Article Database

“A Tradition Her Own”: Womanist Rhetoric and the Womanist Sermon

Abstract:

This dissertation argues that womanist rhetoric is a cultural discourse. It asks the questions, what is womanist rhetoric, who engages in womanist rhetoric, and what are the implications for womanist rhetoric in the everyday lives of Black women? I ask and answer these questions within the context of the Black Church as a cultural location and social institution. This allows for a rich and complex discussion of the organic elements of womanist rhetoric, which enter the academy but are not limited to the academy. I define the Black Church in both historic and contemporary terms to demonstrate the cultural location of womanism within African America.

Womanist rhetoric has three pillars: authentic womanist voice, gendered cultural knowledge, and ethical discourse for salvation. This dissertation uses a mixed-methods approach to present each of these three elements. Historic and literary womanist shape my definition of womanist rhetoric. In centralizing Black women’s narratives through womanist discourse, Black women create spaces in which and through which they make their voices heard and their presence known. Through this engaged discourse within and outside of the Black Church, African American women have created and maintained spaces for authentic womanist voice. African American women daily embody the process of womanist rhetoric. Through an analysis of Wanda Davis Turner as a womanist minister, I am able to discuss womanist rhetoric in the context of the sermon.

Womanist rhetoric goes beyond womanist theory and beyond womanist theology to get at the root of the cultural meanings within the deep cultural spaces African American women inhabit daily. Through her sermon Sex Traps, Wanda Davis Turner presents herself as an authentic womanist voice within the Black Church. Her sermon and book series Sex Traps utilizes gendered cultural knowledge to explore issues of morality and the ethical discourse of salvation that constitute womanist discourse.

“Transformative Womanist Rhetorical Strategies”: Contextualizing Discourse and the Performance of Black Bodies of Desire

Abstract:

I enter this conversation through a community of watchers. I am an observer of women, men,¹ transsexuals, straight, straightish,² trans-gender, queer, and drag queen daily performances of identities whenever and wherever I see/hear/read them. As a heterosexual black American woman scholar, I am often transfixed by the performances of gendered identity. My research often takes up questions of identity that focus on the ways in which we construct identity through communication. Recently, I have focused my attentions on the ways in which social justice and gender equity are gained through social critique. In other words, is it possible to move outside of the liminal boxes of identity narratives to create spaces for transformative body politics? To this question, I insert womanist rhetorical strategy within the efforts of drag queens to focus on femininity and womanhood through the construction of clearly made choices about how to drag, or, rather, shift the fixed boundaries of the feminized “queen.”³ Drag queens, unlike most women, chose every aspect of woman they perform.⁴ There is deliberation not only over clothes, make-up, hair, and nails, but walk, voice, body, movement, and gesture also.

“Dear Nice White ladies”: A Womanist Response to Intersectional Feminism and Sexual Violence

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Gendered violence is historically and presently a colonial tool that wields power over and against Indigenous peoples, attempting to destroy or erase their sovereignty and lives. Decolonization is necessary in movements addressing gendered violence in settler colonial nation-states. In this article, we forefront Indigenous organizing as a practice of survivance and decolonial feminist theory building. We argue that decolonial feminist critique deepens our understanding of complex iterations of gendered violence. By witnessing resistant Indigenous community responses to sexual violence, we can begin to imagine and build coalitional decolonial feminist possibilities. Witnessing, we argue, is a decolonial heuristic for engaging with resistant subjectivities at the colonial difference as embodied theory and praxis of decolonial feminism.

“Pedagogies of Race”: Digital Humanities in the Age of Ferguson

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In their 2013 essay,“Can Digital Humanities Mean Transformative Critique?” Alexis Lothian and Amanda Phillips ask,“What would digital scholarship and the humanities disciplines be like if they centered around processes and possibilities of social and cultural transformation as well as institutional preservation? If they centered around questions of labor, race, gender, and justice at personal, local, and global scales?”(Lothian and Phillips). As digital humanities scholars invested in critical race studies, we share their concerns, and we applaud the recent work in the field that draws attention to these questions. But we are also invested in the development of a practice-based digital humanities that attends to the crucial issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the undergraduate classroom and beyond.

Theoretical Considerations in the Examination of African American Girls and Women in Sport

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In the United States of America, Black (e.g. African American) women are said to experience a ‘double burden’ based on race and gender marginalisations (St. Jean and Feagin 1998). In this chapter, the author will discuss critical theories and why they are the most appropriate framework to illuminate African American women’s experiences of ‘double burden’ in and through sport and society. Therefore, the contribution of African American women intellectuals, intersectionality and the vagaries of Black feminist thinking are debated and connected to the development of womanist theory, Black feminist thought, critical race feminism, and Hip-Hop feminism. In this chapter, it is argued that these critical theories have the potential to better elucidate African American women’s experiences of sport.

Fit and Phat: Black College Women and their Relationship with Physical Activity, Obesity and Campus Recreation Facilities

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Bioengineering Strategies for Designing Targeted Cancer Therapies

Abstract:

The goals of bioengineering strategies for targeted cancer therapies are (1) to deliver a high dose of an anticancer drug directly to a cancer tumor, (2) to enhance drug uptake by malignant cells, and (3) to minimize drug uptake by nonmalignant cells. Effective cancer-targeting therapies will require both passive- and active-targeting strategies and a thorough understanding of physiologic barriers to targeted drug delivery. Designing a targeted therapy includes the selection and optimization of a nanoparticle delivery vehicle for passive accumulation in tumors, a targeting moiety for active receptor-mediated uptake, and stimuli-responsive polymers for control of drug release. The future direction of cancer targeting is a combinatorial approach, in which targeting therapies are designed to use multiple-targeting strategies. The combinatorial approach will enable combination therapy for delivery of multiple drugs and dual ligand targeting to improve targeting specificity. Targeted cancer treatments in development and the new combinatorial approaches show promise for improving targeted anticancer drug delivery and improving treatment outcomes.

