Student-Centered Pedagogy in the Chinese Classroom: Let’s Talk About Sexual Empowerment

This paper looks at the politics of teaching sexuality education, healthy and comprehensive focusing on issues specific to female sexuality, in the context of a Chinese university ELL classroom. Through feminist pedagogical approaches and feminist beliefs in healthy sexuality, this article explores how a university ELL classroom was transformed. As with their U.S. peers, many Chinese young people rely on unhealthy and inaccurate information about human sexuality through pornography or dubious internet searches. Through feminist pedagogical approaches that focus on student-centered learning, critical thinking, and open debate, teachers can integrate controversial topics into a classroom setting to benefit the health and well-being of their students. Because my students did not perceive discussing sexuality as a U.S. cultural taboo, as an American teacher and “out” feminist, I was able to integrate lessons on sexuality into my Chinese classroom. However, first I had to lay the groundwork to establish a student-centered community where debate and discussion were central to the work of the cours

Far from the Truth: Teaching the Politics of Sojourner Truth\u27s “Ain\u27t I a Woman?”

If there is a canon of American women’s rhetoric, Sojourner Truth’s speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” is a central text in that collection. Truth’s “Ain’t/Aren’t I a Woman?” speech is included regularly in anthologies of women’s literature, anthologies of women’s rhetoric, and textbooks on history and women’s studies throughout all levels of the curriculum. The version of Truth’s speech that is typically anthologized, transcribed by Frances Gage twelve years after Truth delivered it, communicates an intentionally feminist message

Industrial networks: are they a new and alternative way to conduct business or just a logical consequence of a globalising economy?

Based on a report for the seminar Industrial Networks, at Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main Dozent: Prof. Dr. Blättel-Mink, Prof. Dr. António Moniz SS 2011Networks have been a hot topic in recent years, not only in mainstream media but also in academic literature. The sociological interest in industrial networks is one of multiple levels and surely stems from the question if networks can benefit society. It was the purpose of this paper to research the emergence of the study of networks or industrial networks and validate, using articles concerned with the matter, if they are in fact a new concept in business or not. Considering the review of literature, one can conclude that by no means are networks in business a novelty but a logical consequence of human relationships in general and also that network structures have been present long before their discovery through academia, only not identified as such. It was found that the previous definition of market structures in business, while maneuvering between the two extremes of hierarchy and a free market, may have been too rigid and networks provided an excellent alternative term. It can further be suggested that the study of networks should focus on exchange mechanisms, cultural differences and emotional involvement as industrial networks may differ in their degrees of freedom, scale and purpose but always rely on reciprocity, as do all human relationships

What\u27s so feminist about garters and bustiers? Neo-burlesque as post-feminist sexual liberation

The performance art of burlesque is gaining popularity in North American culture, but with many ‘neo-burlesque’ performers, critical reflection or commentary on the politics of female sexuality is glaringly absent or summarily dismissed. Neo-burlesque could be a feminist rewriting and reclaiming of a Western dance form, which showcased women simpering sexily for her audience. However, in order for neo-burlesque to have a feminist tone, it needs to do more than incorporate women of various ethnicities and body types to transcend patriarchal scripts of female sexuality. Some neo-burlesque includes disruptions of traditional scripts regarding female sexuality that demand the audience think about the complexities of desire, sexuality, and identity, often through a feminist lens. However, these critiques often do not go far enough in their interrogation of power structures and the politics of sexuality. This article makes the argument that the popularity of neo-burlesque in mainstream culture serves to oppress female sexuality in very traditional ways instead of what it purports to do: empower women to celebrate their sexuality through performance

Teackerly A cts of Transgression: How Fem inist Educators are Changing Composition

The purpose of this project is to research how feminists in the field of composition have used feminist pedagogy to change standards of writing instruction. The first two chapters create a collaborative and comprehensive definition of feminist pedagogy, culling three decades of research on the issue to extrapolate a contemporary definition of feminist pedagogy that focuses on 16 themes. The subsequent three chapters of the project document ethnographic studies of three feminist teachers and scholars in the field of composition, investigating how they are practicing feminist pedagogy in classrooms, leadership, and scholarship. The three feminist teachers who are the focus of the ethnographic chapters are Harriet Malinowitz, professor of English at Long Island University and author of Textual Orientations: Lesbian and Gav Students and the Making of Discourse Communities: Lynn Worsham, professor of English at South Florida University and editor of JAC: and Jackie Jones Royster, associate dean of research and faculty affairs at Ohio State University and a composition scholar whose current work centers on African American Women rhetors of the nineteenth century. In the ethnographic chapters I examine how these three feminist leaders in the field of composition are living their feminist pedagogy and how their work helps shape contemporary composition theory and practice

