Lawrence University Research Articles

Kimberley Rampersad: a conversation

St. Lawrence College faculty member Ian Simpson interviews Shaw Festival Associate Director Kimberley Rampersad and provides an overview of the background and career of this exciting new voice in Canadian theatre. She discusses her journey growing up in Winnipeg as a dancer, singer, and musical theatre performer, including her role as a dance and arts educator, building to her rapid rise to become one of Canada’s most promising and prominent young directors and choreographers. She talks about directing two of the biggest plays in the theatrical canon, “The Amen Corner" at the Shaw Festival, and “King Lear” at the Stratford Festival, both in 2023. She describes how her musical theatre background was critical in her development as a director, and the importance of mentorship and training a new generation of performers.

Le compagnon idéal par Isabelle Minière

Reviewed by: Le compagnon idéal par Isabelle Minière Eilene Hoft-March MiniÈre, Isabelle. Le compagnon idéal. Serge Safran, 2022. ISBN 979-10-90175-97-6. Pp. 176. "Love in the time of lockdown" could arguably serve as this novel's subtitle. Readers are hauled back to the inauspicious spring of 2020, confronted with our shared pandemic history, especially its European version: le grand confinement with its circumscribed mobility, restaurant closures, télétravail, and runs on toilet paper and pasta. "Comme si c'était la guerre" (34) observes the narrator of the world's resigned conformity to a common misfortune. While recent history undergirds almost every page, title, and cover suggest a different, less realistic story. Its vintage image straight from an early 50s romance novel illustrates the title's "ideal companion," a suited young man in the driver's seat of a convertible, arms in a proprietary embrace of a young woman. The image's outmoded romanticism constitutes a conspiratorial wink at readers. The narrator, Eva, certainly seems an unlikely proponent of such archaic claptrap. Clear-eyed and self-aware, she knows herself to be mildly unhappy, socially inept, and constitutionally timid. Eva traces her self-diagnosed behaviors to unhealthy family dynamics: a cold and critical mother, a sister who ranks as Mother 2.0, and a father who, she fantasizes, might be affectionate, though she has no proof of his disposition toward her. Eva prefers, in family or social gatherings alike, to withdraw from events undetected ("s'éclipser" 9). Equipped with just such a strategy, Eva attends her boss's birthday party, positioning herself on the periphery preparatory to her usual discreet exit. Enter the fortuitous "companion," her boss's brother, Jimmy (or perhaps Jeff, hesitates the narrator). A very brisk courtship ensues—texts, flowers, dinner, lovemaking, and a hasty decision to live together in Eva's apartment. That these events are all compressed into a few days speaks to those peculiar times when many were propelled by the decree of quarantining to choose almost irrevocably between virtual exile and overly cozy cohabitation. But Jimmy proves indeed to be the title's ideal companion. His personality conforms snugly to Eva's own, matching her every mood and supporting her every decision; there is no daylight between them. Here is where the plot begins to thicken and where the reviewer needs to hold back to avoid spoiling readerly pleasure. The narrative obliges attention to clues scattered throughout the text, further obliging a reassessment of characters and plot. Beyond reviving the history of a global pandemic most likely seared into this generation's memory, Minière projects the psychological wages of isolation that may be with us for years to come. Her novel is a quick, enjoyable read, but nowhere near as lightweight as its cover illustration projects. [End Page 243] Eilene Hoft-March Lawrence University (WI) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Rouge nu par Benjamin De Laforcade

