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Paul of Tarsus has been considered a prominent figure in early Christianity, and his writings are major influence for the Western Christianity. Traditional interpretations of Paul as a heroic and authoritative figure have neglected his personal experiences, particularly his embodiment of weakness. In this thesis, I suggest that Paul’s embodied experience of weakness appears as the axis that articulates his argument in 2 Cor 10-13. I argue that if we take Paul’s weakness seriously, it turns out to be a decentering experience because he is claiming for a spot within the community as one-among-others, and not as its authoritative hero. The thesis is divided in three consecutive chapters. The first chapter of the thesis discusses the interpretative tradition of 2 Cor 10-13, highlighting how the major interpreters of the letter have shifted from rhetorical and linguistic perspectives to culturally embodied analyses that acknowledge Paul’s weakness. The second chapter examines the usage and function of weakness in Paul’s social and literary context as a Second Temple Jew and minister in Corinth. I discuss how the term 'σθένεια was employed in various texts from Greco-Roman, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity backgrounds and explores how diverse are the meanings regarding this word. The third chapter delves into how reading 2 Cor 10-13 through the lens of Paul’s weakness decenters him from an authoritative figure. I argue that the discussion in the letter of tears revolves around Paul’s identity, recognition of the Corinthians as agents in the discussion, and Paul’s claim for a spot as one-among-others in the community. Finally, I present conclusions to the study and ecclesiological projections of reading the Pauline correspondence through the decentering-Paul project’s eyes.

Effects of Micro and Nano Surface Roughness onCavitation Damage of Metallic SurfacesbyJuan Carlos Gonzalez-ParraDoctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Mechanical EngineeringUniversity of California, Riverside, September 2022 Dr. Guillermo Aguilar and Dr. Natanael Cuando-Espitia, Co-ChairpersonsSurface parameters modification via laser irradiation has been a technique used to process materials since de discovery of the laser itself. One of these techniques is nano texturization of a surface by the means of focusing laser irradiation onto it and creating Laser-Induced Periodic Surface Structures (LIPSS). Despite the fact LIPSS have been around since the early dates of laser processing, their physical mechanism is still discussed. These LIPSS’ formation theories have been proposed since the 1980s with the Surface Plasmon Polariton model and Sipe’s theory, and, more recently, the Sipe-Drude model. In recent years, the research has been shifting to their applications. On this work, we suggest a modification of the surface via laser processing for reducing cavitation erosion damage. This proposal is divided in 2 main sections. First, a surface was nanotextured by scribing LIPSS on it. As it is described in the following sections, this processing avoids remnant microbubbles generated after the collapse of a cavitation bubble to attach to the surface, impeding those microbubbles to be activated near the surface and act as a nucleation point when another cavitation bubble is formed. Secondly, by adding a microstructure, a hierarchical structure was generated. This hierarchical structure allowed not only minimizing attached remnant microbubbles, but also the modification of the cavitation bubble’s rebound dynamics. By exclusively generating LIPSS on the surface of the material, we achieved a reduction of erosion by a factor of 3 when compared to an untreated surface. On the other hand, by evaluating it on a hierarchical structure we obtained an improvement of up to a factor of 22. This demonstrates the feasibility of using laser processing of materials as an easy, unexpensive and scalable approach of reducing cavitation erosion.