The uterus as a narrative space in contemporary cinema from the Americas

Ph. D. ThesisThis thesis examines the uterus as a narrative space in contemporary cinema from the Americas. The thesis offers a timely change in focus for film studies in relation to pregnancy and the female reproductive body as it investigates the overlooked space of the uterus, and speaks to the increasing importance of the critical medical humanities. Through close textual analysis, framed phenomenologically, I argue that the uterus is a distinct narrative space by bringing into dialogue film theory and scholarship on the foetal ultrasound to create an analytical framework, which includes biotourism, collaborative coding, and the notion of ultrasound bonding. The thesis is divided into three main chapters. In Chapter One I establish the uterus as a narrative space in Juno (Jason Reitman, 2007, USA); Maria Full of Grace/María, llena eres de gracia (Joshua Marston, 2004, Colombia/USA/Ecuador); Gestation/Gestación (Esteban Ramírez, 2009, Costa Rica), and Stephanie Daley (Hilary Brougher, 2009, USA) by bringing together Vivian Sobchack’s notion of the screen as premises for perception (1992) and Julie Roberts’ notion of collaborative coding (2012a; 2012b). Chapter Two argues for the existence of a biotourist narrative in The Milk of Sorrow/ La teta asustada (Claudia Llosa, 2009, Peru/Spain); Quinceañera/ Echo Park (Wash Westmoreland, Richard Glatzer, 2006, USA); Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (David Lowery, 2013, USA), and Apio verde (Francesc Morales, 2013, Chile). Chapter Three highlights the transformation of the foetus in Up (Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, 2009, USA); The Bad Intentions/Las malas intenciones (Rosario García-Montero, 2011, Peru/Argentina/Germany); Pan’s Labyrinth/El laberinto del fauno (Guillermo del Toro, 2006, Spain/Mexico/USA); and Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2009, USA/UK/Germany/France) by bringing Janelle Taylor’s (2008) notion of bonding into dialogue with the Marksian recollection-object. The thesis focuses attention on narrative spaces in the body in relation to film form, rather than representations of the pregnant body or the figure of the mother and, thus, differs significantly from other scholarship to offer a bold analytical shift on the subject of pregnancy.Research Centre for Film and Digital Media (RCFDM), SELLL and SML Newcastle University, The Fran Trust at Foundation Scotlan

β-cells cis-regulatory networks and type 1 diabetes

[eng] Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) is a ­cell­targeted autoimmune disease, leading to a reduction in pancreatic ­cell mass that renders patients insulin­dependent for life. In early stages of the disease, cells from the immune system infiltrate pancreatic islets in a process called insulitis. During this stage, a cross­talk is established between cells in the pancreatic islets and the infiltrating immune cells, mediated by the release of cytokines and chemokines. Studying the gene regulatory networks driving cell responses during insulitis, will allow us to pinpoint key gene pathways leading to ­cell loss­of­function and apoptosis, and also to understand the role cells have in their own demise. In the present thesis, we used two different cytokine cocktails, IFN­ and IFN­ + IL­1, to model early and late insulitis, respectively. After exposing cells and pancreatic islets to such proinflammatory cytokines, we characterized the changes in their chromatin landscape, gene networks and protein profiles. Using both models, we observed dramatic chromatin remodeling in terms of accessibility and/or H3K27ac histone modification enrichment, coupled with up­regulation of the nearby genes and increased abundance of the corresponding protein. Mining gene regulatory networks of ­cells exposed to IFN­ revealed two potential therapeutic interventions which were able to reduce interferon signature in cells: 1) Inhibition of bromodomain proteins, which resulted in a down­regulation of IFN­­induced HLA­I and CXCL10 expression; 2) Baricitnib, a JAK1/2 inhibitor, which was able to reduce both IFN­­induced HLA­I and CXCL10 expression levels and cell apoptosis. In cells exposed to IFN­ + IL­1, we were able to identify a subset of novel regulatory elements uncovered upon the exposure, which we named Induced Regulatory Elements (IREs). Such regions were enriched for T1D­associated risk variants, suggesting that cells might carry a portion of T1D genetic risk. Interestingly, we identified two T1D lead variants overlapping IREs, in which the risk allele modulated the IRE enhancer activity, exposing a potential T1D mechanism acting through cells. To facilitate the access to these genomic data, together with other datasets relevant for the pancreatic islet community, we developed the Islet Regulome Browser (http://www.isletregulome.org/), a free web application that allows exploration and integration of pancreatic islet genomic data

