bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
TWEAK is expressed at the cell surface of monocytes during multiple sclerosis
Authors: Desplat-Jégo Sophie , Feuillet Lionel , Creidy Rita , Malikova Irina , Rance Roselyne , Khrestchatisky Michel , Hahm Kyungmin , Burkly Linda C , Pelletier Jean , Boucraut José
Published: October 2008

The TNF superfamily ligand, TNF-like weak inducer of apoptosis (TWEAK), regulates cellular responses ranging from proliferation to cell death in a manner highly dependent on the cell type and the microenvironmental context. We have shown previously that treatment of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis mice after the priming phase with neutralizing anti-TWEAK antibodies results in a reduction in the severity of the disease and leukocyte infiltration. To further characterize TWEAK/fibroblast growth factor-inducible 14-kDa protein (Fn14) involvement during multiple sclerosis (MS), we evaluated in MS patients and controls: TWEAK and Fn14 expression on PBMC and soluble TWEAK concentration in serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Thirty-six consecutive patients were enrolled, including 11 patients with relapsing-remitting MS, 11 with a clinical isolated syndrome suggestive of MS (CISSMS), and 14 controls with non-MS diseases. Intracellular TWEAK could be observed in lymphocytes and/or monocytes in all groups of patients. None of the 36 patients displayed TWEAK expression at the cell surface of lymphocytes. In contrast, 12 out of the 36 patients were positive for membrane TWEAK expression on their monocytes. Among these patients, eight were from the CISSMS group. Fn14 was not detected in PBMC. The soluble form of TWEAK is detectable in serum and CSF of patients, and TWEAK concentrations were not statistically different between the disease groups. We demonstrated for the first time that TWEAK is expressed at the cell surface of monocytes during MS, especially in the CISSMS group. Our results support the proposal that TWEAK could be a target for antibody therapy in MS.
Mechanisms of SHP-1 P2 promoter regulation in hematopoietic cells and its silencing in HTLV-1-transformed T cells
Authors: Nakase Koichi , Cheng Jihua , Zhu Quan , Marasco Wayne A
Published: October 2008

The Src homology-2-containing protein-tyrosine phosphatase 1 (SHP-1), is a negative regulator of cell signaling. It is also considered a tumor suppressor gene because of its ability to antagonize the action of tyrosine kinases. Although SHP-1 is expressed strongly in hematopoietic cells, decreased expression has been observed in various hematological malignancies, which suggests a central involvement of SHP-1 in leukemogenesis. We have shown previously that human T cell lymphotropic virus type-1 (HTLV-1) Tax-induced promoter silencing (TIPS) is an early event causing down-regulation of SHP-1 expression, which is dependent on NF-κB. In this study, DNase I footprinting and EMSA also revealed binding of transcription factors, specificity protein 1 (Sp1) and octamer-binding transcription factor 1 (Oct-1) to the P2 promoter, and site-directed mutagenesis confirmed that these factors contribute to the basal P2 promoter activity. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (CHIP) assays showed that Sp1, Oct-1, NF-κB, CREB-1, and RNA polymerase II interacted with the core SHP-1 P2 promoter in CD4+ T cells and Jurkat cells but not in HTLV-1-transformed MT-2 and HUT102 cells when HTLV-1 Tax is present. Furthermore, bisulfite sequencing of the SHP-1 P2 core region revealed heavy CpG methylation in HTLV-1-transformed cells compared with freshly isolated CD4+ T cells and HTLV-1-noninfected T cell lines. A significant inverse correlation between degree of CpG methylation and expression of SHP-1 mRNA or protein was observed. Taken together, our data support the notion that in HTLV-1-transformed CD4+ T cells, TIPS causes dissociation of transcription factors from the core SHP-1 P2 promoter, which in turn leads to subsequent DNA methylation, an important early step for leukemogenesis.
Using suitability profiles to better inform consumers' choice of commonly used over-the-counter analgesics
Authors: Clarke Geoffrey D , Adams Ian M , Dunagan Fiona M
Published: October 2008

Objective

To quantify the impact of labelled contraindications, precautions and warnings for use on the population that may take commonly used over-the-counter (OTC) analgesics.

Setting

Primary care: data were collected from a general practitioner database in Australia.

Methods

Patient data were audited retrospectively (n = 107553) to determine the number of patients with contraindications, warnings or precautions to the use of OTC paracetamol and the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs aspirin and ibuprofen. The primary outcome measure was the suitability rate (i.e. the proportion of patients with no contraindications, warnings or precautions) of these commonly used analgesics.

Key findings

In this Australian dataset, the proportions of patients who had no contraindications, warnings or precautions to the use of paracetamol or ibuprofen were 98.1 and 76.9%, respectively (P = 0.0001); 83.4% of patients had no contraindications, warnings or precautions to the use of aspirin (P = 0.005 compared with paracetamol).

