Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Bloodlines – Mammalian Motherhood, Biotechnologies And Other Entanglements, Lynn Mowson

Animal Studies Journal

This paper outlines my current sculptural research project bloodlines focusing on the ways in which dairy cows are entangled with multiple biotechnologies and the wider environment. bloodlines brings extant works such as fleshlumps, boobscape and slink, together with new works, to represent the dairy industry, the environmental impacts of animal agriculture and the biotech innovations of in-vitro meat and bio-fabricated leather. These works are linked together by a web of interconnected fluids: excreta, milk and blood. In this new work, I hope to make the links between the dairy industry and these extended concerns both visceral and visible.

Demystifying Dairy, Deidre Wicks

Animal Studies Journal

In this paper, I examine the dairy cow, her body and disposition, with a specific focus on the way we humans have designed her for our purposes, through the use of selective breeding and reproductive technology. I will also examine the consequences of this design for the health and welfare of the dairy cow and her calf. I will conduct this examination through the concept of ‘naturalistic mystification’, which I will use to challenge the dominant, hegemonic message, which presents the cow as natural, and milk as a nonharm product. Rather, I will demonstrate that the cow and her milk …

‘Machine Milking Is More Manly Than Hand Milking’: Multispecies Agencies And Gendered Practices In Finnish Cattle Tending From The 1950s To The 1970s, Taija Kaarlenkaski

Animal Studies Journal

During the last hundred years, mechanization has significantly changed the working circumstances of both humans and animals in cattle husbandry. In Finland, cattle tending was regarded as women’s work up until the mid-20th century. According to a common view, the proliferation of milking machines, starting from the 1950s, caused men to start working in the cowsheds. In this paper, I will examine how the agencies of cattle tenders, cows, and milking machines were constructed during the mechanization process from the 1950s to the 1970s. Special attention will be paid to gendered representations, and changes in the gendered division of work. …

‘White Power Milk’: Milk, Dietary Racism, And The ‘Alt-Right’, Vasile Stănescu

Animal Studies Journal

This article analyzes why milk has been chosen as a symbol of racial purity by the ‘alt-right’. Specifically, this article argues the alt-right's current use of claims about milk, lactose tolerance, race, and masculinity can be connected to similar arguments originally made during the19th century against colonialized populations and immigration groups. In the 19th century, colonizing populations classified colonized populations as ‘effeminate corn and rice eaters’ because of their supposed lack of consumption of meat and dairy. This article argues that a similar practice continues today. It also argues that there is a relationship between the dietary racism ideas popularized …

From Rice Eaters To Soy Boys: Race, Gender, And Tropes Of ‘Plant Food Masculinity’, Iselin Gambert, Tobias Linné

Animal Studies Journal

Tropes of ‘effeminized’ masculinity have long been bound up with a plant-based diet, dating back to the ‘effeminate rice eater’ stereotype used to justify 19th-century colonialism in Asia to the altright’s use of the term ‘soy boy’ on Twitter and other social media today to call out men they perceive to be weak, effeminate, and politically correct (Gambert and Linné). This article explores tropes of ‘plant food masculinity’ throughout history, focusing on how while they have embodied different social, cultural, and political identities, they all serve as a tool to construct an archetypal masculine ideal. The analysis draws on a …

[Review] Devries, Scott M. Creature Discomfort: Fauna-Criticism, Ethics And The Representation Of Animals In Spanish American Fiction And Poetry. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Critical Animal Studies, 4. 328pp., Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

Scott M. DeVries’ exhaustive overview of Spanish American Literature serves as a substantial introduction to Spanish American literature in relation to Critical Animal Studies and what DeVries terms Traditional Animal Studies. Motivated by the lack of Spanish American literature featuring in animal studies, his survey convinces of the richness of this literature. The neologism ‘fauna-criticism’ is underpinned by TAS and CAS for their ‘ethical advocacy in defense of nonhumans’ and for their theorising about animals which generates a ‘proper understanding’ of animals (25). The term is intended to avoid the ‘slippages of meaning’ (32) and the ‘baggage’ that has accrued …

