Casting for Change: Tracing Gender in Discussions of Casting through Feminist Media Ethnography

The moment of casting is a crucial one in any media production. Casting the ‘right’ person shapes the narrative as much as the way in which the final product might be received by critics and audiences. For this article, casting—as the moment in which gender is hypervisible in its complex intersectional entanglement with class, race and sexuality—will be our gateway to exploring the dynamics of discussion of gender conventions and how we, as feminist scholars, might manoeuvre. To do so, we will test and triangulate three different forms of ethnographically inspired inquiry: 1) ‘collaborative auto-ethnography,’ to discuss male-to-female gender-bending comedies from the 1980s and 1990s, 2) ‘netnography’ of online discussions about the (potential) recasting of gendered legacy roles from Doctor Who to Mary Poppins, and 3) textual media analysis of content focusing on the casting of cisgender actors for transgender roles. Exploring the affordances and challenges of these three methods underlines the duty of care that is essential to feminist audience research. Moving across personal and anonymous, ‘real’ and ‘virtual,’ popular and professional discussion highlights how gender has been used and continues to be instrumentalised in lived audience experience and in audience research

Galectin-12 colocalizes with splicing factor-rich speckles and shuttles between the nucleus and cytoplasm in colon cancer cells

Several members of the glycan-binding family of galectins have been linked to colon cancer initiation and progression while the role of galectin-12 in this malignancy is largely unexplored. In previous studies we observed expression of galectin-12 in normal colon epithelium in contrast to its lack of expression in colorectal cancer tissues. In order to gain insight into its molecular function we established a genetically engineered colon cancer model cell line, which facilitates inducible and reconstituted expression of LGALS12 transgene at physiological levels in an isogenic background. Regulation of transgene expression by doxycycline was confirmed at the transcript- and protein level in a time- and dose-dependent manner for two independent clones. Reconstituted galectin-12 expression did not affect cell morphology and proliferation. Analysis of its subcellular distribution showed that galectin-12 resides in and shuttles between the nucleus and cytoplasm. More detailed analysis by double-immunofluorescence and confocal microscopy revealed colocalization of galectin-12 with splicing-factor rich nuclear speckles, hinting towards a potential role of galectin-12 in pre-mRNA splicing and processing. Therefore, the established model cell line represents a powerful tool to investigate the functional impact of galectin-12 reconstitution on colon cancer tumorigenesis