bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Emerging Good Practices
Authors: Dandurand Yvon , Heidt Jon
Published: May 2023

This chapter identifies some emerging good practices in youth crime prevention through sports and addresses the question of what communities and crime prevention proponents can do to maximize their investments in sport-based programmes from the points of view of peace, public safety, and crime prevention. A consensus is emerging around programme practices and characteristics that are most likely to yield substantial positive youth development outcomes. Some of these include clearly articulating crime prevention objectives and programme rationale, considering the local context, interests, and cultural background of the young people they seek to influence, being responsive to the needs of participants, and accounting for gender and cultural factors that might relate to the programme. Key factors associated with sustaining interventions over time and ensuring that programme delivery is well planned are also reviewed.
The UK’s Approach to Strategy
Authors: Curtis Andrew R.
Published: May 2023

Chapter 3 considers how the UK’s approach to grand strategy impacts on military capability decision making. It opens with a brief examination of grand strategy in the round before focusing on how it has been employed by UK governments over the 70 years of the research period. From this, it is clear that politicians and defence decision makers have different perspectives regarding the usefulness of strategy at both the national and the military level. The chapter then moves on to scrutinize the broadening of the UK’s approach to developing a risk-management-based national security strategy since its first iteration in 2008. The chapter’s final section examines whether fielded military capability meets the needs of defence policy. This is achieved by exploring how well it aligned to both the strategic direction provided by the government and the threats articulated in national strategy. The conclusion from this chapter’s analysis is that developing national strategy is more challenging today than it was during the Cold War. More contentious, perhaps, is the view that today’s politicians are less inclined than their predecessors to develop and follow a comprehensive national strategic approach to the UK’s place in the world, especially since Brexit.
Defence Reviews
Authors: Curtis Andrew R.
Published: May 2023

Chapter 5 steps through the main aspects of defence reviews that impact the translation of strategic direction into military capability model. It begins by examining the way in which defence reviews, strategic defence and security reviews, and the 2021 integrated review, have been undertaken, which have seldom followed a common standard. It then moves on to explore the impact that contemporaneous events, from seemingly insignificant activities to major strategic shocks, have had on defence reviews. The rest of the chapter is devoted to the two most significant contributors to the translation of strategic direction into military capability model: politicians and defence decision makers. The contribution of, and the relationship between, those giving and those receiving the strategic direction delivered through a defence review is a key part of the process. Defence reviews have always been more confrontational than collegiate, as both politicians and defence decision makers strive to avoid unfavourable outcomes that are particularly difficult to recover from.
Surface plasmon resonance sensor composed of a D-type photonic crystal fiber with a three-layer coating
Authors: Liu Qiang , Wang Shimiao , Mu Haiwei , Sun Yudan , Zhao Jin , Wang Kaiyu , Liu Wei , Lv Jingwei , Chu Paul K. , Liu Chao
Published: May 2023

A surface plasmon resonance sensor composed of photonic crystal fibers (PCF-SPR) with an Au-TiO2-Au triple layer is designed for refractive index (RI) sensing and analyzed theoretically by the finite element method. The sensor exhibits enhanced resonance coupling between the core mode and surface plasmon polariton (SPP) mode as well as better sensitivity than the structure with a single gold coating. Furthermore, the Au-TiO2-Au tri-layer structure narrows the linewidth of the loss spectrum and improves the figure of merit (FOM). In the analyte RI range of 1.30–1.42, the maximum wavelength sensitivity is 20,300 nm/RIU, resolution is 4.93×10−6, amplitude sensitivity is 6427RIU−1, and FOM is 559RIU−1. The results provide insights into the design of high-performance PCF-SPR sensors.
Deep speckle reassignment: towards bootstrapped imaging in complex scattering states with limited speckle grains
Authors: Zhu Shuo , Guo Enlai , Zhang Wenjun , Bai Lianfa , Liu Honglin , Han Jing
Published: May 2023

Optical imaging through scattering media is a practical challenge with crucial applications in many fields. Many computational imaging methods have been designed for object reconstruction through opaque scattering layers, and remarkable recovery results have been demonstrated in the physical models or learning models. However, most of the imaging approaches are dependent on relatively ideal states with a sufficient number of speckle grains and adequate data volume. Here, the in-depth information with limited speckle grains has been unearthed with speckle reassignment and a bootstrapped imaging method is proposed for reconstruction in complex scattering states. Benefiting from the bootstrap priors-informed data augmentation strategy with a limited training dataset, the validity of the physics-aware learning method has been demonstrated and the high-fidelity reconstruction results through unknown diffusers are obtained. This bootstrapped imaging method with limited speckle grains broadens the way to highly scalable imaging in complex scattering scenes and gives a heuristic reference to practical imaging problems.
Generation of attosecond micro bunched beam using ionization injection in laser wakefield acceleration
Authors: Deng Aihua , Li Xiaowen , Luo Zhiling , Li Yan , Zeng Jiaolong
Published: May 2023

