15,000 research outputs found
Humour as social dreaming:Stand-up comedy as therapeutic performance
Stand-up comedy binds dramatic cultural spectacle to ritualised, intimate exposure. Examining ācaseā examples from live comic performance, this paper describes stand-up as a kind of social dreaming. The article proposes a theoretical frame drawing on Thomas Ogdenās notion of ātalking as dreamingā and psychoanalytic accounts connecting humour and melancholia. Locating the stand-up comedianās propensity for humour in a specialist capacity to hone, display and process traumata, the paper characterises stand-up as a performative oscillation evoking paranoid-schizoid and depressive anxieties. A psychosocial gloss places stand-up as a cultural resource in the service of the popular-as-therapeutic. The paper articulates complementarities between Henri Bergsonās formulations on the function of laughter and an emergent object relations account in order to help to recognise ācontainingā and ācultural-restorativeā aspects of much stand-up, understood as contemporary psychosocial ritual
David Stafford-Clark (1916-1999): seeing through a celebrity psychiatrist
This article uses the mass-media career of the British psychiatrist David Stafford-Clark (1916-1999) as a case study in the exercise of cultural authority by celebrity medical professionals in post-war Britain. Stafford-Clark rose to prominence in the mass media, particularly through his presenting work on medical and related topics for BBC TV and Radio, and was in the vanguard of psychiatrists and physicians who eroded professional edicts on anonymity. At the height of his career, he traded upon his celebrity status, and consequent cultural authority, to deliver mass media sermons on a variety of social, cultural, and political topics. Stafford-Clark tried to preserve his sense of personal and intellectual integrity by clinging to a belief that his authority in the public sphere was ultimately to be vindicated by his literary, intellectual, and spiritual significance. But as his credibility dwindled, he came to distrust the cultural intermediaries, such as broadcasters and publishers, who had supported him
Studying soap operas
This present issue of Communication Research Trends will focus on research about soap operas published in the last 15 years, that is, from the year 2000 to the present. This more recent research shows one key difference: the interest in soap opera has become worldwide. This appears in the programs that people listen to or watch and in communication researchers who themselves come from different countries
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Run to the Beat: Sport and music for the masses
Run to the Beat is a half marathon event that is accompanied by live and pre-recorded music. The author was involved with the event as the lead consultant in the period 2007-2010. This case study examines the genesis of the event, the science on which it was predicated and how it was received by participating runners and the media. The primary driver for the event was the 2007 ban on personal listening devices by the International Amateur Athletics Federation, which outraged recreational runners. There is a corpus of work (approximately 100 studies) that has examined the effects of music on exercise and sport. The most conclusive findings from this work are that music reduces perceived exertion at low-to-moderate exercise intensities and, if well selected, enhances affect at all intensities. The Run to the Beat events received mixed reviews from participants, but were generally positively presented by the international media. The event continues today on an annual basis in London, UK and Basel, Switzerland
Guide to Recruiting Black Men as Mentors for Black Boys
Black men are uniquely positioned to help guide black male youth to educational success and a productive future and through the barriers that stand in their way. But there are almost always more black boys to be mentored than black men to mentor them in formal mentoring programs. This guide helps mentoring programs engage in a productive and inclusive recruitment campaign by: 1) addressing program readiness; and 2) providing guidance on an effective social marketing campaign
ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.
The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological
advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected,
augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS
Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the
world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their
potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and
describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge
Differentiating Theists and Nontheists by way of a Sampling of Self-Reported Sexual Thoughts and Behaviors
Numerous researchers have addressed the impact of individual religiosity or spirituality on psychological well-being. However, studies addressing the possible relationship between religiosity and sexuality, specifically in the form of deterrence of certain sexual thoughts or behaviors based upon religious dictates, remain sparse. Individual religiosity may be related to individual sexual self-expression. Built on the framework of cognitive-dissonance theory and self-determination theory, this quantitative, correlational study was designed to examine the relationships between religiosity and sexual attitudes and behaviors of both theist and nontheist population samples comprised of approximately 400 subjects throughout the United States. Study participants completed the Derogatis Sexual Functioning Inventory in addition to a demographic questionnaire designed specifically for the research. A 2-step hierarchical binary logistic regression was performed to address the research questions for this study. Significance was found in the regression model for 3 selected variables--age, drive, and fantasy; research questions 1 and 2 were supported with the model findings. The results also offered support for the 2 aforementioned theoretical frameworks selected for this study. The implications for positive social change include a clearer understanding of the possible relationship between religiosity and sexuality and any differences in sexual behaviors between theists and nontheists. These implications are important in that the findings may result in healthier sex lives for individuals, increased communication among couples, enhanced acceptance of different sexual orientations, and decreased cognitive dissonance among those individuals contemplating or struggling with sexual behaviors that negate the teachings of their religious tenets
Masculine Foes, Feminist Woes: A Response to Down Girl
In her book, Down Girl, Manne proposes to uncover the
ālogicā of misogyny, bringing clarity to a notion that she
describes as both āloadedā and simultaneously āpolitically
marginal.ā Manne is aware that full insight into the ālogicā
of misogyny will require not just a āwhatā but a āwhy.ā
Though Manne finds herself largely devoted to the former
task, the latter is in the not-too-distant periphery.
