Breast milk secretory IgA antibodies provide a first line of defense against enteric infections. Despite this and an effective vaccine, human rotaviruses (RVs) remain the leading cause of severe infectious diarrhea in children in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) where vaccine efficacy is lower than that of developed nations. Therapeutic strategies that deliver potently neutralizing antibodies into milk could provide protection against enteric pathogens such as RVs. We developed a murine model of maternal protective-transfer using systemic administration of a dimeric IgA (dIgA) monoclonal antibody. We confirmed that systemically-administered dIgA passively transferred into milk and stomach of suckling pups in a dose-dependent manner. We then demonstrated that systemic administration of an engineered potent RV-neutralizing dIgA (mAb41) in lactating dams protected suckling pups from RV-induced diarrhea. This maternal protective-transfer immunization platform could be an effective strategy to improve infant mortality against enteric infections, particularly in LMIC with high rates of breastfeeding.

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This dissertation advances previous research on the journalistic interpretive community by placing news at the center of a community's construction of place. By focusing on the construction of Iowa City, Iowa's "Southeast Side"-neighborhoods home to predominantly newly arrived black residents from Chicago and other urban areas-this study identifies dominant news characterizations of the Southeast Side that mark the place as a "ghetto" or "inner city." Beyond providing information about community issues and social conditions from southeastern neighborhoods, the term Southeast Side performed a singular ideological purpose: to identify and maintain dominant community values throughout the rest of Iowa City. Racialized and stereotyped news narratives of urban people, places, and problems in a place called the Southeast Side created an ideological boundary between those in and outside the Southeast Side. Such a boundary subjugated the Southeast Side's cultural diversity and its people, presenting them as being counter to Midwestern values and a threat to notions of a safe, white and historically homogeneous community. Indeed, the creation of Southeast Side was just as much about creating an "inner city" as it was about constructing notions of Iowa City itself. Through mental mapping, this project then compares dominant news characterizations to those made by Southeast Side residents, journalists, and public officials. In the end, this study explores cultural meanings that emerged from examining the similarities or differences between the place-making of residents, journalists, and news sources. This study reveals place-making as a fundamental role of the journalistic community and identifies another ideological function of the press in that they assign power and meanings by describing news by where it happens. Journalists and media scholars have long talked about the press as improving community journalism to meet the notion of the public sphere. Yet, this dissertation is not another such study that only encourages journalists to alter how they report on local news and communities. Instead, this study suggests that journalists and scholars recognize the cultural power of journalistic place-making and the challenge to their authority to do so by residents from a particular place.