Designing Mindscapes: Re-inventing Urban Spaces by understanding Psychology of Design and Philosophy of Heterotopia

Urban spaces are becoming monotonous in their appearance as well as in terms of their experience. In an effort to match the fast pace of our lifestyles, the design of most of our streetscapes and urban areas in our cities have started to look and feel the same. The thesis of this major research project is an investigation into the understanding of the psychological impact of the design of such spaces on human beings, and an attempt to develop a framework to summarize this understanding to help designers and architects design our environments to inspire creativity and innovation. The framework derives its inspiration from the philosophy of ‘heterotopia’ proposed by Michel Foucault, where heterotopia is referred as “the other space”, a space which facilitates heterogeneous experiences

Equinoctial: an investigation of ‘the holographic’ for developing a new collection of ekphrastic poetry

This is a practice-led PhD in creative writing. It comprises a poetry collection, Equinoctial and a critical/reflective accompanying 'poetics'.Holography is a form of 3D imaging. Its practice spans the disciplines of science and art. My original contribution to knowledge is in making a claim for holography as a new context for writing ekphrastic poetry which most usually refers to poetry written in dialogue with the visual. The scholarship of ekphrasis cites examples of poems written in response to painting, sculpture, photography and film but not to holography. This is practice-led research and my collection of poetry Equinoctial arising from it derives its structure, and the linguistic and formal properties of its poems, from a process of holographic enquiry arising from processes of holography and the properties of holograms. Furthermore, I construe this holographic enquiry as a form of ekphrastic enquiry. My primary sources for ekphrastic dialogues are the holopoetry and theories of holopoetry of Brazilian artist and poet, Eduardo Kac; the essay: ‘Stopping Time: Harrison’s Holograms’, and holograms of John Harrison’s timekeeper, ‘H4’ by Martin Richardson; the essays in The Aerial Letter and the novel, Picture Theory by French-Canadian writer, Nicole Brossard. For Brossard, the hologram is a trope associated with liberatory and visionary feminist reading and writing practices. The scholarship of ekphrasis revels its gendered nature which I go on to scrutinize via the various lenses of my primary sources. In order to consolidate my positioning as a feminist researcher, I develop the methodology, ‘flâneuserie’ from poetry and poetics by women poets and scholars which describes an agency-making approach to bringing together the creative and critical components of a practice-led thesis in creative writing in a poetics I come to describe as ‘holopoetics’. I conclude by upholding holography as a technology of perception that emphasises the position of the viewer or reader in relation to artwork and poem, and, in doing so offers multiple perspectives and possibilities of interpretation. Throughout, I emphasise the significance of my study as an example of concept-driven practice-led research in creative-writing which upholds a claim for poetry as new knowledge

Screen Space Reconfigured

Screen Space Reconfigured is the first edited volume that critically and theoretically examines the many novel renderings of space brought to us by 21st century screens. Exploring key cases such as post-perspectival space, 3D, vertical framing, haptics, and layering, this volume takes stock of emerging forms of screen space and spatialities as they move from the margins to the centre of contemporary media practice.Recent years have seen a marked scholarly interest in spatial dimensions and conceptions of moving image culture, with some theorists claiming that a 'spatial turn' has taken place in media studies and screen practices alike. Yet this is the first book-length study dedicated to on-screen spatiality as such.Spanning mainstream cinema, experimental film, video art, mobile screens, and stadium entertainment, the volume includes contributions from such acclaimed authors as Giuliana Bruno and Tom Gunning as well as a younger generation of scholars

Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms & Practices is a volume of essays that provides a detailed account of born-digital literature by artists and scholars who have contributed to its birth and evolution. Rather than offering a prescriptive definition of electronic literature, this book takes an ontological approach through descriptive exploration, treating electronic literature from the perspective of the digital humanities (DH)––that is, as an area of scholarship and practice that exists at the juncture between the literary and the algorithmic. The domain of DH is typically segmented into the two seemingly disparate strands of criticism and building, with scholars either studying the synthesis between cultural expression and screens or the use of technology to make artifacts in themselves. This book regards electronic literature as fundamentally DH in that it synthesizes these two constituents. Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities provides a context for the development of the field, informed by the forms and practices that have emerged throughout the DH moment, and finally, offers resources for others interested in learning more about electronic literature

Literary recognition : representation of Islam and Muslims in post-9/11 novels

The emerging field of post-9/11 literary studies is now well into its second decade. During this short span, a small group of novels has dominated the field in an early process of canonisation. Don DeLillo’s Falling Man is pivotal to the nascent genre but other novels such as Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close also quickly became exemplars of the United States’ literary response to tragedy, and have remained important in the scholarly endeavours that followed. Even more evident is the dominance of trauma studies as the paradigm for analysis of the genre, partly because of the obvious connection with the content of the literature and the historical events that instigated its development. The effects of these early trends have had particular implications for the analysis of the representation of Islam and Muslims in the post-9/11 literary context. This thesis takes a different starting point. It suggests that an alternative methodology is needed to understand the scope and complexity of the relationship between American writers and representations of Islam. It suggests that post-9/11 novels can be reframed from a genre bounded by traumatic event and religious motivation, to one that is part of a historically and politically driven struggle for recognition. After surveying the current position of the post-9/11 literary landscape, and acknowledging the consequences of the trauma theory model, the thesis considers how contemporary German social philosopher Axel Honneth and his comprehensive work in recognition theory offers an opportunity to explore the literary field more broadly. This involves considering a group of novels that diverge from the early canon by contending with Islam beyond trauma and the terrorist archetype. This group includes, among others, Amy Waldman’s 2011 novel The Submission, with its Muslim American protagonist, and the translated work of Iraqi author Inaam Kachachi, The American Granddaughter. I assert that recognition theory provides explanatory and analytical benefits when considering a range of literary responses that are the product of a post-9/11 context, even when not necessarily a direct representation of its experience. I determine that the reification and commodification of otherness, themes and motifs of misrecognition, and the threshold of the recognition of personhood are all elements of recognition theory that are echoed in the post-9/11 novels. I also demonstrate that Honneth’s view of the centrality of intersubjectivity as a precedent to recognition is equally central in the evaluation of contemporary novels as cultural and political artefacts. Ultimately, recognition theory provides a means to develop a taxonomy of the struggle for social and political progress. A glimmer of progress is explored in the final chapter of the thesis as it moves to a range of novels that engage with Islam in innovative and intriguing ways. The chapter identifies commonalities between the recent works of Teju Cole, Dave Eggers and Ben Lerner that all transcend the limitations of the homeland and place their diverse American protagonists in a global dialogue with the Muslim world. Issues of postcolonialism, post-exceptionality and the recognition of global vulnerability emerge. The thesis concludes that these novels suggest potential developments of the genre and its critical analysis through theories of recognition