Micro bunched electron beams with periodic longitudinal density modulation at optical wavelengths give rise to coherent light emission. In this paper, we show attosecond micro bunched beam generation and acceleration in laser-plasma wakefield via particle-in-cell simulations. Due to the near-threshold ionization with the drive laser, the electrons with phase-dependent distributions are non-linearly mapped to discrete final phase spaces. Electrons can preserve this initial bunching structure during the acceleration, leading to an attosecond electron bunch train after leaving the plasma with separations of the same time scale. The modulation of the comb-like current density profile is about 2k0 ∼ 3k0, where k0 is the wavenumber of the laser pulse. Such pre-bunched electrons with low relative energy spread may have potential in applications related to future coherent light sources driven by laser-plasma accelerators and broad application prospects in attosecond science and ultrafast dynamical detection.
Generation of an ultrashort pulse train through ultrafast parity-time symmetry switching
Authors: Wang Wenhao , Zhang Yanfang , Li Ben , Wang Jing , Ma Jingui , Yuan Peng , Zhang Dongfang , Zhang Hao , Qian Liejia
Published: May 2023

We propose a scheme for the direct generation of an ultrashort pulse train as well as the further compression of pulsed lasers based on the nonlinearity inherent to parity-time (PT) symmetric optical systems. Implementation of optical parametric amplification in a directional coupler of χ(2) waveguides enables ultrafast gain switching through pump-controlled breaking of PT symmetry. We theoretically demonstrate that pumping such a PT symmetric optical system with a periodically amplitude-modulated laser enables periodic gain switching, which can directly convert a continuous-wave signal laser into a train of ultrashort pulses. We further demonstrate that by engineering the PT symmetry threshold, an apodized gain switching that enables the production of ultrashort pulses without side lobes. This work suggests a new approach for exploring the non-linearity inherent to various PT symmetric optical structures to extend optical manipulation capabilities.
Candida albicans selection for human commensalism results in substantial within-host diversity without decreasing fitness for invasive disease
Authors: Anderson Faith M. , Visser Noelle D. , Amses Kevin R. , Hodgins-Davis Andrea , Weber Alexandra M. , Metzner Katura M. , McFadden Michael J. , Mills Ryan E. , O’Meara Matthew J. , James Timothy Y. , O’Meara Teresa R.
Published: May 2023

Candida albicansis a frequent colonizer of human mucosal surfaces as well as an opportunistic pathogen.C.albicansis remarkably versatile in its ability to colonize diverse host sites with differences in oxygen and nutrient availability, pH, immune responses, and resident microbes, among other cues. It is unclear how the genetic background of a commensal colonizing population can influence the shift to pathogenicity. Therefore, we examined 910 commensal isolates from 35 healthy donors to identify host niche-specific adaptations. We demonstrate that healthy people are reservoirs for genotypically and phenotypically diverseC.albicansstrains. Using limited diversity exploitation, we identified a single nucleotide change in the uncharacterizedZMS1transcription factor that was sufficient to drive hyper invasion into agar. We found that SC5314 was significantly different from the majority of both commensal and bloodstream isolates in its ability to induce host cell death. However, our commensal strains retained the capacity to cause disease in theGalleriamodel of systemic infection, including outcompeting the SC5314 reference strain during systemic competition assays. This study provides a global view of commensal strain variation and within-host strain diversity ofC.albicansand suggests that selection for commensalism in humans does not result in a fitness cost for invasive disease.
Early biochemical analysis of COVID-19 patients helps severity prediction
Authors: Roncancio-Clavijo Andrés , Gorostidi-Aicua Miriam , Alberro Ainhoa , Iribarren-Lopez Andrea , Butler Ray , Lopez Raúl , Iribarren Jose Antonio , Clemente Diego , Marimon Jose María , Basterrechea Javier , Martinez Bruno , Prada Alvaro , Otaegui David
Published: May 2023

COVID-19 pandemic has put the protocols and the capacity of our Hospitals to the test. The management of severe patients admitted to the Intensive Care Units has been a challenge for all health systems. To assist in this challenge, various models have been proposed to predict mortality and severity, however, there is no clear consensus for their use. In this work, we took advantage of data obtained from routine blood tests performed on all individuals on the first day of hospitalization. These data has been obtained by standardized cost-effective technique available in all the hospitals. We have analyzed the results of 1082 patients with COVID19 and using artificial intelligence we have generated a predictive model based on data from the first days of admission that predicts the risk of developing severe disease with an AUC = 0.78 and an F1-score = 0.69. Our results show the importance of immature granulocytes and their ratio with Lymphocytes in the disease and present an algorithm based on 5 parameters to identify a severe course. This work highlights the importance of studying routine analytical variables in the early stages of hospital admission and the benefits of applying AI to identify patients who may develop severe disease.
Changes in the cochlear and retrocochlear parts of the auditory system in 19–39 and 40–60 years old patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus
Authors: Horváth Mihály , Herold Zoltán , Küstel Marianna , Tamás László , Prekopp Péter , Somogyi Anikó , Gáborján Anita
Published: May 2023

