bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Molecular epidemiology and population genetics of Schistosoma mansoni infecting school-aged children situated along the southern shoreline of Lake Malawi, Malawi
Authors: Archer John , Cunningham Lucas J. , Juhász Alexandra , Jones Sam , O’Ferrall Angus M. , Rollason Sarah , Mainga Bright , Chammudzi Priscilla , Kapira Donales R. , Lally David , Namacha Gladys , Makaula Peter , LaCourse James E. , Kayuni Sekeleghe A. , Webster Bonnie L. , Musaya Janelisa , Stothard J. Russell
Published: October 2024

Background

In areas of low disease endemicity, highly sensitive diagnostic tools to identify, diagnose, and monitor intestinal schistosomiasis transmission are needed to reliably measure the burden and risk of infection. Here, we used highly sensitive molecular diagnostic methods to investigate Schistosoma mansoni prevalence and transmission along the southern shoreline of Lake Malawi, five years post-disease outbreak.

Methodology and principal findings

Faecal and urine samples were provided by school-aged children situated along the southern shoreline of Lake Malawi. Kato-Katz faecal-egg microscopy and point-of-care circulating cathodic antigen (POC-CCA) rapid diagnostic tests were then performed to diagnose infection with S. mansoni. Urine-egg microscopy was also used to diagnose infection with Schistosoma haematobium. In addition, Schistosoma miracidia were isolated from faecal material using a standard miracidium hatching technique. A two-step real-time PCR approach was then used to diagnose infection with S. mansoni using DNA isolated from faecal samples. Furthermore, isolated miracidia were genotyped to species level through PCR and Sanger sequencing. Phylogenetic analyses were then carried out to identify which previously defined S. mansoni cox1 lineage group S. mansoni miracidia were most closely related to.

The measured prevalence of S. mansoni infection varied considerably depending on which diagnostic assay was used. When compared to real-time PCR, faecal-egg microscopy had a sensitivity of 9% and a specificity of 100%. When POC-CCA ‘trace’ results were considered positive, POC-CCA had a sensitivity of 73% and a specificity of 81% when compared to real-time PCR. However, when considered negative, POC-CCA sensitivity was reduced to 56%, whereas specificity was increased to 90%. In addition, a high degree of S. haematobium DNA was detected in DNA isolated from faecal samples and motile S. haematobium miracidia were recovered from faecal samples. Schistosoma mansoni miracidia were closely related to two independent cox1 lineage groups, suggesting multiple recent introduction and colonisation events originating from surrounding east African countries.

Conclusions and significance

Intestinal schistosomiasis is now highly prevalent along the southern shoreline of Lake Malawi just five years post-disease outbreak. In addition, a high prevalence of urogenital schistosomiasis persists. The revision of ongoing schistosomiasis control programmes in this area is therefore recommended. Our study also highlights the need for reliable diagnostic assays capable of distinguishing between Schistosoma species in multispecies co-endemic areas.
Entity Linking for real-time geolocation of natural disasters from social network posts
Authors: Caillaut Gaëtan , Auclair Samuel , Gracianne Cécile , Abadie Nathalie , Touya Guillaume
Published: October 2024

When a fast kinetic natural disaster occurs, it is crucial that crisis managers quickly understand the extent of the situation, especially through the development of “big picture” maps. For many years, great efforts have been made to use social networks to help build this situational awareness. While there are many models for automatically extracting information from posts, the difficulty remains in detecting and geolocating this information on the fly so that it can be placed on maps. Whilst most of the work carried out to date on this subject has been based on data in English, we tackle the problem of detecting and geolocating natural disasters from French messages posted on the Twitter platform (now renamed “X”). To this end, we first build an appropriate dataset comprised of documents from the French Wikipedia corpus, the dataset from the CAp 2017 challenge, and a homemade annotated Twitter dataset extracted during French natural disasters. We then developed an Entity-Linking pipeline in adequacy with our end-application use case: real-time prediction and peak resiliency. We show that despite these two additional constraints, our system’s performances are on par with state-of-the-art systems. Moreover, the entities geolocated by our model show a strong coherence with the spatiotemporal signature of the natural disasters considered, which suggests that it could usefully contribute to automatic social network analysis for crisis managers.
Winter distribution of zooplankton and ichthyoplankton assemblages in the North Sea and the English Channel
Authors: Neven Carolin Julie , Giraldo Carolina , Girardin Raphaël , Lefebvre Alain , Lefebvre Sébastien , Loots Christophe , Meunier Cédric Leo , Marchal Paul
Published: October 2024