Conclusion

Of the three OTC analgesics examined, paracetamol is suitable for use by a larger proportion of the general population without the need to seek medical advice.
A Proliferation of Pigs: Specters of Monstrosity in Reformation Indonesia
Authors: Florida Nancy
Published: October 2008

This essay explores visual art, literary production, memory, and politics in Indonesia at the cusp of the twenty-first century. It focuses on the paintings of the contemporary Indonesian artist Djokopekik and the translation of those paintings into literature by the novelist Sindhunata; both painter and writer are self-consciously engaged in the societal struggles that surrounded and succeeded the fall of President Soeharto in May 1998. The essay thematizes the productive possibilities generated by these works of art that challenge the boundaries between artistic creation and historical transformation.
Pleasures of the Polemic
Authors: Tuathail Gearóid Ó
Published: October 2008

This review critiques Afflicted Powers on three fronts: a flawed conception of politics as spectacle, an overly functionalist account of the Iraq war, and base determinism in its reasoning about American foreign policy.
Intragenic rearrangements of a mycoreovirus induced by the multifunctional protein p29 encoded by the prototypic hypovirus CHV1-EP713
Authors: Sun Liying , Suzuki Nobuhiro
Published: October 2008

Mycoreovirus 1 (MyRV1), a member of the Reoviridae family possessing a genome consisting of 11 dsRNA segments (S1–S11), and the prototype hypovirus (CHV1-EP713) of the Hypoviridae family, which is closely related to the monopartite picorna-like superfamily with a ssRNA genome, infect the chestnut blight fungus and cause virulence attenuation and distinct phenotypic alterations in the host. Here, we present evidence for reproducible induction of intragenic rearrangements of MyRV1 S6 and S10, mediated by the multifunctional protein p29 encoded by CHV1. S6 and S10 underwent an almost full-length ORF duplication (S6L) and an internal deletion of three-fourths of the ORF (S10ss). No significant influence on symptom induction in the fungal host was associated with the S6L rearrangement. In contrast, S10-encoded VP10, while nonessential for MyRV1 replication, was shown to contribute to virulence reduction and reduced growth of aerial mycelia. Furthermore, p29 was found to copurify with MyRV1 genomic RNA and bind to VP9 in vitro and in vivo, suggesting direct interactions of p29 with the MyRV1 replication machinery. This study provides the first example of a viral factor involved in RNA genome rearrangements of a different virus and shows its usefulness as a probe into the mechanism of replication and symptom expression of a heterologous virus.
Suppressors of the cdc-25.1(gf)-associated intestinal hyperplasia reveal important maternal roles for prp-8 and a subset of splicing factors in C. elegans
Authors: Hebeisen Michaël , Drysdale John , Roy Richard
Published: October 2008

The maternal contribution of gene products enables embryos to initiate their developmental program in the absence of zygotic gene expression. In Caenorhabditis elegans, maternal CDC-25.1 levels are tightly regulated to promote early cell divisions, while stabilization of this phosphatase by gain-of-function mutations gives rise to intestinal-specific hyperplasia. To identify regulators of CDC-25.1 levels and/or function, we performed a modifier screen of the cdc-25.1(gf)-dependent hyperplasia. One of the isolated suppressor mutants possesses a donor splice site mutation in prp-8, a key splicing factor of the U5-specific snRNP. prp-8(rr40) produces aberrant prp-8 splice variants that generate C-terminal truncations at the expense of wild-type prp-8. Levels of maternal transcripts are reduced, including cdc-25.1, while zygotic transcripts appear unperturbed, suggesting a germ-line-specific role for this splicing factor in regulating the splicing, and consequently, the steady-state levels of maternal transcripts. Using a novel feeding RNAi strategy we found that only a subset of splicing factors suppress cdc-25.1(gf), suggesting that they too may play specific roles in germ-line spliceosome function. In humans, mutations in the corresponding hPrp8 C-terminal domain result in retinitis pigmentosa, a retinal-specific disorder. Intriguingly, despite affecting the general splicing apparatus, both human and C. elegans show tissue-specific defects resulting from mutations in this key splicing component. Our findings suggest that in addition to its important regulatory function in the C. elegans germ line, prp-8(rr40) may provide further insight into the etiology of this splicing-associated human disorder.
The RNA WikiProject: Community annotation of RNA families
Authors: Daub Jennifer , Gardner Paul P. , Tate John , Ramsköld Daniel , Manske Magnus , Scott William G. , Weinberg Zasha , Griffiths-Jones Sam , Bateman Alex
Published: October 2008

