You Are Safe : Black Maternal Politics Of Resistance And The Question Of Community Consensus In African American Women\u27s Literature

The study focuses on a number of African American women\u27s literary texts that employ the figure of the black mother and the motif of infanticide to engage in critical statements about system arrangements, repressive practices, and theory designs with direct effect upon black people\u27s choices for organizing their lives and existence. Such critical statements are inevitably political and their construction is offered in a most provocative and startling way given the choice of maternal infanticide to make the claims. Angelina Weld Grimke\u27s The Closing Door (1919), Georgia Douglas Johnson\u27s Safe (c.1929), Shirley Graham\u27s It\u27s Morning (c. 1938-1940), and Toni Morrison\u27s Beloved (1987) are texts that explicate the working of the political through an expression of controversial black maternal politics that demands a renegotiation of the basis for communitarian unity. In these texts, black mothers murder their children in often utterly grotesque and spectacular ways to claim brazenly that they provide safety for their children from slavery and lynching. Safety is the one thing missing in their lives and the one thing that mothers secure for their children by definition. Through the act of infanticide and its subsequent interpretations, the signifier safety is quickly thrust into a field of discursivity where competing notions as to what lends meaning to safety exist: safety is cast as death and violence, as dismembered human body, as grotesque maternal mastery, as mother-child oneness, or as sound that breaks the back of words. Thus, the signifier safety reaches the status of what political theorist Ernesto Laclau calls in Emancipation(s) the signifier of empty communitarian fullness (43). It will arrest meaning only after a particular articulation of safety brings the promise of communitarian wholeness. Put in the time of their publication, Grimke\u27s The Closing Door (1919), Johnson\u27s Safe (c. 1229), Graham\u27s It\u27s Morning (c. 1938-1940) and Morrison\u27s Beloved (1988) serve also as responses to the emerging Harlem Renaissance art theories of the 1920s and 30s and the birth of African American vernacular theories in the late 1970s and 1980s where each, from the perspective of its days and goals, aimed to position African American literature safely, and with the necessary dose of comfort, on the American literary and cultural map. The novelty of this project lies first in the fact of putting Angelina Weld Grimke\u27s The Closing Door, Georgia Douglas Johnson\u27s Safe, Shirley Graham\u27s It\u27s Morning, and Toni Morrison\u27s Beloved together for critical examination. To my knowledge, no such study that links infanticidal literature authored by African American women writers exists. Second, it is a critical exploration of the political role of the literary figure of the black mother in shaping community consensus along intracommunal (black) lines and a glimpse of the relation between African American women\u27s texts and theories designed to promote African American literary features. Third, I hope that the study will serve as an illumination of Ernesto Laclau\u27s political theory on hegemony and emancipation, and will contribute to the field of feminism and African American studies

Historiography in Bulgaria After the Fall of Communism: Did "The Change" Happen?

no abstrac

Historiography in Bulgaria After the Fall of Communism: Did "The Change" Happen?

no abstrac

Socialist gerontology? Or gerontology during socialism? The Bulgarian case

This article focuses on the emergence and development of gerontology in communist Bulgaria, looking at the interplay of various circumstances: scientific and political, national and international. We ask if an apparently ideologically neutral field of knowledge such as gerontology may have had some intrinsic qualities imbued by the regimes of knowledge production under a communist regime. More specifically, we ask to what extent and in which ways the production of such specialized, putatively universal knowledge could be ideologically driven and/or politically controlled. To this end, we unpack the ideological, political, institutional, and epistemic circumstances that may have affected the emergence, the institutionalization, and the paradigm of Bulgarian gerontology. We focus in on the social actors, both individuals and organizations, and the roles they played in the process, as well as on international networking and the uses of international contacts and agendas

Family As An Important Factor For The Education And Socialization Of Children

The family is the first social space where every human being is socialized and develops as a person. For a child, it is a base, a center for building a social network through which children experience life. From a psychological point of view, the family is a social institution based on feelings, and from a pedagogical point of view it is a small group, a primary social community of fundamental importance for the socialization of the growing generation. The family is also the first educational environment for the child from a chronological point of view as well as in terms of the degree of importance of the factors influencing a child’s overall development. It is also a micro-society that provides the knowledge and values necessary for the integration of a child into the global social space. Every person’s start in life, which is highly individual and different, is determined precisely by the influence of the basic social environment - the family. Therefore, the status of the family becomes the status of the child. A child sticks to that status for a long time until s/he is able to change it. The good or bad reputation of the family is also transferred to the child and a significant part of his/her relationships is built under the influence of such reputation. The position of the family in the social structure becomes the position of the child. The family environment has a great impact on the future and the potential prospects that become available to the child. That is why the process of socialization, similarly to the process of education, is associated with the beginning from the very birth of a person, that is, with the family, because it is in the family where a child gains his/her first knowledge about the surrounding material and social world and about the interpersonal relationships. The child learns the laws, the forms of government, the concepts of debt, belonging, conscience, responsibility, the patterns of behavior, and so on. The social and moral attitudes are formed. That is why the family stands out as one of the important factors for the upbringing and socialization of the child

Spark plasma sintering synthesis of Ni1−xZnxFe2O4 ferrites: Mössbauer and catalytic study

