The Rhetoric of Mom Blogs: A Study of Mothering Made Public

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of mom blogs to determine their handling of conventional motherhood and the rhetorical nature of their discourse. Unlike other prior studies of blogs and specifically of mom blogs, the dissertation examines both the blog entries themselves and the many comments such entries generate from readers. In addition, it seeks to determine the values and rhetorical practices of any community that might be established through such blog commenting. To accomplish these aims, the dissertation focuses on the entries and comments from three particular blogs chosen to represent the network of mom bloggers. The commonplaces or ideals of the conventional motherhood narrative are first established as they have been identified in existing scholarship on mothering. This provides a framework against which the rhetoric of the mom blogs can be compared to determine the picture of motherhood identity presented by these mom blogs in relation to the societal norms of motherhood. Research on the diary style blog is surveyed as well to establish the mom blogs\u27 potential to support particular emotional interaction between the writer and readers, and the ways such interaction can serve the production of community. Additionally, this chapter considers some established defining characteristics of online communities. Moreover, the diary style blog and online community share similar rhetorical features. A grounded theory analysis of a year\u27s worth of entries the mom blogs reveals they present/perform motherhood identities via an ethos of inexperience or lack of knowledge. They struggle with the judgment of others based on cultural expectations for body image and performance of motherhood, and they themselves struggle with their own tendencies to judge other mothers similarly. The content analysis of the comments from the same three blogs indicates that readers most often respond with affirmation of the writer, either through the sharing of similar experiences, through the extension of the original entry topic, or through the mirroring of the blogger\u27s rhetoric. The analysis concludes that the mom bloggers and their audiences do react against cultural expectations that they are unable to fulfill, but that they do not overtly resist or interrogate those expectations. In fact, the communities that emerge among the writers and readers seem to serve a support group function. The comments offer affirmation for the bloggers, but there is no indication that their interactions with one another, alone, will prompt significant cultural change. However, the simple scale of participation presented in this dissertation--the three bloggers combined with the large number of commenters\u27 contributions--indicates that ideal motherhood is not operative for a significant number of mothers

Haiku Generator That Reads Blogs and Illustrates Them with Sounds and Images

In this paper we introduce our haiku generator, which, in contrast to other systems, is not restricted to limited classic vocabulary sets and preserves a classic style without becoming too random and abstract because it performs a semantic integrity check using the Internet. Moreover, it is able to analyze blog entry input and, by using nouns and adjectives for web-mining, to stay on topic and still preserve kigo, traditional seasonal words used in Japanese poetry. The haiku generator utilizes grammar templates automatically generated from poems written by Japanese poets and a lexicon of 2,473 kigo words from an online haiku repository. In addition to generating haiku poems, it can output them vocally together with related sound effects and images retrieved from the WWW. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed system generates high-quality haikus and that using contentrelated input and multimedia-rich output is effective for increasing users’ satisfaction. We have performed impression evaluation experiments and confirmed that our method is especially useful for generating haikus with higher depth and soundsharpness, which are two very important categories in professional evaluation of Japanese poetry. Next, haikus generated using the proposed method were evaluated by blog authors and blog readers and again, the proposed method outperformed the baseline. We also measured how the presence or absence of multimedia output influenced the evaluation. While using both vocal output and an image achieved higher scores than text alone, there were cases in which some combinations of effects were evaluated higher than all the effects used together. With our original approach to generating poetry, we wish to show the importance of new media and possibilities that are arising from the utilization of the “wisdom of (web-)crowds” in order to achieve higher standards for AI-generated art

Perceptual fail: Female power, mobile technologies and images of self

Like a biological species, images of self have descended and modified throughout their journey down the ages, interweaving and recharging their viability with the necessary interjections from culture, tools and technology. Part of this journey has seen images of self also become an intrinsic function within the narratives about female power; consider Helen of Troy “a face that launched a thousand ships” (Marlowe, 1604) or Kim Kardashian (KUWTK) who heralded in the mass mediated ‘selfie’ as a social practice. The interweaving process itself sees the image oscillate between naturalized ‘icon’ and idealized ‘symbol’ of what the person looked like and/or aspired to become. These public images can confirm or constitute beauty ideals as well as influence (via imitation) behaviour and mannerisms, and as such the viewers belief in the veracity of the representative image also becomes intrinsically political manipulating the associated narratives and fostering prejudice (Dobson 2015, Korsmeyer 2004, Pollock 2003). The selfie is arguably ‘a sui generis,’ whilst it is a mediated photographic image of self, it contains its own codes of communication and decorum that fostered the formation of numerous new digital communities and influenced new media aesthetics . For example the selfie is both of nature (it is still a time based piece of documentation) and known to be perceptually untrue (filtered, modified and full of artifice). The paper will seek to demonstrate how selfie culture is infused both by considerable levels of perceptual failings that are now central to contemporary celebrity culture and its’ notion of glamour which in turn is intrinsically linked (but not solely defined) by the province of feminine desire for reinvention, transformation or “self-sexualisation” (Hall, West and McIntyre, 2012). The subject, like the Kardashians or selfies, is divisive. In conclusion this paper will explore the paradox of the perceptual failings at play within selfie culture more broadly, like ‘Reality TV’ selfies are infamously fake yet seem to provide Debord’s (1967) illusory cultural opiate whilst fulfilling a cultural longing. Questions then emerge when considering the narrative impact of these trends on engendered power structures and the traditional status of illusion and narrative fiction

ELO2019 Programme & Books of Abstracts

ELO2019 Programme & Books of Abstracts, University College Cork, July 15-17, 201

ELO2019: Electronic Literature Organization Conference & Media Arts Festival, Programme and Book of Abstracts