Reviewed by: Rouge nu par Benjamin De Laforcade Eilene Hoft-March De Laforcade, Benjamin. Rouge nu. Gallimard, 2022. ISBN 978-2-07-296112-0. Pp. 273. The setting is Berlin in the early 2000s when new political and social freedoms of a consolidated Germany nourish creativity and transform the city into a European capital of artistic, cultural innovation. In that spirit, renowned painter Andreas Mauser makes several bold moves: he renovates a dilapidated factory of East German vintage into an art studio and school and caps the structure with an enormous concrete cube to house his ultimate masterpiece. Throughout the novel, no one has access to the painting (shades of Balzac's "Chef d'oeuvre inconnu") except the faithful Hausmeister. As plans for a retrospective of Mauser's work take shape, the artist selects a young acolyte from among his students to be his studio assistant. Ezra Zimmerman, a seemingly unlikely candidate for this honor, is of modest origins, with little formal art training but an uncanny ability to reproduce Mauser's techniques and even whole artworks by the painter. This privileged understanding of the master's art gives Ezra growing insights into the complex dynamics of Mauser's art-making enterprise. Laforcade develops Ezra's character convincingly, making him slightly unusual in appearance and demeanor, gay, and unapologetically his own man. Ezra indulges in Berlin's urban, youth-oriented pleasures, mostly with his companions Judith and Luke, both infatuated with him. He also embarks on a caring relationship with a woman and her infant in a neighboring apartment, a relationship initiated by his emergency aid to her during childbirth. The author alternates these narrative threads in finely crafted and evenly paced chapters that build subtle suspense. In addition, Laforcade gives richly evocative descriptions such as the paired processes of seeing and painting or the human blossoming of baby Heiko. Above all, the arc of Laforcade's narrative traces an indicting portrait of the cult of the master. The "great man," Andreas Mauser, speaks very little but his will is known and executed without question by trusted minions. Fame gives him permission to withhold common courtesies much less respectful behaviors toward his closest collaborators. Greatness appears to exonerate his serial oppressions of others. Ezra, the ever observant, witnesses it all and must make a decision accordingly. Rouge nu is an impressive first novel that this reader hopes will have equally impressive successors. [End Page 227] Eilene Hoft-March Lawrence University (WI) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Looking Forward: Interest Group Legal Strategy and Federalist Society Affiliation in the United States Circuit Courts of Appeal

Previous articleNext article No AccessSymposium on the Supreme CourtLooking Forward: Interest Group Legal Strategy and Federalist Society Affiliation in the United States Circuit Courts of AppealChristine C. Bird and Zachary A. McGeeChristine C. BirdUniversity at Albany, SUNY Search for more articles by this author and Zachary A. McGeeSt. Lawrence University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Polity Volume 55, Number 2April 2023Buttered Bagels The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/724189 Views: 17Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref HistoryPublished online February 28, 2023 Keywordscircuit courtsFederalist Societylegal mobilizationconservative legal movementSupreme Court© 2023 Northeastern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Alyson Cole, Robyn Marasco, and Charles Tien Buttered Bagels, Polity 55, no.22 (Mar 2023): 241–247.https://doi.org/10.1086/724222Mary Ziegler Dobbs and the Jurisprudence of Exclusion, Polity 55, no.22 (Feb 2023): 419–426.https://doi.org/10.1086/724185Susan Liebell The Politics of Law: Capricious Originalism and the Future of the Supreme Court, Polity 55, no.22 (Feb 2023): 356–362.https://doi.org/10.1086/724164

Auburn

Auburn Austin Segrest (bio) Reading about conspiracy and moral declinein our independent study, my professordefined ingenium—hard g—as character,something he and I didn’t necessarily have. I was always going down with someone,going soft as the gin Steve gave me in the beginning.Were we translating in a hallway?Hooking him up by then was close enough to hooking up with him,I see now, a professor myself, rememberingthe stiff impress of his prickwhen we hugged goodbye. What was the differencebetween what I lacked and what I wasn’tgiven? Can it be learnedthis late, integrity, even if Latin can’t, or won’t?Raised from the ruins, from wherethere were none,can walls go up? And will the definitions hold?The more-than-walls, the something protected inside,innate soil, or soul—can it abide? [End Page 144] Austin Segrest Poet and critic austin segrest is the author of Door to Remain (unt Press, 2022), winner of the 2021 Vassar Miller Poetry Prize. His poems can be found in poetry, The Common, Ecotone, The Threepenny Review, and many others. He was a 2018–19 poetry fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Born and raised in Alabama, Austin teaches at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. Copyright © 2023 Austin Segrest ...

