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Celebrating Women’s History Month

This March we celebrate Women’s History Month, commemorating the lives, legacies, and contributions of women around the world. We’ve compiled a brief reading list that demonstrates the diversity of women’s lives and achievements.

Women in Asia

The Courtesan’s Arts: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Edited by Martha Feldman and Bonnie Gordon

Delve into courtesan cultures, including artistic practices and cultural production, often overlooked or diminished in relevancy.

The Power of Gender and the Gender of Power: Explorations in Early Indian History by Kumkum Roy

Discover the distinct strategies through which men and women constituted their identities in India for all their implications, tensions, and inconsistencies.

Cornelia Sorabji: India’s Pioneer Woman Lawyer: A Biography by Suparna Gooptu

Learn about Sorabji’s decisive role in opening up the legal profession to women long before they were allowed to plead before the courts of law, including her writings and personal correspondence.

Women in the Middle East

Cleopatra: A Biography by Duane W. Roller

Uncover not the figure in popular culture, arts, and literature of the last five hundred years — but the real last Greek queen of Egypt.

Conceiving Citizens: Women and the Politics of Motherhood in Iran by Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet

Place women in their proper role as mothers of a nation — central to the history of Iran during successive regimes in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire by Leslie P. Peirce

Examine the sources of royal women’s power and assess the reactions of contemporaries, which ranged from loyal devotion to armed opposition.

Women in British History

Singled Out: How Two Million British Women Survived Without Men After the First World War by Virginia Nicholson

Try to keep up with a generation of women fated to remain unmarried in the aftermath of the Great War.

The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London by Barbara A. Hanawalt

Consider an overlooked contribution to London’s economy—the wealth that women accumulated through inheritance, dowry, and dower.

Queen Anne: Patroness of Arts by James A. Winn

Study the life and reign of Queen Anne through literature, art, and music from Dryden, Pope, Purcell, Handel, Lely, Kneller, Wren, Vanbrugh, Addison, Swift, and many other artists.

Women in European History

Murder of a Medici Princess by Caroline P. Murphy

Illuminate the brilliant life and tragic death of Isabella de Medici, one of the brightest stars in the dazzling world of Renaissance Italy, the daughter of Duke Cosimo I, ruler of Florence and Tuscany.

Writing the Revolution: A French Women’s History in Letters by Lindsay A. Parker

Investigate nearly 1,000 familiar letters, which convey the intellectual, emotional, and familial life of a revolutionary in all of its complexity.

The Burgher and the Whore: Prostitution in Early Modern Amsterdam by Lotte van de Pol

Delve into the cultural, social, and economic conditions of the lives of poor women in a seafaring society from the perspectives of prostitutes, their bawds, their clients, and the police.

Women in American History

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy by Elizabeth R. Varon

Probe the life and work of one of the most remarkable women of the Civil War era–the leader of the North’s key spy ring in the South.

Working Women, Literary Ladies: The Industrial Revolution and Female Aspiration by Sylvia J. Cook

Trace the hopes and tensions generated by expectations of gender and class from the first New England operatives in the early 19th century to immigrant sweatshop workers in the early 20th.

Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement by Sally McMillen

Join the meeting that launched the women’s rights movement and changed American history.

I Died for Beauty: Dorothy Wrinch and the Cultures of Science by Marjorie Senechal

Enter the provocative, scintillating mind of the talented and flawed scientist.

African American Women Chemists by Jeannette Brown

Connect to the lives of African America women chemists, from the earliest pioneers through late 1960′s when the Civil Rights Acts were passed, to today.

Women in Latin American History

Power and Women’s Representation in Latin America by Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer

Look at the recent trends in women’s representation in Latin America, and the complex and often incomplete nature of women’s political representation.

Refusing the Favor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880 by Deena J. Gonzalez

Uncover the key role “invisible” Spanish-Mexican women played in the US takeover of Mexico’s northern territory and gain a greater understanding of conquest and colonization.

Weaving the Past: A History of Latin America’s Indigenous Women from the Prehispanic Period to the Present by Susan Kellogg

Reach back through women’s long history of labor, political activism, and contributions to — or even support of — family and community well-being.

Women’s history encompasses the history of humankind, including men, but approaches it from a woman‐centered perspective. It highlights women’s activities and ideas and asserts that their problems, issues, and accomplishments are just as central to the telling of the human story as are those of their brothers, husbands, and sons. It places the sociopolitical relations between the sexes, or gender, at the center of historical inquiry and questions female subordination.

