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This dissertation argues that early modern English drama portrays touch as a crucial means of social negotiation. In the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, a diverse array of contacts between characters, from kicks to kisses to handshakes, embody social relations including dominance, reciprocity and mutuality, in contexts ranging from friendship to marriage to the political realm. But the relations embodied by a given form of touch are not fixed: even as the stage depicts characters using touch to negotiate social relations, many touch gestures are themselves the subjects of social struggle. Amid changing religious views of the senses and emergent discourses of civility, the theater tests, critiques, and reformulates competing codifications of the social role of touch. Five chapters, organized by body part—feet, laps, arms, hands, and mouth respectively—outline the most contested features of the theater’s surprisingly diverse vocabulary of touch. Chapter One considers plays from Love’s Labor’s Lost to the anonymous A Yorkshire Tragedy that contest prevalent associations of the foot with hierarchical dominance in portrayals of such gestures as kicking, foot-kissing, and playing footsy. Chapter Two argues that Hamlet and other plays rework the culturally expected meanings of a male laying his head in a female’s lap, to suggest this action could signify affectionate reciprocity rather than masculine dissipation or dangerous female dominance. Chapter Three argues that Coriolanus, Marlowe’s Edward II, and Arden of Faversham resist a prominent historical tendency to restrict both same-sex and cross-gendered embracing and linking arms to erotically intimate contexts, with each play suggesting that such restriction supports patriarchal power and surveillance. Chapter Four considers hand-holding, betrothal, and hand clasps accompanying business deals and political alliances in Julius Caesar, Jonson’s Poetaster, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and others, which portray touch as enacting mutuality, in contexts otherwise marked by hierarchies of gender and status. Finally, Chapter Five analyzes depictions of kissing, whether erotic or sociable, in plays ranging from Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair to Romeo and Juliet. In depictions of contested courtship and neighborly kisses, plays represent female agents strategically claiming a measure of autonomy among patriarchal structures. / 2026-02-28T00:00:00Z

This thesis investigated developmental changes in temporal perception of hearing and touch (audiotactile). Three empirical chapters provide converging evidence on the unique characteristics of this modality pairing. In Chapter 2, a simultaneity judgment task assessed temporal perception. Three groups of children (aged 7-, 9-, and 11-years-old) were compared to a group of adults, examining measures such as the temporal simultaneity window and the point of subjective simultaneity. By age 11, mature temporal perception between hearing and touch was observed. Chapter 3 investigated developmental changes in temporal-based integration using the fission and fusion illusions. The study involved comparing three groups of children to adults (aged 9-, 11-, and 13-years-old). The measure of illusion strength combined with a signal detection analysis demonstrated that children did not exhibit adult-like integration until around age 13. Chapter 4 explored the potential impact of short-term congenital visual deprivation on hearing and touch temporal perception. An audiotactile simultaneity task was used to test a group of adults who received treatment for congenital bilateral cataracts. The results of this final experiment are considered preliminary because of limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic; instead of the planned age- and gender-matched control participants, we utilized the adult data from Chapter 2 for comparison. The General Discussion provides a comprehensive account of how these findings relate to one another and how they situate in the broader literature. Additionally, a novel hypothetical theory is presented, incorporating the established causal inference framework, to offer insights into observed changes in multisensory perception across development. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Perception relies on combining information from our senses. Multiple cues determine whether we integrate or segregate sensory information. Timing provides one crucial cue. Children's timing perception requires development to reach the same precision as adults. Most studies on the development of time perception between the senses have included vision. However, this thesis investigated the development of time perception between hearing and touch. The first two empirical chapters explored typical development using complementary tasks, while the third empirical chapter investigated the impact of congenital cataracts on timing perception. By studying children with cataracts who underwent early cataract removal, we can observe the effects of visual deprivation on these senses. These chapters shed light on the development of audiotactile temporal perception and propose that different combinations of senses may develop independently.

Artificial tactile recognition systems can provide valuable information about the surroundings and would enable artificial systems like prostheses and robotics to protect themselves against damage. However, making the desired geometry of sensing elements in flexible and stretchable sensors is a problem to be addressed. To overcome these hurdles, 3D printing technology can introduce advantages such as ease of design and rapid prototyping of complex geometries for soft sensors. Here, we report a conductive, biocompatible and antimicrobial 3D printed electronic skin (e-skin) based on a combination of platinum-cured silicone inks alongside carbon nanofibers (CNF). We adapted and standardized 3D printing parameters to obtain consistent CNF-based structural patterns and geometries. We explored the influence of printing angles and infill density on the mechanical properties of the printed structure, and utilized them to build complex resistive sensors with conductivity values of up to 120 S m-1, stretchability of up to 1000%, and 1200% increased pressure sensitivity in comparison to bulk sensors. We investigated the biocompatibility and antibacterial action of our material, and developed relieved pigmented e-skin sensor parts that can be integrated into robotic limbs to measure touch and a wide range of human motions demonstrating its promising integration in smart robotic sensing.