The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) is pleased to announce its 2019 Conference and Media Arts Festival, hosted by University College Cork. The conference and exhibition will be held from July 15-17, 2019, on UCC’s campus in the heart of Cork city, Ireland. The theme for ELO2019 #ELOcork is “peripheries”: delegates are invited to explore the edges of literary and digital culture, including emerging traditions, indeterminate structures and processes, fringe communities of praxis, effaced forms and genres, marginalised bodies, and perceptual failings. ELO2019 #ELOcork will mark the first time that the ELO conference has been hosted by an Irish institution: join us for this momentous gathering

Ridazz, Wrenches, and Wonks: A Revolution on Two Wheels Rolls Into Los Angeles

How can we make cities more livable? Los Angeles, in particular, is a notably challenging place to live. For many, it is hard to see Los Angeles—city or county—as anything other than a huge, sprawling, and some would say placeless place. Los Angeles is known by many as the place that tore up more than 1,000 miles of streetcar lines to make way for millions of cars and hundreds of miles of freeways. Because of this, Los Angeles is also known for its poor air quality and jammed freeways. Those who live in Los Angeles know that it can be a very real challenge to get around. But Los Angeles is also a city of possibilities. It is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. It is mostly flat. It seldom rains. Surprisingly, Los Angeles has an alternative bike culture that has emerged and rapidly matured over the last nineteen years. It has gone from a rowdy and radical culture of bike messengers gathering for night rides to a substantial and growing community of riders, do-it-yourself bike mechanics, and homegrown transportation activists and advocates who have influenced the way bikes and riders are perceived and even how regional transportation policy is developed and implemented. How and why has that come to pass? In answering these questions, this dissertation seeks to describe the recent history of bike culture in Los Angeles through the eyes of its originators and ongoing participants. This is a narrative account of the recent past and the present in Los Angeles, California, in which a collection of bicycle-related phenomena appear to be transforming the land in ways that many might agree constitute a form of revitalization. The electronic version of this Dissertation is at Ohiolink ETDCenter, http://etd.ohiolink.edu and AURA, http://aura.antioch.edu/. An MP4 video introduction by the author accompanies this document

Video Vortex reader : responses to Youtube

The Video Vortex Reader is the first collection of critical texts to deal with the rapidly emerging world of online video – from its explosive rise in 2005 with YouTube, to its future as a significant form of personal media. After years of talk about digital convergence and crossmedia platforms we now witness the merger of the Internet and television at a pace no-one predicted. These contributions from scholars, artists and curators evolved from the first two Video Vortex conferences in Brussels and Amsterdam in 2007 which focused on responses to YouTube, and address key issues around independent production and distribution of online video content. What does this new distribution platform mean for artists and activists? What are the alternatives

Poetry therapy in practice: identifying the mechanisms of poetry therapy and other percieved effects on participants

Background - Poetry therapy is a promising but heterogeneous and under-evidenced form of creative art therapy. Theories of change have been proffered but are modelspecific and poorly evidenced in the empirical literature. Aims – To systematically retrieve, review, and synthesise empirical literature exploring mechanisms of pan-theoretical poetry therapy, providing a united understanding of how poetry therapy operates to guide future research and practice. Methods – A systematic search of six databases yielded 161 papers. Fourteen met the inclusion criteria, spanning individual and group approaches. Mechanisms and effects were extracted and synthesised into a governing framework and logic model. Stakeholder consultation was used to validate results. Results – 25 primary mechanisms and 54 associated effects were identified. These were synthesised into logic model characterised by five core processes: Engaging, Feeling, Exploring, Connecting, and Transferring (“EFECT”). These processes were associated with multifarious benefits, impacting cognitive, emotional and behavioural domains. Conclusions – The mechanisms and effects of poetry therapy can be understood via the EFECT model. This should now be tested empirically. The model can then be used to guide a united, rigorous research programme, helping to bring poetry therapy into evidence-based policy and practice

Lady/Applicant: On The Lazarus

This research investigates the ‘performativity’ of the ‘author function’ through collaging the audio recordings of American poet Sylvia Plath. The ‘author function’ is a term by Michel Foucault to describe how readers attribute certain characteristics that they believe belong to the author and ascribe them to the writing. ‘Performativity’ is a term used by Judith Butler to describe a set of actions that ascribe and predetermine a set of attributes to a subject through his or her gender, age, timeframe, nationality and race. The ‘performativity’ of the ‘author function’ appropriates these characteristics and attributes them to the author. How the determination of an authorial identity translates to the interaction of the practice component of the project, which includes several components of digital collage, is through attributions that readers make in the creation of an author. The practice component of the project consists of the collage of audio and video recordings, the programming of video with Max/MSP/Jitter, ‘performative’ elements and collage poetry on Twitter. The audio component was collaged from two poems entitled ‘Lady Lazarus’ and ‘The Applicant’ that Plath read to the British Council in 1962 to form a new poem entitled Lady/Applicant: The Lazarus. The video component consists of collaging recorded video clips of storefront and street signs in Camden, London, where she is associated with living and committing suicide at. A second video collage entitled Shadows/Shadows/Tomb takes place at a cemetery close to my residence in 2011 and documents symbols of death that reference my own authorial identity. The second set of videos run on a Max/MSP/Jitter patch that display four screens of filmed texts inscribed on tombstones that play four streaming poems through a systematic structure of boxes. The screens are displayed in each box and sourced from separate folders to display and play the film clips. The practice of collage and constraint-based poetry complicates the constitution of being the author when the collagist of Plath’s poetry is a different gender than hers. This research then expands on how identity radically shifts in the text when the subject and the collagist have very different identities. The radical shift in a collage takes place within a predefined and generalized concept of the reader as determined by Stanley Fish, a prominent writer on the subject of ‘reader-response criticism’, who believes that one way a reader could be approached is through his or her relationship with the writing