Spoilers & Sequels; Bifurcated Fandoms in the Age of Adaptation

Spoilers & Sequels; Bifurcated Fandoms in the Age of Adaptation Panel by Joseph Young, Paul Tankard, and Lana Whited. Tech Mod: Joan Marie Verba

Sexualisation, or the queer feminist provocations of Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus has increasingly occupied debates at the centre of feminist engagements with popular culture. Evoking concerns around young women and ‘sexualisation’, Cyrus emerges as a convergent signifier of sexualised media content and the girl-at-risk. As Cyrus is repeatedly invoked in these debates, she comes to function as the bad object of young femininity. Arguing, however, that Cyrus troubles the sexualisation thesis in the provocations of her creative practice, I suggest that this contested media figure exceeds the frames through which she is read. Thus, I ask: what kinds of insights might be possible if we were to transform the terms on which we approach this figure? Considering a selection of the images and performances that constitute the Cyrus archive, this article proposes a reading of Cyrus as performative provocation. Mobilising an existing sensibility of queer feminist struggle, Cyrus emerges as a disruptive, albeit contradictory, figure. Questions of privilege, limit and possibility emerge in this discussion, as well as what constitutes feminist struggle

Post break-up tectonic inversion across the southwestern cape of South Africa: new insights from apatite and zircon fission track thermochronometry

The south-west African margin is regarded as an example of a passive continental margin formed by continental rifting following a phase of lithospheric extension and thinning. Recent attention focused on this margin has included theoretical modelling studies of rift processes, plate kinematic studies of the opening geometry and timing, and empirical studies focused on documenting the crustal structure and offshore sedimentary record. Here, we examine the onshore geomorphic and tectonic response to rifting and breakup, with a specific focus on the SW Cape of South Africa. We present 75 new apatite and 8 new zircon fission track analyses from outcrop samples and onshore borehole profiles along the western margin of South Africa. The data are used to derive robust thermal histories that record two discrete phases of accelerated erosional cooling during the Early Cretaceous (150-130 Ma) and Late Cretaceous (100-80 Ma), respectively. Both periods of enhanced erosion are regional in extent, involved km-scale erosion, and extend well inland of the current escarpment zone, albeit with spatially variable intensity and style. The Late Cretaceous episode is also expressed more locally by tectonic reactivation and inversion of major faults causing km-scale differential displacement and erosion. The new AFT data do not exclude the possibility of modest surface uplift occurring during the Cenozoic, but they restrict the depth of regional Cenozoic erosion on the western margin to less than c. 1 km. The inferred pattern and chronology of erosion onshore is consistent with the key features and sediment accumulation patterns within the offshore Orange and Bredasdorp basins. It is suggested that the Late Cretaceous event was triggered by a combination of regional dynamic uplift augmented along the western margin and in the SW Cape by local tectonic forces arising from dextral displacement of the Falkland Plateau along the Falkland-Agulhas Fracture Zone

Mutations in DCC cause isolated agenesis of the corpus callosum with incomplete penetrance

Brain malformations involving the corpus callosum are common in children with developmental disabilities. We identified DCC mutations in four families and five sporadic individuals with isolated agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) without intellectual disability. DCC mutations result in variable dominant phenotypes with decreased penetrance, including mirror movements and ACC associated with a favorable developmental prognosis. Possible phenotypic modifiers include the type and location of mutation and the sex of the individual

Pat Rogers, Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. pp. x + 245. RRP $90.00. [Book Review]

Review of: Pat Rogers, <i>Johnson and Boswell: The Transit of Caledonia</i>. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. pp. x + 245. RRP $90.00

In full possession of the present moment : Samuel Johnson, reading and the everyday

Abstract not availabl

A. David Moody, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Poet. 2nd Ed. Cambridge, Cambridge University press, 1994. pp. xxi + 387. RRP 31.95(paper);TheCambridgeCompaniontoT.S.Eliot,edA.DavidMoody.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1994.pp.xix+259.RRP31.95 (paper); The Cambridge Companion to T.S. Eliot, ed A. David Moody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. pp. xix + 259. RRP 27.50 (paper). [ Book Review]

Book Revie

Magazines: an exhibition of material from the Monash University Library Collection 19 December 2002 to 5 May 2003

The exhibition was held in the Rare Books Exhibition space, Sir Louis Matheson Library, Monash University from 19 December 2002 - 5 May 2003. An exhibition of colourful and curious magazines dating from the seventeenth century to the present. Magazines give us an intimate snapshot of the culture and time that produced them - for example, it's not likely that we will see a 2003 edition of New Idea repeating their November 1963 headline: "101 ways to be a happy housewife!"