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia has become one of the most important online references in the world and has a substantial and growing scientific content. A search of Google with many RNA-related keywords identifies a Wikipedia article as the top hit. We believe that the RNA community has an important and timely opportunity to maximize the content and quality of RNA information in Wikipedia. To this end, we have formed the RNA WikiProject (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_RNA) as part of the larger Molecular and Cellular Biology WikiProject. We have created over 600 new Wikipedia articles describing families of noncoding RNAs based on the Rfam database, and invite the community to update, edit, and correct these articles. The Rfam database now redistributes this Wikipedia content as the primary textual annotation of its RNA families. Users can, therefore, for the first time, directly edit the content of one of the major RNA databases. We believe that this Wikipedia/Rfam link acts as a functioning model for incorporating community annotation into molecular biology databases.
Experimental identification of microRNA-140 targets by silencing and overexpressing miR-140
Authors: Nicolas Francisco Esteban , Pais Helio , Schwach Frank , Lindow Morten , Kauppinen Sakari , Moulton Vincent , Dalmay Tamas
Published: October 2008

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short noncoding RNA molecules regulating the expression of mRNAs. Target identification of miRNAs is computationally difficult due to the relatively low homology between miRNAs and their targets. We present here an experimental approach to target identification where the cartilage-specific miR-140 was overexpressed and silenced in cells it is normally expressed in separate experiments. Expression of mRNAs was profiled in both experiments and the intersection of mRNAs repressed by miR-140 overexpression and derepressed by silencing of miR-140 was identified. The intersection contained only 49 genes, although both treatments affected the accumulation of hundreds of mRNAs. These 49 genes showed a very strong enrichment for the miR-140 seed sequence implying that the approach is efficient and specific. Twenty-one of these 49 genes were predicted to be direct targets based on the presence of the seed sequence. Interestingly, none of these were predicted by the published target prediction methods we used. One of the potential target mRNAs, Cxcl12, was experimentally validated by Northern blot analysis and a luciferase reporter assay.
A mutant screen reveals RNase E as a silencer of group II intron retromobility in Escherichia coli
Authors: Coros Colin J. , Piazza Carol Lyn , Chalamcharla Venkata R. , Belfort Marlene
Published: October 2008

Group II introns are mobile retroelements that invade their hosts. The Lactococcus lactis group II intron recruits cellular polymerases, nucleases, and DNA ligase to complete the retromobility process in Escherichia coli. Here we describe a genetic screen with a Tn5 transposon library to identify other E. coli functions involved in retromobility of the L. lactis LtrB intron. Thirteen disruptions that reproducibly resulted in increased or decreased retrohoming levels into the E. coli chromosome were isolated. These functions were classified as factors involved in RNA processing, DNA replication, energy metabolism, and global regulation. Here we characterize a novel mutant in the rne promoter region, which regulates RNase E expression. Retrohoming and retrotransposition levels are elevated in the rne∷Tn5 mutant. The stimulatory effect of the mutation on retromobility results from intron RNA accumulation in the RNase E mutant. These results suggest that RNase E, which is the central component of the RNA degradosome, could regulate retrohoming levels in response to cellular physiology.
Stabilization of RNA during laser capture microdissection by performing experiments under argon atmosphere or using ethanol as a solvent in staining solutions
Authors: Clément-Ziza Mathieu , Munnich Arnold , Lyonnet Stanislas , Jaubert Francis , Besmond Claude
Published: October 2008

The combination of laser capture microdissection (LCM) and gene expression experiments allows cell specific expression profiling, which is decisive in cellular transcriptomic exploration. LCM makes possible the isolation of unique cells or group of cells, but maintaining RNA quality during this process is challenging. Several protocols are available for section preparation, but none of those guarantees the integrity of the RNA during microdissection, and operators are recommended to perform LCM during a limited time. We hypothesized that the cause of RNA degradation during the microdissection time is the presence of water rendering endogenous RNase activity possible. We thus developed two methods that stabilize RNA during microdissection time for up to 90 min. The first one consists of performing LCM under an argon atmosphere, thus preventing tissue rehydration; it is compliant with all existing microdissection protocols. The second one is a new fixation and staining method using ethanol as solvent in all preparatory steps to LCM that enhances fixation and dehydration of samples. We assessed several stains in regard of their effect on tissue morphology and RNA integrity and adjusted an ethanolic staining solution of cresyl violet and eosin Y.
Riboswitches in unexpected places—A synthetic riboswitch in a protein coding region
Authors: Topp Shana , Gallivan Justin P.
Published: October 2008

In natural and engineered systems, cis-RNA regulatory elements such as riboswitches are typically found within untranslated regions rather than within the protein coding sequences of genes. However, RNA sequences with important regulatory roles can exist within translated regions. Here, we present a synthetic riboswitch that is encoded within the translated region of a gene and represses Escherichia coli gene expression greater than 25-fold in the presence of a small-molecule ligand. The ability to encode riboswitches within translated regions as well as untranslated regions provides additional opportunities for creating new genetic control elements. Furthermore, evidence that a riboswitch can function in the translated region of a gene suggests that future efforts to identify natural riboswitches should consider this possibility.
Value of Strong Ties to Disconnected Others: Examining Knowledge Creation in Biomedicine
Authors: McFadyen M. Ann , Semadeni Matthew , Cannella Albert A.
Published: October 2008