Although zooplankton were extensively studied in the North Sea, knowledge about winter zooplankton assemblages is still scarce, despite potential influence of zooplankton overwintering stocks on seasonal plankton succession and productivity. Furthermore, several economically and ecologically important fish species reproduce during winter contributing to the zooplankton community as passive members (eggs) or predators (larvae). To elucidate on winter zooplankton distribution, abundance and composition in the Southern North Sea and Eastern English Channel, we defined assemblages based on mesozoo- and ichthyoplankton data sampled between January and February 2008 using fuzzy-clustering and indicator species. Mesozoo- and ichthyoplankton (eggs+larvae) were integrated in a common analysis by using a spatial grid adapted to the datasets and defined by means of a geostatistical method developed in agronomics. Potential environmental drivers of assemblage distribution were evaluated by means of GLMM and comparison with data from 2022 facilitated insight about the inter-annual representativeness of the assemblages. Five zooplankton assemblages were found varying with regard to total zooplankton abundance, dominant and indicator taxa. Spatial variability of abiotic (dissolved nutrients, salinity, depth, temperature, organic matter in suspension, chlorophyll a), biotic variables (phyto- and microplankton composition), water masses and fish spawning grounds were revealed as potential drivers of assemblage distribution. Assemblages off the Rhine-Scheldt estuary and in the German Bight harbored the biggest zooplankton overwintering stocks that might influence the grazing pressure on phytoplankton spring production. Assemblages off the Rhine-Scheldt estuary and covering the English Channel and the Southern Bight were found to be of high importance for herring and plaice larvae. Although further analyses suggested inter-annual representativeness of the assemblages found (2008 vs 2022), the assessment of further years would be necessary to account for potential inter-annual variability. Future studies could profit from the assessment of microzooplankton facilitating insight in fish larvae feeding potential and zooplankton overwintering strategies.
miR-335-3p attenuates transforming growth factor beta 1-induced fibrosis by suppressing Thrombospondin 1
Authors: Han Dong-Hee , Shin Min Kyoung , Sung Jung-Suk , Kim Min
Published: October 2024

Pulmonary fibrosis is characterized by excessive extracellular matrix (ECM) accumulation caused by detrimental stimuli. The progressive impairment in lung functions is chronic and highly fatal, presenting itself as a global health challenge. Because of the lack of efficacious treatments, the underlying mechanism should be investigated. The progression of fibrosis involves transforming growth factor-beta 1 (TGF-β1), which accelerates ECM production via epithelial–mesenchymal transition and cell invasion. As microRNAs (miRNAs) serve as regulators of disease development and progression, this study aimed to investigate the interaction of miRNAs and target genes that could contribute to pulmonary fibrosis when exposed to TGF-β1. Differentially expressed mRNA and miRNA were identified in respiratory epithelial cells via transcriptome analysis by using the constructed TGF-β1-induced fibrosis model. Our results revealed a significant increase in the expression of thrombospondin 1 (THBS1), which participates in TGF-β1 activation, where THBS1 was identified as a core gene in protein interactions analyzed through bioinformatics. The expression of miR-335-3p, which targets 3ʹ-UTR of THBS1, substantially decreased upon TGF-β1 treatment. The TGF-β1 downstream signal was suppressed by inhibiting the interaction between TGF-β1 and THBS1, consequently alleviating fibrosis. When the miR-335-3p mimic was transfected in TGF-β1-treated respiratory epithelial cells, THBS1 and fibrosis markers were downregulated, while the introduction of miR-335-3p inhibitor exhibited a reverse phenomenon. Our findings demonstrated that TGF-β1 exposure to respiratory epithelial cells led to a decrease in miR-335-3p expression, resulting in the upregulation of THBS1 and ultimately exacerbating fibrosis. This study provides insights into TGF-β1-induced pulmonary fibrosis, suggesting new therapeutic targets and mechanisms.
Only reflecting the industry or critical reporting? News coverage about sustainable finance in Germany
Authors: Strauß Nadine
Published: October 2024

With the increasing need to channel financial capital to reach the sustainable development goals, various actors (political, financial and NGOs) are trying to place their perspectives in the public sphere. Previous research has mainly focused on the coverage of climate change in the news media, whereas the financial aspect of transitioning our society to a net-zero future has often been overseen. This study manually content-analysed 479 news articles in Germany to find out about the main topics, actors and representation of sustainable finance (SF) in the news media. Findings show that media coverage has steadily increased since 2019, with a strong focus on European politics and political actors in Germany. Whereas differences across news outlets were identified, SF was overall mainly presented in a positive tone with advantageous characteristics, pointing out the positive performance of sustainable investments. The findings imply a predominance of neo-capitalistic representations of SF in the news that forego a more critical, differentiated and diversified discussion of the role of finance and the economy in transforming our society towards carbon-neutrality.
Primary Membranous Nephropathy Flare After COVID-19 Vaccination
Authors: V. Liang Kelly , B. Ahmad Syeda , C. Kurtz Elizabeth , Pittappilly Matthew , I. Minervini Marta
Published: October 2024

