Thomas King Research Articles

Two Kings: Empire, Abolition, and the University of Aberdeen’s First African Student

This article presents a biography and multi-generational microhistory of Nathaniel King (1847–1884), the University of Aberdeen’s first African-born student and a pioneering practitioner of Western medicine in colonial West Africa. Nathaniel’s father, Thomas King, rose from slavery to become a missionary and linguist in Sierra Leone and what would later become Nigeria. Nathaniel, born to survivors of the Middle Passage, graduated M.B., C.M. from Aberdeen in 1876, before returning to West Africa to become a prominent member of the educated elite in Victorian Lagos. The long-established historiography of Scottish ‘sojourners’ abroad has not yet explored the impact of colonial sojourners to Scotland, an itinerary travelled particularly by male students from within the empire, especially as Scotland’s universities became imperial centres of medical training. This article draws particular attention to the significance of Britain’s nineteenth-century campaign against the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the arrival of the first African-born students at Scottish universities, placing King’s history within a broader pattern of Africans born to people liberated from slave ships who ventured to Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and St Andrews in the middle decades of the nineteenth century for medical training.

Abstract B027: A blood-based, multiplex protein biomarker signature shows superior performance in detection of early-stage pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC)

Abstract BACKGROUND: A sensitive and specific blood biomarker test is needed to improve survival in PDAC through early detection. An initial discovery study analyzing more than 3000 proteins using both pre-selected immunoassays and the Olink proteomics platform identified 15 promising protein candidates, of which ten were successfully pre-verified for ELISA immunoassay analysis. This model-development study was conducted to develop and pre- validate a specific and sensitive biomarker signature for the early detection of PDAC. METHODS: This multicenter case-control study was performed using existing bio-banked pretreatment samples from patients with newly diagnosed PDAC (Stages I-II) and participants in PDAC high-risk surveillance programs as controls. Blinded quantitative measurement of protein biomarkers was performed using ELISA-based immunoassays. CA19-9 was measured on a Roche COBAS instrument. An AI-derived predictive mathematical biomarker signature incorporating multiple protein biomarkers was developed and assessed using standard cross- validation techniques. RESULTS: 128 Stage 1 and 2 PDACs and 495 high-risk control serum samples were analyzed with 10 predetermined biomarkers to develop a four-protein biomarker signature. The model predicted PDAC versus non-PDAC with 84% sensitivity at 98% specificity. Model performance was significantly better when compared to CA19-9 alone (sensitivity 65% at 98% specificity, p<0.001). In those patients with low CA19-9 (<37 U/ml), the model predicted PDAC with 62% sensitivity at 98% specificity, performing significantly better than CA19-9 alone (9% sensitivity at similar 98% specificity (p<0.001). Additionally, in patients >65 years old, the signature predicted PDAC with 90% sensitivity at 98% specificity, which was significantly more sensitive than CA19-9 alone (75% sensitivity at 98% specificity, p<0.001). Test accuracy was not affected by diabetes status. CONCLUSIONS: This blood-based, multiplexed biomarker signature showed high sensitivity and specificity and significantly outperformed CA19-9 for early-stage PDAC. This biomarker model has the potential to improve outcomes in PDAC patients through early detection. Analytical and clinical validation studies are planned. Citation Format: Norma Palma, Ralph Schiess, Thomas King, Alcibiade Athanasiou, Natasha Kureshi, Lisa Ford, Aimee Lucas, Bryson Katona, Randall Brand, Diane Simeone. A blood-based, multiplex protein biomarker signature shows superior performance in detection of early-stage pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference in Cancer Research: Advances in Pancreatic Cancer Research; 2024 Sep 15-18; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(17 Suppl_2):Abstract nr B027.

Indigenous Literature

This paper synthesizes Indigenous critical theories of literature and the cultural languages that shape Indigenous literary texts, centering these approaches, and arguing that without this body of literary criticism, it would be impossible for Indigenous and non-Indigenous readers alike to appreciate Indigenous literature, including its profound value to humanity. It demonstrates the power of these theories by offering a reading of Thomas King’s The Back of the Turtle using them as lenses to uncover the rich tapestry, the convergence of tradition and innovation, and the transformative power of Indigenous narratives in shaping our shared understanding of humanity. In many ways, the paper argues, Indigenous critical theories have significantly paved the way for the study and interpretation of Indigenous literature, broadening the scope for readers from diverse backgrounds.
 

