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This essay examines ethnic strife and cultural friction in New Orleans during the Mexican-American war. Specifically, it explores how the Crescent City’s anglophone and francophone populations navigated the tension between national and transnational affiliation through performance. By considering both the material and the immaterial aspects of performance residue, this essay attempts to bridge the conceptual gap between a performance’s presence and its disappearance, enduring materials and embodied practice, archive and repertoire. Drawing on two case studies, Félix de Courmont’s 1847 opera Le Capitaine May et le Général de la Vega sur les bords du Rio Grande and the street performances that structured General Zachary Taylor’s 1847 visit to New Orleans, this essay attempts to recover the traces of past performances and their afterlife today, while shedding new light on the complexity of transnational relations in New Orleans beyond the period of the Mexican-American war.

Introduction to America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment

Moving from France to the Caribbean to the American continent, Creole Drama follows the people that created, shaped, and sustained French theatre culture in New Orleans from its inception in 1792 until the beginning of the Civil War. In doing so, it draws upon the neglected archive of francophone drama native to Louisiana, as well as a range of documents from both sides of the Atlantic, teasing out how the members of Louisiana’s French-speaking community intervened in current debates about political representation, slavery, US expansion, and the place of ethnic and racial minorities in the early Americas. Creole Drama offers not only a detailed history of francophone theatre in New Orleans, but also an account of the surprising ways in which multilingualism and early transnational networks helped create the American nation.

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Laminopathies are rare genetic disorders caused by mutations in genes encoding lamins or lamin-interacting proteins. LMNA, EDM and to a lower measure the Nesprin genes have been associated with Emery Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (EDMD), characterized by contractures of the Achilles tendons, progressive skeletal muscle weakness and heart rhythm disturbances leading to dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) and sudden cardiac death. Since ~60% EDMD patients are not associated to known genes, we used a functional candidate-gene approach to identify additional EDMD disease genes. Based on reported interactions of lamina associated polypeptide 2 (LAP2) with nucleoplasmic lamin A/C and the association of the LAP2alpha isoform to DCM (Matthew R.G Taylor et al. 2005), 111 EDMD and 87 DCM patients were investigated for DNA variations in LAP (encoding six LAP2 isoforms) using heteroduplex analysis and direct sequencing. Among ten variations found, four changes—p.P426L (c.1481C>T) in LAP2alpha, p.D271E (c.1054T>G) in LAP2beta, and p.V423L (c.1058G>C) and p.M381I (c.1387 G>A) in LAP2gamma—were unique for EDMD patients, but segregation analysis indicated only p.P426L LAP2alpha as a mutation potentially associated to EDMD. P426L-LAP2 alpha localized to the nucleoplasm in skin fibroblasts, like wild-type protein and did not affect the loalization of lamin A. However, in mutant fibroblast cultures phosphorylated retinoblastoma protein (Rb) levels were reduced compared to wild-type cultures, sugesting that the mutated protein may affect cell cycle progression in agreement with previous studies implicating LAP2alpha-lamin A in Rb-mediated cell cycle control. The present study shows that LAP2alpha mutations might add to the pathology of EDMD in ~1% of EDMD patients.

In besonders malignen Karzinomen wie dem anaplastischen Schilddrüsenkarzinom führt die starke Deregulierung der Genexpression zur Entwicklung von Metastasen und damit zu einer schlechten Patientenprognose. Die Invasion von Karzinomzellen in das umliegende Gewebe und in Blutgefäße beruht im Wesentlichen auf der Transition epithelialer Krebszellen in Krebszellen mit mesenchymalen Eigenschaften. In dieser Doktorarbeit wurden die starke Herabregulierung von mikroRNAs und die Neusynthese des RNA-bindenden Proteins IGF2BP1 als wesentliche Auslöser für die epithelial-mesenchymale Transition in anaplastischen Schilddrüsenkarzinomen identifiziert. Diese posttranskriptionellen Genregulatoren modulieren die mesenchymale Genexpression und dadurch mesenchymale Zelleigenschaften. NebenSchilddrüsenkrebs-orientierten Untersuchungen wurde die miTRAPMethode entwickelt. MiTRAP ermöglicht die sichere Identifizierung regulatorischer mikroRNAs einer RNA in einem zellulären Kontext der Wahl., In late-stage cancers like anaplastic thyroid carcinomas, the severe deregulation of gene expression results in the formation of metastasis and thus a poor patient prognosis. Carcinoma cell invasioninto surrounding tissue and blood vessels essentially relies on the transition of epithelial cancer cells to cancer cells with mesenchymal properties. In this thesis, the severe downregulation of microRNAs as well as the de novo synthesis of the RNA-binding protein IGF2BP1 were identified as major triggers for the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in anaplastic thyroid carcinoma. These post-transcriptional gene regulators modulate mesenchymal gene expression and thereby mesenchymal cell properties. In addition to thyroid cancer-focused studies, the miTRAP approach was developed. MiTRAP allows the reliable identification of regulatory microRNAs for a target RNA of interest in a cellular context of choice.

This essay recovers, describes, and analyzes the theatrical tradition emerging from New Orleans's free people of color during the antebellum period. I will start out by tracing the presence of free people of color in the francophone theatres of New Orleans, teasing out their impact on the early formations of a francophone theatrical culture in the Crescent City. Next, I will examine more closely the 1837 breaking point in theatrical race relations and the ensuing foundation of two theatres by and for free people of color, the Théâtre Marigny and the Théâtre de la Renaissance. Considering the material conditions of the two theatres – including their location and interior layout – as well as their admittance policies, troupes, and repertoire, I assess the function of these playhouses for a population that was bound to remain in a position of liminality throughout the antebellum period. Through an analysis of four of the plays performed at the free black theatres I uncover the relevance of a seemingly outdated and imported repertoire for the day-to-day experiences of New Orleans’s free black population. Ultimately, I argue that New Orleans’s free people of color developed a distinct theatrical tradition that reflected as well as complicated the specific contours of their liminal position within the city.