A leap of faith: Abbott, Bellamy, Morris, Wells and the fin-de-siècle route to utopia

In the great surge of utopian writing that was produced during the fin de siècle, Edward Bellamy, William Morris and H. G. Wells among others imagined utopias that were global in scale and located in the future. They made a radical shift in utopian thinking by drawing a historical trajectory between their own time and that of utopia. A contemporaneous text that might seem to have little in common with these “historical utopias” is E. A. Abbott’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884). This article shows how closely its ideas can bring into focus those of the specifically utopian texts being written alongside it. Flatland breaks the conventions of utopian narrative by removing the reader from the narrative plane and situating us instead in the “impossible” third dimension. The “leap of faith” necessary for scientific or religious revelation is simultaneously invoked as the route to utopia

Textured Activism: Affect Theory and Transformational Politics in Transnational Queer Palestine-Solidarity Activism

AbstractHow do we conceptualize social and political transformation? What possibilities arise for our political imaginings when we examine the approaches and orientations of activist practice in the everyday? Using queer and affect theory, I examine dualistic thinking in social movement practices to propose a model for thinking about the ethics of solidarity in practice. I consider this model of solidarity though the texture of activism and by examining the everyday practices of solidarity in the queer Palestine movement.Résumé De quelle façon concevons-nous la transformation sociale et politique? Quelles possibilités s’offrent à notre imagination politique lorsque nous examinons les approches et les orientations de l’activisme au quotidien? À l’aide de la théorie queer et de la théorie des affects, j’examine la pensée dualiste dans les pratiques des mouvements sociaux afin de proposer un modèle d’examen de l’éthique de la solidarité dans la pratique. Je considère ce modèle de solidarité selon la texture de l’activisme et en examinant les pratiques quotidiennes de la solidarité du mouvement queer palestinien

Mirror - Vol. 04, No. 05 - September 18, 1980

The Mirror (sometimes called the Fairfield Mirror) is the official student newspaper of Fairfield University, and is published weekly during the academic year (September - May). It runs from 1977 - the present; current issues are available online.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/archives-mirror/1063/thumbnail.jp

An interactive interface for NCAR Graphics

The NCAR Graphics package has been a valuable research tool for over 20 years. As a low level Fortran library, however, it was difficult to use for nonprogramming researchers. With this grant and NSF support, an interactive interface has been created which greatly facilitates use of the package by researchers of diverse computer skill levels

With us or against us? : hegemony and ideology within American superhero comic books 2001-2008

Superhero comic books, part of American popular culture since 1938, have been recognised as a site for the reproduction of dominant ideology, however, their ability to resist dominant ideology has not been as equally considered. This study examines the narratives of DC Comics and Marvel Comics superhero characters’ Batman and Captain America, in the time period 2001-2008 to evaluate the ability of these superhero narratives to reproduce, critique, challenge and contest dominant ideological versions of the American Dream. The years 2001 to 2008 were a time of ideological upheaval in American society influenced in no small part by specific articulations of historical events; 9/11 in 2001, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the election of the first African American to the Presidency, Barack Obama, in 2008. To position the dominant ideology this study adopts the theoretical lens of hegemony as developed by Antonio Gramsci, and radicalised by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Methodologically, the theory of hegemony is used to develop a sociological tool of analysis; the analysed hegemonic ideology. When this tool is applied to the ideology of the American Dream it exposes the constituted ideological components of the ideology that are subject to articulation within the process of hegemony and counter hegemony. The changing articulations, ideologies and process of hegemony from 2001 to 2008 are detailed in this study as a necessary step in analysis. When the specific constituted ideological components of the hegemonic ideology are applied to the superhero narratives of the same period, the true ideological position of the superhero narratives are exposed. The results suggest that superhero comics’ engagement and role in hegemony as a popular cultural product are extremely complex. While there is evidence of superhero narratives reproducing the ideological positions of the Right Wing hegemony that emerges after 9/11, there is also evidence of ideological resistance within the narrative and later support for the Left Wing hegemony that emerges in the Presidential campaign of Obama in 2008. In the changing landscape of hegemony in American society, superhero comics offer intelligent and detailed ideological contributions to process of hegemony and counter hegemony. This suggests both a progressive power to the concept of the American Dream and a degree of agency within the realm of popular cultural production

Strategic Communication in Context: Theoretical Debates and Applied Research

Strategic communication is becoming more relevant in communication sciences, though it needs to deepen its reflective practices, especially considering its potential in a VUCA world — volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The capillary, holistic and result-oriented nature that portrays this scientific field has led to the imperative of expanding knowledge about the different approaches, methodologies and impacts in all kinds of organisations when strategic communication is applied. Therefore Strategic Communication in Context: Theoretical Debates and Applied Research assembles several studies and essays by renowned authors who explore the topic from different angles, thus testing the elasticity of the concept. Moreover, this group of authors represents various schools of thought and geographies, making this book particularly rich and cross-disciplinary.illustrato