Drink-Music: The ‘ól’ in Brian Ua Nualláin’s ‘!CEÓL!’ (1932)

In the illustration accompanying ‘!CEÓL!’ (!Music!), Brian Ua Nualláin’s 1932 Irish-language story about radio and gramophone music, Ua Nualláin uses an established but outdated spelling of ‘ceol’ to suggest a polysemantic pun. This pun is significant given the story’s subtitle – ‘Eachtra an Fhir Ólta’ (The Tale of the Drunkard) – because it places ‘ól,’ the Irish word for drink, inside the word for music, ‘ceol.’ The resulting portmanteau in Ua Nualláin’s illustration is interfusional in Thomas King’s sense, because it blends the textual with the oral. The orthography Ua Nualláin uses for his visual representation of ‘!CEÓL!’ draws attention to how the word is spoken, and the stress on the second half of the word makes it sound drunken. We argue that the story’s implied title, ‘Drink-Music,’ thematises intertextual play in ways that anticipate Ua Nualláin’s Middle Irish Joycean pastiche ‘Pisa bec oc Parnabus’ (1935/1938). This note provides the first critical discussion of the ‘!CEÓL!’ illustration, observing the presence of Ua Nualláin’s initials in the bottom right-hand corner of the image.

Anthropocene and the Posthuman in The Back of the Turtle

The Anthropocene is our current geological epoch in which humans are the primary agents of environmental change. Inherent in that agency is the possibility that humans could bring an end to the world, at least as we know it today. The Anthropocene is thus a drama in which humans at once play the role of protagonist and antagonist; how can we achieve a happy ending to this drama if these two roles are played by the same actor? To find tentative answers to this question, I analyze Thomas King’s 2014 novel The Back of the Turtle through the lens of posthumanism. The Back of the Turtle follows the trials and tribulations of Gabriel Quinn, an Indigenous scientist who journeys to the town of Samaritan Bay to commit suicide after a botched deployment of his experimental defoliant led to an ecological disaster in the region. However, after failing his initial suicide attempt, Gabriel lives awhile among the region’s remaining human and non-human inhabitants. Through them, Gabriel reconnects with his once-lost Indigeneity and discovers a posthuman alternative to the human subjectivity that drives the Anthropocene, showing how the protagonist may survive and the antagonist be defeated.

Forgotten Clones: The Birth of Cloning and the Biological Revolution. By NathanCrowe. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. 2021. pp. 336. $60 (Hardcover).

Forgotten Clones: The Birth of Cloning and the Biological Revolution. By NathanCrowe. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. 2021. pp. 336. $60 (Hardcover).

Redeeming Memory

This article channels the voices of leading Indigenous scholars Thomas King, Lee Maracle and Terry LeBlanc to retrieve the untold past and demystify the present so as to pave the way for a reconciled future. The colonial narrative of civilization undergirding settler Christian identity and way of life must be challenged by Indigenous stories of trauma, survival and struggle for liberation. King, Maracle and LeBlanc enjoin settler Canadians and Christians to produce an honest account of history and Christianity, decolonize and de-Europeanize culture and Christianity, engage and listen to Indigenous peoples and cultures as equals, dialogue partners and teachers in order to contribute to the creation of truly multicultural Canada and Christianity.

Cultural Resource Management: A Collaborative Primer for Archaeologists

Cultural Resource Management: A Collaborative Primer for Archaeologists

871. Oral Ibrexafungerp Outcomes by Fungal Disease in Patients from an Interim Analysis of a Phase 3 Open-label Study (FURI)

