Captain Joseph Deverell and the 108th NYV Infantry

This presentation examines the unpublished documents of Captain Joseph Deverell, 108th New York Volunteer Infantry, as a case study of the Northern experience during the Civil War. Specifically, Captain Deverell’s records of mustering, desertion, honor culture, and medical treatment reaffirm the traditional narrative. Deverell’s paperwork provides insight into the minds of the Rochester men in his unit. Deverell’s records are contextualized with other primary and secondary sources about the 108th, which are in turn fit into the framework of the larger Northern narrative of the war, established by James McPherson in his work, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

Men of Steel & Sentinels of Liberty: Superman and Captain America as Civilians and Soldiers in World War II

This thesis examines Superman and Captain America comics during World War II, arguing that they portray the civilians’ and soldiers’ experiences of the war, respectively. The thesis begins by examining the creators’ backgrounds and how they influenced later portrayals of the war before proceeding to explore the wartime comics. During the war, DC used Superman as escapist fare to distract from the war while Timely Comics used Captain America to explore the issues of the war, such as portrayals of the Nazis and Japanese. The third and fourth chapters focus on these two issues: portrayals of Nazis and the Japanese. Both comics carefully distinguished between Germans and Nazis, avoiding racial stereotyping of Caucasians. The Japanese, however, were the most prevalent in a series of bluntly racist portrayals of non-whites in the comics. Superman and Captain America comics reinforced white supremacy and cast the war in racial terms. The two characters and their respective publishers used the relatively new medium of comic books to engage World War II in distinctly different ways, allowing the comics to portray the civilians’ and soldiers’ respective experiences

The Manokwari Declaration: Challenges ahead in conserving 70% of Tanah Papua’s forests

The Manokwari Declaration is an unprecedented pledge by the governors of Indonesia’s two New Guinea provinces to promote conservation and become SE Asia’s new Costa Rica. This is an exciting, yet challenging endeavour that will require working on many fronts that transcend single disciplines. Because Indonesian New Guinea has the largest expanse of intact forests in SE Asia, large-scale conservation pledges like the Manokwari Declaration will have a global impact on biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation

Captain America Comics as Historically Grounded Cultural Criticism

After Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created him in 1941, Captain America served the writers and editors of Timely, then Atlas, and finally Marvel comics as a means to comment upon and critique American culture. In the 1950s, Atlas Comics, wrapped up in the frenzy of McCarthyism and the Red Scare, rebranded Captain America the “Commie Smasher” for a short, and ultimately retconned (negated after the fact), run. Following the character’s second resurgence in the 1960s, Marvel tapped into the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement and wrote the character to be more liberal, discussing issues of race and examining what it meant to be an American. Finally, in the past decade, Ed Brubaker wrote Captain America stories that reflected back on the cultural memory of the Cold War, resurrecting Bucky as a Soviet-brainwashed assassin and introducing a series of ex-KGB characters

Men of Steel and Sentinels of Liberty: Superman and Captain America as Civilians and Soldiers in World War II

During World War II, both Timely Comics and DC used Superman and Captain America to contextualize the war and present various ideologies to their readers. The comics, in keeping with historian John Dower’s thesis , portrayed World War II as a racial conflict pitting Anglo-Americans against non-whites around the world. While comic book writers and illustrators targeted the Japanese with the worst of the stereotyping, no non-white group escaped unscathed. African Americans, Indians, and surprisingly Native Americans faced racial stereotyping in comic books, serving to reinforce white male supremacy and cast America as a white nation defending itself against non-white enemies. The very first time an African American character appeared in Captain America Comics, he appeared in the background and then disappeared as soon as Captain America and his allies began fighting Nazis, again reinforcing the white supremacist portrayal of the war. Subsequent African American characters fit into the minstrel image and further dehumanized one group of Americans in a comic meant to unite all Americans. DC’s two Superman titles, Action Comics and Superman, avoid any portrayal of races other than Caucasians and Japanese. The comics, as a burgeoning form of mass media that catered to both soldiers and civilians, represented the war in the simplest terms possible, pitting attractive white men against dehumanized and grotesque portrayals of nonwhite soldiers and civilians

Elucidation of asthma phenotypes in atopic teenagers through parallel immunophenotypic and clinical profiling

Background: Current treatment strategies for asthma in teenagers derive primarily from information on chronic disease in adults. More detailed understanding of risk factors related to teenage asthma might aid in the development of improved preventive and treatment strategies for this age group. Objective: We sought to identify biomarkers associated with asthma phenotypes in teenagers, particularly atopic asthma, and to identify markers that aid in discriminating between atopic subjects at high versus low risk of asthma. Methods: We studied 1380 unselected 14-year-olds and collected data on clinical history, allergic sensitization, and respiratory and immunoinflammatory function. The latter comprised measurements of circulating inflammatory markers and in vitro innate and adaptive immune functions, including house dust mite T-cell responses. We integrated the data into regression models to identify variables most strongly associated with asthma risk and severity among atopic subjects. Results: Eight hundred twenty-seven subjects were atopic, 140 subjects were asthmatic, and 81% of asthmatic subjects were also atopic. We identified asthma risk variables related to atopy intensity, including specific IgE and eosinophil levels, plus an additional series external to the TH2 cascade but that modified risk only in atopic subjects, including IFN-γ, IL-10, and IL-12 responses and neutrophil numbers in blood. Moreover, bronchial hyperresponsiveness was associated strongly with atopic but not nonatopic asthma, and the bronchial hyperresponsiveness risk profile was itself dominated by atopy-associated variables. Conclusions: Asthma in teenagers is predominantly driven by atopy acting in concert with a second tier of TH2-independent immunoinflammatory mechanisms, which contribute to pathogenesis only against the background of pre-existing inhalant allergy