Richard I. Cook, MD – 1953-2022

Article| November 2022 Richard I. Cook, MD – 1953-2022 Michael F. O'Connor, MD, FCCM, FASA Michael F. O'Connor, MD, FCCM, FASA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar ASA Monitor November 2022, Vol. 86, 40. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.ASM.0000897408.29363.76 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Cite Icon Cite Get Permissions Search Site Citation Michael F. O'Connor; Richard I. Cook, MD – 1953-2022. ASA Monitor 2022; 86:40 doi: https://doi.org/10.1097/01.ASM.0000897408.29363.76 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll PublicationsASA Monitor Search Advanced Search Topics: accidents, care of intensive care unit patient, complex work environment, engineering, ohio, professors, safety, software We are saddened to share the news of the death of Richard I. Cook, MD, on August 31, 2022. He was arguably the best-known and most accomplished anesthesia-based expert on safety in the world. Richard graduated cum laude from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1975. He worked on supercomputer design and engineering applications at Control Data Corporation from 1975 to 1980. He graduated with his MD from the University of Cincinnati in 1986 and completed his anesthesiology residency in 1994. His gap years during that time were spent learning about accidents, safety, and complex systems with David Woods at the Ohio State University, the leading expert in the U.S. on these topics. From 1994 to 2012, Dr. Cook was a member of the Department of Anesthesia & Critical Care at the University of Chicago. While at the University of Chicago, Richard helped found the National Patient Safety Foundation at... You do not currently have access to this content.

Perioperative Nurse Recruitment: An OR Placement Program for Fourth-Year Nursing Students in Ontario.

Nursing associations have predicted a worldwide shortage of perioperative RNs as more nurses reach retirement age. Additionally, the lack of perioperative exposure during undergraduate nursing programs is contributing to the failure to attract recently graduated nurses to this field. In 2019, multiple hospital sites within the St. Lawrence College network in Ontario, Canada, expressed difficulty recruiting perioperative RNs and expressed an interest in collaborating with the college to increase exposure to the perioperative specialty and recruit students to their ORs after graduation. The college has run a successful preceptor-supported OR placement program for fourth-year baccalaureate nursing students since 2019. Eleven out of thirteen students were hired into the OR after their 2020-2021 placement program. This article outlines the steps taken to initiate this program as well as results of a formal program evaluation conducted in 2021, including detailed feedback from participating students, preceptors, and leaders at the involved hospitals.

Locating Studentification in Kingston, Ontario

This study will determine how the student population living off campus in Kingston has expanded from 2006 to 2016 by examining census data. Census data shows us the number of unoccupied dwellings which can represent where students are living in cities because full-time students living away from home are attached to their parents’ residence in the census. A larger scale study has been conducted for unoccupied dwellings in Ontario mid-sized cities with Universities’, Kingston being one subject. This previous study shows a disproportionate increase in student population at Queen’s to the increase in on campus housing, resulting in more students living off campus in Kingston (Lauzon 2021). This research project will examine how the areas where students are living in Kingston has expanded and changed by analyzing the dissemination areas in the census tracts around Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College. This expansion represents a process known as “Studentification” which refers to the increase of higher education students occupying neighbourhoods, and the affect it has socially and economically on communities (Smith 2005). The outcome of this research project will be a report summarizing findings from the data analysis, limitations of the research method and a digital atlas mapped using a Geographic Information System (ArcMap v10.5) showing the physical change to the University district and surrounding areas in Kingston.