Knowledge creation requires the combination and exchange of diverse and overlapping knowledge inputs as individuals interact with exchange partners to create new knowledge. In this study, we examine knowledge creation among university research scientists as a function of their professional (ego) networks—those others with whom they collaborate for the purpose of creating new knowledge. We propose that knowledge creation relies, in part, on two attributes of a researcher's professional network structure—average tie strength and ego network density—and we provide insights into how these attributes jointly affect knowledge creation. Our study of over 7,300 scientific publications by 177 research scientists working with more than 14,000 others over an 11-year period provides evidence that the relationship between a research scientist's professional network and knowledge creation depends on both ego network density and average tie strength. Our evidence suggests that both attributes affect knowledge creation. Moreover, average tie strength interacts with density to affect knowledge creation such that researchers who maintain mostly strong ties with research collaborators who themselves comprise a sparse network have the highest levels of new knowledge creation.
Process Capabilities and Value Generation in Alliance Portfolios
Authors: Sarkar MB , Aulakh Preet S. , Madhok Anoop
Published: October 2008

This paper develops a multidimensional, process-based conceptualization of alliance portfolio management capability. Arguing that such a capability consists of organizational processes to proactively pursue alliance formation opportunities, engage in relational governance, and coordinate knowledge and strategies across the portfolio, we examine the impact of such a capability on organizational outcomes in the context of formal structure (alliance function) and strategy (portfolio diversity). Using data from 235 firms, we find that these three processes have a positive effect on a firm's alliance portfolio capital, and some of these effects are conditioned by a formal alliance function and diversity of the portfolio. Whereas the ability of proactive formation and relational governance processes to create value is further strengthened in the presence of an alliance function, that of the coordination dimension is weakened. Furthermore, the benefits of relational governance are strengthened for firms with diverse portfolios, whereas the benefits of coordination processes are weakened. We discuss implications of these findings for the alliance and network literature, and in general, for firm heterogeneity. In summary, we find evidence that variance in process-based capabilities to manage alliance portfolios can explain performance heterogeneity among firms.
Perspective—Making Doubt Generative: Rethinking the Role of Doubt in the Research Process
Authors: Locke Karen , Golden-Biddle Karen , Feldman Martha S.
Published: October 2008

In this paper, we want to shift the attention of our scholarly community to the living condition of doubt and its underappreciated significance for the theorizing process. Drawing on Peirce's notion of abduction, we articulate the relationship between doubt and belief in the everyday imaginative work central to theorizing, and establish the role played by doubt as abduction's engine in these efforts. We propose three strategic principles for engaging and using doubt in the research process. In concluding, we explore our field's overemphasis on validation to the exclusion of discovery processes and to the detriment of excellence in theorizing. We call for a broadening of our notions of “methodology” to incorporate discovery processes and to begin their explication.
Data reduction scheme for measuring G
IIc of wood in end-notched flexure (ENF) tests
Authors: de Moura Marcelo F.S.F. , Silva Manuel A.L. , Morais José J.L. , de Morais Alfredo B. , Lousada José J.L.
Published: October 2008

Numerical and experimental studies of end-notched flexure (ENF) fracture tests were performed to obtain mode II R curves for maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.) wood in the radial-longitudinal (RL) crack propagation system. Three- (3D) and two-dimensional (2D) finite element analyses were conducted to determine the mode II release rate of the critical strain energy (G
IIc). The 3D analysis revealed that a small spurious mode III component did not affect G
IIc measurements and that the 2D model was very accurate. A new scheme for data reduction based on the equivalent crack concept is proposed to overcome the difficulties related to accurate crack length measurement during propagation. This method does not require previous experimental tests to obtain the elastic modulus, which varies markedly for different wood specimens. Experimental ENF tests were performed to verify the numerical results. The results demonstrate the accuracy of the data reduction method proposed.
Modification of Fagus sylvatica L. with 1,3-dimethylol-4,5-dihydroxy ethylene urea (DMDHEU). Part 2: Pore size distribution determined by differential scanning calorimetry
Authors: Dieste Andrés , Krause Andreas , Mai Carsten , Sèbe Gilles , Grelier Stéphane , Militz Holger
Published: October 2008

The enthalpy of melting and the freezing point depression of European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) wood modified with 0.8, 1.3, and 2.3 M 1,3-dimethylol-4,5-dihydroxy ethylene urea (DMDHEU) were determined at different levels of moisture content above the fibre saturation point by differential scanning calorimetry. The results permitted estimations of the amount of water bound to the cell wall, non-freezing water (NFW), and pore size distribution. The NFW of wood modified with DMDHEU, calculated on a dry wood basis, was not significantly lower than that of the control. The ratio of bound to total water present in the sample was higher in unmodified than in DMDHEU-modified samples. The proportion of pores with a diameter ≤30 nm was 70% of the total cell wall voids for wood modified with 2.3 M DMDHEU and 18% for unmodified wood. These results indicate that DMDHEU reduced the pore size of the samples by occupying the void space present in the cell wall.
Gadolinium chloride as a contrast agent for imaging wood composite components by magnetic resonance
Authors: Eberhardt Thomas L. , So Chi-Leung , Protti Andrea , So Po-Wah
Published: October 2008

