Daily Archives: December 13, 2019

Following the premiere of The L Word: Generation Q, queer audiences who lined up outside viewing parties for the nostalgia-TV event of the year would be wise to leave the TV on for another half-hour. If they do, they will be delightfully surprised by Work in Progress, the most radical queer show to ever make its way to television.

Showtimes new half-hour comedy stars co-writer Abby McEnany, a Chicago improv mainstay who created the show with director Tim Mason (Lilly Wachowski is also an EP and writer). The semi-autobiographical series follows Abby a suicidal, funny, heavyset butch with OCD as she embarks on a relationship with a much younger trans man. In the four half-hour episodes provided to critics, Work in Progress sensitively mines comedy from body shame, mental illness, trans literacy, consent, and gender policing all through Abbys hilariously neurotic point of view.

Playing a fictionalized version of herself, McEnany is able to navigate such otherwise heavy topics with lightness and humor because she is driving the narrative, both behind the scenes and on camera. She can be self-deprecating, exploring the various shades of self-loathing that come with having a body that doesnt fit into societys impossible standards, because she surrounds her character with loving friends and a hot young love interest. Behind the anxiety, depression, and panic attacks, the audience can rest easy knowing there is a writer who actually loves herself at least enough to make a hilarious TV show about her life. Abby the character may not see herself as desirable, but her show does.

Work in Progress opens with Abby telling her therapist of her plan to end it all, which involves throwing away an almond for every day of her life. The almonds provide a catchy structure to the episodes, their ritualistic plunk into the trash creating a pithy reminder of the stakes whenever things get too silly. And silly they get right away; after explaining her elaborate suicide plan, Abby realizes her therapist has died in session.

At lunch with her straight sister, Abby meets a cute waiter named Chris (The Politician star Theo Germaine), a trans man whom she initially mistakes for a baby dyke. The ensuing romance is unlike anything seen on TV before, and it unfurls with such a cute neuroticism its impossible not to root for these two. By putting an older butch dyke and a young trans man together, the show can explore more than one side to the experience of gender non-conforming people, an experience as varied and textured as humanity itself.

In the second episode, Abby schools her brother-in-law that, It is not the job of the queer community to educate the cis straight community on something they could easily learn from a public library. When she then allows his question, he has the right response: Yeah, Im good. But it doesnt feel like an after school special; Abby delivers this very important trans etiquette lesson in a flippant squawking tenor while sipping a Capri Sun that she needed help opening.

One of the shows most brilliant turns comes from an interaction with Julia Sweeney, the former Saturday Night Live cast member most famous for the gender-confusing character Pat. As Abby explains to Sweeney, who plays herself as well, Pats jokes stemmed from the fact that no one could tell if Pat was a man or a woman. With Chriss help, Abby confronts Sweeney over the character she says ruined her life, and Sweeney invites them over for dinner with her husband, played by a delightfully weird surprise guest star.

Surprisingly, one club scene in Work in Progress contains more diversity of bodies, gender expressions, and races than the entirety of The L Word: Generation Q. In yet another scene, Chriss crew of polyamorous Chicago queers feel authentic and real, but they arent presented with any glaring arrow announcing them as such. The show doesnt have to overly perform its queerness; its baked into its very existence. Every queer person knows someone like McEnany, (though maybe not as funny), but we almost never see people like her on TV. The title could just as well refer to Hollywoods slow-but-steady embrace of queer characters that look and behave like actual queer people. It is a work in progress, and it just took it a giant leap forward.

Grade: A-

Work in Progress premiered on Showtime on December 8.

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Excerpt from:

Work in Progress Review: The Queerest Show on TV Is About a Suicidal Butch With OCD - IndieWire

Zanele Muholis Bona, Charlottesville (2015) was included in the Contemporary Jewish Museum exhibition Show Me as I Want to Be Seen. Photo: Yancey Richardson

The Bay Area visual art scene in 2019, like seemingly every aspect of life these days, was marked by political considerations once thought outside its boundaries.

