6788 research outputs found
Sort by
Product of the Past: The Struggle Between the Lakota Sioux Nation and the United States Government
Get PDFMany may be familiar with the national landmark that is Mount Rushmore, located in South Dakota. The heroes represent the leaders of the United States, the founding fathers. However, it shadows a rich history that is what came before the United States\u27 invasion. The Lakota Sioux roamed freely throughout the Midwest, that is until the the US began to expand westward. The rich history of the Lakota lingers throughout their lives today, but is suppressed under a thick lair of oppression and mistreatment by the United States Government
“Work What You Got”: Political Participation And HIV-Positive Black Women’s Work To Restore Themselves And Their Communities
Get PDFBlack women’s rates of HIV/AIDS infection have skyrocketed in comparison to other racial and ethnic groups over the past thirty years. Despite these rates, HIV-positive Black women’s perspectives are rarely sought regarding best practices to eradicate and interrupt HIV/AIDS among African American women, even though historically Black women have often proved phenomenal agents of social change. HIV-positive Black women’s activism has been understudied and input from the community in crisis has rarely been deemed as valuable to public health officials in HIV/AIDS prevention and interventions. Through the narratives of thirty HIV-positive Floridian Black women, I present HIV-positive Black women’s political participation around these emerging themes: 1) face-to-face activism 2) activist mothering, and 2) publically coming out as women living with HIV/AIDS
Further characterization of a secreted lipase from the human pathogen Leishmania donovani by determining the effect of various metal ions on its enzymatic activity.
Get PDFLeishmania donovani, a protozoan parasite, is the causative agent of the often fatal disease visceral leishmaniasis. The current treatments available are minimal and toxic to the patient. It has been shown that these organisms exhibit lipolytic activity during their growth in vitro. Lipases are enzymes that are known to aid in the development and virulence of several pathogenic organisms such as Candida albicans and Staphylococcus warneri. Little information is known, however, about the role of lipases in Leishmania species. We hypothesize that lipase may play a part in Leishmania\u27s ability to survive within the human host as well as its pathogenesis. In past studies, the L. donovani secretory lipase gene (LdLip3) was episomally expressed with an HA tag by transfected promastigotes. The purified protein was tested for enzyme activity by performing assays with McIlvaine\u27s buffer pH 4-8 at 26 C, 37 C, and 42 C using 4MU-palmitate as a substrate. The results showed that there was an average thirtyfold increase in specific activity when comparing the purified protein to the unpurified supernatant samples. Furthermore, metal ions are known to be cofactors of a variety of enzymes, greatly affecting their activity, hence, in the current study a panel of metal ions was tested to determine their effect on the activity of purified LdLip3. Optimal conditions for this enzyme were established at pH 8, 42 C, with the addition of Zn+2, whereas the addition of Mn+2 consistently produced a strong inhibitory effect. We are currently in the process of validating this previously collected data via the same experimentation protocol to determine reproducibility. Chelating agent studies with EDTA, also underway, will determine if the effect of metal ions on the enzyme activity could be reversed. Thus far, EDTA has countered the addition of the cofactors. Future studies include inhibitory studies with organophosphates that have been shown to inhibit lipases, in the hope to develop new drug targets for this parasite
Morality and Nonviolent Protest: The Birmingham Campaign
Get PDFBirmingham, Alabama was a racially segregated city up until 1963 when members of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) began a movement to stop discrimination against the African American population. Though the movement itself was conducted in a peaceful nonviolent manner, opposition from the white civic authorities was often cruel and bloody. Images of protesters both young and old were projected across the news and made the American people think deeply about the problems within their country. Eventually, the protests paid off and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, facilities, transportation and the workplace. The outcome of the protests was positive, but it was a long and brutal journey for all of those involved. Although the Birmingham protesters did not attack anyone, they used the violence against them to gain sympathy. In the end, due to the very nature of man, nonviolent protest was used as a strategy rather than because it was the overwhelmingly noble means of protest
Cover Credit
No full textCover Credit: Image is from Immigration Impact which is a project of the American Immigration Counci
‘Anchor/Terror Babies’ and Latina Bodies: Immigration Rhetoric in the 21st Century and the Feminization of Terrorism