Manne proposes to understand misogyny, as a general
framework, in terms of what it does to women. Misogyny,
she writes, is a system that polices and enforces the
patriarchal social order (33). Thatās the āwhat.ā As for the
āwhy,ā Manne suggests that misogyny is what women
experience because they fail to live up to the moral
standards set out for women by that social order.
I find Manneās analysis insightful, interesting, and well
argued. And yet, I find her account incomplete. While I
remain fully convinced by her analysis of what misogyny
is, I am less persuaded by her analysis of why misogyny
is. For a full analysis of the ālogicā of misogyny, one needs
to understand how the patriarchy manifests in men an
interest in participating in its enforcement. Or so I hope
to motivate here. I aim to draw a line from the patriarchy
to toxic masculinity to misogyny so that we have a clearer
picture as to why men are invested in this system. I thus
hope to offer here an analysis that is underdeveloped in
Manneās book, but is equally worthy of attention if we want
fully to understand the complex machinations underlying
misogyny
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"We Flawless": Black and Latina Adolescent Girls' Readings of Femininity in Pop Culture
This study discusses how adolescent Black and Latina girls read the femininities made available in pop culture texts and how they take up those femininities when they narrate personal experiences. The purpose of the study is to explore how girls engage in pop culture on an ongoing basis, how these everyday engagements shape their understandings of themselves as girls, and how these engagements are themselves performances that both maintain and threaten the boundaries between boy and girl. In addition, this study witnesses the deconstruction of those meanings (Derrida, 1967/1997), exploring how attempts to make femininity mean something ultimately undermines itself.
As pop culture has come to saturate everyday life, American schools, following the Common Core State Standardsā (NGA, 2010) mandate for curriculum driven by āsufficiently complex,ā canonical texts, have narrowed the scope and purposes of literacy instruction in schools. This research serves as a starting point for curricula that support young people in making sense of pop culture and their relationship to it.
Situated within a poststructural feminist theoretical framework, this study uses qualitative methods to make the literacy processes through which girls make sense of pop culture texts visible and to elicit narrations of the personal experiences in which girls take up the femininities made available pop culture texts. The findings suggested that girls make sense of these femininities by reading both in-narrative and out-of-narrativeāstanding back from the text and treating it as a text. In their readings and discussions of pop culture texts, the girls cited and inscribed discourses of femininity, constituting themselves as respectable girls by deliberately making judgments about womenās physical appearance on screen. Specifically, they acted to draw a line between what they saw as appropriate and what they saw as inappropriate. This repetitive act was one way they performed respectable femininity, stabilizing discursive meanings of gender and also holding open the possibility of the line being placed differently. The findings also suggested that storytelling as a site of discursive agency as the distance between the moment of experience and the moment of narration held open the possibility of reformulation and renegotiation of meanings
The civic and social implications of over-the-top television
Through the lenses of Apparatgeist Theory and the Theory of Networked Publics, this dissertation examines the civic and social implications of the contemporary television ecosystem, focusing on the phenomenon of binge-watching as it relates to political participation and empathic concern. Results of an online survey, including quantitative and qualitative measures, indicate that binge-watching television is a statistically significant factor in positively shaping political participation, both online and offline, regardless of the genre consumed. That said, news and informational programming served as the most powerful genre in predicting political participation. Additionally, this dissertation considers the role of empathy within the binge-watching ecosystem, as informed by the Theory of Narrative Empathy; most strikingly, results suggest that empathic concern relates negatively with binge-watching, regardless of genre consumed. However, the process of talking about the television shows binged proved to be a positive and statistically significant contributor to political participation, political discourse, as well as other-oriented dimensions of empathy. Implications and potential directions for future research and theory development are discussed
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