The Romantic Fantasy of Even and Isak - an Exploration of Scandinavian Women Looking for Gratification in the Teen Serial SKAM

Under embargo until: 2022-04-05Based on ethnographic reception analysis, cultural sociology, and psychoanalytic film analysis, this article explores a group of Scandinavian adult female fans of the gay couple Even and Isak from the teen serial SKAM. The aim is to acquire knowledge about what pleasures this group gains from watching and chatting online about this serial. We argue that through their pondering of the gay couple as a romantic fantasy, these women address and negotiate social contradictions regarding gender and sexuality that they encounter in Scandinavian post-feminist societies.acceptedVersio

Reading Graphic Novels in School: texts, contexts and the interpretive work of critical reading

This paper uses the example of an extra-curricular Graphic Novel Reading Group in order to explore the institutional critical reading practices that take place in English classrooms in the senior years of secondary school. Drawing on Stanley Fish's theory of interpretive communities, it questions the restrictive interpretive strategies applied to literary texts in curriculum English. By looking closely at the interpretive strategies pupils apply to a different kind of text (graphic novels) in an alternative context (an extra-curricular space) the paper suggests that there may be other ways of engaging with text that pupils find less alienating, more pleasurable and less reminiscent of 'work'

Pleasure and meaningful discourse: an overview of research issues

The concept of pleasure has emerged as a multi-faceted social and cultural phenomenon in studies of media audiences since the 1980s. In these studies different forms of pleasure have been identified as explaining audience activity and commitment. In the diverse studies pleasure has emerged as a multi-faceted social and cultural concept that needs to be contextualized carefully. Genre and genre variations, class, gender, (sub-)cultural identity and generation all seem to be instrumental in determining the kind and variety of pleasures experienced in the act of viewing. This body of research has undoubtedly contributed to a better understanding of the complexity of audience activities, but it is exactly the diversity of the concept that is puzzling and poses a challenge to its further use. If pleasure is maintained as a key concept in audience analysis that holds much explanatory power, it needs a stronger theoretical foundation. The article maps the ways in which the concept of pleasure has been used by cultural theorists, who have paved the way for its application in reception analysis, and it goes on to explore the ways in which the concept has been used in empirical studies. Central to our discussion is the division between the ‘public knowledge’ and the ‘popular culture’ projects in reception analysis which, we argue, have major implications for the way in which pleasure has come to be understood as divorced from politics, power and ideology. Finally, we suggest ways of bridging the gap between these two projects in an effort to link pleasure to the concepts of hegemony and ideology

History, Commemoration, and Belief: Abraham Lincoln in American Memory, 1945-2001

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/91765/1/Schuman-History_Commemoration_Belief.pd

Lectures à « l'eau de rosé ». Femmes, patriarcat et littérature populaire

Reading the Romance. Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature Janice A. Radway The romance-reading phenomenon, considered non only from the internal narrative structure, but also, through an ethnographic investigation, from the practices and interpretations of their readers, appears to be a fundamentally ambivalent practice. It reinforces traditional values and institutions and carries oppositional aspects (can be said an «oppositional moment»), at the same time. The stereotyped narratives and characters, the social world divided into male public sphere and female private sphere, the inavoidable happy ending through marriage combine to bring about a conservative vision of social roles. However, the reading of romance, which arises out of dissatisfaction regarding the relationships between men and women, is interpreted by the readers themselves as a compensatory and a combative act, claiming to their own space and time, as the learning of assertiveness and thus can be seen as a minimal but nonetheless legitimate form of protest.Lectures à « l'eau de rose ». Femmes, patriarcat et littérature populaire Janice A. Radway La lecture de romans « roses », étudiée non seulement à travers la structure narrative mais aussi, par le biais d'une enquête ethnographique, à travers les pratiques de lecture et les interprétations des lectrices, apparaît comme une pratique fondamentalement ambivalente qui, à la fois renforce des valeurs et institutions traditionnelles et véhicule une dimension de contestation de ces mêmes valeurs. Les récits et les personnages stéréotypés, la partition du monde entre sphère publique masculine et sphère privée féminine, l'inévitable dénouement de l'intrigue par le mariage concourent à conforter une vision conservatrice des rôles sociaux. Cependant cette pratique de lecture, qui trouve son origine dans une profonde insatisfaction quant aux rapports entre hommes et femmes, qui est interprétée par les lectrices elles-mêmes comme une compensation et comme la revendication d'un moment et d'un espace propres, comme l'apprentissage d'une affirmation de soi, peut être vue comme une forme limitée, prudente mais néanmoins légitime de contestation.Radway Janice A. Lectures à « l'eau de rosé ». Femmes, patriarcat et littérature populaire. In: Politix, vol. 13, n°51, Troisième trimestre 2000. La cause des femmes, sous la direction de Christine Guionnet et Brigitte Le Grignou. pp. 163-177

Reading the Romance

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