Figures gynandres chez Catulle Mendès : Les Oiseaux bleus, Méphistophéla et Monstres parisiens

Les personnages à l’identité trouble sont nombreux dans l’œuvre romanesque de Catulle Mendès. À la frontière du féminin et du masculin, ils se distinguent du reste du monde tant par leur apparence physique que par leur singularité psychique, occupant ainsi une place à part dans l’univers mendésien. Sont-ils des femmes, sont-elles des hommes ? À plusieurs reprises, le doute subsiste chez le lecteur, et l’auteur se réjouit de semer le trouble dans le genre. Si l’on connaît la fascination que vouait Catulle Mendès à l'androgynie masculine, son intérêt pour les cas d’androgynie féminine, qualifiée par Péladan de « gynandrie », est largement passé inaperçu dans les études critiques jusqu’à présent. Loin de l'image positive de l'androgyne masculin tel que le fictionnalisent les écrivains de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, « l’androgyne-femelle » revêt plutôt des caractéristiques monstrueuses, voire diaboliques. La gynandre, cette femme virilisée qui entretient avec le dandy fin-de-siècle des liens étroits, se démarque par sa représentation comme figure marginale qui se trouve, toutefois, au centre de nombreuses intrigues où glorification et peur du féminin s’entremêlent. L'étude de ces « femmes-hommes » prend alors tout son sens et permet d'entrevoir une nouvelle facette de l'œuvre romanesque de Mendès où la question d’un féminin hybride, symbole de la reconfiguration des identités sexuées et sexuelles, constitue en effet une matière vivante et complexe. Pour mener à bien notre étude, nous avons choisi de nous appuyer sur trois œuvres de Catulle Mendès qui mettent en scène chacune un personnage gynandre différent : Méphistophéla, Les Oiseaux bleus et Monstres parisiens. Grâce aux outils de l’histoire littéraire, des études sur le décadentisme, des gender studies et de la théorie queer, nous examinerons la place qu’occupe la gynandre dans l’imaginaire fin-de-siècle, ainsi que les thèmes et les motifs lui étant associés.In the fictional works of Catulle Mendes, many characters with troubled identities can often found. Standing on a thin line between the feminine and the masculine, they are distinguished from the rest by their physical appearances as well as by their psychic singularities, occupying a special place in the Mendesian universe. Are they women, are they men? On several occasions, the reader is overcome with doubt about the character’s gender. If we know Catulle Mendes' fascination with masculine androgyny, his interest in the cases of female androgyny, described by Peladan as "gynandry," has largely gone unnoticed in critical studies so far. Far from the positive image of the androgynous male fictionalized by the writers of the second half of the nineteenth century, the "androgynous-female" is rather monstrous or even diabolical. The gynandry, a virile woman who maintains close ties with the end-of-century dandy, is distinguished by her representation as a marginal figure who is at the center of many intrigues, where glorification and fear of the feminine intermingle. The study of these "women-men" takes on its full meaning and allows us to glimpse into a new facet of Mendes’s work, in which the question of a hybrid feminine, symbol of the reconfiguration of the sexe and sexual identities, constitutes a living and complex matter. In order to carry out our study, we chose to rely on three works by Catulle Mendès, each of which depicts a different gynandrous character: Méphistophéla, Les Oiseaux bleus and Monstres parisiens. With the use of literary history, studies on decadentism, gender studies and queer theory, we will examine the gynandrous roles in the end-of-century imagination, as well as the themes and motives associated with it

Characteristics of Incident Liver Cancer Cases in the District of Columbia Metropolitan Area

