Harvey Young

Nutrition and Somatomedin: II. Serum Somatomedin Activity and Cartilage Growth Activity in Streptozotocin-diabetic Rats

Since diabetes mellitus is a condition in which poor growth occurs despite elevation of plasma GH, we have attempted to determine if poor growth in diabetes, as in malnutrition, could be associated with a decrease in somatomedin activity. Young male rats were rendered diabetic with intravenous streptozotocin (STZ). The growth activity of their cartilage was estimated by 35SO4 incorporation in vitro, and somatomedin (SM) activity in their serum was determined by the stimulation of SO4 incorporation by cartilage from hypophysectomized rats or normal young pigs. Cartilage growth activity was significantly decreased 24 hours after STZ and fell to hypopituitary levels after 48 hours. The decreased growth activity could not be attributed to decreased cartilage responsiveness to SM, since incubation of diabetic cartilage with normal rat serum (normal SM) resulted in significant stimulation of cartilage SO4 incorporation. SM in diabetic serum decreased to hypopituitary levels 24 hours after STZ, and decreased further after 48 hours. The decrease in SM and cartilage growth activity was not prevented by the administration of high doses of bovine GH. The fall in bioassayable SM appeared to be due in part to the presence of an SM inhibitor in the diabetic serum, since addition of diabetic serum to normal serum decreased to measurable SM in the normal serum. Administration of insulin to diabetic rats 48 hours after STZ led to significant increases in SM and cartilage growth activity, and insulin therapy 24 hours after STZ prevented the decreases in SM and cartilage growth activity which occurred without insulin. Thus, acute STZ-induced diabetes in rats was associated with a significant decrease in both serum SM and cartilage growth activity; these changes were not ameliorated by administration of GH, and insulin therapy could both prevent and reverse the fall in SM and cartilage growth activity. From these observations, we conclude that (1) that fall in somatomedin activity and cartilage growth activity associated with STZ-induced diabetes appears to be due to insulin deficiency and (2) growth failure in diabetes, as in malnutrition, may be due to decreased somatomedin activity.

Embodying Black experience : stillness, critical memory, and the Black body

Embodying Black Experience places a spotlight on spectacular acts of racial violence--from police stops (racial profiling) to lynching campaigns--and shows how African American men and women have employed performance to respond to the intrusion of such events within their daily lives. Masterfully blending biography, archival history, performance theory, and phenomenology, Harvey Young centers selected artistic and athletic performances--photography, boxing, theatre/performance art, and museum display--as lenses through which to gain access to the lived experiences of a variety of individuals. The photographs of Joseph Zealy, Richard Roberts, and Walker Evans; the boxing performances of Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali; the plays of Suzan-Lori Parks, Robbie McCauley, and Dael Orlandersmith; and the tragic performances of Bootjack McDaniels and James Cameron offer insight into the lives of black folk across the previous two centuries and reveal the similar ways in which black artists/performers/athletes have acted to challenge the racist (and racializing) assumptions of the societies they lived in.

The Black Body as Souvenir in American Lynching

This essay reads the collection of body parts, in the aftermath of the lynching spectacle, as souvenirs, fetish objects, and performance remains. Along the way, it spotlights the importance of narrative to the souvenir, challenges the notion that performance disappears through an emphasis on its remains, and asserts that embodied experiences of the past can be accessed in the present.

Touching history: Suzan-Lori Parks, Robbie McCauley and the Black Body

This essay closely reads two contemporary performance projects by Suzan-Lori Parks (Venus) and Robbie McCauley (Sallys Rape). It examines how the authors (re)present black history on stage, manipulate language to reveal a particular, repeating experience of blackness, and center the body as the site where these accumulated repeating experiences visibly express themselves.

An Interview with David Henry Hwang

Since winning wide acclaim and a Tony Award for his play M. Butterfly in 1988, David Henry Hwang (Fig. 1) has remained one of the brightest luminaries in American theatre. A playwright, screenwriter, and librettist, he regularly tells stories that center on complex characters and reveal their experiences with Western imperialism, American racism, and cross-generational family differences. His works include the plays FOB, Golden Child, Yellow Face, Chinglish, and Kung Fu ; the revised book for the 2002 Broadway revival of the Rodgers and Hammersteins musical Flower Drum Song ; and, most recently, episodes of the television series The Affair . In this interview, Hwang reflects on the longevity of East West Players, comments on todays culture wars, and shares his perspective on the current state of Asian American theatre.

