Expression studies in the embryo and in the micropylar endosperm of germinating coffee (Coffea arabica cv. Rubi) seeds

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Gender in Theology and Religion: a Success Story?! Report from a Conference

In January 2011 some fifty scholars from different parts of Europe met in Groningen, the Netherlands for an expert meeting entitled Gender in theology and religion: a success story?! to analyze the factors that contribute to the successful mainstreaming of gender in a theological discipline and to reflect on the future of gender studies in theology and religious studies. Different speakers highlighted the many successes of gender studies in theology and religious studies: its power to 'trouble' the disciplines and their heuristic categories; its contribution to the development of other disciplines such as queer studies and postcolonial studies; the many PhD studies produced; the number of significant publications that had appeared over the last years. All indicate that gender studies in theology and religious studies have matured. But the participants also pointed towards the ambiguity of the success of gender studies in the academy: the indeterminacy of the institutional position and positions of gender studies in the theological disciplines in seminaries, departments faculties and universities; the lack of male scholars’ engagement in gender studies, which is expressed by their absence in these studies and/or the low reception of gender studies publications in their disciplines. Both ambiguities represent a danger for the future of gender studies, according to the participants in the meeting. In order to further the success of gender in theology and religion they formulated the following recommendations: to analyze the position of these studies in their institutions from the perspective of the implied audience (church, academy, ordinary theologians); engage men in gender studies; embrace the cultural turn in religious studies; develop interdisciplinary cooperations with gender studies in the humanities; engage creatively with the changing role of religion in contemporary society; analyze whose perspective one follows and authorizes in the perception of theology, religious studies and gender studies themselves; record the history of women’s and gender studies in theology and religion, and honor and celebrate the successes.

Indicating Commitment: The Notion of dépense in the Study of Ritual and Religion

By analysing two cases from the recent history of Vaishnavism (a temple festival in Vrindavan; the development of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON), this paper shows that the notion of dépenseas developed by Marcel Mauss, Robert Hertz and Georges Bataille can be applied as an analytical tool in the study of rituals and religion as an indicator of religious commitment. At the same time it is possible to show that, by constructing a kind of macro-economic theory that includes religious behaviour, recent theories of religious economics are part of, and reproduce, a modern discourse of rationality that rules out, rather than understands, forms of irrationality such as unproductive expenditure (dépense).

Poetry and religion

by Israel Abrahams. With a foreword by Arthur Quiller-Couch

Made in God's Image! - What Does It Mean? Science and Religion in Conversation

How can we best interpret the traditional Christian affirmation that human beings are made in God's image in light of contact and dialogue between religion and science? And what, if any, are the environmental implications of this conversation between the two?

Modular cis-regulatory organization of developmentally expressed genes: two genes transcribed territorially in the sea urchin embryo, and additional examples.

The cis-regulatory systems that control developmental expression of two sea urchin genes have been subjected to detailed functional analysis. Both systems are modular in organization: specific, separable fragments of the cis-regulatory DNA each containing multiple transcription factor target sites execute particular regulatory subfunctions when associated with reporter genes and introduced into the embryo. The studies summarized here were carried out on the CyIIIa gene, expressed in the embryonic aboral ectoderm and on the Endo16 gene, expressed in the embryonic vegetal plate, archenteron, and then midgut. The regulatory systems of both genes include modules that control particular aspects of temporal and spatial expression, and in both the territorial boundaries of expression depend on a combination of negative and positive functions. In both genes different regulatory modules control early and late embryonic expression. Modular cis-regulatory organization is widespread in developmentally regulated genes, and we present a tabular summary that includes many examples from mouse and Drosophila. We regard cis-regulatory modules as units of developmental transcription control, and also of evolution, in the assembly of transcription control systems.