Casas tomadas: Leopoldo Brizuela’s Una misma noche

This essay considers Leopoldo Brizuela’s 2012 novel Una misma noche’s contribution to existing fiction about Argentina’s dictatorship. Focusing on the novel’s engagement with Argentina’s then (2010) Kirchnerist leadership, this analysis argues that the novel offers a consideration of the present as much as the past. The analysis focuses on the contemporary political commentary suggested by the novel’s consideration of Kirchnerist politics as its narrator attempts to pen a novel about the victims, perpetrators, and unwilling accomplices in the atrocities that characterised the military dictatorship. Specifically, this novel en abyme seeks to recount the narrator’s possible complicity in the break-in into his own home and the kidnapping of his next-door neighbour at the beginning of the military dictatorship in 1976. This reading of the novel engages with cultural and political commentary on the country’s Kirchnerist leadership as well as with the canonical Argentine short story “Casa tomada” in order to consider Brizuela’s creation of a new aesthetic for thinking through the past and present

Metamorphoses of 1968: Latin America and the Israel-Palestine Question in Tomás Abraham’s La dificultad (2015)

Throughout Tomás Abraham’s novel of ideas La dificultad, Judaism is revealed to be central to the protagonist’s understandings of revolutionary politics, philosophy, and his own identity. As is apparent in his affinity with Palestinian causes as a form of anti-imperialist solidarity, life experiences and politics are inseparable. That Abraham should have chosen to focus this autobiographical novel on the Hungarian-Argentine Jewish narrator’s experiences with the Paris student movements of 1968 suggests that revolutionary movements and the challenges to the global Jewish community continue to affect his identity as a Jew, an Argentine, and a philosopher. A lo largo de la novela de ideas de Tomás Abraham La dificultad, se revela el rol central del judaísmo en como el protagonista entiende la política revolucionaria, la filosofía y su propia identidad. Como es evidente en su afinidad con las causas palestinas como una forma de solidaridad antiimperialista, las experiencias de vida y la política son inseparables. El hecho de que Abraham eligió enfocar esta novela autobiográfica en las experiencias del narrador judío húngaro-argentino con los movimientos estudiantiles de París de 1968 sugiere que los movimientos revolucionarios y los desafíos a la comunidad judía global continúan afectando su identidad como judío, argentino y filósofo

Redirected utopias: the politics of self-reflexive autobiographical documentary in Albertina Carri’s Los rubios and Ufuk Emiroglu’s Mon père, la révolution, et moi

Twenty-first century documentary production from around the world has used self-reflexivity to challenge assumptions about subjectivity and social positioning in ways that explicitly challenge the politics of filmmaking. Released in 2003 and 2013 respectively, Argentine director Albertina Carri’s Los rubios and Turkish filmmaker Ufuk Emiroglu’s Mon père, la révolution et moi incorporate fictions and fantasies into their autobiographical stories, telling their life stories through alternative narrative forms that deviate from existing social and aesthetic precepts. The two filmmakers seek to understand–and scrutinize–the utopian ideals of the revolutionary movements to which their fathers belonged in 1970s Argentina and Turkey, respectively. The directors use non-realist, non-linear approaches to telling their own life stories as a way of challenging what audiences think they know about their nations’ recent history. Situating these two films within their respective national film industries and within documentary practices around the globe, I show that their shared metonymic structures question the utopic aspects of their respective fathers’ revolutionary politics and the non-place of memory. As I argue in my comparative discussion, these films are ‘redirecting’ utopic autobiographical storytelling to challenge notions of cohesion in both the self and political pursuits

Silences between jewishness and indigeneity in eduardo Halfon\u27s Mañana nunca lo hablamos

This article analyzes Eduardo Halfon\u27s Mañana nunca lo hablamos (2011) arguing that Hal/on offers a retrospective view of Guatemala\u27s Civil War ( la violencia ) from a Jewish perspective that is distinct from an indigenous perspective. Nonetheless, this study shows to what extent Halfon\u27s work posits the possibility of an affective identification between Jews and indigenous populations in the context of the violent political conflict The conclusion maintains that the work offers new possibilities for thinking through the relationship between ethnicity and politics, a conceptual relationship that until now has been a critical lacuna within analyses of Jewish Latin American cultural productions