Primary membranous nephropathy (MN) is due to autoantibodies to phospholipase A2 receptor (PLA2R Ab). It is unclear whether COVID-19 vaccines can trigger flares of glomerular diseases such as primary MN. There have been increasing reports of glomerular diseases presenting or flaring after receipt of COVID-19 vaccines. We present a patient with primary MN who developed nephrotic syndrome after receiving her second mRNA-1273 COVID-19 vaccine with positive PLA2R Ab. Renal biopsy confirmed primary MN. She was treated for her primary MN flare with rituximab in a manner similar to non-vaccine-associated MN, which led to significant reduction in both PLA2R Ab level and proteinuria. This case adds to the growing literature on MN flares after receipt of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Close follow-up of patients with primary MN and other glomerular diseases after COVID-19 vaccination is warranted. Further research is needed to determine the pathophysiology behind vaccine-induced MN flares and whether there is a potential association between exposure to SARS-CoV-2 antigens and loss of tolerance to the PLA2R antigen.
Primary Healthcare Services and Health-Related Quality of Life of Older Persons with Non-Communicable Diseases: A Narrative Literature Review
Authors: Fiona Atim , Kiyinji Frank , Orach-Meza Faustino , Nanyonga Rose Clarke
Published: October 2024

In response to the rising burden of non-communicable disease (NDC), the World Health Organization (WHO) developed tools to enable early detection and management of NCDs in Primary Healthcare centers (PHC). Globally, the prevalence of NCDs remains alarmingly high with 41 million deaths annually. Of these, 17 million people die before the age of 70, and 86% of these premature deaths occur in low-and middle-income countries. This narrative review aimed to assess the effect of PHC services on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of older persons with NCDs, to critically analyze the potential of the existing literature in informing improvements in PHC services. We searched various databases (PubMed, Springer, Scopus, and ScienceDirect) for relevant literature. Peer-reviewed articles on the influence of PHC services on HRQoL among older persons with NCDs written and published in English between January 2013 and May 2024 were considered. The review indicates that effective PHC services are linked to good HRQoL. However, PHC services are sub-optimal and poor in low- and middle-income countries, hence more health interventions are essential to improve PHC services to enhance HRQoL of older persons.
Requirements for the content of harmful substances in market products of plastics and rubber. Part V. Vehicles and their equipment
Authors: Kolasa Dorota , Stępkowska Aneta , Wróbel Justyna , Samsonowska Katarzyna , Kaszuba Alicja , Wróbel Kamil , Lach Jakub
Published: October 2024

This article continues the review of applicable regulations on the safety of products placed on the European Union (EU) market. Part V regarding the regulations on the control of hazardous substances in vehicles, including their components and equipment made of plastics and rubber, covers EU regulations and national acts adapting Polish law to EU legislation in this area.
Paddleways of Mississippi
Authors: Herndon Ernest , Parker Patrick
Published: October 2024

The navigable rivers and creeks of the state of Mississippi have been foundational in every aspect of the state’s geology, ecology, settlement, development, economy, and politics. Native Americans traveled and settled along these waterways, which they used for drinking, cooking, and irrigation as well as for navigation. Later, European-descended Americans moved into the Mississippi Territory in steam-powered boats and paddlecraft. Rivers and creeks dictated the construction and placement of roadways and other infrastructure. Commerce took place by way of rivers including, but not limited to, the mighty Mississippi. A handful of the rivers of Mississippi played an out-sized role in the Civil War. Including the Mississippi River, Big Black, The Yazoo and its tributaries, and the Pearl. The rivers influenced the movement and speciation of wildlife and other ecological issues also follow the courses of the navigable rivers. Because the rivers and creeks of Mississippi were so instrumental in the development of every aspect of the state, one of the best ways to understand Mississippi is to investigate the social, ecological, and oral histories of the peoples and communities that dot the state’s navigable waterways. These are the stories of the people of the Paddleways of Mississippi.
Big Sunflower River
Authors: Herndon Ernest , Parker Patrick , Elise  , Parker Patrick
Published: October 2024

This chapter describes the Big Sunflower River as an important river in the Mississippi Delta and elaborates on peoples who lived near and depended on the Big Sunflower River. Evocative description of wildlife and valuable canoeing advice is included. Numerous personal anecdotes illustrate the chapter.
Homochitto River
Authors: Herndon Ernest , Parker Patrick , Elise  , Parker Patrick
Published: October 2024

This chapter describes the Homochitto River as an important river in the Southwest part of the state and elaborates on peoples who lived near and depended on the Homochitto River. Evocative description of wildlife and valuable canoeing advice is included. Numerous personal anecdotes illustrate the chapter.
Tangipahoa River
Authors: Herndon Ernest , Parker Patrick , Elise  , Parker Patrick
Published: October 2024

This chapter describes the Tangipahoa River as an important river in the Southwest part of the state and elaborates on peoples who lived near and depended on the Homochitto River. Evocative description of wildlife and valuable canoeing advice is included. Numerous personal anecdotes illustrate the chapter.
Hatchie River
Authors: Herndon Ernest , Parker Patrick , Elise  , Parker Patrick
Published: October 2024

This chapter describes the Hatchie River in northeast Mississippi.
Pascagoula River
Authors: Herndon Ernest , Parker Patrick , Elise  , Parker Patrick
Published: October 2024

