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Nena leaves Laredo, Texas, and moves to Madrid, Spain, to research the historical roots of traditional fiestas in Laredo. Immersing herself in post-Franco Spain and its rich history, its food, music, and fiestas, Nena finds herself falling for Paco, a Spaniard who works in publishing. Nena's research and experiences teach her about who she is, where she comes from, and what is important to her, but as her work comes to a close, Nena must decide where she can best be true to her entire self: in Spain with Paco or in Laredo, her home, where her job and family await her return.

• "What you can know is what you have made"
• Pulling the moon
• Elegies
• Gesture with both hands tied
• Dulce
• Wetback
• El frutero
• Nuclear fictions
• Sugar
• First gesture in reverse
• Immigration interview with Jay Leno
• Century of good metal
• Immigration interview with Don Francisco
• Rituals of healing
• Origin of prayer and Eden
• Gesture and pursuit
• Drown
• First wedding dance
• Origin of glass and children
• Love poem: a nocturne
• Please
• Rima
• Bi-glyph
• In vitro fertilization
• Miss Lonelyhearts
• Cenzontle.

The poems in Dulce are at once confession and elegy that admit the speaker's attempt and possible failure to reconcile intimacy toward another and toward the self. The collection asks: what's the point in any of this?-meaning, what's the use of longing beyond pleasure; what's the use of looking for an origin if we already know the ending? Surreal and deeply imagistic, the poems map a parallel between the landscape of the border and the landscape of sexuality. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo invites the reader to confront and challenge the distinctions of borders and categories, and in doing so, he obscures and negates such divisions. He allows for the possibility of an and in a world of either/or. These poems enact a prescient anxiety of what is to come, "I want to say all of this is true / but we both know it isn't. . . . We already know what's at the other end of this." Dulce is truly a lyrical force rife with the rich language of longing and regret that disturbs even the most serene quiet.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Physics describes the Event Horizon as the boundary of a black hole, a one-way crossing between the universe outside and an undiscovered state within, the point of no return between one reality and another. Einstein's theory of Special Relativity proved that different observers, in different states of motion, see different realities. The nearer one approaches the Event Horizon, the stronger the effect on space and time. Nothing? not even light? can escape its power.

In this dissertation, I propose novel approaches to causal inference in the settings characterized by an explicit clustering structure. I study different aspects of this problem, considering settings with few large clusters as well as with many small clusters. The dissertation consists of two essays. The first essay proposes a new model for causal inference in the settings with few large clusters and cluster-level treatment assignment. The second essay studies causal inference questions in the settings with many clusters of moderate size and individual-level treatment assignment. In the first essay, I construct a nonlinear model for causal inference in the empirical settings where researchers observe individual-level data for few large clusters over at least two time periods. It allows for identification (sometimes partial) of the counterfactual distribution, in particular, identifying average treatment effects and quantile treatment effects. The model is flexible enough to handle multiple outcome variables, multidimensional heterogeneity, and multiple clusters. It applies to the settings where the new policy is introduced in some of the clusters, and a researcher additionally has information about the pretreatment periods. I argue that in such environments we need to deal with two different sources of bias: selection and technological. In my model, I employ standard methods of causal inference to address the selection problem and use pretreatment information to eliminate the technological bias. In case of one-dimensional heterogeneity, identification is achieved under natural monotonicity assumptions. The situation is considerably more complicated in case of multidimensional heterogeneity where I propose three different approaches to identification using results from transportation theory. The second essay is co-authored with Guido Imbens. We develop a new estimator for the average treatment effect in the observational studies with unobserved cluster-level heterogeneity. We show that under particular assumptions on the sampling scheme the unobserved confounders can be integrated out conditioning on the empirical distribution of covariates and policy variable within the cluster. To make this result practical we impose a particular exponential family structure that implies that a low-dimensional sufficient statistic can summarize the empirical distribution. Then we use modern causal inference methods to construct a novel doubly robust estimator. The proposed estimator uses the estimated propensity score to adjust the familiar fixed effect estimator.

