Embodied accounts contend that word meaning is grounded in sensory-motor representation. In support of this view, research has found rapid motor priming effects for words like eagle or shoe, which differ as to whether they are typically associated with an up or down spatial direction. These priming effects are held to be the result of motor representations evoked as an obligatory part of understanding the meaning of a word. In a series of experiments, we show that prime words associated with up or down spatial locations produce vertical perturbations in the horizontal movements of a computer mouse, but that these effects are contingent either on directing conscious attention to the spatial meaning of the word, or on the inclusion of the primed spatial direction in the response set, and that this is true even for strongly spatial words such as up and down. These results show that the motor representations associated with such words are not automatically evoked during reading. We discuss implications for claims that spatial representations reflect our embodied perception of the world. / Graduate

There are many competing techniques for specifying robot policies, each having advantages in different circumstances. To unify these techniques in a single framework, we use formal language as an intermediate representation for robot behavior. This links previously disparate techniques such as temporal logics and learning from demonstration, and it links data driven approaches such as semantic mapping with formal discrete event and hybrid systems models. These formal models enable system verification -- a crucial point for physical robots. We introduce a set of rewrite rules for hybrid systems and apply it automatically build a hybrid model for mobile manipulation from a semantic map. In the manipulation domain, we develop a new workspace interpolation methods which provides direct, non-stop motion through multiple waypoints, and we introduce a filtering technique for online camera registration to avoid static calibration and handle changing camera positions. To handle concurrent communication with embedded robot hardware, we develop a new real-time interprocess communication system which offers lower latency than Linux sockets. Finally, we consider how time constraints affect the execution of systems modeled hierarchically using context-free grammars. Based on these constraints, we modify the LL(1) parser generation algorithm to operate in real-time with bounded memory use.

På senare tid har det framkommit vad man skulle kunna benämna som komplexa karaktärsrepresentationer i tv-serier relaterade till brott och illegala handlingar. Exempel på dessa syns i tv-serier som Dexter (2006) vars handling bygger på en huvudkaraktär som utför seriemord. Andra exempel går att hämta ur den samtida populärkulturen, det går inte att bortse från de allt fler tv-serier som ställer vad man konventionellt skulle kalla skurken och hans handlingar i fokus. En löpande produktion av tv-serier pågår ständigt och tv-tittandet individualiseras allt mer till följd av streaming-tjänster som Netflix, vilket lämnar utrymme för allt fler mångfacetterade bilder av vad man tidigare såg som tvådimensionella karaktärer. Ett sätt att framställa ondska och immoralism som en mänsklig egenskap, genom att ge tittaren en inblick i skurkens liv, kan spegla den sociala verklighet vi lever inom där individen har makt över sina egna handlingar och där lag och konventioner kring moral och etik går att vrida och vända på, beroende på perspektiv Med ambition att undersöka det nämnda forskningsområdet har denna studie som syfte att att undersöka hur kriminalitet skildras i tv-serien Narcos (2015) och hur detta uppfattas av tittaren. Detta med hjälp av forskningsfrågorna: Hur representeras kriminella aktiviteter och kriminella i tv-serien Narcos? Hur upplever tittarna de kriminella aktiviteter och kriminalitet i tv-serien Narcos? Med brist på forskning inom området ur ett svenskt perspektiv, ämnar studien att fokusera på den målgrupp som främst exponeras för dessa typer av tv-serier: svenska ungdomar. Studien utfördes således utifrån en triangulering av en innehållsanalys och fokusgrupp, bestående av 8 ungdomar mellan åldrarna 18-26 från Stockholmsområdet. Resultaten från innehållsanalysen och fokusgrupperna visade på att kriminella i tv-serien representeras som karaktärer med lägre klasstillhörighet, med en fattig bakgrund som via kriminella medel vunnit till sig makt och en förmögenhet. Kriminella aktiviteter som mord, mutor och narkotikahandel är en del av vardagen och betraktas som norm. De värderar familj och relationer högt men förhåller sig till omoraliska handlingar. Kriminalitet upplevs som ett medel med vilka individer i tv-serien tjänar sina pengar och kan betraktas som en typ av vardagligt jobb. Då detta tillhör de kriminellas vardag och sätt att leva, ses inte detta som avvikande från hur en kriminell karaktär inom serien ska bete sig. Såväl kriminella som politiker och polis, som står som någon sorts motsättning till kriminella aktiviteter och kriminalitet i tv-serien, utför immoraliska aktiviteter. Dessa immoraliska aktiviteter förstärks av kampen om pengar, vilka samtliga deltagare håller med om är ursprunget till immoralitet.

This thesis explores the gender and sexual politics of erotic dance, through an ethnographic investigation of two leisure venues which provide erotic dance entertainment for women audiences in the UK. Using the research techniques of participant observation, qualitative interviews, visual methods, email interviews and internet research, this thesis examines the work roles of women and men dancers, and the interactions of women customers with dancers. In taking both a lesbian leisure venue and a male strip show for analysis, this thesis goes further than previous academic studies which often equate erotic dance with a male clientele base and women performers. The key findings of the thesis are related to three central themes. These are, firstly, the defining of both of the venues as a ‘women-only’ space by customers, and the ways in which this simultaneously both challenges and reproduces heteronormativity. Secondly, findings in both venues point to evidence of an erotic female ‘gaze’ being exercised by women customers. Yet I highlight how this is at times couched in problematic post-feminist conceptions of sexual agency, and further, how some customers articulated a critique of ‘gazing’ as objectifying erotic dancers. I argue that male dancers do not take on a ‘sex object’ role, and suggest that women dancers are able to exercise a gaze directed at women customers in some instances. The third key finding, evident in dancers’ accounts of their working experiences, suggests that their work practices are in many ways similar to concepts of work that are used to discuss service sector labour. I argue that the particular spaces in which dancers work is crucial to their capacity to exercise autonomy in their work role. Overall, the thesis develops a more complex analysis of participants’ engagement with erotic dance venues, highlighting the tensions around exercising agency in commercial sexual encounters.

