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CHARACTERIZATION OF HUMAN HUNTINGTIN 513 AGGREGATION AND PROTEOTOXICITY IN C. ELEGANS BODY WALL MUSCLE CELLS
Get PDFHuntington’s disease (HD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by the insidious onset of choreiform movements (rapid, jerky involuntary movements), cognitive decline, and early death. Huntington’s Disease is caused by a polyglutamine (polyQ) expansion in the human Huntingtin protein (Htt) that induces Htt protein misfolding and cytotoxic aggregation later in life. The expanded polyQ tracts embedded within Htt target the protein for pro‐apoptotic caspase cleavage, and the formation of nuclear inclusions by Htt fragments is reported to contribute to the neurodegeneration and dysregulated muscle tissue metabolism canonical of HD. Of note, the activities of polyQ‐expanded Htt in HD neuropathology have been well studied, whereas the molecular pathways by which aggregated Htt confers diseaseassociated muscle tissue phenotypes have been incompletely described. To investigate tissue phenotypes mediated by Htt aggregation, it is purposeful to utilize simple model organisms that accurately recapitulate Htt molecular pathology in target tissues. To this end, the Kikis laboratory expressed disease‐associated, polyQ‐containing Htt fragments within body wall muscle cells of Caenorhabditis elegans and assessed muscle tissue phenotype throughout aging. I report that the Htt fragments aggregate and confer cytotoxicity in a polyQ lengthdependent manner in C. elegans body wall muscle cells, with tissue toxicity manifesting as decreased motility and curtailed lifespan. Apart from introducing a novel, biologically relevant model of Htt fragment toxicity in muscle cells, the data presented herein corroborates the notion that Htt‐associated toxicity, and more generally the nature of polyQ protein‐protein interactions within tissue microenvironments, is based on inherent protein characteristics and not simply an artifact of protein overexpression.Dr. Bethel Seballo
"These non-human hours": Reimagining the Homosocial Feminine In Charlotte Bronte's Villette and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles
No full textThe Pendragon, the President, and the Captured Woman: The Aesthetics of Male Violence in the Stories of Donald Barthelme
Get PDFPractice of Christian Mindfulness as an Imaginative Challenge in Parish Ministry
Get PDFProject under the direction of Professor Julia Gatta
In an age when anxieties around church attendance and participation prompt pastors and lay leaders alike to explore myriad leadership resources, there is another, more prayerful way to address this challenge. Within the broader spiritual climate of church decline, there nonetheless exists a keen interest in mindfulness practice as long-taught in the Eastern religious traditions. Rather than ignoring or dismissing this interest, we can engage the practice through the Christian contemplative tradition. By bringing Christian ascetical theology and practice to bear on a version of Christian mindfulness, we can more faithfully and effectively address the pressures we face as leaders within congregations.
Grace Episcopal Church in Gainesville, Georgia, has encountered its own particular struggles with leadership, growth, and attendance. After difficult transitions over the past couple of decades, the resource-sized parish reached a pivotal point in its common life. During the last four years—a time span including the search process that brought me to Grace and my early years there as rector—the leadership of the parish reoriented Grace Church by exploring what we call the “mindful church model.” Rather than continue the long-standing program-maintenance model that focused on a more business-style approach to parish leadership, the community has risked a way of leading and ministering that is steeped in prayer and the contemplative practices long held by the Christian tradition. This paper lays out a theological reflection on our communal development, paying special attention to a Christian understanding of mindfulness practice.
Chapter One lays out the particular challenges within this parish community. These include the discernment process in the search for a new rector as well as initial conversations about persistent mistrust from previous years and the bourgeoning potential for growth and expansion within the community. Chapter Two delves more deeply into the dynamic of “discernment and imagination.” Drawing on insights from my ongoing work with the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation as well as the founding documents of the Ignatian tradition, the chapter advocates for a more imaginative engagement with both leadership and discipleship in the church. In Chapter Three, there is a more thorough exploration of mindfulness practice in general, noting the intriguing juxtaposition between various concepts of mindfulness and Christian perspectives on conversion of life. Chapter Four focuses on patristic development of the notion of “watchfulness,” comparing and contrasting it with Buddhist understandings so that one can appreciate both Eastern perspectives on mindfulness as well as the potential for growth through the Christian contemplative tradition. Chapter Five explores how such a transfigured awareness, shaped and informed by the ascetical dimensions of discernment, imagination, and conversion, awakens our desire for God; at the same time, we begin to perceive God’s desire for our fullness of life. This chapter highlights the contributions of Anglican theologians as well as others in the broader Christian tradition.