In certain aspects, that was a very good thing, as traditional centers of authority ceded a degree of power or, at least, competed to demonstrate to an increasingly diverse community their accessibility and inclusivity. Regardless of the motive, for example, behind adding works by artists of color to our public collections, the net result is that the future will at least know that such artists were here.

Untempered political passion can also have a blinding effect, however, as we saw in several important instances this year. And then there were the choices made, not for the sake of art and its value to community, but out of mere expediency.Those decisions, too, will shape our tomorrows.

When leaders at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art wished to broaden the museums collection to include more works of art by women, LGBTQ artists and artists of color, they decided to employ a venerable museum practice: deaccessioning. Recognizing that they missed the boat when works that now command six- and seven-figure prices were affordable, they decided to effectively trade a pricey object a Mark Rothko painting eventually sold for $50.1 million at auction for strong works of lesser value.

There was pushback, and there were legitimate questions. Some asked, Why not tap those rich trustees? And though the museum has other great Rothkos, was this too good a work to let go? In the end, it was enough for me that rare and major works by Rebecca Belmore, Forrest Bess, Frank Bowling, Leonora Carrington, Lygia Clark, Norman Lewis, Barry McGee, Kay Sage, Alma Thomas and Mickalene Thomas now grace our city.

It wasnt only SFMOMA that made big strides in collection diversity this year. The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (whose director, Lawrence Rinder, announced his retirement in September) accepted a gift of nearly 3,000 quilts of superb design by African American artists.

Shortly after the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco opened the excellent exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, on view at the de Young through March 15, they announced acquisition of the monumental painting Penumbra (1970) by featured artist Frank Bowling. At nearly 23 feet wide, the vintage masterwork is even larger than SFMOMAs 17-foot Bowling, painted in 2018.

Also of note were the Contemporary Jewish Museums celebration of gender-nonconforming artists and themes, Show Me as I Want to Be Seen, and the Museum of the African Diasporas Black Refractions: Highlights From The Studio Museum in Harlem, both of which were presented in the first half of the year.

Continuing through Jan. 5 is the Sonoma Valley Museum of Arts abbreviated-but-revelatory survey of Abstract Expressionist Bernice Bing, a proud Chinese American lesbian outsider, even in the days of beatnik San Francisco. And still on view through Feb. 14 at SFMOMA, Soft Power examines the approaches of a broader range of socially engaged artists.

CJM, SVMA and SFMOMA developed their own content, while MoAD and the de Young signed on to national tours. The key to the success of all these shows was that they focused first on art of complexity, rather than lazily relying on sloganeering, as the plethora of self-consciously political exhibitions often do.

Several important decisions this year were marred by shortsightedness. In June the San Francisco Board of Education considered complaints from some parents and students that an 83-year-old mural at George Washington High School causes psychic harm. It depicts such despicable institutions as slavery and the slaughter of Native Americans in the pursuit of our so-called manifest destiny.

Rather than seeing an educational opportunity in the murals content, which plainly implicates Washington in a shameful period of American history that should never be forgotten, the school board voted to permanently paint it over. After an uproar both local and national, the board backed off. Yet it still plans to censor the work by boarding it up, unless citizen action and promised lawsuits prevail.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Arts Commission, a group that calls itself the city agency that champions the arts, once again showed its cowardice when art was under attack. Its Visual Arts Committee knuckled under when county Supervisor Catherine Stefani demanded rejection of a winning design for a sculpture of poet Maya Angelou.

Berkeley artist Lava Thomas, who is African American, won the competition for the public monument fair and square, with a 9-foot bronze representation of a book bearing Angelous face and a quotation from her work. But Stefani, after the fact, insisted that only a statue-type figure would do and the committee went meekly along.

