But What Has Helga Crane to Do with the West Indies? Plantation Afterlives in the Black Atlantic

“But What Has Helga Crane to Do with the West Indies? Plantation Afterlives in the Black Atlantic” situates the emergence of the southern gothic in modernist American and Caribbean works as a response to the shifting cultural narrative of the plantation in the twentieth century. In this project, I argue that the plantation seeps out of its place and time to haunt landscapes it may never have touched and times in which slavery is long over. While the plantation system is broadly recognized as a literary, political, and cultural force in nineteenth-century literary studies, I conceive it is also a driving force of southern literature even after the physical plantations begin to fade. In this project, I examine how literary portrayals of plantations flourish in the 1920s and 30s, from the writings of the Nashville Agrarians to the popularity of Gone with the Wind, arguing that this period represents a literary re-mythologizing of the plantation’s legacy as a benevolent and positive model for the south. A significant contribution of this dissertation is then in demonstrating how plantations are present in works that are not traditionally understood as plantation fiction, and that these works offer a resistance to this re-mythologizing through turning to the gothic: the transatlantic plantation gothic in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand and Jean Rhys’ Voyage in the Dark, the impact of environmental labor on the plantation gothic in Jean Toomer’s Cane and Eric Walrond’s Tropic Death, and finally, how plantation modernity affects portrayals of natural disasters in plantation territories in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong!. Ultimately, this project contributes to the discussion of plantation modernity currently occurring in Southern Studies beyond the nineteenth century and into the modernist period, while also demonstrating how movements often construed as disparate in American literary studies, like the Harlem Renaissance and the Nashville Agrarians, were actually in close conversation

Garotas de loja, história social e teoria social [Shop Girls, Social History and Social Theory]

Shop workers, most of them women, have made up a significant proportion of Britain’s labour force since the 1850s but we still know relatively little about their history. This article argues that there has been a systematic neglect of one of the largest sectors of female employment by historians and investigates why this might be. It suggests that this neglect is connected to framings of work that have overlooked the service sector as a whole as well as to a continuing unease with the consumer society’s transformation of social life. One element of that transformation was the rise of new forms of aesthetic, emotional and sexualised labour. Certain kinds of ‘shop girls’ embodied these in spectacular fashion. As a result, they became enduring icons of mass consumption, simultaneously dismissed as passive cultural dupes or punished as powerful agents of cultural destruction. This article interweaves the social history of everyday shop workers with shifting representations of the ‘shop girl’, from Victorian music hall parodies, through modernist social theory, to the bizarre bombing of the Biba boutique in London by the Angry Brigade on May Day 1971. It concludes that progressive historians have much to gain by reclaiming these workers and the service economy that they helped create

Resisting the mantle of the monstrous feminine : women's construction and experience of premenstrual embodiment

The female reproductive body is positioned as abject, as other, as site of defciency and disease, the epitome of the ‘monstrous feminine.’ Premenstrual change in emotion, behavior or embodied sensation is positioned as a sign of madness within, necessitating restraint and control on the part of the women experiencing it (Ussher 2006). Breakdown in this control through manifestation of ‘symptoms’ is diagnosed as PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome) or PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder), a pathology deserving of ‘treatment.’ In this chapter, we adopt a feminist material-discursive theoretical framework to examine the role of premenstrual embodiment in relation to women’s adoption of the subject position of monstrous feminine, drawing on interviews we have conducted with women who self-diagnose as ‘PMS sufferers.’ We theorize women’s self-positioning as subjectifcation, wherein women take up cultural discourse associated with idealized femininity and the reproductive body, resulting in self-objectifcation, distress, and self-condemnation. However, women can resist negative cultural constructions of premenstrual embodiment and the subsequent self-policing. We describe the impact of women-centered psychological therapy which increases awareness of embodied change, and leads to greater acceptance of the premenstrual body and greater self-care, which serves to reduce premenstrual distress

Ex situ diet influences the bacterial community associated with the skin of red-eyed tree frogs (Agalychnis callidryas)

Amphibians support symbiotic bacterial communities on their skin that protect against a range of infectious pathogens, including the amphibian chytrid fungus. The conditions under which amphibians are maintained in captivity (e.g. diet, substrate, enrichment) in ex situ conservation programmes may affect the composition of the bacterial community. In addition, ex situ amphibian populations may support different bacterial communities in comparison to in situ populations of the same species. This could have implications for the suitability of populations intended for reintroduction, as well as the success of probiotic bacterial inoculations intended to provide amphibians with a bacterial community that resists invasion by the chytrid fungus. We aimed to investigate the effect of a carotenoid-enriched diet on the culturable bacterial community associated with captive red-eyed tree frogs (Agalychnis callidryas) and make comparisons to bacteria isolated from a wild population from the Chiquibul Rainforest in Belize. We successfully showed carotenoid availability influences the overall community composition, species richness and abundance of the bacterial community associated with the skin of captive frogs, with A. callidryas fed a carotenoid-enriched diet supporting a greater species richness and abundance of bacteria than those fed a carotenoid-free diet. Our results suggest that availability of carotenoids in the diet of captive frogs is likely to be beneficial for the bacterial community associated with the skin. We also found wild A. callidryas hosted more than double the number of different bacterial species than captive frogs with very little commonality between species. This suggests frogs in captivity may support a reduced and diverged bacterial community in comparison to wild populations of the same species, which could have particular relevance for ex situ conservation projects

Host Lung Environment Limits Aspergillus fumigatus Germination through an SskA-Dependent Signaling Response

