Glutamate counteracts the denaturing effect of urea through its effect on the denatured state

The urea induced equilibrium denaturation behavior of glutaminyl-tRNA synthetase from Escherichia coli (GlnRS) in 0.25 m potassium l-glutamate, a naturally occurring osmolyte in E. coli, has been studied. Both the native to molten globule and molten globule to unfolded state transitions are shifted significantly toward higher urea concentrations in the presence of l-glutamate, suggesting that l-glutamate has the ability to counteract the denaturing effect of urea. d-Glutamate has a similar effect on the equilibrium denaturation of glutaminyl-tRNA synthetase, indicating that the effect of l-glutamate may not be due to substrate-like binding to the native state. The activation energy of unfolding is not significantly affected in the presence of 0.25 m potassium l-glutamate, indicating that the native state is not preferentially stabilized by the osmolyte. Dramatic increase of coefficient of urea concentration dependence (m) values of both the transitions in the presence of glutamate suggests destabilization and increased solvent exposure of the denatured states. Four other osmolytes, sorbitol, trimethylamine oxide, inositol, and triethylene glycol, show either a modest effect or no effect on native to molten globule transition of glutaminyl-tRNA synthetase. However, glycine betaine significantly shifts the transition to higher urea concentrations. The effect of these osmolytes on other proteins is mixed. For example, glycine betaine counteracts urea denaturation of tubulin but promotes denaturation of S228N lambda-repressor and carbonic anhydrase. Osmolyte counteraction of urea denaturation depends on osmolyte-protein pair

The search for place and context: locating strategies of resistance in gay and lesbian subjectivity

This dissertation is about the nature of community and the substance of individual and collective subjectivity. Specifically, I interrogate the character of gay and lesbian subjectivity by investigating the ways in which the gay or lesbian subject is constituted through the discourse on same-sex marriage and military service. I argue that recasting gay subjectivity uncovers more meaningful ontological possibilities for the emergence of a new description of an individual who has relational and social attachments to a broader community while maintaining fidelity and integrity to descriptions of the self. I argue that gay subjectivity begins as a search for models, a search for examples, and of a representation of the self. Gay subjectivity is about a search for place and context in an environment that views homosexuality as merely a marginal sexual identity. It is in this environment that gay and lesbian subjectivity is produced through a heteronormative discourse that distorts what it means to be gay. I argue that marital equality and unqualified military service successfully fulfill the Foucaultian promise of meaningful resistance which allows for a fuller, more meaningful subjectivity to be embraced by gays and lesbians. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Multicultural politics & women’s activism: when do race and nation enter women’s frames?

Women’s advocacy organizations often invoke moral arguments and frame issues in ways that make them legible within discourses on sexuality and race, with significance for struggles over decolonization, national representation, and schism within women’s movements. Postcolonial feminist theories help make sense of women’s activism that engages both racism and women’s rights. They provide a map of the symbolic terrain on which policy debates are fought, enabling us to identify the paths available (as well as closed) to women’s organizations as they negotiate a collective identity for their members, diagnose the problems they want to address, propose solutions, and select a strategy for persuading others to adopt their perspective. With a map like this, we can anticipate the ways in which different women’s organizations, differently positioned in terms of racial or national identity, may diverge, as well as routes to alliance. These are the tasks to which I turn when looking within the case of Trinidad and seeking to explain the different uses to which Afro-Christian, East Indian Hindu and Muslim women put race/nation in their activism. As a paired comparison of women’s activism in Trinidad and Guyana show, however, similar policy questions debated in comparable contexts (decolonizing states with histories of explicitly racial politics) can lead to strikingly different conversations, depending on whether ethno-nationalist frames occupy a central or peripheral position on the national stage. Theories of collective action framing, and the related concepts of state resonance and discursive opportunity structures, point to the role of institutionalized discourses and government priorities in shaping the choices activist women make about how to evaluate proposed problems and solutions to gender-based grievances. Process tracing reveals that values and beliefs institutionalized in state policies affect women’s strategic framing by creating discursive political opportunities. Broadly then, the contributions made further develop social movement theory by analyzing the causal mechanisms linking state-based discursive opportunities to the frames constructed by prominent women’s organizations. Because the Trinidadian case involves opportunities created by multicultural policy, the study also provides some insight into the effects of such policies on minority women’s activism in decolonizing, multiethnic societies. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Deep in the heart: Mark Twain and Walker Percy as authors of agency

The following project examines the transformative power of literature against certain problems of the modern and postmodern experience as articulated by political theory. The primary concern is what theologian David Kyuman Kim calls "melancholic freedom," a condition wherein the intelligibility of the self has been compromised by the decreases in personal agency brought on by a modern disconnect from moral and ethical sources. As such, this work is situated within the contemporary debate on the interrelatedness of identity and agency, and thus the work of Charles Taylor will figure prominently. Much of the work of twentieth and twenty-first theorists has centered around attempts to resolve the complications that have developed in the wake of our modern era, to explain the tradeoffs and contradictions. Kim suggests the need for "projects of regenerating agency," which satisfy the following criteria: 1) provide suggestion of a religious imagination at work; 2) support a cultivation of the self; 3) demonstrate a search for moral identity and present opportunities for spiritual exercise; and 4) exhibit an aspiration toward a vocation of the self. It is my argument that engagement with the literary arts, either as a reader or writer, fulfills these conditions and presents an alternative site for regenerating agency. This expansion of Kim's work opens theory to wider application and joins political philosophy and literature in a common project of expanding the discourse on identity and agency. I will demonstrate how the writing and lives of Mark Twain and Walker Percy meet Kim's criteria for such a project. Twain and Percy as authors of projects of regenerating agency advance the case that art has the capacity to be instructive and illuminating as part of our moral discourses in ways that theory cannot replicate. Also, a reading of literature motivated by the concerns of political theory--in this case the discussion on identity, agency, and their points of intersection--allows us to reinvigorate the critical appreciation of these two authors. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries