Thesis advisor: Shep Melnick / Every decade, following the U.S. Census, lawmakers redraw state and federal legislative districts. This process of redistricting is a necessary aspect of representative democracy for capturing population changes in a dynamic society. While this responsibility of redrawing legislative districts has historically been left to state legislatures to complete - and more recently to commissions and panels - the reality is that every redistricting cycle, some of these maps are actually drawn by the U.S. federal courts. These maps determine the district boundaries for millions of Americans - who votes where, for whom and with whom. Since the Supreme Court ruled that legislative reapportionment was a justiciable issue for federal judiciary in 1962’s landmark decision, Baker v Carr, the lower federal courts have regularly taken the extraordinary step of drawing legislative districts themselves when the initial redistricting institution fails to implement a lawful plan. This places the famously nonpartisan institutions at the center of the most political activity. There is no clear constitutional or statutory guidance for how federal courts should make these remedial maps, and there are dozens of competing criteria for where to draw each line: compactness, partisan advantage, racial representation, competitiveness, protection of political subdivisions, etc. This raises fundamental questions about the role of the federal courts in American government, the nature of representative democracy, judicial independence and the separation of powers, the criteria for judging fairness, institutional capacity and federalism. Despite these tensions, there has been no comprehensive research on the impact that federal courts have on redistricting. This dissertation aims to address these tensions and fill this scholarly gap, answering the question of What has been the impact of federal court involvement in legislative redistricting between 1962’s Baker v Carr and 2019’s Rucho v Common Cause. In this dissertation, I use five approaches to undertake a comprehensive examination of the role of the federal courts in redistricting during this 57-year period. In Chapter 2, I adapt Supreme Court decision making theories for the lower federal courts to develop a theory of institutional constraints. I argue these constraints determine the courts’ choices on when, how and why to make a redistricting map and which criteria to use. In Chapter 3, I use an American Political Development approach to examine the changes in judicially manageable standards created by the Supreme Court over time for understanding the legally constraining precedents for the lower courts. In Chapter 4, I conduct an original descriptive content analysis of more than 1,200 lower federal court decisions between 1960 and 2019 related to redistricting to understand the preconditions for federal court action, the trends in lower federal court caseload and outcomes, and the obedience of the lower courts to Supreme Court precedents. In Chapter 5, I present the analytical heart of this dissertation, testing my theory and defining what makes a federal court-made map distinct from those made by other institutions. To accomplish this goal, I use an original dataset of five decades of redistricting plans at the state and federal levels together with 13 varied quantitative methods developed by myself and other political scientists for measuring gerrymanders. Analyses of these data allow me to quantify the criteria used by the federal courts in distinction to other institutions, leading to predictive results about the federal courts as map makers. I find that federal courts create redistricting plans with lower population variance, more compact districts, and a higher proportion of majority-minority districts for descriptive racial representation than legislatures or commissions. Federal courts also create some partisan bias in their plans but at a lower level than is seen in legislatures. In Chapter 6, I take a qualitative, case study approach and compare these empirical results to the actual court opinions in four representative instances where the courts drew the maps. I examine how well judges understood the nonpolitical criteria they were actually using in practice and apply my theory of institutional constraints on lower federal courts. In sum, this dissertation offers: • new datasets and methods for studying redistricting institutions; • descriptive accounts of the trends, processes and development of federal courts redistricting; • an institutional theory and approach for studying the lower federal courts; • A detailed examination of the development of Supreme Court precedents on redistricting that constrain lower court decision making; • and quantitative and qualitative analyses of which criteria the federal judiciary favors when they draw plans and why. Most importantly, this dissertation finds that the criteria courts favor in practice differ from those used by state legislatures and commissions. Federal courts apply criteria shaped by judicial constraints and that reflect a distinct understanding of legislative representation. The dissertation’s conclusion examines the implications of these findings for American democracy, the lower federal courts, voters and constituents. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Magister Artium - MA / The demands of modernity and globalisation present print culture as dominant in such a way that oral tradition is forced in to a shadowy position, because the latter tradition cannot be exploited entirely for profit. Dominant scholarship on oral studies therefore positions orality in the background of writing, so as to suggest that it is a past tradition of, and serves as a reservoir for, written literature. However, such approaches reveal theoretical gaps, highlighted, as will be shown in the thesis, by the effaced position of the black woman as storyteller. Orality, in this, becomes the spectre which haunts the writing of most African writers in the same way that the black woman haunts man -centred nationalism. Such spectrality is precisely one which is embodied if not by the black woman in nationalist discourse and in society in general. I begin in by examining the representation of an archetypal black woman namely Sycorax, in William Shakespeare’ s The Tempest. Even though Shakespeare is quite ambiguous about her racial identity, I interpret Sycorax– whose story is told by male characters– as a black black woman.