Aspergillus fumigatus isolates display significant heterogeneity in growth, virulence, pathology, and inflammatory potential in multiple murine models of invasive aspergillosis. Previous studies have linked the initial germination of a fungal isolate in the airways to the inflammatory and pathological potential, but the mechanism(s) regulating A. fumigatus germination in the airways is unresolved. To explore the genetic basis for divergent germination phenotypes, we utilized a serial passaging strategy in which we cultured a slow germinating strain (AF293) in a murine-lung-based medium for multiple generations. Through this serial passaging approach, a strain emerged with an increased germination rate that induces more inflammation than the parental strain (herein named LH-EVOL for lung homogenate evolved). We identified a potential loss-of-function allele of Afu5g08390 (sskA) in the LH-EVOL strain. The LH-EVOL strain had a decreased ability to induce the SakA-dependent stress pathway, similar to AF293 ΔsskA and CEA10. In support of the whole-genome variant analyses, sskA, sakA, or mpkC loss-of-function strains in the AF293 parental strain increased germination both in vitro and in vivo. Since the airway surface liquid of the lungs contains low glucose levels, the relationship of low glucose concentration on germination of these mutant AF293 strains was examined; interestingly, in low glucose conditions, the sakA pathway mutants exhibited an enhanced germination rate. In conclusion, A. fumigatus germination in the airways is regulated by SskA through the SakA mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway and drives enhanced disease initiation and inflammation in the lungs. IMPORTANCE Aspergillus fumigatus is an important human fungal pathogen particularly in immunocompromised individuals. Initiation of growth by A. fumigatus in the lung is important for its pathogenicity in murine models. However, our understanding of what regulates fungal germination in the lung environment is lacking. Through a serial passage experiment using lung-based medium, we identified a new strain of A. fumigatus that has increased germination potential and inflammation in the lungs. Using this serially passaged strain, we found it had a decreased ability to mediate signaling through the osmotic stress response pathway. This finding was confirmed using genetic null mutants demonstrating that the osmotic stress response pathway is critical for regulating growth in the murine lungs. Our results contribute to the understanding of A. fumigatus adaptation and growth in the host lung environment

Risk of COVID-19 after natural infection or vaccinationResearch in context

Background: While vaccines have established utility against COVID-19, phase 3 efficacy studies have generally not comprehensively evaluated protection provided by previous infection or hybrid immunity (previous infection plus vaccination). Individual patient data from US government-supported harmonized vaccine trials provide an unprecedented sample population to address this issue. We characterized the protective efficacy of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and hybrid immunity against COVID-19 early in the pandemic over three-to six-month follow-up and compared with vaccine-associated protection. Methods: In this post-hoc cross-protocol analysis of the Moderna, AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Novavax COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials, we allocated participants into four groups based on previous-infection status at enrolment and treatment: no previous infection/placebo; previous infection/placebo; no previous infection/vaccine; and previous infection/vaccine. The main outcome was RT-PCR-confirmed COVID-19 >7–15 days (per original protocols) after final study injection. We calculated crude and adjusted efficacy measures. Findings: Previous infection/placebo participants had a 92% decreased risk of future COVID-19 compared to no previous infection/placebo participants (overall hazard ratio [HR] ratio: 0.08; 95% CI: 0.05–0.13). Among single-dose Janssen participants, hybrid immunity conferred greater protection than vaccine alone (HR: 0.03; 95% CI: 0.01–0.10). Too few infections were observed to draw statistical inferences comparing hybrid immunity to vaccine alone for other trials. Vaccination, previous infection, and hybrid immunity all provided near-complete protection against severe disease. Interpretation: Previous infection, any hybrid immunity, and two-dose vaccination all provided substantial protection against symptomatic and severe COVID-19 through the early Delta period. Thus, as a surrogate for natural infection, vaccination remains the safest approach to protection. Funding: National Institutes of Health

Risk of COVID-19 after natural infection or vaccinationResearch in context

Summary: Background: While vaccines have established utility against COVID-19, phase 3 efficacy studies have generally not comprehensively evaluated protection provided by previous infection or hybrid immunity (previous infection plus vaccination). Individual patient data from US government-supported harmonized vaccine trials provide an unprecedented sample population to address this issue. We characterized the protective efficacy of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and hybrid immunity against COVID-19 early in the pandemic over three-to six-month follow-up and compared with vaccine-associated protection. Methods: In this post-hoc cross-protocol analysis of the Moderna, AstraZeneca, Janssen, and Novavax COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials, we allocated participants into four groups based on previous-infection status at enrolment and treatment: no previous infection/placebo; previous infection/placebo; no previous infection/vaccine; and previous infection/vaccine. The main outcome was RT-PCR-confirmed COVID-19 >7–15 days (per original protocols) after final study injection. We calculated crude and adjusted efficacy measures. Findings: Previous infection/placebo participants had a 92% decreased risk of future COVID-19 compared to no previous infection/placebo participants (overall hazard ratio [HR] ratio: 0.08; 95% CI: 0.05–0.13). Among single-dose Janssen participants, hybrid immunity conferred greater protection than vaccine alone (HR: 0.03; 95% CI: 0.01–0.10). Too few infections were observed to draw statistical inferences comparing hybrid immunity to vaccine alone for other trials. Vaccination, previous infection, and hybrid immunity all provided near-complete protection against severe disease. Interpretation: Previous infection, any hybrid immunity, and two-dose vaccination all provided substantial protection against symptomatic and severe COVID-19 through the early Delta period. Thus, as a surrogate for natural infection, vaccination remains the safest approach to protection. Funding: National Institutes of Health