Author: Grace Eagan

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Cold War Origins

Last week Heather Streets-Salter, a Professor at Northeastern University, spoke about the Noulens Affair and how it could have been the start of anti-communism before the Cold War even started. She began the talk by educating the room about the Noulens Affair which took place in Shanghai in 1931. Professor Streets-Salter prefaced the story by guessing that no one in the audience had heard about it before because of the lack of literature surrounding the event.

The Noulens Affair began with the arrival of Joseph Ducroux and Wong Muk Han in Singapore where they were arrested for their role in the communist party. At the time of the arrest, Ducroux was carrying an address book with names of the people involved, which led them to Shanghai. The authorities were led to an apartment which had a key to another apartment, where they hit the “jackpot”, as Streets-Salter described. In the second apartment the French and British authorities found papers of the Far Easter Bureau of the Comintern including payroll documentation, lists of pseudonyms, correspondence and cipher codes. These documents led to 276 arrests and the confiscation of 963,601 copies of communist literature. Additionally, they found links between Moscow and Shanghai and many other parts of Asia. European governments wouldn’t claim the Noulens’, the holders of the apartment, so they were imprisoned in China and sentenced to death. Although there was pushback all over the world, there is a lack of English literature surrounding the events of the Noulens affair and the amount of people that were involved.

Professor Streets-Salter not only aimed to educate us about the Noulens Affair itself, but also to argue the significance in terms of communism pre-cold war and to show the state of the world at that time. She argued that the Noulens affair was a metaphor for thinking about empires in the 1900s, not as bounded territories or specific places but more as communication between different territories and how they were connected. A good example was that the Noulens’ were connecting communist movements in southeast Asia while their captors were working together to question and control the communist movement. The main point of the presentation was to illustrate how the Noulens Affair contradicts the origins of the Cold War. Streets-Salter explained that the commentary on the confiscated papers is a good way to understand the level of threat that the colonial powers and China believed they were facing. They understood that the communist movement was capable of crossing boundaries and that it was aided by a powerful outside source. It is extremely likely that in the Noulens Affair we see the beginnings of the Cold War years before it even started. Additionally, one audience member asked if Streets-Salter was able to obtain the original documents that the authorities found in the Noulens’ apartment and she described that many of them were still protected by the British government. I think the lack of literature surrounding this event also displays the effects that it had on the colonial powers and shows the fear that they felt towards the communist movement years before it came to fruition in the cold war.

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An Interdisciplinary Approach?

Last week Dr. Carin Berkowitz spoke about the anatomy and its relation to art, two topics which rarely are addressed in the same talk. During the lecture she focused on Charles Bell’s works which paired anatomy with art. Through his illustrations he was able to both capture the harsh scientific details of human anatomy while simultaneously bringing life and emotionality into the human body. These depictions of the human body are fascinating due the images that we currently associate with the study of anatomy and human bodies that are in your average textbook today.

Dr. Berkowitz moved on to compare the works of Charles Bell to the work of Henry Gray in Gray’s Anatomy. There is a stark contrast between the ways in which these two artists depict the human body, the greatest difference being the emotionality and life that is conveyed in each. In comparison to Bell’s scientifically accurate but emotionally charged images, Grays work is completely dehumanizing and is simply about the cold hard science without any attention to what makes a human: life and emotion. The texts that students currently use to study are much closer to the works of Gray and show little respect for the life of a human, suggesting that the bodies depicted in those books are specifically for scientific research and nothing else. This is a common theme that we see in a larger sense in schooling systems. There is much more emphasis on the study of the hard sciences than on more artistic disciplines and it is very important to strike a balance in order to receive a comprehensive education.

I think this is possibly one of the most important lessons that we have been exposed to during this talk series. We students are lucky to attend a college that encourages studying a variety of different disciplines and we have the flexibility to incorporate some of both the hard sciences and more artistic and creative disciplines. However, many students who attend more traditional one-track colleges do not have that opportunity and that can lead to a single way of thinking. In one of the previous lectures another professor spoke about the STEAM group at Yale University and how that group is helping others to understand climate change. STEAM as opposed to the more traditional STEM adds art along with the studies of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This is an example of how a multidisciplinary approach to understanding something can help to expand the ways in which we view a particular topic.

Regarding the question from an audience about ethics of how the bodies were obtained before people were able to donate them to science, I thought this was a horrifying example of how the study of the human body has become a field without emotion. In line with this, doctors and all medical staff are taught and encouraged to remove the emotion from what they do in order to adequately and professionally do their jobs. Is there any way to bring emotion back into medicine without creating more difficulty for the people who are treating the patients?