In 2013, the United States is becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse.  With these demographic changes, attitudes and approaches toward representation are likewise shifting. Public administration scholarship and practice can continue to contribute to this dynamic process of defining representation and crafting initiatives to meet the needs of the public. To do this, social injustices of the past must be addressed through the recognition and valuation of historically-underrepresented groups in public organizations. Yet, much public affairs discourse and numerous policy decisions are rooted in multiculturalism.  The central question this research explores is whether multiculturalism is detrimental to theorizing and to enacting a representative bureaucracy, and if so, why. To answer this question, the work begins with a critical review of the representative bureaucracy, affirmative action, and multiculturalism literatures.  Then, linking these reviews to practice, the study performs a critical discourse analysis of several executive orders and guidance documents from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to trace how views of representation in U.S. national government agencies changed between 1998 and 2011.  This research finds that a shift from "Affirmative Action" to "Multiculturalism" occurred.  EOs 13078, 13163, and 13171 were heavily rooted in the Affirmative Action approach, while the 2000 OPM Agency Diversity Guide, EOs 13518 and 13583, and the Government-Wide Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan 2011 were anchored in the "Multicultural" approach.  Ultimately, this study concludes that multiculturalism poses significant challenges for representative bureaucracy as a result of its lack of clear and explicit definitions and its treatments of differences, especially group-identity classifications.  Rethinking the relationship between representative bureaucracy and multiculturalism and focusing on historically-underrepresented groups hold the potential to contribute to the further attainment of normative goals of bureaucratic representation. / Ph. D.

This research explores the process of integration of IDPs into the host communities in Ukraine from Communication for Development perspective. It aims to examine integration process in the context of representation and participatory communication theories. The objectives of this research are threefold. Firstly, it explores the concept of “successful” or finalized integration. Secondly, it investigates existing stereotypes and myths about IDPs in Ukrainian society through the lens of representation theory. Thirdly, it examines promising participatory communication projects in Ukraine aimed at countering these stereotypes. The research is based on semi-structured interviews with IDPs, representatives of host communities, employees of international development organizations and NGO, producer of TV-show and the author of the performance about IDPs. The research finds that establishment of social contacts and engagement into the life of the new community is key to successful integration and that stereotyped perception of IDPs in Ukrainian society comes not from interpersonal experience, but from media and political context and more participatory communication projects are needed for countering it.

Let $\mathbb{G}$ be a connected reductive group defined over a p-adic field F which splits over a tamely ramified extension of F, and let G = $\mathbb{G}(F)$. We also assume that the residual characteristic of F does not divide the order of the Weyl group of $\mathbb{G}$. Following J.K. Yu's construction, the irreducible supercuspidal representation constructed from the G-datum $\Psi$ is denoted $\pi_G(\Psi)$. The datum $\Psi$ contains an irreducible depth-zero supercuspidal representation, which we refer to as the depth-zero part of the datum. Under our hypotheses, the J.K. Yu Construction is exhaustive. Given a connected reductive F-subgroup $\mathbb{H}$ that contains the derived subgroup of $\mathbb{G}$, we study the restriction $\pi_G(\Psi)|_H$ and obtain a description of its decomposition into irreducible components along with their multiplicities. We achieve this by first describing a natural restriction process from which we construct H-data from the G-datum $\Psi$. We then show that the obtained H-data, and conjugates thereof, construct the components of $\pi_G(\Psi)|_H$, thus providing a very precise description of the restriction. Analogously, we also describe an extension process that allows to construct G-data from an H-datum $\Psi_H$. Using Frobenius Reciprocity, we obtain a description for the components of $\Ind_H^G\pi_H(\Psi_H)$. From the obtained description of $\pi_G(\Psi)|_H$, we prove that the multiplicity in $\pi_G(\Psi)|_H$ is entirely determined by the multiplicity in the restriction of the depth-zero piece of the datum. Furthermore, we use Clifford theory to obtain a formula for the multiplicity of each component in $\pi_G(\Psi)|_H$. As a particular case, we take a look at the regular depth-zero supercuspidal representations and obtain a condition for a multiplicity free restriction. Finally, we show that our methods can also be used to define a restriction of Kim-Yu types, allowing to study the restriction of irreducible representations which are not supercuspidal.

