Fuck tha Police : The Poetry and Politics of N.W.A.

No one withdrew after syllabus day. In the semester I piloted a first-year seminar course, the “Rhetoric of Protest Songs,” on the first day of class, I introduced the topic of the class and myself. However, before I gave students the syllabi, I confessed that I knew little about music. I told them I Googled and YouTubed, and read our text to gain knowledge about protest songs. I told them the “Rhetoric of Protest Songs” was a writing class, and rhetoric means persuasion. “In this class, you’ll write academic essays about protest songs. And we’ll listen to some music.” My students may not have known that when they researched and wrote about protest songs they were entering an ongoing conversations about the role of social justice activism. They do now

Writing The Lives Of Others: The Veterans Project

This essay describes an advanced composition course in which the students studied the ethics, politics, history, and rhetorical strategies involved in writing the lives of others. The heart of the course was a service-learning project that introduced college juniors and seniors to veterans of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The students interviewed, wrote brief biographies, and transcribed the wartime stories of a group of veterans from a local American Legion post and its women’s auxiliary. The stories were collected in a volume made available to local American Legion posts, veterans hospitals, and libraries in Connecticut

Beyond \u27Hot Lips\u27 and \u27Big Nurse\u27: Creative Writing and Nursing

This essay describes a special topics creative writing course designed for nursing students, and argues that creative writing strategies work to improve nurses\u27 compositional skills. Also discussed are other potential benefits from creatively writing patients\u27 lives, notably, the blending of arts and sciences, and the ways in which medical schools are encouraging their students to study the humanities, especially literature and creative writing. The essay includes student creative writing samples. The essay also discusses the depiction of nurses in popular culture. M*A*S*H*, Richard Hooker’s black comedy about the antics of doctors and nurses during the Korean War, gave us “Hot Lips” Houlihan. Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u27s Nest, book, offered homage to the human spirit and also gave us “Big Nurse” Ratchet. “Hot Lips” Houlihan and “Big Nurse” Ratchet have two things in common: they represent the stereotypical character of the rigid, rule- and role-bound nurse, and they are well-trained professionals

Negotiating truth, freedom and self : the prison narratives of some South African women

The autobiographical prison writings of four South African women - Ruth First, Caesarina Kana Makhoere, Emma Mashinini and Maggie Resha - form the focus of this study. South African autobiography is burdened with the task of producing history in the light of the silences enforced by apartheid security legislation and the dominance of representations of white histories. Autobiography with its promise of 'truth' provides the structure within which to establish a credible subject position. In chapter one I discuss the use of authenticating devices, such as documentary-like prose, and the inclusion in numerous texts of the stories of others. Asserting oneself as a (publicly acknowledged) subject in writing is particularly difficult for women who historically have been denied access to authority: while Maggie Resha's explicit task is to highlight the role women have played in the struggle, her narrative must also be broadly representative, her authority communal. As I discuss in chapter two, prison writing breaks the legal and psychological silences imposed by a hostile penal system. In a context of political repression the notion of the truth becomes complicated, because while it is important to be believed, it is also important, as with Ruth First, not to betray her comrades and values. The writer must therefore negotiate with the (imagined) audience if her signature is to be accepted and her subjectivity affirmed. The struggle to represent oneself in the inimical environment of prison and the redemptive value in doing so are considered in chapter three. The institution of imprisonment as a means of silencing political dissidence targets the body, according to Michel Foucault's theories of discipline and control explored in chapter four. Using the work of Lois McNay and Elizabeth Grosz I argue in chapter five that it is necessary also to pay attention to the specificities of female bodies which are positioned and controlled in particular ways. I argue, too, using N. Chabani Manganyi, that while anatomical differences provide the rationale for racism and sexism, the body is also an instrument for resisting negative cultural significations. For instance, Caesarina Kana Makhoere represents her body as a weapon in her political battle, inside and outside prison. The prison cell itself is formative of subjectivity as it returns an image of criminality and powerlessness to the prisoner. Following the work of human geographers in chapter six I argue that space and subjectivity are mutually constitutive, as shown by the way spatial metaphors operate in prison texts. The subject can redesign hostile space in order to represent herself. As these texts show, relations of viewing are crucial to self-identification: surveillance disempowers the prisoner and produces her as a victim, but prisoners have recourse to alternative ways of (visually) interacting in order to position the dominators as objects of their gaze, through speaking and then also through writing. Elaine Scarry's insights into torture are extended in chapter seven to encompass psychological torture and sexual harassment: inflicting bodily humiliation, as well as pain, on the body, brings it sharply into focus, making speech impossible. By writing testimony and by generating other scenes of dialogue through which subjectivity can be constructed (through being looked at and looking, through having the message of self affirmed in the other's hearing) it is possible to contain, in some way, the horror of detention and to assert a measure of control in authoring oneself. For Mashinini this healing dialogue must take place within an emotionally and ideologically sympathetic context. v For those historical subjects who have found themselves without a legally valued identity and a platform from which to articulate the challenge of their experience, writing a personal narrative may offer an invaluable chance to assert a truth, to reclaim a self and a credibility and in that way to create a kind of freedom. Bibliography: pages 173-182

