If the Shoe Fits: The Evolution of the Cinderella Fairy Tale from Literature to Television

More than a millennium after the earliest-known version was committed to text, fairy tales continue to occupy our bookshelves and airwaves. The current popularity of fairy tale-based television programs such as Grimm and Once Upon a Time offer continued proof that the appeal of these tales is not lost on 21st century audiences. Beginning with the rise of fairy tales in the ancient cultures of China and India, this paper will follow their journey through Asia, long before these tales reached their traditionally recognized European birthplace. In this examination of the multicultural variations of a single tale—the Cinderella story—we begin to understand just how these stories have evolved. By means of textual analysis, I will examine the familiar French literary version (Perrault) of Cinderella using Propp’s (2008) morphology of “function” and character, and semiotic theories advanced by Berger (2000). I will then apply this structure to three television adaptations of the Cinderella story: the 1957 live-television broadcast of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, the 2006 pilot episode of ABC’s Ugly Betty, and the 2007 Mexican production of La Fea más Bella. Likewise, I will examine the ways that the Cinderella tale has retained its relevance as it crossed cultures—a literary example of globalization through cultural flow—and how the sharing of its ideas has contributed to its historical persistence

The Fall Fringe Festival: Bluebeard's Castle

This is the concert program of the Fall Fringe Festival performance of Bluebeard's Castle by Bela Bartok, with libretto by Bela Balazs, running Friday and Saturday, October 22 and 23, 1999 at 6:45 p.m. and Sunday, October 24 at 3:00 p.m. and 6:45 p.m., at Studio 210, The Boston University Theater, 264 Huntington Avenue. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund

Boy meets goal, boy loses goal, boy gets goal : the nature of feedback between goal-based simulation and understanding systems

We are designing a goal-based planning and simulation system called REACTOR for a multiple-actor world in which partially formulated plans are monitored during execution, providing feedback to the planner. Plan failures that occur are diagnosed by a combination of top-down (plan-synthesis) and bottom-up (plan-understanding) techniques, allowing an informed choice of response to the error. By maintaining separate belief spaces for each actor, we simulate planners who themselves simulate the planning and plan-understanding of other actors

2010 Bright Ideas Conference Program

Event program for the 2010 Bright Ideas Conference at SFASU

Molding Messages: Analyzing the Reworking of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in \u3ci\u3eGrimm’s Fairy Tale Classics\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eDollhouse\u3c/i\u3e

The story of “Sleeping Beauty” (ATU 410) is one of the most consistently captivating fairy tales. It tells of a cursed princess dreaming in a tower, waiting patiently for her prince to rescue her. Those who recreate the tale for contemporary audiences spin the story anew, reconstructing again and again what it means both to sleep and to awaken. This chapter analyzes two modern television versions of the tale, one for children and one for adults, comparing their incorporation of feminist messages and parallel ideas about shaping narratives and shaping lives. The children’s cartoon Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (also called Grimm Masterpiece Theatre) and the adult program Dollhouse each remold the story to advance very specific rereadings of the tale

Building equitable literate futures : home and school computer-mediated literacy practices and disadvantage

This paper examines the complex connections between literacy practices, the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and disadvantage. It reports the findings of a year-long study which investigated the ways in which four families use ICTs to engage with formal and informal literacy learning in home and school settings. The research set out to explore what it is about computer-mediated literacy practices at home and at school in disadvantaged communities that make a difference in school success. The findings demonstrate that the \u27socialisation\u27 of the technology - its appropriation into existing family norms, values and lifestyles - varied from family to family. Having access to ICTs at home was not sufficient for the young people and their families to overcome the so-called \u27digital divide\u27. Clearly, we are seeing shifts in the meaning of \u27disadvantage\u27 in a globalised world mediated by the use of new technologies. New definitions of disadvantage that take account not only of access to the new technologies but also include calibrated understandings of what constitutes the access are required. The article concludes that old inequalities have not disappeared, but are playing out in new ways in the context of the networked society.<br /