Warner Bros. Forgotten Men: Representations of Shifting Masculinities in 1930s Hollywood

This dissertation examines the stardom, characters, and and shifting nature of the styles of masculinities enacted by Paul Muni, George Brent, Dick Powell, and Errol Flynn's characters in the films produced during their tenure at Warner Bros. in the 1930s. This study argues that the styles of masculinities in operation on the Warner Bros. lot were in fact more complex and contradictory than previous studies have acknowledged. Robert Sklar argues that the dominant type of masculinity represented by the studio was that of the "city boy." However in examining the films, fan magazines, movie reviews and studio records from the period dealing with Muni, Brent, Powell, and Flynn what is evident is that crafting a unified stable masculine screen presence for each of these men was something that the studio was unable to achieve. The dissertation uses elements of "whiteness," as well as gender, and class to look at how each of these four men and their characters represented an image of American masculinities during the 1930s that attempted to model the various experiences and frustrations of men as a result of the Great Depression

Cellular Inflammatory Response to Flaviviruses in the Central Nervous System of a Primate Host

Flaviviruses such as tick-borne encephalitis virus, Japanese encephalitis virus, West Nile virus, and St. Louis encephalitis virus are important neurotropic human pathogens, typically causing a devastating and often fatal neuroinfection. Flaviviruses induce neuroinflammation with typical features of viral encephalitides, including inflammatory cell infiltration, activation of microglia, and neuronal degeneration. Development of safe and effective live-virus vaccines against neurotropic flavivirus infections demands a detailed knowledge of their neuropathogenesis in a primate host that is evolutionarily close to humans. Here, we used computerized morphometric analysis to quantitatively assess the cellular inflammatory responses in the central nervous system (CNS) of rhesus monkeys infected with three antigenically divergent attenuated flaviviruses. The kinetics, spatial pattern, and magnitude of microglial activation, trafficking of T and B cells, and changes in T cell subsets within the CNS define unique phenotypic signatures for each of the three viruses. Our results provide a benchmark for investigation of cellular inflammatory responses induced by attenuated flaviviruses in the CNS of primate hosts and provide insight into the neuropathogenesis of flavivirus encephalitis that might guide the development of safe and effective live-virus vaccines. (J Histochem Cytochem 57:973–989, 2009