An Auto-Ethnography Of Anti-Dairy Vegan Activism In New Zealand, Lynley K. Tulloch

Animal Studies Journal

This paper examines my experiences of anti-dairy activism in New Zealand. Using autoethnographic methodology, I discuss the emotional work and core strategies and tactics of Starfish Bobby Calf Project (hereafter called Starfish). Starfish is a grassroots vegan activist group that I founded in 2013. Its genesis began in my childhood, when I became aware of the plight of bobby calves while living in rural New Zealand. It combines both autobiography and ethnography to analyse the emotional process of becoming an activist and campaigning against dairying. In doing so I uncover the narratives that underpin the dairy industry and the larger …

[Review] Malcolm Caulfield. Animals In Australia: Use And Abuse. Vivid, 2018. 336pp., Elizabeth Ellis

Animal Studies Journal

Reflecting on the last decade, Malcolm Caulfield argues that revelations of extreme cruelty in the live export and greyhound racing industries have ‘altered forever the animal welfare landscape in Australia’ (viii); at the same time, substantial progress in animal welfare has been lacking. Critical to his analysis is another recent development: the backlash by industry interests, supported by their political and media chums, to the articulated concerns of unprecedented numbers of Australians. This disjunction, between public disquiet about animal welfare and the absence of a ‘meaningful political response’ (35), underpins Caulfield’s important account of the use and abuse of animals …

[Review] Anna Barcz. Animal Narratives And Culture: Vulnerable Realism. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017. Xii,185pp., Sally Borrell

Animal Studies Journal

Anna Barcz’s Animal Narratives and Culture: Vulnerable Realism sets out to answer two related questions: what do animals add when they are realistically included in cultural texts, and what is the role of fiction in particular? As part of the examination of these questions, the book identifies what Barcz terms ‘zoonarratives’ and develops the concept of zoocriticism itself. Barcz explains that a twentieth-century acceptance of what is likely (and not only what is definite) within understandings of realism has allowed increased scope to explore animal perspectives in fiction. The book’s focus on animal vulnerability in particular in one sense seems …

[Review] Strange Mirrors: Review Of Tessa Laird, Bat, Reaktion, 2018. 224pp., Jacqueline Dalziell

Animal Studies Journal

In the latest text in Reaktion Books’ Animal Series, art critic and theorist Tessa Laird’s Bat provides a cultural history of the species, including a sociological critique of the place of bats in human history. Seeking to correct what she perceives to be inaccurate, yet unrelentingly persistent representations of these animals, Laird covers everything from bat biology, to the bat trope in popular culture, to echolocation and the figure of the bat in European art and literature. Whilst Laird does discuss the perhaps more obvious references, such as Batman and Dracula at length, she also delves into our collective unconscious …

[Review] Creatural Fictions David Herman, Editor. Creatural Fictions: Human-Animal Relationships In Twentieth- And Twenty-First-Century Literature, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

David Herman has put together a landmark collection of essays in the Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature series. Drawing from the Animal Studies theories of Donna Haraway, John Berger, Jacques Derrida and Cary Wolfe, for instance, the collection has a lot to offer students new to Literary Animal Studies. Rigorous essays which further debates mean that the collection also has appeal for established scholars in the field. Creatural Fictions takes its title, Herman explains, partly from the creaturely theories Anat Pick turns to in Simone Weil, but the term ‘creatural’ is preferred in order to emphasise continuities between human …

From Disability To Eco-Ability [Review] Anthony J. Nocella Ii, Amber E. George, And J. L. Schatz, Editors. The Intersectionality Of Critical Animal, Disability, And Environmental Studies: Toward Eco-Ability, Justice, And Liberation, Nathan Poirier