Follicular lymphoma : clinical and biological factors associated with response to therapy and overall prognosis

Follicular lymphoma (FL) is a heterogeneous group of malignancies within the adaptive immune system. The clinical course is highly variable. Treatment includes different chemotherapy regimens as well as the anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody rituximab which has significantly improved the prognosis for patients with all types of B cell lymphomas. The majority of patients with FL respond well to therapy but eventually relapse and generalized disease is still considered incurable. On the other hand, a substantial number appear to have such an indolent disease that the benefit from treatment is unclear. In the clinical setting one challenge is to identiy FL patients in need of therapy upfront as opposed to those who can be managed with active expectancy. Seemingly of importance in addition to the clinical status of the host are characteristics of the tumour cells as well as of the immune cells in the surrounding microenvironment. A greater understanding of the complex intra- and intercellular signaling provides new potential targets for therapeutical intervention. The aim of this thesis was to gain increased insight in clinical and immunological factors of prognostic importance, in indolent lymphoma in general and in FL in particular. This was done by investigation of the long-term outcome in patients treated with rituximab-based immunotherapy and of the validity of the prognostic tools developed in patients receiving standard chemotherapy-based treatment. We also made a study on the interaction of rituximab and the immunomodulator lenalidomide with the healthy immune system during therapy. In paper I we evaluated the late effects of rituximab monotherapy and rituximab with interferon-α2a in 321 previously untreated symptomatic indolent lymphoma patients. After a median follow-up of 10 years more than one third had never required chemotherapy and 73% were still alive. In papers II and III we investigated the two prognostic models m7-FLIPI and PRIMA-PI, both recently developed on cohorts of FL patients treated with a combination of rituximab and CHOP/CVP. The clinicogenetic m7-FLIPI model was not valid in our cohort treated with rituximab with or without interferon. The PRIMA-PI on the other hand, although based on only two parameters – beta2-microglobulin and bone marrow involvement, was a useful tool in differentiating a small group of patients with very poor prognosis, that should be considered for a new or more intensive and hopefully more effective therapeutic approach. In paper IV we followed the changing composition of immune cells in blood in FL patients randomized to therapy with rituximab with or without lenalidomide. Cells were sampled at baseline, after 2 weeks of lenalidomide (combination arm), 24 hours after first rituximab dose and at follow-up weeks 10 and 23 and analysed by flow cytometry. With lenalidomide alone a transient increase in monocyte and NK cell fractions appeared, the latter decreasing again after first rituximab infusion. Post-treatment effects included an increased fraction of T cells as a group and an increased CD4/CD8 ratio. A high proportion of monocytes at baseline was associated with clinical response at week 10 as were a larger fraction of naïve T cells in the rituximab monotherapy treatment arm. Possibly lenalidomide may help overcome the negative impact of few naïve cells, by a beneficial effect on their activity

A Search For Variables That Affect School Climate in Hawaii

While climate is a somewhat global concept involving a generalized perception of a school by its publics, the question remains as to whether there are variables within the context which are related to, and may have some explanatory power in, determining climate scores

Effect of mannitol and repetitive coughing on the sputum properties in bronchiectasis

SummaryMucociliary clearance increases with increasing doses of mannitol and clearance is enhanced when mannitol inhalation is followed by repetitive voluntary coughing.The aim of the study was to investigate: 1) the effect of increasing doses of mannitol and repetitive coughing on the sputum physical properties; 2) if the changes in sputum properties can predict the efficacy of mucus clearance measured by radioaerosol technique in bronchiectasis patients.Sputum was collected from 14 patients, age: 63±6yr, who participated on the mucociliary and cough clearance studies at baseline, with mannitol (160, 320 and 480mg) and control (Daviskas et al. ERJ 2008; 31:765-772). Sputum was collected: 1) on the screening visit before and after mannitol challenge (635mg); 2) at the start and end of each clearance study after 100 repetitive voluntary coughs except on the control study (no mannitol or repetitive coughing). The sputum solids content, surface tension, contact angle and rheology were measured.Mannitol in association with coughing and coughing alone reduced the solids content, surface tension, contact angle and viscoelastic sputum properties (p<0.0001) and this effect, unlike mucociliary clearance, was not dose dependent. The control produced no effect. Total mucus clearance correlated only with the percentage reduction in surface tension on 480mg mannitol and with the reduction in solids content at baseline.In conclusion: Inhaled mannitol and voluntary repetitive coughing improved the sputum physical properties in bronchiectasis patients and this effect was not dose dependent. Changes in sputum properties do not predict efficacy of mucociliary and cough clearance