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A Thin Line Between Sovereign And Abject Agents: Global Action Thrillers With The Sci-Fi Mind-Game War On Terror, Seung-Hoon Jeong

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Seung-hoon Jeong discusses in his paper global action thrillers about the war on terror. He highlights the biopolitical abjection of counterterrorist agents from their state agencies. This abjection ends up either self-reaffirming in the manner of a sovereign agent (the Bond series) or terrorizing their sovereign system (the Bourne series), while both are trapped in the vicious cycle of terror and counterterror. More notable is the “mind-game” sci-fi genre. Source Code, among others, stages a loop of a traumatic counterterrorist mission with retroactive causality, a closed circuit of neoliberal productivity and pathological abjection in a video-game narrative. The time-travel …

"The Headwaters Of A River Of Failure": Detroit As An Icon Of American Decline, Jae H. Roe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay analyzes films (8 Mile, Gran Torino, It Follows) and television series (Hung, Low Winter Sun) that use the setting of Detroit to depict characters who are dealing with deteriorating socioeconomic conditions and whose choices and relationships reflect their difficulties in, and anxieties about, adjusting to such conditions. While the familiar icons of Detroit's decline appear in all of these texts, the narratives evolve from working class realism to satire and ultimately horror, or from anxieties about white working class displacement to the displacement of such anxieties. The history of Detroit illustrates the complex ways …

Monstrous Accumulation: Topographies Of Fear In An Era Of Globalization, Robert T. Tally Jr.

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The predominance of the horror genre, broadly conceived, in recent years attests to the profound sense of anxiety and dread permeating late capitalist societies. As the processes and effects of globalization become more viscerally experienced, they are also often rendered invisible or unknowable, and individuals and groups find themselves subject to an immense array of forces beyond their control. The contemporary scene is crowded with monsters, from alien invaders to the zombie apocalypse, set against the backdrop of darkly fantastic landscapes and dystopian visions. Drawing upon a variety of Marxist cultural theory, Robert T. Tally Jr. explores the topographies of …

Introduction To The Monstrous Global: The Effects Of Globalization On Cultures, Ju Young Jin, Jae Roe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This special issue on “The Monstrous Global: The Effects of Globalization on Cultures” explores representations of the monstrous effects and products of globalization. The monstrous (as in The Monstrous Feminine by Barbara Creed) in this sense alludes to the ways in which local or national displays of fear and anxiety about the Other are embedded in struggles and tensions of global scale; the inability to cognitively map the effect of such global forces on local/national problems produces monstrous representations of the global. Global forces such as neoliberalism and reactionary nationalism, technology, climate change, migration and displacement lead to accelerating instability …

Expression Of Tryptophan 2,3-Dioxygenase In Metastatic Uveal Melanoma, Mizue Terai, Eric R Londin, Ankit Rochani, Emma Link, Bao Lam, Gagan Kaushal, Alok Bhushan, Marlana Orloff, Takami Sato

Kimmel Cancer Center Faculty Papers

Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most common primary eye malignancy in adults and up to 50% of patients subsequently develop systemic metastasis. Metastatic uveal melanoma (MUM) is highly resistant to immunotherapy. One of the mechanisms for resistance would be the immune-suppressive tumor microenvironment. Here, we have investigated the role of tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase (TDO) in UM. Both TDO and indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) catalyze tryptophan and produce kynurenine, which could cause inhibition of T cell immune responses. We first studied the expression of TDO on tumor tissue specimens obtained from UM hepatic metastasis. High expression of TDO protein was confirmed in all …

A Deconstructive Reading Of Taoist Influenced Chinese And American Poetry, Hong Zeng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “A Deconstructive Reading of Taoist Influenced Chinese and American Poetry” Hong Zeng attempts to deconstruct the logos status of "Nature" in Chinese natural philosophy and explore the tragic potentiality of such philosophy and poetry under its influence. It also analyzes its aesthetic strategies used to overcome historical tragedy, and how such tragic potentiality in classical Chinese philosophy and poetry break out into the imagery of death and fragmentation in modern Chinese and American poetry under its influence, including poetry by such poets as Hai Zi, Gu Cheng, Robert Bly and Wallace Stevens, and how it sometimes leads …

