Luminous connections: Risk, value and responsibility in a late nineteenth-century high wire bicycle stunt

This article analyses risk, value and responsibility in a high wire cycling stunt which took place in Brooklyn in 1897. The stunt involved the performer’s bicycle completing an electrical circuit to illuminate his body and wheels with coloured lights, using electricity siphoned from a nearby Brooklyn trolley route. I explore the connections and distinctions between stunts and circus, and the status of risk and responsibility in each. I then analyse what is known about the contract between the performer and the railroad company, and the types of exchange it involved. I compare these modes of exchange and investment to Randy Martin’s concept of a ‘derivative’, which encompasses a mode of sociality as well as a type of financial investment. Martin argued for conjoint critiques of performance and value abstractions, holding that the ‘intricate acrobatics of high finance have all manner of parallel expression in dances on the ground’. Pursuing this parallel between bodily movement and value abstraction, I read this bicycle act, and stunts more broadly, as embodied derivatives

On the Couch: Casting, Cruel Optimism, and Memory Work

This article responds to the use of “casting couch” in the defense of Harvey Weinstein during his New York trial for rape and sexual assault in 2020. It traces the emergence of “casting couch” in the early-to-mid-twentieth century as a means of naming, but not acknowledging, sexual exploitation and violence in proximity to casting practices. The “casting couch” cliché invokes genre-scenes which depict sexual exploitation and violence, particularly towards actresses, as pornographic, melodramatic, and farcical, framing it as a source of pleasure for an audience. I compare the conventions of “casting couch” to first-hand accounts by women working in the performing arts in the UK in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. My sources are drawn from interviews and life writing, comprising Dodie Smith’s autobiography, a collection of recorded interviews with music hall performers conducted by Martha Vicinus, and several biographies of performers by Stephen Bourne. I analyse how gender, class, and racialization interact in these accounts and their framing. I analyse these sources in relation to genre, drawing particularly on Lauren Berlant’s concept of “genre as defense.” While Weinstein’s lawyers utilized the genre-scenes of “casting couch” to defend a sexual predator against the consequences of his actions, the various women discussed here deployed them in more complex ways. “Casting couch” was a means to give sexual exploitation discursive presence, even while limiting that presence. By gesturing towards a joke, and invoking melodramatic tropes, the “casting couch” cliché sometimes defended women against the violence and inequality contained in the stories they were telling

On Being Cast: Identity Work

This article examines the relationship between being cast and identity, arguing that casting not only functions as an index of identity in a given context, but also reveals quotidian identity work. I analyse Zawe Ashton’s Character Breakdown, framing it as an example of an actor’s effort to decolonise casting (in a British context). Drawing on Judith Butler and Randy Martin, I define identity work as negotiating between value abstractions, social discipline and intimate corporeality. Character Breakdown depicts a search for different ways to cite identity and thereby different ways to labour. I explore how an actor materialises in being cast, the surrogation involved in identity work, and the possibilities that resistant casting practices have held for reconstituting that work. I contextualise the portrayal of present-day casting in Character Breakdown with archival sources documenting the history of casting and being cast in the United Kingdom. Casting in the present is portrayed as both haunted by repertory typologies and engaged in new, still limiting forms of stratification

Risky Enterprise: Stunts and value in public life of late nineteenth-century New York

PhDThis thesis analyses stunts in the public life of late nineteenth-century New York, where ‘stunt’ developed as a slang term. Addressing stunts as a performative and discursive practice, I investigate stunts in popular newspapers, sports, politics and protest and, to a lesser extent, theatre and film. Each chapter focuses on one form of stunt: bridge jumping, extreme walking contests, a new genre of reporting called ‘stunt journalism’, and cycling feats. Joseph Pulitzer’s popular newspaper, the World, is the primary research archive, supported by analysis of other newspapers and periodicals, vaudeville scripts, films, manuals and works of fiction. The driving question is: how did stunts in public life enact conceptions of value? I contextualise stunts in a ‘crisis of value’ concerning industrialisation, secularisation, recessions, the currency crisis, increased entry of women into remunerative work, immigration, and racialised anxieties about consumption and degeneration. I examine the ways in which ‘stunt’ connotes devaluation, suggesting a degraded form of politics, art or sport, and examine how such cultural hierarchies intersect with gender, race and class. The critical framework draws on Theatre and Performance Studies theorisations of precarity and liveness. I argue that stunts aestheticised everyday precarity and made it visible, raising ethical questions about the value of human life and death, and the increasingly interdependent nature of urban society. Stunts took entrepreneurial idealisations of risk and autoproduction to extreme, constructing identity as commodity. By aestheticising precarity and endangering lives, stunts explored a symbolic and material connection between liveness and aliveness, which provokes questions about current conceptualisations of liveness and mediatisation. I argue that while stunts were framed as exceptional, frivolous acts, they adopted the logic of increasingly major industries, such as the popular press, advertising and financial markets. Stunts became a focal point for anxiety regarding the abstract and unstable nature of value itself.Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant numbers AH/M108823H, AH/M000427/1]

