Late Leader Research Articles

Mythologizing Madiba: Myth, Resistance, and the Globalized Post-Presidency in Barack Obama’s Nelson Mandela Lecture Series Address

In his first major post-presidential public address, President Barack Obama spoke at the 2018 Nelson Mandela Lecture Series in Johannesburg, South Africa. In this address, Obama lent the weight of the rhetorical post-presidency to further mythologize the late South African leader, helping to transform him into the mythic “Madiba,” the embodiment of resistance, progress, and perseverance for all of humankind. Set against the backdrop of a resurgent, globalized, and racist right-wing populist movement, this essay explores how Obama helped magnify this mythic version of Mandela to inspire resistance through the three basic elements that structure mythic rhetoric: the universe, the protagonist, and the narrative lesson. This essay also reinvigorates the study of post-presidential public address through an emphasis on the institutional and rhetorical power of the modern post-presidency and its evolving global reach. Finally, this essay contemplates the role mythic rhetoric can play in advancing and solidifying anti-racist practices, beliefs, and structures, and ultimately positions modern mythic discourse as a helpful catalyst for the continuation of resistance through rhetoric.

The Effect of Intra-Generational Differences on the Ego States of Millennial Leaders in Indian Software Industry

Each person has a favorite ego state which they exhibit the most, or prefer the most, depending on the situations they face and the people they interact with. People belonging to different generations react differently to different situations based on their states of ego. This paper has classified the millennial generation into Early millennial leaders (Y1) and Late millennial leaders (Y2) based on suitable findings from the literature. Further, this paper intends to explore whether Millennial generation leaders differ in ego states within their generation. The study is carried out in convenient sampling method by collecting responses from 489 Millennial leaders working in the Indian software industry. Ego State Questionnaire- Revised [ESQ-R] is utilized to survey the sample population and MANOVA is performed to assay the ego differences within the generation. It is found that the Early millennial leaders exhibited parent ego and adult ego states whereas the Late millennial leaders exhibited child ego state. Future studies can be conducted in multi-generational context and can include gender-specific research to probe whether ego states differ between males and females..

Ghosts of Weirdwood: A William Shivering Book by Christian McKay Heidicker

Reviewed by: Ghosts of Weirdwood: A William Shivering Book by Christian McKay Heidicker Natalie Berglind Heidicker, Christian McKay Ghosts of Weirdwood: A William Shivering Book; illus. by Anna Earley. Holt, 2021 [352p] (Thieves of Weirdwood) Trade ed. ISBN 9781250302908 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250302915 $9.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 5–7 Following the events of Thieves of Weirdwood (BCCB 4/20), it’s 1907, and Wally is training to become a Novitiate at Weirdwood Manor while storyteller Arthur [End Page 299] fails to convince the Wardens to keep him on. Arthur returns home to find that the daughter of his late gang leader has the dragon-bone quill that brings stories to life, and she demands Arthur’s help to retrieve someone from the dead. Meanwhile, Wally tries and fails to defeat a new brand of Fae-born thugs, and Breeth the ghost girl is closer than ever to getting answers about her murder. In line with the first book of the series, this novel is suspenseful and chock-full of age-appropriate humor, from Arthur’s snarky ability to stretch the truth to the talking, lockpicking ferret woman from one of the pocket-worlds. Heidicker treats readers to some involved character development for Arthur, who learns to care about something other than himself, and Wally, who begins to criticize the tactics the Wardens use against their enemies. New readers interested in the premise have a lot of enjoyable world building to catch up on before they’re ready to read this one, but fans of the first title can rest easy knowing this is a worthy successor. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Muslim Volte-Face

The post-1857 revolt era represents one of the highly eventful phases in the history of the Muslims in British India. Perhaps the most striking event was the U-turn that occurred in the minds of the Muslim elite by the turn of the century whereby they became convinced that the old advice preached by the late community leader, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, regarding aloofness from politics was no longer helpful to the cause of their co-religionists. This change of heart was, in fact, spurred by new challenges that the Muslims of India were facing in the light of the new context in the Indian subcontinent. Therefore, the aim of this work is to look into these challenges which brought the followers of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan face to face with the option of entering politics, as an inevitable move in order to survive.