While the precise experience of Grace Episcopal Church is unique to our community, this paper seeks to lay out a theological reorientation possible within any Christian community. The Christian Church faces challenging days, to be certain, with decreases and distractions from many angles. We would do well to focus more intently on the contemplative dimensions of our tradition as we address the pressures and anxieties that we face. By seeking a transfigured awareness, we come to rely more fully on the Holy Spirit’s guidance in our individual lives and in the lives of our communities of faith.Dr. Julia Gatt
Toward a ministry of Economic and Spiritual Development: Sustainable Agriculture at the Crossroad of Spiritual, Economic Development and Social Justice for Haitian Migrant Workers
Get PDFProject under the direction of Professor Robin Gottfried
The purpose of this project was to explore the plight of reported mistreatment of Haitian Migrant workers in the Dominican Republic, and to create and implement a God-centered model of ministry in order to alleviate, and possibly eliminate, the problem. The mistreatment of the workers took the form of overt racism, and sub-standard social and economic conditions. The primary reason for the migration of workers is the poverty that exists in Haiti. The objective of the God-centered model, to be implemented in Haiti, would be to improve economic and spiritual conditions of the workers there. This would reduce migration of migrant workers to the Dominican Republic and enhance the spiritual capabilities of those workers, who migrated, to resist mistreatment in the Dominican Republic.
The background to the migration of Haitian workers to the Dominican Republic is described by explaining the history of Hispaniola, which is made up of the nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The history of Haiti traced the French colonial exploitation of slaves, overt racism, discrimination against dark skin members of the population by those members with lighter skin, social and economic exploitation, environmental problems, and ineffective government programs. These contributed to abject poverty among the majority of the population and the migration of workers from Haiti to the Dominican Republic to better their economic conditions. The history of the Dominican Republic related the racist overtone of “Anti-Haitianismo” perpetuated by two national leaders, resulting in the massacre of scores of Haitians in 1937, and the instilling in the popular culture the notion of the inferiority of Haitians in the Dominican Republic.
The God-centered model was proposed to alleviate poverty in Haiti, with the premise that an improved economic standard of Haitians should reduce migration to the Dominican Republic while those who migrate may find that their stronger spiritual state should help them resist traditional exploitation. The tenets of the model would be strong Christian ethics for spiritual development and sustainable agricultural development projects implemented within the parameters of cooperative economic development funded by loans based on the Yanus micro credit lending model. There is a detailed description of the roles of economic theories, the Haitian educational system, and a theological framework focusing on economic and spiritual development of Haitians.
The thesis next explores the potential of the model. The description focuses on the anticipated spiritual revelation of God's love to the people of Anse-a-Pitre in Haiti, where the model is proposed to be implemented. The agricultural, economic, social, and spiritual aspects of the program are all interrelated. The anticipated success of the project will serve as a testament to God's love for his people. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the Christ-centered work will be an invitation to those people who have listened to the spirit of God and to those who understand the reality of the Gospel. It is anticipated that those people will use their vocation and gifts with accountability and excellence.Dr. Robin Gottfrie
Nature's Sacrament: The Epic of Evolution and a Theology of Sacramental Ecology
No full textThe ‘Epic of Evolution’ is the scientific story that reveals that we live in an approximately 14 billion year old universe on a planet that is approximately 4.6 billion years old and that we are a part of the ongoing process of life that has existed on Earth for
3.5-4 billion years. This project focuses on the religious and ecological significance of the evolutionary epic in an effort to seamlessly connect the ecological value attributed as a part of an understanding of the evolutionary connectedness of life on earth with the Divine grace understood to be present in Christian sacramental worship. With a particular emphasis on the Eucharist, I argue that the sacramental perspective of grace being conveyed through material reality provides the potential for Christian sacramental tradition to make a significant contribution to protecting the threatened ecological communities of our planet.