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Image Credits: (1) Physical World Map via CIA World Factbook (public domain). (2) Map of Asia by Bytebear. CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Map of Middle East by NuclearVacuum. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (4) Map of Britain by Anonymous101. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (5) Map of Europe via CIA World Factbook (public domain). (6) Blank US Map by Theshibboleth. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. (7) Map of Latin America and the Caribbean by Yug. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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                Related StoriesIn memoriam: Tony BennAmerica and the politics of identity in BritainCancer therapy: now it’s getting personal 

America and the politics of identity in Britain

By David Ellwood

“The Americanisation of British politics has been striking this conference season,” declared The Economist last autumn. “British politicians and civil servants love freebies to the US ‘to see how they do things,’” reported Simon Jenkins in The Guardian in November. Among the keenest such travellers is Michael Gove, the Education Secretary. Talking to the Daily Telegraph in February 2014, Gove spoke of the entrepreneurial spirit he found in California, and how his contacts with Microsoft and Google were helping him bring the skills of Silicon Valley to Britain. Perhaps Gove simply didn’t know how many UK governments of recent decades have journeyed along the same road, with the same aims. When Chancellor, Gordon Brown was tireless in his efforts to get British business “to rival America’s entrepreneurial dash,” as he told the same Daily Telegraph in December 2003, with speeches, conferences, educational programmes and other gestures, including visits from stars such as Bill Gates and Alan Greenspan.

One of the resources the British governing class most often turns to in its search for a successful, competitve identity for their country is ‘America’. Not American policy or money of course, not even that ‘Special Relationship’ which London clings on to so forlornly. Instead it’s an inspirational version of the United States: a source of models, examples, energies, ideas, standards; an invoked America whose soft power influence and prestige never fade. It is a form of virtual political capital which governments from Thatcher to Cameron feel they can draw on to compensate them for all their frustrations in Europe, their humiliations in the wider world and the intractability of their problems at home.

Overlooked by all the commentators without exception, there has long been an American question in Britain’s identity debate. It has not been put there by artists, experts, army officers, sports personalities or even Rupert Murdoch. It has been imported systematically and with great persistence by the governments of the last thirty years, and with it they have brought a series of possible answers. The underlying purpose has been to solve the identity crisis by way of ceaseless efforts to ‘modernise’ the nation, to renew its democracy but also to raise its ranking in those league tables of world competitiveness which the land of Darwin takes so seriously, and — of course — to distinguish it from everything supposedly going on in the European Union. Where better than America to find inspiration and encouragement for this permanent revolution of change the governing class repeatedly insists on?

A visionary image of the United States was central to Margaret Thatcher’s political revolution of the 1980s. As she told a Joint Session of Congress in 1985: “We are having to recover the spirit of enterprise which you never lost. Many of the policies you are following are the ones we are following.” Employment policy was one of the first examples, with reforms explicitly modelled on Reaganite ideology and experience. Even the wording of legislation was directly copied. Under Thatcher, Blair and Brown, certain public sectors, in particular the school and university systems, were reformed again and again in the hope of hooking them up to the motor of economic growth in the way their equivalents were thought to function in the United States. Since the 1980s, the Home Office has been the most zealous of departments in importing American methods and innovations. Simon Jenkins says: “An American friend of mine spent much of his time showing British officials around New York’s police department after its recent success in cutting crime.” Labour’s recent prime ministers were both enthralled by America’s examples. Gordon Brown proposed that school children should swear allegiance to the Union Jack, that there be a British Fourth of July, and a museum celebrating great documents of British democracy. Blair and Brown were the ones who started introducing American private health care firms into the running of the NHS.

David Cameron has followed the American path laid down by Thatcher, Blair, and Brown with zeal and ambition at least equal to theirs. The Tory foreign policy platform for the 2010 election was written by a Brit sitting in the Heritage Foundation in Washington. Just as the outgoing Labour administration created a British Supreme Court, the incoming coalition has set up a new National Security Council, with a National Security Adviser. In November 2012 the country was called upon to elect its first police commissioners, and there was talk of a single school commissioner. Now the Prime Minister talks of life sentences really meaning life in prison. All of this is based on American precedents. But Cameron’s affiliations in America seem to be deepest in parts of California where even Tony Blair did not reach, in particular the Google Corporation. A featured speaker at Google Zeitgeist conferences, Cameron is said to believe that the internet revolution as configured by Google, “meshes with the modern conservative mission – flattening hierarchies and empowering people…” Across Silicon Valley, Cameron and his strategists see a land where “a dynamic economy meets the family-friendly work-place…where hard-headed businessmen drink fruit smoothies and walk around in recycled trainers,” as an admiring journalist put it.

The evidence of the last 40-odd years suggests that in their failure to invent a generally agreed moral theme or narrative of change for their society, the British governing class clings to the America of their imaginations to fill the void. Not because the creed of Americanism as such, far less American politics as currently displayed, can provide the cohesiveness required but simply because US experience over time appears to show how a uniquely powerful machine of national pride and aspiration, embodied in institutions, rituals, stories, and proclaimed values, can keep a multicultural nation glued together and provide ever-lasting hope of renewal. With its exceptional levels of child poverty, social inequality and numbers of people in jail, the governments of the last 30 years may not have got the Americanised Britain they dreamed of. But this has not discouraged them. After all, Ministers know that their enthusiasms can always count on a far warmer reception across the Atlantic than anywhere else in the world, including in Britain itself.

