U.S. Route 1 (After Berenice Abbott)

Exhibition at Rencontres D’Arles Palais de l'Archevêché July 7 - October 5 In 1954, photographer Berenice Abbott journeyed along the length of U.S. Route 1. From Florida motels to Maine potato farmers, Abbott memorialised communities up and down the East Coast. During this trip, she shot more than two hundred and fifty 8x10-inch photographs, and around one thousand smaller images using her Rolleiflex camera, representing her largest portfolio of photographs devoted to a single subject. In 2014 after the publication of David Campany’s book, The Open Road: Photography & the American Road Trip, Anna Fox and Karen Knorr decided that they would make a collaborative road trip together based on Berenice Abbott’s Route One. Following in the tracks of Berenice Abbott and her colleague/assistant Damon Gadd (also accompanied by Sara Gadd), Karen Knorr and Anna Fox set out in 2016 to start a record of contemporary life along U.S. Route 1. during the age of Trump. They started in Key West in 2016 and aimed North for Maine, not knowing how long this trip might take. Along the way Fox and Knorr searched for a sense of what is happening today and how that differs from what Abbott and Gadd found. Using their iPhones, digital SLRs and a Phase One medium format camera, they photographed small towns, people, drugstores, cafes, diners, hotels, motels, farms, factories, street signs and advertisements. Abbott focused on the road and its signs, local industry, how goods moved both north and south, the rapid growth of the use of the motor car and the development of tourism. Fox and Knorr wanted to re-call the importance of Abbott’s work, looking at the significance of U.S.1 and how life has developed around it, since it is now a far quieter roadway. From 2016 – 2025, Fox and Knorr traversed the U.S. Route, considering current environmental debate and societal discontent created by the increasing disenchantment of working Americans with their governance and elites. Covid stopped all travel between 2020 and 2022, but Fox and Knorr continued to take photographs off social media networks during the Jan 6 storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. In 2024 they made two last trips to Maine and Florida, and finally one more to Florida in 2025 concluding this chapter of their work. Despite being one of the most advanced economies, USA is still surprisingly conservative. The second amendment to the United Sates Constitution protects the right of people to keep and bear arms. Girls as young as 14 are allowed to marry (with parental consent) in 27 states. On June 24, 2022, America’s top court overturned the 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling which had given women abortion rights up until 24 weeks and opened the door for states to ban abortion outright. The criminal justice system in the United States has a very large imbalance in the composition of races incarcerated, specifically between blacks and whites. Black males are not only the victims of violence and discrimination but have an incarceration rate twenty-five times higher than that of the total population. Black Lives Matter, a decentralised social movement was formed in 2013 by three women, and global support culminated in the founding of Black Lives Matter Global network advocating for the eradication of systematic racism and prevention of police violence. Prior to this, in 2006, the #MeToo movement was started by Tarana Burke, a women's advocate, to support survivors of sexual violence, especially young women of colour. It gained widespread attention in 2017 after news reports surfaced about Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct. On November 5, 2024, Donald Trump won the US presidential election for the second time. Barely two weeks later, on November 17, an image began circulating on social media that signalled the start of what will be an unprecedented period in the United States: Trump and his right-hand man Elon Musk with Robert Kennedy aboard Trump Force One enjoying a meal of McDonald’s hamburgers

Pride and prejudice: the history of LGBTQ people in British newspaper cartoons

This short article provides an overview of the LGBTQ People in British Newspaper cartoons exhibition that I curated at the University of Kent in summer 2025 with funding from the Beaverbrook Foundation

Freedom as Fetish

Recent Marxist political theory has foregrounded freedom as normative commitment. This paper re-stages the break between slavery and capitalism through which slavery's natural bondage is supposedly superseded by the compulsions of market dependency. Capitalist social practices depend upon our freedom whilst inculcating a system in which domination and freedom are interdependent. But this interdependence leads to a double-bind: if freedom is reducible to social practices, we acquiesce to unfreedom; if not, we appeal to an ahistorical essence. I consider whether the double-bind can be diffused by exploring freedom's fetish character as a real phenomenon enacted in practice because we are implicated in the commodity as both free and passive object to be exchanged. But I suggest that slavery is not then excisable but remains as fetish character internal to the freedom of the worker as presupposition: freedom for the worker is guaranteed by the practical enaction of slavery's impossible negation

Thematic analysis in an artificial intelligence-driven context: a stage-by-stage process

Although a substantial body of research has explored the application of thematic analysis within qualitative enquiry, considerable variation remains regarding how scholars might operationalise the method. More importantly, the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has introduced additional complexity to the expanding corpus of secondary data. The volume and evolving characteristics of AI-generated content necessitate a critical re-evaluation of existing analytical frameworks. In response to these emerging challenges, this study develops a carefully constructed and theoretically grounded thematic analysis framework to support researchers in conducting analysis within an AI-driven context. Drawing on a previous framework, it highlights the flexibility of thematic analysis and its capacity to generate rich, contextually grounded insights, particularly in the synthesis of existing knowledge through secondary data analysis. This paper proposes the RIPES (Reflexivity, Interpretation, Procedural consistency, Evaluation, and Situatedness) model, outlines the key stages of conducting thematic analysis, examines its application to secondary data, and evaluates both the benefits and the challenges associated with this approach in qualitative enquiry. It aims to assist researchers and practitioners in critically engaging with both primary and secondary data while maintaining methodological integrity within an increasingly technologically mediated research environment