‘The Ngabwe Covenant’ and the Search for an African Theology of Eco-Pneumato-Relational Way of Being in Zambia

This study explores the ways in which the born-again traditional leaders in Zambia are redefining neo-Pentecostal interaction with nonhuman creation. It demonstrates their attempts to rapture new religious imaginations in interstitial spaces between neo-Pentecostalism and Africa’s old spiritual systems. Since eco-spirituality is foundational to most African traditional institutions, some born again traditional leaders are forced to search for contextualized forms of neo-Pentecostalism to form new collective expressions of the spirituality of healing and reconciliation of all things. Grounded in the third space translation approach, this study analyzes ‘The Ngabwe Covenant’ which was made by the late neo-Pentecostal clergy and later traditional leader Ngabwe upon his inauguration as the traditional leader of Lamba-Lenje-and–Lima people of Central Province in Zambia. The study argues that Chief Ngabwe attempted to translate neo-Pentecostal spirituality through a traditional spiritual system of eco-relationality. In so doing, neo-Pentecostal spirituality and traditional religio-cultural heritages found new meaning and home within the hybridized (new) religious space. The study underlines that the resultant religious view which could be described as an African theology of eco-pneumato-relational way of being was envisioned as a new spiritual foundation for the Ngabwe kingdom. The article concludes that Rev. TL. Ngabwe’s theology of Spirit’s indwelling of the natural world is a critical contribution to neo-Pentecostal search for life-giving interactions between human and nonhuman creation.

OPIUM: Exhibition of Cuban artist José Toirac

OPIUM: Exhibition of Cuban artist José Toirac Octavio Zaya (bio) ORGANIZED BY THE CUBA STUDIES PROGRAM AND THE ARTS@DRCLAS PROGRAM AT THE DAVID ROCKEFELLER CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, HARVARD UNIVERSITY. Since the early 1990s, José Toirac has been a well-known artist in Cuba, even if his unassuming and reserved personality did not propel him to instant fame and the recognition that granted to other artists of his generation. Despite the obvious political irony of his paintings and drawings, or perhaps because of it, José Toirac was awarded last year’s National Prize of Fine Arts in Cuba while we were preparing his presentation at DRCLAS, a much-deserved acknowledgment of his independent career that is finally catching up with what we understand as his “political poiesis.” He brings that irony mainly through juxtaposing and combining political and advertisement iconographies, but he is never explicit in his intentions, and his work is always full of nuance and successful pairings and encounters. The exhibition is part of the DRCLAS Cuban Studies Program’s activities related to the sixtieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. The exhibition presents ten drawings reproduced in this issue of Cuban Studies. They anticipate his rather successful and recognized series of paintings Tiempos nuevos (New times, 1996). Like his more famous and acclaimed paintings, these drawings bring the iconographic public figure of Fidel Castro together with well-known and globalized ads from famous brands, such as Opium perfume by Yves Saint Laurent, Marlboro, and Benetton. Perhaps Toirac is hinting at the commercial component of politics; perhaps he is equating commercial brands with the charismatic sales potential of celebrities such as Castro. The exhibition also introduces a collection of new works—originally published in the book Parables (2017) along with religious poems by Robert Gluck—to highlight, once again, the juxtaposition of religion and politics, theocracy and cult of personality, through known public images of the late Cuban leader. All together, these represent the beginning of an overdue introduction of Toirac’s work at Harvard. [End Page 371] Octavio Zaya Octavio Zaya is an art critic and curator, born in Las Palmas (Canary Islands). He has been director of Atlántica, curator at large and adviser of MUSAC, the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, and a member of the Advisory Board of Performa [2] (New York). He was also a curator of the first and second Johannesburg Biennials (1995 Johannesburg Biennials (1997). The large list of exhibitions he has curated include In/Sight, African Photographers 1940 to the Present (Guggenheim Museum, 1997), and Versiones del Sur: Latinoamérica at Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (2000). He was one of the curators of Fresh Cream (Phaidon Press, 2000), has authored more than a dozen books on artists, and has contributed to numerous other books and catalogs. Copyright © 2020 University of Pittsburgh Press

Giving thanks in China.