David Ellwood is Senior Adjunct Professor of European Studies at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Bologna Center. He is the author of The Shock of America: Europe and the Challenge of the Century. His first major book was Italy 1943-1945: The Politics of Liberation (1985) then came Rebuilding Europe: Western Europe, America and Postwar Reconstruction (1992). The fundamental theme of his research — the function of American power in contemporary European history — has shifted over the years to emphasize cultural power, particularly that of the American cinema industry. He was President of the International Association of Media and History 1999-2004 and a Fellow of the Rothermere America Institute, Oxford, in 2006. Read more from David Ellwood on OUPblog.

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Image credit: Supreme Court of the United States. By US Capitol. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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                Related StoriesIn memoriam: Tony BennWhy the lobbying bill is a threat to the meaning of charityCancer therapy: now it’s getting personal 

In memoriam: Tony Benn

By Jad Adams

Tony Benn has left as an enduring monument: one of the great diaries of the twentieth century, lasting from 1940, when he was fifteen, to 2009 when illness forced him to stop.

They are published as nine volumes but these are perhaps ten percent of the 15 million words in the original dairy. I am one of the few people to have had access to the manuscript diary, in the course of writing my biography of Benn. For this I received every assistance from him and his staff in the jumbled, chaotic office in the basement of his Holland Park Avenue home.

The diaries of course are of historic interest because they reveal the work of a cabinet minister and member of parliament for more than fifty years. Over time the Benn charts post-war hope, the rise of the Labour militants, the battle of Orgreave, and the decline of the Left. The books also have descriptions of constituents’ experiences in his weekly surgery, an opportunity to meet the people and sample their woes, which is hated by some MPs but was embraced by Benn.

They also show the development of Benn’s family of four children, twelve grandchildren, and the suffering of the death of parents and partner. One would be hard put to it to find anywhere in literature a more poignant description of death and continuing loss than Benn’s of Caroline, his partner of more than fifty years whose illness and death was described in remorseless detail in manuscript, some of which was published in More Time for Politics (2007).

Benn had always felt he ought to be writing a diary, as a part of the non-conformist urge to account for every moment of life as a gift from God. He explained at one of our last formal conversations: ‘It’s very self obsessed. I must admit it worries me that I should spend so much time on myself, I saw it as an account, accountability to the Almighty, when I die give him 15 million words and say: there, you decide. I think there is a moral element in it, of righteousness.’

This need to see time as a precious resource to be accounted for went back to his father, William Wedgwood Benn (Later Lord Stansgate) who expected the boy Benn to fill in a time chart showing how he had made use of his days. Benn senior had read an early self-help book by Arnold Bennett called How to Live 24 Hours a Day on making the best use of time. ‘Father became obsessed with it,’ Benn said.

Tony Benn had been keeping a diary sporadically since childhood. It had always been his ambition to keep one, and early fragments of diary exist, including one during his time in the services, where diary-keeping was forbidden for security reasons so he put key words relating to places or equipment in code. In the 1950s he began keeping a political diary and wrote at least some parts of a diary for every year from 1953. The emotional shock of his father’s death in 1960 and subsequent political upsets stopped his diary writing in 1961 and 1962 but, with a return to the House of Commons in sight, he resumed it in 1963.

He started dictating the diary to a tape recorder in 1966 when he joined the cabinet because he could not dictate accounts of cabinet meetings to a secretary who was not covered by the Official Secrets Act. Benn would store the tapes, not knowing when he would transcribe them, or indeed if they would be transcribed in his lifetime. His daughter, Melissa spoke of arriving at their home late at night when she was a teenager, and hearing her father’s voice dictating the diary, followed by snoring as he fell asleep at the microphone.

Benn stopped writing the diary after he fell ill in 2009 in what was probably the first stroke he was to suffer. He explained to me:

‘You can’t not be a diarist some of the time. One day is much the same as the other and it is a lot of effort. You really do have to be very conscientious and keep it up in detail and keep up the recordings and so on and it took over my life, also I’m not sure now that I’m not in a position on the inside on anything where my reflections would be interesting. I think my reflections might be as interesting as anybody else’s but whether it constitutes a diary when I’m not at the heart of anything…

‘I never thought of it as an achievement, just something I did, it’s been a bit of a burden to have to write it all down every night. It began as a journal where I put down things that interested me during the war, I drew a little bit on that for Years of Hope (1994). You can say you’ve achieved a reasonably accurate daily account of what has happened to you and since people are always shaped by what has happened to them so if you have a diary you get three bites at your own experience: when it happens, when you write it down and when you read it later and realise you were wrong.’

Benn did not think he would publish it in his lifetime, but in about 1983 he decided to type up six months and have a look at it. He invited Ruth Winstone to help with the diary in 1985 and found they worked so well together that she stayed and edited all the diaries.

