Fighting Fire with Fire: the Islamic Novel in Iraq and the Battle for Hearts and Minds

Author(s):  
Hawraa Al-Hassan

This chapter examines for the first time the phenomena of religious novel writing by Iraqi women. It argues that the conservative, and often reactionary religious discourses expounded by devout female authors represented a proxy attack on the Ba‘th’s supposed godlessness. As such, the female body becomes a site of resistance, with modest clothing and limited gender mixing forming part of a wider discourse on purity and contamination. The chapter ultimately concludes that the extremely popular religious novels produced by writers inside and outside Iraq can be considered as a form of counter-propaganda, and their views on women should not be taken at face value.

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-113
Author(s):  
Obert Bernard Mlambo ◽  

This article examined attitudes, knowledge, behavior and practices of men and society on Gender bias in sports. The paper examined how the African female body was made into an object of contest between African patriarchy and the colonial system and also shows how the battle for the female body eventually extended into the sporting field. It also explored the postcolonial period and the effects on Zimbabwean society of the colonial ideals of the Victorian culture of morality. The study focused on school sports and the participation of the girl child in sports such as netball, volleyball and football. Reference was made to other sports but emphasis was given to where women were affected. It is in this case where reference to the senior women soccer team was made to provide a case study for purposes of illustration. Selected rural community and urban schools were served as case references for ethnographic accounts which provided the qualitative data used in the analysis. In terms of methodology and theoretical framework, the paper adopted the political economy of the female body as an analytical viewing point in order to examine the body of the girl child and of women in action on the sporting field in Zimbabwe. In this context, the female body is viewed as deeply contested and as a medium that functions as a site for the redirection, profusion and transvaluation of gender ideals. Using the concept of embodiment, involving demeanor, body shape and perceptions of the female body in its social context, the paper attempted to establish a connection between gender ideologies and embodied practice. The results of the study showed the prevalence of condescending attitudes towards girls and women participation in sports.


2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (5) ◽  
pp. 2598-2603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Liu ◽  
Yi Sun ◽  
Wei Chen ◽  
Weixia Liu ◽  
Zhe Wan ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTWith voriconazole (VRC) being approved as the first choice in treating invasive aspergillosis (IA) and its increasing use in treatment, a VRC-resistant strain ofAspergillus flavus, the second leading cause of IA afterAspergillus fumigatus, has emerged. The VRC-resistant strain ofA. flavuswas isolated for the first time from the surgical lung specimen of an IA patient with no response to VRC therapy. In order to ascertain the mechanism of VRC resistance, the azole target enzyme genes in this strain ofA. flavuswere cloned and sequenced, and 4 mutations generating amino acid residue substitutions were found in thecyp51Cgene. To further determine the role of this mutated gene for VRC resistance inA. flavus, anAgrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated gene replacement approach was applied. Consequently, the mutatedcyp51Cgene from thisA. flavusstrain was proven to confer the VRC resistance. Finally, to discern the one out of the four mutations in thecyp51Cgene that is responsible for contributing to VRC resistance, a site-directed gene mutagenesis procedure combined with a gene replacement method was performed. As a result, the T788G missense mutation in thecyp51Cgene was identified as responsible for VRC resistance inA. flavus. These findings indicated that the detection of this mutation inA. flavuscould serve as an indicator for physicians to avoid the use of VRC during IA treatment. Further comprehensive surveillance for antifungal susceptibility, as well as intensive study on the mechanism of azole resistance inA. flavuscausing IA, would be required to fully understand this mechanism.


2021 ◽  
Vol VI (I) ◽  
pp. 79-85
Author(s):  
Ayesha Khaliq ◽  
Mamona Yasmin Khan ◽  
Rabia Hayat

The female body is more than often used as a site to perpetuate violence and oppress women in patriarchal societies. The current study aims to explore how patriarchal oppression targets the female body and how it enforces women to become subalterns having no voice in the selected fictional work, Half the Sky by Kristoff and WuDunn. For this purpose, Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) and Bryan Turner's The Body theory (1984) are used as theoretical frameworks to explore the selected novel. The research is descriptive qualitative, and placed within the interpretive paradigm. The data for the present study is in the form of textual paragraphs, which is taken from the selected novel and is collected through the purposive sampling technique. The study argues on women's oppression and violence. The findings of the study revealed that the dominancy of male counterpart in every field of life is the basic reason for women oppression which leads to the women being subalterns.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Meric Guvenc ◽  
sinan balci

