Placing Location-Based Narratives in Context Through a Narrator and Visual Markers

Location-based services, narratives and interactive experiences have a substantial tradition in human–computer interaction. Building on this background, we report the iterative design process, prototyping and evaluation of Seven Stories, a location-based narrative experience. The design includes two novel features that aim to link the user experience more closely to its physical context: visual markers scanning and a narrator. We have evaluated Seven Stories with two studies. Study 1, with 12 participants, was conducted using qualitative methods to assess the overall user experience. Study 2, with 21 participants, was conducted using quantitative methods, to evaluate the role of the markers and narrator as specific design features. Our contribution is to illustrate, through both qualitative and quantitative findings, how these two novel features influence the user experience, and what implications they have for design

Historical spaces as narrative: mapping collective memory onto cinematic space

The following article proposes and develops a single theory: that unlike written history which tends to privilege chronology, teleology and consequentiality, historical films have increasingly abandoned overt means of narration and instead inscribe historical meanings onto cinematic spaces in historical films. The reason for this shift, I argue, is that recent advances in historiography have begun to encourage scepticism towards the human element in reconstructing narratives. In a world bombarded with media rhetoric from all directions, persuasion from traditionally “authoritative” sources such as voiceovers, prologues, marketing material proclaiming the use of historical experts and research, individual viewpoints, eyewitness accounts, etc, all become open to criticism. In the absence of authorial authenticity, and the gradual erosion of trust in both grand narratives and individual insights, the historical film nevertheless still requires some means by which the viewer can be persuaded of its veracity through shared or collective memory, history proper and lived social experience. It is to answer this need, then, that history and historical narratives have begun to place an emphasis on historical spaces as a means to retell history by creating a “cognitive map”, which offers recourse to an intertextual “representational legacy”

Essaying Place: Time and Landscape in the Essay Film

This practice as research thesis explores the representation of place in the essay film. Place and landscape are frequent subjects of the essay film, films that often form through, and in response to, encounters with the spaces of the world. This thesis seeks to shed light onto the essayistic representation of place through exploring the structures, make-up and experience of places and landscapes and through the application of theory from the field of geography. I establish what I call an essaying of place in order to describe the processes and outcomes of an approach to cities and landscapes through the essay film, one in which the complexities and multiplicities of place come to the fore. Central to the thesis is a focus on temporality in a consideration of place and in developing an understanding of the relationship between place and the essay film. I produced two film works that both take an essayistic form in an approach to representing place and landscape, embodying the theoretical research and expanding this research through creative production. My practice approaches the spaces of England through the essay film, where travelling acts as a film production device, as a research tool and as a method of putting into practice an essaying of place. The process oriented nature of a practice as research project positions filmmaking as a key element in understanding my work as a practitioner alongside the wider research into the essay form

Telling the Story of Mexican Migration: Chronicle, Literature, and Film from the Post-Gatekeeper Period

This study examines how the social process of undocumented Mexican migration is interpreted in the chronicle, literature, and film of the post-Gatekeeper period, which is defined here at 1994-2008. Bounded on one side by the Mexican economic crisis of 1994, and increased border security measures begun in that same year, and on the other by the advent of the global economic crisis of 2008, the post-Gatkeeper period represents a time in which undocumented migration through the southern U.S. border reached unprecedented levels. The dramatic, tragic, and compelling stories that emerged from this period have been retold and interpreted from a variety of perspectives that have produced distinct, and often paradoxical, images of the figure of the undocumented migrant. Creative narrative responds to this critical point in the history of Mexican migration to the U.S.by applying the inherently subjective and mediated form of artistic interpretation to a social reality well documented by the media, historians, and social scientists. Throughout the chronicle, literature, and film of this period, migration is understood as a cultural tradition inspired by regional history. These stories place their undocumented protagonists on a narrative trajectory that transforms migration into a heroic quest for personal and community renewal. Such imagery positions the undocumented migrant as an active agent of change and provides discursive visibility to a figure often represented, in media and political rhetoric of the period, as an anonymous, collective Other. Filtered through this creative lens, migration is revealed as a complex social process in which individual experience is informed not only by personal ambition, but also by the expectations of the home community and its culture of migration. The creative works examined here foreground the history, motivation, and experience of their migrant protagonists in relation to the socio-historical context of this period. In doing so, they compose tales of migration in which the figure of the undocumented migrant plays a primary role, one informed not only by the experience of migration, but also by personal and community history