Investigation of IRQ domain containing proteins in Arabidopsis thaliana

The endomembrane system in eukaryotic cells plays a vital role in the movement of membranes and substances around the cell in response to abiotic and biotic stimuli. Recent work on an actin binding protein, NETWORKED4B (NET4B), revealed that this vacuolar localised protein (Deeks et al. 2012) contains a domain termed the IRQ domain responsible for interacting with particular regulatory proteins of the endomembrane system. Bioinformatic analysis revealed that this IRQ domain was present in six novel proteins not containing the characteristic NET Actin Binding (NAB) domain. These proteins were termed the IRQ proteins (IRQ1-6). Work outlined in this thesis explores the evolution and localisation of expression of these proteins but in particular looks at IRQ4. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the IRQ proteins represent a eudicot specific group of proteins and that they evolved from the NET proteins. The IRQ proteins can be subdivided based on sequence similarity into three groups: IRQ1 and IRQ6, IRQ2 and IRQ3, IRQ4 and IRQ5. Using promoter GUS lines for IRQ1 and IRQ6 revealed that these proteins may be involved in the initiation or regulation of lateral root growth. IRQ4 was expressed most strongly in the root. Subcellular localisation analysis using promIRQ4::IRQ4-GFP and live cell imaging showed that IRQ4 localises to the prevacuolar compartment (PVC)/multivesicular body (MVB). Immunogold labelling using an IRQ4 specific antibody revealed an additional localisation to autophagasomes. This project investigates a group of novel eudicot specific proteins and shows that IRQ4 may be involved in key endomembrane pathways in plants

PINK1 protects against oxidative stress by phosphorylating mitochondrial chaperone TRAP1.

Mutations in the PTEN induced putative kinase 1 (PINK1) gene cause an autosomal recessive form of Parkinson disease (PD). So far, no substrates of PINK1 have been reported, and the mechanism by which PINK1 mutations lead to neurodegeneration is unknown. Here we report the identification of TNF receptor-associated protein 1 (TRAP1), a mitochondrial molecular chaperone also known as heat shock protein 75 (Hsp75), as a cellular substrate for PINK1 kinase. PINK1 binds and colocalizes with TRAP1 in the mitochondria and phosphorylates TRAP1 both in vitro and in vivo. We show that PINK1 protects against oxidative-stress-induced cell death by suppressing cytochrome c release from mitochondria, and this protective action of PINK1 depends on its kinase activity to phosphorylate TRAP1. Moreover, we find that the ability of PINK1 to promote TRAP1 phosphorylation and cell survival is impaired by PD-linked PINK1 G309D, L347P, and W437X mutations. Our findings suggest a novel pathway by which PINK1 phosphorylates downstream effector TRAP1 to prevent oxidative-stress-induced apoptosis and implicate the dysregulation of this mitochondrial pathway in PD pathogenesis

‘Nothing for the godly to fear’: Use of Sarum Influence on the 1549 Book of Common Prayer

This thesis examines the extent to which the Use of Sarum service books provided an evolutionary basis for the form and content of the 1549 edition of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP). This study focuses on the contributions of the Sarum books to the 1549 BCP from a book history viewpoint, addressing where necessary the religious and political issues, in order to better comprehend the ways in which such changes would have impacted Tudor people. First offering an analysis of the genres studied as the BCP’s antecedents, this thesis further surveys how governmental attitudes affected religious doctrine and practice in the service books of the English realm, during the vacillations of the 1530s and 1540s. It further contends that the transition from manuscript production to print production and the growth of the printing industry in England hardly altered how religious material was produced, despite the religious preferences of the producers. The five subsequent chapters argue that the legacy of the Sarum books in the Book of Common Prayer varies according to the selected themes. The first theme is that of marking time; we prove that although the calendars of service books were radically pruned, the methods for tracking time remained the same. The second theme looks at the use of vernacular and Biblical material, arguing that the use of English and of specific Biblical passages from Sarum services in the BCP were not radical differences. The third theme explores the rich devotional tradition of praying to the Virgin Mary and to the saints, attesting that while there is diminution, it was not strictly due to reformist ideals. The fourth theme examines the occasional offices of the Church, asserting that the considerable overlap outweighed the differences between the Sarum and BCP traditions. The final theme examines changes and continuities in the ways of preparing for death, contending that the impact of seemingly radical changes was lessened by the retention of optional practices. This thesis provides the book history evidence that the 1549 Book of Common Prayer clearly derived from its Sarum predecessors, in ways that go beyond the simple paradigm of melding reformist and traditional interpretations

A Method to Identify p62's UBA Domain Interacting Proteins

The UBA domain is a conserved sequence motif among polyubiquitin binding proteins. For the first time, we demonstrate a systematic, high throughput approach to identification of UBA domain-interacting proteins from a proteome-wide perspective. Using the rabbit reticulocyte lysate in vitro expression cloning system, we have successfully identified eleven proteins that interact with p62’s UBA domain, and the majority of the eleven proteins are associated with neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. Therefore, p62 may play a novel regulatory role through its UBA domain. Our approach provides an easy route to the characterization of UBA domain interacting proteins and its application will unfold the important roles that the UBA domain plays