6,639 research outputs found

    Metaphors of London fog, smoke and mist in Victorian and Edwardian Art and Literature

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    Julian Wolfreys has argued that after 1850 writers employed stock images of the city without allowing them to transform their texts. This thesis argues, on the contrary, that metaphorical uses of London fog were complex and subtle during the Victorian and Edwardian periods, at least until 1914. Fog represented, in particular, formlessness and the dissolution of boundaries. Examining the idea of fog in literature, verse, newspaper accounts and journal articles, as well as in the visual arts, as part of a common discourse about London and the state of its inhabitants, this thesis charts how the metaphorical appropriation of this idea changed over time. Four of Dickens's novels are used to track his use of fog as part of a discourse of the natural and unnatural in individual and society, identifying it with London in progressively more negative terms. Visual representations of fog by Constable, Turner, Whistler, Monet, Markino, O'Connor, Roberts and Wyllie and Coburn showed an increasing readiness to engage with this discourse. Social tensions in the city in the 1880s were articulated in art as well as in fiction. Authors like Hay and Barr showed the destruction of London by its fog because of its inhabitants' supposed degeneracy. As the social threat receded, apocalyptic scenarios gave way to a more optimistic view in the work of Owen and others. Henry James used fog as a metaphorical representation of the boundaries of gendered behaviour in public, and the problems faced by women who crossed them. The dissertation also examines fog and individual transgression, in novels and short stories by Lowndes, Stevenson, Conan Doyle and Joseph Conrad. After 1914, fog was no more than a crude signifier of Victorian London in literature, film and, later, television, deployed as a cliche instead of the subtle metaphorical idea discussed in this thesis

    Material Economies of South Yorkshire. The Organisation of Metal Production in Roman South Yorkshire.

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    This thesis aims to develop a model for the social organisation and production of ferrous and non-ferrous metals in South Yorkshire during the Roman period. This characterisation of the organisation of metallurgical activities is achieved through a combined methodology that will gather data from grey literature, published literature, as well as chemical, visual and microstructural analysis of metallurgical debris. The metallurgical practices in the study area are primarily rural in nature. These results are looked at through the lenses of Agency, Habitus, and the social construction of craft production. The movement of materials and people within the study area and local specialist practices are central in the interpretation of regional metalworking practices. Furthermore, models of craft production are critiqued, and an alternative modelisation process is suggested to characterise and understand the organisation of metal production in Roman South Yorkshire

    Chinese Benteng Women’s Participation in Local Development Affairs in Indonesia: Appropriate means for struggle and a pathway to claim citizen’ right?

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    It had been more than two decades passing by aftermath the devastating Asia’s Financial Crisis in 1997, subsequently followed by Suharto’s step down from his presidential throne which he occupied for more than three decades. The financial turmoil turned to a political disaster furthermore has led to massive looting that severely impacted Indonesians of Chinese descendant, including unresolved mystery of the most atrocious sexual violation against women and covert killings of students and democracy activists in this country. Since then, precisely aftermath May 1998, which publicly known as “Reformasi”1, Indonesia underwent political reform that eventually corresponded positively to its macroeconomic growth. Twenty years later, in 2018, Indonesia captured worldwide attention because it has successfully hosted two internationally renowned events, namely the Asian Games 2018 – the most prestigious sport events in Asia – conducted in Jakarta and Palembang; and the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting 2018 in Bali. Particularly in the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting, this event has significantly elevated Indonesia’s credibility and international prestige in the global economic powerplay as one of the nations with promising growth and openness. However, the narrative about poverty and inequality, including increasing racial tension, religious conservatism, and sexual violation against women are superseded by friendly climate for foreign investment and eventually excessive glorification of the nation’s economic growth. By portraying the image of promising new economic power, as rhetorically promised by President Joko Widodo during his presidential terms, Indonesia has swept the growing inequality in this highly stratified society that historically compounded with religious and racial tension under the carpet of digital economy.Arte y Humanidade

    Irresistible Revolution: Black, Trans, and Disabled World-Making through Activist Portraiture

