The Periodical Reading Room

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The Rose, First Edition

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Disgruntled

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Door to Remain: Community in Poetry\u27s Threshold

Austin Segrest, recipient of the 2022 Faculty Convocation Award, saw his debut book, Door to Remain, garner significant praise even before it hit bookshelves this spring. The book of poetry from the Lawrence University assistant professor of English took home the 2021 Vassar Miller Poetry Prize last year. Published by University of North Texas Press, the deeply personal book presents poems focused on Segrest’s mother, Susu, who died in 2003 when he was 23, and his time growing up in Alabama. Segrest, whose poetry also can be found in Poetry, The Yale Review, The Threepenny Review, Ecotone, New England Review, and Ploughshares, will deliver the Honors Convocation address at 12:30 p.m. May 27 in Memorial Chapel. He has been teaching at Lawrence since 2014, first as a visiting professor and for the last three years as an assistant professor of English. He teaches classes in poetry writing and literature, as well as First-Year Studies. Segrest earned a bachelor’s degree from Emory University, an MFA in poetry at Georgia State University, and a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing (poetry) at the University of Missouri

Common sense philosophy and politics in America: John Witherspoon, James McCosh, and William James

This dissertation examines the political significance of the two leading strains of common sense thought in the history of American philosophy—Scottish Common Sense and Pragmatism—as suggested in the writings of John Witherspoon and James McCosh in the Scottish Common Sense line, and of the more famous co-founder of Pragmatism, William James. These two strains of American common sense are placed in context of the larger Western common sense tradition. Each is shown to aim at finding a solid middle ground epistemologically between skeptical doubt and idealistic certitude that could serve as a stable basis for moral and political life. Witherspoon, the first great advocate and popularizer of Scottish Common Sense in America, gave the United States its first coherent, systematic common sense political theory, and that theory is here traced out as a common sense theory of politics for the first time. The first systematic text-based treatment of the moral and social thought of McCosh, the last great proponent of Scottish Common Sense in the American setting, is also provided. In James’ case, the first systematic treatment of the place of common sense in his philosophic worldview is rendered, and it is argued in the process that he is rightly understood as a kind of common sense philosopher. Together, Witherspoon, McCosh, and James offer a vision of man and society that avoids the rigidity of dogmatic foundationalism, on the one hand, and the slackness of foundationless ethics and politics, on the other

The Art of Cross-Examination in PTAB Trials

Despite similarities in form, a cross-examination in a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) trial constitutes trial testimony, which is different from a discovery deposition occurring in civil litigation. While most practitioners would readily recognize this distinction in the abstract, it can be easy to fall back into patterns learned in and applicable to pretrial discovery in civil litigation that may not fit for a PTAB cross-examination. The PTAB regulations describe cross-examination as “routine discovery” in the “form of a deposition transcript,” but a civil action discovery deposition and a PTAB trial cross-examination deposition differ in their goals, their applicable rules, and their use in the case, all of which should inform how one approaches the cross-examination process. One of the classic texts on trial advocacy, THE ART OF CROSS-EXAMINATION, was published more than a century ago. Through stories and descriptions, that book has taught generations of lawyers its techniques for approaching cross-examination in a live courtroom setting. In this article, drawing its title from that work, we will review some of the regulations, guidelines, and cases from the Board instructing counsel on how to approach and conduct cross-examination in the PTAB trial

Denying equality: an analysis of arguments against lowering the age of consent for sex between men

This paper takes a human rights approach to lesbian and gay oppression and critically explores the arguments used to oppose equality in the debates about the age of consent for sex between men. A thematic analysis of Hansard and newspaper reports produced in Britain during the 1990s showed that opponents of the amendment to equalise the age of consent countered with three key arguments laying claim to ethical principles overriding the principle of equality. These were: (1) Principles of right and wrong take precedence over equality; (2) Principles of democracy take precedence over equality; (3) Principles of care and protection take precedence over equality. Two additional arguments (the health risks of anal intercourse, and escalating demands for gay rights) are also outlined. Our findings are discussed with reference to debates on other lesbian and gay rights issues, and we consider the ways in which we might best counter these arguments. </p