And speaking ofa failure of courage, one can hardly ignore the announcement in July by Napas di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art that it would abandon its founding mission, selling off most of the 1,600 works of art in its fabled collection of works by Bay Area artists. The centers board and its director said, in short, that it is just too hard to raise $3 million a year, or to trim programs to fit its resources.

Outraged artists, many of whom thought their legacy would be preserved at di Rosa, say they donated or deeply discounted the works now destined for the auction block. Their appeal that center officials identify an alternative institution to house, preserve and appropriately utilize this unique collection has fallen on deaf ears.

In the final days of November, a letter signed by center director Robert Sain came to light. Quietly circulated among commercial galleries and auction houses, it offered for sale 18 important works from the collection. Near the top of the list: a 31-foot-high monumental sculpture by Mark di Suvero titled For Veronica, dedicated to the wife of the centers late founder.

See more here:

Progress and missteps marked 2019 in Bay Area art - San Francisco Chronicle

At the start of the fall semester, campus kicked off year three of Academic Futures by integrating the strategic initiatives into the implementation of our priority themes and projects. At the heart of this process is our commitment to furthering the public good by embracing our role as Colorados leading national public research university.

Read aboutthe progress so far this year on the campuss four priority themes and projects, along with concurrent work on other Academic Futures themes and projects.

On Nov. 20, the Academic Futures Interdisciplinary Education, Research and Creative Works Committee submitted its final report (PDF)and the response from campus to Provost Russell Moore.

Both are currently under review by the provost and Chief Operating Officer Kelly Fox.

The report has some compelling ideas and suggestions for moving ahead in an area in which we have a long record of doing exciting work, said Moore. The campus response gives us just a taste of the facultys strong appetite for engaging in interdisciplinary research, teaching and scholarship in new ways, as well as by enhancing existing efforts.

Moore said he and Fox would announce early in the spring semester a path forward on the reports recommendations.

Responding to the Foundations of Excellence initiative, the campus is implementing a first-year advising model, under Vice Provost and Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education Mary Kraus, that embeds first-year advisors in colleges, schools and programs, networked together under a common structure and budget. Hiring is underway to add more first-year advisors across all of CU Boulder colleges and schools, and implementation will be complete as of July 1, 2020. CU Boulder leadership continues to consider the recommendations of the First-Year Experience Committee report for funding and implementation.

Associate Vice Provost for Advising and Exploratory Studies Shelly Bacon says the first-year advising model is one of several advising-related initiatives that are underway.

As we work toward implementation, we are involving campus stakeholders in important conversations about how best to honor students local disciplinary contexts while ensuring a consistent experience for our students across colleges and schools, Bacon said.

Its wonderful to see advising being valued as a key contributor to student success, and I look forward to the progress I know well make as an advising community over the next few years, said Bacon.

The Center for Teaching & Learning (CTL), which will soon announce a lead for inclusive pedagogy, is offering workshops to build inclusive communities of practice in partnership with the Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement (ODECE).

CTLs pilot projects this spring include a series for faculty on graduate student mentoring co-sponsored with the Graduate School and a conference for graduate students on career paths, including the entrepreneurial path, with the Research & Innovation Office (RIO).

I am very excited to see that our strategic vision announced back in October is really taking shape and serving our campus community, said Kirk Ambrose, director of CTL. This spring, I look forward to having our full staff team in place and to continuing our work with partners across campus in advancing a common student-centered approach to learning through new and innovative offerings.

The fall 2019 semester saw several milestones in the work of making excellence inclusive campuswide. The publication of the finalized version of the IDEA Plan took place Oct. 30, marking the first comprehensive diversity plan of its scope for CU Boulder.

Following the momentum of the IDEA Plans release, the campus saw record attendance at the 29th annual Diversity and Inclusion Summit. The event featured two days of workshops and campus addresses focused on building community, fostering diversity and inclusion. Allied student groups partnered with the Diversity and Inclusion Summit Planning Committee to coordinate several sessions, including the Leadership Unplugged conversation at which diverse members of the campus community engaged in honest dialogue.