Australian Food Safety Policy Changes from a “Command and Control” to an “Outcomes-Based” Approach: Reflection on the Effectiveness of Its Implementation

© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).Foodborne illness is a global public health burden. Over the past decade in Australia, despite advances in microbiological detection and control methods, there has been an increase in the incidence of foodborne illness. Therefore improvements in the regulation and implementation of food safety policy are crucial for protecting public health. In 2000, Australia established a national food safety regulatory system, which included the adoption of a mandatory set of food safety standards. These were in line with international standards and moved away from a “command and control” regulatory approach to an “outcomes-based” approach using risk assessment. The aim was to achieve national consistency and reduce foodborne illness without unnecessarily burdening businesses. Evidence demonstrates that a risk based approach provides better protection for consumers; however, sixteen years after the adoption of the new approach, the rates of food borne illness are still increasing. Currently, food businesses are responsible for producing safe food and regulatory bodies are responsible for ensuring legislative controls are met. Therefore there is co-regulatory responsibility and liability and implementation strategies need to reflect this. This analysis explores the challenges facing food regulation in Australia and explores the rationale and evidence in support of this new regulatory approach. View Full-Tex

Zombie Apocalypse: Engaging Students In Environmental Health And Increasing Scientific Literacy Through The Use Of Cultural Hooks And Authentic Challenge Based Learning Strategies

Environmental Health (EH) is an essential profession for protecting human health and yet as a discipline it is under-recognised, overlooked and misunderstood. Too few students undertake EH studies, culminating in a dearth of qualified Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) in Australia. A major deterrent to students enrolling in EH courses is a lack of appreciation of the relevance to their own lives. This is symptomatic of a wider problem of scientific literacy: the relevance gap and how to bridge it. Employing a cultural hook offers a means to connect students to science and the fundamental elements of EH. Zombies feature prominently in the contemporary cultural landscape – movies, TV, gaming, music, cosplay, ‘Zombie Marches’. A Zombie Apocalypse provides an engaging platform to convey key EH concepts such as microbes and toxins, whilst improving the scientific literacy skills of both science and non-science students. Engaging students through this cultural hook bridged the relevance gap, connected students to science, and inspired an increased interest in EH

Colorado Wetlands Mobile App: a user's guide

Prepared for: EPA Region 8 Wetlands Program.December 2015.The Colorado Wetlands Mobile App delivers information about Colorado's wetlands to users via smartphones or tablets. It was created by the Colorado Natural Heritage Program (CNHP) through a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 8 Wetland Program Development Grant (WPDG). The App is free and available to the public from the major App distribution points, including Apple App Store and Google Play Store. CNHP's main objective in creating the App was to provide wetland professionals and public citizens alike with information to guide conservation and appreciate of the state's value wetland resource

Real-time imaging of Leishmania mexicana-infected early phagosomes: a study using primary macrophages generated from green fluorescent protein-Rab5 transgenic mice

The small GTPase Rab5 is a key regulator of endosome/phagosome maturation and in intravesicular infections marks a phagosome stage at which decisions over pathogen replication or destruction are integrated. It is currently unclear whether Leishmania-infected phagosomes uniformly pass through a Rab5+ stage on their intracellular path to compartments with late endosomal/early lysosomal characteristics. Differences in routes and final compartments could have consequences for accessibility to antileishmanial drugs. Here, we generated a unique gfp-rab5 transgenic mouse model to visualize Rab5 recruitment to early parasite-containing phagosomes in primary host cells. Using real-time fluorescence imaging of phagosomes carrying Leishmania mexicana, we determined that parasite-infested phagosomes follow a uniform sequence of transient Rab5 recruitment. Residence in Rab5+ compartments was much shorter compared with phagosomes harboring latex beads. Furthermore, a comparative analysis of parasite life-cycle stages and mutants deficient in lpg1, the gene encoding the enzyme required for synthesis of the dominant surface lipophosphoglycan, indicated that parasite surface ligands and host cell receptors modulate pathogen residence times in Rab5+ phagosomes, but, as far as tested, had no significant effect on intracellular L. mexicana survival or replication.—Lippuner, C., Paape, D., Paterou, A., Brand, J., Richardson, M., Smith, A. J., Hoffmann, K., Brinkmann, V., Blackburn, C., Aebischer, T. Real-time imaging of Leishmania mexicana-infected early phagosomes: a study using primary macrophages generated from green fluorescent protein-Rab5 transgenic mice

Stumping and Stunts: Walking in Circles in the “Go-As-You-Please” Race

New York City, 1884: 14 contestants set out to walk round and round a track for six days in the “go-as-you-please” race, taking as little rest as possible. What does this durational act tell us about a type of performance just beginning to be named in New York slang as a “stunt”? Anticipating early-20th-century dance marathons and later durational performance art, the race enacted and troubled circulation, revealing fault lines of valorization: between work and leisure, work and life, and sporting and theatrical performance