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Unicellular to Multicellular

Suegene Noh, Assistant Professor of Biology at Colby College, began her presentation on genomes shaped by evolution by looking at the social amoeba Dictyostelium dicoideum. In the case of the “dicty”, as she referred to them, amoebas are unicellular organisms, but they have the ability to aggregate and form mounds. In this process the dicty form a fruiting body with spores and a stalk in order survive harsh conditions, and in this form, they are able to eat bacteria. Organisms that have singular and multicellular stages have facultative multicellularity as it benefits the singular organism to band together with others of its kind for survival. However, when genetically different cells make up the same body their interests tend to be different. Human cells do not behave in this way because they are identical, but they do conflict in other ways such as cancerous cells, which have a very different agenda from normally developed cells. Professor Noh describe fruiting bodies with multiple different types of dicty as chimeric and she used those in her own research.

In her lab she has compared the ways in which chimeric dicty genes are expressed compared to those of clonal genes (fruiting bodies made up of one strain of dicty). In her research she used Illumina Cell machine to sequence the whole genome of the dicty mounds. She used four pairs of wild dicty strains and out of those made two clonal samples and one chimeric sample and repeated the study four times. She found that in the chimeric samples, sometimes they would produce less or more of certain genes compared to the clonal samples, and more frequently genes were biased down in chimeras. However, the few up regulated genes in the chimeric samples were involved in the development of the fruiting body and the cAMP response which is important for the aggregation of the Dicty. These changes in gene expression demonstrate that the chimeric genes selected for those that would help the fruiting body survive the best. This shows that the process of going through this cycle means that the chimeric samples will be more “fit” than the clonal samples.

Professor Noh used a second example to demonstrate the effects of social conflict on the evolution of the dicty. She discussed three types of microbes that infect the dicty and keep them from forming the fruiting bodies that allow them to survive. Each of the three types of bacteria interact with the host in a different way, but the dicty have evolved in different ways due to the social conflict that they have endured with either agricolaris, bonniea, or hayleyella. Some of the audience members asked why professor Noh chose to get the strains of dicty that she used from the wild. She explained to the roome that some of the dicty strains that are grown in the labs have been effected by the environment in which they were made, and by choosing to select strains from the wild she was able to improve upon the validity of her own research.

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How the Environment Shapes Us?

Greta LaFleur, professor of American studies at Yale University, began her talk on the environment and its relation to early sexuality with a variety of different narratives that she proposed. Initially she spoke of the execution narratives in which the details of a crime and the moments leading up to it were described. Secondly, she spoke of the barbary captivity narratives, when Christian sailors were captured were sold on the Islamic slave market from the 17th to the 19th century. In these narratives the slaves rejected the sodomy laws. I am still unsure of these and how they relate to the idea of environmental theory influencing early sexuality as both of these are accounts of humans and not how the environment has changed sexuality. However, later in the lecture, Professor LaFleur showed a quote by William Cronon from A Place for Stories. I felt that this quote helped me to understand the relation between the Barbary captivity narratives and the execution narratives. In essence the quote describes all human relationships actions and feelings as both a notion of history but also of the earth and how it has changed over the years.

This statement relates to the climate theory, one that LaFleur brought up later on in her discussion. This theory is that differences amongst people, their bodies and beings, are a result of the climate where they reside. An example she gave was one that the class could understand, in cuffing season. Cuffing season describes the idea that when the weather gets colder, people want to couple up and have someone to “snuggle” with as opposed to when it is hotter, people are less likely to display this phenomenon. This example shows that people can change their behaviors when it the climate changes regardless of whether or not they realize what they are doing.

Another author, Samuel Stanhope Smith, describes the effects of climate on humans in An Essay on the causes of variety of complexion and figure in the human species. He believes that variation in humans is caused by not only differences in beliefs, actions, looks and many more combined with the environment are what causes all variations amongst humans. Professor LaFLeur, gave many good reasons for the environment to influence human beings, but perhaps she could have organized it in a better manner. I felt that the second part of the lecture made much more sense in the context of what she was arguing, and I was slightly unsure of how it all connected to the first part in which she discussed the different types of narrative. Perhaps that is due to my lack of knowledge on the subject, however, I feel she could have connected the different parts of the lecture to help the audience understand its purpose. In the Q & A portion of the talk someone mentioned how climate determines how people act and feel. I think that this is one takeaway from the talk that could have been simplified. It is easy to understand how where one lives could influence the food that is available to them and work from their towards sexuality.

