The otaku phenomenon : pop culture, fandom, and religiosity in contemporary Japan.

The focus of this dissertation centers on the otaku subculture and their subsequent incorporation of Japanese religious elements into their consumption of Japanese popular culture. This phenomenon highlights the intersections of popular culture and religion in Japan, which is emerging in religious sites. Shintō shrines and Buddhist temples are incorporating popular culture as a means to maintain relevancy, encourage growth of parishioners, and raising revenue by capitalizing on the popularity of manga and anime. The relevance of this research connects to the continued impact of Japanese popular culture through globalization. The first chapter provides a theoretical background examining this socio-religious phenomenon, and sociological framework, which considers the capitalist economy and relationship to religion. Chapter Two defines Shintō and kami, explains deification, outlines an historical overview for religion in Japan, providing historical antecedents for the otaku’s relationship to religion, and highlighting historical and cultural influences. Chapter Three analyzes the historical and cultural contexts that form the otaku identity, traces the etymology of the word “otaku,” and positions the otaku within mainstream society. This analysis of otaku identity and mindset provides insight into the otaku’s consumptive behaviors associated with popular culture. Chapter Four analyzes otaku consumptive practices and behaviors, and the impact on several Shintō shrines and Buddhist temples. Chapter Four concludes with the emergence of “pop culture kami” that accentuate the otaku’s incorporation of Shintō elements into their consumption of popular culture. This convergence of otaku, religion, and popular culture points to emerging shifts within contemporary Japan

Facing stigma, negotiating expectations, and exploring identities in a special olympics group transitioning into adulthood

Special Olympics continues to be controversial to those who criticize any segregated activity that is not inclusive for people with disabilities. Rather than dismissing the Special Olympics outright as an outdated organization that has not kept pace with the push towards inclusion, I engage these controversies from the perspectives of the disciplines of folklore and disability studies. I demonstrate that close attention to the actual practices and lived experiences of a Special Olympics group provides important insights about the challenges and goals of inclusive versus exclusive practices. I examine the athletes’ conceptions of identity, disability, and kinship to better understand how stigma affects people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) and the opportunities for full the participation in public life. Based on extensive ethnographic research, participant observation, and open-ended interviews with adult athletes, their families, coaches, and support professionals, I describe a Midwestern team’s activities, including athletic practices, games, home life, and social events. To what extent people with IDD are aware of stigma and its effects emerges as one of the underlying questions from this research. In addressing this, I encounter methodological challenges that require an appreciation for different communication styles, including deceptive practices, moments of resistance, and exercises of agency. I begin by looking at the history of the Special Olympics, how it is structured, and where it provides (or inhibits) possibilities for full participation. As part of that discussion, I describe the roles of safety, sportsmanship, and self-esteem. To further develop the issues that arise in discussing Special Olympics and inclusion from a disability studies perspective, I turn to the subjects of pity and its corollary, the celebration of individuals with IDD as mascots who are awarded symbolic, rather than actual, roles in sports, school, or community events. As mascots, individuals with IDD are hypervisible, but this does not necessarily counter the stigma they experience that prevents them from being fully included in other domains. In particular, obtaining and maintaining competitive employment are often the central measures of inclusion, so my concluding chapter considers the challenges faced by Special Olympics athletes in the workplace

Divergent femininities in British film, 1945-59

British cinema of the post-war period has often been characterised as anodyne in terms of gender relations, with the exciting 'wicked ladies' of the war years erased in favour of more conservative versions of femininity. Recent writing (Geraghty, 2000, Harper and Porter, 2003) has brought challenges to bear on this paradigm and opened up a critical space for a more nuanced analysis of gender. This thesis considers representations of divergent femininities in post-WWII British films, that is, female characters who function as liminal figures and who queer boundaries between normative and divergent femininity. I explore how divergent femininities are constructed and the extent to which gender conservatism can be challenged in films from the period. A number of well-known (cross-genre) films, such as Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957) and Mandy (1952), are analysed, augmented by other films that have received little critical attention, for example, The Perfect Woman (1949), Dear Murderer (1947) and Young Wives' Tale (1951). This study employs detailed textual and semiotic analyses (film, reviews, publicity material, critical writings) to produce a historicised feminist reading of 1950s films and femininity and, by combining attention to visual style with an analysis of contextual material, complements existing scholarship which emphasises film production and reception.This thesis explores the extent to which female desire for autonomy, excitement and social mobility could be expressed in 1950s films, and how women questioned their 'proper place' in the gendered social economy. Women's function as housewives is problematised in ways that enter into contemporaneous debates about modernity and consumerism. The heterosexual nuclear family survives as the preferred familial model but the difficulty of mothering is dramatised in ways that challenge hegemonic maternity. Heteroromance and marriage remain the central goal for all women and censorship largely curtails the depiction of female sexuality outside this paradigm. A space however is opened up for women to voice desire for something in addition to the role of wife and mother and in this respect these liminal figures represent a cultural contestation of normative femininity. They shore up - whilst simultaneously challenging - certain ideals of femininity and in doing so speak of the consolidation and transformation of gender relations in post-war British society, suggesting a more dynamic model than has been acknowledged