Literary bodies: Intersectional spaces of belonging in Caribbean-Canadian stories by Bissoondath, Brand, and Clarke

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the role of space and place in the identity formation of the im/migrant characters of the selected short story texts by Caribbean Canadian authors Neil Bissoondath, Dionne Brand, and Austin Clarke. My analysis of identity formation pays attention to how the characters move, interact, and exist within these public and private environments. The postcolonial discourses that affect their experiences within these environments, either through outside forces or internal conflicts, are strong factors in reinscribing their positions within society. The societal pressures affecting them from the host country may range from discomfort in the public and private environments they move through, such as being the only Black person in the train, to dealing with completely inappropriate comments or advances from one’s boss based on the fact that they are Other and seen as inferior. Chapter 1 focuses on space, which, in this thesis, is analyzed through the social, civic, and public environments found within the text. This is done through an analysis of the representations of the spaces associated with the different communities and individuals that interact. I discuss how these interactions may affect one’s sense of identity by paying attention to moments of cultural nostalgia, and conflict, whether internal or external, in relation to the environments, whether of the present or the past, in order to determine important spaces within Canada and the Caribbean. Chapter 2 focuses on place, analyzed through the domestic, individual, and private environments within which the characters interact. This is done through a relational analysis of the narrative representations of differing feelings and emotions elucidated by the characters’ interpretations of the more intimate places with which they interact. Chapter 3 focuses on gender and how the social mobility of the characters is heavily biased by the margins within which they are placed by the hegemonic values of the society at large. I look at the characters, their social positions (class), sex/gender and how these identity markers affect their position. The thesis comes to the conclusion that there is little chance of actual integration of the im/migrant body without significant changes to the migrant’s identity or sense of self. The selected texts, through my analysis, consistently demonstrate that Caribbean im/migrants are generally represented as “not integrating” on the basis of their cultural nostalgia for their place of origin.Le but de cette thèse est d’analyser le rôle de l’espace et des lieux dans la formation identitaire des personnages im/migrant(e)s au cours des nouvelles sélectionnées d’auteur(e)s caribéen(ne)s-canadien(ne)s Neil Bissoondath, Dionne Brand et Austin Clarke. Mon analyse de cette formation identitaire examine les déplacements, interactions et modes de vie des personnages à l’intérieur de ces environnements publics et privés ainsi que la manière dont les discours anti/dé/postcoloniaux affectent leurs expériences à l’intérieur de ces environnements, soit par le biais de conflits internes ou de forces externes. Le premier chapitre se concentre sur l’espace, qui dans ce mémoire est analysé dans le contexte des environnements sociaux, civiques et publics que l’on retrouve dans le texte. Cette analyse a trait aux représentations des espaces associés avec les différentes communautés et individus qui y interagissent. Je focalise sur la manière dont ces interactions influencent leur perception identitaire, en portant une attention particulière aux moments de nostalgie culturelle, de conflits, de tensions, ce qui s’avère particulièrement utile pour déterminer les espaces cruciaux. Le deuxième chapitre analyse l’espace en se concentrant sur les environnements domestiques, individuels et privés, à l’intérieur desquels les personnages interagissent. Cette analyse se fait par le biais de représentations narratives des différents sentiments et émotions élucidé(e)s à travers les interprétations de ces endroits plus intimes/personnels où les personnages interagissent. Le troisième chapitre se concentre plutôt sur le genre des personnages ainsi que sur la façon dont leur mobilité sociale est affectée par les marges entre lesquelles ces personnages sont forcé(e)s d’exister, c’est-à-dire à l’intérieur des valeurs hégémoniques de la société. J’observe directement les interactions entre les personnages et j’examine où ils sont positionnés socialement, et dans quelle mesure le genre affecte cette position. Le point focal de cette thèse est la conclusion logique qu’il n’y a que peu de chance d’intégration réelle du corps im/migrant sans changements significatifs à son identité ou à sa notion/perception de soi. Les textes sélectionnés pour mon analyse démontrent de manière consistante que les im/migrant(e)s caribéen(ne)s sont généralement représenté.es comme étant peu ou pas intégré(e)s en partie à cause d’une nostalgie culturelle pour leur espace d’origine