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Reluctant to Change

Two weeks ago, Professor Peterson of Colby College gave an interesting talk that was centered around the relationship between German philosophy and how we view environmental changes that are slowly happening around us. Although some of the recent talks on climate change have taken a different less direct approach to help us understand what we might to do further the understanding of climate change and strategies to combat it, Peterson was direct in his analysis of the problem.

Peterson drew on the works of Kant and used the notion of priori, a feeling held before one as an experience, to describe the main problem with understanding climate change and lack of progress in addressing it. This he claims is one of the main reasons why our human nature has prevented us from taking the appropriate action against climate change. I truly enjoyed Petersons analysis of the human brain and found it to be particularly true and easily understood. He discussed the inherent qualities of the human brain and that our understanding of risk is not enough to change our behaviors. I believe this is an accurate statement about most humans and we are all inherently positioned to reject change unless completely necessary.

I find this true in my own life especially as graduation is grows closer. I know that I am not the only one who would like to stay in the college bubble for a little bit longer. The idea of having a job and being largely independent is one that many people struggle to grasp, and it is this great change that causes anxiety and stress for many. We also see this trend of change aversion from generation to generation as certain ideas and values differ and we often think of older generations as being less accepting than younger ones. However, this is likely due to the fact that a change in value or norms for an older generation is likely caused by the younger ones so there would be a disconnect in the processing. In this case, we must understand how we as humans view change in order to address the problems that we have with it.

This is no different in the case of climate change. If we understand that our brains are programmed against change, and the action that is needed against climate change requires a societal initiative greater than we are prepared to accept; we must push past the reluctance for change. The only way to move past the way that our brains are wired is to understand that they will push against the change needed in the action against climate change. The second part of the issue is that it is not an individual effort, and many people need to come to this realization in order to properly address climate change. I thoroughly enjoyed Professor Peterson’s direct, and in my opinion, accurate analysis of what is preventing us from acting against climate change. Our resistance to change is something that we all need to be aware of, not only in this case, but throughout our lives.

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Using Literature to Understand Science

Professor Wai Chee Dimock from Yale University gave a similar talk to that of professor Nathan Hensley of Georgetown. In both instances the professors proposed that in order to understand and overcome the current issue of climate change, we must turn to literature to fully understand the phenomenon. Professor Dimock, took a slightly different approach than Hensley and compared the works of Elizabeth Bishop and William Blake in order to describe the lack of understanding and knowledge that currently exists around the future of the environment and the changes that are occurring as a result of global warming. The difference between Bishops and Blakes poetry is that one acknowledges the future and the unknown compared with Blake who describes the environment in a concrete and unchanging way. This is a mindset that makes it impossible to understand work towards reversing the current climate change as it focuses on the past and doesn’t accommodate for the ever-changing nature of the environment and even more broadly the world.

I was particularly interested in Dimock’s understanding of Peter Singer and his stance on vegetarianism. I have read his book Animal Liberation as part of an ethics class my freshman year in high school, his arguments were so convincing that I even converted to vegetarianism for six years following. I thought it was interesting how Singer addresses the problem of vegetarianism and how to help people understand why it is important. Although he feels that animal lives are worth the same as human lives and he argues that in his book, he knows that it is not a common belief amongst humans and that is not a way to convert people to vegetarianism. Instead, he takes the approach of the contribution of meat towards the global warming problem. This is a way to address the larger audience in a more effective way because global warming directly effects the lives of humans, and the amount of green-house gas generated in the meat process is alarming.

One of the major commonalities between Professor Dimock and Professor Hensley’s talks was the need to merge the scientific and the literary world. Dimock suggested that literary thinking can bridge the lack of understanding that often goes along with scientific works and help us understand the true gravity of the climate change issue. Clearly, there has been difficulty with a scientific approach to understanding climate change. People who don’t understand science don’t believe that climate change is real and we need to bring the emotional aspects of the humanities to help people understand the science behind climate change. The development of STEAM groups on college campuses shows that sciences arts and humanities must be in collaboration in order to fully address the issue of climate change and make it a more widespread issue. I admire this observation and agree with the need to address the disconnect between the science of climate change and the lacking emotional understanding of certain populations who do not depend on science. However, this does not seem to be a true solution to the issue of climate change, but the first step is to understand that it is real and happening.