Méthode by Mary Dorsan

Reviewed by: Méthode by Mary Dorsan Eilene Hoft-March Dorsan, Mary. Méthode. P.O.L, 2021. ISBN 978-2-8180-5289-1. Pp. 272. We all have our methods for attempting to invest our lives, and perhaps even the lives of others, with meaning. Mary Dorsan's unnamed narrator turns to volunteering for a local union of healthcare workers and support staff in order to do just that: something meaningful. During her very first volunteer shift, she is taken aback both by the personal nature of the aid required of her and by the deep inequalities revealed—with no little irony—in health and human service workplaces. Her first client is a black staff worker of long tenure in a health facility. A tense encounter between him and a man intent on asserting his privilege has resulted in disciplinary action against the staff worker. More terrible still, the sanction comes as the final straw in a lifetime of injustices. The man, whom the narrator will name "Méthode," has a breakdown and contemplates aloud a suicidal car accident. Méthode's revelation of brokenness and the narrator's powerlessness to prevent it thus become the impetus for the journal (i.e., the novel): she will methodically invent the supportive influences Méthode will need to be able to rise from the nadir of his life. She imagines for him a wife, family, and friends who will lift him out of depression or at least redirect him away from self-harm. This magical thinking reminds readers constantly that the novel vacillates along a continuum ranging from "reality" to "fiction." On one hand, the narrator consumes novels that she rates as page-turners and tearjerkers, fully aware that they pander to a readership that does not want to be challenged. On the other hand, the narrator/author draws on a real case of human-rights abuse, a Burundi man named Méthode Sindayigaya who was enslaved in a basement in France for ten years by a Burundi diplomat and his wife. The original Méthode offers knowledge of human cruelty and remedy for it through almost superhuman effort ("knowledge" and "remedy" being etymological origins of "method"). Although the narrator adopts this method—both character and strategy—she implicitly critiques her own occasional lack of method: when she ignores a homeless person or indulges in damaging gossip or refrains from renewing close relationships, especially through writing. This novel has the ruminative quality of an autobiography paired with an acute attention to its own fictionalizing. It has disarming depth if little in the way of rapid or focused plot development. Many of its journal entries describe the dreary decor of the union office, the convoluted tales of woe by aggrieved workers, the hit-or-miss solutions proffered to clients. It reminds us that making good faith attempts at addressing injustice often begins with finding the correct official form(s), listening closely, and even just showing up. [End Page 246] Eilene Hoft-March Lawrence University (WI) Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

Early Undergraduate Biostatistics & Data Science Introduction Using R, R Studio & the Tidyverse

Increasingly, students training in the biological sciences depend on a proper grounding in biological statistics, data science and experimental design. As biological datasets increase in size and complexity, transparent data management and analytical methods are essential skills for undergraduate biologists. We propose that using the software R and RStudio are effective tools to train first- and second-year undergraduate students in data visualization and foundational statistical analyses. Here, we present the redesigned laboratory curriculum for our Experimental Design and Statistics course, a required course for all first- or second-year biology majors at Lawrence University, a small liberal arts institution in northeast Wisconsin. We include an example 10-week syllabus and eight laboratory exercises (as supplementary materials) for undergraduate institutions that aim to introduce and guide students through acquiring a basic understanding of biostatistical analyses and skills using R and RStudio. We also provide a flexible framework and examples that are easily modifiable and cover the essential biostatistics and data science skills needed for biology undergraduates. Finally, we discuss the potential pitfalls and obstacles as well as the intrinsic benefits and expected outcomes of our laboratories.

Author Biographies

Author Biographies

Rien dans le ciel par Michael Delisle

Reviewed by: Rien dans le ciel par Michael Delisle Eilene Hoft-March Delisle, Michael. Rien dans le ciel. Boréal, 2021 ISBN 978-2-7646-2653-5. Pp. 144. The eight assembled short stories of this volume begin in despair and end with a modest renewal of hope. The evenly written pieces draw their subtle dramatic force from an unpretentious prose and not entirely banal action. Each one represents the tribulations of aging: thwarted ambitions, loss of purpose, growing isolation, revised self-image—all of it unrelieved by the drama of death. The opening story is about an aging hoarder of graphic novels living in squalor in a Montreal high-rise. The building having been sold to a wealthy investor, the old man lives under orders to decamp, unable to commit himself to become the literal human sacrifice to gentrification inspired by his BD imagery. A darker tale follows in which a newly minted retiree unearths an unthinkable act in his father’s past so consistently misrepresented in family lore that it deforms the history with which he himself identifies. On the theme of misrecognized identities, a third story begins with a man reeling from a recent divorce who encounters another only just bereft of his sister. Their chance meeting begets an effortless camaraderie that endures several years. When at last the man accepts his friend’s offer of a cabin getaway to be able to write, he is stunned to encounter the cognitive dissonance of his friend’s unexamined adherence to religious dogma paired with his casual sexual comportment. The story that follows begins with two men having little in common: a temporary chauffeur and the fading Argentinian and former TV heartthrob he squires about. The two ill-matched men come to an important exchange of views on dying, aging, and being oneself, in that order. Three more stories explore relationships of characters who have caved under the weight of age and diminishing expectations: one who cheerfully and pragmatically adopts a young “niece” who will inherit his estate; another who attempts to save an immigrant from deportation with a quiet altruism that the young migrant cluelessly exploits; and a third who reunites briefly with an old flame only to experience “une peine insondable” (117) for what she has (not) become. The very last story serves as an antidote to these bitter conclusions. It opens with the narrator receiving the dis concerting news of his imminent death. He hastily liquidates his possessions, most notably all documentation of his existence, in order to leave definitively for Cambodia to live out his shortened life. The story’s delightful peripety offers a different angle on the wisdom threaded throughout the collection: that the present is all we ever have to work with. [End Page 243] Eilene Hoft-March Lawrence University (WI) Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