Abstract Background There are limited oral treatment options for patients with fungal infections who fail currently available antifungals or have an infection caused by resistant organisms. Ibrexafungerp is an investigational broad-spectrum glucan synthase inhibitor with activity against Candida and Aspergillus species, including azole- and echinocandin-resistant strains. A Phase 3 open-label, single-arm study of ibrexafungerp (FURI; NCT03059992) is ongoing for the treatment of patients intolerant of, or with fungal disease refractory to, standard antifungal therapy. We present an interim analysis of patient outcomes from the FURI study by fungal disease type. Methods FURI patients are eligible for enrollment if they have proven or probable: severe mucocutaneous candidiasis, invasive candidiasis, chronic or invasive aspergillosis, with documented evidence of failure, intolerance, or toxicity related to a currently approved standard-of-care antifungal treatment; or patients who cannot receive approved oral antifungal options (e.g., due to susceptibility), and continued IV antifungal therapy is clinically undesirable or unfeasible. Results An independent Data Review Committee (DRC) provided an assessment of treatment response for 113 enrolled patients in the FURI study from 27 centers in US, UK and EU treated with ibrexafungerp for mucocutaneous or invasive fungal infections from 2016–2021. Fifty-six patients (49.5%) had invasive candidiasis/candidemia, 32 (28.3%) had mucocutaneous candidiasis, 14 (12.4%) had vulvovaginal candidiasis (VVC), and 11 (9.7%) patients had aspergillosis. Upon DRC review, the percent of patients with complete or partial response, or for VVC, clinical improvement (defined as vulvovaginal signs and symptoms score ≤ 1) was 58.4%; stable disease was 23.9%; and 11.5% had disease progression (including 2 VVC patients not meeting the criteria for clinical improvement). There was 1 death due to underlying causes, and 6 outcomes were indeterminate. The table presents outcomes by disease type. Conclusion Analysis of 113 patients from the FURI study indicates that oral ibrexafungerp provides a favorable therapeutic response in patients with challenging fungal disease and limited treatment options. Disclosures George R. Thompson, III, MD, Amplyx: Advisor/Consultant|Amplyx: Grant/Research Support|Astellas: Advisor/Consultant|Astellas: Grant/Research Support|Cidara: Advisor/Consultant|Cidara: Grant/Research Support|F2G: Advisor/Consultant|F2G: Grant/Research Support|Merck: Grant/Research Support|Pfizer: DSMB|Scynexis: Advisor/Consultant|Scynexis: Grant/Research Support Thomas King, MS MPH, SCYNEXIS, Inc.: employee|SCYNEXIS, Inc.: Stocks/Bonds Nkechi Azie, MD MBA FIDSA, SCYNEXIS, Inc.: employee|SCYNEXIS, Inc.: Stocks/Bonds David A. Angulo, MD, SCYNEXIS, Inc.: employee|SCYNEXIS, Inc.: Stocks/Bonds.

The Climate of Indigenous Literature: Thomas King’s Anthropocene Realism

ABSTRACT This essay argues that the Cherokee-Greek author Thomas King writes a realism for the Anthropocene avant la lettre, aiming to illuminate how his fiction – including Green Grass, Running Water (1993) and Truth and Bright Water (1999) – becomes even more significant when we perceive how his approach, from the situations he explores to his narrative modes, acknowledges states of dislocation, historical entanglement, and socio-material interconnection as the condition of reality in our catastrophic present, thereby educating the reader into a systems thinking that recognizes the indivisibility of the projects of decolonization and environmental justice. In contextualizing the realities of a present in which the interests of capital and empire and their discursive and institutional handmaidens have been forcibly made paramount within Indigenous frameworks and experiences – bleeding into Indigenous cosmologies, storytelling practices, lifeways, and histories, as well as means of resistance and survivance – King achieves in his fiction a mode of realism with the capacity to teach his readers how to scale their imaginations to climates of crisis, illuminating what Indigenous literatures can and should mean as we strive to inhabit such climates in ways conducive to communal survival.