Pathophysiological alterations in the cochlea and functional tests of the auditory pathway support that in diabetes both vasculopathy and neural changes could be present. The aim of our research was to study the differential effect of type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) on two different age groups. Audiological investigation was carried out in 42 patients and 25 controls at the same age groups. Investigation of the conductive and sensorineural part of the hearing system by pure tone audiometry, distortion product otoacoustic emission measurement and acoustically evoked brainstem response registration were evaluated. Among the 19-39-year-old people the incidence of hearing impairment was not different in the diabetes and control groups. Among the 40-60-year-old people hearing impairment was more common in the diabetes group (75%) than in the control group (15,4%). Among patients with type 1 diabetes, the mean threshold values were higher in both age groups at all frequencies although significant difference was in 19–39 years old group: 500-4000Hz right ear, 4000Hz left ear, in 40–60 years old group: 4000–8000 Hz both ears. In the 19–39 years old diabetes group only at 8000 Hertz on the left side was a significant (p<0,05) difference in otoacoustic emissions. In the 40–60 years old diabetes group significantly less otoacoustic emissions at 8000 Hz on the right side (p<0,01) and at 4000-6000-8000 Hertz on the left side, (p<0,05, p<0,01, p<0,05 respectively) was present compared to the control group. According to ABR (auditory brainstem response) latencies and wave morphologies, a possible retrocochlear lesion arose in 15% of the 19–39 years old and 25% of the 40–60 years old diabetes group. According to our results, T1DM affects negatively the cochlear function and the neural part of the hearing system. The alterations are more and more detectable with aging.
Staging LaParoscopy to Assess Lymph NOde InvoLvement in Advanced GAstric Cancer (POLA)—Study protocol for a single-arm prospective observational multicenter study
Authors: Rawicz-Pruszyński Karol , Sędłak Katarzyna , Pelc Zuzanna , Mlak Radosław , Litwiński Jakub , Mańko Paweł , Zinkiewicz Krzysztof , Paśnik Iwona , Cięszczyk Katarzyna , Pawlik Timothy , Märkl Bruno , Erodotou Maria , Polkowski Wojciech P.
Published: May 2023

Introduction

In the era of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in advanced gastric cancer (GC), the role of staging laparoscopy (SL) will become more established. However, despite guidelines recommendations, SL for optimal preoperative staging remains underutilized. Diagnostic value of near-infrared (NIR) / indocyanine green (ICG) guided sentinel node (SN) mapping in GC confirmed its technical feasibility, however no data exist regarding its potential role in pathological nodal staging. To the best of our knowledge, current study is the first to evaluate the role of ICG in nodal staging of advanced GC patients undergoing SL.

Materials and methods

This single-arm prospective observational multicenter study was approved by the Bioethical Committee of Medical University of Lublin (Ethic Code: KE-0254/331/2018). The protocol is registered at clinicaltrial.gov (NCT05720598), and the study results will be reported according to the Strengthening of Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) statement. The primary endpoint of this study is the identification rate of ICG-guided SN in advanced GC patients. The secondary endpoints include pathological and molecular assessment of retrieved SNs and other pretreatment clinical variables potentially associated with SL: pattern of perigastric ICG distribution according to patients’ pathological and clinical characteristics, neoadjuvant chemotherapy compliance, 30-day morbidity, and mortality.

Conclusion

POLA study is the first to investigate the clinical value of ICG-enhanced sentinel node biopsy during staging laparoscopy in advanced GC patients in a Western cohort. Identifying pN status before multimodal treatment will improve GC staging process.
Plasma proteome perturbation for CMV DNAemia in kidney transplantation
Authors: Sigdel Tara K. , Boada Patrick , Kerwin Maggie , Rashmi Priyanka , Gjertson David , Rossetti Maura , Sur Swastika , Munar Dane , Cimino James , Ahn Richard , Pickering Harry , Sen Subha , Parmar Rajesh , Fatou Benoit , Steen Hanno , Schaenman Joanna , Bunnapradist Suphamai , Reed Elaine F. , Sarwal Minnie M. ,   CMV Systems Immunobiology Group
Published: May 2023

Background

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, either de novo or as reactivation after allotransplantation and chronic immunosuppression, is recognized to cause detrimental alloimmune effects, inclusive of higher susceptibility to graft rejection and substantive impact on chronic graft injury and reduced transplant survival. To obtain further insights into the evolution and pathogenesis of CMV infection in an immunocompromised host we evaluated changes in the circulating host proteome serially, before and after transplantation, and during and after CMV DNA replication (DNAemia), as measured by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (QPCR).

Methods

LC-MS-based proteomics was conducted on 168 serially banked plasma samples, from 62 propensity score-matched kidney transplant recipients. Patients were stratified by CMV replication status into 31 with CMV DNAemia and 31 without CMV DNAemia. Patients had blood samples drawn at protocol times of 3- and 12-months post-transplant. Additionally, blood samples were also drawn before and 1 week and 1 month after detection of CMV DNAemia. Plasma proteins were analyzed using an LCMS 8060 triple quadrupole mass spectrometer. Further, public transcriptomic data on time matched PBMCs samples from the same patients was utilized to evaluate integrative pathways. Data analysis was conducted using R and Limma.