Golden autumn. The best time of year in Beijing. I'd just flown in from the United States to start a position teaching scientific writing in English. I hadn't been to China before, much less taught there, so I didn't know what to expect. “Will I be able to establish rapport with my students?” I wondered. “Will we communicate adequately?” At the start of my first class, I looked around at my students: 17 scientists. The year was 1983, and some wore jackets that resembled the type popularized by the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong. The students gave me hesitant but welcoming smiles, and I proceeded to tell them that my main goal was to help them publish internationally. I hoped this venture would work out for them—and me. ![][1] ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER > “I hope younger colleagues will take chances on unexpected opportunities.” My path to China began the previous autumn. I was an assistant professor at the time, teaching science writing in the United States. One evening, I returned to my apartment and saw the light flashing on my answering machine. The message was from the head of a U.S. institute devoted to furthering academic exchange with China. He suggested that I apply for a position teaching scientific writing at a medical college in Beijing. I had dreamed of international work ever since I'd received my medical and public health degrees and embarked on a science communication career 4 years earlier. Yet I hesitated about applying for the opportunity in Beijing. I felt unsure about spending a school year in then-isolated China and putting my tenure-track position at risk. I also worried about venturing so far from my parents, one of whom had been seriously ill. My parents, however, encouraged me to explore the opportunity. My program director offered me a leave of absence. And there was a good omen: Months before I ever thought of moving to China, my New Year's resolution—one of the few I've kept—had been to master chopsticks. So I found myself in Beijing. Most of my students were female faculty members approaching my parents' age. They made a point of taking care of me outside the classroom—inviting me to make dumplings, showing me where to shop, and taking me to Chinese operas—and I immersed myself in my host culture. In return, I enjoyed sharing bits of U.S. culture with my students. In November, I told them about U.S. Thanksgiving and the traditional dishes, such as sweet potatoes and turkey. Within a week, the students proposed having a potluck Thanksgiving dinner. They would provide the main courses; I would bring dessert. When I reached the potluck, sweet potatoes and Chinese favorites awaited. But the main dish had not arrived. Eventually, one student brought a package—and an apology. Turkeys were hard to get, he said, so he hoped we wouldn't mind Peking duck. We went on to eat a delicious meal, complete with the best Thanksgiving bird I've tasted yet. The potluck gave us a chance to meld cultures and build bonds—some of which endure to this day—and in that moment I knew I had much to be thankful for. My first year in China proved so rewarding that I gave up my U.S. faculty position to work there for one more year. Fortunately, I was able to land a faculty job after I returned to the United States, and I've now been tenured for more than 25 years. I look back fondly on my time in Beijing. I've been proud to see class members publish internationally and to see one elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Some have shared what I taught them with their own students. The experience showed me that I greatly enjoy exploring other cultures and helping nonnative speakers communicate science in English. I've pursued those interests ever since. I've given workshops in many countries, and each year I welcome international researchers to my university to take an intensive writing course, treasuring the chance to establish bonds with scientists from other countries. I hope younger colleagues will take chances on unexpected opportunities. The bird that appears might exceed all expectations. [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

Stalin on Their Minds: A Comparative analysis of Public Perceptions of the Soviet Dictator in Russia and Georgia

Recently there has been a renewed focus on analyzing post-communist memory, including the revitalization of debate on contemporary public perceptions of Josef Stalin. How do Russians and Georgians judge Stalin in the post-Soviet present? What individual characteristics are the best indicators of how someone evaluates Stalin? Scholars have offered various insights into the apparent resurgence of appreciation for the late Soviet leader, including nostalgia for the Soviet period, socio-spatial variables, and political attitudes, but no comparative research on attitudes and their explanations has been attempted. Using nationally representative survey data, this study compares the perceptions of Stalin in contemporary Russia and contrasts it with how people view the Soviet dictator in Georgia, his home country. We conclude that Stalin is alive in the minds of many, both in Georgia and Russia, although for different reasons. If in Georgia the admiration of Stalin is largely explained by socio-demographic and socio-spatial variables, in Russia it is more closely related to ideological and political context.

Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan by Danny Orbach

Reviewed by: Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan by Danny Orbach Richard J. Smethurst Curse on This Country: The Rebellious Army of Imperial Japan. By Danny Orbach. Cornell University Press, 2017. 384 pages. Hardcover, $39.95. Many writers on Japan’s road to war against China, the United States, Great Britain, and their allies have oversimplified the origins of World War II. Some writers see a Japan with a ravenous appetite for conquest in Asia; others see a Japan bent on [End Page 267] defending itself and other East Asian countries against Western imperialism. Danny Orbach has written a splendid book in which he complicates our understanding of the road to war by demonstrating how a tradition of insubordinate military actions from below led modern Japan from the Meiji Restoration in the 1860s to World War II in the late 1930s. He advances three main arguments: First, cliques of lower-ranking officers such as the shishi—or, in his translation, “warriors of high aspiration”—forced their late feudal leaders into actions that led to the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1860s. Second, former samurai such as Saigō Takamori and Etō Shinpei in the 1870s led their forces in rebellions against the very Meiji state that they as shishi had helped establish ten years earlier. And finally, the descendants of these men in the 1930s attempted to carry out a “Showa Restoration” in which they seized nearby territories like Manchuria that were viewed as essential to Japan’s existence and rid the Japanese government of politicians who allegedly put the interests of their political parties and capitalist supporters before the needs of Japan’s “Imperial Way.” These bourgeois leaders, who compromised with hostile (and more powerful) foreigners, needed to be replaced by men who worked for the “good of Japan and its emperor,” as defined of course by the rebels. Another strength of Or-bach’s book is that he describes each of these events in lucid prose. His book is a gripping read. Orbach also writes about how and why the army rebels got away with their insubordination. One reason was that army officers at all levels believed the Meiji Constitution of 1889 gave the army and navy general staffs the authority under certain (ill-defined) circumstances to report directly to the emperor, not through the prime minister or even the army and navy ministers. To the rebel officers of the 1930s, a mélange of elite staff officers who graduated from the Army War College and of non-elite officers who commanded troops on a day-to-day basis, the emperor personally commanded the army, and they knew best how to advise him. The army’s top leaders, themselves often former rebel officers, put up with this pressure from below because it made the army more independent: better, they thought, to have insubordination from below than nonmilitary control from above. Another reason was that the army’s leaders agreed with the goals of the rebels and were willing to put up with insubordination, that is, a weakened chain of command within the army, to achieve these goals. In the 1920s and 1930s, virtually everyone in the Japanese army believed that direct political and military control of Northeast China (Manchuria) was necessary for the armed forces to obtain the natural resources and the means of production they needed to build a total war state. Thus, when colonels Itagaki Seishirō and Ishiwara Kanji, elite staff officers in the Japanese army stationed in Manchuria to protect Japan’s legitimate treaty rights there, planned an incident to allow for the military conquest of Northeast China, the Tokyo commanders quickly overcame their fears of insubordination and gave them their approval. Or take the case of Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo. He was assassinated by rebellious army officers on 26 February 1936 ostensibly because of “widespread poverty in the country” (p. 229), when in fact his Keynesian countercyclical fiscal and monetary policies [End Page 268] after assuming his post in December 1931 were bringing the countryside to the highest level of prosperity in its history. But superiors put up with, and in some cases even applauded, the rebels’ actions, because...