Linguistic Variation from Cognitive Variability: The Case of English \u27Have\u27

In this dissertation, I seek to construct a model of meaning variation built upon variability in linguistic structure, conceptual structure, and cognitive makeup, and in doing so, exemplify an approach to studying meaning that is both linguistically principled and neuropsychologically grounded. As my test case, I make use of the English lexical item ‘have\u27 by proposing a novel analysis of its meaning based on its well-described variability in English and its embed- ding into crosslinguistically consistent patterns of variation and change.I support this analysis by investigating its real-time comprehension patterns through behavioral, electropsychophysiological, and hemodynamic brain data, thereby incorporating dimensions of domain-general cognitive variability as crucial determinants of linguistic variability. Per my account, ‘have\u27 retrieves a generalized relational meaning which can give rise to a conceptually constrained range of readings, depending on the degree of causality perceived from either linguistic or contextual cues. Results show that comprehenders can make use of both for ‘have\u27-sentences, though they vary in the degree to which they rely on each.At the very broadest level, the findings support a model in which the semantic distribution of ‘have\u27 is inherently principled due to a unified conceptual structure. This underlying conceptual structure and relevant context cooperate in guiding comprehension by modulating the salience of potential readings, as comprehension unfolds; though, this ability to use relevant context–context-sensitivity–is variable but systematic across comprehenders. These linguistic and cognitive factors together form the core of normal language processing and, with a gradient conceptual framework, the minimal infrastructure for meaning variation and change

Linguistic variation from cognitive variability: the case of English \u27have\u27

In this dissertation, I seek to construct a model of meaning variation built upon variability in linguistic structure, conceptual structure, and cognitive makeup, and in doing so, exemplify an approach to studying meaning that is both linguistically principled and neuropsychologically grounded. As my test case, I make use of the English lexical item \u27have\u27 by proposing a novel analysis of its meaning based on its well-described variability in English and its embedding into crosslinguistically consistent patterns of variation and change. I support this analysis by investigating its real-time comprehension patterns through behavioral, electropsychophysiological, and hemodynamic brain data, thereby incorporating dimensions of domain-general cognitive variability as crucial determinants of linguistic variability. Per my account, \u27have\u27 retrieves a generalized relational meaning which can give rise to a conceptually constrained range of readings, depending on the degree of causality perceived from either linguistic or contextual cues. Results show that comprehenders can make use of both for \u27have\u27-sentences, though they vary in the degree to which they rely on each. At the very broadest level, the findings support a model in which the semantic distribution of \u27have\u27 is inherently principled due to a unified conceptual structure. This underlying conceptual structure and relevant context cooperate in guiding comprehension by modulating the salience of potential readings, as comprehension unfolds; though, this ability to use relevant context--context-sensitivity--is variable but systematic across comprehenders. These linguistic and cognitive factors together form the core of normal language processing and, with a gradient conceptual framework, the minimal infrastructure for meaning variation and change

Seeing the Spell: Baroque, Decadence, and a Cinema of Digital-Animated Liberation