Travel, Cultural Hybridity and Transnational Connections in Taiwanese Graphic Narratives

This study adopts a discursive analytical perspective to elaborate on transnational connections and cultural diversity as strategies for defining Taiwaneseness in graphic narratives published between 1997 and 2016. It considers the following aspects represented in the analysed texts: (1) processes of self-identification while travelling abroad; (2) depictions of Taiwan centred on familiar spaces open to outside cultural influences, which become locally appropriated through daily activities that link them to individual emotions and weave them into personal and collective memories; and (3) reaching beyond Taiwan to highlight transnational encounters and connections, thus placing the island within a global or regional framework of reference. The article assesses the degree to which this transnational viewpoint reproduces, challenges or complements existing notions regarding Taiwan’s relations with China, Japan and the US, while also exploring relations established with other nodes of reference: Europe, New Zealand and Hong Kong. It also comments on the extent to which academic critical stances on Taiwan’s multiculturalism and warnings against overlooking existing ties between Taiwan and the PRC in contemporary definitions of nationhood may hold true for the research material

Narration and Speech and Thought Presentation in Comics

The purpose of this study was to test the application of two linguistic models of narration and one linguistic model of speech and thought presentation on comic texts: Fowler's (1986) internal and external narration types, Simpson's (1993) narrative categories from his 'modal grammar of point of view' and Leech and Short's (1981) speech and thought presentation scales. These three linguistic models of narration and speech and thought presentation, originally designed and used for the analysis of prose texts, were applied to comics, a multimodal medium that tells stories through a combination of both words and images. Through examples from comics, I demonstrate in this thesis that Fowler's (1986) basic distinction between internal and external narration types and Simpson's (1993) narrative categories (categories A, B(N) and B(R) narration) can be identified in both visual and textual forms in the pictures and the words of comics. I also demonstrate the potential application of Leech and Short's (1981) speech and thought presentation scales on comics by identifying instances of the scales' categories (NPV/NPT, NPSA/NPTA, DS/DT and FDS/FDT) from comics, but not all of the speech and thought presentation categories existed in my comic data (there was no evidence of IS/IT and the ategorisation of FIS/FIT was debatable). In addition, I identified other types of discourse that occurred in comics which were not accounted for by Leech and Short's (1981) speech and thought presentation categories: internally and externally-located DS and DT (DS and DT that are presented within (internally) or outside of (externally) the scenes that they originate from), narratorinfluenced forms of DS and DT (where narrator interference seems to occur in DS and DT), visual presentations of speech and thought (where speech and thought are represented by pictorial or symbolic content in balloons) and non-verbal balloons (where no speech or thought is being presented, but states of mind and emphasized pauses or silence are represented by punctuation marks and other symbols in speech balloons)

The language of uncertainty in W.G. Sebald's novels

textThis dissertation investigates two of W.G. Sebald’s novels, "Die Ausgewanderten" and "Austerlitz" as examples of a unique kind of Holocaust fiction by a non-Jewish German author. Sebald’s fiction represents a radically different German depiction of the Holocaust and its effects on Jewish victims, as it deconstructs critical discourse and debates about the Holocaust in Germany, establishing an ethical approach to Jewish suffering and the idea of coming to terms with the Nazi past in the German context. Through the narrative structure, ambiguity and the language of the German narrators, what I term its language of uncertainty, Sebald’s fiction avoids appropriating the Jewish voice as well as identifying with Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors, while giving voice to the underrepresented Jewish perspective in contemporary German literature. In addition, this dissertation examines competing discourses on representation, victimization and memory in regard to the Nazi past and views Sebald’s work as a critical response to these discussions. Indeed, Sebald’s fiction moves the discussion beyond the trope of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“mastery of the past”), which has for so long dominated discussion of the Holocaust in Germany, towards a reconsideration of the victims, whose voice has been marginalized in the focus on the non-Jewish German handling of the Nazi past.Germanic Studie