Animal Studies Journal

The Intersectionality of Critical Animal, Disability, and Environmental Studies: Toward Eco-ability, Justice, and Liberation (hereafter, Intersectionality), edited by critical scholars Anthony Nocella II, Amber E. George, and J.L. Schatz, is the follow-up collection to an earlier anthology edited by Nocella II, Judy Bentley and Janet Duncan. Published in 2012, Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation: The Rise of the Eco-Ability Movement was visionary in illuminating entanglements of the struggles that people with disabilities share with environmental and nonhuman animal oppression (similar to the realization of the shared oppression of women, animals and the environment that sparked ecofeminism). This connection is termed …

A Teacher Goes Gothic: Walter White, Heisenberg And The Dark Revenge Of Science, J. Patrick Mcgrail, Ewa Mcgrail, Alicja Rieger

Research, Publications & Creative Work

Much has been written on the natures and personalities of teachers in educational research and publications (Carter, 2009; Beck, 2012; Bulman, 2015; Dalton, 2013; Gillard, 2012; Kelly & Caughlan, 2011). However, mass media can have a powerful influence on how people see teachers. The television series Breaking Bad (Gilligan, 2007-2013) and its representation of teachers, has contributed a unique – if warped -perspective on the subject of teachers and teaching in America. In this article, we argue that three important Gothic and mythic fables from literature are harbingers of Walter White and his transformation – the Faust legend, as told …

10 Movies And Documentaries With An "Inclusion Message", Trang Delos Luu, Tamara Prabhakar

Social Space

Social inclusion ideally involves a multi-targeted approach that addresses a medley of contextual factors including cultural customs and access to resources to ascertain a degree of assimilation. Fostering collaboration between different social identities has the power to catalyse social mobility for marginalised communities through increased participation and access to societal opportunities generally barred by conventional norms. To this end, fi lms have the special ability to draw focus to specifi c circumstances by capturing the engaging stories and experiences of unique characters to offer multitudes of perspective. The following 10 fi lms highlight stories of and by trailblazing outsiders who …

The Dmz Responds, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Seo-Young Chu’s “The DMZ Responds” appeared in Telos 184 (Fall 2018), a special issue on Korea edited by Haerin Shin.

From Model Building To 3d Printing: Star Trek And Build Code Across The Analog/Digital Divide, Bob Rehak

Film & Media Studies Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

More Than Meets The Eye: Special Effects And The Fantastic Transmedia Franchise, Bob Rehak

Film & Media Studies Faculty Works

From comic book universes crowded with soaring superheroes and shattering skyscrapers to cosmic empires set in far-off galaxies, today’s fantasy blockbusters depend on visual effects. Bringing science fiction from the studio to your screen, through film, television, or video games, these special effects power our entertainment industry. More Than Meets the Eye delves into the world of fantastic media franchises to trace the ways in which special effects over the last 50 years have become central not just to transmedia storytelling but to worldbuilding, performance, and genre in contemporary blockbuster entertainment. More Than Meets the Eye maps the ways in …

Untangling Late-Victorian Anxieties: Hair Symbolism In Drcula, Nancy Rosenberg England

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

On Guenther Anders, Political Media Theory, And Nuclear Violence, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

• Guenther Anders was a philosopher concerned with the political and social implications of power, both as expressed in the media and its tendency to elide the citizenry and thus the very possibility of democracy and the political implications of our participation in our own subjugation in the image of modern social media beginning with radio and television. Anders was particularly concerned with two bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II, and he was just as concerned with the so-called ‘peaceful’ uses of nuclear power, i.e., what he named our apocalypse-blindness and the urgency of violence. To …

Wonder Woman: A Case Study For Critical Media Literacy, Adriana N. Fehrs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

To better grasp the messages Wonder Woman is sending to its audience, a Critical Media Literacy (CML), ideological, and feminist framework is used to examine whether, and if so how, Wonder Woman succumbs to stereotypes that are often portrayed in the media. These theories will be used in the ensuing project to build a curriculum aimed at high school students.The curriculum positions students to examine the hegemonic ideologies that are represented in pop culture, specifically Wonder Woman.