Search Results (4)

The transnational configuration of contemporary German literature cannot be detached from its historical continuum, since such a separation would render the archive of histories of exile in and out of Germany inconsistent and incomplete. Bringing literary histories of exile in a dialogue, in this instance, Exilliteratur, represented by prominent German authors, who, during the Second World War, immigrated to Southern California (Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, and Franz Werfel, among others), as well as Anna Seghers and Stefan Zweig, who went into exile in Mexico and Brazil, respectively, and the emerging literature of contemporary transnational or so-called hyphenated German (“Bindestrich-Deutsche”) writers would enable an inclusive paradigm that communicates across communities of research. To that end, I briefly review one novel each by Anna Seghers and Lion Feuchtwanger and essays by the Iranian-German poet SAID, which exemplify the two distinctive genres of exile literature: the long-established Exilliteratur and what I elsewhere described as transnational literature of writers mostly from the non-Western world, who in the latter part of the twentieth century began immigrating to the West. While I acknowledge the different circumstances and historical imperatives that have dictated the features of the two genres, I foreground the ethical implications and the cautionary tales the respective works of Exilliteratur authors and transnational writers share. Full article

Cotton leafroll dwarf virus (CLRDV) is an emerging aphid-borne pathogen infecting cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L., in the southern United States (U.S.). The cotton aphid, Aphis gossypii Glover, infests cotton annually and is the only known vector to transmit CLRDV to cotton. Seven other species have been reported to feed on, but not often infest, cotton: Protaphis middletonii Thomas, Aphis craccivora Koch, Aphis fabae Scopoli, Macrosiphum euphorbiae Thomas, Myzus persicae Sulzer, Rhopalosiphum rufiabdominale Sasaki, and Smynthurodes betae Westwood. These seven have not been studied in cotton, but due to their potential epidemiological importance, an understanding of the intra- and inter-annual variations of these species is needed. In 2020 and 2021, aphids were monitored from North Carolina to Texas using pan traps around cotton fields. All of the species known to infest cotton, excluding A. fabae, were detected in this study. Protaphis middletonii and A. gossypii were the most abundant species identified. The five other species of aphids captured were consistently low throughout the study and, with the exception of R. rufiabdominale, were not detected at all locations. The abundance, distribution, and seasonal dynamics of cotton-infesting aphids across the southern U.S. are discussed. Full article

Anthony Leigh (d. 1692) built his career as a Restoration comedic actor by playing a combination of queer, lascivious, old, and/or disabled men to audiences’ great delight. In this essay, I key in on two plays that frame Leigh’s career: Thomas Durfey’s The Fond Husband (1677) and Thomas Southerne’s Sir Anthony Love (1690). In The Fond Husband, a younger Leigh plays a “superannuated,” almost blind and almost deaf Old Fumble who, in the first act, kisses a man because he cannot navigate the heterosexual erotic economy of the play (as over-determined by able-bodiedness). Over a decade later, in Sir Anthony Love, Leigh plays an aging, queer Abbé who is so earnestly erotically invested in Love’s masculinity (unaware that Love is a woman in drag) that he attempts to seduce Love with dancing. I bring the beginning and end of Leigh’s stage life together to argue that Leigh’s body, performing queerly, asks audiences to confront the limits of pleasure in sustaining fantasies of the abled, autonomous heterosexual self. Using these two Restoration comedies that bookend Leigh’s career, I trace pleasures and queer structures of feeling experienced in the Restoration playhouse. While Durfey and Southerne’s plays-as-texts seek to discipline unruly, disabled queer bodies by making Fumble and the Abbé the punchline, Leigh’s performances open up alternative opportunities for queer pleasure. Pleasure becomes queer in its ability to undo orderings and fantasies based on autonomy (that nasty little myth). In his Apology, Colley Cibber reveals the ways that Leigh’s queerly performing body engages the bodies of audience members. In reflecting on the reading versus spectating experience, Cibber remarks, “The easy Reader might, perhaps, have been pleas’d with the Author without discomposing a Feature; but the Spectator must have heartily held his sides, or the Actor would have heartily made them ache for it” (89). Spectatorship is not a passive role, but rather a carnal interplay with the actor, and this interplay has immediate, bodily implications. Audiences laugh. They ache. They touch. Whereas the reader of a play in private can maintain composure, audiences in the theatre are contrarily discomposed, non-autonomous, and holding onto their sides. Leigh’s ability as a comedian energizes the text and produces pleasure on an immediate, corporeal level for audiences. And that pleasure is generated through stage business built on touching, feeling, and seducing male-presenting characters. Spectatorship may, in fact, be a queer experience as Leigh’s queerly performing body exposes the limits of autonomy. Full article

Wildfires are a major hazard to humans in the southern California Mediterranean ecosystem and improving our understanding and delineation of different fire regimes is critical to mitigating wildfire-related hazards. Recent research has demonstrated that there are two distinct fire regimes in this region based on the presence or absence of katabatic winds (primarily Santa Ana winds) concurrent with the fire. Here, we expand the katabatic wind category to include Sundowner winds along the Santa Barbara front range and analyze the spatial relationships and difference in ignition sources between fires associated with katabatic and non-katabatic wind events from 1948–2017. We found distinct spatial extents for katabatic versus non-katabatic fires, with areas of the higher number of repeat fires generally associated with one fire type or the other. These spatial delineations were consistent with prior analyses of katabatic wind patterns and were also related to the climatology of marine influences across the region. Finally, we contextualize the burn perimeter of the 2017 Thomas Fire, the largest fire in modern California history, relative to spatial patterns of katabatic and non-katabatic fires. The 2017 Thomas Fire began during the longest Santa Ana event in the last 70 years in an area that has been burned repeatedly by Santa Ana fires. However, the Thomas Fire ultimately burned into a region where there were no prior Santa Ana fires. The spatial delineation of two relatively distinct fire regimes is critical to making management decisions, such as where to locate suppression resources at critical times and where fuel treatments might be most effective. However, the anomalous pattern of the Thomas Fire also points to the potential for changes in anthropogenic and environmental factors to disrupt historical spatial patterns and suggests that spatial patterns of fire regimes are themselves prospective metrics of global change. Full article