Although paramagnetic contrast agents have an established track record in medical uses of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), only recently has a contrast agent been used for enhancing MRI images of solid wood specimens. Expanding on this concept, wood veneers were treated with a gadolinium-based contrast agent and used in a model system comprising three-ply plywood panels fabricated from two untreated veneers and one treated veneer. The limited degree of effect imparted by the contrast agent for specimens in a water-saturated state likely resulted from contrast agent losses due to leaching during the prerequisite water saturation process. Specimens were also analyzed in the air-dry state using a non-conventional MRI sequence. This allowed what appears to be the first reported visualization of earlywood and latewood bands in MR images for air-dry wood specimens. Observation of significant signal dropout for the gadolinium-treated veneer demonstrated the first successful use of a contrast agent to manipulate the signal intensity of a wood component within a composite structure. This technique shows promise for non-destructive two- and three-dimensional assessments of wood component (e.g., veneers, flakes, particles) distributions and orientations in wood composites.
Alteration of the pore structure of spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) and maple (Acer pseudoplatanus L.) due to thermal treatment as determined by helium pycnometry and mercury intrusion porosimetry
Authors: Pfriem Alexander , Zauer Mario , Wagenführ André
Published: October 2008

The pore size distribution in wood affects sorption and transport of moisture. In the present paper, the pore structure of spruce and maple was examined in untreated and thermally modified samples. The relative humidities of the specimens were 33%, 43%, 53%, and 76%. Tests were carried out by helium pycnometry and mercury intrusion porosimetry. The results clearly show that thermal treatments change the apparent density, pore structure, and pore size distribution. Measurements by the mercury intrusion porosimetry indicated that the influence of various environmental conditions (humidity, temperature) on the porosity and pore size distribution is small.
Comparative Racialization: An Introduction
Authors: Shih Shu-Mei
Published: October 2008

In the Fall of 2004, members of the MLA committee on the Literatures of People of Color in the United States and Canada felt that it was time to assess the state of the study of race in literary studies as we approached the twenty-year anniversary of the publication of the seminal collection“Race,” Writing, and Difference(1986), edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., which contained contributions from some of the most important scholars of race. It may appear that studying race is now largely taken for granted in English departments and that we no longer need to place quotation marks aroundraceto emphasize its constructedness. Many scholars, though, feel a deep sense of anxiety that the situation with regard to race may have been normativized and comfortably compartmentalized but not improved. Intellectual tokenism abounds, as do equivalences between phenotypes and fields of study, with notable exceptions in larger metropolitan universities. For those of us outside English departments, the situation has barely improved. Each discipline has its unique historical baggage, and some are more able to discard their baggage than others, while some have been placed under greater pressure to change. But the truth of the matter is that some are just plain unwilling to acknowledge the significance of race even as they strive to update their disciplines and expand into new areas. In the extensive field of literary studies, it is premature to state that race has arrived, and it is not at all certain that the relation between race and critical theory, so central to the Gates volume, is settled. To a large extent, critical theory continues to see race as exterior to it, transcendent of the theorizations and lived experiences of race. Even though South Asia-based postcolonial theory has geared us to the study of colonialism and its consequent postcolonial complexities, it has also long held a strongly ambivalent relation to race studies.
Race Talk, Race, and Contemporary Racism
Authors: Dirlik Arif
Published: October 2008

How do we talk about racism, which we must, given its pervasiveness, without erasing significant changes that distinguish the present from the past and, even more important, without contributing to further racialization of the language of social and cultural analysis—and, by implication, to racist discourses? Much has changed over the last half century in the consciousness of racism and in efforts to overcome it. It is obscurantist to overlook these changes and speak of racism today as if it were the racism of earlier times. On the other hand, recent decades have witnessed the globalization of racism, the racialization of social categories, and the proliferation of race talk, which contributes to the reification of race. This article seeks to evaluate the ways in which race talk finds expression in discourses of political economy, labor migration, biogenetics, and neoliberal attacks on the idea of the social, as well as in putatively antiracist arguments in cultural and postcolonial studies that nevertheless contribute to the pervasiveness of race talk. It suggests that contemporary issues of race are best grasped within a condition of global modernity and sees in the restoration of the social a precondition for overcoming political and cultural racialization.
Racial Liberalism
Authors: Mills Charles W.
Published: October 2008

