Looking like a hero: constructions of the female gun-fighter in Hollywood cinema.

This paper addresses the aesthetic and semiotic issues of dress, agency and desire as they are articulated around the figure of the female gun-slinger in action-driven genres. It explores the problems that this complex figure presents for feminist critics, in relation to the fetishisation of the female action figure, the potential for readings of cooption or resistance embodied in the transvestite heroine, and the celebration of cinematic violence. It also explores a number of strategies whereby film-makers and narratives contrive to contain the transgressive potential of the female gun-slinger. With particular reference to Salt (Phillip Noyce 2010), it highlights issues of transformation, performance and identity, focusing on the operation of costume as an ‘alternative discourse’ within the text. It considers the limitations and potential of the contemporary action heroine as an empowering female figure within popular culture

Spatial competition with intermediated matching

Matching;Price Competition;Intermediation;Microeconometrics

Spatial competition with intermediated matching

This paper analyzes the spatial competition in commission fees between two match makers. These match makers serve as middlemen between buyers and sellers who are located uniformly on a circle. The profits of the match makers are determined by their respective market sizes. A limited willingness to pay is incorporated by means of reservation prices. If the fraction of buyers and sellers is unequal, the match makers are willing to subsidize the short side of the market, while the long side is exploited completely, provided reservation prices are sufficiently high. Competition is then concentrated entirely on the short side. When reservation prices are low, two local monopolies will emerge.Matching;Price Competition;Intermediation;Microeconometrics;microeconomics

Black Isis and White Moon-Cakes: Divine Femininity and Everyday Womanhood in the Work of Dion Fortune

Dion Fortune (1890-1946) is one of the most influential figures of 20th century British occultism, although her work remains largely unstudied. Born Violet Mary Firth, Fortune founded an offshoot of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the 1920s, before an argument with Moina Mathers led her start her own magical group, the Society of the Inner Light, which continues to be active today. Fortune published a huge body of work within her life time, including books and articles on a number of magical, psychological and social topics, and a series of occult novels (which Fortune believed were her most important magical works). This paper will explore the construction of the Divine Feminine within Fortune’s work, examining how Fortune believed that the worship and embodiment of such a figure could be incorporated into the everyday lives of the British middles classes

No Small-talk in Paradise: why Elysium fails the Bechdel Test and why we should care

After a century of feminist activism, women are still marginalized in many areas of human activity throughout the Western world – and women are still marginalized in the outputs of the culturally powerful dream factory that is the Hollywood film industry. This is not a coincidence. The 'Bechdel Test' is a rule of thumb to determine the extent to which women are marginalised in a film or television text. Popularised by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in 1985, it is not an academic theory but a joke of sorts that has become itself a meme of popular culture - and is arguably all the more powerful for that. To pass the test a film must feature at least two named female characters, who have a conversation with one another about something other than a man. While it does not grapple with qualitative issues of ideology and representation, it does have the virtue of simplicity. It is able to cut through the post-modern sophistry that can obscure some unpalatable truths about modern culture and the society that produces and consumes it, at a time when the number of speaking female characters in top grossing Hollywood films appears to be in decline, from an unedifying 2009 high of 33%(Smith, S 2013). I would arguing that the issue highlighted by the Bechdel test merit serious academic attention. In this paper, I will discuss some of these issues in relation to mainstream Hollywood film. In particular I will focus on the recent sci-fi blockbuster Elysium (Blomkamp 2013), arguing that the utilisation of its two female leads, and the pointed manner in which they are deprived of an opportunity to pass the Bechdel test, bring into focus some critical concerns about gender representations in 21st century Hollywood

Intimacy, ‘Truth' and the Gaze: The Double Opening of Zero Dark Thirty.

The opening scene of Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012) is, strictly speaking, not a 'scene' at all since it offer no images, only a black screen, some text and a soundscape that uses real recordings of phone-calls made on 11th September 2001 to depict the events of that day. In this article I want to discuss the operation of intimacy, cultural memory and audience address in these ninety seconds, the way in which these same ideas are reworked in the scene that immediately follows, and the way in which the film's investment in ' the spectacle of the real' and complex treatment of the gaze is established within both these opening sequences

Market formation and market selection

Abstract: The organization of markets is an important field of inquiry in modern economic theory. This monograph analyzes models which consider the formation and selection of markets. In these models, markets are organized by middlemen and used by traders. In Part I of the monograph, coalitions of middlemen are determined endogenously. Arrow/Debreu type consumers choose roles (middleman or trader) and markets in a non-cooperative market formation game. Distributions of consumers over roles and markets that are individually as well as coalitionally stable are investigated. In Part II, the competition in commission fees between exogenously given middlemen, who intermediate on a bilateral matching market is analyzed.

A Mortgage Deed of the Van Raaltes to James Suydam

A mortgage deed of the Van Raaltes to James Suydam, in the amount of $823.85 for a piece of property of 160 acres.https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/vrp_1850s/1025/thumbnail.jp

Van Raalte\u27s Purchases from Henry Post

An account of Van Raalte\u27s purchases from Henry Post [in the Colony Store?]. The purchases include a wide range of items. On another page, purchases began September 23. The last date is August 23, 1848.https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/vrp_1840s/1131/thumbnail.jp