Language, politics and society in the Middle East: Essays in honour of Yasir Suleiman ed. by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar

Reviewed by: Language, politics and society in the Middle East: Essays in honour of Yasir Suleiman ed. by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar Camelia Suleiman Language, politics and society in the Middle East: Essays in honour of Yasir Suleiman. Ed. by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2018. Pp. 241. ISBN 9781474421539. $29.95. This volume on Arabic linguistics edited by Yonatan Mendel and Abeer AlNajjar is a refreshing compendium consisting of eleven chapters of research, reaching from Morocco to the Sudan, to Israel and Palestine, with historic comparisons in some cases. The chapters celebrate the scholarship of Yasir Suleiman, a towering figure in Arabic linguistics with a career that spreads over more than three decades of research and mentoring. In his dedication to Arabic linguistics, Suleiman's scholarship demonstrates a remarkable breadth and depth of approaches and methods (see e.g. Suleiman 1999, 2003, 2013). The contributors to the chapters are scholars who know [End Page 572] Suleiman personally, either as former students or as peers. The foreword is written by Carole Hillenbrand, a former colleague of Suleiman at the University of Edinburgh. As Mendel and AlNajjar state in the introduction, even the choice of a street sign as the book's cover image is a tribute to Suleiman's scholarship. The street is from an Israeli town, and as is the case with all street signs in Israel, Hebrew has to be first, then Arabic, and then English. The Hebrew reads 'Batzra', in reference to 'Basra' in Iraq, where some Jews fought during WWII, and as a tribute to the city, as pronounced in Ashkenazi Hebrew, which is what these military men were. The Arabic is a transliteration of the Hebrew (as is generally the case in Israel), and the English is 'Bazra', even though English also has the name of this Iraqi city as 'Basra' or 'Al-Basra'. The editors intended to show the seen, but most of the time unnoticed, depth of the semiosis of the sign. This is done to remind the reader that Suleiman was one of the early Arabic linguists to analyze street signs, and that was long before investigating the linguistic landscape became common practice in linguistic analyses (see e.g. Gorter 2006). Further, the fact that the two editors are a Jewish Israeli (Mendel) and a dispossessed Palestinian (AlNajjar) is also a gesture to the career and life of Suleiman, a dispossessed Palestinian himself in constant pursuit of social justice regardless of color or creed (see e.g. Suleiman 2016). The book is in two parts. Part one covers some general themes in Arabic sociolinguistics. The authors made a good choice by opening with John Joseph, who applies Derrida's (1994) framework to the understanding of language and identity. Joseph highlights the centrality of Suleiman's scholarship in the debate on Arabic sociolinguistics. Derrida's term 'hauntology', loosely translated as the ghosts of history in the formation of identity, fits very well the framework in which Suleiman worked and through which he influenced Arabic debates. Karin Ryding's is a US-focused study of the pedagogy of Arabic, its shortcomings, and how to move forward. Chaoqun Lian examines the discourse of language policy in two of the oldest Arabic language academies, Damascus and Cairo. The metaphors used in the rationalization of the academy's work is indicative of the role of language in the collective imagination of the national identity of both academies. Eirlys Davies discusses language preferences on the internet in social media, emails, and text messages in Morocco. Users' preference for Moroccan Arabic is a bottom-up change happening in Arabic writing; thus Davies is moving the debate about code-switching in Arabic to the internet and social media realm. Lastly in part one, Ashraf Abdelhay and Sinfree Makoni discuss ideology toward Arabic in the Sudan by looking into the discourse of President Bashir, the journalist Hussein Khojali, and John Garang de Mabior (the late South Sudanese leader), and how Arabic acts as a proxy for national conflict. Abdelhay and Makoni's chapter is a refreshing reminder that the...

Ending the siege? David Ervine and the struggle for progressive Loyalism

ABSTRACTDrawn from newspapers and interviews with political colleagues, relatives, and conflict intermediaries, this article concerns the late Loyalist political leader David Ervine – an ideal vector through which to explore the recent history and struggle for progressive Loyalism within Protestant working-class East Belfast. It outlines the vital influence of his father, as well as Ervine’s ability to find mentorship in others. It covers his imprisonment in Long Kesh, early political awakening, and later success as a representative of the Progressive Unionist Party. It argues that Ervine’s chief political opposition eventually came from establishment and hard-line Unionism, and that his primary achievement was to articulate Ulster Loyalist positions and demands against this culture. Ervine’s duality as a political representative who was close to the militarism of his former career is shown as being central to his political persona. Ervine’s premature passing is shown to be connected to the pressures arising from pursuing progressive policies and stances from a Loyalist background, frequently under fire from other Unionists.