Results

Samples were segregated based on their proteomic profiles with respect to their CMV Dnaemia status. A subset of 17 plasma proteins was observed to predict the onset of CMV at 3 months post-transplant enriching platelet degranulation (FDR, 4.83E-06), acute inflammatory response (FDR, 0.0018), blood coagulation (FDR, 0.0018) pathways. An increase in many immune complex proteins were observed at CMV infection. Prior to DNAemia the plasma proteome showed changes in the anti-inflammatory adipokine vaspin (SERPINA12), copper binding protein ceruloplasmin (CP), complement activation (FDR = 0.03), and proteins enriched in the humoral (FDR = 0.01) and innate immune responses (FDR = 0.01).

Conclusion

Plasma proteomic and transcriptional perturbations impacting humoral and innate immune pathways are observed during CMV infection and provide biomarkers for CMV disease prediction and resolution. Further studies to understand the clinical impact of these pathways can help in the formulation of different types and duration of anti-viral therapies for the management of CMV infection in the immunocompromised host.
The microbiome and gene expression of honey bee workers are affected by a diet containing pollen substitutes
Authors: Powell J. Elijah , Lau Pierre , Rangel Juliana , Arnott Ryan , De Jong Tyler , Moran Nancy A.
Published: May 2023

Pollen is the primary source of dietary protein for honey bees. It also includes complex polysaccharides in its outer coat, which are largely indigestible by bees but can be metabolized by bacterial species within the gut microbiota. During periods of reduced availability of floral pollen, supplemental protein sources are frequently provided to managed honey bee colonies. The crude proteins in these supplemental feeds are typically byproducts from food manufacturing processes and are rarely derived from pollen. Our experiments on the impact of different diets showed that a simplified pollen-free diet formulated to resemble the macronutrient profile of a monofloral pollen source resulted in larger microbial communities with reduced diversity, reduced evenness, and reduced levels of potentially beneficial hive-associated bacteria. Furthermore, the pollen-free diet sharply reduced the expression of genes central to honey bee development. In subsequent experiments, we showed that these shifts in gene expression may be linked to colonization by the gut microbiome. Lastly, we demonstrated that for bees inoculated with a defined gut microbiota, those raised on an artificial diet were less able to suppress infection from a bacterial pathogen than those that were fed natural pollen. Our findings demonstrate that a pollen-free diet significantly impacts the gut microbiota and gene expression of honey bees, indicating the importance of natural pollen as a primary protein source.
The Fashion Show Goes Live: Exclusive and Mediatized Performance, Rebecca Halliday (2022)
Authors: Pecorari Marco
Published: May 2023

Review of: The Fashion Show Goes Live: Exclusive and Mediatized Performance, Rebecca Halliday (2022)

London, New York and Dublin: Bloomsbury, 234 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-35022-634-0, h/bk, $143.95
Sobre los límites al deber de lealtad de los abogados
Authors: Alonso Vidal Horacio José
Published: May 2023

En este trabajo, el autor, desde la perspectiva del Derecho como argumentación propuesta por el Profesor Atienza, analiza los límites al deber de lealtad de los abogados, esto es, la obligación de los abogados de maximizar los objetivos de sus clientes. En el texto se defiende que el deber de lealtad constituiría un deber moral especial, cuyo ámbito de aplicación estaría condicionado por la propia relación de los abogados con el Derecho. Así, mientras que para los jueces y tribunales el Derecho constituiría el único fundamento de su actuación, para los abogados el Derecho sería un medio para conseguir los fines encomendados por sus clientes. Siendo esto así, se propone la viabilidad de la pretensión como un criterio regulativo en la actuación de los abogados, de suerte que los abogados sólo deberían defender aquellos casos que sean viables jurídicamente. Asimismo, el autor analiza, a través de un caso concreto –la aportación como prueba de comunicaciones reservadas entre abogados– el alcance de las normas deontológicas que regulan el ejercicio de la abogacía como otros límites al deber de lealtad de los abogados. Finalmente, el trabajo finaliza con dos reflexiones sobre el ejercicio de la abogacía.
La enseñanza del Derecho en España. Un diagnóstico crítico y algunas propuestas
Authors: Pérez Lledó Juan Antonio
Published: May 2023

Este texto es un resumen del trabajo «Teoría y práctica en la enseñanza del Derecho en España» que se publicó en el Anuario de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, en un número monográfico –el n.º 6, del año 2002 (págs. 197-268)– dedicado precisamente a la enseñanza del Derecho. El resumen se ha realizado siguiendo la técnica de «selección y exclusión» de párrafos y epígrafes.
Apología del Derecho y transformación social
Authors: Torres Ortega Ilsse Carolina
Published: May 2023

La afirmación de que el Derecho es una práctica de carácter social y de que existe una relación de complementariedad entre el Derecho y el dinamismo y la historicidad de la sociedad es casi una cuestión indiscutible. Sin embargo, una de las recriminaciones más frecuentes hacia el Derecho es su apartamiento de la realidad social y su renuencia a cumplir el papel que se esperaría de él como vehículo hacia una mejor sociedad. En este trabajo se revisa la tesis de Manuel Atienza respecto a que el Derecho es una herramienta para la transformación social y también debe serlo. Lo anterior se lleva a cabo a través del siguiente recorrido argumental: (1) En primer lugar, se plantea que la perspectiva de Atienza del Derecho como una práctica social encaminada a la transformación es resultado de un conocimiento profundo de la teoría y filosofía del Derecho, pero también de la incorporación de los saberes sociales al saber jurídico. (2) En segundo lugar, se sostiene que esta visión corresponde a un punto de vista crítico, pero positivo del Derecho, por medio del cual Atienza reprueba el alejamiento del Derecho de la realidad social, sin caer en una posición normativamente vacía que reduce el Derecho a su carácter fáctico-opresivo. (3) En tercer término, se presenta, como corolario de lo anterior, su propuesta de una idea del Derecho como empresa social encaminada a conseguir una serie de fines valiosos que dotan de contenido a la transformación social.
The Limits of Exceptional Women
Authors: Kozma Alicia
Published: May 2023