An Introduction to Reading the Past Critically

An Introduction to Reading the Past Critically

L'homme aux trois lettres: dernier royaume XI par Pascal Quignard

Reviewed by: L'homme aux trois lettres: dernier royaume XI par Pascal Quignard Eilene Hoft-March Quignard, Pascal. L'homme aux trois lettres: dernier royaume XI. Grasset, 2020. ISBN 978-2-246-82487-9. Pp. 192. This volume is the eleventh in Quignard's opus, Le dernier royaume, a themed series of meditations. In thirty-eight short and varied reflections, this book attempts to capture the experience of reading literature. The overall effect is one of a beautiful tracery of history and myth, almost all classical or medieval, the most recent example being Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Quignard's adamant disregard for anything more modern underscores his contention that reading opens the infiniteness of our human past. Other unconventional associations with—or dissociations from—reading spill out chemin faisant. Quignard retells the legend of St. Augustin observing St. Ambrose reading silently and turned inward to his own thoughts, an apparent anomaly of his era, and one that so impressed Augustin that he converted to Christianity. "Requoy" with its added connotations of withdrawn, meditative searching recurs in the author's examples (e.g., the angel Gabriel's [Jibril's] command to the prophet Mohammed to read). Secrecy also figures importantly in Quignard's conception of reading. The "man of three letters" refers to a Roman epithet for a thief, "fur" being Latin for one who steals, both "fur"-tively and silently. Connotations of criminality do not cling to this reader-thief. Rather, the latter, in a readerly state, remains unobtrusively outside of human conventions, laws, and institutions. The author revels in the expansion of human existence and the concomitant if temporary loss of consciousness of self that reading promotes. Liberatory reading is at the heart of the [End Page 260] author's writing: "[É]crire assure une prise entre deux mondes possibles (entre le premier monde et le dernier royaume)" (92). If these are possible communications with and of other experiences and worlds, Quignard refuses the chestnut that literature is communication with readers. He sternly dissociates spoken language from writing. As illustration: the only "dialogue" he re-stages in L'homme is a lopsided one between Petrarch and Cicero, dead some 1,300 years at the time he was so passionately addressed by the Renaissance poet. Petrarch's interrogation could be likened to the book's example of mushroom hunting, the absorbed free association of the sights secreted in the soil and the odors spanning all the natural, autumnal decompositions. This same "odeur de jadis" is the reader's recompense. One last meditation stood out for this reader: the story of Louis XI's defense of the (then) new technology of the printing press, especially the king's defense against allegations of witchcraft and the better-founded fears of insubordination to political regimes and religious hierarchies. Louis XI was an inveterate, solitary, nocturnal reader who, perhaps, paved the way for the incorrigibly independent habits of the rest of us readers. L'homme aux trois lettres understands literature as liberations from time, from the body, from spoken language, and from servitude. A welcome read for 2021. Eilene Hoft-March Lawrence University (WI) Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French

‘To really trust [...] we had to be open with ourselves and each other’: Community building through Spring Awakening

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to better understand how participation in St. Lawrence University’s (New York, the United States) production of Spring Awakening served as a means of intimate and broader community building. This narrative ethnography investigated the director and a focus group of actors involved in the production of Spring Awakening. Analyses of the data revealed four themes: content, interconnectedness, emotion and vulnerability and magic. St. Lawrence University students welcomed and embraced the language, the music and the subject matter presented to them in the content of Spring Awakening. The willingness with which the students opened up to conversation and community continued to resonate with them in an interconnectedness that seemingly had more depth and more meaning than other productions they have worked on, including other musical theatre productions.