Nationalizing Judaism: Zionism as a Theological Ideology by David Ohana

Reviewed by: Nationalizing Judaism: Zionism as a Theological Ideology by David Ohana Aviel Roshwald (bio) Nationalizing Judaism: Zionism as a Theological Ideology By David Ohana. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. 214 pp. There is no better way to set the scene for a review of this book than with a synopsis of its final chapter (coauthored with Michael Feige), an evocative and illuminating interpretive depiction of David Ben-Gurion's December 1973 funeral. Its key aspects having been planned and scripted by Ben-Gurion himself, the funeral was both intentionally and unintentionally symbolic of many of the key ideological and political issues, challenges, and dilemmas faced by the Zionist project and the Israeli state twenty-five years after independence and just a few weeks after the end of the traumatic Yom Kippur War. The burial location was not in Jerusalem but on the edge of the southern desert, at the site of the study and research center that Israel's first prime minister had created adjacent to his chosen place of residence, Kibbutz Sde Boker. The choice of residence and gravesite alike reflected Ben-Gurion's wish to inspire a new generation of Israeli youths to turn their backs on the comforts of urban living and take up the task of settling the Negev and "making the desert bloom." For Ben-Gurion, there was no contradiction between the assertion of the state's central role in the organization of Jewish national life—the principle of mamlakhtiyut (sovereigntism or statism), which he, more than any other of the late Yishuv's and early state's leaders, had been responsible for articulating and institutionalizing—and Israelis' continued commitment to personal engagement in the settlement and cultivation of the land. Yet even as the graves of David and Paula Ben-Gurion became sites of dutiful pilgrimage for dignitaries and ordinary citizens alike, it was the knitted-kippahwearing members of the national religious movement's offshoot Gush Emunim, not the secular kibbutzniks of Labor Zionism, who were to [End Page 205] take the lead in building new settlements and bedroom communities— and not in the Negev Desert but on the occupied West Bank. Israel was to remain, in some sense, in a state of permanent revolution, but its course was to take a very different ideological direction from that envisaged by its founding father. Or was it so different? Is the explicitly and avowedly religious and messianic nationalism of the disciples of the Rabbis Kook (father and son) who came to dominate the settler wing of the national religious movement marked by underlying continuities with or fundamental differences from what Ohana terms the "Promethean messianism" and secular "political theology" predominant among Israel's founding generation? That is the question overhanging all of the essays included in this collection. As is evident from the very first chapter (coauthored with Ari Barell), Ohana retains great admiration for the daring scope and ambition of Ben-Gurion's plans, first seriously laid out during the Second World War, for the integration of technical expertise, political power, and the pioneering ethos of a mobilized nation to create the infrastructure and political capacity for the intake of an anticipated massive inflow of refugees from Europe (the "Million Plan"). (A version of this plan ended up being implemented in the early 1950s in the context of the flight of Jews from Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa.) This was, as Ohana sees it, a form of political utopianism that was married to a firm, modernist belief in the transformative potential of twentieth-century science and technology. Yet clearly, in the light of Israel's political trajectory over the half century since the 1967 war, Ohana cannot help but wonder whether any form of political theology or "Promethean messianism" is not liable to lend itself to the revival of religious forms of political messianism divorced from a capacity for rational analysis and incapable of a realistic understanding of the bounds of the politically possible (let alone the ethically justifiable). Each of these essays wrestles with these questions through the lens of a prominent Israeli political or intellectual leader's works, or through the analysis of the evolving depiction...

The Generals in Their Labyrinth

The Generals in Their Labyrinth

The adenovirus L4-22K protein regulates transcription and RNA splicing via a sequence-specific single-stranded RNA binding.