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    This practice-based dissertation project engages large-scale portraiture to confront and resist the fungibility of Blackness. The project comprises a selection of twenty drawings and an exegesis in which I analyze my aesthetic process in order to shed light on theoretical problems and gaps in Trans, Disability, Black studies and activisms. This collection of writing also discusses and presents activist struggle, white supremacy in the arts, abolitionist organizing and speculative futures. These theoretical explorations are supported by reflections on the collaborative creation process and the ways in which the portraits have been received. To this end, I have included interviews I conducted with the portrait subjects and through textual analysis of ways in which the portraits have been taken up in art and activist contexts. I argue that studying and supporting Black disabled activist practice can inform ways forward for disability arts in the Canadian milieu

    Racism, crisis, and confrontation – political struggles over racist violence and state racism in Britain, 1958-1999

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    This thesis provides a conjunctural analysis of the political struggles over racist violence and state racism in Britain from the late 1950s to the late 1990s. Based on original archival research conducted between 2017 and 2020, and drawing on critical materialist theoretical and methodological perspectives, it combines extensive context analysis with a series of in depth case studies that examine various incidents of excessive or deadly violence against Black and Asian individuals. It focuses not only on racist murders that have led to accusations of insufficient, biased, and discriminatory police investigations and criminal prosecutions but also on incidents of deadly police violence that have led to accusations of racist discrimination and victimisation. More specifically, it explores a distinct cycle of struggles that had begun in the aftermath of the racist riots in Notting Hill and Nottingham in 1958 and reached an important yet limited watershed with the publication of the Macpherson report in 1999. While the existing literature in the area of racism studies tends to lose sight of these struggles, this thesis offers new insights into the cases of Kelso Cochrane (1959), Gurdip Singh Chaggar (1976), the New Cross fire (1981), Dorothy “Cherry” Groce (1985), Cynthia Jarrett (1985), as well as Stephen Lawrence (1993). At the centre of these case studies lies an examination of the struggles of the bereaved families as well as minority, anti-racist, and anti-fascist support actors. The focus on the second half of the 20th century was chosen to demonstrate that these conflict dynamics can only be fully grasped if they are situated within broader socio-historical and (geo-)political developments. The thesis places particular emphasis on the economic crisis of the early 1970s which continued to have a longstanding political impact in the 1980s and 1990s, the decline of the British Empire since the mid-20th century, as well as the legitimation crisis of British traditionalism since the late 1960s. With such a socio-historical perspective, this project makes an innovative contribution to understanding the trajectories of violent racism, social crisis, and political conflict in modern British history

    The Weight of (Im)possibility: Exploring body weight and shape with trans and gender non-conforming people

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    In recent decades, theorising around trans embodiment has sought to move away from narratives of the ‘wrong’ and pathological trans body. Emergent analytical and theoretical frameworks have instead highlighted the ways in which particular bodies become designated as trans, and what this means for the kinds of possibilities for embodiment that are opened up and closed down at the levels of both individual relationships and contexts, and structural and systemic constraints. The significance of weight and shape in relation to these embodied possibilities has not yet been fully explored within sociology. Drawing upon qualitative interviews with 21 participants who identified as trans and/or gender non-conforming, this thesis examines the intersection of body weight and shape with trans and gender non-conforming positionality in order to address gaps in existing knowledge around the meaning and significance of weight and shape for trans and gender non-conforming people and communities in the UK. Phenomenological epistemology informs this thesis and the thematic analysis (TA) undertaken, centring participants’ experiential claims. In discussion of the findings presented, I argue that weight and shape are enmeshed with the constraints and possibilities of gendered positionality in ways that indicate the need for wide-reaching and profound transformation in order for relationships with the body based on connection, acceptance, and pleasure to be more consistently and widely possible for trans and gender non-conforming people. Relationships with weight and shape, as I illustrate in this thesis, were not simply shaped by the conditions and possibilities for embodiment in which they were situated, but represented sites of agentic engagement within and through conditions of embodied possibility

    Spaces in-between: a transitional inquiry into transitionality

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    Working between the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari and the psychoanalysis of Winnicott, through stories and creative writing, I create new concepts and understandings of the notion of assemblages. This thesis is a playful exploration of experiences, thinking with theory, making a creative-relational inquiry. Moving between the refrain and the transitional object, I work with the idea of a transitional inquiry: between the internal and external, between the conscious and unconscious, producing something-in-the-world. Even though it is personal, this type of inquiry de-centres the notion of the subject to include objects, machines, and the creation of territories as fundamental aspects to understand human processes. One of the main contributions of working with Deleuze, Guattari, and Winnicott is to think the transitional object together with the refrain and propose a holding-machine to help other machines develop and process assemblages. This concept emerges while working with stories of trauma, understanding them as moments where the subject cannot process events and affects. This exploration is about spaces in-between, spaces that are not entirely what they are, as they move between the created and the discovered, between the intensities and extensions, fantasy, and reality