This chapter describes the Pascagoula River system as one of the largest, most important, and last unaltered river systems in the world and it elaborates on peoples who lived near and depended on the Pascagoula River. Evocative description of wildlife and valuable canoeing advice is included. Numerous personal anecdotes illustrate the chapter.
Chickasawhay River
Authors: Herndon Ernest , Parker Patrick , Elise  , Parker Patrick
Published: October 2024

This chapter describes the Escatawpa River as an important river in the state and elaborates on peoples who lived near and depended on the Escatawpa River. Evocative description of wildlife and valuable canoeing advice is included. Numerous personal anecdotes illustrate the chapter.
Bowie Creek
Authors: Herndon Ernest , Parker Patrick , Elise  , Parker Patrick
Published: October 2024

This chapter describes Bowie Creek as an important river in the state and elaborates on peoples who lived near and depended on Bowie Creek. Evocative description of wildlife and valuable canoeing advice is included. Numerous personal anecdotes illustrate the chapter.
Gulf Islands
Authors: Herndon Ernest , Parker Patrick , Elise  , Parker Patrick
Published: October 2024

This chapter describes several coastal barrier islands and the Intracoastal waterway as important navigable paddleways in the state and elaborates on peoples who lived near and depended on the gulf islands. Evocative description of wildlife and valuable canoeing advice is included. Numerous personal anecdotes illustrate the chapter.
Stealing Letters
Authors: Chandler Karen Michele
Published: October 2024

This chapter explores texts that revise the myth of literacy as a path to freedom. The chapter argues that a Disney Channel film adaptation of Gary Paulsen’s Nightjohn by Charles Burnett and two Dear America novels, Patricia McKissack’s A Picture of Freedom and Joyce Hansen’s I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly, make the interplay between literacy and the Black vernacular important for Black individual and group survival. They complicate the idea of Black acculturation to white norms, instead portraying Black girls’ strategic coopting of literacy. Moreover, the novels’ use of the diary form and the film’s and books’ foregrounding of black girls’ voices revise the antebellum slave narrative’s individualistic, often male, voice and emphasis on Black communal deficiencies. By contrast, in portraying a rich tradition of Black children’s community-based intellectual and creative expression, the texts manifest the spread of freedom narratives’ Black-power message to mass-marketed children’s narratives.
Tending to the Land
Authors: Chandler Karen Michele
Published: October 2024

This chapter depicts the relationship between Black children or youth and property, focusing on characters’ aspirations to own land. On the one hand, these aspirations seem to endorse the American Dream of opportunity, but on the other, they mark African American writers’ insistence that Black socioeconomic aspirations and achievements should be understood through the distinct lenses of Black cultures that depart from the exploitative tendencies of American capitalism. The focal texts, Marilyn Nelson’s My Seneca Village, Joyce Hansen’s Home Is With Our Family, Mildred Taylor’s The Land and Walter Dean Myers’s The Glory Field, show African Americans creating places for themselves and their families within the U.S. economy in ways that build on African American principles of community and intergenerational welfare.
Caught on the Cultural Cusp: Nisei Politics of Identity and Music
Authors: Asai Susan Miyo
Published: October 2024

This chapter delves into the complex struggle of second-generation Japanese Americans or Nisei in the early to mid-twentieth century United States. Despite being born in America, Nisei faced significant barriers to acceptance due to entrenched racial biases. The chapter reviews how the Nisei grappled with the tension between their Japanese heritage and the desire to be fully recognized as Americans. It highlights the crucial role music played in the Nisei's identity formation, allowing them to assert their belonging while also maintaining ties to their cultural roots. Despite their resilience, the Nisei experience demonstrates enduring issues of racialization and anti-immigrant sentiment and emphasizes the ongoing need for a more inclusive society.
Introduction
Authors: Brown Christopher Michael
Published: October 2024

This introductory chapter identifies two disjunctures that must be central to any understanding of the long tradition of African American writing: the law's abiding failure to produce a coherent account of its own racial logics, and a Black ambivalence about the efficacy of the law for making a new political world. From its earliest texts, the practices and conventions of Black letters articulated a profound and deliberate engagement with the “consciousness and form” of legal discourse. Many of the earliest narratives by Black writers of enslaved life in the Black Atlantic world were told through the legal print culture and discourse that organized so much of eighteenth-century intellectual formation, and indeed through one legal form in particular: the petition. This book then explores the relationship between the law and the African American literary tradition. It addresses a problem that until now is little discussed in the criticism of African American literature: the gap between the law's vision of itself and an African American experience of the law as narrated in the texts of the tradition.
The Illogic of Law
Authors: Brown Christopher Michael
Published: October 2024