Liberalism is globally triumphant, the dominant political ideology of the modern age. In recent decades, it increasingly has been based on the social contract tradition of John Locke and Immanuel Kant, which has been spectacularly revived by John Rawls's 1971A Theory of Justice.Debates about the justice or injustice of the existing social order overwhelmingly use a liberal framework, typically centering on the comparative defensibility of social democratic or welfarist conceptions of liberalism versus free market, neoliberal conceptions. But there is a debate orthogonal to these familiar left-right disputes that tends to remain unacknowledged. Liberalism, I suggest, has historically been predominantly a racial liberalism, based on what has in effect been a “racial contract” among whites that denies equal personhood to people of color. White political philosophers have generally ignored this history, but only by recognizing it can we dismantle the structures of white racial privilege established by racial liberalism.
Becoming Colored in Occom and Wheatley's Early America
Authors: Chiles Katy L.
Published: October 2008

Engaging contemporaneous ideas about how environmental factors could alter the surface of the human body, Samson Occom and Phillis Wheatley use language emphasizing the ostensible malleability of physical characteristics—what I call a symbolics of metamorphosis—to depict the formation of racial identities. For Occom, the beliefs his Anglo- and Native American contemporaries held about the status of the “red” Indian enable him to challenge colonial society's contradictory Christian epistemology in his 1772A Sermon, Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian.In her 1773Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, Wheatley fuses ancient mythological beliefs and natural-historical axioms about the production of poetic genius and dark skin to characterize the black poet as an inevitable outcome rather than an anomalous exception. Drawing on the late-eighteenth-century notion of transformable race, this essay posits a historically specific model of critical race theory for interpreting early American literatures.
The Mestizo State: Colonization and Indianization in Liberal Mexico
Authors: Lund Joshua
Published: October 2008

This essay explores the limits of the liberal critique of racism by focusing on the dynamic interaction among race, space, and modes of production. My context is a national-historical moment when the confluence of these themes was being debated with intensity: Mexico's 1880s project of colonization (colonización). Enabling my analysis is a critical reading—the first ever, to my knowledge—of a daring argument set forth by an advocate of the colonization policy, the newspaper editor and political activist Luis Alva. The idea is that if liberalism, whether neo or classical, relates to space, it does so through its tenacious drive to make space productive in the capitalist sense, enlisting the state (the government and its armed forces) in this task. People, of course, usually get in the way. In the modern world, this conflict often articulates to processes of racialization. Alva deals with this in a provocative, forward-looking, and ultimately unsustainable way.
The Literary Alterities of Philippine Nationalism in José Rizal's El filibusterismo
Authors: Lifshey Adam
Published: October 2008

The seminal novels of the Philippines, José Rizal's Noli me tangere (1887) and El filibusterismo (1891), are written in Spanish, a language that began evaporating in the archipelago when the United States defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and imposed English as a lingua franca. Where does a foundational author like Rizal fit in a discussion of globalized literatures when the Philippines are commonly framed as a historical and cultural hybrid neither quite Asian nor quite Western? In Rizal's El filibusterismo, the Philippines are an inchoate national project imagined not in Asia but amid complex allusive dynamics that emanate from the Americas. Rizal and his novel, like the Philippine nation they inspired, appear in global and postcolonial frameworks as both Asian and American in that epistemes Eastern and Western, subaltern and hegemonic, interact in a ceaseless flow that resists easy categorization.
Black No More: George Schuyler and Racial Capitalism
Authors: Retman Sonnet H.
Published: October 2008

As Schuyler's story hones in on market-driven formulations of identity, it speaks to fantasies and anxieties about increasing urban industrialization, racial assimilation, and the reproduction of raced bodies in the black modernist moment. Tracing the manufacture, promotion, and regulation of race in the novel, I argue thatBlack No Moreilluminates new market possibilities for the trade of racial property in commodity form during the Fordist era. In this way, Schuyler's narrative offers a complex and prescient understanding of racial capitalism in the interwar period, one that portends our contemporary negotiations with mass-mediated identity and consumer culture on a global scale.
The Jew in the Canon: Reading Race and Literary History in Philip Roth'sThe Human Stain
Authors: Glaser Jennifer
Published: October 2008

The evolving political landscape of a multicultural America grown disenchanted with the mythology of the melting pot had vast repercussions for the Jewish American literary imagination. Nonetheless, critical race theory has yet to take full stock of the role of Jewish writers in the debates over canonicity, representation, and multicultural literary genealogies occurring in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. Philip Roth'sThe Human Stain, published in 2000, directly engages questions of literary history, race, and the position of the Jewish writer and intellectual in the canon wars. By depicting the tragedy of an African American man who passes into whiteness by passing for a Jewish professor, Roth uses the trope of passing to simultaneously critique the puritan impulse he perceives at the heart of the multicultural academy and write himself into the multicultural canon taking shape at the time.
The End(s) of Race
Authors: Eng David L.
Published: October 2008

The emergence of European Colonialism in the fifteenth century and the establishment of the Enlightenment project in the eighteenth century mark the rise and expansion of European modernity in the West and elsewhere. As the uncontested superpower on the world stage today, the United States is not just the custodian of empire but indeed the guardian of a European tradition of modern liberal humanism, one now mobilized to declare that the project of human freedom has been accomplished within the domestic borders of the nation-state. Our putatively color-blind moment is marked by the assertion that racial difference has given way to an abstract and universal United States community of individualism and merit—even as (or if) it demands the inexorable growth of the prison-industrial complex and ever-increasing militarization and unfreedom in global locales such as the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay (see Gilmore; Kaplan).
When Characters Lack Character: A Biomythography
Authors: Holland Sharon P.
Published: October 2008

