Protocols of the elders of feminism

In 1905 a Russian named Sergei Nilus published the Protocols of the Leamed Elders of Zion. The book claimed to be a Russian translation of minutes, or protocols, from secret meetings of leaders of the international Jewish conspiracy. The Protocols is a strange, incoherent mish-mash. Its first-person narrator froths at the mouth as he boasts of Jewish responsibility for every evil of western civilization, from liberal political philosophies endorsing equality, to the break-up of Gentile families

Teaching Crime Narratives: Historicizing Genre and the Politics of Form

This chapter discusses methods and approaches for the teaching of crime narratives, focusing in particular on the problem of how to historicize shifts in narrative practice, using examples from Raymond Chandler, Sara Paretsky and Attica Lock

Strange Birds: Rewriting 'The Maltese Falcon'

Hammett's formative role in establishing the conventions of the hard-boiled detective formula is widely acknowledged, but the formative influence of his masterpiece, The Maltese Falcon, on specific texts by subsequent innovators has remained largely unexplored territory. Both Sara Paretsky and Chester Himes have paid tribute to Hammett's influence, with particular reference to The Maltese Falcon. An examination of Indemnity Only and For the Love of Imabelle in relation to The Maltese Falcon offers a unique perspective on Paretsky's and Himes's stylistic choices and the social perspectives these articulated. It also helps to explain the critical reception of their work. Paretsky, writing within the grain of a type of social realism associated with both protest literature and hard-boiled detective fiction, achieved early recognition. Himes, writing against the grain, did not. Those of his detective novels most closely allied to his protest writing have received the most critical attention, but in For the Love of Imabelle, Himes used techniques allied to surrealism. These effectively disrupted and destabilized important, socially privileged discourses – and discomforted audiences and wrong-footed critic

Artificial Iron Proteins: Modeling the Active Sites in Non-Heme Dioxygenases

An important class of non-heme dioxygenases contains a conserved Fe binding site that consists of a 2-His-1-carboxylate facial triad. Results from structural biology show that, in the resting state, these proteins are six-coordinate with aqua ligands occupying the remaining three coordination sites. We have utilized biotin-streptavidin (Sav) technology to design new artificial Fe proteins (ArMs) that have many of the same structural features found within active sites of these non-heme dioxygenases. An Sav variant was isolated that contains the S; 112; E mutation, which installed a carboxylate side chain in the appropriate position to bind to a synthetic Fe; II; complex confined within Sav. Structural studies using X-ray diffraction (XRD) methods revealed a facial triad binding site that is composed of two N donors from the biotinylated ligand and the monodentate coordination of the carboxylate from S; 112; E. Two aqua ligands complete the primary coordination sphere of the Fe; II; center with both involved in hydrogen bond networks within Sav. The corresponding Fe; III; protein was also prepared and structurally characterized to show a six-coordinate complex with two exogenous acetato ligands. The Fe; III; protein was further shown to bind an exogenous azido ligand through replacement of one acetato ligand. Spectroscopic studies of the ArMs in solution support the results found by XRD