His final thought on the long labour of the Benn Diaries was: ‘I couldn’t recommend anyone to keep a diary without warning them that it does take over your life.’

Jad Adams’ Tony Benn: A Biography is published by Biteback.  His next book is Women and the Vote: A World History to be published by OUP in the autumn.

Image credit: Portrait of Tony Benn. By I, Isujosh. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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                Related StoriesWhy the lobbying bill is a threat to the meaning of charityThreshold Collaborative: a lesson in engaged story workWomen of 20th century music 

Threshold Collaborative: a lesson in engaged story work

By Alisa Del Tufo

Stories are powerful ways to bring the voice and ideas of marginalized people into endeavors to restore justice and enact change. Beginning in the early 1990s, I started using oral history to bring the stories and experiences of abused women into efforts to make policy changes in New York City. Trained and supported by colleagues at Columbia Center for Oral History and Hunter College’s Puerto Rican Studies Department, I was able to pioneer the use of oral history to leverage social change.

In 2007, I became an Ashoka Fellow and had the space to organize my ideas and experiences about oral history, story gathering, and participatory practices into a set of teachable methods and strategies. This resulted in the creation of Threshold Collaborative, an organization that uses stories as a catalyst for change. Our methods aim to deepen empathy and ignite action in order to build more just, caring, and healthy communities. Working with justice organizations around the country, we help design and implement ways to do that through engaged story work.

This is why when a colleague who runs a youth leadership organization in Pennsylvania wanted to share the ideas and voices of the area’s marginalized youth, we helped to create a school-based story-sharing initiative called A Picture is Worth…. This project came to fruition after the New York Times gave Reading, PA the “unwelcome distinction” of having the highest poverty rate of any American city. Reading also suffered from elevated high school dropout numbers and extraordinarily low college degree rates.

Threshold went to the I-LEAD Charter High School in Reading, which offers poor and immigrant youth another chance to succeed. After spending time at the school — meeting and talking with teachers, parents and learners — we brainstormed a project that would incorporate the personal stories of 22 learners into an initiative to help them learn about themselves, their peers, and their larger community. Audio story gathering and sharing were at the core of this work. The idea was to support them in identifying their vision and values, link them with their peers, and thereby align them with positive change going on in Reading.

With the support of I-LEAD, assistance from the administrators and teachers, the talent of a fabulous photographer Janice Levy, and of course, the participation of the students, Threshold was able to launch an in-school curricular literacy class, which revolved around story gathering and sharing. The project uses writing, audio stories and photography to create powerful interactive narratives of students, highlighting their unique yet unifying experiences. A Picture is Worth… also provides an associated curriculum in literacy for high school students. The project fosters acquisition of real-world knowledge and skills, and encourages young learners to become more engaged in personal and scholastic growth, by combining personal stories with academic standards.

We also gathered and edited the stories of all 22 learners and have linked them with the wonderful photos done by Levy. You can find these powerful voices and images on our Soundcloud page. Here is one of the photos and stories:

Now, we are growing this project to be able to share it with schools and other youth leadership programs around the country. Through our book, curriculum and training program, we hope to inspire youth justice programs to see how young people can contribute to positive change through the power of their stories.

More information about the project can be found at apictureisworth.org, as well as on Facebook.

Alisa Del Tufo has worked to support justice and to strengthen empathy throughout her life. Raising over 80 million dollars, she founded three game changing organizations: Sanctuary for Families, CONNECT, and Threshold Collaborative. In the early 1990s, Del Tufo pioneered the use of oral history and community engagement to build grassroots change around the issues of family, and intimate violence. Her innovations have been recognized through a Revson, Rockefeller, and Ashoka Fellowship.

The Oral History Review, published by the Oral History Association, is the U.S. journal of record for the theory and practice of oral history. Its primary mission is to explore the nature and significance of oral history and advance understanding of the field among scholars, educators, practitioners, and the general public. Follow them on Twitter at @oralhistreview, like them on Facebook, add them to your circles on Google Plus, follow them on Tumblr, listen to them on Soundcloud, or follow the latest Oral History Review posts on the OUPblog via email or RSS to preview, learn, connect, discover, and study oral history.

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An interview with I. Glenn Cohen on law and bioscience

There are huge changes taking place in the world of biosciences, and whether it’s new discoveries in stem cell research, new reproductive technologies, or genetics being used to make predictions about health and behavior, there are legal ramifications for everything. Journal of Law and the Biosciences is a new journal published by Oxford University Press in association Duke University, Harvard University Law School, and Stanford University, focused on the legal implications of the scientific revolutions in the biosciences. We sat down with one of the Editors in Chief, I. Glenn Cohen, to discuss the rapidly changing field, emerging legal issues, and the new peer-reviewed and open access journal.

Why have you decided to launch Journal of Law and the Biosciences?

