American Dance Pioneer Martha Graham and the Ghosts of Feminism

Abstract: The essay explores the mutual haunting between American modern dance pioneer Martha Graham and feminism. This troubling arises from the confusion between what can be considered the predominantly feminist character of Graham's life and work coupled with Graham's outright rejection of a feminist consciousness. The author suggests that this ambivalent situation allows for an ever increasing complex but fruitful discussion of Graham's possible feminist identifications and their effects. The essay first argues for the performanative force of ‘doing’ a feminist identity as a foil for Graham's public written reputation of feminism. It then charts both the changing cultural and social beliefs of and about women in the twentieth century alongside Graham's specific geographical, social, cultural and historical placement in that history and its possible impact on her processes of identification. The essay then makes a close contextual reading of one of Graham's works of the early 1930s, Primitive Mysteries (1931), to illustrate its radical conception of the female body both at the time of its premiere and over subsequent reconstructions. The author finishes by arguing that the question of Graham's feminism is an important one because it remains unanswered.     

Performing the Self,Performing the Other: gender and racial identity construction in the Nanteuil Cycle

This article focuses on the Old French Nanteuil Cycle of chansons de geste, investigating the nature of medieval identity and its connection to gender, race and religion. The Nanteuil Cycle repeatedly uses disguise as a means of crossing gender boundaries, which allows the repositioning of identity and simultaneously reveals the arbitrariness of cultural categorisation. Although cross-dressing heroines abound in medieval literature, the fourteenth-century Tristan de Nanteuil contains instances where cross-dressing is both gendered and racialised, stretching the malleability of identity to the point that it seems physical form can be altered at will. The article discusses the distortion of genealogies in the Cycle effected by the challenges to the social matrix produced by disguise, with a new relational framework where wives may become fathers and mothers become husbands.     

Kate Davis: re-visioning art history after modernism and postmodernism

This article engages with the work of Scotland-based artist Kate Davis (b.1977). The discussion begins to articulate a framework for understanding Davis’s work within a feminist logic of re-visioning and re-citing, strategies that are explicated and suggested as paradigmatic to feminist art production since 1970. Fundamentally, the article explores Davis’s complex strategies for adopting and adapting motifs from within the archives of art history, arguing that her work constitutes a mode of visual research and historiography.     

Identifying reliable ions for the statistical differentiation of structurally similar fentanyl analogs

Definitive identification of fentanyl analogs based on mass spectral comparison is challenging given the high degree of structural and, hence, spectral similarity. To address this, a statistical method was previously developed in which two electron-ionization (EI) mass spectra are compared using the unequal variance t-test. Normalized intensities of corresponding ions are compared, testing the null hypothesis (H₀) that the difference in intensity is equal to zero. If H₀ is accepted at all m/z values, the two spectra are statistically equivalent at the specified confidence level. If H₀ is not accepted at any m/z value, then there is a significant difference in intensity at that m/z value between the two spectra. In this work, the statistical comparison method is applied to distinguish EI spectra of valeryl fentanyl, isovaleryl fentanyl, and pivaloyl fentanyl. Spectra of the three analogs were collected over a 9-month period and at different concentrations. At the 99.9% confidence level, the spectra of corresponding isomers were statistically associated. Spectra of different isomers were statistically distinct, and ions responsible for discrimination were identified in each comparison. To account for inherent instrument variations, discriminating ions for each pairwise comparison were ranked based on the magnitude of the calculated t-statistic (t_calc) value. For a given comparison, ions with higher t_calc values are those with the greatest difference in intensity between the two spectra and, therefore, are considered more reliable for discrimination. Using these methods, objective discrimination among the spectra was achieved and ions considered most reliable for discrimination of these isomers were identified.     

Evaluation of the catalytic decomposition of H2O2 through use of organo-metallic complexes--a potential link to the luminol presumptive blood test

Hair testing for drugs of abuse is performed in Lombardy by eleven analytical laboratories accredited for forensic purposes, the most frequent purposes being driving license regranting and workplace drug testing. Individuals undergoing hair testing for these purposes can choose the laboratory in which the analyses have to be carried out. The aim of our study was to perform an interlaboratory exercise in order to verify the level of standardization of hair testing for drugs of abuse in these accredited laboratories; nine out of the eleven laboratories participated in this exercise. Sixteen hair strands coming from different subjects were longitudinally divided in 3-4 aliquots and distributed to participating laboratories, which were requested to apply their routine methods. All the participants analyzed opiates (morphine and 6-acetylmorphine) and cocainics (cocaine and benzoylecgonine) while only six analyzed methadone and amphetamines (amphetamine, methamphetamine, MDMA, MDA and MDEA) and five Δ(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The majority of the participants (seven labs) performed acidic hydrolysis to extract the drugs from the hair and analysis by GC-MS, while two labs used LC-MS/MS. Eight laboratories performed initial screening tests by Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay Technique (EMIT), Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) or Cloned Enzyme Donor Immunoassay (CEDIA). Results demonstrated a good qualitative performance for all the participants, since no false positive results were reported by any of them. Quantitative data were quite scattered, but less in samples with low concentrations of analytes than in those with higher concentrations. Results from this first regional interlaboratory exercise show that, on the one hand, individuals undergoing hair testing would have obtained the same qualitative results in any of the nine laboratories. On the other hand, the scatter in quantitative results could cause some inequalities if any interpretation of the data is required.