Writing, Rewriting, And Miswriting: Eileen Chang’S Late Style Against The Grain, Lina Qu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article “Writing, Rewriting, and Miswriting: Eileen Chang’s Late Style Against the Grain,” Lina Qu reconstructs Eileen Chang as a Saidian late figure and formulates the poetics and politics of lateness immanent in her late self-writing. Drawing from Said’s theorization, Qu argues that Chang’s late style emerges and matures in rewriting her memories into numerous autobiographical accounts. The exposé of her dysfunctional family and turbulent life metonymically constitutes a counter narrative that disenchants Chinese modernity. In contrast to the dominant modalities of evolution and revolution, her involutionary discourse embodies a Deleuzian paradigm of artistic creativity and historical development. Qu …

Mo Yan’S Radish: Between The Real And The Surreal, Xiaoyue Li, Xuefang Feng

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article “Mo Yan’s Radish: Between the Real and the Surreal” Xiaoyue Li and Xuefang Feng argue that Radish, a novella written by Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan skillfully combines realism with surrealism, the flexible swing between which is made possible by the choice of children’s perspective, and the effect is too significant to be ignored. Their analysis concludes that the transparent golden radish symbolizes humanity, the lack of which projects the protagonist’ sufferings, and that the surrealist description of the radish reveals the magic function of humanity in brightening up life in times of miseries.

Migrant Necropolitics At The Table: "Civilized Cannibalism" In Mahi Binebine's Cannibales, Taïeb Berrada

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In Cannibales, the Maghrebi Francophone author Mahi Binebine revisits the encounter between the so-called “cannibals” and the European colonizer in the context of illegal immigration where bodies become commodities exchangeable for social improvements creating a different form of cannibalism. It is no longer the usual dichotomy between the civilized and the savage that is at work but rather a “civilized” European imperialist who feeds himself on a migrant’s flesh. This article argues that this representation works as a “colonial fragment” from the past but contextualized in today’s globalization. Binebine’s morbid depiction of an ambivalent postcolonial cannibalistic encounter translates as …

The Goddess Of Love In Sadomasochistic Costume: Roman Polanski's Venus In Fur, Alan P. Barr

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Throughout his career as a filmmaker, Roman Polanski has circled the subject of sex, its aberrations, its delights, and its risks. His twenty feature films are remarkably varied, yet characteristically probe the compelling, contradictory, and enchanting nature of human sexual behavior. He develops a cluster of images or tropes that appear across his films—from knives to claustrophobic settings—that advance his enquiry. Venus in Fur is Polanski’s most comprehensive portrayal of the intricacies of sexual conduct, employing a theatrical setting (rehearsing an adaptation of a notorious classic novel), amplified with cultural allusions and exploring the limits of role-playing. Normality and contentment, …

The Others (2001) By Alejandro Amenábar In The Light Of Valentinian Thought, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article offers a Valentinian interpretation of the Hollywood film The Others (2001). A particular attention is paid to the ways in which cinematic motifs and narrative elements of the film draw on myths, ideas and symbolic imagery present in Valentinian works, especially in the Gospel of Truth (NHC I, 3) and the Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3). In the course of the heuristic analysis, the paper argues that although the film employs Valentinian ideas, it depicts different understanding of the world. This issue is addressed in the last part of the article by situating the film within broader …

Farmer, Priest, And Poet: Knowledge Transmission And Wisdom In Works And Days And Gelimu, Duoduo Xu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This paper aims at a comparison between a classic poem from ancient Greek literature, the Works and Days by Hesiod, and ancestral records of hemerology from Daba Culture, entitled Gelimu, collected during my fieldwork in South-West China. Both traditions use constellations to mark important dates throughout the year, providing similar instructions on how to deal with daily work in the fields. Moreover, their mnemonic strategies and formulaic verses reflect their origins from oral traditions passed down from generation to generation. Starting from these basic similarities, the author analyzed the roles of Daba priests, the calendars authors, and Hesiod, the …

Revisiting "Home" In Ghanaian Poetry: Awoonor, Anyidoho And Adzei, Gabriel Edzordzi Agbozo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The idea of “home” is a significant occurrence in postcolonial literature, as it connects to other ideas as identity, nationhood, and culture. This paper discusses “home” in Ghanaian poetry focusing on three well-regarded poets: Kofi Awoonor, Kofi Anyidoho, and Mawuli Adzei. These poets come from the Ewe ethnic group, and engage with the Pan-African project in both their scholarly and creative expressions. Drawing on John Berger, Sara Dessen, and Ewe thought on the afterlife, this paper suggests two major types of “home” in the works of these three poets: the physical, and the metaphysical. Physical “home” refer to the Wheta …