This chapter establishes and examines the exceptional women paradigm and its consequences on the status of women directors in film histories. By privileging homogeneity in personal and artistic identity, and evading the regularized disrespect granted to women's directorial labor, the paradigm of exceptional women advances tokenism cloaked as equity. The chapter traces the tensions around feminist film criticism and female authorship, demonstrating how the paradigm of exceptional women limits the role of women directors in film history and archives. Lastly, it addresses two imbricated topics: the current existence of women in filmic archives as 'exceptional' and the potentialities of feminist archival interventions and alternative archival practices.
Space, Identity, and Voice
Authors: Rountree Wendy
Published: May 2023

This chapter provides an analysis of The Hate You Give through the lens of Robert Stepto’s concept of “ritual ground,” and W.E.B. DuBois’s “double consciousness.” Ritual grounds are described as Afro-American spatial configurations that are responses to social structure, such as the barbershop or community center. Double consciousness describes the experience of living in the United States as an African American; a feeling of “twoness” as an American and an African American. The chapter applies these concepts to a discussion of how the protagonist navigates the spaces of the narrative to find her voice and agency, not unlike her real-life counterparts who mobilize, protest and use their voices to push for social and political change.
The Blind Maze of Thought
Authors: Charles-Linen Julia S.
Published: May 2023

This chapter tracks the overwhelming cultural effects of Jessie Redmon Fauset as the managing editor of The Brownies’ Book. It maintains that Fauset used her considerable social and political influence to navigate that “blind maze of thought” to which Fauset alludes in her appraisal of her mentor W.E.B. Du Bois’s work. The resultant publication engendered social, political, educational, and cultural dialogues for and about Black children during one of the nation’s most memorable literary movements. This chapter is particularly interested in how the conceptualization of The Brownies’ Book captivated and empowered Black youth of the 1920s. It argues that Fauset’s influence as contributor and literary and managing editor of this important Black children’s periodical gave its young readership the necessary tools to nurture a collective sense of belonging and to theorize their young and emerging Black identities, therefore, providing them with critical strategies to navigate a nation in racial turmoil.
“Let Us Make the World Know That We Are Living”
Authors: Gray Paige
Published: May 2023

Through examining youth sections of Black weekly newspapers in America during the 1920s, this chapter considers the wider influence of The Brownies’ Book on ideas of Black childhood through the era’s periodical culture. In particular, the chapter shows how youth sections of prominent Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier, Baltimore’s Afro-American, and the Journal and Guide (Norfolk, Virginia) picked up the cue from The Brownies’ Book to further nurture and promote agency for its young readers of color via creative production and intellectual curiosity. These children’s sections, mostly consisting of letters and poems from readers, allowed young people to reconceive and reconstruct their realities apart from white children’s literature and culture that generally either excluded depictions of African American childhood, or presented it through harmful, racist caricatures.
Gay Fanzines as Contact Zones
Authors: Ernest Dit Alban Edmond (EDO)
Published: May 2023

Prompted by fandom, the creators of the French gay comics zine Dokkun seek to emulate and understand the comics of the Japanese artists whom they encounter at fanzine conventions in Europe and Japan. The resulting “contact zones” among geographically far-flung gay comics communities suggest the variety of ways in which local, regional, and global LGBTQ+ comics cultures may meet: in personal conversations, at comics conventions, and via the transnational circulation of gay comics. The Dokkun group’s understanding of certain definitive features in Japanese gay manga occasions a productive translocal conversation about misapprehensions of other comics cultures, one that itself provides a basis to connect French and Japanese LGBTQ+ readers and creators.
Canadian LGBTQ+ Comics
Authors: Halsall Alison
Published: May 2023

As Alison Halsall’s chapter explores, the Canadian LGBTQ+ comics scene features perspectives from many different communities—Cherokee and Two-Spirited; Japanese Canadian and queer-questioning; Hindu, transgender, and non-binary—all showcasing the personal experiences of intersectional insight and agency that queer characters encounter. The particular visual formats of Daniel Heath Justice’s comics parable, Vivek Shraya’s comic Death Threat (illustrated by Ness Lee), and Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s young adult graphic novel, Skim, consider queerness as an aspect of gender identity, race or ethnicity, and spirituality. In these Canadian LGBTQ+ comics, queerness is at work at the interstices of other modes of accounting for selfhood, as their brightening and invigorating feature.
BLK Cartoons
Authors: Howard Sheena C.
Published: May 2023