I open with two philosophical gestures that point to the two quandaries that motivate this paper. First, the (im)possibility of biography—an account of some one's life—a documenting that usually, for better or worse, takes the lives of individuals as exemplary to the community, thus setting them apart from, rather than making them part of, the community of counterparts. And second, the problem discourse itself creates: When saying what we mean, does the message always reach its “indicated address” or audience? In critical theory, discourse often seems to circumvent rather than “treat” the material at hand. In keeping with the purpose of this special issue—to speak to comparative racialization—I would like to begin with a brief challenge to this project. I find “comparative racialization” an oxymoron: a promise to render the “races”—bundled into their minoritizations—separate but equal to demonstrate the effectiveness of the happy colored folks' companionability. Good racial feeling, after all, comes in twos (think Lone Ranger and Tonto, Amos and Andy, Sonny and Cher, etc.). My critique here is not meant to be facetious or disrespectful, since I intend to follow the rigorous investigation that I am charged with: bringing pressure to bear on the “comparative” in association with “racialization.” To understand what is being examined here, it is necessary to challenge the possibility of doing anything here. The minute we grasp that two racialized entities can be compared, does a set of proofs—such as, but not limited to, ideas of belonging and community and, more generally, ideas of a literature or literatures, a culture or cultures—then confront us? What if the subjects we choose to engage with are not subjects at all? What if we begin our query with some attention to what makes the subject work? Or, better yet, what tale would we tell about it, if we could? Could we provide a series of ontological proofs about its being that would ground itself in the happy narrative of place, space, and race?
Continents and Archipelagoes: FromE Pluribus Unumto Creolized Solidarities
Authors: Lionnet Françoise
Published: October 2008

Archipelagoes, cosmopolitanism, creolization: From antiquity to the present, from early Greek colonial settlements to twentieth-century postcolonial sites, these terms capture an idea of diversity linked to fluidity and mobility, exchange and transformation. Early modern European colonial expansions intensified processes that have continued to affect populations and landscapes, languages and worldviews. Today, postmodern global cities are the setting for new forms of creolized identities that are altering understandings of ethnic and national belonging across the world, even if established political and educational institutions do not always follow suit and adjust to this changing human landscape.
“Race,” Writing, and Difference: A Meditation
Authors: Griffin Farah Jasmine
Published: October 2008

“Race,” Writing, and Difference first appeared in 1986. That Fall, I entered graduate school at Yale University; I still associate the book with those intellectually heady times. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., left the university before my arrival, but his influence was still felt, and we graduate students followed his every move. We also read and debated the essays of his volume with great excitement. The collection legitimated our intellectual concerns and delineated a set of questions that we would pursue throughout our graduate school careers. The volume set the bar high and helped prepare us for the task ahead. These were the days when we anticipated and greeted the appearance of works by Gates, Houston Baker, Jr., Hortense Spillers, Sylvia Wynter, and Cornel West with almost as much excitement that years earlier accompanied the release of recordings by Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind, and Fire. Many of us came to Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Paul de Man through these brilliant theorists of African American literature and culture. Those were intellectually exciting times: the period also produced Black Literature and Literary Theory; the painful exchange between Gates, Baker, and Joyce Ann Joyce on the pages of New Literary History; Hazel Carby's Reconstructing Womanhood, and Spillers's “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” Furthermore, through his books Black Literature and Literary Theory, Figures in Black, and The Signifying Monkey, Gates not only provided a theoretical framework for the study of African American literature, he also set forth an intellectual agenda that he would institutionalize in a number of projects, especially The Norton Anthology of African American Literature and the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard. In fact, Gates's PBS series African American Lives might be seen as part of this larger project as well in that it demonstrates the fiction of race through scientific evidence without denying its power to determine the lived experience of those identified as black in the United States. Despite the appearance of texts such as Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray's The Bell Curve (and other arguments for the biological basis of race that rear their heads every so often), few people would disagree with the fundamental premise of “Race,” Writing, and Difference: that race was not fixed or naturalized but instead socially and historically constructed and institutionalized.
Criticism in the Vineyard: Twenty Years after“Race,” Writing, and Difference
Authors: Lott Eric
Published: October 2008