This is an incredibly exciting time to be working in these areas and in particular the legal aspects related to these areas. We are seeing major developments in genomics, in neuroscience, in patent law, and in health care. We want to be in the forefront of this, and we think that a peer-review journal led by the leading research institutions working in this area in the United States is the way to go.

How has this subject changed in the last 10 years?

The genomics revolution, the reality of cheap whole genome sequencing, further developments in the ability to examine neuroscience, the realization that biosciences are a crucial aspect of criminal investigations, and the importance of research ethics have all become more prominent, as have roles that law and the biosciences play in the criminal justice system, health care delivery, and our understanding of ourselves.

What are the major intersections of law and the biosciences?

Neuroscience, genetics, research ethics, human enhancement, development of drugs and devices in biologics, and medical ethics, and many others.

What is it that makes this such a fast growing area of law?

First, we are fuelled by development in the biosciences, which is moving at an increasingly fast pace since we can build new technologies over old technologies. Second, there is increasing interest by jurists and by lawyers in these areas. Third is an increase in interest in health care and sciences more generally. From President Obama’s announcement of a major enterprise in studying the human brain to the passing of the Affordable Care Act, we are seeing a golden age in this field.

What do you expect to see in the coming years from both the field and the journal?

The ethical issues that have always been in the background are going to be made much more pressing, such as with cheap whole genome sequencing, fetal blood tests called non-invasive genetic testing, and increasingly science-based attempts to restrict abortion rights. All of these are raising questions that have always been present but are making them more pressing and also making it more likely that courts and legislatures will have to be the ones to wrestle with them correctly. We are hoping that the journal plays a role in answering those questions.

Last year, with the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM) and revisions to the common rule in human subjects’ research, there has also been a lot more emphasis and rethinking about the rules by which science operates at the level of human subject research regulation.

 What do you hope to see in the coming years from both the field and the journal?

Increasing number of law students and non-lawyers realizing the important role that law has to play in these disputes and enabling discourse at a deeper level than we have seen to this date.

What does Journal of Law and the Biosciences expect to focus on within the field (trends / new approaches)?

Stem cell technology, reproductive technologies, law and genetics, law and neuroscience, human subjects’ research, human enhancement, patent law, food and drug regulation, and predictive analytics and big data . . . but those are just off the top of my head. We are hoping to get submissions in many more areas as well.

Nita Farahany, I. Glenn Cohen, and Henry T. (Hank) Greely are the Editors of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences. I. Glenn Cohen, JD, is Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics at Harvard Law School. Cohen’s current projects relate to reproduction and reproductive technology, research ethics, rationing in law and medicine, health policy, and medical tourism. Nita Farahany, PhD, JD, is Professor of Law & Philosophy at Duke Law School and Professor of Genome Sciences and Policy at the IGSP. Since 2010, she has served on Obama’s Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Henry T. (Hank) Greely, JD, is the Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law at Stanford University, where he directs the Center for Law and the Biosciences. He chairs the California Advisory Committee on Human Stem Cell Research, is a founder and director of the International Neuroethics Society, and belongs to the Advisory Council for the National Institute for General Medical Sciences and the Institute of Medicine’s Neuroscience Forum.

The Journal of Law and the Biosciences (JLB) is the first fully Open Access peer-reviewed legal journal focused on the advances at the intersection of law and the biosciences. A co-venture between Duke University, Harvard University Law School, and Stanford University, and published by Oxford University Press, this open access, online, and interdisciplinary academic journal publishes cutting-edge scholarship in this important new field. The Journal contains original and response articles, essays, and commentaries on a wide range of topics, including bioethics, neuroethics, genetics, reproductive technologies, stem cells, enhancement, patent law, and food and drug regulation.

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Cancer therapy: now it’s getting personal

By Miranda Payne

Oncologists have long known that one patient is not the same as another. Indeed one patient’s cancer is not the same as another’s. Regardless of apparent clinical similarities, doctors witness huge variations in rates of cancer progression and patients’ response to treatment. There is increasing understanding of the need to investigate the multiple molecular differences between cancers, which may predict differences in patterns of growth and spread, and assist in the selection of the most effective treatments, whilst avoiding treatment in those unlikely to benefit. These molecular differences can evolve during the course of a patient’s disease, so that the cancer from which a patient might die may be very different to the one with which they were originally diagnosed. Exciting as these advances are, they bring into stark relief just how difficult the challenges faced by the patient and their oncologist are: how to develop treatments to which the individual’s particular cancer is likely to respond, and how to mount a re-challenge should it evolve.