From 1988 to 1994, BLK, the monthly American newsmagazine for African-American LGBTQ+ readers, regularly featured single-panel comics that visualized the lives of Black lesbians. In pages that mingled investigative journalism, news coverage, and profiles of major contemporary Black LGBTQ+ figures, BLK magazine addressed a void in comics’ representation of Black lesbians with comics that depicted Black lesbians’ dating and flirting, pregnancy, activism, conversations about safe sex, and referring to other queer people. BLK magazine’s comics affirm their characters’ lesbian selfhood through specific engagements with their 1980s and 1990s contexts to help show that queerness inheres in everyday social registers of social interaction: from familiarity, alienation, or interest to perturbation or bemusement.
Comics, Community, and Kickass Women
Authors: Halsall Alison , Warren Jonathan , Camper Nifer
Published: May 2023

In this interview, ground-breaking and influential comics artist and creator and director of the biennial LGBTQ+ comics conference “Queers & Comics” Jennifer Camper provides insight into the origins and development of her comics sensibility, her sense of the evolving queer comics scene, and the importance of her LGBTQ+ comics community-building work. Powerful lesbian representation, “mongrel” identities in comics, humor as a weapon, and kickass women are some of the ideas that she addresses in her comics that foster a queer solidarity that has galvanized the queer comics scene.
Between Culture and Political Economy
Authors: Burden-Stelly Charisse
Published: May 2023

The epilogue argues that the development of thought on racial capitalism is indebted to Percy Hintzen’s influence and scholarship, especially his combination of Neo-Marxism, Politics, Economics, and Philosophy, and Political and Historical Sociology that brings regimes of racial governance, capitalist social relations, institutional formation, and epistemology into a single focus. While scholars in disciplines from sociology to political science either left the state by the wayside in their studies of transterritorial and supranational regimes of governance, movements of peoples and goods, and cultural circulations; or remained entrapped in a nation-state framework that neglected the internationalist, world-systemic, and global realities of culture and political economy, Hintzen’s work on the Caribbean (not to mention Africa and Latin America) has consistently offered a methodology for expertly avoiding such pitfalls by centering racial capitalism.
Webspinner
Authors: Niles John D. , Niles Helen Beccard , Niles Alan , Williamson Linda , Yarensky Leonard
Published: May 2023

Duncan Williamson (1928–2007) was one of the premier storytellers of his generation not just in Scotland, but in the world. Born in a tent on the shore of Loch Fyne, Argyll, Williamson pursued a semi-nomadic way of life for many decades, at first with his parents and after age sixteen on his own. He eventually won esteem not just as a brilliant storyteller and authoritative singer, but also for his deep knowledge of the traditional way of life of the Scottish travelling people, or tinkers. The present book offers myriad insights into Williamson’s life and times, as recounted here in his own words. The main part of the book (Chapters 2–9) is based on tape recordings made by Niles during the 1980s and faithfully transcribed for print. Williamson’s personal reminiscences are interspersed with songs, anecdotes, and lengthier stories in a manner that is suggestive of his natural style of communication. An introductory chapter, a concluding chapter, and a substantial Commentary set Williamson’s words within a wide intellectual and scholarly horizon. Over sixty still photographs add a visual dimension to the book, while hyperlinks give selective access to the recordings on which most of chapters are based. Webspinner makes a major contribution to the fields of folklore, ethnography, and Scottish studies while calling attention to the role of the “strong” tradition-bearer — that is, the buoyant, creative individual, as opposed to the memorizer — in the shaping of an oral tradition.
Print Culture and the Enduring Legacy of Confederate War Monuments
Authors: Weisenburg Michael C.
Published: May 2023

This chapter illustrates the rise and spread of Confederate monuments at the local level by focusing how they were promoted and disseminated in print. It also shows how the lasting effects of this cultural work influence the current historical moment and, as such, makes a transhistorical argument for how the myths and values of the Confederacy have endured the twentieth century and have uncannily come to dominate the twenty-first century. By attending to the production and circulation of ephemeral print, which was produced by small, local publishers and distributed regionally, readers gain a more nuanced understanding of how the communities who produced these monuments adapted residual and emergent communication networks and technologies to engender enthusiasm for these monuments as well as how they appropriated pre-existing cultural norms and mythologies in order to normalize and perpetuate a revised system of white supremacy.
Weaponizing Silent Sam
Authors: Christmas Danielle
Published: May 2023

Framed by analysis of the dedication of the Silent Sam statue at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this chapter employs literary studies methods to understand the place of storytelling, in news as well as novels, and to offer a more authentic evaluation of the stakes associated with the contemporary fight to preserve Confederate monuments. It draws particular attention to these stakes as characterized by those who would most violently, in prose and in person, defend them. Reading white nationalist media, like The Daily Stormer, against neo-Confederate fiction, like Gregory Kay’s The Third Revolution, the chapter makes a compelling and clear case for an ideological discourse that it calls heritage politics, a strategy that frames the removal of Confederate monuments and the ethnic cleansing of white Americans as two sides of the same coin.
Rewriting the Landscape
Authors: Jackson Cassandra
Published: May 2023