This chapter discusses the competing structures of madness and competence that mark the early struggles for Black subjectivity. It takes as its starting point the disjuncture between the logics of competing legal and literary texts of the late eighteenth century: slave petitions on the one hand, and Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative on the other. The petitions, as well as much of the protest literature that borrows the petition's form by articulating grievance and demanding redress, are the first textual statements of Black competence for citizenship, pursuing legal acknowledgments of their formal humanity. Yet read alongside the petitions, the early texts in the Black literary tradition produce striking scenes of the madness inspired by the realities of slavery: of “crazed” slaves who come to see suicide or rebellion as the only sane alternative to servitude. The seemingly counterproductive representations of madness and incompetence in African American literary texts are in fact of a piece with the claims for citizenship posited by the petitions, critiquing their inevitable failure and deploying figures of madness in response to the failures of law.
Was Blind but Now I See
Authors: Brown Christopher Michael
Published: October 2024

This chapter evaluates texts whose racial formalisms belie a twenty-first-century critique of the law's own colorblindness. Against the context of the ascendance of critical formalisms generally and racial hermeneutics in particular, it considers three turn-of-the-new-century texts to explore how different literary texts engage the notion of the postracial legal order. These texts include Toni Morrison's Paradise (1997), Edward P. Jones's The Known World (2003), and Colson Whitehead's Zone One (2011). It is no coincidence that in a newly postracial moment, in the face of the celebratory rhetoric surrounding the election of the first Black president, these three texts narrate the failure of colorblind experiments. Against the law's exclusion of considerations of race—and of the history of race before the law—how do these texts understand the logic of colorblindness? Each of these novels offers a different way of understanding what the law means by colorblindness—three perspectives that illuminate the troubled path of the law as it strives to reach a place unthinkable for most African Americans.
In Formation
Authors: Brown Christopher Michael
Published: October 2024

This chapter addresses the contemporary crisis of police violence against Black bodies. It examines the logics that lie behind the law's standards for judging the state's responsibility for those encounters and the different ways that literary texts narrate, represent, apprehend, and indeed aestheticize scenes of encounter between the police and Blackness in its different forms. The chapter begins by presenting a critical reading of the line of Supreme Court cases developing the so-called “reasonableness” standard by which uses of police force are analyzed to determine their constitutionality under the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. It then elaborates readings of several of the most prominent texts of the post-Trayvon Martin era, books that narrate the spectacular forms of anti-Blackness that mark the law in the contemporary moment. These texts include Claudia Rankine's Citizen (2014), Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me (2015), Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad (2016), and Paul Beatty's The Sellout (2016).
“No Colored Athletes Allowed”
Authors: Kemper Kurt
Published: October 2024

Kurt Kemper examines the efforts of Historically Black Colleges (HBCs) to enter their teams in the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament, focusing on basketball coach John McLendon at North Carolina College (now North Carolina Central University). The NCAA tacitly excluded HBCs from their basketball tournament because they had not played white schools of “equal” caliber in their regions. However, the NCAA never acknowledged southern segregationist policies that prohibited Black and white schools from competing against each other. Kemper further argues that McLendon and the HBCs on one side and the NCAA on the other highlighted the complexities of the United States’ mid-twentieth-century dialogue on race, in which both parties increasingly spoke different languages.
Revisiting the Revolt
Authors: Lomax Michael E.
Published: October 2024

Michael Lomax traces how Harry Edwards formed the Olympic Committee for Human Rights (OCHR) with the aspiration of boycotting the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. Lomax argues that the OCHR exemplified Malcolm X’s dictum for the need for Black unity and self-determination, and the internalization of the Black struggle. Edwards confronted a generation of African American athletes who were ambivalent about altering fundamental values of US society or initiating changes. Instead, they aspired to win participation in the existing sporting institutions through collective action.
The Activist Athlete
Authors: Bass Amy
Published: October 2024

Amy Bass investigates the legacy of African Americans and other people of color as activists. She points out that modern athletes of color—like LeBron James and Naomi Osaka—joined the ranks of many who came before them, athletes who used their platform to highlight broad political, economic, and social issues. These figures made it clear that sports cannot exist simply as an escape from our daily grind. Instead, sports serves as a global social justice platform, with athletes demanding accountability. In other words, the responsibility often leads to athletes suffering personal and professional consequences on and off the field
Doomed
Authors: Fields Sarah K.
Published: October 2024

Sarah K. Fields explores the protest efforts of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, which led him to file a grievance against the National Football League. Kaepernick claimed that NFL clubs and the league conspired against him in violation of the league’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) under Article 17, the anticollusion clause. No player has successfully invoked Article 17 since the inception of the CBA in 1968. Thus, as Fields argues, Kaepernick was doomed from the beginning, and a settlement from the league was the best he could hope for.
Negotiating Kitsch and Race in Florida Writing and Art
Authors: Hagood Taylor
Published: October 2024

So often imagined as a playground full of the promises of tropical pleasures, Florida actually harbors an ugly past and present of environmental abuse and social injustice. Writers and artists of color have been particularly adept at grasping the glittery paradoxes of Florida kitsch. This essay examines the writing of Zora Neale Hurston and the art of the Florida Highwayman and contemporary Miami-based artist, Edouard Duval Carrié, in terms of how they employ Florida kitsch to offer readers and viewers an initially pleasant encounter only to reveal harsh realities of African American experience in the state. Such triangulating of these cultural producers shines light on aspects of Hurston’s writing not readily accounted for by precepts and stylistics of Modernism.
“Follow Me through Florida”
Authors: Bordelon Pamela
Published: October 2024