The adenovirus L4-22K protein both activates and suppresses transcription from the adenovirus major late promoter (MLP) by binding to DNA elements located downstream of the MLP transcriptional start site: the so-called DE element (positive) and the R1 region (negative). Here we show that L4-22K preferentially binds to the RNA form of the R1 region, both to the double-stranded RNA and the single-stranded RNA of the same polarity as the nascent MLP transcript. Further, L4-22K binds to a 5΄-CAAA-3΄ motif in the single-stranded RNA, which is identical to the sequence motif characterized for L4-22K DNA binding. L4-22K binding to single-stranded RNA results in an enhancement of U1 snRNA recruitment to the major late first leader 5΄ splice site. This increase in U1 snRNA binding results in a suppression of MLP transcription and a concurrent stimulation of major late first intron splicing.

Ready Rhetorics: Political Homophobia and Activist Discourses in Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda

Since the late 1990s political leaders in several African countries have pursued legislation to expand criminal penalties for same-sex sex. Yet, much of the research on efforts to expand criminalization of same-sex sexualities in Africa has focused on individual country cases, neglecting the role of national and transnational sociopolitical contexts and economic flows. Focusing on discourses present in news media data from 2000 to 2014 in three African countries pursuing regressive policies targeting homosexuality—Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda—we examine: 1) the different antihomosexual discourses and constellations of actors that emerge over time; 2) the linkages among antihomosexual discourses and other social or cultural logics that allow individuals and collective actors to make sense of antihomosexual discourses in a particular historical moment; and 3) the relationships among discourses vying for power in a given discursive field. In these data we observe episodic public debates around homosexuality that engage different arguments and constellations of actors over time. The intensity of public debates has increased since the mid-2000s in each country, and debates reflect strong linkages among transnational and national actors. Ultimately, we contend that the particular debates occurring around the regulation of same-sex sex in Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda reflect larger conflicts over social change, political power, and global status hierarchies. We conclude with implications for the study of homophobia and LGBT movements in sub-Saharan Africa.

Marwan Barghouti in Tel Aviv

On 15 April 2002, Marwan Barghouti, a high profile Member of the Palestinian Parliament and a close aide of the late Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, was arrested and transferred to Israel for trial. On 14 August 2002, he was charged with multiple counts of crimes including acts of terrorism, murder and conspiracy to murder. In the Courtroom in Tel-Aviv, Barghouti was being tried for acts of terrorism, but in the court of public opinion, Israel was using the trial to slander and discredit the Palestinian leadership as a bunch of ‘murderous gangs,’ and ‘enemies of all mankind.’ On his part, Barghouti uses the judicial space to go beyond the surface problem of law and legality to the deeper question of occupation – a problem that is at the depth but also all across the normative structure of Israel’s legal order. Through re-signification, the accused becomes the accuser, putting the state of Israel and the occupation on trial. In this article, I consider the ways in which the accused and the accuser repurpose the legal material to produce and disseminate ideas, concepts, and images productive to their respective politics. Attending to the ways in which discourses of occupation, resistance, and terrorism were synchronized with the legal form, the article reflects on how the narratives move from the legal to the political, from the personal to the social, from the local to the global, and from the theological to the political, creating the conditions of possibility for meaning and understanding.