In recent years, cancer immunotherapy has returned to the forefront of cancer research. This aims to exploit the power and targeted response of the patient’s own immune system to fight their cancer. Resurgence in interest has been prompted particularly by developments in the management of malignant melanoma, a type of skin cancer as well as kidney cancers, along with exciting clinical trial data in patients with lung cancer. Many patients with a diagnosis of secondary melanoma now routinely have access to the anti-cancer treatment ipilimumab, an antibody which triggers a specific response from a sub-group of the patient’s own white blood cells (called cytotoxic T-cells). One role of these T-cells is to recognise and kill cancerous cells, but to protect the rest of the body from unnecessary attack, this response is usually dampened down. Ipilimumab ‘releases the brakes’ from the immune system, speeding up the reaction time and growth of the T-cells. For a small minority of patients with secondary melanoma this can result in control of their tumour, sometimes lasting years, offering a tantalising insight into the potential of the immune system to eliminate cancerous cells. But the majority of patients derive no benefit, yet may suffer the multi-organ side-effects of the drug and the average survival with secondary melanoma continues to be measured in months.

How then to provoke the immune system more consistently and more specifically? Following successes with vaccinations against infectious diseases, there has been inevitable long-standing interest in the concept of vaccination to provoke a useful reaction against established cancers. Despite numerous avenues of research, little has translated into clinical practice. A solitary ‘therapeutic cancer vaccine’ currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in asymptomatic patients with hormone-resistant secondary prostate cancer has yet to find its place in the routine management of this disease.

Particular recent research focus has been on the role of the dendritic cell within the immune system, a cell derived from the bone marrow which captures ‘foreign’ material and is highly efficient at presenting it to T-cells, effectively launching the immune system to target the ‘foreign’ material. Earlier this year the BBC reported on a clinical trial underway in patients with glioblastoma, a brain tumour typically with a dismal prognosis and a low chance of responding to standard treatment options. There are over ten published small-scale studies performed along similar lines which, collectively, hint sufficiently at improved outcomes to justify expanding recruitment to several hundred patients. A sample of each patient’s tumour has been mixed with a sample of their own dendritic cells, before re-injection at intervals over a two year period. Each patient’s injection is a unique blend of their own cancer and their own immune cells, reintroduced to their immune system in the hope of educating it both to recognize their cancer as a target for destruction — and to remember that cancer, should it re-emerge in the future.

Results of this individualised cancer vaccine in patients with brain tumours are awaited, but the drive for evidence-based personalised cancer therapy has already advanced routine oncology practice. For instance, a patient’s breast cancer can be risk-stratified by analysis of a panel of mainly cancer-related genes. This can help the patient decide with their oncologist whether chemotherapy is the right treatment for them.

Future years will see rapid expansion in the concept of personalised cancer care, likely to encompass all aspects of the patient’s pathway, from diagnosis to treatment. The latest emerging concept is the ‘Mouse Avatar’ – the implanting of a sample of a patient’s cancer into an immunodeficient mouse to provide a personalized, living and reproducing model of that patient’s unique cancer. In theory this could enable oncologists to offer treatment to patients for which there is evidence of response in ‘their’ mouse. In reality, this technology remains in the earliest stages of development and multiple hurdles can be anticipated; scientific, financial and even ethical. Huge leaps are required before there is any prospect of it becoming a reality for the vast numbers of cancer patients requiring treatment each year.

But we have begun the journey towards the goal of personalised cancer care. Just as doctors should endeavour to treat each patient as unique, it seems possible that one day oncologists may be able to treat each patient’s cancer as unique too.

Miranda Payne is a Locum Consultant in Medical Oncology at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, specializing in the treatment of malignant melanoma, gynaecological and breast cancers. She took a first in Physiological Sciences at Oxford University and obtained her DPhil in Medical Oncology from Oxford University in 2010. Along with Jim Cassidy, Donald Bissett, and Roy Spence, she has been editor of the Oxford Handbook of Oncology for ten years and more recently, the Oxford American Handbook of Oncology (with Gary Lyman).

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Image credit: cancer cell – closeup. Image by Eraxion, iStockphoto.

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Thinking more about our teeth

By Peter S. Ungar

Most of us only think about teeth when something’s wrong with them — when they come in crooked, break, or begin to rot. But take a minute to consider your teeth as the extraordinary feat of engineering they are. They concentrate and transmit the forces needed to break food, again and again, up to millions of times over a lifetime. And they do it without themselves being broken in the process — with the very same raw materials used to make the plants and animals being eaten.

Chewing is like a perpetual death match in the mouth, with plants and animals developing tough or hard tissues for protection, and teeth evolving ways to sharpen or strengthen themselves to overcome those defenses. Most living things don’t want to be eaten. They often protect themselves by reinforcing their parts to stop eaters from breaking them into small enough bits to swallow or digest. It could be a hard shell to keep a crack from starting, or tough fibers to keep one from spreading. Either way, the eater still has to eat. And that’s where teeth come in. The variety of tooth types, especially across the mammals, is extraordinary. It’s a testament to what evolution can accomplish given time, motive, and opportunity.

Lots of animals have “teeth”; sea urchins, spiders, and slugs all have hardened tissues used for food acquisition and processing. But real teeth, like yours and mine, are special. They first appeared half a billion years ago, and Nature has spent the whole time since tinkering with ways to make them better. It’s a story written in stone – the fossil record. We see the appearance of a hard, protective coating of enamel, better ways of attaching tooth to jaw, differentiation of front and back teeth, tighter fit between opposing surfaces, and a new joint for precise movements of the jaw.