Following a well-attended fall summit, the Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement is now gearing up for the spring summit, which will take place on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020.

This is an exciting time, said Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement Bob Boswell. We recognize that the activities weve been engaged in are bringing more people together than ever before, helping us to move toward making excellence inclusive. During the spring semester, departments and units across campus will move from inspiration to action as they tailor the IDEA Plan to their localized units.

To help provide initial guidance on IDEA Plan implementation, a transition working group, led by Vice Chancellor Bob Boswell, Assistant Vice Chancellor and Deputy Chief HR Officer Merna Jacobsen and Arts & Sciences Associate Dean for Student Success Daryl Maeda, held its first meeting in November.

Additional updates regarding the rollout of activities stemming from the IDEA Plans recommendations will be forthcoming in the spring semester.

Provost Russell Moore has received threeworking group reports on online and distance education.

The first two reportson creating a plan to move from the current state of online education to a desired future state and to consider new possibilities for continuing education as a program innovatorwere submitted to campus leadership in October.

The third reportto create infrastructure and resources for online/continuing educationwas submitted on Friday, Dec. 6, and is under review.

Putting these recommendations together will help us chart a course of action on online and distance education that will begin to take shape in the spring semester, said Moore.

The universitys evaluation for reaffirmation of accreditation is underway with an external review team from the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) on campus holding drop-in sessions and open forums for faculty, staff and students.

As we complete our site visit with HLC this week, I want to thank everyone for their input and support, said Katherine Eggert, senior vice provost for academic planning and assessment. This was a full-campus lift, and I am proud of our collective accomplishment.

HLC will take action on the universitys reaccreditation in early 2020.

We continue to work with schools and colleges to develop a more robust governance ecosystem, ensuring more direct representation of faculty across campus.

The efforts of the Strategic Facilities Visioning (SFV) team have culminated with the delivery of a dynamic digital planning tool, PREVIEW, that is on the cutting edge for facilities evaluation in institutions of higher education. This tool will prove integral in helping campus leadership make the most meaningful and impactful infrastructure investment decisions in support of the campus mission and priorities emanating from Academic Futures.

PREVIEW (Planning for Research and Education: Visioning Information Explorer WebApp) is the final deliverable of the 15-month SFVprocess. SFV, informed by the other major campus strategic initiatives, drew collaborative input from more than 180 visionaries representing 30-plus colleges, schools, institutes and major support units across campus.

The tool implements the future vision for space types and functions articulated by these visionaries and incorporates a wealth of campus data on space and programming, enabling campus planners to test different planning scenarios for leadership.

The Office of Planning, Design and Construction is now in the process of integrating the tool into its workflows as the university prepares to embark on creation of the next campus master plan due in 2021.

PREVIEW comes at a pivotal time for our campus as we plan for the future, and it represents a truly innovative approach to space planning in higher education, said David Kang, vice chancellor for infrastructure and sustainability. Shaped by the thoughtful work of our SFV visionaries, the tool will bring an unprecedented level of data validation to our infrastructure decisions.

The goal of PREVIEW is multi-faceted and will enable leadership to do the following:

While aggregating a wealth of data sources from across campus into its functionality is a key component of PREVIEW, the form and intent of the tool were driven largely by the work of the SFV visionaries during the scenario planning phase.

Scenario planning entailed visionaries working in interdisciplinary groups to develop and test future infrastructure scenarios relating to identified university requirements and the evolving landscape of education and research. While each of the six teams focused on distinct topics, their proposed strategies and goals aimed for alignment with the chancellors strategic imperatives and ultimately converged on a vision of human-centered campus planning.

Key findings across the scenario planning teams articulated the spatial components and strategies necessary to achieve university strategic goals. That phase culminated in the development of building templates for unique building typologies across campus, each of which applies a mixed-use approach to campus programming to facilitate an enhanced experience for all students, faculty and staff.