Purification of Amyloid Fibers Formed by the Tetracycline Resistant Soil Bacterium, Microbacterium oryzae

Amyloid fibers are proteins formed by repeating protein monomers which stack to create a cross‐beta sheet quaternary structure. Though the unregulated production of amyloid fibers is often associated with diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, amyloid fibers are also produced in a regulated manner by bacteria in biofilms. We isolated a number of tetracycline resistant soil bacteria from a pig farm in upstate New York and screened them for biofilm production with the crystal violet assay and amyloid formation using a Thioflavin T (ThT) assay. We focused on one species, Microbacterium oryzae isolate #29, which had the highest amyloid production. Five days of growth at ambient temperature in liquid R2A medium maximizes amyloid fiber recovery. An isolation procedure utilizing sonication and differential centrifugation to separate fibers from the cell (Jordal et al. 2009) was adapted for use with M. oryzae isolate #29. This procedure is being modified further to increase the percent recovery and improve purity. Two detergents, Triton X‐100 (TX‐100) and hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), were assessed as a means of disrupting the cell membranes to separate fibers from soluble proteins during the procedure. The fluorescence of the detergents below and above their critical micelle concentrations in the presence of ThT was investigated to determine whether adding a detergent treatment step would interfere with the ThT assay, as is the case for the commonly used detergent SDS. Additionally, sonication time was assessed to see if more fibers could be released from the cell. Preliminary results suggest that while neither detergent interferes with the ThT assay only the TX‐100 appears to improve yield, and that a longer sonication treatment results in a greater percent recovery in the ultracentrifuge pellet. Fibers will be purified further using preparatory SDS‐PAGE and depolymerized using formic acid. The purified fibers can be imaged by atomic force microscopy and the amyloid protein monomers will be sequenced.Support or Funding InformationSt. Lawrence University Fellowship Program, Departments of Chemistry and Biology, St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY 13617

Effects of Different Cerium Oxide Nanoparticle Formulations on Oxidative Stress Survival in the Nematode C. elegans

Cerium oxide (CeO2) nanoparticles (CeNPs or nanoceria) are potent antioxidants that are being explored as a potential therapeutic for diseases in which oxidative stress plays an important pathological role. Nanoceria catalytically neutralize multiple types of reactive oxygen species. However, both therapeutic and toxic effects of CeNPs have been reported. We hypothesize that these disparate reports are due to small differences in each type of nanoparticle arising from the synthetic process. These small differences could lead to particles that aggregate and induce toxicity versus particles that are monodispersed and display antioxidant properties. Due to its short lifespan and easily observable behaviors, we used the nematode worm C. elegans to examine, in parallel, the effects of three different types of cerium oxide nanoparticle formulations on survival after exposure to oxidative stress. To induce oxidative stress, we used juglone (5‐hydroxy‐1,4‐naphthoquinone), a compound derived from many plant species including the black walnut tree, Juglans nigra. We first conducted a dose‐response analysis to find a concentration of juglone that induced significant mortality in our model system. This dose of juglone, 250 μM, was then used in subsequent experiments to test the impact of nanoparticle pre‐treatment on worm viability. For these studies, animals were fed, starting at the L1 larval stage, a range of doses (0 to 580 μM) of three formulations of nanoceria that differed in size as well as the stabilizers used during synthesis. When the worms reached young adulthood, they were exposed to 250 μM juglone for 1 hour. Worms were then placed back onto fresh growth plates containing nanoceria and animal viability was determined 24 hr later via a nose‐touch assay conducted by an experimenter blind to treatment. Preliminary analysis shows that the three different formulations tested showed varying potency in protecting C. elegans from juglone‐induced oxidative stress, supporting our hypothesis that differences in synthetic parameters can impact the ultimate biological effect of the nanoparticles.Support or Funding InformationFunding provided by St. Lawrence University.