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

While Black women are more visible in media and popular culture today, the range of their visibility remains narrow and in continuation within the dominant ideology concerning Black women within the U.S. The images that are presented discourage a full understanding of the conditions of the Black female experience and the ways these women are socially constituted within it (Newton & Rosenfelt 1985). This paper examines how the images of Black women are contradictory to the depressed socioeconomic status of Black women, how the show Girlfriends works to move beyond these images by expressing moments of the lived experience of Black women, and how Black women recognize their position within the oppressive institutional forces of the U.S. by negotiating their representations. / text

By formulating the six dimensional (0,2) superconformal field theory X[j] on a Riemann surface decorated with certain codimension two defects, a multitude of four dimensional N=2 supersymmetric field theories can be constructed. In this dissertation, various aspects of this construction are investigated in detail for j=A,D,E. This includes, in particular, an exposition of the various partial descriptions of the codimension two defects that become available under dimensional reductions and the relationships between them. Also investigated is a particular observable of this class of four dimensional theories, namely the partition function on the four sphere and its relationship to correlation functions in a class of two dimensional non-rational conformal field theories called Toda theories. It is pointed out that the scale factor that captures the Euler anomaly of the four dimensional theory has an interpretation in the two dimensional language, thereby adding one of the basic observables of the 4d theory to the 4d/2d dictionary. / text

The WWE, formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), has a long history of showcasing harmful stereotypes via hyperracialized characters. Many academics have observed these characters and the overarching types to which they can be assigned as being indicative of the respective sociohistorical conditions in which they were produced. During the mid-to-late nineties, the WWF embarked upon a re-branding effort focused on adopting a new “Attitude” that purported to offer a more “realistic” form of “sports entertainment.” Throughout this “Attitude Era” the WWF purposely obfuscated delineations between fact and fiction, and subsequently, performers and racialized performance. Set against the backdrop of the neoliberal nineties, then – a period when America was supposedly embracing multiculturalism, the “welfare state” had been discarded in favor of fiscal conservatism, and possessive individualism catapulted to paramount importance – in what ways did the hyperracialized characters and storylines of the WWF Attitude Era reflect contemporary American cultural attitudes toward race? This study seeks to answer this question by incorporating historiographical work, industrial discourse analysis, and textual readings to analyze the representation of race in WWF programming of the late nineties. Utilizing an ideological textual analysis to understand how weekly episodes of Monday Night Raw and monthly pay-per-view events that aired during the years of 1997-1999 embodied and reified certain values, beliefs, and ideas, this project will look to the cultural, industrial, and political discourses circulating during the 1990s to show how they intersect with the WWF programming of the period. / text

Television impacts the shape of our common culture by depicting our societal fears, myths and hopes in a constantly shifting and negotiated manner. There is a glaring lack of research regarding media representations of children/adolescents in poverty. The study of this intersection is critically important for understanding societal discourse around education, healthcare, government assistance programs and even the opinions and practices of teachers and administrators. Children under 18 years of age represent 24 percent of the population, but they comprise 34 percent of all people in poverty in the United States. Among all children, 45 percent live in low-income families and approximately one in every five (22 percent) live in poor families. In this thesis, I trace discourse in the mainstream news and popular culture regarding children and poverty through welfare debates and policy changes in the U.S. from the 1990s and 2000s through the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. Subsequently, I analyze the construction of this discourse on narrative television in the shows My So Called Life (ABC, 1994-1995) The O.C. (FOX, 2003-2007) and Shameless (Showtime, 2011-). Through this mapping, I examine how gender, sexuality, race, and age are mobilized in constructing televisual representations of poverty; as well as how shifting discourses and depictions make transparent society’s anxieties regarding poverty. / text

This dissertation examines the intersections among discourses of feminism, transgender studies, queer theory, film studies, and social activist practice. I address the question of how transphobia as a set of beliefs and behaviors is illustrated in four late-twentieth-century films, three produced in America and one originally released in Australia but later acquiring a significant following in this country. I define transphobia as the "fear of a transgendered person and the hatred, discrimination, intolerance, and prejudice that this fear brings" (Laframboise 2002) and transgender as a broad term that can apply to persons, behaviors, and filmic images, a "self-conscious politicization of identity that activates an investigation of gender relations within different s socio-spatial regimes" (Brooks 1) and "clearly disrupt[s] hegemonic notions of a stable trinity between sex, gender and sexuality" (Jennings and Lomine 146).I provide brief histories of feminist and queer theories to illustrate these fields' insufficiency in accounting for transgender experience and trace the establishment of transgender studies as an explicit field of study. Then, I examine works by transgender studies theorists and activists to explain the progression of thought that led to these writers' call for abolition of the binary gender system. In the following chapter, I trace the theoretical moves from a feminist theory of film to a queer theory approach to film, again pointing out the limited perspective that explicitly feminist analysis of film has frequently offered. Finally, I demonstrate the ways in which each film conforms to and/or defies heteronormative ideals of gender and sexuality and upholds the binary gender system. I suggest that ongoing efforts in transgender and other kinds of social activism might eventually bring about a postgenderist society wherein gender "roles" are no longer forced upon individuals, but may be adopted (or refused) by choice. To this end, I outline six criteria of what I term a positive film portrayal of transgender and explain how each film either meets or fails to meet these criteria, which generally focus on the degree to which the films allow their protagonists to maintain a gender identity that violates binary norms on a continual basis.