El presente estudio tiene como objetivo analizar las representaciones sociales acerca el proceso suicida en gatekeepers de atención primaria de la salud en la ciudad de Lima, Perú. Para la presente investigación se utilizó el método cualitativo con diseño fenomenológico, y se analizó la información haciendo uso del análisis de contenido temático. Para tal fin se realizaron entrevistas semiestructuradas a once trabajadores de atención primaria de la salud. Se encontró que las representaciones sociales con respecto al suicidio que tenían los participantes tendían a ser negativas, con presencia de estereotipos y, mitos o creencias falsas. Los temas encontrados están relacionados a la percepción del suicidio, a las características de las personas que deciden suicidarse, factores que influyen en el suicidio y a los sentimientos frente a situaciones suicidas. Se discuten los resultados a la luz del marco teórico y estudios empíricos. / The present study aims to analyze the social representations about the suicide process in primary health care gatekeepers in the city of Lima, Peru. For the present investigation, a qualitative method with phenomenological design was used, and the information was analyzed using the thematic content analysis. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven primary health care workers. It was found that the social representations regarding suicide that the participants had tended to be negative, with the presence of stereotypes and, myths or false beliefs. The themes found are related to the perception of suicide, the characteristics of people who decide to commit suicide, factors that influence suicide and feelings about suicidal situations. The results are discussed in light of the theoretical framework and empirical studies. / Tesis

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Extant research has established that workplace discrimination negatively predicts turnover and influences targets’ job commitment and satisfaction. Historically, diversity research explored the consequences of colorblind diversity philosophies and the benefits of multicultural diversity philosophies for minorities; however, it may be that multicultural work environments are not universally beneficial for minorities. The present study examines how organizational philosophies regarding diversity influence minorities’ perceptions of trust, affective commitment, organizational attraction, and perceptions of tokenism towards an organization. Results indicate main effects of minority representation and diversity philosophy such that participants in the high representation condition reported greater trust and comfort than participants in the low representation condition, and participants in the multicultural condition reported greater trust and comfort than participants in the colorblind condition. Moreover, results reveal a significant indirect effect of minority representation on trust and comfort, affective commitment, and organizational attraction through perceived tokenism. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Let D be a division algebra over a p-adic field of characteristic 0. We investigate the mod-p supersingular representations of GL(2, D) by computing a basis for the space of invariants of a certain quotient under the pro-p Iwahori subgroup. This generalizes the previous works of Hendel and Schein.