Le view-master by Louis-Philippe Hébert

Reviewed by: Le view-master by Louis-Philippe Hébert Eilene Hoft-March Hébert, Louis-Philippe. Le view-master. Grenouillère, 2019. ISBN 978-2-924758-40-3. Pp. 137. This roman-poème has an apparent simplicity to it: a conversational monologue written in free verse and delivered to two listeners. The situation seems correspondingly banal: a lonely, elderly woman compels her two guests to keep her company while she plies them with coffee and tales of her past. But Maxime Parent is telling her story after a silence of some 50 years, and it has the power to exonerate her or confirm her guilt of the suspected murder of her child. She appears to be under house arrest. Her interlocutors could be police investigators or journalists. These and other uncertainties can be ascribed to her failing mind or shifting perspectives. Everything depends on what she says, although Maxime, with no small measure of duplicity, calls herself "la plus grande meurtrière" (14) on one page, then queries rhetorically: "[E]st-ce que j'ai l'air d'une tueuse?" (15) on the next. Recalling the origins of her earliest sentiments, she talks of her parents' ambivalence to her in their choice of an ambiguously gendered name and in their marked indifference to her presence. One day, when the phonebook is delivered, she discovers a second Maxime Parent, a young man her own age living directly across the street. His presence seems to legitimate her own. She begins to see herself as a woman worthy of affection. After a brief period of marijuana-infused trysting on a waterbed (water themes will recur), Maxime gives birth to a son and names him Maxime Parent as well. Sensing that the child's father wishes to know nothing of this unbidden offspring, Maxime claims parenthood for herself, as though she could become everything for him. But as the child grows older, he longs to know his estranged male Parent to the detriment of his mother's presence, hence the story repeats the cycle of abandonment she herself experienced earlier. Whether the child's [End Page 255] eventual drowning in a pond—another waterbed—is an accident or a murder depends on how readers evaluate Maxime's narration. The title, however, argues for a third possibility. View-masters were a twentieth-century version of the stereoscope, that is, two scopes presenting slightly different images to each eye, which the perceiving brain combines into a single, three-dimensional image. Neither image is a singular truth, but together they give an impression of reality. As an intriguing touch, Hébert adds four dedications at the poem's end that acknowledge people in the author's young life whose strange stories inspired this understated little mystery. The dedications suggest that in our quotidian lives and communities abounds a surfeit of bizarreness and uncanniness. I recommend this poem-novel on its own merits but also as a text that would lend itself to a gateway French course in reading. It is linguistically accessible, experientially familiar, and more than a little unsettling. Eilene Hoft-March Lawrence University (WI) Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