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A Historic Look at Genes and Where They are Taking Us

Professor Projit Bihari Mukharji from the University of Pennsylvania began his talk on the bodily collectives with a present look at the Indian genome project. The purpose of this research is to determine biological differences within the Indian population. The ways in which they aim to conduct this research are very interesting and they have divided the population of India into communities. This began with people who are affiliated with the Hindu religious fold, making up 80% of the population of India, which is separated into four sociocultural castes and was a convenient way in which to start dividing the population. Eventually the researchers divided everyone into 4693 communities with in the country. The current push for research of this kind has stemmed from a long historical background of raciology, but recent understanding of the biology of race has led some to believe that medicine should be specialized according to race for it to be completely successful, and Muharji gave the example of Bidil a drug that is specifically made for African American’s with heart conditions.

As I mentioned before, there has been a long history of studying genetics throughout the population that extends far beyond the current genome project in India. However, much of the data that they have collected is outdated and while it can provide information historically the sets of data need further development in order to provide a comprehensive look into the entire population of India. Historically, the study of genetics starts with observation, but studying samples from a couple of people only shows something about that individual not the entire population of India, and even then, it can be difficult to obtain samples from people. Dr. Mukharji told stories about researchers trespassing in the cemeteries of tribal people and using their power with government officials to take the skeletons of recently deceased from their shallow graves. Although this seems morally wrong in every possible way, the researchers continued to do it in the name of science. In another case, researchers wanted to determine if Type B blood was more common in Indians, so they targeted an older Indian community and pretended to be practicing doctors in order to draw blood from the population and achieve a comprehensive sample. However, as previously mentioned, an individual’s blood sample does not represent a group or race, it is unique to that person alone, nor do Hindu samples represent all Indians. Scientists have argued how to break up the population for decades, and it seems that they still have not reached a universal conclusion.

At the end of the presentation someone asked about a national register of citizens and whether or not countries are moving in a direction where in order to gain citizenship, one must give their tissues to be a part of that comprehensive database. Although this would be a technocratic dream, my question is whether or not this is plausible? It seems that in the current state of our world citizenship is avoidable and therefore would we ever be able to have a comprehensive database of all people living in a given country?

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Climate Change in Wonderland

Professor Nathan Hensley from Georgetown introduced his thoughts on the climate crisis and how we can learn from literature to help combat it. He began his talk with a personal history of his home town in Fresno, California, a major agricultural hub. Initially, I couldn’t understand how this was relevant to his new book and research as he spoke about the farm that his family owned and remembering what it was like to grow up in that environment. He went on to discuss his memories of the farm and how they were idealized to conform to conventional ideas about what a farm is and means. This was evident when he showed the photographs of Fresno today and discussed the environmental changes that have occurred since he left his hometown. While Fresno remains an agricultural hub, the technologies and industries have developed, and it has become a center for industrial agriculture. The word agriculture to me suggests organic farm where you can enjoy all of your fresh vegetables and fruits and pasture raised chickens and cows, but this is not the case. The industrial agriculture business in Fresno has created such pollution and sickness that it is no longer close to what Hensley remembers from his childhood. The pollution in the air has caused some of the highest rates of asthma in the country and its in not solely impacting the humans that live in the area; 95% of the monarch butterflies that used to populate the area have died as well.

This problem is not only isolated to California and Hensley’s personal experience; it is a global issue. Hensley suggests an entire overhaul of the ways in which we think and the systems in place that guide our actions. A concrete example of this are the devastating hurricanes that have plagued the United States in recent years and the probabilities that we assign to them. By the probability that is currently in place, Houston, Texas has experienced 3500 years of storms in the past ten years alone, and who knows what will happen if this continues on the same trajectory.

The one literary example that was well developed throughout his argument was the story of Alice in Wonderland and the transitions that she endures within the story. Alice runs into problems in this novel environment because she attempts to bring principles from her normal world into Wonderland. This causes a mismatch between two frames of reference and distinguishes the two different realities. I understood this to be a metaphor for how we think about our world as it develops. Clearly there is something that must be changed in order for survival on this planet. The current way in which we treat the environment with reaction as opposed to action will not continue to work as is illustrated by Alice in Wonderland. Similar to Alice, adapting to a new mindset is the sole way to living in a new reality.

Hensley ended his discussion with a few suggestions for how to make this shift happen. He suggested a collaborative approach as opposed to the individualistic one that we often take, including the past and thinking about how this relates to past historical events, opening our minds to multiple approaches versus one specific plan. Upon reflection I have a better understanding of his argument, however, someone asked how this translates into action, and I think this concept may need more development before we are able to accept the idea.

