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"Allen, Joseph R"
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Methotrexate hampers immunogenicity to BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in immune-mediated inflammatory disease
ObjectiveTo investigate the humoral and cellular immune response to messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 vaccines in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) on immunomodulatory treatment.MethodsEstablished patients at New York University Langone Health with IMID (n=51) receiving the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccination were assessed at baseline and after second immunisation. Healthy subjects served as controls (n=26). IgG antibody responses to the spike protein were analysed for humoral response. Cellular immune response to SARS-CoV-2 was further analysed using high-parameter spectral flow cytometry. A second independent, validation cohort of controls (n=182) and patients with IMID (n=31) from Erlangen, Germany, were also analysed for humoral immune response.ResultsAlthough healthy subjects (n=208) and patients with IMID on biologic treatments (mostly on tumour necrosis factor blockers, n=37) demonstrate robust antibody responses (over 90%), those patients with IMID on background methotrexate (n=45) achieve an adequate response in only 62.2% of cases. Similarly, patients with IMID on methotrexate do not demonstrate an increase in CD8+ T-cell activation after vaccination.ConclusionsIn two independent cohorts of patients with IMID, methotrexate, a widely used immunomodulator for the treatment of several IMIDs, adversely affected humoral and cellular immune response to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. Although precise cut-offs for immunogenicity that correlate with vaccine efficacy are yet to be established, our findings suggest that different strategies may need to be explored in patients with IMID taking methotrexate to increase the chances of immunisation efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 as has been demonstrated for augmenting immunogenicity to other viral vaccines.
Journal Article
Taipei
Winner of the Joseph Levenson Post-1900 Book Prize
This cultural study of public space examines the cityscape of Taipei, Taiwan, in rich descriptive prose. Contemplating a series of seemingly banal subjects--maps, public art, parks--Joseph Allen peels back layers of obscured history to reveal forces that caused cultural objects to be celebrated, despised, destroyed, or transformed as Taipei experienced successive regime changes and waves of displacement. In this thoughtful stroll through the city, we learn to look beyond surface ephemera, moving from the general to the particular to see sociocultural phenomena in their historical and contemporary contexts.
Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBdGIoox7zM
eBook
Words as Things: The Materiality of Writing in Contemporary Chinese Art
[...]because of the large number and wide range of works on display: paintings, sculpture, photographs, videos, installations, performance pieces captured on camera, and, at the very top, a towering room with Chinese writing high on the wall, constituting GU DEXIN'S 2009-05-02 (2009).1 The writing encircled the room with large red characters in simplified font repeating variations on a macabre phrase in run-on lines. 我们杀过人我们杀过男人我们杀过女人我们杀过老人我们杀过孩子我们吃过人我们 吃过人心我们吃过人脑我们打瞎过人眼我们打烂过人脸我们杀过人我们杀过男人我 们杀过女人我们杀过老人我们杀过孩子我们吃过人我们吃过人心我们吃过人脑我们 我们杀过人我们杀过男人我们杀过女人我们杀过老人我们杀过孩子我们吃过人我们 we have killed people we have killed men we have killed women we have killed old people we have killed children we have eaten people we have eaten people's hearts we have eaten people's brains we have struck people's eyes blind we have beaten people's faces to pulp [all repeats]. See PDF ] Here, I pursue this intersection of writing and materiality in contemporary Chinese art; yet, instead of investigating places where writing is submerged in a work of art, such as in the installations by Qiu Zhijie and Huang Yongping, I instead consider works in which writing is very much on the surface, as in Gu Dexin's 2009-05-02, but which also expose the artifactuality of Chinese characters. First is the very \"made-up\" quality of the Chinese writing system, whereby characters (technically, logographs) are relatively open to manipulation beyond their linguistic representation. For studies of materiality of contemporary Chinese art, the essays in Wu Hung and Orianna Cacchione's The Allure of Matter (2019) is a strong corrective—there Wu even deciphers the Chinese word for \"material art,\" caizhi yishu 材質藝術.9 In citing the words of Petra Lange-Berndt, an art historian whose name is nearly synonymous with the study of material art—\"to follow the material and act with the material\"—their stated goal is \"to enrich the existing scholarship on materiality by discovering and interpreting an important non-Western [contemporary Chinese] artistic phenomenon. [...]for Gu Dexin, it is his constructions from plastic, meat, and fruit that draw Cacchione's attention; Wu's discussion of Xu Bing focuses on his Tobacco Project, where various constructions are made from everyday tobacco products.11 When attention does come to the written word, such as in gu wenda's Forest of Stone Steles, language is treated in a straightforward, nonironic way.12 Wu summarizes the art of the Allure exhibition in this way: \"This type of art entails
Journal Article
The Babel Fallacy: When Translation Does Not Matter
“The Babel Fallacy: When Translation Does Not Matter” is an essay is in three parts. First is the positing of the importance of the story of Babel as the meta-narrative for widespread conceptualizations of translation and for the ideological foundation of translation studies. The second part contemplates the conditions of translation in early Chinese and East Asian history and suggests a voiding of that Babelian meta-narrative. The final part is an exploration of what meta-narrative might emerge from East Asian literary cultures to divert translation studies from the Tigris and Euphrates to the Yellow and Yangtze and, in doing so, change the current discursive structure of the field.
Journal Article
Picturing Gentlemen: Japanese Portrait Photography in Colonial Taiwan
This essay investigates the conditions of portrait photography in Taiwan during Japanese colonization. After a brief introduction to the theoretical issues concerning the indexical nature of the photograph, I consider the Japanese colonial photographic industry and its products (portraits) in three contexts: the state of photographic technology in the world at that time, the ideological machinery of colonization in Taiwan, and the wider phenomenon of colonial mimicry. In this consideration, I offer a diachronic analysis of photo albums and commercial directories that contain formal portraits of politically and economically influential (almost exclusively) men. Bringing these considerations together suggests an aspect of the colonial ideological machinery that has been underrepresented in other studies: the colonial portrait as a mask in several forms.
Journal Article
Why Learning To Write Chinese Is a Waste of Time: A Modest Proposal
: This article argues that for students of Chinese and Japanese, learning to write Chinese characters (hanzi/kanji) by hand from memory is an inefficient use of resources. Rather, beginning students should focus on character/word recognition (reading) and electronic writing. Although electronic technologies have diminished the usefulness of Chinese character handwriting, its cultural importance remains. This leads to a hegemony of hanzi/kanji through which the assumed primacy of the written language is reinforced. After reviewing these conditions, strategies are offered to integrate handwriting skills with the new electronic writing technologies, creating an efficient and culturally sensitive program of instruction in hanzi/kanji writing. The article concludes with suggestions for further research needed to explore the theses of the essay.
Journal Article