Our scenario planning teams ultimately created a vision for the campus on the building, neighborhood, campus and university scales that helped mold the PREVIEW tool, Kang said.

The result is a tool that helps ensure future space decisions meet programmatic needs while also meeting the holistic, university-first vision for campus infrastructure.

Colorado statutes require CU Boulder update its campus master plan every 10 years, with the next due in 2021. Housing and transportation master planning efforts to help inform the next campus master plan are currently underway, and an energy master plan initiative with the same aims will begin soon.

This initiative, embedded inAcademic Futures, is integrated in our daily activities of research, scholarship, creative work, teaching and service. These activities further the public good by providing new knowledge, discoveries and creative works that directly serve communities. Progress on this initiative will be announced in the spring semester.

Under theIDEA Plan, we are creating commitments to diversity, equity and inclusive excellence that will sustain, support and inspire our research, scholarship, creative work, teaching and service. ThroughStrategic Facilities Visioning, we are transforming the universitys physical infrastructure to support learning, teaching, research and community interaction.

See the original post:

Academic Futures year 3: Progress on our priorities | CU Boulder Today - CU Boulder Today

Weve got a lot to catch up on. First episode in just over a week, as Eugene comes back from being sick, and Chris Lane joins the show for the first time in two seasons!

The podcast is also available for free on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Stitcher and Spotify (a bit later in the day)! You may also listen to the newest episode at the bottom of the post.

Episode Description: Weve got a lot to catch up on! Chris Lane joins the show, as we recap the Penn Quakers and Saint Josephs Hawks Big 5 matchups. The Villanova Wildcats are now 3-0 in Big 5 play, and theres been a lot of free time with huge gaps in between games, so we take a look back at some of the younger guys and some impressions of the team from their previous two wins. Also, we preview the upcoming game against the Delaware Blue Hens, reminisce on some cold, and good Villanova basketball games of the past, sift through a full mailbag of questions, and more!

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State of the Nova Nation: Big 5 Revenge, Progress Report, Blue Hen Battle, and More! - VU Hoops

Incongruous though it feels to state Celtic and Rangers can be happy, mutual cohabitors anywhere, the Europa League has supplied the perfect backdrop as a domestic title race for now rumbles on. The Old Firms progression to the last 32 of Europes second-tier domestic competition has left supporters and supposedly neutral onlookers grasping for superlatives. Well be subject to a few more days of this yet.

Steven Gerrard can be forgiven giddy analysis, given it arrived in the immediate aftermath of Rangers 1-1 draw against Young Boys. It is, Gerrard insists, a magnificent achievement for his team to reach the knockout phase from a section which featured Porto and struggling Feyenoord. The former Liverpool captain over-egged his theory that Rangers were written off before a ball was kicked in Group G, with nothing in subsequent matches suggesting any of the competing sides will trouble the judges as the Europa League hurtles towards its conclusion.

Rangers have endured a lengthy European run, given qualifying matches started on 9 July, but whereas seeing off Midtjylland and Legia Warsaw represented decent results, we shouldnt be kidded that St Josephs and Progrs Niederkorn were serious opposition.

Across the city, the attitude shift has been hilariously stark. Elimination from the Champions League at the qualifying stage in August was treated as an affront to Celtic, just as it was put forward as a serious blemish on the record of Neil Lennon. The harsh reality is that Celtics recent Champions League proper campaigns saw them routinely reduced to cannon fodder. The Europa League is a more appropriate environment, as Lennon and his players quickly grasped. Victory against Lazio in Rome was the peak result of their group campaign as qualification was sealed with two games to spare.

Great for Scottish football is the cliched cry. In truth, this is great for two clubs. Those who sit with calculator in hand as matches are played out tell us the Old Firms efforts this season could soon lead to a tangible improvement in their countrys coefficient standing. This season alone, Kilmarnock were knocked out of Europe by Connahs Quay Nomads and Aberdeen were halted by Rijeka (who didnt make the group stage either). No Scottish side other than Rangers and Celtic have made the proper element of European competition since season 2007-08, with the list of opponents who have delivered such scenarios infamous. Scottish Premiership sides can have as many cracks at Europe as they like; there is precious little evidence of them being able to seize upon it.