Fusogenic-oligoarginine peptide-mediated silencing of the CIP2A oncogene suppresses oral cancer tumor growth in vivo

Abstract:

Intracellular delivery and endosomal escape of functional small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) remain major barriers limiting the clinical translation of RNA interference (RNAi)-based therapeutics. Recently, we demonstrated that a endosome-disruptive peptide we synthesized termed, 599, could enhance the intracellular delivery and bioavailability of siRNAs designed to target the CIP2A oncoprotein (siCIP2A) into oral cancer cells and consequently inhibit oral cancer cell invasiveness and anchorage-independent growth in vitro. Thus, to further assess the therapeutic potential of the 599 peptide in mediating RNAi-based therapeutics for oral cancer and its prospective applicability in clinical settings, the objective of the current study was to determine whether intratumoral dosing of the 599+siCIP2A complex could induce silencing of CIP2A and consequently impair tumor growth using a xenograft oral cancer mouse model. Our results demonstrated that the 599 peptide was able to protect siRNAs from degradation by serum and ribonucleases in vitro, confirming the stability of the 599+siRNA complex and its potential for in vivo utility. Moreover, 599 peptide-mediated delivery of siCIP2A to tumor tissue induced CIP2A silencing without any associated toxicity, consequently resulting in reduction of the mitotic index and significant inhibition of tumor growth. Together, these data suggest that the 599 peptide carrier could be a clinically effective mediator of RNAi-based cancer therapeutics.

Fusogenic-oligoarginine peptide-mediated silencing of the CIP2A oncogene suppresses oral cancer tumor growth in vivo

Abstract:

Intracellular delivery and endosomal escape of functional small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) remain major barriers limiting the clinical translation of RNA interference (RNAi)-based therapeutics. Recently, we demonstrated that a cell-penetrating endosome-disruptive peptide we synthesized, termed 599, enhanced the intracellular delivery and bioavailability of siRNAs designed to target the CIP2A oncoprotein (siCIP2A) into oral cancer cells and consequently inhibited oral cancer cell invasiveness and anchorage-independent growth in vitro. Thus, to further assess the therapeutic potential of the 599 peptide in mediating RNAi-based therapeutics for oral cancer and its prospective applicability in clinical settings, the objective of the current study was to determine whether intratumoral dosing of the 599 peptide–siCIP2A complex could induce silencing of CIP2A and consequently impair tumor growth using a xenograft oral cancer mouse model. Our results demonstrate that the 599 peptide is able to protect siRNAs from degradation by serum and ribonucleases in vitro and upon intratumoral injection in vivo, confirming the stability of the 599 peptide–siRNA complex and its potential for therapeutic utility. Moreover, 599 peptide-mediated delivery of siCIP2A to tumor tissue induces CIP2A silencing without any associated toxicity, consequently resulting in reduction of the mitotic index and significant inhibition of tumor growth. Together, these data suggest that the 599 peptide carrier is a clinically effective mediator of RNAi-based cancer therapeutics.

Dual peptide-mediated targeted delivery of siRNAs for the treatment of oral cancer

Abstract:

Two major hurdles for small interfering RNA (siRNA)-mediated therapies are cell/tissue-type targeted delivery and endosomal entrapment of siRNAs, resulting in inefficient gene silencing. As a result, the objective of this study was to examine the feasibility of utilizing two peptides, one with cancer cell-targeting specificity and the second with endosome-disruptive properties, to co-deliver bioactive siRNAs into oral cancer cells overexpressing the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and induce silencing of the targeted oncoprotein, CIP2A. Previously, we designed a novel endosome-disruptive peptide, termed 599, that was demonstrated to mediate intracellular delivery of bioactive siRNAs targeting CIP2A (siCIP2A) in vitro. Furthermore, we recently demonstrated that 599 peptide-mediated delivery of siCIP2A into tumor tissues via intratumoral injections reduced the expression of CIP2A and significantly inhibited tumor growth. In order to induce targeted uptake via systemic administration, we designed the EGFR targeting peptide, GE11R9, which was found to deliver siRNAs specifically to EGFR-overexpressing oral cancer cells; however, it was incapable of mediating the delivery of bioactive siRNAs due to endosomal entrapment. Consequently, we developed a novel dual peptide delivery strategy, combining the 599 peptide, with the GE11R9 peptide and examined their ability to co-deliver siRNAs. Our results demonstrated that the dual peptide complex exhibited effective binding and specific uptake of siRNAs into EGFR-overexpressing cells compared to low-EGFR-expressing cells. The co-addition of the 599 peptide with the GE11R9 peptide also restored siRNA functionality. Furthermore, when administered systemically to mice bearing xenograft oral tumors, the dual peptide complex mediated increased targeted delivery of siRNAs into tumor tissues in comparison to the 599 peptide alone. Together, these data demonstrate the clinical potential of the dual peptide strategy for RNAi-based therapeutics by synergistically mediating the effective targeting and delivery of bioactive siRNAs into EGFR-overexpressing cancer cells.