281 research outputs found

    Choreographing tragedy into the twenty-first century

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    What makes a tragedy? In the fifth century BCE this question found an answer through the conjoined forms of song and dance. Since the mid-twentieth century, and the work of the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, tragedy has been variously articulated as form coming apart at the seams. This thesis approaches tragedy through the work of five major choreographers and a director who each, in some way, turn back to Bausch. After exploring the Tanztheater Wuppertal’s techniques for choreographing tragedy in chapter one, I dedicate a chapter each to Dimitris Papaioannou, Akram Khan, Trajal Harrell, Ivo van Hove with Wim Vandekeybus, and Gisèle Vienne. Bringing together work in Queer and Trans* studies, Performance studies, Classics, Dance, and Classical Reception studies I work towards an understanding of the ways in which these choreographers articulate tragedy through embodiment and relation. I consider how tragedy transforms into the twenty-first century, how it shapes what it might mean to live and die with(out) one another. This includes tragic acts of mythic construction, attempts to describe a sense of the world as it collapses, colonial claims to ownership over the earth, and decolonial moves to enact new ways of being human. By developing an expanded sense of both choreography and the tragic one of my main contributions is a re-theorisation of tragedy that brings together two major pre-existing schools, to understand tragedy not as an event, but as a process. Under these conditions, and the shifting conditions of the world around us, I argue that the choreography of tragedy has and might continue to allow us to think about, name, and embody ourselves outside of the ongoing catastrophes we face

    MWS and FWS Codes for Coordinate-Wise Weight Functions

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    A combinatorial problem concerning the maximum size of the (hamming) weight set of an [n,k]q[n,k]_q linear code was recently introduced. Codes attaining the established upper bound are the Maximum Weight Spectrum (MWS) codes. Those [n,k]q[n,k]_q codes with the same weight set as Fqn \mathbb{F}_q^n are called Full Weight Spectrum (FWS) codes. FWS codes are necessarily ``short", whereas MWS codes are necessarily ``long". For fixed k,q k,q the values of n n for which an [n,k]q [n,k]_q -FWS code exists are completely determined, but the determination of the minimum length M(H,k,q) M(H,k,q) of an [n,k]q [n,k]_q -MWS code remains an open problem. The current work broadens discussion first to general coordinate-wise weight functions, and then specifically to the Lee weight and a Manhattan like weight. In the general case we provide bounds on n n for which an FWS code exists, and bounds on n n for which an MWS code exists. When specializing to the Lee or to the Manhattan setting we are able to completely determine the parameters of FWS codes. As with the Hamming case, we are able to provide an upper bound on M(L,k,q) M(\mathcal{L},k,q) (the minimum length of Lee MWS codes), and pose the determination of M(L,k,q) M(\mathcal{L},k,q) as an open problem. On the other hand, with respect to the Manhattan weight we completely determine the parameters of MWS codes.Comment: 17 page

    2023- The Twenty-seventh Annual Symposium of Student Scholars

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    The full program book from the Twenty-seventh Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 18-21, 2023. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/sssprograms/1027/thumbnail.jp

    Epistemological Insecurity in the Anthropocene

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    This dissertation analyzes how increased mainstream awareness of climate change and other complex environmental phenomena transforms some of the basic tools we use to understand the world, including notions of agency, evidence, and causality. More specifically, this project highlights numerous contemporary literary and cultural narratives that formally and thematically depict impromptu systems of action and comprehension developed by humans confronting the unique forms of information overload that result from damaged and rapidly changing environments. Following critics like Ulrich Beck, Rob Nixon, and Stacy Alaimo, I suggest our current era of ecological instability and destructive environmental practices dictate what I refer to as epistemological insecurity—a condition in which a subject’s growing awareness of systems degradation coincides with an onslaught of incomprehensibly vast, ever-expanding information about the system itself, rendering the individual subject incapable of making the kinds of risk assessments necessary to effectively navigate their environment. Over four chapters covering works of literature and television from the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, including Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49, Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport, the 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl, and several recent works of science fiction, I explore the ad hoc epistemic systems humans generate when entangled in material and informational ecosystems. My overarching argument is that as the formidability of unstable material environments becomes increasingly prevalent, it is necessary to consider how our stories, relationships, and the production of knowledge itself are transformed by the often incomprehensible nature of the sprawling social and ecological interconnections that structure our lives. Seeking models for such stories, relationships, and epistemic strategies, my dissertation casts a wide, interdisciplinary net that includes climate prognosticators, energy and information infrastructures, encyclopedias, cybernetics, geopolitics, geoengineering proposals, and conspiracy theories to engage with an array of diverse approaches to epistemological breakdown amidst destabilized environments

    LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 261, ICALP 2023, Complete Volum

    The good, the bad, and the bloody. Conceptualisations of menstruation across genders and languages

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    Menstruation is a particularly prominent aspect of the life of the many bodies that experience it. From menarche in adolescence to menopause in later life, the implications are not only biological and medical, but also social, cultural and political. Myths, religions, cultures, medicine, and scholarship from diverse fields have concerned themselves with this event for decades, indeed centuries, creating the complex interplay that now informs the menstrual experience and discourse. Yet, beyond anthropologically exploring the status of ‘taboo’ that keeps menstruation hidden, the metaphors in this discourse remain to be fully analysed from a cognitive linguistics perspective. Furthermore, there has been little acknowledgement of gender and linguistic variance within that discourse, particularly of trans individuals and speakers of Arabic and its dialects. There is a wealth of metaphorical expressions that were born within this complex landscape, and that are now used to think and speak about menses, particularly in some types of language and among certain populations. This project aims to fill this gap as it focuses on uncovering the conceptual metaphors of menstruation that exist in everyday language, while including menstruators and non-menstruators alike, as well as speakers of Arabic and its dialect, using a Conceptual Metaphor Theory-based investigation of these metaphors. For this purpose, a survey of participants is first used to gather data which is examined through a semantic tagger, the Historical Thesaurus, and the Mapping Metaphor online tool. This analysis results in the identification of several conceptual metaphors pertaining to the domains PART OF NATURE or NATURAL PART OF LIFE, SOMETHING DIRTY or UPKEEP, PURIFICATION, A PERIOD OF TIME or A PERIOD OF THE HEALTH CYCLE, A HABIT, BLOOD, BLESSING AND TORMENT, A VISITOR, and THE COLOUR RED. Menstruators and non-menstruators rely on those domains and engage in creative coinages of new expressions to create a linguistic point that is informed by their purposes in communication and from which they are able to communicate exactly what and how they want, whether it is to comply with or to defy convention and taboo. Therefore, the usage of menstrual metaphors, beyond its tabooed background and its reflections of societal constraints, is first and foremost a strategic tool for menstruators in particular to be able to accomplish any communicative goal they have in a manner that they deem safe and suitable

    Fictional Practices of Spirituality I: Interactive Media

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    "Fictional Practices of Spirituality" provides critical insight into the implementation of belief, mysticism, religion, and spirituality into worlds of fiction, be it interactive or non-interactive. This first volume focuses on interactive, virtual worlds - may that be the digital realms of video games and VR applications or the imaginary spaces of life action role-playing and soul-searching practices. It features analyses of spirituality as gameplay facilitator, sacred spaces and architecture in video game geography, religion in video games and spiritual acts and their dramaturgic function in video games, tabletop, or LARP, among other topics. The contributors offer a first-time ever comprehensive overview of play-rites as spiritual incentives and playful spirituality in various medial incarnations

    Human Rights at the Intersections

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    At a time when states are increasingly hostile to the international rights regime, human rights activists have turned to non-state and sub-state actors to begin the implementation of human rights law. This complicates the conventional analysis of relationships between local actors, global norms, and cosmopolitanism. The contributions in this open access collection examine the “lived realities of human rights” and critically engage with debates on gender, sexuality, localism and cosmopolitanism, weaving insights from multiple disciplines into a broader call for interdisciplinary scholarship informed by practice. Overall, the contributors argue that the power of human rights depends on their ability to be continuously broadened and re-imagined in locales around the world. It is only on this basis that human rights can remain relevant and be effectively used to push local, national and international institutions to put in place structural reforms that advance equity and pluralism in these perilous times. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com
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