Anatomists Assemble! Integrating superheroes into the anatomy and physiology classroom

Anatomy and physiology courses are sometimes seen as difficult, which can lead to a lack of motivation in students to learn and engage in the course material. Students may also see the material as “dry,” have issues forming personal connections, or struggle to connect the content to the real world. These issues may lead to students not performing well in the course or feeling that the health field is not ideal for them. Popular culture, especially mainstream superheroes, can serve as an option for mending these gaps by being a gateway to connecting to many students’ lives. Superheroes can be integrated into the classroom through relevant, creative, and unique examples that include clinical correlates, modern scientific innovations, and some real-life “supers” living among us. Real anatomy and physiology can still be taught and explained through discussing these “incredible” examples and also present an opportunity for students to be creative in generating their own anatomical and physiological explanations for various superpowers. Superheroes also help open the classroom up to being a place of acceptance, primarily through their secret identities, which cover a broad range of idols that students can look up to, whether it is their career or based on a character’s race or sexual orientation. Professors can become the superhero in their classroom and help students become more engaged and interested in the material.

The secret identities of TMPRSS2: Fertility factor, virus trafficker, inflammation moderator, prostate protector and tumor suppressor

The human TMPRSS2 gene is pathogenetically implicated in both coronaviral lung infection and prostate cancer, suggesting its potential as a drug target in both contexts. SARS-COV-2 spike polypeptides are primed by the host transmembrane TMPRSS2 protease, triggering virus fusion with epithelial cell membranes followed by an endocytotic internalisation process that bypasses normal endosomal activation of cathepsin-mediated innate immunity; viral co-opting of TMPRSS2 thus favors microbial survivability by attenuating host inflammatory responses. In contrast, most early hormone-dependent prostate cancers express TMPRSS2:ERG fusion genes arising from deletions that eliminate the TMPRSS2 coding region while juxtaposing its androgen-inducible promoter and the open reading frame of ERG, upregulating pro-inflammatory ERG while functionally disabling TMPRSS2. Moreover, inflammatory oxidative DNA damage selects for TMPRSS2:ERG-fused cancers, whereas patients treated with antiinflammatory drugs develop fewer of these fusion-dependent tumors. These findings imply that TMPRSS2 protects the prostate by enabling endosomal bypass of pathogens which could otherwise trigger inflammation-induced DNA damage that predisposes to TMPRSS2:ERG fusions. Hence, the high oncogenic selectability of TMPRSS2:ERG fusions may reflect a unique pro-inflammatory synergy between androgenic ERG gain-of-function and fusogenic TMPRSS2 loss-of-function, cautioning against the use of TMPRSS2-inhibitory drugs to prevent or treat early prostate cancer.

The Shadow and the dual-identity avenger tradition in American popular fiction

A secret identity is one of the definitional characteristics of comic-book superheroes. However, American popular literature had been populated by characters with secret identities long before the first superhero comics appeared. The crime-fighting dual-identity vigilantes enjoyed their heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, during the golden era of pulps. Selling usually for 10 cents, pulp magazines were the best source of cheap thrills and heroics. In this era, dozens of costumed avengers appeared and the most popular was undoubtedly The Shadow. Between 1931 and 1949, Street and Smith published more than three hundred stories featuring The Shadow, most of them written by Walter B. Gibson. In the late 1930s, several of the pulp conventions, including costumed avengers, were adopted by the creators of the superhero comic books, and The Shadow served as a main inspiration for Bill Finger’s and Bob Kane’s Batman. The article discusses the evolution of crime-fighting pulp heroes with a particular emphasis on The Shadow as the most influential dual-identity avenger of the era.

Everyone has a secret: Closeting and secrecy from Smallville to The Flash, and from shame to algorithmic risk

This article charts changes in the representation and encoding of superhero closeting metaphors from US television programs Smallville (2001–2011) to The Flash (2014–). Many theorists have noted that superheroes’ hidden secret identities resemble closeting. However, because of legal and social changes in LGBTQ acceptance, as well as intensification of the data-driven security state, closeting on The Flash connects to a fundamentally different set of algorithmic neoliberal social processes. As a result, The Flash portrays a form of post-shame closeting wherein secrecy is a practice of necessary self-defense against mechanized necropolitical violence and social erasure based on unpredictable data markers of risk.

“A New Type of Human Being”

Jeffrey Eugenides’s 2002 epic Middlesex uses its intersex narrator, Callie/Cal, to interrogate the process of radically changing identity. Cal is a guevedoce, possessing a rare but real genetic condition that transforms apparent girls into men at puberty. From butch schoolgirl to effeminate patriarch, never simply male or female, Cal’s life is passing. The novel questions, however, whether any categories need be so exclusive. Cal’s ambiguous identity echoes myriad others, in plot lines concerning incest, immigration, Islam, and more. Through shifting genres, secret identities, and dramatic plot twists, the novel demonstrates that when society demands strict categories, we are all essentially passing. The chapter gestures forward to a time when the pretense of passing will disappear, and we will all embrace our multifarious, uncategorizable selves.

"It's a secret thing": Digital disembedding through online teen drama fandom

Fans of teen drama television series often feel that their pleasures are unworthy, with many going to great lengths to hide their practices from certain people. Social media plays a key role in contemporary fan cultures, and so fans must navigate platforms’ changing and complex norms around their users’ identity in careful and strategic ways. These acts counter recent scholarly claims about the ‘embeddedness’ (or entanglement, enmeshing) of social media’s technologies and norms within our everyday lives. In this paper I explore how fans sometimes disembed, or detach from the logics of certain platforms to facilitate secrecy. My respondents disembed from: (1) some platforms’ normalization of authentic identities, (2) social media’s increasing naturalization of its own embeddedness within everyday life, and (3) platforms’ demands that their users engage in often-risky practices of sharing. I draw on interview and social media observation data to examine how teen drama fandoms’ devalued cultural status motivates my respondents to create secret identities on certain platforms, particularly Facebook Pages.