Prototyping A Social Media Flooding Photo Screening System Based On Deep Learning, Zhenlong Li Huan Ning, Michael E. Hodgson, Cuizhen Wang

Faculty Publications

This article aims to implement a prototype screening system to identify flooding-related photos from social media. These photos, associated with their geographic locations, can provide free, timely, and reliable visual information about flood events to the decision-makers. This screening system, designed for application to social media images, includes several key modules: tweet/image downloading, flooding photo detection, and aWebGIS application for human verification. In this study, a training dataset of 4800 flooding photos was built based on an iterative method using a convolutional neural network (CNN) developed and trained to detect flooding photos. The system was designed in a way that …

Regulation Of Synaptic Development By Astrocyte Signaling Factors And Their Emerging Roles In Substance Abuse, Christopher D. Walker, W. Chris Risher, Mary-Louise Risher

Biomedical Sciences

Astrocytes have critical functions throughout the central nervous system (CNS) and have emerged as regulators of synaptic development and function. With their highly complex morphologies, they are able to interact with thousands of synapses via peripheral astrocytic processes (PAPs), ensheathing neuronal axons and dendrites to form the tripartite synapse. In this way, astrocytes engage in crosstalk with neurons to mediate a variety of CNS processes including the regulation of extracellular matrix protein signaling, formation and maintenance of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), axon growth and guidance, homeostasis of the synaptic microenvironment, synaptogenesis, and the promotion of synaptic diversity. In this review, …

On What Autoethnography Did In A Study On Student Voice Pedagogies: A Mapping Of Returns, Mairi Mcdermott

The Qualitative Report

In this paper, I invite you into some considerations of what autoethnography might do in research, what it might teach us as researchers. In doing so, I return to an autoethnographic study I engaged in a few years ago which was contoured through the question: How do teachers experience student voice pedagogies? In that study, I experienced autoethnography as a creative methodology that allowed me to go back to two experiences I had with youth, or student voice projects. The paper embodies a return to the autoethnographic study of my doctoral research, which itself was a return to the previously …

Culturally Relevant Science Teaching: A Literature Review, Uma Maheshwari Ganesan

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Theses and Other Student Research

This educational research literature review paper aims to discuss the rationale, review eight empirical research studies, and identify knowledge gaps in culturally relevant pedagogy in science education. This paper focuses on synthesis, review, and comparison of the findings of the empirical studies, and categorizes them into thematic heads such as similarities and differences between studies under the broad categories of professional development (PD) programs and case studies. Following these reviews, the author summarizes her reflections and thoughts about the literature to understand the big picture of culturally relevant pedagogy in science education. The basis of this literature review are various …

Creating A Culturally Responsive Stem Classroom, Adrienne Coleman, Sowmya Anjur

Publications & Research

STEM Significance: Career Stability and Economic Development

• According to the Washington-based Center for Political and Economic think tank, the U.S. workforce could employ as many as 140,000 additional Black and Latino college graduates in STEM fields annually if the gap in college completion by Blacks and Latinos closed to roughly match that of the White and Asian student graduation rates.
• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median income for Blacks is $32,229 and $ 38,624 for Latinos, almost $20,000 less than Whites; but for Latinos and Blacks in STEM careers, the median income is $75,000 which is only about …

Crisis, Guy Eric Chinang

Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities

This paper intends to speak on a crisis of, at times focusing on Macalester College, and at others focusing on the university at large. On the broader university, it reflects and analyses the student debt crisis, the corporatization crisis, and the crisis of mass individualism. On Macalester, it traces its evolution on race, and as such, its relationship with black students.

A Message From The Professor, Karin Aguilar-San Juan

Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities

Karin Aguilar-San Juan, Professor and Chair of American Studies at Macalester College, shares the process involved in the creation and publication of We Are the Crisis, volume 9 in the Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities journal series.