Indigenous diasporas in speculative fiction: Writing through estrangement

AbstractThis article explores diasporic dimensions of Indigenous experiences and narratives on Turtle Island, by looking at the Indigenous speculative fiction novels The Back of the Turtle (2014) by Thomas King, The Marrow Thieves (2017) by Cherie Dimaline, and The Moon of the Crusted Snow (2018) by Waubgeshig Rice. The three evoke (post)apocalyptic or dystopic futures involving environmental crises and destruction. As Indigenous peoples have historically witnessed and experienced Apocalypse with colonization, both in the past and the present, speculative fiction provides fertile narrative ground to work with and through those legacies of devastation. I particularly focus on how these novels offer accounts of different forms of mobility that may be defined as diasporic. Often prompted by settler use and abuse of the land, and even the exploitation of Indigenous peoples as resource, the displacements and movements recorded in these stories trace routes of both oppression and resistance. These diasporas have fundamental political and historical significance, in that they highlight connections between past acts of colonialization and the violence of present‐day neoliberal capitalist practices. Simultaneously, speculating with estrangement in the form of the supernatural, apocalyptic or dystopic, serves as a mechanism to delineate decolonial stories of presence and survivance. These stories, while constantly referring to the past, also include motion towards possible better futures, countering Western notions of Indigenous peoples as static and futureless.

Indigenous Young Adult Novels: An Introduction

Indigenous Young Adult Novels:An Introduction Eric Gary Anderson (bio), Angela Calcaterra (bio), and Christopher Pexa (bio) This special issue participates in a watershed moment in the history of Indigenous Young Adult (YA) literature. In 2021, the American Library Association (ALA) for the first time awarded the Caldecott Medal for "the most distinguished American picture book for children" to an Indigenous artist, Michaela Goade (Tlingit), who illustrated We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom (Turtle Mountain). The following year, the ALA for the first time presented a Newbery Medal Honor Award for "distinguished contribution to American literature for children" to an Indigenous writer, Darcie Little Badger (Lipan Apache), for her novel A Snake Falls to Earth. The ALA also included several Indigenous works in its "2022 Notable Children's Books" list: Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids, edited by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek), whose novel Hearts Unbroken (2018) is the subject of one of the essays in this issue; Borders by Thomas King (Cherokee); Healer of the Water Monster by Brian Young (Navajo Nation); Sharice's Big Voice: A Native Kid Becomes a Congresswoman by Sharice Davids (Ho-Chunk) and Nancy K. Mays; and We Are Still Here! Native American Truths Everyone Should Know by Traci Sorell (Cherokee). Such mainstream recognition and approbation is, of course, but part of the story. Indigenous people have been telling stories for young audiences for a very long time and writing children's and young adult books for well over one hundred years. From oral literatures that enthralled Indigenous youths gathered around the fire, to early written work by Charles Alexander Eastman (Dakota), Zitkála-Šá/Gertrude Bonnin (Yankton Dakota), Francis La Flesche (Omaha), Susette La Flesche (Omaha), and Luther Standing Bear (Lakota), to more recent YA texts including The Birchbark House (1999) by Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa), The Night Wanderer (2007) by Drew Hayden Taylor (Curve Lake First Nations), Wabanaki Blues (2015) [End Page 265] by Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel (Mohegan), The Marrow Thieves (2017) by Cherie Dimaline (Georgian Bay Métis), Apple in the Middle (2018) by Dawn Quigley (Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe), and Firekeeper's Daughter (2021) by Angeline Boulley (Anishinaabe), Indigenous authors have captivated young and adult audiences alike with stories that feature young protagonists, coming-of-age plots, and crucial insights about being and becoming in an often hostile world. Publications including Mandy Suhr-Sytsma's Self-Determined Stories (2019) and Debbie Reese (Nambé Owingeh) and Jean Mendoza's co-edited "American Indians in Children's Literature"—a blog devoted since 2006 to the critical analysis of Indigenous people in children's and YA literature and to the promotion of Indigenous-authored YA texts—have highlighted the long-standing significance of Native YA literatures for Indigenous communities. And the American Indian Library Association (AILA), founded in 1979 and an affiliate of the ALA, "addresses the library-related needs of American Indians and Alaska Natives. Members are individuals and institutions interested in the development of programs to improve Indian library, cultural, and informational services in school, public, and research libraries on reservations" ("About AILA"). Beginning in 2006, AILA has biennially presented the American Indian Youth Literature Awards, which are juried by a majority-Indigenous committee. Despite this important work, however, scholarship largely has not kept up with the proliferation and increasing visibility of Indigenous YA literature. For this special issue, we wanted to instigate a timely intervention by gathering essays that examine Indigenous YA novels both in their own right and in conversation with the conventions of settler YA fiction more broadly. But, as these essays clearly demonstrate, what is most needed right now is detailed consideration of the texts themselves and the ways they negotiate the continuing systemic presence of a settler colonialism that reaches much farther and deeper than just settler YA writing. This is to say that the most pressing questions and concerns these authors raise about Indigenous YA fiction are the same pressing concerns and questions that drive much intellectual work in Native American and Indigenous Studies. The essays in this issue consider, for example, how Indigenous YA fiction addresses Indigenous sovereignty, community, resistance, resurgence, trauma, fear, dreams, desires, and futurities. Like Indigenous...