<p><b>Two-dimensional lead halide perovskite nanoplatelets (2D LHP NPLs) have been emerging as one of the most promising semiconductor nanomaterials due to their narrow absorption and emission line widths, tunable bandgaps, high exciton binding energies, high defect tolerance as well as highly localized energy states. Colloidal synthesis of 2D LHP NPLs is generally performed using hot-injection or ligand assisted precipitation techniques (LARP). In the LARP method, perovskites are synthesized in polar solvents, which decrease the stability of the 2D LHP NPLs due to their weakly bonded nature. In fact, the presence of residual polar solvent in the LHP NPL colloid can cause deterioration of thickness uniformity, degradation of NPLs to parent precursors, and undesired phase transformations. Herein, for the first time, we report facile seed-mediated synthesis route of monolayer, 2-monolayers, and thicker lead halide perovskite nanoplatelets without using A site cation halide salt (AX</b><b>;</b><b> A = Cesium, methylammonium, formamidinium and, X = Cl, Br, I) and long chain alkylammonium halide salts (LX; L = oleylammonium, octylammonium, butylammonium and, X = Cl, Br, I). The seed solution has been synthesized by reacting lead (II) halide salt and coordinating ligands (oleylamine or octylamine and oleic acid) in nonpolar high boiling solvent (1-octadecene). The seed mediated synthesis has been carried out in hexane by reacting seed solution with A-site cation precursors (Cs-oleate, FA-oleate, or diluted MA solution in hexane) under ambient conditions. More importantly, the seed mediated growth of NPLs has been tracked for the first time by performing in-situ optical measurements. Furthermore, the optical properties and morphologies of the seeds have been extensively studied. We find that our facile synthesis route provides highly stable, monodisperse NPLs with narrow absorption, and photoluminescence line widths (68-201 meV), and high PLQY (37.6-1.66% for 2ML NPLs). Furthermore, anion exchange reactions have been performed by mixing pre-synthesized LHP NPLs with counter halide seeds. The optical properties of NPLs have been affectively tuned by postsynthetic chemical reactions without changing the thickness of the NPLs. We anticipate that our new synthetic route provides further understanding of growth dynamics of LHP NPLs.</b></p>


Author(s):  
Giulia Frederico ◽  
Priscilla N. Silva dos Santos ◽  
Jéssica M. Ferreira ◽  
Luis Bahamondes ◽  
Arlete Fernandes

Author(s):  
Emily Coit

This chapter revisits a site of foundational feminist scholarship to ask new questions about gender, class, race, health and motherhood. Examining two iconic fin-de-siècle female writers, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Gilman, it highlights an age-old tension in their work, articulated via contemporary eugenics, between the portrayal of the female body and that of the female intellect. It shows that both writers held antiquated views about female agency that sit uncomfortably with their common association with feminism and modernity.


2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 30-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Ledanff

On 4 July 2002, the German Bundestag had to decide on the futureof one of the capital city’s principal historical sites: the square knownas the Schlossplatz, where the Hohenzollern Palace once stood butthat since 1976 had been the site of the German Democratic Republic’sflagship Palace of the Republic. It was not the first time thatGerman politicians had been called upon to decide issues relating toart and architecture. On previous occasions votes had been taken onthe wrapping of the Reichstag by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, SirNorman Foster’s dome, Hans Haacke’s artistic installation “DerBevölkerung” inside the Reichstag, and Peter Eisenman’s design forBerlin’s Holocaust memorial.1 Their decision to rebuild the historicalpalace, however, differed in that the politicians did not vote onan architectural design, “in eigener Sache.”2 That is, it was not abuilding or monument belonging to the governmental or politicalsphere of the capital city but rather a site likely to house culturalinstitutions. Parliamentarians, thus, were called upon to settle atwelve-year-old planning and architectural controversy after all othermeans, including architectural competitions, had failed.


1995 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan J. Mohr

In June/July 1994, I was fortunate in having been selected by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) to be the chief inspector (CI) of one of the most interesting inspections conducted by the commission, namely UNSCOM 84/BW6. This particular inspection was fascinating because of its complexity—the team not only conducted inspections of Iraqi biological research and production facilities, it also excavated a site that UNSCOM surmised might contain materials from Iraq's former BW program. As such, this inspection was the first time that UNSCOM collected environmental samples for analysis. In this paper I discuss my experiences during this inspection and comment on the effectiveness of sampling and analysis as a verification measure.


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