A satire of their own: subjectivity, subversion, and the rewriting of literary history in women’s satire of the twentieth century

In recent years, there has been renewed interest in the study of literary satire, particularly twentieth century works that are more aligned with the complexity and ambiguity found in Menippean satire. Despite the abundance of scholarship about satire produced within the past decade, twentieth century women’s satire is an area that has been largely ignored. One reason why there are so few studies about women’s satire is that women theorists and critics distance themselves from the genre, making the argument that satire and women’s writing are in contention with one another. Because satire is an important tool used by the oppressed to mock their oppressors, this dissertation aims to uncover how women writers of the twentieth century use specific techniques of satire to deride the literary establishment that attempts to categorize and rank genres as ‘literary’ while marginalizing women’s ways of writing. I make the argument that parody and irony, both often used for the purpose of satirizing, are the two most common tools women writers use to critique the literary tradition. Furthermore, women’s satire uses humor and an emphasis on the subjective experiences of women to deflate the masculine focus on empiricism, objectivity, and literary exclusivity. Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories related to Menippean satire, parody, dialogism, carnival and the novel are used in this study to offer a framework of how women writers situate their criticisms of patriarchal hegemonies and hierarchies, including those within the male dominated literary tradition. Women satirists favor the Menippean form because of its ambiguity, playfulness, malleability and resistance to easy categorization, as well as the genre’s roots in the communal and egalitarian features of carnival. In addition, poststructural feminists such as Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler add insight as to why women’s writing, including satire, is often misread by men when considering its refusal to fit neatly into the literary tradition and within distinct genre boundaries. This project intends to recover satire as an ‘available means’ for the woman writer. The chapters in this study offer examples of women writers within various literary movements of the twentieth century – Virginia Woolf, Stella Gibbons, Angela Carter, and Margaret Atwood – who satirically parody established genres including biography, history, rural fiction, the fairy tale and dystopian literature

The feminine erotic ; and Gen(d)re bending: ambiguity and sexual androgyny in Virginia Woolf's Orlando

For this paper I propose an experimental application of Hélène Cixous's theory of écriture féminine to the erotic works of Anaïs Nin, particularly the erotic short stories written in the 1940s that are now found in her books Little Birds and Delta of Venus . I also refer to statements Nin made in her diaries concerning her conflicting emotions about creating her own style of writing that encompasses feminine writing. I believe Anaïs Nin illustrates Cixous's expression of a form of feminine writing and began the notion of écriture féminine before Cixous coined the term. My thesis counters the various critics who criticize Nin for supposedly copying the masculine pornographic descriptions of sexual encounters. In rebuttal, I argue that through her poetic portrayal of intimacy and sexual experience, through her diction, imagery, characterization, sentence structure, and plot sequences, Anaïs Nin uses a feminine form of writing in order to subvert the male depiction of the erotic experience that has reinforced the objectification, domination, and oppression of women's sexuality. Paper no. 2, Gen(d)re Bending: Ambiguity and Sexual Androgyny in Virginia Woolf's Orlando. The purpose of this paper is to argue that Virginia Woolf's main concern in Orlando is to show the problematic 'nature' of socially constructed norms. Woolf problematizes cultural norms by playing with established forms of sexual identity, genre, and the Romantic notion of the 'self' in order to highlight a kind of necessary multiplicity or "androgyny" to blur the boundaries of socially constructed roles. Ambiguity offers Woolf the means to express her doubts of the common acknowledgment of a fixed universal and essential state of being, therefore showing how Woolf's works may be viewed as feminist. Though it has been not been taken seriously by most Woolf scholars nor feminist theorists and has been described as mere escapism by Woolf herself, I use Orlando to show how Woolf expresses her philosophy of ambiguity, including both ambiguity of sex as "androgyny" and ambiguity of genre in order to show her reader the complicatedness of what is generally taken for granted as natural or normal. I also reference Woolf's pivotal essay A Room of One's Own, as well as many of her journal entries and letters to show how Woolf's view of Orlando and its importance to her as a writer changes during the process of its creation

No difference in stroke knowledge between Korean adherents to traditional and western medicine – the AGE study: an epidemiological study

BACKGROUND: Effective stroke intervention and risk reduction depend on the general public's awareness and knowledge of stroke. In Korea, where both traditional Oriental medicine and Western medicine are practiced, estimates of the general public's awareness and knowledge of stroke are poor. The present study sought to describe the inception cohort of the Ansan Geriatric Study (AGE study) and to determine baseline stroke awareness and preferred medical treatment for stroke in this Korean sample. METHODS: A total of 2,767 subjects selected randomly from the Ansan Geriatric Study in South Korea were questioned about stroke. Their answers were compared with their sociodemographic data and other variables. RESULTS: Only 44.8% of participants correctly identified stroke as a vascular disease in the human brain. Sudden numbness or weakness was the most frequently identified stroke warning sign (60.2%). Hypertension (66.7%) and mental stress (62.2%) were most frequently identified as stroke risk factors. The contributions of diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease to stroke were underestimated; they were identified as risk factors by 28.3% and 18.6% of participants, respectively. The predictors for poor knowledge of stroke warning signs and risk factors were similar irrespective of preference for Western or Oriental medical treatment, and included those with lower levels of education and inaccurate definition of stroke. Television and radio (40.3%) were the most frequent sources of stroke information for both groups. CONCLUSION: This study shows that knowledge of stroke is similar among Koreans with preferences for either Western or Oriental medical treatment and that misunderstandings about stroke are common among the Korean elderly. In order to prevent and manage stroke effectively, public health education regarding basic concepts of stroke is necessary. This should target those with a lower level of education and a misunderstanding of the definition of stroke

Oxidative protein labeling in mass-spectrometry-based proteomics

Oxidation of proteins and peptides is a common phenomenon, and can be employed as a labeling technique for mass-spectrometry-based proteomics. Nonspecific oxidative labeling methods can modify almost any amino acid residue in a protein or only surface-exposed regions. Specific agents may label reactive functional groups in amino acids, primarily cysteine, methionine, tyrosine, and tryptophan. Nonspecific radical intermediates (reactive oxygen, nitrogen, or halogen species) can be produced by chemical, photochemical, electrochemical, or enzymatic methods. More targeted oxidation can be achieved by chemical reagents but also by direct electrochemical oxidation, which opens the way to instrumental labeling methods. Oxidative labeling of amino acids in the context of liquid chromatography(LC)–mass spectrometry (MS) based proteomics allows for differential LC separation, improved MS ionization, and label-specific fragmentation and detection. Oxidation of proteins can create new reactive groups which are useful for secondary, more conventional derivatization reactions with, e.g., fluorescent labels. This review summarizes reactions of oxidizing agents with peptides and proteins, the corresponding methodologies and instrumentation, and the major, innovative applications of oxidative protein labeling described in selected literature from the last decade