In 2008, a new course entitled Ethics and Religious Culture was introduced in Quebec for students from first grade to secondary five, with the exception of secondary three students. The implementation of the course was controversial and many parents and…

Situated in a Canadian multiethnic urban neighbourhood, this exploratory study examines the experiences of youth dancing Hip Hop. Critical and performance ethnographic research was conducted at a drop-in Hip Hop class at a community centre using participant observation and dyadic…

This thesis synthesizes different elements of Bourdieu’s writings on practice, politics, and charisma to provide a new interpretation of Egypt and Syria’s three-year merger into a unified state, the United Arab Republic (UAR). It begins with a theoretical chapter that…

This thesis examines variations in specific framing used by the Obama administration and New York Times journalists during the public legitimation process of armed unmanned aerial vehicles. It employs a theoretical framework that examines the socially thick agency created through…

This dissertation is centered on the Grande Bibliothèque (GB) which opened in Montreal in the spring of 2005, and was a library project of unprecedented scale in the city. The Grande Bibliothèque project unfolded during a significant moment in the…

A plant is a natural hierarchical structure, which exhibits remarkable mechanical properties. The macro (scale) mechanical properties of a plant are the cumulative outcome of the structural properties of its preceding level of structural hierarchy. To develop engineering structures inspired…

In the last few decades, the world of electric machine design, specifically induction machine design, has been reinvigorated by the introduction of power electronics. Where designers were once limited to a single alternating current waveform with constant voltage and frequency,…

It is commonly believed that memory capacities decline with advanced age. Among various biological mechanisms investigated, the stress hormone (cortisol) has received much attention. When cortisol levels are elevated, they impair cognitive performance. Yet evidence shows that there is considerable…

Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection is now recognized as an antecedent for the development of cervical cancer and over the last two decades has been increasingly recognized as a major risk factor for oropharyngeal cancer (OPC). The last twenty years…

This research focuses on tracking generic non-rigid objects at close range to an infrared triangulation-based RGB-D sensor. The work was motivated by direct industry demand for a foundation for a low-cost application to operate in a surveillance setting. There are…