The District of Columbia (D.C.) has the highest liver cancer incidence in the United States (U.S.), but the reasons for this are not fully known. We examined socio-demographic, clinical and behavioral characteristics of incident liver cancer cases in D.C., Maryland (MD) and Virginia (VA) to identify potential risk factors.We obtained data from D.C., MD and VA cancer registries for individuals diagnosed with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) or intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) between 2013 and 2016. We estimated age-adjusted incidence rates and conducted descriptive analyses stratified by state/territory, sex, stage at diagnosis, and race/ethnicity. 5,928 incidents HCC/ICC cases occurred between 2013-2016. Age-adjusted incidence rates (per 100,000) for HCC/ICC were highest in D.C. (12.2, 95% CI=10.9, 13.5), for males (12.6, 95% CI=12.2, 12.9), and non-Hispanic Blacks (11.3, 95% CI=10.8, 11.8) and Asian/Pacific Islanders (APIs) (10.8, 95% CI=9.7, 11.9). Racial disparities in HCC/ICC incidence were widest in D.C. A substantial proportion of cases were missing data on country of birth and behavioral risk factors. Mean age at diagnosis, marital status, country of birth, insurance status, and alcohol and tobacco use history varied across analytic sub-groups. Non-Hispanic Blacks, APIs and males experience a high burden of liver cancer in the D.C. metropolitan area. There are several socio-demographic disparities by state/territory, sex, and race/ethnicity. More data on country of birth, behavioral risk factors, and comorbidities are urgently needed to understand their contribution to the burden of liver cancer in the D.C. metropolitan area.

Assessment of Hepatitis B Virus Screening Behaviors among Asian-Americans through the Lens of Social Cognitive Theory

Asian-Americans suffer from significant liver cancer disparity caused by chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. Understanding psychosocial predictors of HBV screening is critical to designing effective interventions. Chinese-, Korean-, and Vietnamese-Americans in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan region (N=877) were recruited from community-based organizations. Applying the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), three main theoretical constructs (knowledge, outcome expectancy, and self-efficacy) were tested. Descriptive analyses using Chi-square and ANOVA and multivariate logistic regression models were conducted. About 47% of participants reported ever having screening for HBV. Vietnamese-Americans had the lowest HBV screening rate (39%), followed by Korean-Americans (46%) and Chinese-Americans (55%). Multiple logistic regression analyses showed significant effects of HBV-related knowledge on screening in all three groups, whereas self-efficacy had significant effects in the Chinese and Korean subgroups, but not Vietnamese. HBV outcome expectancy had no effect on the screening outcome in any of the groups. Additionally, consistent in all three groups, those who had lived in the United States longer were less likely to have screening. HBV screening rates in Asian Americans remain low; targeted interventions need to consider the differences across ethnic subgroups and address the psychosocial risk factors

Tacotron: Towards End-to-End Speech Synthesis

A text-to-speech synthesis system typically consists of multiple stages, such as a text analysis frontend, an acoustic model and an audio synthesis module. Building these components often requires extensive domain expertise and may contain brittle design choices. In this paper, we present Tacotron, an end-to-end generative text-to-speech model that synthesizes speech directly from characters. Given pairs, the model can be trained completely from scratch with random initialization. We present several key techniques to make the sequence-to-sequence framework perform well for this challenging task. Tacotron achieves a 3.82 subjective 5-scale mean opinion score on US English, outperforming a production parametric system in terms of naturalness. In addition, since Tacotron generates speech at the frame level, it's substantially faster than sample-level autoregressive methods.Comment: Submitted to Interspeech 2017. v2 changed paper title to be consistent with our conference submission (no content change other than typo fixes

Promoting Breast Cancer Screening through Storytelling by Chamorro Cancer Survivors

The largest Chamorro population outside of Guam and the Mariana Islands reside in California. Cancer health disparities disproportionally affect Pacific Islander communities, including the Chamorro, and breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women. To address health concerns such as cancer, Pacific Islander women frequently utilize storytelling to initiate conversations about health and to address sensitive topics such as breast health and cancer. One form of storytelling used in San Diego is a play that conveys the message of breast cancer screening to the community in a culturally and linguistically appropriate way. This play, Nan Nena’s Mammogram, tells the story of an older woman in the community who learns about breast cancer screening from her young niece. The story builds upon the underpinnings of Chamorro culture - family, community, support, and humor - to portray discussing breast health, getting support for breast screening, and visiting the doctor. The story of Nan Nena’s Mammogram reflects the willingness of a few pioneering Chamorro women to use their personal experiences of cancer survivorship to promote screening for others. Through the support of a Chamorro community-based organization, these Chamorro breast cancer survivors have used the success of Nan Nena’s Mammogram to expand their education activities and to form a new cancer survivor organization for Chamorro women in San Diego

Racial Disparities in Hepatitis B Birth Dose in the Washington Metropolitan Region, 2018-2020.

