This paper explores the efficacy of using oral history to document the life history narratives of individuals and communities impacted by a high degree of trauma. Oral history, I believe, poignantly captures a gamut of traumatic experiences by embodying the multiple dimensions of individual experience—including affective dynamics and social meanings—within a socio‐cultural and historical frame. This paper also articulates the ways in which an oral history project is often directed and informed by the social location(s) of the interviewer and narrator (Shuman 130).

Using Conversation Analysis, this study describes how ‘institutionality’ is accomplished in talk-in-interaction by analyzing how the Korean student group members construct themselves as ‘an institution’ through decision-making. Most conversation-analytic research on institutional talk has been of occupational settings. This study, with data from a voluntary student staff group whose meetings are sporadic and without formal phases, illustrates that the group members’ interaction reveals how they construct themselves as a decision-making group whose members embody different social roles, and ultimately as an institution. Two significant practices are discussed. First, the data show that the members actively search for precedents, which later become the most crucial basis for their decision-making. Second, as a strategy of gathering power over others within their institutional boundary, the members frequently depart from the preference structure of ordinary conversation. Overall, this paper contributes to a better understanding of institutionality with data from a quasi-institutional setting in the relatively under-examined language, Korean.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States experienced a remarkable growth of the immigrant population and witnessed scientific and medical developments that facilitated the selection of desirable and respectable immigrants. Between the 1890s and the 1920s, the American government passed several immigration acts to exclude newcomers with mental or physical defects and expanded the excludable classes of immigrants. The actual number of deportees was small, but their presence alerted the American public of the danger of the "new" immigrants. Compared to physical defects, insanity was difficult to detect due to its relative invisibility and cultural differences in its manifestations and diagnoses. Nevertheless, insanity was often discussed to prove the undesirable nature of the immigrant population, and the popular eugenic ideas of the time period justified its exclusion. Financial concerns at the American borders also posed a problem in detecting immigrants with mental defects. In 1912, against the criticism that immigration officials failed to implement the immigration acts, the Acting Secretary of the Department of Immigration asserted: "A dollar will only go so far, and we cannot get two dollars worth of work for one dollar." The medical deportation of the "alien" insane was not just a political measure against diseased immigrants; it reflected social anxieties of the time period, and the causes and symptoms of insanity among immigrants revealed deeply ingrained gender and racial stereotypes of the "strangers in the land."

The overall goal of this project is to gain insight into the role of the enhanced expression of SOX11, a member of the SOX transcription factor family, and SDCCAG8, a tumor antigen, in oral/head and neck cancer. We hypothesize that over-expression of SOX11, an embryonic development related gene, leads to an upregulation of SDCCAG8, promoting a malignant phenotype in oral/head and neck cancer. To test this hypothesis, we have first demonstrated that knockdown of SOX11 expression inhibits the proliferation, migration and invasion of oral/head and neck cancer cells. Next, we have confirmed that SOX11 binds to the promoter of SDCCAG8 by using ChIP and luciferase assays and proven that up-regulation (or down-regulation) of SOX11 induces (or inhibits) the expression of SDCCAG8 in oral/head and neck cancer cells. To further investigate the clinical significance of SDCCAG8 over-expression in oral/head and neck cancer, we have utilized the deep sequencing data from the TCGA database and performed a correlation analysis of SDCCAG8 gene expression with clinicopathological parameters of oral/head and neck cancer patients. The results show that high expression of SDCCAG8 is significantly associated with overall survival, tumor size and stage of the cancer patients. Taken together, our findings indicate that SDCCAG8 is a prognostic biomarker in oral/head and neck cancer and SOX11 may promote the progression of oral/head and neck cancer via the regulation of SDCCAG8.

Natural products are varieties of naturally occurring compounds that possess wide range of useful biological activities. Their intricate structures and activities are often the inspiration behind designs of medicinally significant molecules and new methodologies to perform chemical transformations. Through total synthesis of natural products, organic chemists discover how complex molecules behave in flasks and develop creative ways to build them. This dissertation describes findings and challenges from the effort towards total synthesis of portimine A, a complex marine natural product that is a highly selective inducer of apoptosis towards several cancer cells.

The first part of this dissertation details a new method in creating contiguous quaternary and tertiary carbon stereocenters through remote stereocontrol in Ireland-Claisen rearrangement. This new method enables stereocontrol in the rearrangement through a distant acetonide as an internal stereocontrol unit instead of transferring chirality from a chiral secondary alcohol, providing a rapid access to an extensively functionalized framework.

The second part of this dissertation describes efficacy of employing enyne metathesis in constructing cyclohexene diene motif commonly present in many members of cyclic imine family. This strategy is elegantly staged by the proceeding remote Ireland-Claisen rearrangement and is a convenient way to gain access to conjugated cyclic dienes.

The third part of this dissertation demonstrates the unprecedented use of N-heterocyclic carbene catalysis in complex macrocyclization. This strategy, with a large potential to be further optimized, is a useful method for large-membered macrocyclization baring various functionalities. The most recent discoveries on the total synthesis of portimine A following the successful macrocyclization are also discussed, and the remainder of synthesis is in progress.

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