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In light of its title, ""The Petting Zoo,""? many of the poems in this collection exist on the page as animals, domestic ones mostly like cats and dogs and birds. Animals that have been tamed and trained to eat out of bowl or Petri dish, shit in certain places, and animals that have grown accustomed to the habitual pet and good good bird affirmation of owner. Katy wanna cracker? To be looked at. To be fed. To be loved. These poems are personal. They are an attempt to articulate the desires of a speaker who is in a constant state of trying to understand the world and the obsessive concerns that decorate her life: think memory, think past, think brother, think sex, think nature, empathy, imagination, abortion, old dog, abortion, love, all of which show up time and time and again throughout the collection. Touch and to be touched, to be whole and yet to break. These poems, perhaps, approach what it means to be alive, and even more specific, what it means to be alive and working through the aftermath of the past and day-to-day that for the speaker often feels broken and incomplete. / Master of Fine Arts

The resonance of a knock on a door uncovers its density. The smell of a wall describes its materiality. The texture of a floor may invite us to sit or lay down. The smoothness of a handrail comforts our ascent. Human skin is a powerful material that enables us to perceive and understand our surroundings. Skin is highly expressive; based on its color, texture, wear and plasticity we can read it, gathering information concerning culture, ethnic background, age, abuse, health and the tasks it performs on specific body parts. Skin itself reads as it is readable. Our skin can gather data through tactile perception and read our spatial surroundings. Architecture is an expressive act and the only discipline that stimulates all of our senses. An architect designs spaces that foresee and celebrate the bodily interaction of the inhabitant. The architecture of the 21st century seems to be geared toward a more optic experience, an influence of the digital world and its widespread effect. The architectural body of modern construction is made up of skins that convey no intentions of interaction between human skin, delivering a concoction of low quality materials that time and again are layered the same way and only aim to be cost efficient. The result is a bland, empty and "flat" experience. In a culture dominated by visual stimulation, can the design of architectural skins aid in the reading and understanding through touch of an architectural body's spatial sequence? / Master of Architecture

The purpose of this thesis was to review findings regarding human touch and positive and negative effects on preterm infants. The review and synthesis of findings included data from research articles published from 2000-2006. Studies showed positive outcomes associated with infant massage, kangaroo care, gentle human touch, and facilitated tucking. One study noted negative effects ofbradycardia/hypoxia during kangaroo care. Positive effects included increases in weight gain, improved bone formation and mineralization, ability of infants to maintain temperature, and decreased pain responses. Limitations included the small number of studies within the US in comparison to other countries and small sample sizes. This work provides a single source for nurses in regard to the care of preterm infants using these interventions.

For this essay we used pattern theory from interface design and applied it in an analysis of touch games. In order to make full use of the patterns, we selected five of them and adapted these slightly with the help of game related patterns to be useful for the framework of this essay. The selection of games were the top eight games on the App Store’s “What’s Hot”. The results showed, among other things, that the games had a clear focus on getting a pleasant apperance, and they did it relatively well. The grouping and positioning of buttons on the other hand was illogical and at times frustrating. We came to a conclusion that the focus on the visual apperance of the games had consequences on other aspects that were perhaps more important to the interface. Furthermore, we noticed a distinct lack of interface in both menus and during gameplay. We deduced this was since the game developers chose to use the technical aspects of touch, rather than implement more interface such as buttons or similiar. / I denna uppsats använde vi oss av teori från gränssnittdesign och applicerade den i en analys av touchspel. För att kunna utnyttja patterns optimalt, valde vi ut fem stycken av dem och anpassade dessa för att passa syftet av vår uppsats. Urvalet av spel valdes genom att hämta de åtta spel som visades under App Stores ”What’s Hot”-lista. Resultaten visade bland annat att spelen hade ett tydligt fokus på att ha ett trevligt utseende vilket de också lyckades med relativt väl. Grupperingen av knappar var dock ologisk och stundtals frustrerande. Vi kom fram till att fokuset på den visuella aspekten av gränssnitten hade konsekvenser på andra aspekter som möjligtvis är viktigare för gränssnittet. Utöver detta noterade vi även att det var en klar brist på gränsnitt i spelen, både i menyer och under spelandet. Detta beror enligt oss på att spelutvecklarna valde att utnyttja de tekniska aspekterna av touch, snarare än att implementera mer gränssnitt såsom knappar eller liknande. / C-uppsats för Medieteknik