This thesis consists of three essays, which examine several problems in active asset management and financial intermediation. The first essay demonstrates that skill and scale are significantly mismatched among actively managed equity mutual funds. The second essay models dealer balance sheet costs that arise from debt-overhang, and shows how these balance sheet costs affect valuation, pricing, and liquidity in dealer-intermediated market. The third essay shows that the funding costs to derivatives dealers' shareholders for carrying and hedging dealing inventory have an economically important impact on derivatives prices. An implication is that some supposed ``no-arbitrage" pricing relationships, such as put-call parity, frequently break down. Specifically, the first essay demonstrates that skill and scale are mismatched among actively managed equity mutual funds. Many mutual fund investors behave as though they rely on the Capital Asset Pricing Model. They confuse the effects of fund exposures to other common factors with managerial skill. Actively managed mutual funds with positive factor-related past returns thus accumulate assets to the point that they significantly underperform. I also show that the negative aggregate benchmark-adjusted performance of all actively managed equity mutual funds is caused mainly by the poor performance of this small subset of oversized funds. I find that less skilled active fund managers are inclined to tilt their portfolios toward common factors in order to gather more flows and collect more fees. The second essay, co-authored with Leif Andersen and Darrell Duffie, demonstrates that the funding value adjustments (FVAs) of major dealers are debt-overhang costs to their shareholders. In order to maximize shareholder value, dealer quotations therefore adjust for FVAs. Our case examples include interest-rate swap FVAs and violations of covered interest parity. Contrary to current valuation practice, FVAs are not themselves components of the market values of the positions being financed. Current dealer practice does, however, align incentives between trading desks and shareholders. We also establish a pecking order for preferred asset financing strategies and provide a new interpretation of the standard debit value adjustment (DVA). The third essay shows how debt-overhang funding costs to derivatives dealers' shareholders for carrying and hedging inventory affect mid-market derivatives prices. An implication is that some supposed ``no-arbitrage" pricing relationships, such as options put-call parity, frequently break down. I also explore the implications for measuring the term structure of S& P 500 dividend risk premia.

Centuries before the modern conception of surveillance, medieval subjects imagined an entity that monitored their every move: Christ Pantokrator (Ruler of All). My dissertation, The Medieval Art of Fear, investigates how Byzantine image-makers constructed this all-seeing figure in three-dimensions and manipulated spaces in order to create immersive encounters with the fearsome image. Following the crisis of Byzantine Iconoclasm (726-843), the making and display of Christ Pantokrator structured the visual perception of absolute power. Dramatic poetry, rituals and theologies, replete with fear of the Last Judgment, established the modes through which the faithful would perceive the image. My study taps into this textual evidence as it engages in close analysis of how specific monuments and objects were embedded in public and private rituals that invoked this all-seeing figure. Ultimately this dissertation argues for the critical significance of the image of Christ Pantokrator to the study of fear as a visual, spatial and material experience.