Introduction: Border Moves

A border defines. It structures space by establishing a point of reference that immediately and consequently positions people and objects in relation to itself. To stand on this or that side of the border is to either physically perform your belonging within a community or to trespass into another. It is to be domestic or foreign, home or abroad, insider or outsider, citizen or immigrant, at rest or on the move. A border transforms space into place. It creates nations and states in addition to smaller and less formalized social units. It keeps communities apart or forces them to remain together. It not only makes cultural production – literally the production of culture – possible but also provides a mechanism for distinguishing and differentiating cultures. Borders inform our embodied experiences by framing our perspectives on the world, policing the movement of our bodies, and enabling (or denying) access to goods and services that support our physical, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual development. Simply put: we are the products of the borders that surround us. Our daily performances reflect our bordered existence.

Signs of Life

Every day, I pass four Black Lives Matter yard signs as I walk to my office on Northwestern University’s suburban Chicago campus. Those placards, with large letters stenciled in black font against a white background, are models of minimalism. They also are reminiscent of the “I AM A Man” signs held or worn by striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968 that called attention to racial discrimination and unsafe working conditions disproportionately experienced by African Americans in that city. The Black Lives Matter signs assert the value of life and recognize the alarming number of African Americans who have been murdered or killed across the US. Their appearance emerges in a moment of heightened social activism in which the deaths of specific individuals have captured national attention: Trayvon Martin in 2012; Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice in 2014; Sandra Bland, Freddie Carlos Gray, Jr., and Walter Scott in 2015; and Philando Castile and Alton Sterling in 2016, to name a few. In greater Chicago, where the shootings and murders of young black men are weekly (and sometimes daily) phenomena, the Black Lives Matter campaign resonates. Those signs will come down. Such is the nature of things. They will weather and eventually become unsightly blemishes on manicured front lawns. They will be replaced by other signs seeking to raise awareness about other issues such as the protection of public parks from commercial development or the importance of voting for a particular political candidate. Some signs will be saved, perhaps as souvenirs of a past moment of heightened activism. Most will be discarded. When those signs disappear, will black life continue to capture the attention of a wide and diverse public? Will it still matter? The imminence of removal invites a consideration of the role that Black Lives Matter performances have played in remembering, recording, and narrating black life for the future. A signature element of the Civil Rights Movement (and the numerous campaigns that it inspired) was the embrace of performance to relay lived experience in order to encourage social change. From Rosa Parks’s strategic decision to sit (and remain sitting) on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to

An Interview with Quiara Alegría Hudes

Quiara Alegria Hudes (Fig. 1) won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Water by the Spoonful , the second play in her “Elliot” trilogy. She is a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist for Elliot, A Soldiers Fugue , the first play in the trilogy, and the musical In the Heights . Her plays include The Happiest Song Plays Last (which ends the trilogy), 26 Miles , Yemayas Belly , and Daphnes Dive . In 2012, the Los Angeles Times praised Hudes as “one of the most poetic, socially clued-in young voices in the American theater.” In this engaging interview with Editor Harvey Young, Quiara Alegria Hudes talks about the role of music in her plays, socioeconomic isolation in cities, the inspiration for some of her plays, and the importance of asking the deep question.

Still Thrills: The Drama of Chess

Although chess is a game that is played, it is also an event that is performed. An analysis of the Fischer-Spassky World Championship, the match between Garry Kasparov and IBMs Deep Blue, and the European tour of the 19th-century American champion Paul Morphy reveals the qualities that make competitive chess a theatrical event that relies both on bodies and on imaginations.

Black Performance Studies in the New Millennium

Since 2000, the field of black performance studies has not only emerged, but also flourished, stimulating a vibrant interdisciplinary conversation. An increasing number of books appears each year, demonstrating a growing interest in nuanced critical readings of and savvy theoretical engagements with the enactment and experience of race. Over the past two years, for example, no fewer than ten books in this area have been published by a range of scholars with varying disciplinary appointments, including Aliyyah I. AbdurRahman (Against the Closet, 2012), Robin Bernstein (Racial Innocence, 2011), Soyica Diggs Colbert (The African American Theatrical Body, 2011), Koritha Mitchell (Living with Lynching, 2011), Cherise Smith (Enacting Others, 2011), Salamishah Tillet (Sites of Slavery, 2012), and Kyla Wazana Tompkins (Racial Indigestion, 2012), as well as Tony Perucci, Stephanie Leigh Batiste, and Michele Elam, whose books are reviewed here. This increase in scholarship can be attributed to several interrelated factors.