This dissertation examines the administration of Islamic family law in the British Straits Settlements and the Netherlands Indies through the lens of Arab merchants in colonial courts from 1860 till 1942. During this period, Arab communities tended to seek justice…

Malaria and diarrhea are major causes of illness and death in Africa. These preventable diseases take the biggest toll on children, mostly due to lack of education and adequate resources in the home. The purpose of the reported research project…

Early Americans defined themselves, and the nation, through their relations with the world. This dissertation explores a crucial aspect of these relations, examining how global commerce, and Americans' ideas about global commerce, produced theories and practices of power. It approaches…

This dissertation explores the conception of Jewish practice developed in the writings of Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786). Although this eighteenth-century figure is often described as the "founder" of modern Jewish thought and as a leading philosopher of the late Enlightenment, considerable…

PICTURES OF PATRIARCHS: THE ILLUSTRATED LIFE AND ACTS OF HÔNEN









ABSTRACT










This dissertation is a study of the Illustrated Life and…

In polyandrous species, sexual selection acts both before (precopulatory) and after
(postcopulatory) mating on traits that are important for reproductive success. Precopulatory traits
are important for mate acquisition and include weapons and ornaments. Postcopulatory traits
include components of sperm quantity…

Seasonality is a characteristic and important feature of the birth rate, but hitherto largely undocumented for sub-Saharan Africa. The research we present in Chapter 2 helps close the gap by providing contemporary documentation of the seasonal patterns of births in…

This dissertation sets a detailed, technical history of ideas of Dutch-born lens maker and natural philosopher Nicolas Hartsoeker (1656-1725). Hartsoeker's case exemplifies the kinds of intellectual journeys a university-educated man with technical skills undertook to navigate the chaos and uncertainty…

This dissertation examines the historical evolution of Korean print culture by studying the ways in which the reading public expanded its boundary beyond the confines of canonical texts in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this dissertation, I analyze…

Although we represent other people in terms of both what they look like and how they behave, these two aspects of person knowledge have rarely been studied together. While vision scientists have focused on the processing of faces and bodies,…