The New Deal’s Federal Writers Project, through its black studies program, gave the nation its first credible look at its African American roots. To follow the journey of the black federal writers unit in Florida is to understand how and why this was done. This article looks at how the impromptu interviewing of aged slaves whose stories of bondage “could be had for the asking” led to the now-famous Federal Writers’ Project ex-slave narratives. These federal writers explain how blacks formed towns and churches and sought educations for their children. The journey had a guide, Mary McLeod Bethune, and a godmother, Eleanor Roosevelt. But even more than the immediate explanation for their government-subsidized journey, the black federal writers set the tone for the civil rights movement that was to follow.
Black and Blue in Florida
Authors: Konzett Delia Malia
Published: October 2024

This chapter discusses the intersection of gay and black identity in Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight. This sociological intersection is amplified by the film’s complex use of film genres such as the inner-city ghetto genre alongside an arthouse genre focusing on poetic modes of belonging as represented in Florida’s fecund landscape captured with stunning cinematography. This complication of filmic representation produces new and unexpected insights into a biography too quickly written off as a sociological fact or as an expression of identity politics. Instead, the film follows the coming-of-age story, told in elliptical fashion, of its main protagonist Little/Chiron/Black navigating the available symbolic options in search of a community. The film also reflects the complex settlement history of Florida in its multinational and global perspective.
Collecting Our Bones
Authors: Medina-López Kelly , Martinez Shantel
Published: October 2024

From family curses to La Llorona, dueling border ghosts to haunted migrations, this book bears witness to make real not only to the intergenerational trauma that exists in LatIndigenous geographies but the ways in which we reveal and share suppressed knowledge through ghost stories, from one haunted and wounded tongue to another, to heal body-mind-spirit-land. The introduction explores some of the relevant cultural context for the book, then ends with a brief summary of the chapters to come.
Dueling Border-Ghosts
Authors: Martínez Diana Isabel
Published: October 2024

In chapter 3, D. Martί‎nez problematizes the Equator’s haunted trauma through acts of science and colonialism while also creating potential for spiritual and personal recovery through nepantla.
Ciguanabas, Refugees, and Other Hauntings
Authors: Lara Brenda Selena
Published: October 2024

Switching gears to Central America in chapter 5 to focus on La Ciguanaba,
B. Lara presents her argument on “epistemic haunting:” a form of haunting that reveals suppressed knowledge. Using La Ciguanaba as a metaphor, Lara explores unresolved sexual violence against Central American women while also challenging legacies of colonialism that reach the United States through vessels of broken dreams and unfulfilled promises.
And He Whispered, “Yolanda, Yolanda”
Authors: Herrera Spencer R.
Published: October 2024

In chapter 11, S. Herrera argues that decolonization begins with the family and within the confines of family stories. But by excavating his own familial archive, he learns that sometimes ghosts do not want to be bothered, and by unlocking Pandora’s Box, familial history can reveal more than one wants to know.
my baby wanted an el camino ; that’s real
Authors: Medina Diego
Published: October 2024

For chapter 14, D. Medina traces the history and intersections of colonization in New Mexico using a metaphorical journey on El Camino Real, or US Interstate I-10. Using modern mile-markers as stopping points, Medina provides an indigenous history of the state juxtaposed against a backdrop of imperial erasure.
Framing Subsistence
Authors: Regis Helen A. , Walton Shana
Published: October 2024

This chapter emphasizes the importance of subsistence to bayou families by reframing the understanding of hunting and harvesting. Traditionally seen as a contrast to commercial and industrial economies, subsistence is often viewed as a remnant of an earlier economic system. The chapter considers subsistence practices as integral to local economies and are highly valued for their role in individual and group identity, family bonding, community resilience, self-reliance, and food sovereignty. The chapter covers terms like artisanal food production, self-provisioning, and culturally embedded harvesting, highlighting the diverse activities that differ from industrial, market-based food systems. Despite often being overlooked by formal economies, subsistence activities play a crucial role in the well-being and happiness of communities, reinforcing cultural heritage and environmental stewardship.
“Worth It” and Other Measures of Value
Authors: Regis Helen A. , Walton Shana
Published: October 2024

This chapter provides a detailed account of Arthur Bergeron's gardening practices, illustrating the intersection of capitalist, market-driven activity with recreational and self-provisioning aspects. Bergeron has modernized some aspects of his gardening, such as using newer hybrid sweet corn varieties, while retaining traditional methods like planting in rows. The chapter explores Bergeron's commitment to gardening that extends beyond corn as he also cultivated tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, and winter crops like turnips, cauliflower, and broccoli. The chapter touches upon the communal aspect of Bergeron 's garden, as neighbors know they can purchase tomatoes from him, highlighting the social bonds fostered through his gardening. It references research by Melissa Poe and colleagues, which suggests that practices like Bergeron's contribute to community food security, enhance social networks, and improve overall well-being by providing access to high-quality foods and supporting local food systems.
Self-Reliance, Care, and Mutual Aid
Authors: Regis Helen A. , Walton Shana
Published: October 2024

