Historicism, Psychoanalysis, and Early Modern Culture

Review of Historicism, Psychoanalysis, and Early Modern Culture by Carla Mazzio and Douglas Trevo

Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal

Review of Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal by Gabrielle Langdo

Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence

Review of Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence by Carl Brandon Strehlk

Women in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe

Review of Women in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe edited by Christine Meek (Four Courts Press, 2000

Playthings in Early Modernity: Party Games, Word Games, Mind Games

Why do we play games—with and upon each other as well as ourselves? When are winners also losers, and vice-versa? How and to what end do we stretch the spaces of play? What happens when players go out of bounds, or when games go too far ? Moreover, what happens when we push the parameters of inquiry: when we play with traditional narratives of ludic culture, when we rewrite the rules? An innovative volume of fifteen interdisciplinary essays at the nexus of material culture, performance studies, and game theory, Playthings in Early Modernity emphasizes the rules of the game(s) as well as the breaking of those rules. Thus, the titular plaything is understood as both an object and a person, and play, in the early modern world, is treated not merely as a pastime, a leisurely pursuit, but as a pivotal part of daily life, a strategic psychosocial endeavor.https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mip_lc/1000/thumbnail.jp

Water Lake and Other Stories

This excerpt from the novel Water Lake takes place at an undisclosed time in an undisclosed American location called Water Town. It primarily follows Jason and Holly, who are employees at Water Hardware and lifelong residents of the insular, religious, isolated town. Water Town is in constant industrial and environmental decay and hosts many mysterious natural and social phenomena such as an unusual amount of animal deaths, a gender ratio skewed disproportionately towards men, and a single seal in a local body of water hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. During an episode of impulsivity induced by neurological trauma, a strange and erratic woman named Cheryl visits Water Town and immediately wreaks physical and interpersonal havoc on its citizens. Jason does not know what to make of her and Holly falls in love with her. The novel consists of vignettes of each their pasts and presents as well as other anecdotes from around the town. There are seven other stories in this collection. “Predator” is the tale of a toxic engagement told in retrospect from the perspective of a deranged woman. “You Are Here” is an account of an ambiguous wildfire and an unnamed character’s descent into madness. “Life Cycles” is an exploration of the natural and artificial aspects of sexuality. “The Only Whore in Ritzville” features a troubling encounter between a prostitute and a policeman. “Real Taxi” is a critique of the horrors of the pornography industry in which a man is lured into a car by a demonic adult film actress. “The Pledge” involves a college student’s rejection from a sorority, which leads to a violent massacre against the sorority’s members. “Scalp Baby” is a stream-of-consciousness narrative that evokes Freudian concepts and the doldrums of working in the service industry; it also uses sixty-eight semicolons and no periods in six pages. The novel excerpt and stories are unified by themes of the perils of womanhood, social isolation, sexual exploitation, inner turmoil, tumultuous relationships, and a sense of impending inevitable doom

Suppression-Induced Forgetting on a Free-Association Test

The repeated suppression of thoughts in response to cues for their expression leads to forgetting on a subsequent test of cued recall (Anderson & Green, 2001). We extended this effect by using homograph cues and presenting them for free association following suppression practice. Cue-target pairs were first learned under integrating imagery instructions; then in the think/no-think phase students practiced suppressing thoughts connected to some homograph cues, with or without the assistance of thought substitutes that changed their meaning. Below-baseline forgetting on the subsequent free-association test was found in the production of suppressed targets. Following aided suppression, this effect was also obtained in the production of other responses denoting the target-related meaning of the homograph cues. Discussion emphasizes the ecological value of the test; rarely do people deliberately attempt recall of unwanted thoughts

The VERNALIZATION 2 Gene Mediates the Epigenetic Regulation of Vernalization in Arabidopsis

AbstractThe acceleration of flowering by a long period of low temperature, vernalization, is an adaptation that ensures plants overwinter before flowering. Vernalization induces a developmental state that is mitotically stable, suggesting that it may have an epigenetic basis. The VERNALIZATION2 (VRN2) gene mediates vernalization and encodes a nuclear-localized zinc finger protein with similarity to Polycomb group (PcG) proteins of plants and animals. In wild-type Arabidopsis, vernalization results in the stable reduction of the levels of the floral repressor FLC. In vrn2 mutants, FLC expression is downregulated normally in response to vernalization, but instead of remaining low, FLC mRNA levels increase when plants are returned to normal temperatures. VRN2 function therefore stably maintains FLC repression after a cold treatment, serving as a mechanism for the cellular memory of vernalization