Get PDFThe post-9/11 era in the United States has revealed a specific fear about immigrants as terrorist threats. Although this fear manifests as a generalized one against any immigrant, when we analyze public discourse, we can find rhetorical patterns involving specific groups, with Latinos/as at center. U.S. public discourse typically conjures images of immigrants as terrorists, which are either genderless or male, and it is activated and cultivated in moments of national crisis (most recently, the 2013 Boston marathon bombing attacks). In this paper, we move beyond notions of immigrants as either genderless or male to discuss post-9/11 perceptions of immigrant women as threats to the security and stability of the country. Specifically, we consider notions surrounding the savagely named “anchor babies” or “terror babies” to explain how images of immigrant women have assumed new meanings following the events of September 11, 2001, with special attention given to conceptions of Latina bodies as threatening. These designations, used consistently among the country’s political right, have created discursive sensibilities in relation to (Latina) immigrants. We tease out the ideologies embedded within the rhetoric of conservative pundits and politicians, who have consistently discussed and proselytized against immigrants, and more to the point, painstakingly articulated immigrants as terrorists since 2001. We examine statements made by social critics such as Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter, along with comments made by state and federal politicians, to trace a troubling pattern of discourse connecting women immigrants and their babies to destruction and terrorism--transforming immigrant bodies into perceived threats to the security of the United States. We also use Leo Chavez’s concept of the Latino threat, relating it to Nicholas de Genova’s idea of a deportation regime, and Kathleen Arnold’s notions about immigrants as threats to unpack and trace these connections
A radical, subjunctive, political theology of resistance: On religion and community
No full textThis dissertation argues for the possibility of theology of the political. It understands the distinctions between religion and politics to be porous. They are both exercises in the re-creation of the world. In the end, the dissertation reads radical theology alongside contemporary examples of political upheaval in a performance of a theology of resistance. ^ The dissertation is a work of political theology, drawing on political philosophy, philosophy of religion, radical theology, and anthropology of religion. It argues that a better foundation for political theology than Carl Schmitt\u27s notion of sovereignty is the anthropologist, Roy A. Rappaport\u27s understanding of the ritual construction of society because the ritual act toward authority is more fundamental than the sovereign act of decision. Specifically, the dissertation argues that subjunctivity—living in and creating the world as it might be rather than as it is—provides a more fertile and open foundation for the political. Subjunctivity short circuits sovereignty, producing a reorientation of political theology. In elucidating the concept of subjunctivity, this dissertation performs it as well. As such, the dissertation is both a political project and a theological one. ^ This dissertation is a deliberate and interdisciplinary investigation into, on the one hand, the common subjunctive foundation of both the political and the religious as well as, on the other, a construction of a theology of resistance. The bulk of the dissertation is an exercise in demarcating its conceptual terrain. The first two chapters establish subjunctivity as an alternative foundational concept for political theology. The third chapter argues for an understanding of religion without God—both in terms of personal practice and in the construction of religious community. The central argument here arises from creative readings of Martin Buber, René Girard, Paul Tillich, Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton: that religious community operates best without God. The fourth chapter performs creative readings of Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and the story of the French village Le Chambon Sur Lignon\u27s resistance to the Nazis. It concludes that radical theology—a name for thinking theologically in the absence of God—contains within it a latent political imperative. Radical theology is already political theology. ^ At that point, the dissertation undertakes a theology of contemporary political resistance, specifically in the case of Occupy Wall Street. The chapter begins by examining the concept of the city as it relates to both the political and the theological. Through critical readings of Michel de Certeau and Thomas Merton\u27s work on how people perform acts of resistance in cities, the first part of this chapter argues that the city is both a theological object and produces political resistance. The second half of the chapter performs a radical, subjunctive, political theology of Occupy Wall Street. ^ This dissertation\u27s focus is twofold: to justify the methodological legitimacy of thinking theologically about resistance, and to experimentally perform that theology of resistance. In the end, this dissertation hopes to both prove and demonstrate that resistance is theological activity.