This chapter details the collaborative efforts of the Neighborhood Story Project and the Land Memory Bank and Seed Exchange, focusing on the Botanica series. It includes insights from Monique Verdin, a United Houma Nation member, on her gardening practices, mutual aid, seed exchanges, and the Indigenous Women's Gardens project. Verdin reflects on her garden's contents and discusses the vision of creating a network of Indigenous gardens. The chapter examines coastal people's perspectives on subsistence, emphasizing the challenges and values associated with hunting, harvesting, and communal practices. It highlights the importance of reclamation of land and community networks and the role of subsistence in shaping individuals and communities, as seen through the lens of Indigenous worldviews and practices.
Conclusion
Authors: Regis Helen A. , Walton Shana
Published: October 2024

This chapter recounts the 2012 Chauvin Folk Festival where Annemarie Galeucia and Shana Walton set up a booth inviting people to share their stories. It discusses the first systematic study of Louisiana subsistence practices that was initiated in 2011 by the Environmental Studies office of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. It also mentions a meeting with James Fall from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, emphasizing the importance of understanding the meaning of subsistence practices before quantifying them. The chapter reevaluates the concept of subsistence, proposing it as emergent, multichanneled, and hybrid, with goals beyond profit, contributing to food, pleasure, and personal identity, and linked to community, family, and heritage. It connects subsistence practices to broader conversations on food sovereignty and happiness and well-being studies, providing a foundation for further research and debate.
Four Repulsive Women
Authors: Cole Jean Lee
Published: October 2024

In “Four Repulsive Women: Marjorie Organ, Nell Brinkley, Kate Carew, Djuna Barnes,” Jean Lee Cole uncovers an important circle of women journalists in the male-dominated world of newspaper comics and reporting. Cole is especially attentive to the “grotesque transformations of bodies, especially female ones” in response to patriarchal modernity.
Telling Details
Authors: Bukatman Scott
Published: October 2024

Scott Bukatman’s essay “Telling Details: Feminine Flourish in Midcentury Illustration and Comics” reveals the rich complexity of seemingly superfluous “ornamental” details, which he connects to contemporary practices in Hollywood melodrama.
“Our First Literature”
Authors: Sturm Nick
Published: October 2024

In this chapter, Nick Sturm surveys the challenging, subversive work of Joe Brainard, putting the artist in conversation with various underground cartoonists (many of whom Brainard prefigures by at least ten years). As Sturm writes, “ We should see Brainard’s work as establishing a legitimate and sophisticated role for comics as a critical and imaginative form that engages both visual art and literature.”
Racial and Sexual Politics of Black and Tan Nightlife
Authors: Harper Colter
Published: October 2024

This chapter opens with a case study of a Hill District black and tan club, examining police responses to its social scene and the resulting media disputes about the nature of vice in the neighborhood. It then explores the history of the term “black and tan” and the ways it was used in both Black-and white-owned media to address interracial socializing in the context of Pittsburgh’s Prohibition Era nightlife. The term “black and tan,” which designated sites of interracial contact, socializing, or collaboration, became widely used in political contexts during the Reconstruction Era (1865-77) though it was applied to many early jazz nightclubs during the 1920s. The Hill District black and tan venues also laid the foundation for subsequent jazz clubs by establishing key nightlife entrepreneurs and connecting the region to the booming nightlife scenes of Chicago’s South Side and New York’s Harlem.
Challenging Discrimination, Resisting Merger
Authors: Harper Colter
Published: October 2024

Pittsburgh’s Local 471, the second African American local to be chartered by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), provided a structure for unionized jazz musicians to collectively improve their professional lives while challenging racial discrimination in the city. This chapter examines the activism of Local 471 presidents during the civil rights era and discusses their approaches to the challenges of integration within the AFM. Following the 1965 merger of Locals 471 and 60, a group of jazz musicians organized and levied charges of discrimination against the integrated local. The resulting court case was part of a growing movement of legal actions made possible by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Testimony by unionized jazz musicians revealed a long history of activism and self-determination as well as a struggle for continued representation in merged union locals.
A Tale of two Cuban Cartoonists
Authors: Amell Diana Álvarez
Published: October 2024

The violently shifting winds in the Cuban mid-twentieth century political landscape swerved in their turmoil the course of two original Cuban cartoonists. While Antonio Prohías left the country early in the sixties, and Santiago Armada, who published under the pen name Chago, remained, their work bears the imprint of the Island’s conflictive politics. At first glance, these two cartoonists may have seemingly followed different paths. However, the two experienced a painful entanglement in their country’s politics. Ultimately both faced the ideological maelstrom of their time when they developed in their comix visual innovations with significant interpretations of political narratives, expanding the expressive range of the genre.
Calvin and Hobbes
Authors: Murel Jacob
Published: October 2024