The motive is endothermy; we mammals heat our bodies from within. And chewing allows us to squeeze the energy we need to fuel our furnaces. The opportunity is evolvability; very slight genetic tweaks can have dramatic effects on tooth form and function. Consider the incredible variety of different tooth types in mammals, matched so well to the foods individual species eat. A lion has sharp-crested chewing teeth, with blades opposing one another like a pair of scissors, for slicing flesh. A cow has broad, flat ones broken by thin, curved ridges, like a cheese grater, for milling grass. You and I have thick molars with rounded cusps that fit neatly into opposing basins, like a mortar and pestle, for crushing and grinding whatever it is we eat.

There can be little doubt that the diversity, abundance, and success of mammals, including us, are due, in no small measure, to our teeth. Look in a mirror, smile, and think about it.

Peter S. Ungar received his PhD in Anthropological Sciences from Stony Brook University and taught Gross Anatomy in the medical schools at Johns Hopkins and Duke before moving to the University of Arkansas, where he now serves as Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Anthropology. He has written or co-authored more than 125 scientific papers on ecology and evolution for books and journals and is the author of Teeth: A Very Short Introduction.

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Image credit: Gebitsdiagram Chart created with Open Dental By Jordan Sparks. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

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Colorful spiders?

By Rainer Foelix

Spiders are not exactly renowned for being colorful animals. Admittedly, most of the more than 40,000 spider species are rather drab looking. However, there are certainly several hundred species which are lively colored, e. g. bright red or bright green, and some are very colorful indeed. For instance, the so-called “peacock-spider” that shows a wide range of iridescent blue and green color hues, reminiscent of the plumage of peacocks or humming birds.

How do those colors in spiders come about?  Usually they are due to certain pigments deposited in the cuticle of their exo-skeleton or the underlying epidermis cells. Some spiders appear bright green or red or yellow, due to pigment granules. Other spiders contain crystalline deposits of guanine and strongly reflect the incoming light, either pure white or bright silvery. And often coloration is not really caused by pigments but is due to a special light diffraction (interference) in their cuticle. A very fine lamellation in the nanometer range causes a shift of the wavelength of the incoming light and thus a whole spectrum of colors  appears in the outgoing light. We all know this phenomenon from other natural objects such as mother-of-pearl, butterfly wings, or bird feathers. In spiders, such iridescent colors have been known for a long time but only in the last few years were they studied in detail.




Figure One
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A small crab spider (Diaea), mostly green, but with a red abdomen.

Figure Two
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Abdomen of a jumping spider (Phidippus) with red hairs and black scales.

Figure Three
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Male jumping spider (Phidippus) with iridescent green chelicerae.

Figure Four
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Leg segments of a tarantula (Poecilotheria) with blue and yellow hairs.

Figure Five
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Blue hairs of a tarantula (Poecilotheria) undr the electron microscope. The ridges of the hair shaft (left) consist of a fine cuticular meshwork (right) that causes the iridescence of these hairs.

Figure Six
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Peacock spiders (Maratus sp.) are among the most colorful jumping spiders.
Most colors originate from iridescent hairs or scales.

Among the jumping spiders are some species where the mouth parts (chelicerae) are strongly iridescent: reddish-purple in the females and blue-green in the males. In that case it is the layering of the cheliceral cuticle that is responsible for the brilliant coloration. In some other species these interference colors reside entirely in hairs or scales of the body. This is for instance the case in those most colorful peacock spiders, where some scales change from blue over turquoise to green, and others from yellow to purple and golden. Under the electron microscope  those hairs and scales exhibit  a meshwork of thin layers that ultimately produces these structural colors. These shiny colors are much more pronounced in males than in females (as in most birds) and it is very likely that they play a crucial role in the visual courtship dances that the male performs in front of a female.

Somewhat surprisingly, such iridescent colors also occur in the large tarantulas. Several species are deep blue  and they are in high esteem (and highly priced!) among tarantula keepers. Some species may have additionally bright yellow hairs on their legs or golden-green hairs on their abdomen. Since most tarantulas are active at night, it is a bit puzzling why they are colorful at all. Their courtship is not visual but tactile, and no predator would be warned by bright colors that can only be seen under day light. So, it may well be that there is no specific purpose for having conspicuous colors, at least not in tarantulas. Perhaps the situation is comparable to colorful organisms living in the dark abyss of the oceans, in which colors only show up under illumination.

Since 14 March is Save-a-Spider-Day, let these colorful spiders brighten your day, or, as the old English saying goes: “If you want to live and thrive, let a spider run alive.”

Rainer Foelix is recognized as an authority on spiders. He studied Biology in both Germany and Switzerland and earned his PhD in Zoology. His is also the author of Biology of Spiders, now in its third edition.