Crossing Cultures and the Poetic Worlds of Forrest Gander, Thomas King, and Margaret Atwood

Forrest Gander is a major American poet who crosses poetic, cultural, and linguistic bounds. This review article discusses the poetry and poetics of Gander in the context of two other poets, Thomas King and Margaret Atwood, providing a close reading of Gander’s Be With (2018), King’s 77 Fragments of a Familiar Ruin (2019), and Atwood’s Dearly (2020). King, an Indigenous writer and scholar born and educated in the United States, and Atwood, some of whose ancestors lived in the American colonies and who had been a student at Radcliffe/Harvard, also have American experience. Poets may be rooted in the local and national, but they are also part of a comparative or world poetics. These poems express their beauty, understanding, and wisdom in a world too often devoid of poetry. Nature underwrites culture, and the natural world pervades these three collections, which also address human feeling, especially grief and loss.

Book Reviews

Living in Data and The Uncounted, reviewed by Thomas King

It is no Longer Possible to Go Back Home: Crossing Borders and Liminal Space in Thomas King’s “Borders”

It is no Longer Possible to Go Back Home: Crossing Borders and Liminal Space in Thomas King’s “Borders”

The Unstable Nature of Dominant-Subordinate Relation: Postcolonial Study Towards Thomas King’s 'The Colour of Walls'

Aboriginal/Indigenous peoples, cultures and works of literature (in the broadest sense) play a crucial role in the continuous growth of world literary and cultural studies. Indigenous writers advocate indigenous rights and address their concerns in works of fiction and non-fiction. Focusing on the correlation between the dominant (center) and the subordinate (margin) in Thomas King’s The Colour of Walls (2013), the present paper aims to specifically investigate the dominant-subordinate interplay in the colonial discourse. So as to elucidate this labyrinthine network of relationships, Homi Bhabha’s critical concept of hybridity is employed throughout the analysis process. The results indicate the unstable nature of dominant-subordinate dichotomy in the story, where power-based relationships are subject to constant change. Accordingly, this process of cultural struggle provides a site for the subordinate to change their marginal position and to resist the dominant’s influence; ultimately, this process assists the subordinate to reclaim their own independent identity.

On Second Thought

On Second Thought

Review: News, Numbers, and Public Opinion in a Data-Driven World

Abstract Book review by Thomas King.

Translating the “Dead Indian”: Kent Monkman, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, and the Painting of the American West

This article examines the work of Kent Monkman, an artist of Cree ancestry, and his Indigenous interventions into art of the American West. Known for his provocative and highly sexualized genre, Monkman, along with his gender fluid alter ego and companion, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, have been upsetting the art world for more than a decade. By using Thomas King’s (Cherokee) concept of the “Dead Indian”, I examine how Monkman’s work revitalises Indigenous histories and places them in the centre of the paintings by the 19th-century German-American artist of the American West, Albert Bierstadt. By repurposing the scene, Monkman translates the images from anachronistic settler-colonial narratives and uses these images from the past to highlight Indigenous narratives of the American West.

THE SPACE OF TRANSCULTURATION IN THOMAS KING’S GREEN GRASS, RUNNING WATER

This paper uses Thomas King’s novel Green Grass, Running Water (1994) to examine the contact between two cultures in Canada; the culture of the Indigenous people and the culture of the white settlers. Taking postcolonial studies as its framework, this paper relies on works written by critics such as Stephen Slemon, Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and others, in its analysis of the transcultural space which Thomas King creates in his novel. The four mythical stories in the novel offer a fruitful ground upon which contact between the two cultural, social and political spaces can be analyzed. We hope that the research conducted in this paper can serve as an explanation of the nature of transculturation, and in the words of Bhabha (1994, 25), offer a textual “space of hybridity”.