Apolipoprotein A-I: the dual face of a protein

Conformational plasticity and flexibility are key structural features of ApoAI in lipid metabolism. Amyloidogenic single point mutations, associated with incurable familial amyloidosis with fibril deposition in peripheral organs, may have a dramatic impact on the structural and functional features of ApoAI. Here, the consistent body of data on ApoAI variants has been reviewed, with the aim of highlighting the hallmarks of the pathology. In accordance with our observations, as well as that of others, we propose a model that accounts for the alteration of the delicate balance between lipid-free/lipid-bound dynamic states which is based on monomer-to-dimer interconversion via domain swapping

Panel. Faulkner and the Literary Canon

Considering the Unthinkable: The Risks and Rewards of Decanonizing Faulkner / Deborah Clarke, Arizona State UniversityAre we doing Faulkner any favors by canonizing him? To what extent does our belief in his greatness foreclose different ways of reading his work? Do we default to “if Faulkner did it, it must be brilliant,” giving him the benefit of all doubts? I’ll be looking at how our reverence for his work may actually hinder our understanding of it, as well as alienating students and colleagues who don’t dare to admit their resistance and doubt. Rather than using Faulkner’s difficulty as a way to silence critics, let’s consider what happens if we admit that it may be a problem. It’s time to re-think why Faulkner should—or shouldn’t—retain his position atop the American literary canon. Popular Faulkner: Pulp Paperbacks, Oprah’s Book Club, and the Curse of the Hypercanonical / Jaime Harker, University of MississippiBecause of Faulkner’s hypercanonical status—that is, because his writing seems to exemplify the autonomous aesthetic object, placed in opposition to mass culture—decades of brilliant scholarship about Faulkner’s deep and complicated relationship to popular culture have had little effect on the larger direction of Faulkner studies. Building on David Earle’s book Re-Covering Modernism, I suggest that Cold War paperbacks created an egalitarian, diverse reading and writing community that Oprah’s Book Club continued. I conclude by speculating about how a pulp Faulkner canon might construct a new vocabulary for talking about style that articulates multiple interpretive communities and their contingencies of value (in Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s provocative phrase). What happens when we no longer understand popular culture as base source material transformed by genius but as alternate interpretive communities? What if we consider a ‘fertile interchange’ without assuming that our own designations of quality are natural and innate? Benjy Compson\u27s Mind of the South / Mab Segrest, Connecticut CollegeBenjy Compson is more than likely the referent of Faulkner\u27s title for The Sound and the Fury. But a reading of the novel through the lens of southern psychiatric history and my own study of Georgia\u27s mammoth and iconic \u27lunatic asylum\u27\u27/sanitarium/state hospital at Milledgeville reveals the complex signification that results from the family\u27s decision to keep a cognitively disabled son and brother out of the state hospital. What do we learn about Faulkner and about the disciplining of mind in the Jim Crow South from Faulkner\u27s radical decision to write the novel\u27s opening from Benjy\u27s point of view? How do the Compsons’ choices and those of the African Americans who care for them and for Benjy reverberate through The Sound and the Fury and through other southern works, from To Kill a Mockingbird to The Violent Bear It Away to The Member of the Wedding to Streetcar Named Desire

Dimensionality of Carbon Nanomaterials Determines the Binding and Dynamics of Amyloidogenic Peptides: Multiscale Theoretical Simulations

Experimental studies have demonstrated that nanoparticles can affect the rate of protein self-assembly, possibly interfering with the development of protein misfolding diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and prion disease caused by aggregation and fibril formation of amyloid-prone proteins. We employ classical molecular dynamics simulations and large-scale density functional theory calculations to investigate the effects of nanomaterials on the structure, dynamics and binding of an amyloidogenic peptide apoC-II(60-70). We show that the binding affinity of this peptide to carbonaceous nanomaterials such as C60, nanotubes and graphene decreases with increasing nanoparticle curvature. Strong binding is facilitated by the large contact area available for π-stacking between the aromatic residues of the peptide and the extended surfaces of graphene and the nanotube. The highly curved fullerene surface exhibits reduced efficiency for π-stacking but promotes increased peptide dynamics. We postulate that the increase in conformational dynamics of the amyloid peptide can be unfavorable for the formation of fibril competent structures. In contrast, extended fibril forming peptide conformations are promoted by the nanotube and graphene surfaces which can provide a template for fibril-growth