Tumors often result from temporal and spatial dysregulation of developmental signaling pathways. A striking example is medulloblastoma, the most common malignant pediatric brain tumor. During normal cerebellar development, granule neuron precursors (GNPs) proliferate extensively in response to hedgehog (Hh) signaling before differentiating into granule neurons. Sustained Hh signaling in GNPs, due either to reduced function of pathway components that negatively regulate Hh signal transduction or to heightened function of activating Hh signal transducers, results in continued maintenance and division of precursor cells beyond the normal proliferative stage of development, and eventually to formation of a medulloblastoma. To better understand the molecular mechanisms driving proliferation in GNPs and medulloblastoma, I characterized changes in transcript, protein and protein phosphorylation at the beginning of the proliferative stage of GNP development (P1), at peak proliferation (P7) and in the first moments of differentiation (P14). The proliferative period of GNP development had few changes in transcript (<5% of all transcripts changed greater than 2-fold, of which 92% decreased), or protein abundance (<4% of all quantified proteins changed greater than 2-fold, 50% decreased). In contrast, GNP differentiation was accompanied by a moderate increase in transcription (<5% changed 2-fold, 86% of which increased) and widespread protein turn-over (31% of the entire proteome changed 2-fold or more, equally up and down). Notably, phosphorylation was highest at P7 (4.9% of the phosphorylation sites increased >2-fold between P1 and P7) but differentiation was accompanied by widespread dephosphorylation (21.4% of the phosphoproteome decreased > 2-fold). The medulloblastoma-like, peak proliferative stage of GNP development was characterized by high levels of phosphorylation of a specific set of proteins which become dephosphorylated upon differentiation. This suggests that increased activity of a particular kinase might played a role in proliferation of GNPs, and by inference, medulloblastoma. Protein kinase CK2 emerged as a driver of hundreds of phosphorylation events during the proliferative, medulloblastoma-like stage of GNP growth, including three of the eight genes commonly amplified in medulloblastoma. I found that CK2 is required for normal GNP proliferation due to its action on two late steps in Hh signal transduction: stabilizing the transcription factor Gli2 and promoting Gli2-regulated transcription. Treatment of highly aggressive human SHH MB cell lines with CK2 inhibitors resulted in a dose-dependent increase in cell death. Furthermore, treatment of medulloblastoma-bearing mice with CK2 inhibitors blocked growth of mouse medulloblastomas resistant to previous hedgehog inhibitors and resulted in longterm tumor regression. This work has now directly led to a phase 1/2 clinical trial investigating the use of the CK2 inhibitor CX-4945 for treatment of SHH medulloblastoma.

This dissertation examines the nature, frequency, and intensity of violent political conflict (stasis) in the c. 1,100 city-states (poleis) inhabited by the ancient Greeks between 500 and 301 BCE. Against existing scholarship, which conflates stasis with modern analogs like civil war, revolution, and internal war, I highlight the many ways in which stasis was a historically distinctive concept. I show that most poleis experienced stasis at an average rate of more than once per decade and that most staseis produced fewer than a dozen casualties. I also introduce new methods and new tools to overcome three of the most significant obstacles that face attempts to study Greek history on a panhellenic scale: the scarcity, ambiguity, and deep biases of the evidentiary record.

This thesis considers several learning problems where interaction between the end-user and the algorithm play an important role. The thesis is organized as follows. The first chapter provides background material on mechanism design and reinforcement learning, and discusses related work. This sets us up for the next three chapters, which cover our contributions. In the second chapter, we consider recommendation systems. Many recommendation algorithms rely on user data to generate recommendations. However, these recommendations also affect the data obtained from future users. We aim to understand the effects of this dynamic interaction. We propose a simple model where users with heterogeneous preferences arrive over time. Based on this model, we prove that naive estimators, i.e. those which ignore this feedback loop, are not consistent. We show that consistent estimators are efficient in the presence of myopic agents. Our results are validated using simulations. In the third chapter, we consider a platform that wants to learn a personalized policy for each user, but the platform faces the risk of a user abandoning the platform if they are dissatisfied with the actions of the platform. For example, a platform is interested in personalizing the number of newsletters it sends, but faces the risk that the user unsubscribes forever. We propose a general thresholded learning model for scenarios like this, and discuss the structure of optimal policies. We describe salient features of optimal personalization algorithms and how feedback the platform receives impacts the results. Furthermore, we investigate how the platform can efficiently learn the heterogeneity across users by interacting with a population and provide performance guarantees. In the fourth chapter, we propose a new experimentation framework for the setting where there are many hypotheses and observations are costly. In such scenario, it is important to internalize the opportunity cost of assigning a sample to an experiment. We fully characterize the optimal policy and give an algorithm to compute it. Furthermore, we provide a simple heuristic that helps understand the optimal policy. Simulations based on baseball batting average data demonstrate superior performance compared to alternative algorithms. We also discuss more general insights gained from this testing paradigm, such as the paradox of power; high-powered tests can lead to inefficient sampling.

