915 research outputs found
Discovering Shakespeareâs Personal Style: Editing and Connoisseurship in the Eighteenth Century
This chapter examines the use of connoisseurial rhetoric by Shakespeare editors and critics over the course of the eighteenth century, beginning with Alexander Pope in 1723â5 and concluding with George Steevens in the 1780s and 1790s. Connoisseurship was originally developed by art critics as a discourse for authenticating paintings and drawings. Beginning with Pope, however, literary editors began to draw upon it as an analogy for representing authorial style. As I shall show through an examination of Steevensâs work in compiling the first chronological catalogue of William Hogarthâs prints and paintings, this convergence between art criticism and textual criticism involved more than a simple exchange of metaphors. Connoisseurship offered critics such as Steevens new ways of looking at artworks and assessing their genuineness, modes of vision that could be applied as readily to plays as to paintings. The eighteenth-century art market relied upon the expertise of the connoisseur, who could guarantee that a given painting stemmed from the hand of a particular master. Shakespeare publishing in the eighteenth century likewise came to depend on the expertise of the editor, who could reliably identify Shakespeareâs personal style and distinguish the genuine from the spurious
Radicalism in the Margins: The Politics of Reading Wilfrid Scawen Blunt in 1920
This article examines marginalia as a form of radical writing practice in the period immediately after the First World War. It focuses specifically on a densely annotated copy of the second part of Wilfrid Scawen Bluntâs My Diaries, which covers 1900â1914 and was published in 1920. The annotator, John Arthur Fallows (1864â1935), was a former Church of England clergyman and Independent Labour Party politician, and the article asks what motivated him to leave such an explicit record of his engagement with the book in its margins. Blunt recast his original diary entries to show how the outbreak of the First World War had arisen from the pre-war imperialist policies of the Entente. Fallows, meanwhile, used his copy of My Diaries to inscribe a permanent record of his responses to Bluntâs writing, which were shaped by his own memories of pre-war radical-left political action. The dual record of textual engagement that can be recovered from this copy of My Diaries provides insight into how two British radicals âreadâ the causes of the First World War in the period between the Armistice and the conclusion of the Paris Peace Accords
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Reusing Historical Questionnaire Data and Using Newly Commissioned Oral History Interviews as Evidence in the History of Reading
Interviews, whether freestyle or structured, printed or recorded, offer historians of reading valuable insights into the practices and preferences of individual readers. Despite the potential biases that can be generated by the interview format, the reshaping of memory through the process of retelling, and the questions that can go unasked (and therefore, unanswered), the individual interview can be a richly textured source of information for historians of reading. In this article, three researchers involved in both the recently completed Reading Communities: Connecting the Past and the Present project and the ongoing historically focussed UK Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 project (UK-RED) examine the ways in which interviews can capture individual records of reading, both in the past and the present
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Unpacking the âRed Flagâ Bookshelf: Negotiating Literary Value on Twitter
On 24 August 2020, the writer Jess McHugh posted on Twitter a list of her âTop 7 Warning Signs in a Manâs Bookshelfâ. At the very top of her list of red flags was âA Dogeared copy of Infinite Jest.â This was followed by âToo much Hemingwayâ, âAny amount of Bukowskiâ, âAYN. RANDâ, and Goethe. Lolita and Ivan Turgenevâs Fathers and Sons also made the cut. McHughâs tweet quickly went viral across the platform, gaining 3200 replies, 6000 retweets and 17,000 likes over the next four days, as well as news coverage in a variety of venues, including the Onion AV Club and The Times of India. Drawing on platform analysis and qualitative analysis of Twitter
data, this article will examine McHughâs bookshelf meme and some of the many responsesâdiscussions, appropriations and alternative lists, and counter-listsâthat it generated (not least from readers of Goethe). It will ask what this episode reveals about the effect of algorithmically curated digital space on understandings of reading, taste, gender, and canonicity in the early 2020s. To what extent do the specific dynamics, affordances, and posting cultures of a virtual platform space like Twitter affect the way âbook talkâ unfolds online
Readers and Reading in the First World War
This essay consists of three individually authored and interlinked sections. In âA Digital Humanities Approachâ, Francesca Benatti looks at datasets and databases (including the UK Reading Experience Database) and shows how a systematic, macro-analytical use of digital humanities tools and resources might yield answers to some key questions about reading in the First World War. In âReading behind the Wire in the First World Warâ Edmund G. C. King scrutinizes the reading practices and preferences of Allied prisoners of war in Mainz, showing that reading circumscribed by the contingencies of a prison camp created an unique literary community, whose legacy can be traced through their literary output after the war. In âBook-hunger in Salonikaâ, Shafquat Towheed examines the record of a single reader in a specific and fairly static frontline, and argues that in the case of the Salonika campaign, reading communities emerged in close proximity to existing centres of print culture. The focus of this essay moves from the general to the particular, from the scoping of large datasets, to the analyses of identified readers within a specific geographical and temporal space. The authors engage with the wider issues and problems of recovering, interpreting, visualizing, narrating, and representing readers in the First World War
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âMedicinable Literatureâ: Bibliotherapy, Literary Caregiving, and the First World War
Histories of bibliotherapy often emphasize the importance of the First World War in stimulating the development of bibliotherapeutic theory and practice. The word itself was used in a 1916 article by the American author Samuel McChord Crothers, while histories of bibliotherapy in the United Kingdom often foreground H. F. Brett-Smithâs so-called âfever chartâ of therapeutic books for treating shell-shocked soldiers. Despite this, however, we argue that a full account of wartime bibliotherapy (particularly the importance of British hospital libraries in its development) has yet to be told. This article draws on the papers of British military hospital personnel to describe the range of âliterary caregivingâ supporting the treatment of sick and wounded soldiers during the conflict. It traces the social and professional networks underlying these schemes. Finally, it shows how British volunteer librarians helped develop a specifically medicalized language of caregiving through books, thereby contributing to the early development of bibliotherapy
Status of Muon Collider Research and Development and Future Plans
The status of the research on muon colliders is discussed and plans are
outlined for future theoretical and experimental studies. Besides continued
work on the parameters of a 3-4 and 0.5 TeV center-of-mass (CoM) energy
collider, many studies are now concentrating on a machine near 0.1 TeV (CoM)
that could be a factory for the s-channel production of Higgs particles. We
discuss the research on the various components in such muon colliders, starting
from the proton accelerator needed to generate pions from a heavy-Z target and
proceeding through the phase rotation and decay ()
channel, muon cooling, acceleration, storage in a collider ring and the
collider detector. We also present theoretical and experimental R & D plans for
the next several years that should lead to a better understanding of the design
and feasibility issues for all of the components. This report is an update of
the progress on the R & D since the Feasibility Study of Muon Colliders
presented at the Snowmass'96 Workshop [R. B. Palmer, A. Sessler and A.
