Eve and the creation cycle: Christina Rossetti\u27s reaction to John Milton\u27s Paradise Lost

Christina Rossetti\u27s poetry is concerned with the image of woman as a creator and as a redeemer, the woman who has fallen from innocence and whose innocence is restored through participation in the creation/redemption cycle. Rossetti\u27s writing reflects her personal experiences, her love of Dante\u27s works, her interest in the Anglican sisterhood, her own Tractarian obsession, the influence of her association with the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and most specifically, her reaction to Milton\u27s depiction of Eve in Paradise Lost. She reconstructs Milton\u27s Eve in her own poetry. This treatise will examine a selection of poetry by Christina Rossetti, in specific her depiction of Eve, as a reaction to Milton\u27s Eve in his epic poem

Decapitation and disgorgement: The female body\u27s text in early modern English literature

My dissertation focuses on language and forms of expression for women in early modern English literature. In particular, William Shakespeare\u27s character Lavinia from Titus Andronicus, Elizabeth Cary\u27s character Mariam in The Tragedy of Mariam, and Isabella Whitney\u27s narrative voice in her poem The Manner of Her Will are examined. French feminist Helene Cixous provides the theoretical framework for this project. Exploring manifestations of Cixous\u27s crucial terms decapitation and disgorgement is the objective of the three core chapters. Privileging the female body\u27s text and discussing the variety of means used to speak it is of central concern. The connection between silencing and expression that brings about a subversion of discourse through generosity rather than hostility is interrogated. I continue to be excited by an investigation of unique ways in which women use language to express rather than be repressed by patriarchal society. This project attempts to follow in the footsteps of contemporary psychoanalytic feminists and post-structuralist critics

New genetic loci link adipose and insulin biology to body fat distribution.

Body fat distribution is a heritable trait and a well-established predictor of adverse metabolic outcomes, independent of overall adiposity. To increase our understanding of the genetic basis of body fat distribution and its molecular links to cardiometabolic traits, here we conduct genome-wide association meta-analyses of traits related to waist and hip circumferences in up to 224,459 individuals. We identify 49 loci (33 new) associated with waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index (BMI), and an additional 19 loci newly associated with related waist and hip circumference measures (P < 5 × 10(-8)). In total, 20 of the 49 waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for BMI loci show significant sexual dimorphism, 19 of which display a stronger effect in women. The identified loci were enriched for genes expressed in adipose tissue and for putative regulatory elements in adipocytes. Pathway analyses implicated adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution, providing insight into potential pathophysiological mechanisms