that were believed to control substrate specificity. Chapter 3 details mutagenesis experiments on MtuIPMS that probe the function of these residues. Once the importance of the residues had been established, substitutions were made in which IPMS residues were replaced with their equivalents from HCSs and CMSs in order to change substrate specificity. The most successful result was the Y169L substitution based on HCS, which decreased the specificity constant with KIV by four orders of magnitude while improving other activities, successfully shifting the best activity to the unbranched α-ketoacid α-ketobutyrate. Chapter 4 of this thesis details the purification and functional testing of the RCS from C. saccharolyticus (CscRCS), the first thermophilic RCS characterised. CscRCS was found to have an extremely low Km for its substrate oxaloacetate (1.7 µM), believed to be an adaptation to the instability of oxaloacetate at the temperatures CscRCS operates at in vivo. The enzyme also showed competitive affinity by α-ketoglutarate, the end product of the pathway. Unlike other characterised RCSs, CscRCS showed no oxygen sensitivity. The phylogenetic analysis conducted for this thesis identified a subfamily of KARAs dubbed pseudo-IPMSs (PIPMSs) that showed no substantial homology to any studied subfamily. In Chapter 5 the PIPMS from T. thermophilus (TthPIPMS) was expressed and characterised. TthPIPMS showed many features of a CMS, being most active with the same substrate (pyruvate) and sensitive to the same inhibitor (isoleucine). Unlike the previously studied CMS subfamilies, TthPIPMS possesses a nanomolar IC50 for its inhibitor, and also shows substantial activity as an RCS. The results of these chapters are then drawn together in Chapter 6 to create a picture of the relationships between the KARA enzymes, in terms of their functional characteristics as well as the sequence and evolutionary relationships between them that have bought about their diverse functions.

<p>The North Kara Terrane (NKT), with Severnaya Zemlya as its main outcrop area, constitutes the Palaeozoic and older rocks of the northern part of the Kara Shelf. Potential field data suggest a continuation into the eastern Barents Shelf. Several lines of evidence imply that the NKT was a part of Baltica at least during the latter part of the Neoproterozoic, and probably was influenced by Timanian orogeny.</p><p>The Timanide type area is characterised by metaturbidites from the pre-Timanian passive margin of the East European Craton (EEC). Regional amphibolite facies metamorphism, as exposed on Kanin Peninsula, was probably followed by near-isothermal decompression. It is inferred that these conditions were reached by depression beneath the accreted outboard terranes. Subsequently, the metaturbidites were thrust into their present position onto the EEC’s pericratonic unmetamorphosed shelf sediments. The thrusting was accompanied by rapid exhumation. About 560 Ma late-orogenic granites intrude the Timanian accreted terranes.</p><p>On Severnaya Zemlya, Neoproterozoic turbidites, containing ca. 560 Ma zircons, are overlain by shelf deposits, which dominate the Palaeozoic until the end of the Silurian. The succession is interrupted by the regional Kan’on (canyon) River Unconformity and probably by a late Neoproterozoic unconformity. New U-Th-Pb ion-microprobe isotope-ages on volcanics and faunal evidence imply that the Kan'on River Unconformity developed in a short time span around the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary. Other isotope-ages demonstrate that intense igneous activity, which has been inferred to be related to rifting within the NKT, extended into the Arenig and was contemporaneous with the development of Baltica’s northeastern passive margin. Zircon xenocrysts (ca. 540 - 580 Ma) in these igneous rocks indicate a Timanian component in the crust below the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago. In the latest Silurian, Old Red Sandstone facies sedimentation began with the migration of an inferred Caledonian foreland basin into the area of Severnaya Zemlya. The Caledonian deformation front overrode the area in the latest Devonian or earliest Carboniferous.</p><p>The inferred late Caledonian deformation terminated, according to biostratigraphy and new isotope-ages from Bol'shevik Island granites, before the end of the Visean (ca. 345 Ma). Thus, the Uralian collision between the NKT and Siberia (ca. 300 Ma) apparently did not affect the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago.</p>

The North Kara Terrane (NKT), with Severnaya Zemlya as its main outcrop area, constitutes the Palaeozoic and older rocks of the northern part of the Kara Shelf. Potential field data suggest a continuation into the eastern Barents Shelf. Several lines of evidence imply that the NKT was a part of Baltica at least during the latter part of the Neoproterozoic, and probably was influenced by Timanian orogeny. The Timanide type area is characterised by metaturbidites from the pre-Timanian passive margin of the East European Craton (EEC). Regional amphibolite facies metamorphism, as exposed on Kanin Peninsula, was probably followed by near-isothermal decompression. It is inferred that these conditions were reached by depression beneath the accreted outboard terranes. Subsequently, the metaturbidites were thrust into their present position onto the EEC’s pericratonic unmetamorphosed shelf sediments. The thrusting was accompanied by rapid exhumation. About 560 Ma late-orogenic granites intrude the Timanian accreted terranes. On Severnaya Zemlya, Neoproterozoic turbidites, containing ca. 560 Ma zircons, are overlain by shelf deposits, which dominate the Palaeozoic until the end of the Silurian. The succession is interrupted by the regional Kan’on (canyon) River Unconformity and probably by a late Neoproterozoic unconformity. New U-Th-Pb ion-microprobe isotope-ages on volcanics and faunal evidence imply that the Kan'on River Unconformity developed in a short time span around the Cambrian-Ordovician boundary. Other isotope-ages demonstrate that intense igneous activity, which has been inferred to be related to rifting within the NKT, extended into the Arenig and was contemporaneous with the development of Baltica’s northeastern passive margin. Zircon xenocrysts (ca. 540 - 580 Ma) in these igneous rocks indicate a Timanian component in the crust below the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago. In the latest Silurian, Old Red Sandstone facies sedimentation began with the migration of an inferred Caledonian foreland basin into the area of Severnaya Zemlya. The Caledonian deformation front overrode the area in the latest Devonian or earliest Carboniferous. The inferred late Caledonian deformation terminated, according to biostratigraphy and new isotope-ages from Bol'shevik Island granites, before the end of the Visean (ca. 345 Ma). Thus, the Uralian collision between the NKT and Siberia (ca. 300 Ma) apparently did not affect the Severnaya Zemlya Archipelago.

Tez (Yüksek Lisans) - Süleyman Demirel Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Maliye Anabilim Dalı, 2007. / Bibliyografya var.

This thesis aims to define the scope of Article 3 ECHR, concerning children with traumas in registration and identification camps. The interpretation of the scope of Article 3 ECHR is based on a case study of the cases Khan v France and J.R. and Others v Greece. The result of the case study in conjunction with relevant legislation is applied to the Mavrovouni camp in Lesvos, Greece. The normative approach in this thesis is combined with hermeneutic analysis. The case study shows that inadequate housing conditions are unlikely to violate Article 3 ECHR. Nonetheless, the threshold of Article 3 ECHR is broader when children are subject to the conditions. Children are internationally recognized as more vulnerable, especially when they are traumatized. In conclusion, it is to say that a violation of Article 3 ECHR can be made out in the Mavrovouni camp concerning children that live in the camp.