Riffing on Geoffrey Hartman'scriticism in the wilderness, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., titled his introduction to the 1984 collectionBlack Literature and Literary Theory“Criticism in the Jungle.” Yale deconstruction, meet tropes of blackness. When a Gates-edited issue ofCritical Inquiry(plus several additional essays) appeared two years later in book form as“Race,” Writing, and Difference, the encounter he helped broker between poststructuralist theory and race studies had its battle cry. Race was not an essence but an inscription, a signifier of instituted difference. The literature produced under its auspices was to be read as a series of marks and markers calling for complex formal analysis, not merely as an index of the humanity or condition of its writers. In retrospect, it appears that all this was a gambit in the embourgeoisement of African American literary studies. Twenty years on, Gates has started a company that does racial DNA searches—what he calls “roots in a test tube”—and produces books and television specials on black celebrities' racial genealogies (Lee B1). No scare quotes about it, race now gives you access to Oprah and her people. Call it criticism in the Vineyard.
From “Race” to Race Transcendence: “Race,” Writing, and Difference Twenty Years Later
Authors: Smith Valerie
Published: October 2008

When I began my career in higher education in the early 1980s, English departments at elite, historically white colleges and universities typically only had, at most, one faculty member of color. With a few notable exceptions, that person was usually the only one in the department to teach or conduct research on topics that engaged questions of race. Now, almost thirty years later, the study of race has assumed a more prominent role in academic life. Not only is it increasingly common to find clusters of scholars working on race in English departments, but scholars of all races and ethnicities are engaged in the study of race. Moreover, scholars of color are no longer assumed to focus on works of literature and culture produced by people of their own racial or ethnic backgrounds. Generally speaking, we have moved beyond the expectation that academic specialization follows phenotype.
Reading “Race,” Writing, and Difference
Authors: Gates Henry Louis
Published: October 2008

“Race,” Writing, and Difference was published as a special issue of critical inquiry in Autumn 1985 (12.1). Responses to the essays in the special issue appeared in the journal's autumn 1986 number (13.1). The University of Chicago Press published both parts as a book in 1986. Since then, it has become the best-selling book version of a special issue of Critical Inquiry in the history of that splendid publication. And I believe that this occurred because its contributions simultaneously reflected and defined a certain pivotal moment in the history of both literary studies and the larger discourse on race, bringing the two fields together in a way that had not been done before. At least, that was the goal of editing it in the first place.
Why the Humanities Matter for Race Studies Today
Authors: Koshy Susan
Published: October 2008

We have no Adequate Lexicon for dealing with the transformation of racial orders. Recently, commentators have sought to pinpoint a shift in racial meanings by announcing the advent of a “postidentity,” “postracial,” or “cosmopolitan” social order. These appellations suggest that we are now past racial or identity politics in some crucial way. But it is not so much that we have gone beyond race as that race has gone beyond us, morphing at a speed with which academic expertise has not kept pace. The content of racial, gender, and sexual identities has been significantly transformed, and this change has, in turn, fostered the illusion that we no longer inhabit racialized realities—hence the proliferation of posts to tell us that temporally and politically we are no longer where we were. The representational strain of dealing with the elusive and dynamic qualities of racial and sexual identities makes us too eager to declare that we are over difference. The recourse to posts seems, however, more an admission of helplessness at identifying the nature of the shift than a sign of transcendence. It stems from our dependence on social schemas that offer us only two options: we are in the racial order or we are out of it. But we are not out of it, not yet. And herein lies a rare opening for the humanistic study of race.
The Transitivity of Race and the Challenge of the Imagination
Authors: Lee James Kyung-Jin
Published: October 2008

While sociologists generally do not deign to assume such a rhetorical mantle, Michael Omi and Howard Winant Suffuse the first edition ofRacial Formationwith the language of prophecy that they at once fear to articulate and hope to imagine otherwise. “What does the immediate future hold?” they anxiously wonder.

It is unlikely that we shall experience a period of racially based mobilization such as “the great transformation.” The conjuncture in which the 1960s racial upsurge occurred was almost certainly unique. The sophistication of the contemporary racial state and the transformed political landscape as a whole seem to thwart any short-term radical political initiative based in opposition to the racial order. (143)
At Home with Race
Authors: Nguyen Viet Thanh
Published: October 2008

The line between a contact zone and a comfort zone is a thin one. I can imagine that line drawn in many ways, but the color line of which W. E. B. DuBois spoke is the one that concerns Michael Omi and Howard Winant. InRacial Formation in the United States, when they declare that “race has no fixed meaning” (71), they mean that this color line is always being redrawn, by different hands and differing hearts. It is this possibility of racial transformation, not just racial formation, that makes Omi and Winant's theory powerful and compelling. With transformation in mind, we can conceive of racial formation as another version of Mary Louise Pratt's contact zone, where friction sparks unpredictable futures and where, by implication, our racial present may not look like our racial past. At the same time, racial formation is also reformation, affirming identities with which we feel at ease. In these comfort zones of inherited identities, we encourage others and are encouraged ourselves to toe the (color) line. These racial tendencies, toward change and constancy, innovation and cliché, are evident in both politics and culture. Although Omi and Winant's sociology of race is not concerned with literature, their insightful model of racial formation is manifest in literary culture, in aesthetic form and in literary institutions: the publishing industry, the literary marketplace, and the department of literature, where racial politics are always present.