Esquivel!: Space-Age Sound Artist by Susan Wood

Reviewed by: Esquivel!: Space-Age Sound Artist by Susan Wood Elizabeth Bush Wood, Susan Esquivel!: Space-Age Sound Artist; by Susan Wood; illus. by Duncan Tonatiuh. Charlesbridge, 2016 32p Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-58089-673-3 $17.95 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-60734-825-2 $17.95 R Gr. 2-5 A kid’s got to be careful in admitting a taste for grandparents’ music. Mick Jagger is acceptable, and Aretha Franklin’s not too embarrassing—and as Wood and Tonatiuh demonstrate in this picture-book biography, being part of Juan Garcia Esquivel fandom could be insanely cool. An autodidact at the piano, Esquivel had landed a modest piano gig on a Mexico City radio station by age fourteen and led a radio orchestra by age seventeen. With a keen ear attuned to urban soundscapes, he played fast and loose with popular Mexican tunes, lacing them with a kind of instrumental take on vocal scat that made him a recording star in both Mexico and the United States. Wood describes not only the quirkiness of his instrumentation but also how Esquivel arrived on the scene just in time to take advantage of new recording techniques and stereophonic sound separation, and how he was able to make a home in a range of sonic media, from Las Vegas stage shows, to television and movies, and of course, vinyl. That’s all well and good, but for kids who haven’t heard Esquivel, they’ll need more incentive, and Wood brings it. Her closing note focuses on the 1990s resurgence of interest in Esquivel’s recordings, which segues happily into the current rediscovery of the pleasures of vinyl. Tonatiuh reprises the Maya-influenced style audiences may recognize from Funny Bones: Posada and His Day of the Dead Calaveras (BCCB 10/15), but he infuses its formality with some freewheeling text and swirling motif design suggestive of Sean Qualls. The [End Page 102] Resources page tosses in a couple of quotation credits and adult print references but concentrates on websites of Esquivel interviews and YouTube performances virtually guaranteed to secure the late orchestra leader a fresh following. Let the downloads begin. Copyright © 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

A suppressive effect of Sp1 recruitment to the first leader 5′ splice site region on L4-22K-mediated activation of the adenovirus major late promoter

Transcription from the adenovirus major late promoter (MLP) requires binding of late phase-specific factors to the so-called DE element located approximately 100 base pairs downstream of the MLP transcriptional start site. The adenovirus L4-22K protein binds to the DE element and stimulates transcription from the MLP via a DE sequence-dependent mechanism. Here we use a transient expression approach to show that L4-22K binds to an additional site downstream of the MLP start site, the so-called R1 region, which includes the major late first leader 5′ splice site. Binding of L4-22K to R1 has a suppressive effect on MLP transcription. L4-22K binds to the distal part of R1 and stimulates the recruitment of Sp1 and other cellular factors to a site overlapping the first leader 5′ splice site. Binding of Sp1 to the 5′ splice site region had an inhibitory effect on L4-22K-activated MLP transcription.

Editorial: Taking an indigenous approach to study organizational behavior in China

Since the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and open policy” started in 1978, China’s economy has been growing rapidly and today is the second largest economy in the world. In the globalization age, China s economy has become more integrated and increasingly interdependent with the rest of the world. In this historical transformative moment, practitioners and academics alike have shown growing interests in management and organizational behavioral (OB) issues in the Chinese context. For example, we have seen an increasing number of OB studies using Chinese samples published in international OB and management journals each year. Although these OB studies have undoubtedly shed light on the uniqueness and complexity of OB issues in China, most of these studies tend to rely heavily on Western OB theories and paradigms in testing their proposed hypotheses and make little reference to the contextual factors or indigenous theorization process (Jia, You, & Du, 2011). Thus, there is still very limited evidence to suggest that these OB theories developed in the Western contexts are fully aligned with traditional Chinese culture and history, and current economic, social, and cultural developmental stages.

The agnoprotein of polyomavirus JC is released by infected cells: Evidence for Its cellular uptake by uninfected neighboring cells

Poliomavirus JC replicates in glial cells in the brain, and causes the fatal demyelinating disease, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML). PML is usually seen in patients with underlying immunocompromised conditions, notably among AIDS patients and those on chronic immunosuppressive regimens. The late leader sequence of JC virus contains an open reading frame encoding a small regulatory protein called agnoprotein. Agnoprotein contributes to progressive viral infection by playing significant roles in viral replication cycle. Here, we demonstrate that agnoprotein can be detected in cell-free fractions of glial cultures infected with JCV, transfected with expression plasmids or transduced with an adenovirus expression system. We also provide evidence that extracellular agnoprotein can be taken up by uninfected neighboring cells. These studies have revealed a novel phenomenon of agnoprotein during the viral life cycle with a potential of developing diagnostic and therapeutic interventions.