Nickel-zinc ferrite nanoparticles, Ni1-xZnxFe2O4 (x ¼ 0, 0.2, 0.5, 0.8, 1.0) were prepared by combination of chemical precipitation and spark plasma sintering (SPS) techniques and conventional thermal treatment of the obtained precursors. The phase composition and structural properties of the obtained materials were investigated by X-ray diffraction and Mössbauer spectroscopy and their catalytic activity in methanol decomposition was tested. A strong effect of reaction medium leading to the transformation of ferrites to a complex mixture of different iron containing phases was detected. A tendency of formation of Fe-carbide was found for the samples synthesized by SPS, while predominantly iron-nickel alloys ware registered in TS obtained samples. The catalytic activity and selectivity in methanol decomposition to CO and methane depended on the current phase composition of the obtained ferrites, which was formed by the influence of the reaction medium

Risk profile and hemodynamic characteristics in young subjects with high normal arterial blood pressure

Introduction: The European Society of Cardiology classifies arterial pressure bellow 140/90 mmHg as optimal (below 120/80 mmHg), normal (120-129 mmHg for systolic and/or 80-84 mmHg for diastolic) and high normal (130-139 mmHg for systolic and/or 85-89 mmHg for diastolic). The argument is concerned with different cardiovascular risk. The possibility for arterial hypertension (AH) to appear is higher in individuals with high normal arterial pressure (HNAP). Such individuals could be treated with non-drug therapy as the idea is the appearance of AH to be delayed and the cardiovascular risk to be reduced.The goal of the study was to examine the risk and hemodynamic profile of medical students with HNAP.Material and methods:  The object of the investigation was focused on medical students with HNAP. The two followed-up groups - with HNAP and with optimal arterial blood pressure (OBP) assumed this pattern on the base of inquiry and screening among 116 students (60 men and 56 women). Inquiry and anthropometric methods, arterial pressure monitoring and impedance cardiography were carried out.Results: The dominance of some factors, predisposing hypertension appearance as overweight, increased salt consumption, family history was registered in HNAP group. Hemodynamic evaluation manifested hyperkinetic type of circulation.Conclusion: Medical students` risk and hemodynamic profile within HNAP group is close to that of the hypertensive individuals. That makes them a special risk group and there is a necessity of non-drug treatment in order to delay AH expression

LIPAD (LRRK2/Luebeck International Parkinson's Disease) Study Protocol:Deep Phenotyping of an International Genetic Cohort

Background: Pathogenic variants in the Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene are the most common known monogenic cause of Parkinson's disease (PD). LRRK2-linked PD is clinically indistinguishable from idiopathic PD and inherited in an autosomal dominant fashion with reduced penetrance and variable expressivity that differ across ethnicities and geographic regions.Objective: To systematically assess clinical signs and symptoms including non-motor features, comorbidities, medication and environmental factors in PD patients, unaffected LRRK2 pathogenic variant carriers, and controls. A further focus is to enable the investigation of modifiers of penetrance and expressivity of LRRK2 pathogenic variants using genetic and environmental data.Methods: Eligible participants are invited for a personal or online examination which comprises completion of a detailed eCRF and collection of blood samples (to obtain DNA, RNA, serum/plasma, immune cells), urine as well as household dust. We plan to enroll 1,000 participants internationally: 300 with LRRK2-linked PD, 200 with LRRK2 pathogenic variants but without PD, 100 PD patients with pathogenic variants in the GBA or PRKN genes, 200 patients with idiopathic PD, and 200 healthy persons without pathogenic variants.Results: The eCRF consists of an investigator-rated (1 h) and a self-rated (1.5 h) part. The first part includes the Movement Disorder Society Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating, Hoehn &Yahr, and Schwab & England Scales, the Brief Smell Identification Test, and Montreal Cognitive Assessment. The self-rating part consists of a PD risk factor, food frequency, autonomic dysfunction, and quality of life questionnaires, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Inventory, and the Epworth Sleepiness as well as the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scales. The first 15 centers have been initiated and the first 150 participants enrolled (as of March 25th, 2021).Conclusions: LIPAD is a large-scale international scientific effort focusing on deep phenotyping of LRRK2-linked PD and healthy pathogenic variant carriers, including the comparison with additional relatively frequent genetic forms of PD, with a future perspective to identify genetic and environmental modifiers of penetrance and expressivityClinical Trial Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04214509

Approaching the socialist factory and its workforce: considerations from fieldwork in (former) Yugoslavia

The socialist factory, as the ‘incubator’ of the new socialist (wo)man, is a productive entry point for the study of socialist modernization and its contradictions. By outlining some theoretical and methodological insights gathered through field-research in factories in former Yugoslavia, we seek to connect the state of labour history in the Balkans to recent breakthroughs made by labour historians of other socialist countries. The first part of this article sketches some of the specificities of the Yugoslav self-managed factory and its heterogeneous workforce. It presents the ambiguous relationship between workers and the factory and demonstrates the variety of life trajectories for workers in Yugoslav state-socialism (from model communists to alienated workers). The second part engages with the available sources for conducting research inside and outside the factory advocating an approach which combines factory and local archives, print media and oral history

The genetic architecture of the human cerebral cortex

The cerebral cortex underlies our complex cognitive capabilities, yet little is known about the specific genetic loci that influence human cortical structure. To identify genetic variants that affect cortical structure, we conducted a genome-wide association meta-analysis of brain magnetic resonance imaging data from 51,665 individuals. We analyzed the surface area and average thickness of the whole cortex and 34 regions with known functional specializations. We identified 199 significant loci and found significant enrichment for loci influencing total surface area within regulatory elements that are active during prenatal cortical development, supporting the radial unit hypothesis. Loci that affect regional surface area cluster near genes in Wnt signaling pathways, which influence progenitor expansion and areal identity. Variation in cortical structure is genetically correlated with cognitive function, Parkinson's disease, insomnia, depression, neuroticism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder