22 research outputs found
Women and Sexuality in African Cinema
African cultures' views on intimacy and privacy have had an approach to sex, nudity, and eroticism that differs from the openness associated with that of most Western cultures. This is one of the factors that explains the relatively scarce displays of sexuality in African cinema. However, in the past two decades, an increasing number of films made by African filmmakers in the continent and the diaspora have featured stories by women with fluid sexual identities. In these films, women engage in same‐sex relationships as part of their assertion of freedom. The titles include Karmen Geï (dir. Joseph Gaï Ramaka, 2001, Senegal), Les Saignantes (dir. Jean‐Pierre Bekolo, 2007, Cameroon), The World Unseen (dir. Shamim Sarif, 2007, South Africa), and, more recently, Stories of our Lives (dir. Jim Chuchu, 2014, Kenya) and Rafiki (dir. Wanuri Kahiu, 2018, Kenya), whose lead actress, Samantha Mugatsia, won the best actress award in the 50‐year‐old film festival FESPACO (Pan‐African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou) in 2019. African scholars, and more specifically African women scholars, are revisiting gender theories and concepts, in search of a de‐Westernization of the academic terminology able to address the complexity and intersectionality of women's sexuality in African cultures. Similarly, African women filmmakers are contesting patriarchal representations of women in relation to violence, illness, and as victims, with self‐representations of sexuality and redefinitions of identity revolving around pleasure and as subversive to different forms of oppression experienced by African women
Results of MDR-1 vector modification trial indicate that granulocyte/macrophage colony-forming unit cells do not contribute to posttransplant hematopoietic recovery following intensive systemic therapy
To formally test the hypothesis that the
granulocyte/macrophage colony-forming unit (GM-CFU) cells can
contribute to early hematopoietic reconstitution immediately after
transplant, the frequency of genetically modified GM-CFU after
retroviral vector transduction was measured by a quantitative
in
situ
polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which is specific for the
multidrug resistance-1 (MDR-1) vector, and by a quantitative GM-CFU
methylcellulose plating assay. The results of this analysis showed no
difference between the transduction frequency in the products of two
different transduction protocols: “suspension transduction” and
“stromal growth factor transduction.” However, when an analysis
of the frequency of cells positive for the retroviral MDR-1 vector
posttransplantation was carried out, 0 of 10 patients transplanted with
cells transduced by the suspension method were positive for the vector
MDR-1 posttransplant, whereas 5 of 8 patients transplanted with the
cells transduced by the stromal growth factor method were positive for
the MDR-1 vector transcription unit by
in situ
or in
solution PCR assay (a difference that is significant at the
P
= 0.0065 level by the Fisher exact test). These
data suggest that only very small subsets of the GM-CFU fraction of
myeloid cells, if any, contribute to the repopulation of the
hematopoietic tissues that occurs following intensive systemic therapy
and transplantation of autologous hematopoietic cells