Comics have many unique means of signifying violence and its effects, e.g. dizzy stars, onomatopoeia, motion lines accompanying a punch, etc. Little to no scholarship has been done on one enduring symbol of comics violence despite its prevalence and popularity: the battle cloud or whirlwind. While noting relevant iterations of the battle cloud, this essay approaches the battle cloud primarily through Calvin and Hobbes, as when depicting fights between the two eponymous characters, Bill Watterson often employs the cloud/whirlwind symbol while eschewing it at other moments. By comparing various moments in which Watterson did and did not use the cloud to signify Calvin and Hobbes’ confrontations, this essay explores the signifying power of the battle cloud in comics. In short, the essay argues the cloud exists, not only as a signifier for violence, but as a sign of possibility—the cloud is invoked to indicate uncertainty as to who triumphs in the altercation, thereby likewise invoking suspense in the reader.
Male Authority Against Female Bodies
Authors: Minico Elisabetta Di
Published: October 2024

The depiction of women in comics is a complicated issue because female characters' representation is not univocal and fixed, neither temporally nor geographically, neither physically, nor conceptually. Women can be as strong and indomitable as hypersexualized. They can be relegated into domesticity, only dreaming of a perfect married life, or, on the contrary, they can occupy a position of power. Women can be damsel in distress, sidekicks, superheroines, girlfriends, wives, lovers, slaves, mistresses, and villainesses. They can be what they want or what men wanted them to be. This essay will briefly analyze how gender issues, violence against women, toxic masculinity, objectification, disempowerment, and depreciation are presented and received in selected and prominent comics, mostly from the USA and from the two major editorials (Marvel and DC), including Alias (vol.1), Avengers #200, Batman: The Killing Joke, Green Lantern #54, Identity Crisis, Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do, The Amazing Spiderman #121, V for Vendetta, and Wonder Woman, among others.
Complex Comics, Complex Trauma
Authors: Bhattacharjee Partha , Tripathi Priyanka
Published: October 2024

One of the most discussed reasons for complex trauma is childhood abuse, which is directly linked to cultural as well as personal memory. Phoebe Gloeckner, among others, effectively exemplifies how graphic narrative can be a medium of approach for the representation of complex trauma and post-memory, abused childhood, and testimonies. Gloeckner’s A Child's Life and Other Stories (1999, 2000) and Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures (2002, 2015) are no exception to it. This chapter aims to investigate how the testimonies in the select works of Phoebe Gloeckner with reference to their illustrations, photographs, and words instantiates a moment for catharsis.
All New, All Different, or No Normal?
Authors: Later Naja
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines the growing push for more diverse representation among mainstream superhero comics, assessing Marvel Comics’ approach in their 2016 branding of the “All-New, All-Different” publishing initiative in which the mantles of well-established white male superheroes were assigned to non-white and female characters. While many titles achieved critical and cultural success, a sales decline during this period made diversity an easy scapegoat, being most infamously singled out by Marvel Sales VP David Gabriel. The chapter takes a holistic view in analysing why ‘diversity’ was perceived as a failure in the “All-New, All-Different”/“Legacy” narrative and how the “Legacy” branding of the line after mantles passed back compounded the scapegoating of diversity as the decisive issue. Contextualizing this within wider issues how of market systems, generic conventions, and fan cultures reinforce the homogeneity of superheroes, the chapter maps how the diversification of creators over characters could serve as the most effective corrective to repeating the difficulties encountered by the “All-New, All-Different” line.
The Heart of a Hero
Authors: Schilling Alexandra Ostrowski
Published: October 2024

This chapter examines a trend in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) where disability is used as a frequent narrative device in origin stories to imbue heroes-to-be with the expected heroic morality needed for them to “truly” become heroes. However, this disability is then often cured, made negligible, or rendered invisible by the conclusion thereby signalling an incompatibility between superheroes and overt disability within the MCU. Framing this approach within traditional Western views of disability and drawing on Simi Linton’s work on the figure of the “supercrip,” the chapter demonstrates how the MCU’s trend of using disability as a narrative device in heroic origin stories is paired with a desire for the completion of a positive moral arc, during which heroes must problematically move through and often past disability in order to achieve proper heroic morality.
African American Viewers Watching Black Panther
Authors: Howard Sheena C.
Published: October 2024

The release of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther in 2018 marked a watershed moment for representation in the superhero genre and precipitated a profound cultural moment for Black audiences. In particular, this chapter examines the resonance of the film among young African American viewers and how it has contributed to the development of robust self-concepts within this demographic. Through focus-group interviews, the chapter specifically seeks to examine uses and gratifications categories as they relate to African American viewership responses, including: tension release, affective connection, affirmation of identity dimensions and self-concept reflections. The chapter then assess the ways in which viewing the film connects to identity development theory, positive/negative racial self-concept and collective consciousness.