Colour me Pink! ​Being inspired by the Zandra Rhodes' Colourful Heritage Project

On Thursday, 6th February 2025, the University for the Creative Arts, Library & Learning, and the Colourful Heritage Project hosted a webinar introducing the Zandra Rhodes’ Colourful Heritage project. The webinar highlighted the vibrant fashion images and educational resources now freely available for educational use. The project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, offers a unique platform for students and educators to explore the influential work of fashion designer Zandra Rhodes. The webinar attracted art librarians, visual arts researchers, educators, fashion historians, curators, and museum/gallery staff, interested in learning about Rhodes' legacy and how to inspire future generations of designers and creatives. The Colourful Heritage project emphasizes engagement with fashion heritage and skill-building opportunities, particularly for underrepresented learners in Medway, Kent. The webinar introduced participants to the expanded Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection, which now includes textiles, headpieces, hats, jewellery, and iconic pieces such as the cape worn by Freddie Mercury. The webinar also included discussions on copyright rights and the use of the collection, visual literacy, and 'slow looking' techniques for better understanding garments and fashion collections. The event concluded with a reflection and Q&A session, offering attendees a chance to engage directly with the speakers. Further details about the Colourful Heritage project and the Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection can be found on the website: https://mylibrary.uca.ac.uk/colourfulheritag

IN-Between

A Fast Forward exhibition in collaboration with Wozownia Art Gallery 11.10.2025 – 9.11.2025 Opening: 11.10.2025, 7pm Wozownia Art Gallery, ul. Rabiańska 20, Toruń, Poland Borders, migration and identity are constantly in our news, yet what do those stories ever tell us about real life aside from what is urgent and immediate. News and media are plagued by drama and false sincerity. These four contemporary artists have worked to bring new narratives to the burgeoning stories of migration. Two of them, Maria Kapajeva and Masha Pryven have worked collaboratively with groups of refugees and migrants. Then Elizabeth Ransom reflects on her own family experience of migration looking acutely at the very day they moved from one country to another. While the fourth artist, Ania Ready, materialises displacement and postwar migration through soil, collected from places central to a Polish Holocaust survivor. All the artists use alternative photographic methods and/or hands-on analogue techniques to act as a cipher for the complexity of the stories they are relating, all four have been affected themselves by changing borders and migration. The layering of information in their practical methods is so different to that of photojournalism, less instant, more contemplative, perhaps in some ways more approachable. Certainly, the beauty in these images draws us in and in a slow, thoughtful manner unfolds their stories to us. ‍Artists: Maria Kapajeva (Estonia/UK), Masha Pryven (Ukraine/Germany), Elizabeth Ransom (USA/UK), Ania Ready (Poland/UK)

‘Boys and girls of every age. Wouldn’t you like to see something strange?’ – Uncanniness and The Nightmare Before Christmas

This article explores The Nightmare Before Christmas through the critical framework of the Freudian uncanny, incorporating such issues as animation, authorship, audience, genre, and seasonal holidays. The uncanny is initially identified in the film’s macabre cast of animated corpses, and the stop-motion process which brings these puppets to life. More significantly, the uncanny is understood as the intellectual uncertainty implicated in blurring distinctions, whereby a quality shifts into its antithesis. The homely becomes unhomely, the familiar unfamiliar, the festive night transforms into a frightful nightmare. The Nightmare Before Christmas is characterised by such ambivalent dynamics. Despite contrasts between the family friendly Disney studio, and the darker creations associated with filmmaker Tim Burton, Gothic qualities which define the latter have traditionally characterised the former, with its history of dancing skeletons, haunted houses, and animated objects. Ambiguity concerning the film’s intended audience further enhances its uncanny status. The combination of animation and horror, while seemingly at odds with the genres’ respective audiences of child and adult spectators, accords with established traditions within children’s media which frequently incorporate horror elements. For adult viewers the stop-motion aesthetic evokes nostalgia memories of spooky childhood entertainment which easily assume an uncanny register. Finally, this article considers the extent Christmas and Halloween, while seemingly distinct, share common qualities upon which The Nightmare Before Christmas plays

Care as counterinsurgency

In Louisiana in 2021 a group of Black fathers gathered in the form of Dads on Duty to pre-empt increasing violence amongst their children at a local high school. Activist and writer Harsha Walia hailed this as community-based care exemplifying abolition in practice. This coheres with a recent focus on care as a political project providing an antidote to anti-Black violence. However, this case is instructive in foregrounding the limitations of a politics of care insofar as care is sutured into the continuation of policing and violence. With Fanon’s concept of incomplete death, I consider whiteness’ orienting tensions between the drive to annihilate Blackness and simultaneously to maintain Blackness as a source of exploitable value and the rights and privileges for whites. If care operates in this space of incomplete death, then care-politics becomes a survival program that conciliates anti-Black violence that would render impossible its abolition

Advancing sustainable development goals through green inclusive leadership in hospitality industry: a dual study perspective

Implementing green innovation is paramount for the luxury hospitality industry in accomplishing its sustainable development goals (SDGs). Therefore, identifying the key drivers that enable green innovation (GI) is essential for promoting sustainable development. Existing literature on luxury hospitality management has overlooked exploring the key factors that drive green innovation. This study leverages the natural resource-based view to examine the mediating roles of green dynamic capability and green environmental orientation in the relationship between green inclusive leadership (GIL) and green innovation. The research further examines the effect of GI on a hotel’s environmental performance and a hotel’s green image. The theoretical model was evaluated through two distinct studies focusing on Italian employees in the hospitality sector. The findings underscore the significance of GIL practices with environmental initiatives to promote sustainable GI. Expanding the GI debate offers compelling insights that might help hotel professionals make informed strategic decisions contributing to SDGs