"Contemporary Suburbium is a photographic meditation on living in the suburbs of Orange County, California -- specifically, Huntington Beach, a seaside town on the outer extremities of the population surrounding Los Angeles. Once dotted with orange trees, oil drilling and summer cottages for the rich, Huntington Beach is now a popular beach destination for vacationers, and the old cottages are being replaced with tall modern three-story houses. The photographs in this book are a look at the people of this traditionally conservative stronghold, the disaffected youth, the fortunate (and less fortunate), as they venture out from behind fences, walls, and endless blocks of tract housing. Reading like two opposing coming-of-age novellas about the same place, Contemporary Suburbium offers a gritty and sunbaked, yet romantic view of Southern California, and of the twenty-first century in its own adolescence"--Publisher's website. https://www.nazraeli.com/complete-catalogue/ed-deanna-templeton

"Nazraeli Press is delighted to present our third monograph by American photographer Lucas Foglia. Human Nature revisits themes established in Foglia's his previous books, A Natural Order and Frontcountry, but on a broader, global scale. Foglia grew up on a small farm bordering a wild forest, thirty miles east of New York City. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded his family's fields and blew down the oldest trees in the woods. On the news, scientists linked the storm to climate change caused by human activity. Foglia realized that if humans are changing the weather, then there is no place on earth unaltered by people. The average American spends 93% of their life indoors. With this in mind, Foglia photographed government programs that connect people to nature, neuroscientists measuring how time in wild places benefits us, and climate scientists measuring how human activity is changing the air. Many of the scientists included in the book are now facing budget cuts and censorship by the Trump administration. Human Nature begins in cities and moves through forests, farms, deserts, ice fields, and oceans, towards wilderness. Funny, sad, or sensual, the photographs illuminate the human need to connect to the wildness in ourselves." -- Publisher's website https://www.nazraeli.com/

"The photographs in Hundreds of Sparrows were made in the Central Valley, in particular, the sprawling cities of Modesto, Fresno, and Bakersfield that sit within this vast agricultural region in the geographical center of California. This location also served as the setting for Grannan’s debut feature film, 'The Nine', which premiered to wide critical acclaim in 2016. Throughout the works, the artist explores the significance and complexity of the seemingly ordinary, the mundane and the overlooked--anonymous strangers, familiar gestures and interactions--the soundscape and theatre of nowhere"--Publisher's website, February 1, 2018. https://www.nazraeli.com/complete-catalogue/katy-grannan-hundreds-v1

Photographs taken from 1979 to 1998 in the Los Angeles area.

"A brief description of Morning Star and Wheeler Ranches in Sonoma County, California during the late sixties-early seventies, including the two Wheeler Ranch manifestos. During the late sixties-early seventies, two open-door communal ranches opened their gates in Sonoma County, California. Nothing quite like them had ever existed before, and people came from all over the country to live there. Together, they allowed city folks and others to rediscover and practice a tribal, neo-primitive way of life that consumed less energy and offered more freedom than our regulated, consumption-oriented Great Society could give. Many of these settlers formed small families that migrated north to the 'Kingdom of New Albion, ' as we call the rural areas of Mendocino, Humboldt and other counties, where land was cheap and they could continue thieir new-found lifestyle unmolested. At our two ranches, we experienced a magical eight years until Sonoma County authorities discovered that they could use the health and buildings codes punitively to bulldoze the houses, expel the inhabitants, and close them both down. Although Lou Gottlieb's Morning Star and Bill Wheeler's Sheep Ridge/Ahimsa differed in many respects, they both celebrated the freedom of each individual to 'do their thing, ' as long as no harm came to anyone or to the land. People who arrived, allergic to everything they had experienced, discovered the healing aspects of living on the earth with no concrete foundation under them, of building a home-made simple structure, and the pride that came from 'owning' their habitation, even if only a hut with a canvas roof. But the change was too sudden for many neighbors, who feared that drug-crazed hippies would lead their children astray. In the case of each ranch, one politically powerful neighbor acted as the catalyst, and saw to it that the district attorney acted on their complaints. By 1973, it was all over, and the fines levied and legal fees for the defense ocquired ran into many thousands of dollars. Sonoma County's fees no doubt were even greater for the abortive raids and harassments, many of which were found illegal and thrown out of court."--Amazon.com.