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The Ignored History of Native Americans in the US

Professor Sonja Thomas presented her current research and ideas behind her previous works last week in Presence of the Past. She began by discussing the history of the small town where she grew up in Montana. In the past the catholic church had taken over indigenous peoples’ land and forced the Native American children into catholic schools, where they were abused and forced to take on the catholic faith. Children were forced into the missions without a choice where they were bullied into accepting the Catholic faith. In the schools they were not allowed to speak their native language and when they went home to their families they would not discuss their experience at the schools. Thomas elaborated on the unjust treatment of the natives and how they were restricted by the catholic settlers. Natives were not considered citizens until 1924 and were not allowed to vote until 1965. It was truly unsettling to hear about the ongoing abuse of the people who had lived on the lands in Montana long before the Catholics decided to plant their roots. While the religious lessons may not have stayed with them through the years, they still remember the abuse that was inflicted by the people who took over their lands.

Thomas, then moved on to discuss the current work that she has been researching for, a book based upon Indian missionary priests that have migrated and come to work in Montana around where she grew up. The topic of the book is specifically focused on the interaction between the missionary priests and the Native Americans that have previously had issues with other Catholic priests settling on their lands. Professor Thomas was looking to see if the Indian priests would have the same experience with racism that the Native Americans had. The new book will be an autoethnography in which Thomas has interviewed 40 people both Native Americans, white and Indian Priests. One interesting takeaway was that the children in her town were not educated on the history and as a part of that were not educated about the Native Americans that share their towns. The Indian missionary priests have been subject to some racism since their arrival. They are referred to as imports rather than missionaries, which is what white priests are called when they travel abroad to other countries, and many white Catholics have resisted Indian priests if they join their parish.

Thomas did not get the response that she anticipated when she interviewed Native Americans about the missionary priests. They are still caught up in the abuse and racism that they face from whites against the natives in schools. There seems to be no solution to the problem as the segregation between them only continues to grow with more hostility. I thought Kallie’s discussion about education around Native Americans in the United States was interesting and true. There is a widespread issue with the way history is written in our country, and there is no way for the lives of the natives to improve if the history is continuously discredited and ignored.

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Merkel Keeping Memories Alive

This past week Professor Yoder gave a fascinating speech on the politics and ideology behind Angela Merkel, the German chancellor’s, leadership strategy. When Merkel assumed the German Chancellorship in 2005, many were curious about how she would fulfill the position and differ from previous chancellors.

When she took office in 2005 many saw her as young, in comparison with previous leadership, and she was also from East Germany, unlike recent leadership. Due to her upbringing and recent mentors many assumed that she would continue with a more normal approach to leadership and fail to address issues of the past. However, she quickly established her stance on German politics to be one of open conversation by continuously bringing the past into the present. Although shocking at first, Merkel has led her center-right leaning party much more towards the center through her use of memory politics.

Professor Yoder spent a great deal of her presentation discussing some of Merkel’s most influential speeches. Although, not all of her public addresses have been transcribed and made available to the public, of the 58 that are, 67% of those ranging from 2005 to 2016 contained messages aimed at invoking German past. It is important to note that Germany’s past is one that is painful for not only Germans but also for the world. The easy route would be to make no mention of the World Wars (one and two), the holocaust and Germany’s communist past, but Merkel is determined to keep these memories alive, despite the pain that they induced.

Although it may not be popular amongst all German parties, Merkel has continuously harped on the country’s difficult past. It seems strange that she should continue to do this when so much of politics world-wide is based upon the popularity of a candidate amongst the people, but Merkel is unwavering in her moral obligation to create a culture of remembrance that will endure when survivors and people who experienced the tragedies of the World Wars and the Holocaust are no longer around. Her reasons for invoking the past are clear. Merkel sets out to remind not only Germany, but the world on a larger scale that we have to take responsibility for the past to ensure nothing of that nature will happen again. She aims to focus on humanitarianism as a response to the past, through her policies on refugees, and believes solidarity in historic responsibility to strengthen European democracy should take precedence over nationalism.

One of the questions that was discussed at the end of the presentation addressed how Germany’s difficult history is taught in early education in the country. I thought this was particularly interesting as the United States has failed to properly educate elementary school children on the history of North American civilization and how the country was founded. This issue is just now being rectified in the United States and proper education in school could be equally as important as politics for Germany moving forward, in order to preserve memories of the past.