What happens when Confederate monuments fall into the hands of predominantly Black urban communities who have both the desire and the means to resist them? Framed by the author’s reflection of her past and recent engagements with the Confederate monument in her hometown of Florence, Alabama, this chapter explores the efforts of Black communities in Memphis, Tennessee, Atlanta, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama to intervene in the power of the Confederate monuments that they inherited after white flight. While the exact means of resistance are different in each community, their efforts are connected by a common desire to disrupt the illusion of permanence from which Confederate monuments gain their authority and thus disrupt their function as blueprints for the future. The chapter concludes with a meditation on Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War.
Settling the Land
Authors: Elliott Jack D.
Published: May 2023

Falkner’s family beginnings are explored alongside the early days of Ripley, Mississippi. The chapter discusses the origins of the Falkner surname, the marriage of Falkner’s parents in 1816 in North Carolina, and the geographic history and early settlement of Pontotoc and Ripley from the Chickasaw Cession. As towns developed in north Mississippi, so developed plans for several railroads—many of which failed to come to fruition.
The Hindman Feud
Authors: Elliott Jack D.
Published: May 2023

With a small but growing family, Falkner continued a law practice and other activities to support his wife and children. However, a conflict between the Hindman brothers and Falkner turned violent in an encounter that resulted in Falkner being tried for murder. Around this time, Falkner’s wife also died. When Falkner was released from jail, tensions with the Hindman family only escalated, and Falkner had to endure a second murder trial following another violent conflict with a friend of the Hindman’s. Falkner eventually headed north to Cincinnati, writing poems from his observations. He did return to Ripley, however, marrying once again and seeking to reestablish his life in Mississippi, including involvement in politics.
Belt of Desolation
Authors: Elliott Jack D.
Published: May 2023

In May of 1862, Falkner returned to Ripley. A large swathe of northern Mississippi was considered to be “no man’s land,” with the Union army occupying Corinth, driving Confederate forces south towards Tupelo. This brought potential military conflict right to Falkner’s back door. The chapter describes the military movements in north Mississippi, including the attempt to retake Corinth. In the following year, part of Ripley’s town square was burned by the Seventh Illinois Cavalry. More Union troops would pass through the town later in the war, some more destructive than others. Eyewitness accounts recall thirty-five buildings being burned, including churches, the courthouse, and Falkner’s house.
Reconstruction and Rebuilding
Authors: Elliott Jack D.
Published: May 2023

The South after the Civil War was largely decimated, and much of the following years was dedicated to rebuilding what was destroyed. This chapter describes the rebuilding of Ripley, including the town square and Falkner home. Falkner, now rededicated to the United States, had a part in rebuilding several aspects of Ripley, including the Ripley Female Academy—later to be rechristened Stonewall College.
Doing Blues Fieldwork
Authors: Evans David
Published: May 2023

This chapter discusses methodological issues in fieldwork in areas such as Folklore, Ethnomusicology, Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Photography, with particular attention to fieldwork in blues music. It discusses issues such as the purpose and organization of the research, preparation for fieldwork (including personal appearance and presentation as a couple), establishing rapport, explaining one’s intentions, the difficult issue of payment, and both the anticipated and unanticipated problems in the field, with particular reference to the authors’ own experiences.
Sometimes the Field Came to Us
Authors: Bokelman Marina , Evans David
Published: May 2023

This chapter describes in retrospective detail—by both authors—the visits to their home in 1966 by blues artist Robert Pete Williams and in 1967 by blues artist Mississippi Fred McDowell, giving a personal view of these two bluesmen. Both authors were involved in documenting these visits: David focused on interviewing and recording, while Marina photographed the sessions. Al Wilson was often present to partake in the interviews.
The Tobacco Trust in Puerto Rico, 1899–1911
Authors: Baldrich Juan José
Published: May 2023

Chapter 4 follows the Porto Rican-American Tobacco Company (PRATCO), its subsidiaries, factories, and plantations from its incorporation, in 1899, as a cigarette manufacturer in 1899 to an agribusiness by 1911. The PRATCO started with the creation of monopoly conditions by absorbing two major domestic cigarette factories. When the American Tobacco Company (ATC) entered the US cigar trade, the PRATCO initiated an enormous expansion that soon led it to become the largest tobacco enterprise. The application of science to agriculture with the purpose of producing a light-colored wrapper for cigars, whose scarcity and desirable qualities became a powerful incentive for the ATC, the tobacco trust, to venture into farming in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Chapter 4 documents how a local trust subsidiary, the Porto Rican Leaf Tobacco Company (PRLTC) brought experts of diverse origins to grow this type of tobacco.
The Social Organization of Tobacco Growing, 1899–1950
Authors: Baldrich Juan José
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the socioeconomic context of the realignment of local tobacco exports after the US invasion in 1898. Tobacco growing areas expanded in the central highlands, at the expense of coastal tobacco planted in the Yauco and Isabela regions. The expansion included the development of the hacienda and the persistence of the smallholding in their relations with leaf dealers, agregados, and sharecroppers.
While most gender studies of this industry have focused in manufacture, this chapter addresses the overlooked gendered division of labor that drew thousands of women to family patches, haciendas, and corporate plantations. Consequently, women in tobacco farms had labor participation rates that surpassed those of other agricultural products. Nevertheless, they experienced strong occupational segregation. Women seem to have had a strong presence in small independent farms and among sharecroppers that granted the supervision of the women to the male head of their household.
Conclusion
Authors: Baldrich Juan José
Published: May 2023

