abstract: Prior to the first successful allogeneic organ transplantation in 1954, virtually every attempt at transplanting organs in humans had resulted in death, and understanding the role of the immune mechanisms that induced graft rejection served as one of the biggest obstacles impeding its success. While the eventual achievement of organ transplantation is touted as one of the most important success stories in modern medicine, there still remains a physiological need for immunosuppression in order to make organ transplantation work. One such solution in the field of experimental regenerative medicine is interspecies blastocyst complementation, a means of growing patient-specific human organs within animals. To address the progression of immune-related constraints on organ transplantation, the first part of this thesis contains a historical analysis tracing early transplant motivations and the events that led to the discoveries broadly related to tolerance, rejection, and compatibility. Despite the advancement of those concepts over time, this early history shows that immunosuppression was one of the earliest limiting barriers to successful organ transplantation, and remains one of the most significant technical challenges. Then, the second part of this thesis determines the extent at which interspecies blastocyst complementation could satisfy modern technical limitations of organ transplantation. Demonstrated in 2010, this process involves using human progenitor cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to manipulate an animal blastocyst genetically modified to lack one or more functional genes responsible for the development of the intended organ. Instead of directly modulating the immune response, the use of iPSCs with interspecies blastocyst complementation could theoretically eliminate the need for immunosuppression entirely based on the establishment of tolerance and elimination of rejection, while also satisfying the logistical demands imposed by the national organ shortage. Although the technology will require some further refinement, it remains a promising solution to eliminate the requirement of immunosuppression after an organ transplant. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Biology 2020

Though historical scholarship on gender and international relations has grown over the last few decades, there has been little work done on women in the Foreign Service. The main objective of this thesis is to examine the role of women diplomats within the Foreign Service since 1945 and to examine how gender differences related to the low numbers of women within the field during a time when women's representation in other male-dominated fields increased substantially. The study is divided into three chapters that focus on determining how certain factors affected women's marginalization within the field. The first chapter examines the basic statistics of the women diplomats. Chapter two explores the policies of other countries towards accepting female diplomats, and the last chapter investigates how women conducted foreign policy and carried out the goals of the administration. The conclusion provides an analysis of the findings of all three areas and how they relate to women's access to fields both within and outside politics. / A Thesis Submitted to the Department of History in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2009. / December 10, 2008. / Perception, Gatekeeper, Ambassador, Diplomacy, Femininity, Masculinity / Includes bibliographical references. / Suzanne Sinke, Professor Directing Thesis; Charles Upchurch, Committee Member; Michael Creswell, Committee Member.

In A Science of Literature, I examine how and why US ethnologists and popular authors of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries collected, read, and interpreted Indigenous oral traditions as works of literature. “Oral traditions” in this case refers to the narratives and songs that Indigenous peoples maintained mostly orally, and which variously served religious, historical, philosophical, educational, and entertainment purposes within Indigenous communities. I track how, through the collection process, Euro-American authors transformed oral traditions into “Indian oral literature,” (re)writing versions of oral traditions that aligned with Western literary categories and attitudes toward the “primitive.” For the most part, this reconceptualization, I argue, worked to discredit oral traditions as bodies of knowledge—as works of fiction and poetry, oral traditions became, in effect, untrue—and it supported removal and assimilation efforts in so far as it was used to shed light on a primitive Indian psychology, one that was naturally poetic, but not rational, not scientific. And yet many Indigenous writers, like George Copway and Zitkala-Ša, took advantage of the popularity of Indian oral literature to produce their own print collections of oral traditions. I analyze these collections as works of Indigenous “counter science.” I show how Indigenous writers, for example, moved from informant to ethnologist as they cited, summarized, and transcribed oral traditions as tribal records (histories, maps, deeds) and later as works of moral philosophy, thus explicitly contesting their interpretation as merely works of the imagination. Oral traditions, as I argue, have functioned as important resources to which Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers alike turned to validate scientific and literary practices, to contest the history of colonization, and to debate US-Indian relations. / English

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This project examines how the confluence of nineteenth-century England’s educational reform, periodical literature, and scientific community growth contributed to a public dialogue between science and spiritualism that positioned the two as antithetical. I argue that this media-borne dialogue entrenched in the public consciousness a scientific domain claiming authority through masculinized, exclusionary language that effectively enclosed knowledge within objective measurement, while dismissing spiritualist notions of embodied knowledges based in affect. In doing so, I locate the under-recognized bridge between the printed medium of the debate itself and its durable influence on public discourse, occurring as it did at precisely the moment to best influence the broadest public. The first chapter examines the confluence of educational reform, burgeoning print culture, and rising science professionalization that formed the ideal delivery platform for the promulgation of a cultural narrative pitting objective knowledge against the subjective. The second chapter examines contemporary newspaper and journal articles to find science repeatedly metaphorized as solid ground, “objective”, and masculinized, while spiritualism is shadowy, irrational, and feminized. Metaphors of light and landscape recur from both sides, with spiritualist voices further claiming unquantifiable and communal experience as of equal value to the material “useful knowledge” privileged by science and institutional schooling. The final chapter analyzes texts from George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Marie Corelli, and Richard Marsh for representations of science, scientists, and those deemed outside their circles. There I discern a reflection of the media debate that finds unexpected – if unsettling – compatibilities between spiritualism and science, rejecting the alleged incompatibility of objective and subjective knowledge. All the texts speculate as to the parameters of human physical and mental life, but notably, none resolve the argument. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This project examines the ways nineteenth-century England’s educational system, periodical literature, and growing science community contributed to a public dialogue between science and spiritualism. The knowledge and practices privileged by science were repeatedly framed as more valuable than, and irreconcilable with, the subjective, personal knowledges of spiritualism, which posited a spiritual human self beyond the limits of the material body. This paper uses examples from contemporary newspaper and journal articles to study the dialogue between science and spiritualism, and finds science metaphorized as solid ground, “objective”, and masculinized, while spiritualism is shadowy, irrational, and feminized. These positions became entrenched enough in the public mind to affect the era’s speculative fiction, but in analyzing texts from George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Marie Corelli, and Richard Marsh, the author also finds an embrace of science and spiritualist themes as sometimes compatible, blurring the simple “sides” of the media conversation.

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