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Image Credit: Figures one, two, three, and four by B. Erb. Figures five and six by R. Foelix

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Women of 20th century music

Women musicians are constantly pushing societal boundaries around the world, while hitting all the right notes. In honor of Women’s History Month, Oxford University Press is testing your knowledge about women musicians. Take the quiz and see if you’re a shower singer or an international composer!

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Portrait of Billie Holiday, Downbeat(?), New York, N.Y., ca. June 1946. via Library of Congress.

Maggie Belnap is an intern in the Social Media Department at Oxford University Press. She is a student at Amherst College.

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Kitty Genovese and the bystander effect: 50 years on

By Alfred Mele

A famous experiment on the behavior of bystanders was inspired by an electrifying episode in New York City in 1964 when Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in the middle of a street. According to newspaper reports, although many people witnessed the early morning attack from their apartment windows when they heard screams, no one tried to stop the assault, and no one even called the police.

Kitty Genovese was killed in Kew Gardens, Queens, on her way home. Image: Kew Gardens Road by Edgar Zuniga Jr. CC BY-ND 2.0 via Flickr.

John Darley and Bibb Latané (1968) conducted an influential experiment in the wake of the Genovese murder. Participants were told that they would be talking about personal problems associated with being a college student. Each was in a room alone, thinking that he or she was talking to other students over a microphone. Sometimes participants were led to believe that there was only one other participant (group A), sometimes that there were two others (group B), and sometimes that there were five others (group C). In fact, the voices they heard were recordings. Participants were told that while one person was talking, the microphone arrangement would not let anyone else talk. At some point, the participant would hear a person – the “victim” – say that he felt like he was about to have a seizure. The victim would ask for help, ramble a bit, say that he was afraid he might die, and so on. His voice would be abruptly cut off after he talked for 125 seconds, just after he made choking sounds.

The percentage figures for participants who left the cubicle to help before the voice was cut off are striking: group A 85%, group B 62%, group C 31%. Also, all the participants in group A eventually reported the emergency, whereas only 62% of the participants in group C did this. Clearly, participants’ beliefs about how many other people could hear the voice – none, one, or four – had an effect on their behavior.

According to a pessimistic view, findings of this kind suggest that we have very little control over our behavior – that human behavior is largely driven by the situations in which we find ourselves and the effects these situations have on unconscious, automatic behavior-producing processes. I’m not so pessimistic. Obviously, there’s a difference between not doing something and not being able to do it. Even in group C, about a third of the participants went out to get help. My guess is that most of the others could have done the same – that it was to some extent up to them whether they did or didn’t help. Are we to believe that it was simply impossible for the non-helpers to behave like the helpers?

A pessimist may claim that everything we do is completely determined by the situations in which we find ourselves, that we have no control at all over how we respond to these situations, and that the non-helpers therefore couldn’t have helped. The claim is off base. If situations really did completely determine behavior, then everyone in the same situation would act the same way. But only 69% of the people in group C refrained from helping; the others helped. This pessimistic view of decisions isn’t true to the facts.

What can we do to get potential non-helpers to help? Lots of people find striking “news” about human behavior interesting; articles claiming that neuroscientists have shown that free will is an illusion, for example. The classic situationist experiments aren’t news now, of course, but they continue to be cited in new studies on situationism or automaticity. One way to spin news about these studies is pessimistic: for example, being in a group that witnesses an emergency has an enormous effect on your behavior, and there is nothing you can do about it. Another way to spin the news is not: now that you know about the bystander effect, do you have a better chance of resisting your inclination to remain passive the next time you find yourself in a group that witnesses an emergency? Here we see two very different takes on the same findings.

There are plenty of self-help books on self-control. People learn techniques for resisting or avoiding temptation with a view to making their lives better. People who read such books know what they want to avoid – binge eating, uncontrolled gambling, excessive drinking, or whatever it may be – and they try to learn how to avoid it. When a cause of harmful behavior flies under everyone’s radar, not much can be done about it. But once a cause of harmful action or inaction is brought to light, prospects for amelioration may become brighter. A public that is educated about the bystander effect is less likely to display it. For a discussion of some indirect evidence of this, see A. Mele and J. Shepherd, “Situationism and Agency.”

Keep in mind that even if you’re never a subject in a scientific experiment, being in a bystander situation is a realistic possibility. So, if you saw a young woman being assaulted on a busy street or an old man slip and fall in a crowded mall, would it be up to you to some extent whether you tried to help? The situationist experimental findings fall far short of proving that it wouldn’t be. And knowing what you do about the bystander effect, you might make a special effort to step up to the plate and take control of the situation. Knowledge is power. Forewarned is forearmed.

Alfred Mele is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He was director of the $4.4 million Big Questions in Free Will Project (2010-13) and is the author of ten books, including Effective Intentions (2009), Backsliding (2012), and A Dialogue on Free Will and Science (2014). His book Free will be published soon by Oxford University Press.

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