mparkllan's blog

Stereotypes can influence people's expectations and and keep people divided. Tayeb Salih attempts to show us that we are far more similar than different to any human, regardless of what part of the world we are from. Salih accomplishes this through the use of situational irony to demonstrate the similarities of traditions and social customs and also uses imagery to compare the real and genuine and ungenuine use of certain decorative items. Everywhere around the world there are always good people who care about their communities, and bad people who use communities for their own selfish benefit. The use of literary devices in this novel are to help demonstrate that regardless of where someone is from, appearances and expectations should always be treated as such, not as the reality.

Another example of how Persepolis’ visual style and use of imagery reinforces its themes is through its use of abstract cartoon like drawings to show how characters feel. Marjane cries on a bed and thinks to herself “ That was my last meeting with my beloved Anoosh… and so I was lost, without any bearings… what could be worse than that?”(Satrapi 71). At this point Marjane had met her uncle in prison, knowing that he would be executed before she ever gets to see him again. When thinking about her executed uncle, she imagines herself talking to God and floating in the middle of space. Scenes like this show and do not tell us how isolated and hopeless she feels and how sometimes even prayer can not make her feel better. In another scene Marjane is walking down the road with someone else and after she thinks to herself “ I saw a turquoise bracelet. It was Neda’s. Her aunt had given it to her for her fourteenth birthday… The bracelet was still attached to… I don’t know what…”(Satrapi 142). Before she realizes that someone she knows is under the rubble, she is with her friend, on a road, looking at a crumbled building. After, she is tearing up and alone in the next couple of panels, until the last one of the chapter cuts to black. These stylistic choices again do a good job of showing how alone she feels even in company.

Irony is used throughout the novel to create an interesting contrast. In one scene a family member talks about how “Ahmadi suffered the worst torture… they burned him with an iron,”(Satrapi 51) and in another Marjane explains “My mother was right to believe it was murder… when they found his body, only his head was underwater.”(Satrapi 65) Persepolis creates a sense of irony by contrasting these scenes of dark subject matter and the lighthearted visual style with the subsequent scenes of Marjane and her friends chasing another kid outside. To go from murder to running around with a fellow student because his families political activities shows just how polarizing countrywide conflicts can be. This dramatic shift in tone happens multiple times throughout the novel and draws attention to the fact that young children sometimes have to grow up in very hostile environments.

In times of conflict bystanders and revolutionaries are often both put in harm's way. Whether you flee your country, keep your head down, or actively participate in your cause, there is always a chance that you or someone close to you will get hurt. In Persepolis, an autobiographical graphic novel written by Marjane Satrapi, the audience follows the changing life of a little girl growing up in Iran during the islamic revolution.

The suffering of the innocent is a major theme of the novel, and scenes of death and imprisonment are all central to young Marjane’s life. Persepolis supports these themes in a variety of ways through the use of visual motifs, cartoon like imagery, and moments of irony that contrast the very serious topics with the relatable innocence of a young child.

Persepolis is a graphic novel about a little girl growing up in a time of conflict for Iran. Despite the cartoonish appearence and art style, inocent people are imprisoned and executed just for speaking their mind. In an effort to spare the little girl suffering, her parents send her to grow up in vienna where she was simultaneously saved and alieneted. As she gets older she learns about how Iranians are viewed, romantic relationships, and her own idealistic beliefs.

Michelle Facette received her Ph.D. in biological sciences from Stanford University in 2008 and now works in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico. I attended her  guest lecture on the fifteenth of February and she summarized some of her work with stomata, cell differentiation, and other developmental aspects of Maize in a concise and understandable way. While she has helped author many papers I believe the majority of the concepts discussed at this job talk came from a few papers that cite her as an author published in 2012, 2013, and 2015. These papers titled: Division Polarity in Developing Stomata, Parallel Proteomic and Phosphoproteomic Analyses of successive Stages of Maize Leaf Development, and The SCAR/WAVE complex polarizes PAN receptors and promotes division asymmetry in maize, all use maize as a model organism to look at intracellular and intercellular chemical cues,  as well as other aspects of leaf development.

Michelle Facette received her Ph.D. in biological sciences from Stanford University in 2008 and now works in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico. I attended her  guest lecture on the fifteenth of February and she summarized some of her work with stomata, cell differentiation, and other developmental aspects of Maize in a concise and understandable way. While she has helped author many papers I believe the majority of the concepts discussed at this job talk came from a few papers that cite her as an author published in 2012, 2013, and 2015. These papers titled: Division Polarity in Developing Stomata, Parallel Proteomic and Phosphoproteomic Analyses of successive Stages of Maize Leaf Development, and The SCAR/WAVE complex polarizes PAN receptors and promotes division asymmetry in maize, all use maize as a model organism to look at intracellular and intercellular chemical cues,  as well as other aspects of leaf development.

Matthew Parkllan, Liam Gorman, Austin Meserole

One way that these data can be interpreted is by creating two different graphs, one with GPA and Hours studied as the x and y axis, and have another graph with hours studied vs hours slept as the x and y axis. If we wanted to be really thourough we could make these two graphs each for both male and female students. Sorting the data out this way would be a good way to prove or disprove the hypothesis that more hours of sleep leads to a higher GPA.

I remember a few things about my semester of intro to stats. In general we learned about certain types of analysis of data. Some key terms that pop into my mind are things like mean, average, p-value, standard deviations, and equations to relate all of the values. I also remember the tests including all of these things as well as another layer of complexity, as they would give us limited information and ask us to produce a conclusion about how likely a certain outcome is. I few other students lived on my floor so studying outside of lecture could clear up any misunderstandings I still had and I did pretty well in the class. Another thing that I remember was that our teacher wanted us to be able to apply our new skills to the real world and realize that certain interpretations of data can be misleading, like when certain claims are made on tv. The difference between correlation and causation was also discussed in a particularly funny class day, when she showed us a bunch of bogus statistics like levels of crime and levels of cheese consumption being correlated across states, meaning of course that cheese causes crime. This is most of what i remember from intro to statistics.

Species of African Cichlid fishes and their evolutionary development are the main focus of Albertson’s lab and understanding how environmental factors like types of food sources and availability can influence traits like jaws to fill different niches across different bodies of water. Craig Albertson’s lab studies aspects of evolutionary development to better understand how genotypes become morphologies. His lab follows species from embryo to maturity, documenting everything along the way. In the past Albertson’s lab has studied many aspects of species like Zebrafish and Cichlids and how their populations in various lakes and bodies of water developed such diverse characteristics. His lab includes many members at various levels of education from undergraduates to postdoctoral researchers has published papers on many topics in the field of evolutionary development, genetic and phenotypic expression, evolutionary mutant models for human disease, and morphological features of Cichlids. Studying how all of these factors come together to create large populations is vital to understanding both the origins of these species and how well they can adapt to change helps us understand how their roles in the ecosystem developed and how they will continue to change because of human interference.