This dissertation draws on the artistic traditions of seventeenth-century Baroque and nineteenth-century Decadence in seeking to formulate an analytical vocabulary for the aesthetics of digitally-animated spectacle in contemporary cinema. The dissertation seeks to critique binary antinomies of narrative vs. spectacle, and instead propose a concept of narrativized spectacle whereby digital visual effects have brought about a profound liberation in cinemas capacity to envision narrative story-worlds, and depict their workings. It takes the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster as its chief subject for this inquiry, insofar as this is the filmmaking idiom most given to the embrace and deployment of digitally-liberated spectacle, and one which is frequently assumed to be largely bereft of formal and narrative sophistication. This dissertation argues, on the contrary, that the Hollywood blockbusters spectacular nature in fact bears complex utopian implications, and that the crudities which occasionally mar the form in practice are more the result of not being imaginatively hyperbolic enough, rather than being too much so. The dissertations invocation of Baroque and Decadent aesthetics provides a conceptual apparatus for describing this contemporary cinematic idiom of digitized blockbuster spectacle. It identifies a Baroque aesthetic in such stylistic traits as verticality, profusion, and the sublime, as well as narrative themes of transgression of limits, reverence before imposing scale and grandeur, and refusal to ennoble passivity and martyrdom. Likewise, it identifies Decadent aesthetics in stylistics which privilege the gaze, the enclosed and aestheticized space, and formal ritual, as well as narratives ordered around principles of perversity, self-consciousness, and interconnectedness. The ultimate intervention which this dissertation seeks to make, however, is to demonstrate the centrality rather than marginality of animation to cinema, insofar as cel animation has always possessed the graphic freedom to realize any imaginative vision, which digital effects have only recently extended to live-action cinema. All of the aesthetics of Baroque and Decadent blockbuster spectacle that the dissertation traces could be and, the dissertation seeks to show, were deployed in the animated feature years in advance of the liberation of representation that digital effects would bring to live-action

The Pageantry of Western Bodies: Material Practices, Intercorporealities and Cultural Recycling in the Twenty-First Century

This thesis argues for a new way of thinking about the corporeality in cultural performance. Drawing on performance theory, cultural analysis, corporeal and materialist discourses, I demonstrate how the new workings of bodily materiality and its dramaturgical configurations constitute an extra layer of meaning, most readily discerned when the body is deliberately placed on a public display, thus also exposing and highlighting its – often exaggerated – material workings. The concept of material as used in this study does not denote the anatomical or organic, although it is informed by them; nor does it imply the purely representational body. What I call for is a quality of “presentness” engendered through materiality, between organic and representational, that is informed by historical and cultural context and the workings of fleshy reality, as well as the meanings created by the bodily image. The material layer persistently reveals itself in the four case studies which embody the “pageantry” of contemporary Western bodies and comprise the thesis: the dead body as represented by Gunther von Hagens’ plastinates, the pop body produced by contemporary popular culture, homo nudus, or the naked body, as it appears in theatre performance and the wrestler’s body in the context of professional wrestling. By departing from the well-established postmodern and phenomenological terminology, the study re-evaluates the contemporary status of the body and its reception, and offers new approaches to the heterogeneous bodily manifestations of the twenty-first century

Tracking Queer Kinships: Assisted Reproduction, Family Law and the Infertility Trap

The global advent of assisted human reproduction has brought with it an upheaval in social, cultural and legal norms of the family. The centrality of biological reproduction to the traditional heterosexual family has been challenged by reproductive intervention, further destabilizing nuclear family norms already unmoored by same-sex marriage, single mothers, unwed fathers, and increased access to divorce, contraceptives and abortion. As these challenges have shifted EuroAmerican social norms of family, the law has increasingly been called upon to preside over the re-organization of intimate life, operating as a central vehicle to reframe the relationship of the family to the state. This relationship remains critical, as the family remains the preeminent social institution and the conduit through which both biological and social reproduction are performed. The traditional family has thus become the site of considerable anxiety, and perhaps nowhere more so than in regard to assisted human reproduction (AHR). This dissertation argues that the complex outcomes of blood, genetics, sociality and affiliation created through reproductive technology, and the legal struggles they engender, cannot be understood as mere deviations from the heterosexually reproductive family. Instead, it invites exploration of the sociality and legal bonds created by the inherently non-reproductive family as a locus to understand the decoupling of sex from reproduction that is being produced through AHR. It draws from more than 1200 pages of interview transcripts with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, two-spirit and queer [LGBTQ] Canadians who have used or considered using reproductive assistance, and reflects upon this data to examine the assumptions of law, nature, technology and kinship that drive the conceptual vocabularies of AHR. Its central contention is for the utility of a queer perspective on reproductive law and technology, as a way to pry open cognate issues around kinship, biology, sociality and the order of family. By placing LGBTQ participant voices at the fore, this dissertation offers a fresh analysis on complex questions of parentage, child-rearing and the legal regulation of intimacy

Play Among Books

How does coding change the way we think about architecture? Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books