Red Aesthetics, Intermediality and the Use of Posters in Chinese Cinema after 1949

Abstract: This article focuses on the aesthetic and affective techniques of saturation through which posters legitimated the Party-State in Mao’s China by closing the gap between everyday experience and political ideology. Propaganda posters were designed to put into practice the principle of unity, as conceptua- lised by Mao Zedong. The argument posits that while the “poster” is normally a printed edition of a painting or design intended for mass distribution in this way, the term may fairly be deployed to capture other cultural objects that function as “posters”, in that they provide public, political information that expresses or con- structs a political self in aesthetic form. This approach requires a metonymic understanding of a visual field in which cultural objects are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. The essay draws on recent in-depth interviews with poster artists of the 1960s and 1970s

Adaptive Immune Regulation of Mammary Postnatal Organogenesis.

Postnatal organogenesis occurs in an immune competent environment and is tightly controlled by interplay between positive and negative regulators. Innate immune cells have beneficial roles in postnatal tissue remodeling, but roles for the adaptive immune system are currently unexplored. Here we show that adaptive immune responses participate in the normal postnatal development of a non-lymphoid epithelial tissue. Since the mammary gland (MG) is the only organ developing predominantly after birth, we utilized it as a powerful system to study adaptive immune regulation of organogenesis. We found that antigen-mediated interactions between mammary antigen-presenting cells and interferon-γ (IFNγ)-producing CD4+ T helper 1 cells participate in MG postnatal organogenesis as negative regulators, locally orchestrating epithelial rearrangement. IFNγ then affects luminal lineage differentiation. This function of adaptive immune responses, regulating normal development, changes the paradigm for studying players of postnatal organogenesis and provides insights into immune surveillance and cancer transformation

Angelo Zottoli’s Cursus litteraturæ sinicæ as propaedeutic to Chinese classical tradition

© Monumenta Serica Institute 2015.One of the most impressive landmarks in Western Sinology must be the Cursus litteraturæ sinicæ by Italian Jesuit Angelo Zottoli (1826–1902). This four-thousand page work, presented as a Latin introduction to the written Chinese language, is actually a synoptic guide to the Chinese tradition, encompassing a vast range of texts from the Shijing (Book of Songs) to Qing-era examination essays, poetry, and letters. The Cursus was regarded even in its own time as an overly demanding text for beginners, but it remains a useful model for thinking abouthowscholars of premodern China should approach the linguistic and rhetorical features of texts. Though specialized study is essential, an appreciation of premodern China also demands comprehensive perspective. Conscious reflection on the Cursus and its potential may thus help to clarify some of the challenges faced by Sinology in the 21st century.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex