Equilibrium

This is a review of Equilibrium (2002)

Minority Report

This is a review of Minority Report (2002)

Hell House

This is a review of Hell House (2001)

Concurrent Paper Session 2C: From the Depths: Uncovering Sources of the Imagination

Lewis Underground: Echoes of the Battle of Arras in The Silver Chair - Vickie Holtz Wodzak Enchanted, the men of Underworld intone “many sink down to Underworld, but few return to the sunlit lands.” While the underworld passages in The Silver Chair clearly echo any number of literary accounts of trips to the underworld—those of Odysseus and Orpheus to name only two—these passages also draw on Lewis’s personal knowledge of an underworld where soldiers sheltered from German bombs, and of a system of interconnected caves and mines used as a staging area for The Battle of Arras, which began in April of 1917. Lewis himself participated in the Battle of Arras from September 1917 to April 1918, when he was wounded at Mt. Berenchon. While he arrived there some months after the offensive, it seems unlikely that the underground caves and the battle plan would have been forgotten by the time he arrived. Further, he was billeted on more than one occasion in the barracks at Arras. The Underworld that the Green Witch creates, her plan to burst forth on the unsuspecting Narnians, and even the imagined cool caves left behind when her plans fail, are reminiscent of a battle that Lewis just missed but that could not have been forgotten by the time he arrived on the front. Understanding Relics: Charles Williams\u27s Journey From Holy Torn to Holy Grail - Sue Wendling According to his biographer, Williams completed The Chapel of the Thorn two years after his uncle Charles Wall published Relics of the Passion (1910). This essay, first, defines what sacred “relics” are and emphasizes their importance to pre-modern Christians. Rather than seeing relics as “merely superstitious and idolatrous,” the early Church’s sacramentalism did not dualistically harden boundaries between the physical and the spiritual. This essay then traces the progression from Williams’s early use of a relic, such as a thorn in The Chapel of the Thorn, to his later use of the relic of the Holy Grail in both War in Heaven (1930) and his late Arthurian cycles. In Williams’s final retelling of the Arthurian myth, the Grail in its physical manifestation departs sinful Logres. Yet the Christian is able after all to “achieve the Grail” through the Sacrament of the Eucharist. For Charles Williams the chalice of the Grail has become the cup of the Eucharist. The Ladder of Love and C.S. Lewis - Christian Mack Straunger Thinges: The Absolute Upside Down of the Medieval Model in The Dark Tower, All Hallow\u27s Eve, and The Lost Road, - Michael Karounos With a glance at contemporary culture, this paper will look at the influence of Chaucer and J.W. Dunne in the novels The Dark Tower (1938) and All Hallow’s Eve (1945) in which C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams portray the “Upside Down” of a spatio-temporal “Othertime” in terms of early 20th century theories on time and space. Lewis’s The Dark Tower explicitly cites J. W. Dunne, Henri Bergson, and Friedrich Nietzsche while Williams’s All Hallow’s Eve’s depiction of time and space implicitly suggests their influence. Additionally, The Dark Tower has intriguing compositional elements that anticipate All Hallow’s Eve and suggests that the later work, That Hideous Strength (1945), may not be a “Charles Williams novel written by C. S. Lewis” but simply shares in the common interests that both men incorporated in their work

Cytauxzoon felis in salivary glands of Amblyomma americanum

Cytauxzoon felis is a tick-borne piroplasmid hemoparasite that causes life-threatening disease in cats. Despite the critical role that ticks play in pathogen transmission, our knowledge regarding the C. felis life cycle remains limited to the feline hosts. Specific life stages of C. felis within the tick host have never been visualized microscopically and previous investigations have been limited to molecular detection by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Sporozoites are the infectious stage of piroplasmids that are transmitted by ticks. In other tick-borne piroplasmids, sporozoite-based vaccines play a key role in disease prevention and management. We believe sporozoites have similar potential for cytauxzoonosis. Therefore, the objective of this study was to use different molecular and microscopic techniques to detect and evaluate C. felis sporozoites in tick salivary glands (SG). A total of 140 Amblyomma americanum adults that were fed on C. felis-infected cats as nymphs were included for this study. Specifically, dissected SGs were quartered and subjected to C. felis RT-PCR, RNAscope® in situ hybridization (ISH), histology, direct azure staining, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Cytauxzoon felis RT-PCR was also performed on half tick (HT) carcasses after SG dissection. Cytauxzoon felis RNA was detected in SGs of 17/140 ticks. Of these, 7/17 ticks had microscopic visualization via ISH and/or TEM. The remaining 10/17 ticks had only molecular detection of C. felis in SGs via RT-PCR without visualization. Cytauxzoon felis RNA was detected solely in HT carcasses via RT-PCR in 9/140 ticks. In ISH-positive tick SGs, hybridization signals were present in cytoplasms of SG acinar cells. TEM captured rare C. felis organisms with characteristic ultrastructural features of sporozoites. This study describes the first direct visualization of any developing stage of C. felis in ticks. Forthcoming studies should employ a combination of molecular and microscopic techniques to investigate the C. felis life cycle in A. americanum