La Femme Qui Lisait Des Romans Anglais by Sylvia Tabet

Reviewed by: La Femme Qui Lisait Des Romans Anglais by Sylvia Tabet Eilene Hoft-March Tabet, Sylvia. La femme qui lisait des romans anglais. Lattès, 2019. ISBN 978-2-7096-6058-7. Pp. 300. Jane Austen's title, Sense and Sensibility, names the dilemma of Tabet's protagonist, Juliet. Like Austen's Elinor, Juliet struggles with the question of marriage and whether her choice of partner should be determined by reason or emotion. Unlike all of Austen's heroines, Juliet is already twenty-five years into a happy, stable marriage with many of the accoutrements of success: children on the cusp of independence, a thriving and nourishing academic career, and a sensitive and solicitous partner. Her second-guessing about her life choices begins when she attends a professional conference in Rio that brings her in contact with a photojournalist, Jeremy. In this exotic Brazilian setting far from the national despondency and anxieties of post-Bataclan France, she finds Jeremy irresistible. Consequently, she fully contributes to the dalliance that lasts the duration of the conference. Once back in Paris, Juliet assumes that the amorous arrangement can continue as it began, without having to decide between the reasonable choice, François, and the romantic choice, Jeremy. (There are hints that having them both would give some kind of liberatory parity with men.) Jeremy, however, presses for exclusivity, promising not only exhilarating passion but constant adventure, this last confirmed by his new job assignment to Lebanon, where he wants Juliet to follow him. She hedges, seeking guidance in therapy and in literature, especially that of the novelists of English tradition (Austen, the Brontës, Hardy, Woolf, etc.). The book's a-chronological flashbacks and interior monologue reveal the various considerations poured into Juliet's agonized decision-making: her revisions of key memories, her methodical comparison of the two men and the lives associated with them, and the maternal "advice" she extrapolates from the notebook of literary quotes her mother kept. (Both Juliet's parents died in her youth, leaving her to make her own way as an adult.) Anxiety, perimenopause, grief, and the negative Zeitgeist around her contribute to this hardcore case of dithering. At times, readers need to keep a tight rein on the novel's chronology to be able to follow its seemingly endless tergiversations. This reader also found the insertion of extensive plot summaries of the beloved British authors something between pedantic and disruptive. On balance, later chapters pick up speed and emotional resonance. Possibly the most important aspect of this novel is its reminder that the life decisions of older adults are no less complicated than those of the young, compounded as they tend to be with histories, commitments, and dwindling opportunities. What would Jane Austen have had to say? [End Page 252] Eilene Hoft-March Lawrence University (WI) Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French

Essais cliniques aux laboratoires Donadieu par Louis-Philippe Hébert

Reviewed by: Essais cliniques aux laboratoires Donadieu par Louis-Philippe Hébert Eilene Hoft-March Hébert, Louis-Philippe. Essais cliniques aux laboratoires Donadieu. Lévesque, 2020. ISBN 978-2-89763-092-8. Pp. 226. In six short stories, Hébert's mordant humor tempers a composite portrait of humanity as existing somewhere between an indiscernible reality and the fantasies of our own making. In the first story, a young man volunteers for the clinical trials of Antifobix, an anti-fear vaccine. Over time, he becomes inured to images of unspeakable violence but ultimately experiences swings from paranoia to fearlessness about his own mundane reality. Hébert also gets in some jabs at Big Pharma, as the drug company "fabrique le problème et vend la solution" (20). A second story follows a Japanese boy who develops destructive urges from a tender age. His fixation on metal devolves into delusions of metallization and eventually fantasies of self-immolation in the Fukushima meltdown. In a slightly lighter vein, a third character, an overweight airline employee, checks luggage for banned food products. Her over-sized proportions—possibly related to the consumption of contraband—render her invisible to the public she serves. Eventually, she becomes immobilized in an airport basement where she compensates for her losses with fantasies of seduction of travelers. Continuing this theme of self-delusion, a fourth character convinces himself—at his own peril—of the reversibility of aging following a trip to the optometrist for a prescription for less strong glasses. The penultimate story offers a surreal road trip (in a vintage Cadillac Eldorado) from Montréal to Providence, RI to research the work of H.P. Lovecraft, American author of tales of the bizarre. The narrator and his friend Mortimer, barely recovered from a near-fatal bike accident, make a Kafkaesque circuit in Providence, attempting interaction with a citizenry that is either unresponsive or hostile to them and wandering from one dead end to the next. The final story, "Le virus de la fatigue," about a pandemic of sleeping sickness, has eerie resonances with the (current) Covid-19 crisis. It relates unpredictable outbreaks of the disease, supermarkets depleted in panic, abandoned streets, and a paralyzed economy. To be sure, Hébert's tale has moments of grim humor: for example, the sleep-stricken [End Page 267] accumulate in such unlikely places as doorways, tables, sidewalks, and parks. But there is also the recognition of how little it takes to break apart human community. Despite the collection's variety, the stories share aspects of a common reality: Memento drugs resurface in several stories, as do diluvial conditions. Even more consistently: ignorance, distrust, and fear drive behaviors. As entertainingly weird as Hébert's stories are, they make a strong statement about our age of rampant misinformation that strains even the most ordinary and precious of relationships. Eilene Hoft-March Lawrence University (WI) Copyright © 2020 American Association of Teachers of French