Victorian Novels and Educational Reform: A Study of Dickens, Hughes, and Peacock

This thesis analyzes how Victorian novelists Charles Dickens, Thomas Hughes, and Thomas Love Peacock depict the influences of educational reformers in their three works: Hard Times, Tom Brown’s School Days, and Gryll Grange respectively. Written in an era of rapid sociological and economic change due to the emergence of the middle class and effects of industrialization, these texts illustrate rising conflicts between a new scientific age and a legacy of traditional classical study. As a result of such transformational forces, these three novelists witnessed a shifting regard for the value of the humanities as scientific study became seen as the more “useful” form of learning. This new conceptualization of “useful knowledge” and its repercussions can be seen in the characters and plot trajectories of the three novels examined in this study. Considering the term “useful knowledge” as it relates to purpose and content of characters’ educations, the present paper examines the impacts of educational reformers Jeremy Bentham, Thomas Arnold, and Henry Brougham as they appear in the novels’ public and private schools, as well as social and domestic spheres. As each work features extensive expository information on characters’ educational backgrounds, one can infer that the relationship between education, plot trajectory, and characterization is one that is deeply interconnected. A contextualized reading of the novels as products of the Victorian educational reform movement offers insight into the effects of an unbalanced education on characters’ intellectual, emotional, and moral development. Exploring the conflicts between science and the humanities, “useful knowledge” and classical learning, and the standardization of education by Competitive Examination, this project investigates how the novels offer commentary on the relationship between such tensions and characters’ morality, social relationships, and imagination within educational systems. Evaluating the novelists’ varying depictions of reformers in their novels, we can see how such shifts in curricula could have significant consequences--either harmful or beneficial--for both the individual and society

Gendered engineering culture in Turkey: construction and transformation

In this study, I aim to understand gendered aspects in professional culture of engineering and its transformation in contemporary Turkey by using a theoretical tool called "Gendered engineering culture”. Deriving from the results of this study, I argue that engineering profession has a prestigious image in Turkey’s society. This image has transformed due to economic and political changes. Secondly, engineering profession in Turkey is based on gendered codes and ideals. These codes mainly adress male engineer as the ideal type. Yet, this definition of masculinity has certain limits peculiar to Turkey which values mathematical ability in addition to physical toughness. In addition, findings of this study provide constrasting perspectives from different cohorts of women engineers concerning the change in gendered structure of engineering profession in Turkey. Findings of this study also indicate that gendered engineering culture manifest in engineers’ communication styles; belittling jokes, daily language, caricatures, also in gendered job ads, and segregation of certain tasks in work organization which finally affects promotion strategies. The ways gendered engineering culture manifest itself affects men and women engineers differently; women need to struggle more than men in order to survive in engineering environment.Ph.D. - Doctoral Progra

And the Word was made Flesh : Anthropomorphism in the poetry of W.H. Auden

And the Word Was Made Flesh: Anthropomorphism in the poetry of WH Auden examines the reasons for the neglect of Auden’s prolific deployment of anthropomorphism by examining the poetry’s critical reception with a view to understanding what larger purpose, what ‘strategy of discourse’ (Ricoeur 2003, The Rule of Metaphor: 5-9), Auden may have had in mind when he revived a trope traditionally regarded as retrograde. Anxious not to be mistaken for a Modern, yet unable to find a social rhetoric to suit his purposes, Auden elected upon a new style of poetry which questioned the very foundations of language by placing anthropomorphism, the ascription of agency and sentience to voiceless entities, at its centre. The study explores anthropomorphism from historical and theoretical perspectives in an attempt to explain the reasons for its demise, at least, within the academy. This study emphasises the importance Auden placed on the everyday activity of reading, the principal focus for the poet’s ‘cultural theory’ (Boly 1991 and 2004: 138). Auden, 'eager to create a tradition of its own' (Emig 2000: 1), abjuring propaganda, hoped to educate the reader to resist the different ideologies which were vying for ascendency during the 1930s. This study will demonstrate that anthropomorphism, with its capacity to suggest alternative words to ‘re-describe reality’ (Ricoeur 2003: 5), played a pivotal role in Auden’s project for cultural renewal. This study demonstrates that the lasting benefit of Auden’s use of anthropomorphism is to have recognised with prescience what critics now recognise as a 'revolutionary and potently counter-cultural tactic of cultural appropriation' (Paxson 1994: 173), a trope that 'engenders within its semiotic structure a hidden critique of Western culture' (Paxson: 50). Evidence from recent linguistic theory is marshalled in support of the trope’s rehabilitation. This study examines a selection of Auden’s four hundred published poems, and it also offers a provisional taxonomy to initiate the complex process of classifying instances of personification and its co-ordinate tropes in poetry.English StudiesM.A. (English