Hepatitis B vaccination protects newborns from contracting the hepatitis B virus that may lead to chronic infection, liver failure, or death. Trends and racial differences in the administration of the hepatitis B (HepB) birth dose in 2018-2020 were examined in the targeted region. A retrospective analysis of electronic birth dose vaccination data of newborns in 2018-2020 was performed. Birth data from six birthing facilities and home delivery records were obtained from the DC Health Department Vital Statistics Division. This data represented 40,269 newborns and included the mother\u27s race and ethnicity, health insurance type, birthing facility, and administration of the HepB birth dose. Descriptive analysis and multivariable logistic regression analysis were conducted. In addition, subgroup analysis by health insurance type was also conducted with a significant interaction of race/ethnicity and health insurance type. A total of 34,509 (85.7%) received the HepB birth dose within 12 h or before discharge from the facility. The rates of birth dose vaccination have seen an increase over the 3-year period (83.7% in 2018, 85.8% in 2018, 87.7% in 2020

Social media-based intervention to promote HBV screening and liver cancer prevention among Korean Americans: Results of a pilot study

Objective: In United States, Asian Americans are 10 times more likely to have hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection than Whites. Asian immigrants with limited English proficiency face extra barriers to HBV screening and many are unaware of the infectious status. This study aimed to evaluate a social media-based intervention to promote HBV screening and liver cancer prevention among Korean Americans (KA) with limited English proficiency. Methods: Our community-academia partnership developed the Lets talk about liver cancer mHealth program by adapting a CDC media campaign. The program consisted of culturally tailored short video clips and pictorial messages and was delivered over 4 weeks to the participants via the popular Korean social media app, Kakao Talk. A total 100 KA living in greater Washington DC metropolitan were recruited via social media networks and completed this pre-post pilot study. Results: Out of the 100 participants of KA, 56 were female, mean age was 60, and most have lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years, 84% had limited English proficiency, and 21% had a family history of HBV infection or liver cancer. After 4-week intervention, 95% completed the follow-up survey. Participants reported significant improvements in HBV-related knowledge, liver cancer prevention knowledge, perceived benefits of HBV testing, perceived risks of HBV infection, injunctive norms of HBV testing, and self-efficacy of HBV testing. Conclusions: The Kakao Talk-based liver cancer prevention program for KAs was feasible and effective. We advocate for community-academia partnership to develop and implement culturally appropriate and social media-based interventions for underserved immigrants

Process evaluation of an academic-community-government partnership to reduce liver diseases attributable to hepatitis B virus.

BACKGROUND: Racial/ethnic minorities have higher incidence and mortality rates of liver cancer, or hepatocellular carcinoma, than non-Hispanic Whites. As such, the Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan Area Hepatitis B Virus (WB-HBV) Demonstration Project, a community-based participatory research (CBPR)-driven academic-community-government (ACG) partnership, was established in 2019 to address disparities and implement strategies to improve the HBV screening and vaccination infrastructure for at-risk communities. CBPR is a partnership of community members, organizational leaders, and academic researchers with a common aim to collectively share and contribute their input at every phase of the project. Herein, we describe the process evaluation of the WB-HBV Project and extract themes and insights to benefit future ACG partnerships and community-engaged research. The process evaluation has been conducted to determine whether CBPR-driven partnership and programmatic activities have been implemented as intended and have resulted in building expanded research capacity for future ACG partnership HBV community-level initiatives. METHODS: A WB-HBV Project Task Force was convened and comprised of eight organizations: four community organizations, three government organizations, and one academic institution. Through a mixed-methods process evaluation, an online survey and key informant interviews were conducted to provide context for program implementation barriers and facilitators. Descriptive statistics were conducted, and interviews were recorded, transcribed, and thematically coded. RESULTS: The survey was completed by 14 of 20 partnership members (70.0%): two academic, eight community, and four government members. Partnership members showed general agreement across 14 domains: organization and structure of meetings; trust; decisions; impact; general satisfaction; strategic planning; ACG policy impact; community-based participatory research and government; participation in meetings; assessment of participation; partnership operations and capacity; communication; challenges/limitations associated with ACG involvement; and benefits compared to challenges associated with ACG involvement. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 of the 20 members (75.0%): two academic, nine community, and four government members. Four themes emerged: partnership involvement, project goals and accomplishments, project challenges and barriers, and partnership involvement in government or policy. CONCLUSIONS: The process evaluation presents insights into developing strategies to enhance partnership functioning and increase the ability of present and future ACG partnerships to improve community health outcomes