Search

An instance of sequential infection of an individual with, firstly, the Delta variant and secondly a Delta-sub-lineage has been identified. The individual was found positive for the AY.26 lineage 22 days after being found positive for the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant. The viruses associated with the cases showed dramatic genomic difference, including 31 changes that resulted in deletions or amino acid substitutions. Seven of these differences were observed in the Spike protein. The patient in question was between 30 and 35 years old and had no underlying health conditions. Though singular, this case illustrates the possibility that infection with the Delta variant may not itself be fully protective against a population of SARS-CoV-2 variants that are becoming increasingly diverse.

While many scholars praise Ingmar Bergman’s film trilogy— Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence—they tend to disregard the contradictory views on gender within these films. However, each of these films explores how men and women interact with one another. Though women play a prominent role in each part of the trilogy, Through a Glass Darkly is especially significant because its plot revolves around Karin, a woman who is treated as both powerless and powerful. In fact, the duality of Karin’s existence is the very essence of the film: in the eyes of the men in her family, she is an object used to satisfy male desire; but, in the narrative of the film, she is the autonomous catalyst of male redemption. In Through a Glass Darkly, Bergman intentionally highlights the duality of woman as both object and autonomous being, an idea which is outlined by Slavoj Zizek in his article “Woman as a Symptom of Man”; by emphasizing Karin’s duality, Bergman reveals how Karin’s ontology is both disregarded by the men in her family and embraced by the narrative of the film. While many scholars have written on Karin, their analyses have been oversimplified and reductive. Analyzing Karin’s duality, however, more clearly captures Bergman’s intent: to highlight the ways in which women function as both subject and object in patriarchal world of his films. For Bergman, the God’s Silence trilogy presents a male-dominated world in which women are silent, or forced into submission, who find their voices by subverting social norms. In Through a Glass Darkly, Karin’s subversive visions of God provide her with an escape from misuse at the hands of the men. Similarly, in Winter Light, Marta, who is symbolic of Martha, suffers and subverts Thomas’ world by still loving him when he pushes her away. In the Bible, Martha is the sister of Mary and Lazarus, and is the first to meet Jesus when he comes to raise Lazarus from the dead. In all later depictions of Martha, her servitude is emphasized. For example, in John 12:2 and Luke 10:40, Martha serves meals to her community. The most significant passage on Martha, however, is John 11:20–27 which states

Though critics highly regard her earlier novels, Barbara Kingsolver's 2009 Orange Prize winning novel, The Lacuna, has received little critical attention. One reason for the absence of scholarly debate is that the narrative form of The Lacuna is highly fragmented. Comprised of autobiography, diary entries, letters, book reviews, archivists notes, and court transcripts, the text describes the life and work of Harrison Shepherd, the novel's protagonist. Because the narrative is communicated in a variety of overlapping and functionally different forms, the text contains a number of gaps, or lacunas, that the reader must fill in using textual clues and deductive reasoning. While many reviewers cite this as a weakness in the text--NPR's Maureen Corrigan states that the "lacuna" in the novel is the "unintentionally missing" main character, The Los Angeles Times' Kai Marsted notes that the novel has "no enigma," and Entertainment Weekly's Tina Jordan says that "the book--told through newspaper clippings, letters, bits of memoirs, and the like--never quite comes together"--the gaps are, in actuality, the key to understanding the novel because they mark the places where Harrison experiences a crisis of identity as a homosexual, half-Mexican, half-Anglo man. Liesl Schillinger, author and literary critic for the New York Times, recognizes that "the value of Kingsolver's novel lies in its call to conscience and connection," and suggests that "Kingsolver gives voice to truths whose teller could express them only in silence." In the novel, therefore, the gaps become a site of connection: they leave a space in which the disparate parts of Harrison's identity can coexist. While interpreting the lacunas is crucial to understanding the text, their inherent lack makes them difficult to interpret. One way to inform the gaps, however, is through a comparison with Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera, which utilizes lacunas both to highlight the complication of possessing "non-normative" racial and sexual identities and to suggest the need to move through the liminal space created by physical and psychological gulfs. Doing so informs the lacunas within Kingsolver's text while preserving their complexity and ambiguity. Before comparing the texts, however, it is necessary to outline their source of internal conflict--the establishment of the border between the United States and Mexico. Since the arrival of Hernan Cortes in the early sixteenth century, the territory known as New Spain and Mexico has been effectively colonized. Its indigenous populations have experienced deculturization while also undergoing cultural domination by both Spanish and American powers. Alejandro Lugo, in his Fragmented Lives, Assembled Parts: Culture, Capitalism, and Conquest at the U.S.-Mexico Border, argues that the basis for this cultural conquest can be found in the physical border itself. He states, "the name 'Rio Grande' speaks to power politics of land appropriation that allow geographical spaces to be invented in times when the conquerors (either Spanish or the Americans) can construct a world in their own image, whether it fits others' reality or not" (36). Hence, the renaming of the Mexican landscape resulted in the creation of a New Mexico, one which subsumed the identities of its indigenous peoples in the prevailing cultures of the conquerors. Furthermore, the "Rio Grande" was already an established landmark demarcating the border between the regions of Nueva Galicia and Nueza Vizcaya; thus, by reappropriating the term, the Spanish conquerors actually renamed and reappropriated the landscape to suit their needs. The American conquest of Northern Mexico similarly utilized the power of naming to assert colonial power. In particular, Lugo continues, "the United States appropriated 'Rio Grande' as a strategy to differentiate themselves from the 'Mexicans,' who preferred 'Rio Bravo'" (37). Thus, the border regions of Mexico have been both physically and linguistically dominated by colonial powers. …