Seeing and Hearing the Thinking Voice

Given that my own work is focused on questions of diaspora, visuality, and queerness, I am very grateful for the fact that Fiol-Matta models for us a mode of both listening and looking with deep care. This critical listening and critical looking make apparent an entirely different understanding of Puerto Rican music culture, through an examination of how women singers have negotiated the impossible demands placed on their star bodies. Fiol-Matta theorizes for us the intimate relation between the visual and the aural. As such, her work in fact powerfully resonates with that of visual studies scholars such as Tina Campt, Christopher Pinney, and Krista Thompson

Applications of Circular Dichroism for Structural Analysis of Gelatin and Antimicrobial Peptides

Circular dichroism (CD) is a useful technique for monitoring changes in the conformation of antimicrobial peptides or gelatin. In this study, interactions between cationic peptides and gelatin were observed without affecting the triple helical content of the gelatin, which was more strongly affected by anionic surfactant. The peptides did not adopt a secondary structure in the presence of aqueous solution or Tween 80, but a peptide secondary structure formed upon the addition of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). The peptides bound to the phosphate group of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and displayed an alpha-helical conformation while (KW)4 adopted a folded conformation. Further, the peptides did not specifically interact with the fungal cell wall components of mannan or laminarin. Tryptophan blue shift assay indicated that these peptides interacted with SDS, LPS, and gelatin but not with Tween 80, mannan, or laminarin. The peptides also displayed antibacterial activity against P. aeruginosa without cytotoxicity against HaCaT cells at MIC, except for HPA3NT3-analog peptide. In this study, we used a CD spectroscopic method to demonstrate the feasibility of peptide characterization in numerous environments. The CD method can thus be used as a screening method of gelatin-peptide interactions for use in wound healing applications

29. Diaspora, Indigeneity, Queer Critique: Tracey Moffatt’s Aesthetics of Dwelling in Displacement

This essay draws from my recent book, Unruly Visions: The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora (2018). I use this phrase, ‘the aesthetic practices of queer diaspora,’ to name aesthetic practices that engage the visual register and that allow us to theorize gender and sexuality in relation to race and migration in multiple geographic and/or national locations. Most crucially, these aesthetic practices also allow us to apprehend the ways in which viable modes of dwelling and rootedness are cre..

Unruly Visions : The Aesthetic Practices of Queer Diaspora

"In Unruly Visions Gayatri Gopinath brings queer studies to bear on investigations of diaspora and visuality, tracing the interrelation of affect, archive, region, and aesthetics through an examination of a wide range of contemporary queer visual culture. Spanning film, fine art, poetry, and photography, these cultural forms—which Gopinath conceptualizes as aesthetic practices of queer diaspora—reveal the intimacies of seemingly disparate histories of (post)colonial dwelling and displacement and are a product of diasporic trajectories. Countering standard formulations of diaspora that inevitably foreground the nation-state, as well as familiar formulations of queerness that ignore regional gender and sexual formations, she stages unexpected encounters between works by South Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Australian, and Latinx artists such as Tracey Moffatt, Akram Zaatari, and Allan deSouza. Gopinath shows how their art functions as regional queer archives that express alternative understandings of time, space, and relationality. The queer optics produced by these visual practices creates South-to-South, region-to-region, and diaspora-to-region cartographies that profoundly challenge disciplinary and area studies rubrics. Gopinath thereby provides new critical perspectives on settler colonialism, empire, military occupation, racialization, and diasporic dislocation as they indelibly mark both bodies and landscapes." -- Publisher's website