Tollestrup, Proceedings of the 1996 DPF/DPB Summer Study on High-Energy Physics
(Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park, CA, 1997)].Comment: 95 pages, 75 figures. Submitted to Physical Review Special Topics,
Accelerators and Beam
Mitochondrial oxodicarboxylate carrier deficiency is associated with mitochondrial DNA depletion and spinal muscular atrophy-like disease.
PURPOSE: To understand the role of the mitochondrial oxodicarboxylate carrier (SLC25A21) in the development of spinal muscular atrophy-like disease. METHODS: We identified a novel pathogenic variant in a patient by whole-exome sequencing. The pathogenicity of the mutation was studied by transport assays, computer modeling, followed by targeted metabolic testing and in vitro studies in human fibroblasts and neurons. RESULTS: The patient carries a homozygous pathogenic variant c.695A>G; p.(Lys232Arg) in the SLC25A21 gene, encoding the mitochondrial oxodicarboxylate carrier, and developed spinal muscular atrophy and mitochondrial myopathy. Transport assays show that the mutation renders SLC25A21 dysfunctional and 2-oxoadipate cannot be imported into the mitochondrial matrix. Computer models of central metabolism predicted that impaired transport of oxodicarboxylate disrupts the pathways of lysine and tryptophan degradation, and causes accumulation of 2-oxoadipate, pipecolic acid, and quinolinic acid, which was confirmed in the patient's urine by targeted metabolomics. Exposure to 2-oxoadipate and quinolinic acid decreased the level of mitochondrial complexes in neuronal cells (SH-SY5Y) and induced apoptosis. CONCLUSION: Mitochondrial oxodicarboxylate carrier deficiency leads to mitochondrial dysfunction and the accumulation of oxoadipate and quinolinic acid, which in turn cause toxicity in spinal motor neurons leading to spinal muscular atrophy-like disease
Itaconate is an anti-inflammatory metabolite that activates Nrf2 via alkylation of KEAP1.
The endogenous metabolite itaconate has recently emerged as a regulator of macrophage function, but its precise mechanism of action remains poorly understood. Here we show that itaconate is required for the activation of the anti-inflammatory transcription factor Nrf2 (also known as NFE2L2) by lipopolysaccharide in mouse and human macrophages. We find that itaconate directly modifies proteins via alkylation of cysteine residues. Itaconate alkylates cysteine residues 151, 257, 288, 273 and 297 on the protein KEAP1, enabling Nrf2 to increase the expression of downstream genes with anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory capacities. The activation of Nrf2 is required for the anti-inflammatory action of itaconate. We describe the use of a new cell-permeable itaconate derivative, 4-octyl itaconate, which is protective against lipopolysaccharide-induced lethality in vivo and decreases cytokine production. We show that type I interferons boost the expression of Irg1 (also known as Acod1) and itaconate production. Furthermore, we find that itaconate production limits the type I interferon response, indicating a negative feedback loop that involves interferons and itaconate. Our findings demonstrate that itaconate is a crucial anti-inflammatory metabolite that acts via Nrf2 to limit inflammation and modulate type I interferons
A Comparative Study of the Spatial Distribution of Schistosomiasis in Mali in 1984â1989 and 2004â2006
Geostatistical maps are increasingly being used to plan neglected tropical disease control programmes. We investigated the spatial distribution of schistosomiasis in Mali prior to implementation of national donor-funded mass chemotherapy programmes using data from 1984â1989 and 2004â2006. The 2004â2006 dataset was collected after 10 years of schistosomiasis control followed by 12 years of no control. We found that national prevalence of Schistosoma haematobium and S. mansoni was not significantly different in 2004â2006 compared to 1984â1989 and that the spatial distribution of both infections was similar in both time periods, to the extent that models built on data from one time period could accurately predict the spatial distribution of prevalence of infection in the other time period. This has two main implications: that historic data can be used, in the first instance, to plan contemporary control programmes due to the stability of the spatial distribution of schistosomiasis; and that a decade of donor-funded mass distribution of praziquantel has had no discernable impact on the burden of schistosomiasis in subsequent generations of Malians, probably due to rapid reinfection
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