Focusing on the work of E. O. Wilson and Ursula Goodenough, I explore the sacramental significance of the Epic of Evolution itself as value is attributed through recognition of the connectedness and kinship characteristic of all Earthly life. Concurrently, by incorporating William Temple’s concept of a ‘sacramental universe’ from Anglican sacramental theology, I propose that the grace that is understood to be present in the substances of the bread and wine of the Eucharist points outward so that it can also be witnessed in all of God’s ongoing Creation. Therefore, the formal sacrament of the Eucharist is a part of a broader sacramentality in which the presence of Divine grace can be witnessed in all aspects of the natural order. Through our participation in the Eucharistic liturgy, we are immersed in the Christian narrative of Alpha, Chi, Omega and then sent out into the world to experience the broader sacramentality emerging from our sacramental universe.
In addition to providing an outward trajectory pointing toward the attribution of value beyond the walls of the church to the ecological communities of which we are necessarily a part, the connection between the Eucharist and natural value also has a deeper theological significance. The Eucharist calls worshipers to recognize the Christian understanding of the primacy of divine incarnation in the selfless sacrifice associated with the life of Jesus. When this is understood as taking place in a sacramental universe from which ecological grace flows, the incarnation can be recognized not as a one-time event but as an ongoing sacramental process through which God is revealed through the perpetual emergence of life. Consequently, as the primary form of sacramental worship in Christian tradition, the Eucharistic witness to the incarnation of God in Jesus and thanksgiving for life overcoming death provide Christians with a ritual orientation for recognizing the incarnational presence of God as an ever present reality potentially witnessed in all that is.
From the perspective of Christian sacramental theology, it is the responsibility of the priestly vocation, both lay and ordained, to cultivate an awareness of the presence of Divine grace in a sacramental ecology in order perpetuate the attribution of value to the ecological communities from which all life and value emerge. By incorporating David Brown’s theology of sacrament and tradition as an ideal framework for such a pursuit, I argue that this theological perspective is coherent with the Christian tradition of which it is a part as well as applicable to the ecological context in which we live our lives. Therefore, connecting Eucharistic grace with the value associated with an awareness of the ecological and genetic connectedness of all forms of life serves as a mutual enrichment of sacramental tradition and contemporary efforts to protect life on Earth.Dr. Andrew R.H. Thompso
Created Space and Globalized Nature: Chinese Metaphysical Theories and the Nature Poetry of Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder
Get PDFA Comparison of Soil and Site Conditions in Coffee-Based Agroforestry Systems in Three Regions of Central Haiti
Get PDFZanmi Kafe (Haitian Kreyol for Partners in Coffee) is a collaboration between Sewanee the University of the South and the Hattian NGO Zanmi Agrikol (Partners in Agriculture) based in Haiti’s Central Plateau that works with rural farmers to implement agroforestry practices through a payment for ecosystem services (PES) structure. The structure of PES payments reward landholders for land stewardship practices in an effort to improve rural poverty not just economically, but also environmentally (Midler et al 2010). Farm productivity in Haiti’s Central Plateau region suffers from deforestation and resultant soil erosion as well as a lack of arable land on steep rocky slopes. Shade grown coffee, a crop requested by the Haitian farmers in Zanmi Kafe, offers an important agroforestry strategy because it incentivizes the planting of a variety of over-story shade trees with the potential to increase households livelihoods and environmental resilience in these remote mountain areas. Since the establishment of the shade coffee-based agroforests in 2013, comprehensive soil studies have been conducted to characterize the conditions in which the trees are growing, and provide information that will help farmers more effectively manage these systems. We have been working with our farmer-collaborators in three regions to analyze soil chemistry, organic horizon mass, nutrient content, soil depth and percent slope of home garden and open fields. We also assessed site factors such as elevation, and percent canopy openness, as well as coffee seedling survival. Our results demonstrate that the calcium-carbonate-derived soils in these highland areas are neutral to slightly alkaline, low in organic matter, with highly variable amounts of phosphorus. In Baptiste, the oldest, most elevated, mesic and productive coffee growing region, the soils are slightly acidic but higher in organic matter. A better understanding of the region’s soil characteristics aims to help farmers increase their crop yield by adopting plants and strategies more conducive to the Central Plateau. Contour alley cropping and grass terracing may help reduce soil erosion and increase productivity on farms where shallow dry soils inhibit coffee production