What Does It Mean To Study "Modern Spanish Culture"?

Para tratar el tema de la 'cultura española moderna', resulta crucial reflexionar sobre las relaciones entre estas tres palabras y las consecuencias teóricas derivadas de la elección de una definición determinada de 'cultura'. Estudiaré primero los cambioSince this work deals with 'modern spanish culture', it seems crucial to reflect upon the relationships between those three words and the theoretical consequences of how we choose to define 'culture'. I will look first at the changes in the meaning of th

Copla y supervivencia: Conchita Piquer, “Tatuaje”, y el duelo de los vencidos

The present study is a reading of “Tatuaje” (1941), the most famous copla of Conchita Piquer, in the context of Franco’s mass graves. Several intellectuals who grew up during the postwar period in Spain have attested to the passion with which the defeated sang this song. The testimony of survivors of Franco’s terror, presented in recent documentaries, describes the psychological suffering that resulted from the prohibition on burying their dead or carrying out rituals of mourning for them. I use this testimony to argue that “Tatuaje” had such a huge impact because it functioned during the entire postwar period as a clandestine ritual of mourning, a mourning done in code under cover of the story of the woman at the port and her sailor. I interpret the song as a representation of, and as a therapy for, the condition called “complicated grief”. And I argue that “Tatuaje” also helped the defeated to solve an existential problem: that of being ghostly carryovers from a previous era, without a role in Franco’s “New Spain”.<br><br>El presente estudio es una lectura de “Tatuaje” (1941), la copla más emblemática de Conchita Piquer, a la sombra de las fosas comunes del terror franquista. Numerosos intelectuales que crecieron durante la posguerra han dejado elocuente testimonio de la pasión con que los vencidos cantaban esta canción. Valiéndome de los recientes documentales que recogen el testimonio de los superviventes del terror franquista sobre el sufrimiento psicológico que supuso la prohibición de enterrar a sus familiares ni llevar a cabo ningún ritual de duelo por ellos, sostengo que “Tatuaje” tuvo tanto impacto porque funcionaba durante toda la posguerra como un ritual clandestino de duelo, un duelo bajo la clave de la historia de la mujer del puerto y su marinero. Interpreto la canción como una representación de, y terapia contra, el llamado “duelo complicado.” Y argumento que “Tatuaje” también ayudó a los vencidos a resolver un problema existencial: el de ser fantasmas de una época anterior, de no tener papel en la “España nueva” franquista

High-Content Microscopy Identifies New Neurite Outgrowth Regulators

Neurons, with their long axons and elaborate dendritic arbour, establish the complex circuitry that is essential for the proper functioning of the nervous system. Whereas a catalogue of structural, molecular, and functional differences between axons and dendrites is accumulating, the mechanisms involved in early events of neuronal differentiation, such as neurite initiation and elongation, are less well understood, mainly because the key molecules involved remain elusive. Here we describe the establishment and application of a microscopy-based approach designed to identify novel proteins involved in neurite initiation and/or elongation. We identified 21 proteins that affected neurite outgrowth when ectopically expressed in cells. Complementary time-lapse microscopy allowed us to discriminate between early and late effector proteins. Localization experiments with GFP-tagged proteins in fixed and living cells revealed a further 14 proteins that associated with neurite tips either early or late during neurite outgrowth. Coexpression experiments of the new effector proteins provide a first glimpse on a possible functional relationship of these proteins during neurite outgrowth. Altogether, we demonstrate the potential of the systematic microscope-based screening approaches described here to tackle the complex biological process of neurite outgrowth regulation