How much shall we bet? Defining surreal futures

This work comprises a critical thesis ‘How Much Shall We Bet? Defining Surreal Futures’, assessing the scope for stronger cross-pollination between poetry and futures studies and examining a potential hybrid poet-futurist praxis; and a portfolio of futures poetry in a range of lyrical and conceptual modes, The Bunny Assembly. Presented prior to the critical thesis, a fragmentary essay ‘Weak Signals’ introduces the main themes of this research through an account of my experiences attending the 2016 annual meeting of the World Futures Society. Chapter 1 describes the origins and rationale for the research, key lines of enquiry and underpinning conceptual frameworks adopted, including a discussion of why the topic was explored using the methodology of creative Practice-as-Research. Chapter 2 gives an overview of the academic discipline of futures studies and assesses how contemporary futures studies balances analytic and imaginative techniques to identify possible, probable and preferable futures, in order to identify any existing links to poetic techniques. Chapter 3 demonstrates how, although the roles of poet and prophet are historically linked, much contemporary poetry has had unexpectedly little to say on the topic of the future. It is shown through a quantitative review of sample texts that where recent poetry has addressed the topic of the future, it has more often presented clichéd declinist or dystopian visions Sixteen distinct strategies for developing poetic futures are identified in Chapter 4 by combining the steps of a typical forecasting methodology used in futures studies with a simple classification of lyrical and conceptual poetic approaches. These strategies are then evaluated to identify the extent to which they are useful in generating novel and provocative insight about the future. This chapter concludes with discussions of three features which proved effective in writing about the future: ethnographic writing, humour and aphorism. Chapter 5 consolidates poetic and futurist activities into a proposed praxis for the poet-futurist: what one should do differently as a poet if one is a futurist, and vice versa. This praxis is reviewed in the context of competing visions of the future of poetry. To conclude, the thesis assesses the value of systematic poetic investigation of the future with a particular emphasis on the role of poetry in challenging clichéd declinist or dystopian forecasts and inspiring action to realise more hopeful futures

Designing personalised, authentic and collaborative learning with mobile devices: Confronting the challenges of remote teaching during a pandemic.

This article offers teachers a digital pedagogical framework, research-inspired and underpinned by socio-cultural theory, to guide the design of personalised, authentic and collaborative learning scenarios for students using mobile devices in remote learning settings during this pandemic. It provides a series of freely available online resources underpinned by our framework, including a mobile learning toolkit, a professional learning app, and robust, validated surveys for evaluating tasks. Finally, it presents a set of evidence-based principles for effective innovative teaching with mobile devices

Research-Informed Teaching in a Global Pandemic: "Opening up" Schools to Research

The teacher-research agenda has become a significant consideration for policy and professional development in a number of countries. Encouraging research-based teacher education programmes remains an important goal, where teachers are able to effectively utilize educational research as part of their work in school settings and to reflect on and enhance their professional development. In the last decade, teacher research has grown in importance across the three i’s of the teacher learning continuum: initial, induction and in-service teacher education. This has been brought into even starker relief with the global spread of COVID-19, and the enforced and emergency, wholesale move to digital education. Now, perhaps more than ever, teachers need the perspective and support of research-led practice, particularly in how to effectively use Internet technologies to mediate and enhance learning, teaching and assessment online, and new blended modalities for education that must be physically distant. The aim of this paper is to present a number of professional development open educational systems which exist or are currently being developed to support teachers internationally, to engage with, use and do research. Exemplification of the opening up of research to schools and teachers is provided in the chapter through reference to the European Union-funded Erasmus + project, BRIST: Building Research Infrastructures for School Teachers. BRIST is developing technology to coordinate and support teacher-research at a European level

Curriculum Circus: Juggling Curriculum, Science, and The Arts

Education should open the door to better lives and better jobs. The fact is that it does not. In part, there are many causes including rigidity, political interference, and the separation between disciplines that we teach without context and without dialogue with our students. Specifically, I think that we should use education as a way to help students make better choices and have a better life. One way we can do it is by reconciling science with the other disciplines. And that is what is at the heart of curriculum studies. There is a pervasive belief that the Western ideology of knowledge is neutral, and therefore must be good for all peoples in all cases. As a result education here in the West has not changed to address the needs of citizens in the 21st century. We have become a global community, and outsourcing our ideas has met with disastrous consequences. I believe that we have a societal obligation to help our fellow citizens navigate within an increasingly complex world. Curriculum Circus uses the many metaphors of the circus to defend a polymerization of arts and science, a return to their common history. I start with the reconceptualization of William Pinar arguing for a “marriage of two cultures: the scientific and the artistic and humanistic” (W. F. Pinar, 1975/ 2000, p. xv). I then addres