Black Feminists in Serialized Dramas: The Gender/Sex/Sexuality/Race Politics of Being Mary Jane and Scandal

Starring representations of African-American women on television are rare. The versions of Black feminist characters on Scandal (ABC) and Being Mary Jane (BET) create a juxtaposition between a white supremacist Black feminism (Scandal) and an Afrocentric, female-centered rendering of Black feminism (Being Mary Jane)

Transqueer Representations and How We Educate

This article examines the representations of transqueers (specifically female to male transsexuals) in popular media and how these representations shape attitudes of transqueers both with those outside the LBGT community and those within the community. The article discusses how these cultural images of FTM transqueers imply that being accepted often means surgery and hormones in order to “pass” as male, and it challenges educators to work more overtly and diligently to educate toward critical consciousness regarding the sex/gender system and the rigidity of the binary that removes transgendered people as nonentities. The article offers an argument about how to approach these discussions with students and what texts will complicate the sex/gender binary as it is presented to us via the media representations of transqueers

Thermal conductance and thermoelectric figure of merit of C60_{60}-based single-molecule junctions: electrons, phonons, and photons

Motivated by recent experiments, we present here an ab initio study of the impact of the phonon transport on the thermal conductance and thermoelectric figure of merit of C$_{60}$-based single-molecule junctions. To be precise, we combine density functional theory with nonequilibrium Green's function techniques to compute these two quantities in junctions with either a C$_{60}$ monomer or a C$_{60}$ dimer connected to gold electrodes, taking into account the contributions of both electrons and phonons. Our results show that for C$_{60}$ monomer junctions phonon transport plays a minor role in the thermal conductance and, in turn, in the figure of merit, which can reach relatively high values on the order of 0.1, depending on the contact geometry. At the contrary, phonons completely dominate the thermal conductance in C$_{60}$ dimer junctions and strongly reduce the figure of merit as compared to monomer junctions. Thus, claims that by stacking C$_{60}$ molecules one could achieve high thermoelectric performance, which have been made without considering the phonon contribution, are not justified. Moreover, we analyze the relevance of near-field thermal radiation for the figure of merit of these junctions within the framework of fluctuational electrodynamics. We conclude that photon tunneling can be another detrimental factor for the thermoelectric performance, which has been overlooked so far in the field of molecular electronics. Our study illustrates the crucial roles that phonon transport and photon tunneling can play when critically assessing the performance of molecular junctions as potential nanoscale thermoelectric devices

Role of the C-terminus of the Catalytic Subunit of Translesion Synthesis Polymerase ζ (Zeta) in UV-induced Mutagensis

Cellular DNA is under constant attack by endogenous and exogenous DNA damaging agents that threaten genome integrity. Unrepaired DNA lesions often stall replicative DNA polymerases and are bypassed by translesion synthesis (TLS) to prevent replication fork collapse. TLS mechanisms are lesion- and species-specific, with prominent roles of specialized DNA polymerases with relaxed active sites. After incorporation of nucleotide(s) across from the lesion, the distorted primer termini are typically extended by DNA polymerase ζ (Pol ζ). As a result, Pol ζ is responsible for most DNA damage-induced mutations. Mechanisms of sequential polymerase switches and regulation of Pol ζ access to DNA in vivo remain unclear. Pol ζ shares two accessory subunits, called Pol31/Pol32 in yeast, with replicative Pol δ. Inclusion of Pol31/Pol32 in both holoenzymes requires a [4Fe-4S] cluster in the catalytic subunit C-terminal domains (CTDs). Disruption of the Pol ζ cluster or deletion of the POL32 gene attenuates induced mutagenesis. Here we describe a novel mutation affecting Pol ζ, rev3ΔC. Rev3∆C lacks the entire CTD, the binding platform for Pol31/Pol32. This mutation provides insight into regulation of polymerase switches and further defines regulatory roles of the Pol ζ CTD. rev3ΔC strains are partially proficient in Pol32-dependent UV-induced mutagenesis. This suggests a role for Pol32 in TLS beyond binding Pol ζ, related to Pol δ. We examined several TLS regulatory proteins, including Mgs1 which can compete with Pol32 for binding PCNA. Overproduction of Mgs1 suppressed induced mutagenesis, but had no effect in rev3ΔC suggesting Mgs1 exerts its inhibitory effect by acting specifically on Pol32 of Pol ζ. This evidence for differential regulation of Pol δ/ζ Pol32 emphasizes complexity of polymerase switches. Spectra of mutations induced by UV in rev3∆C were examined to further define the regulatory role of Pol ζ CTD. Rev3∆C produced different mutational spectra than WT, progressively deficient first in transversions/frameshifts, then transitions, and altered upon increasing UV doses. This supports a fine-tuned role for the CTD in regulating Pol ζ function and highlights differential mechanisms activated by different UV doses