In the early 2000s, the femme fatales of Nollywood were seldom seen without pencil-thin eyebrows, a thick, dark swipe of lip liner or a carefully placed, painted-on beauty mark. In Nigerian films like “Games Women Play” (2005), “Yankee Girls” (2008)

On her first day of workwinzir, the young bioengineering major climbed down the basement steps of a cancer laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., and caught sight of someone summarily beheading a mouse. The student, Elizabeth Vargis, felt faint. She graspe