    Shared cues, different violence organisations: comparing visual recruitment strategies of extremists, gangs, PMCs/mercenaries, and militaries

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    Extremists, gangs, militaries, and private military contractors (PMC)/mercenaries share the need to recruit, and all employ video for this purpose. How they use these videos to attract new members remains unclear, however. The study is a response to calls for a visual turn in violent extremism and builds upon an emerging shift within the literature, which examines the persuasive power of videos produced by some violence organisations (VOs), exploring the role that narratives, multimodalities, and symbols play in recruitment. It takes an empirical approach to answer the question, ‘what visual strategies are used by violence organisations to recruit members to their group or call them to action?’ Theoretically, it combines Hogg's theory on group membership and identity, Ellul's work on myths and the technique of propaganda, and Mirzoeff’s approach to intervisuality. Through primary analysis of 117 videos, produced and/or circulated by VOs, it shows that VOs encode their videos with similar cues designed to enhance feelings of belonging, identity, and shared beliefs in order to persuade and influence viewers. It therefore makes a pertinent contribution to the literature regarding comparative analysis, which tends to treat these VOs as distinct groups, failing to adequately consider the significance of shared approaches. The findings indicate that VOs’ recruitment and call to action videos should not be viewed independently, but as part of the broader ecosystem of online video content, designed not merely to entertain, but also to persuade; thus, they have implications for responding to extremist content

    Littoral Trouble: Places, Prose, and Possibilities in the Lake Ontario Watershed

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    This thesis focuses on Lake Ontario and seeks to identify the different ways that people have related to it throughout time, starting with a frank discussion of the present state of the lake and the social conditions which surround it. The history of the region is reviewed to form a critical historical geographic survey of the watershed and cast light on how people have related to Lake Ontario throughout time. A literary review explores how artists and authors have used and represented the Lake, noting common themes and motifs. Lastly, I describe my personal fieldwork and observations to provide a contemporary perspective. From this, a few cautious anticipatory inferences are drawn to conclude this review of human relations with Lake Ontario in the throes of an indeterminate and daunting future

    Naodongfang: an examination of meanings in Chinese wedding games and pranks

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    This doctoral dissertation in Folklore explores a traditional, widespread wedding custom in China known as Naodongfang. When used generally, the term “Naodongfang” refers to the scope of all jokes, pranks and games played by grooms, brides, groomsmen, bridesmaids, parents, parents’ siblings and relatives during Chinese weddings. Although the custom has a long history, stretching back 2000 years, today many Chinese citizens consider its elements, such as beating grooms, humiliating brides and bridesmaids, and encouraging fathers-in-law and brides to hug and kiss each other, as bizarre, inappropriate, and even malicious. In this study I attempt to answer the questions: “Why is Naodongfang active in China today?” and “What are Naodongfang’s meanings?” I draw on published descriptions and analyses as well as my own ethnographic materials to explore economic meanings; discuss connections to Chinese concepts such as the Golden Mean, Propriety, and female reservedness; and examine Nao culture in the context of the carnivalesque. A significant focus of the thesis is the exploration of gender issues and violence associated with Naodongfang. Reports of injuries, sexual harassment, and sexual assault experienced by both female and male participants have made the custom controversial. Thus, the last three chapters explore connections of Naodongfang with Chinese feminism, patriarchy and constructions of masculinities. My intention is not to argue whether Naodongfang is good or bad. Rather, I hope this thesis provides new ethnographic materials and analyses on Naodongfang in a way that contributes to a larger conversation of wedding games and pranks and their deeper meanings. I argue that although this custom is criticized and stigmatized by many, it still holds value for some individuals and their communities. These meanings are multifaceted. Naodongfang allows participants to laugh and joke and to step out their everyday lives. This liminal time, with its freedom from usual decorum, can bring participants together or it can pit them against each other as guests compete for red packets or exert pressure on, or exact revenge against, the bridal couple or bridal party. Although Naodongfang can feel like an act of resistance towards authorities, it also reinforces existing family and clan power structures, as well as gender stereotypes, and promotes heteronormativity
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