17 research outputs found
Russia in the prism of popular culture : Russian and American detective fiction and thrillers of the 1990s
The subject matter of my study is representations of Russia in Anglo-American
and Russian spy novels, mysteries, and action thrillers of the 1990s. Especially suitable
for representing the world split between good and evil, these genres played a prominent
role in constructing the image of the other during the Cold War. Crime fiction then is an
important source for grasping the changes in representing Russia after the Cold War. My
hypothesis is that despite the changes in the political roles of Russia and the United
States, the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union continued to have a
significant impact on popular fiction about Russia in the 1990s. A comparative
perspective on depictions of Russia in the 1990s is particularly suitable in regard to
American and Russian popular cultures because during the Cold War, Soviet and
American identities were formed in view of the other. A comparative approach to the
study of Russian popular fiction is additionally justified by the role that the idea of the
West had played in Russian cultural history starting from the early eighteenth century.
Reflection on depictions of Russia in crime fiction by writers coming from the
two formerly antagonistic cultures poses the problem of representation in its relationship
to time, history, politics, popular culture, and genre. The methods used in this
dissertation derive from the field of cultural studies, history, and structuralist poetics. A
combination of structuralist readings and social theory allows me to uncover the ways in
which popular detective genres changed in response to the sentiments of nostalgia and
anxiety about repressed or lost identities, the sentiments that were typical of the 1990s.
My study of Anglo-American and Russian spy novels, mysteries, and action thrillers
contributes to our understanding of the ways American and Russian cultures invent and
reinvent themselves after a significant historical rupture, how they mobilize the past for
making sense of the present. Drawing on readings of literature and culture by such
scholars as Mikhail Bakhtin, Tzvetan Todorov, Siegfried Kracauer, Andreas Huyssen,
Fredric Jameson, and Svetlana Boym, I show that differences in Anglo-American and
Russian representations of Russia are a result of cultural asymmetries and cultural
chronotopes in the United States and in Russia. I argue that Russian and American crime
fiction of the 1990s re-writes Russia in the light of cultural memory, nostalgia, and
historical sensibilities after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Memories of the Cold War and coming to terms with the end of the Cold War played a
defining role in depicting Russia by Anglo-American detective authors of the 1990s; this
role is clear from the genre changes in Anglo-American thrillers about Russia. Similarly,
reconsideration of Russian history became an essential characteristic in the development
of the new Russian detektiv.Arts, Faculty ofEnglish, Department ofGraduat
Quasiantiferromagnetic 120° Néel state in two-dimensional clusters of dipole-quadrupole-interacting particles on a hexagonal lattice
The magnetostatic interactions of colloidal particles, capped with radially magnetized Co/Pt multilayers, are modeled. Motivated by experiment the particles are arranged in microscopic two-dimensional clusters on a hexagonal lattice and are free to rotate. The thermodynamically stable states of clusters containing up to 108 particles are calculated theoretically by means of Monte Carlo simulations in the framework of multipole expansion. It is shown analytically that radially magnetized hemispheres have higher-order multipole moments beyond the dipole. Depending on geometrical details also even order moments appear. The even order moments break the inversion symmetry of the magnetic potential of a single particle. For a specific mixing ratio of dipole and quadrupole moments, the experimentally observed antiferromagnetic 120° Néel state in the clusters is found
Mutations of conserved non-coding elements of PITX2 in patients with ocular dysgenesis and developmental glaucoma.
Mutations in FOXC1 and PITX2 constitute the most common causes of ocular anterior segment dysgenesis (ASD), and confer a high risk for secondary glaucoma. The genetic causes underlying ASD in approximately half of patients remain unknown, despite many of them being screened by whole exome sequencing. Here, we performed whole genome sequencing on DNA from two affected individuals from a family with dominantly inherited ASD and glaucoma to identify a 748-kb deletion in a gene desert that contains conserved putative PITX2 regulatory elements. We used CRISPR/Cas9 to delete the orthologous region in zebrafish in order to test the pathogenicity of this structural variant. Deletion in zebrafish reduced pitx2 expression during development and resulted in shallow anterior chambers. We screened additional patients for copy number variation of the putative regulatory elements and found an overlapping deletion in a second family and in a potentially-ancestrally-related index patient with ASD and glaucoma. These data suggest that mutations affecting conserved non-coding elements of PITX2 may constitute an important class of mutations in patients with ASD for whom the molecular cause of their disease have not yet been identified. Improved functional annotation of the human genome and transition to sequencing of patient genomes instead of exomes will be required before the magnitude of this class of mutations is fully understood
Mutations of conserved non-coding elements of PITX2 in patients with ocular dysgenesis and developmental glaucoma.
Mutations in FOXC1 and PITX2 constitute the most common causes of ocular anterior segment dysgenesis (ASD), and confer a high risk for secondary glaucoma. The genetic causes underlying ASD in approximately half of patients remain unknown, despite many of them being screened by whole exome sequencing. Here, we performed whole genome sequencing on DNA from two affected individuals from a family with dominantly inherited ASD and glaucoma to identify a 748-kb deletion in a gene desert that contains conserved putative PITX2 regulatory elements. We used CRISPR/Cas9 to delete the orthologous region in zebrafish in order to test the pathogenicity of this structural variant. Deletion in zebrafish reduced pitx2 expression during development and resulted in shallow anterior chambers. We screened additional patients for copy number variation of the putative regulatory elements and found an overlapping deletion in a second family and in a potentially-ancestrally-related index patient with ASD and glaucoma. These data suggest that mutations affecting conserved non-coding elements of PITX2 may constitute an important class of mutations in patients with ASD for whom the molecular cause of their disease have not yet been identified. Improved functional annotation of the human genome and transition to sequencing of patient genomes instead of exomes will be required before the magnitude of this class of mutations is fully understood