The larger area of my thesis is Algebra; more specifically, my work belongs to the following two major branches of Algebra: \emph{representation theory} and \emph{invariant theory}. In brief, the objective of representation theory is to investigate algebraic objects through their actions on vector spaces; this allows the well-developed toolkit of linear algebra to be brought to bear on complex algebraic problems. The theory has played a crucial role in nearly every subdiscipline of pure mathematics. Outside of pure mathematics, representation theory has been successfully used, for instance, in the study of symmetries of physical systems and in describing molecular structures in physical chemistry. Invariant theory is another classical algebraic theme permeating virtually all areas of pure mathematics and some areas of applied mathematics as well, notably coding theory. The theory studies actions of algebraic objects, traditionally groups and Lie algebras, on algebras, that is, vector spaces that are equipped with a multiplication. \bigskip The representation theory of (associative) algebras provides a useful setting in which to studymany aspects of the two most classical flavors of representation theory under a common umbrella: representations of groups and of Lie algebras. However, it turns out that general algebras fail to capture certain features of group representations and the same can be said for representations of Lie algebras as well. The additional structure that is needed in order to access these features is naturally provided by the important class of \emph{Hopf algebras}. Besides unifying the representation theories of groups and of Lie algebras, Hopf algebras serve a similar purpose in invariant theory, allowing for a simultaneous treatment of group actions (by automorphisms) and Lie algebras (by derivations) on algebras. More importantly, actions of Hopf algebras have the potential of capturing additional aspects of the structure of algebras they act on, uncovering features that cannot be accessed by ordinary groups or Lie algebras. \bigskip Presently, the theory of Hopf algebras is still nowhere near thelevel that has been achieved for groups and for Lie algebras over the course of the past century and earlier. This thesis aims to make a contribution to the representation and invariant theories of Hopf algebras, focusing for the most part on Hopf algebras that are not necessarily finite dimensional. Specifically, the contributions presented here can be grouped under two headings: \smallskip \noindent\qquad(i) \textbf{ Invariant Theory:} Hopf algebra actions and prime spectra, and\smallskip \noindent\qquad(ii)\textbf{ Representation Theory:} the adjoint representation of a Hopf algebra. \smallskip In the work done under the heading (i), we were able to use the action of cocommutative Hopf algebras on other algebras to "stratify" the prime spectrum of the algebra being acted upon, and then express each stratum in terms of the spectrum of a commutative domain. Additionally, we studied the transfer of properties between an ideal in the algebra being acted upon, and the largest sub-ideal of that ideal, stable under the action. We were able to achieve results for various families of acting Hopf algebras, namely \emph{cocommutative} and \emph{connected} Hopf algebras.\\The main results concerning heading (ii) concerned the subalgebra of locally finite elements of a Hopf algebra, often called the finite part of the Hopf algebra. This is a subalgebra containing the center that was used successfully to study the ring theoretic properties of group algebras, Lie algebras, and other classical structures. We prove that the finite is not only a subalgebra, but a coideal subalgebra in general, and in the case of (almost) cocommuative Hopf algebra, it is indeed a Hopf subalgebra. The results in this thesis generalize earlier theorems that were proved for the prototypical special classes of Hopf algebras: group algebras and enveloping algebras of Lie algebras. / Mathematics

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Biological functions in cells are highly complicated and heterogenous, and can be reflected by omics data, such as gene expression levels. Detecting subspace structures in omics data and understanding the diversity of the biological processes is essential to the full comprehension of biological mechanisms and complicated biological systems. In this thesis, we are developing novel statistical learning approaches to reveal the subspace structures in omics data. Specifically, we focus on three types of subspace structures: low-rank subspace, sparse subspace and covariates explainable subspace. For low-rank subspace, we developed a semi-supervised model SSMD to detect cell type specific low-rank structures and predict their relative proportions across different tissue samples. SSMD is the first computational tool that utilizes semi-supervised identification of cell types and their marker genes specific to each mouse tissue transcriptomics data, for better understanding of the disease microenvironment and downstream disease mechanism. For sparsity-driven sparse subspace, we proposed a novel positive and unlabeled learning model, namely PLUS, that could identify cancer metastasis related genes, predict cancer metastasis status and specifically address the under-diagnosis issue in studying metastasis potential. We found PLUS predicted metastasis potential at diagnosis have significantly strong association with patient’s progression-free survival in their follow-up data. Lastly, to discover the covariates explainable subspace, we proposed an analytical pipeline based on covariance regression, namely, scCovReg. We utilized scCovReg to detect the pathway level second-order variations using scRNA-Seq data in a statistically powerful manner, and to associate the second-order variations with important subject-level characteristics, such as disease status. In conclusion, we presented a set of state-of-the-art computational solutions for identifying sparse subspaces in omics data, which promise to provide insights into the mechanism in complex diseases.