In economic terms, Celtic and Rangers dont remotely reflect Scottish football. These are clubs with staff bills of 60m and 40m in a league where 1,500 people attended last weekends visit of Kilmarnock to Livingston. The annual salaries of Steven Davis or Scott Brown are equivalent to the entire first-team squads of these clubs. Rangers can spend 7m on Ryan Kent, a figure higher than the annual turnover of seven teams in their league.

There is a recurring sense this season that Scotlands top flight is generally weak. The byproduct is a gap at the summit of the table, as the Old Firm readily separate themselves from the rest. Rangers and Celtic encounter little resistance.

The more salient point relates to where, precisely, Rangers and Celtic believe they should rank. Surely it is no leap of faith to suggest these historically huge clubs must hurtle towards the last 32 of the Europa League as a bare minimum?

A glance at the unseeded teams for Mondays draw shows APOEL Nicosia, Getafe, Ludogorets, Brugge, AZ Alkmaar and Olympiakos alongside Rangers. Celtic have Malm, LASK Linz and Braga for seeded company. None of this feels disproportionate; or if it does, this would be in the favour of the Scottish clubs, who merrily portray themselves as global powerhouses.

Spreadsheets can be produced to illustrate how the Old Firm have been squeezed out of transfer markets and, as a consequence, elite competition but surely their glass ceiling isnt now so low that progressing through the Europa League post-Christmas is worthy of party hats and balloons.

Rangers have the mitigating factor of financial implosion in 2012, even if recovery from that took longer than spend should have dictated. Gerrard, who has signed a new contract to 2024, has been handed funds his immediate predecessors could only dream of. How valid this approach is may be for another day but it is difficult to make the case that Rangers performances in Europe are somehow a vast elevation on assumed status.

Celtic, in turn, enjoyed such vast domestic leeway when Ronny Deila and Brendan Rodgers were in office that they should have established themselves as a regular and credible European force long before now. Instead, and this is an affliction distinct to the Old Firm, staying one step ahead in Scotland was the prevailing motivator. That nobody elsewhere particularly cares about that has been emphasised by Rodgers soaring status within 10 months at Leicester City.

The Europa League has clear value to clubs in countries such as Scotland. Bluntly, it feels as if this matters more to them. But when the bigger nations and finest teams are jousting in the Champions League it would be depressing if outcomes such as those achieved by the Old Firm are sufficient for wild celebration. Less is more, in this instance.

The rest is here:

Europa League progress for Celtic and Rangers should not bring wild celebration - The Guardian

At the 2019 ASH Annual Meeting, Stephen M. Ansell, MD, PhD, from Mayo Clinic, discussed a plenary session presentation focused on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, and the excitement surround new bio-specific agents that will be available for patients.

Transcription:I think there's been a lot of really encouraging data from ASH 2019 for large cell lymphoma, particularly in the relapsed/refractory space. So, I think we're learning a lot more about CAR T cells. But I think the most interesting data was data that was in the plenary session, looking at a bio-specific antibody targeting CD 20, and CD 3. So, basically taking the tumor cell and T cells and bringing them into close proximity with a very encouraging promising response rate, a little early data, so we still need longer follow up. But I think what was interesting is in CAR T cell failures, where we really are challenged for options to treat those patients, they showed that in those patients, kind of repurposing the T cells and bringing them back into close contact with the tumor but using the bio-specific antibody actually resulted in high response rates. So, I think this is a very encouraging space to watch as new agents become available, but particularly the bio-specific therapies, there are other bio-specifics that are similar, also with very good results. So, I think as a class this is a very promising approach.

Originally posted here:

Stephen M. Ansell, MD, PhD, on Progress of CAR T-Cell Therapy - Cancer Network