Are Men Who Pay For Sex Sexist? Masculinity And Client Attitudes Toward Gender Role Equality In Different Prostitution Markets, Barbara G. Brents, Takashi Yamashita, Andrew L. Spivak, Olesya Venger, Christina Parreira, Alessandra Lanti

Sociology Faculty Research

Prostitution clients’ attitudes toward gender equality are important indicators of how masculinity relates to the demand for commercial sexual services. Research on male client misogyny has been inconclusive, and few studies compare men in different markets. Using an online survey of 519 clients of sexual services, we examine whether male client attitudes toward gender role equality are related to the main methods customers used to access prostitution services (i.e., through print or online media vs. in-person contact). We found no differences among men in these markets in attitudes toward gender role equality in the workplace and home. This is in …

Between Globalism And America First: The Ambiguous Resonance Of Individualist Values In Current U.S. Foreign Policy, Olga Thierbach-Mclean

The Journal of International Relations, Peace Studies, and Development

In the spring of 1917, Woodrow Wilson was struggling with the question of whether the United States of America should enter World War I. This was an extremely difficult political decision. After all, it had only been weeks earlier, in late 1916, that Wilson had been reelected as U.S. President based on a campaign that promoted a policy of neutrality towards foreign affairs and was built around the slogans “He kept us out of the war” and “America First.” Nevertheless, Wilson ultimately decided to ask Congress to declare war against Germany, embarking on an activist foreign policy style that is …

The Journal Of International Relations, Peace And Development Studies - 5th Edition Introduction, Patrick Clairzier

The Journal of International Relations, Peace Studies, and Development

Within this 5th annual issue The Journal of International Relations, Peace Studies & Development, we present three papers that approach this issue from different perspectives.

Amjambo Africa! (February 2020), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Free English classes in Portland.. p.4

From Jordan to Maine............... p.13

Legislative Update.................... p.16

Russ 411.01: 19th Century Russian Authors, Clint B. Walker

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Harnessing The Power Of Social Incentives To Curb Shirking In Teams, Brice Corgnet, Brian C. Gunia, Roberto Hernán González

ESI Working Papers

We study several solutions to shirking in teams that trigger social incentives by reshaping the workplace social context. Using an experimental design, we manipulate social pressure at work by varying the type of workplace monitoring and the extent to which employees engage in social interaction. This design allows us to assess the effectiveness as well as the popularity of each solution. Despite similar effectiveness in boosting productivity across solutions, only organizational systems involving social interaction (via chat) were at least as popular as a baseline treatment. This suggests that any solution based on promoting social interaction is more likely to …

Cross-Cultural Work In Music Cognition: Challenges, Insights, And Recommendations, Nori Jacoby, Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, Martin Clayton, Erin Hannon, Henkjan Honing, John Iversen, Tobias Robert Klein, Samuel A. Mehr, Lara Pearson, Isabelle Peretz, Marc Pearlman, Rainer Polak, Andrea Ravignani, Patrick E. Savage, Gavin Steingo, Catherine J. Stevens, Laurel Trainor, Sandra Trehub, Michael Veal, Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann

Psychology Faculty Research

Many foundational questions in the psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western participants and Western music. For cross-cultural research to thrive, it will require collaboration between people from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as strategies for overcoming differences in assumptions, methods, and terminology. This position paper surveys the current state of the field and offers a number of concrete recommendations focused on issues involving ethics, empirical methods, and definitions of “music” and “culture.”

Ceramide–Rubusoside Nanomicelles, A Potential Therapeutic Approach To Target Cancers Carrying P53 Missense Mutations, Sachin K. Khiste, Zhijun Liu, Kartik R. Roy, Mohammad B. Uddin, Salman B. Hosain, Xin Gu, Sami Nazzal, Ronald A. Hill, Yong Yu Liu

Faculty Publications

Ceramide (Cer) is an active cellular sphingolipid that can induce apoptosis or proliferation-arrest of cancer cells. Nanoparticle-based delivery offers an effective approach for overcoming bioavailability and biopharmaceutics issues attributable to the pronounced hydrophobicity of Cer. Missense mutations of the protein p53, which have been detected in approximately 42% of cancer cases, not only lose the tumor suppression activity of wild-type p53, but also gain oncogenic functions promoting tumor progression and drug resistance. Our previous works showed that cellular Cer can eradicate cancer cells that carry a p53 deletion-mutation by modulating alternative pre-mRNA splicing, restoring wild-type p53 protein expression. Here, we …

Ling 573.50: Language And Culture, Irene Appelbaum

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Ling 473.50: Language And Culture, Irene Appelbaum

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.