On ‘Not Being Nothing’: Post-ironic Melodrama in James Gray’s “The Immigrant”

This essay analyzes James Gray’s The Immigrant (2013) discussing it as an instance of post-ironic melodrama (Włodek 2017) aimed at recovering the purity shown by this genre in the early phases of cinematic history. The essay argues that, although the movie pays evident homage to pre-classic silent-era melodramas, it also destabilizes the genre’s conventions by resorting to a particular use of the mise-en-scène and characterization. This directorial choice allows the film to retain pathos without eschewing ambivalence and indeterminacy, finally contributing to produce a complex representation of immigrants’ experience as well as a rather bleak portrait of the American Dream

Efficient synthesis of biologically active small molecules

Pancratistatin and narciclasine are natural products isolated from Pancratium litorale1 and Narcissus poeticus2 respectively. Pancratistatin and Narciclasine have been shown to possess potent antitumour activity3 however they have never been widely exploited due to their limited availability from natural sources.4 Pancratistatin and narciclasine both contain a dihydroisoquinolinone framework. The work described in this thesis explores synthetic routes relating to this dihydroisoquinolinone framework, as well as comparable tetrahydroisoquinolines. An initial proposed synthetic route involved the synthesis of the dihydroisoquinolinone framework via the corresponding indanone. Indanones have also been shown to possess potential antitumour activity.5 A range of lactam and indanone analogues were synthesised and a selection were tested for biological activity against cancer cell lines. The most biologically active lactam analogue synthesised was lactam 170. Lactam 170 was synthesised via two steps from commercially available starting materials in an overall 51 % yield and was tested in the HT29 colon cancer cell line to give an IC50 value of 9 μM. Indanone 177 is an analogue of natural product indanocine and was synthesised via two steps in an overall 49 % yield. Analogue 177 was tested in the 60 cell line screen by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to give a mean GI50 value of 1.29 μM and is currently under consideration for further testing. This thesis describes the synthesis and biological testing of the aforementioned compounds as well as an array of analogues.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Cinema, Migration, and the US: An Introduction

Introduction to the Special Section “Cinema, Migration, and the US.

Activated T cells sustain myeloid-derived suppressor cell-mediated immune suppression

The expansion of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), a suppressive population able to hamper the immune response against cancer, correlates with tumor progression and overall survival in several cancer types. We have previously shown that MDSCs can be induced in vitro from precursors present in the bone marrow and observed that these cells are able to actively proliferate in the presence of activated T cells, whose activation level is critical to drive the suppressive activity of MDSCs. Here we investigated at molecular level the mechanisms involved in the interplay between MDSCs and activated T cells. We found that activated T cells secrete IL-10 following interaction with MDSCs which, in turn, activates STAT3 phosphorylation on MDSCs then leading to B7-H1 expression. We also demonstrated that B7-H1+ MDSCs are responsible for immune suppression through a mechanism involving ARG-1 and IDO expression. Finally, we show that the expression of ligands B7-H1 and MHC class II both on in vitro-induced MDSCs and on MDSCs in the tumor microenvironment of cancer patients is paralleled by an increased expression of their respective receptors PD-1 and LAG-3 on T cells, two inhibitory molecules associated with T cell dysfunction. These findings highlight key molecules and interactions responsible for the extensive cross-talk between MDSCs and activated T cells that are at the basis of immune suppression

A gene expression signature associated with survival in metastatic melanoma

BACKGROUND: Current clinical and histopathological criteria used to define the prognosis of melanoma patients are inadequate for accurate prediction of clinical outcome. We investigated whether genome screening by means of high-throughput gene microarray might provide clinically useful information on patient survival. METHODS: Forty-three tumor tissues from 38 patients with stage III and stage IV melanoma were profiled with a 17,500 element cDNA microarray. Expression data were analyzed using significance analysis of microarrays (SAM) to identify genes associated with patient survival, and supervised principal components (SPC) to determine survival prediction. RESULTS: SAM analysis revealed a set of 80 probes, corresponding to 70 genes, associated with survival, i.e. 45 probes characterizing longer and 35 shorter survival times, respectively. These transcripts were included in a survival prediction model designed using SPC and cross-validation which allowed identifying 30 predicting probes out of the 80 associated with survival. CONCLUSION: The longer-survival group of genes included those expressed in immune cells, both innate and acquired, confirming the interplay between immunological mechanisms and the natural history of melanoma. Genes linked to immune cells were totally lacking in the poor-survival group, which was instead associated with a number of genes related to highly proliferative and invasive tumor cells

Introduzione

Considerato il capolavoro della narrativa breve dello scrittore afroamericano Charles W. Chesnutt, il racconto “Il Procuste di Baxter” (1904), tradotto qui per la prima volta in italiano, è una divertente quanto impietosa satira dei club letterari asserviti al mantenimento del privilegio e dello status quo culturale e sociale. Percorso da echi curiosamente melvilliani, il racconto segue la nascita di un “caso letterario” che diventa tale, per paradosso, proprio nel momento in cui ne viene svelata l’inesistenza. Un racconto dove trionfa il magistrale talento ironico di Chesnutt e che si contraddistingue per una spiccata valenza metanarrativa che conduce il lettore a interrogarsi sui rapporti enigmatici tra l’opera e la sua manifestazione materiale—e, non in ultimis, sul valore stesso della letteratura. “Il Procuste di Baxter” è qui accompagnato da altri quattro racconti—presentati anch’essi nella loro prima traduzione italiana—incentrati sulla cosiddetta “linea del colore”, in cui vengono ritratte le tensioni razziali negli Stati Uniti di fine Ottocento: opere esemplificative del talento poliedrico e della varietà di temi, di registro e di stile che contraddistinsero la fine prosa breve di Chesnutt

"Resisting Acquiescence: Institutionalization and Late-life Friendship in Alice Munro's 'Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd'"

This essay analyzes Alice Munro’s short story “Mrs. Cross and Mrs. Kidd” from the collection The Moons of Jupiter (1982), focusing on the ways in which the story dramatizes the clash between the pervasive vitality of the two protagonists and the normalizing acquiescence prescribed by the elderly care facility where they reside

Migrazione e cinema indipendente americano: "Hester Street" di Joan Micklin Silver

Questo saggio analizza “Hester Street” (1975), uno dei capolavori del cinema indipendente nordamericano sulla migrazione di fine secolo verso gli Stati Uniti d’America, scritto e diretto dalla regista Joan Micklin Silver e tratto dalla novella Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto (1896) dello scrittore ebreo-russo Abraham Cahan. In particolare, l’analisi si incentra sull’adattamento cinematografico della novella e sul modo in cui vengono in esso trattati temi come l’assimilazione e l’emancipazione femminile di fine secolo in sintonia con le spinte di rinnovamento socio-culturale degli anni settanta del Novecento

Pound Reading James: The Brunnenburg Volumes

The essay investigates Pound’s engagement with the work of Henry James as expressed by the marks and annotations in the volumes kept in the library of the Castle of Brunnenburg, South Tyrol

Eccentric Naturalists: Henry James and the Provençal Novelist Alphonse Daudet

A Softened Mistral: James on Daudet’s Provençal Heritage Provence plays a major role in Henry James’s appreciation of Alphonse Daudet, the writer who immortalized the beauty of this region in famous works such as the collection of sketches Lettres de mon moulin (1870) and the picaresque novel Tartarin de Tarascon (1872). Both in his travel writing and in his literary criticism, James always referred to Provence as something that shaped and distinguished Daudet both as a man and as an artist. ..