The conclusion reviews the main findings of the investigation. It does so with the concept of the “transculturation of tobacco,” espoused by Fernando Ortiz, that unleashed a centuries-long stream of adaptations from Native American cultures to European patterns that initially ranged from medicinal purposes to cut tobacco leaf for pipe smoking and rolls for chewing.
The transculturation has followed adaptations so profound that people, who, for instance, chewed from tobacco rolls centuries ago, would feel estranged from filter-tipped Winston cigarettes made from blended tobaccos that RJ Reynolds once manufactured in Yabucoa. They would not recognize themselves in cigars made from reconstituted wrappers and exhibiting a plastic tip on the Tiparillos that the General Cigar Company used to manufacture in Utuado. This book has covered the major changes to Puerto Rican social and economic history, labor and gender relations in tobacco agriculture and manufacture from early Spanish colonization to the present.
Reinscribing Racial Power within HBO’s Watchmen
Authors: Stanley David , Stanley Sarah Pawlak
Published: May 2023

Exploring the deconstructive work performed throughout Watchmen (2019) this chapter examines the series’ representational departures from Moore’s original characterizations. (Non)diegetically remediating the default whiteness of superheroes, HBO’s adaptation reframes the first masked avenger in the Watchmen universe as having been secretly Black. Passing as a white vigilante, Hooded Justice’s societal acceptance relies on his continuing racial self-erasure. Watchmen (2019) interrogates the systemic racial oppression inherent within the institutions of masked vigilantism, juxtaposing the implicit whiteness of superherodom against the explicit racism of white nationalists. Dr. Manhattan’s ultimate divestment of his godlike powers symbolically links disempowerment with the social construction of Blackness. Leaving the choice to assume his powers to his Black wife, Angela, represents the ultimate move toward racial justice.
“Plenty of Room to Swing a Rope”
Authors: Marez Curtis
Published: May 2023

Watchmen’s scenes set in Oklahoma, New York, and Saigon were all filmed in Georgia to take advantage of state subsidies for film and TV production. An increasing number of contemporary TV series are filmed in precarious places, profiting from conditions that produce structural inequalities for people of color. Such shows contain disavowed critical knowledge about how government incentives to attract TV and film producers reproduce racial inequality and, more broadly, about the historical preconditions for cotemporary precarity. Drawing inspiration from Black, Chicanx, and Indigenous TV studies focused on the role of state power, this chapter brings together political-economic and textual analysis. It reconstructs a materialist history of Watchmen’s production, demonstrating how location shooting contributes to the reproduction of unequal spaces, while also examining the implications of such material histories for interpreting the show’s narrative. This chapter examines Watchmen’s implicit dialogue with its location, including the many Confederate memorials surrounding its production.
“A Sudden Upheaval of Beauty or Terror”
Authors: Yankovich Margaret J.
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines how bodies in IT are in revolt as much as they are revolting. Unruly bodies disrupt the status quo within the novel, and it is only through their containment by various means—rejection, weight loss, death, controlled destruction—that order is ever attained. In the novel, order hinges precariously on a thin line that divides disease and death, fat and thin, queer and straight, monstrous and human. Viewing IT within the context of body horror and abjection, this chapter determines to what end unruly, revolting bodies in revolt are mobilized by the narrative. More than evincing a visceral, horrified reaction from the reader, it highlights a pervasive social fear of bodies that disrupt normality, that refuse to fit in arbitrarily defined categories of normalcy. In this way, the text perpetuates the predominant cultural attitude toward unruly bodies that is marked by a pronounced fear of corporeal transgression.
Toxic Nostalgia in Stephen King’s IT
Authors: Compora Daniel P.
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores how the novel and film versions of IT use the landscape decade of the 1980s differently to convey the dark side of nostalgia. The novel uses the era as the modern-day battleground, with the adult heroes bound by their nostalgic attraction to the hometown of their childhood and their connection to each other. The films employ the 1980s as the era of personal trauma from which the characters wish to escape, but to which they are inexplicably drawn. Both iterations illustrate that regardless of which era holds the nostalgic value for the characters, it is a burden they carry with them. Nostalgia itself is as much an obstacle to overcome as Pennywise the clown, and their defeat of him is a symbolic victory over the nostalgic curse from which they suffer.
“I Don’t Know How I Can Stop”
Authors: Hamburger Robert
Published: May 2023

There is no end to the history of the civil rights movement in Fayette County. The people who have spoken up in this book are still engaged in their struggle. In this concluding section, some of these people offer a tentative summary of what they have been through and what they expect. Feelings vary from anger and disgust to firm and helpful commitment, but one thing is abundantly clear: the movement has changed people’s lives. A process of conflict and growth was started and there is no way to reverse a thing that has become so deeply ingrained in so many lives. Interviews from Maggie Mae Horton, Robert Horton, Magnolia Horton, Cleotis Williams, Edward Gray, Mary Sue Rivers, Elvin Jones, Square Mormon, Harpman Jameson, John McFerren, and Viola McFerren.