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Critical and Cultural Studies Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Critical and Cultural Studies

Harold Innis’S Concept Of Bias: Its Intellectual Origins And Misused, Edward Comor Jan 2021

Harold Innis’S Concept Of Bias: Its Intellectual Origins And Misused, Edward Comor

FIMS Publications

Harold Innis is one of the foundational theorists of media and communications studies. In the mid-20th century, he developed his concept of media bias (also called the bias of communication). It remains Innis’s most cited concept, but it is also significantly misunderstood. For example, since his death in 1952, bias has often been applied in ways that are akin to a form of technological or media determinism. This has been an ongoing problem despite the fact that Innis developed his concept as a means of compelling analysts to reject such mechanistic formulations. Indeed, his goal was to promote more self-reflective …


What Moves You?: Georges Didi-Huberman’S Arts Of Passage And Pittsburgh Stories Of Migration, Alexandra Irimia Jan 2021

What Moves You?: Georges Didi-Huberman’S Arts Of Passage And Pittsburgh Stories Of Migration, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

Contemporary art historian, critic, and theorist Georges Didi-Huberman thinks of images not as static objects, but as movements, passages, and gestures of memory and/or desire. For the French “historian of passing images,” as he has been called, “all images are migrants. Images are migrations. They are never simply local” (D2017). His book, Passer, quoi qu'il en coûte ("To Pass at Any Price"), co-written with the Greek poet and director Niki Giannari, takes on precisely the visual dynamics of passages, passengers, and passageways in the context of contemporary migration flows. In April 2018, only several months after the launching of the …


What Does A Pandemic Sound Like? The Emergence Of Covid Verbal Art, Karen E. Pennesi Jan 2021

What Does A Pandemic Sound Like? The Emergence Of Covid Verbal Art, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

In times of social upheaval, people create and engage with verbal art for entertainment and a feeling of connection. While millions of people were forced to stay home to reduce the spread of COVID‑19 from March to July 2020, verbal artists posted recorded performances online and viewers had more time than usual to watch and share them. COVID verbal art refers to songs, poems, and comedy skits that mention social and physical distancing, quarantine and isolation, hygiene and cleaning practices, everyday experiences during the pandemic, as well as social and political critiques of policies and practices that explicitly mention COVID‑19 …


Web.Isod.Es Cel, Aman Kular Mar 2019

Web.Isod.Es Cel, Aman Kular

SASAH 4th Year Capstone and Other Projects: Presentations

For her CEL, Aman interned at WEB.ISOD.ES in London, Ontario, working on producing a documentary discussing the recent implementation of Basic Income by the Conservative Provincial government. Aman learned valuable research skills and communications skills while working on this project and was excited to work in politics.


Universal Design For Belonging: Living And Working With Diverse Personal Names, Karen E. Pennesi Jan 2017

Universal Design For Belonging: Living And Working With Diverse Personal Names, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

There is great diversity in the names and naming practices of Canada’s population due to the multiple languages and cultures from which names and name-givers originate. While this diversity means that everyone encounters unfamiliar names, institutional agents who work with the public are continually challenged when attempting to determine a name’s correct pronunciation, spelling, structure and gender. Drawing from over a hundred interviews in London (Ontario) and Montréal (Québec), as well as other published accounts, I outline strategies used by institutional agents to manage name diversity within the constraints of their work tasks. I explain how concern with saving face …


Through Google-Colored Glass(Es): Design, Emotion, Class, And Wearables As Commodity And Control, Safiya Umoja Noble, Sarah T. Roberts Jan 2016

Through Google-Colored Glass(Es): Design, Emotion, Class, And Wearables As Commodity And Control, Safiya Umoja Noble, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

This chapter discusses the implications of wearable technologies like Google Glass that function as a tool for occupying, commodifying, and profiting from the bio- logical, psychological, and emotional data of its wearers and those who fall within its gaze. We argue that Google Glass privileges an imaginary of unbridled exploration and intrusion into the physical and emotional space of others. Glass’s recognizable esthetic and outward-facing camera has elicited intense emotional response, partic- ularly when “exploration” has taken place in areas of San Francisco occupied by residents who were finding themselves priced out or evicted from their homes to make way …


In/Visibility, Sarah T. Roberts Jan 2016

In/Visibility, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

In online life there is a normative supposition that the information- and image-rich environment of the web and other platforms should provide unfettered access to the circulation of all types of content. Less attention is paid to what is not seen, to the invisible—be it actual content that is rescinded, altered or removed, or the opaque decision-making processes that maintain its flow. In/visibility online is central to the intertwined functions/mechanisms of user experience and platform control, further operationalized under globalized, technologically driven capitalism. A digital labour phenomenon that is both responsible for it and relies upon it: is …


Epic And Genre: Beyond The Boundaries Of Media, Luke Arnott Jan 2016

Epic And Genre: Beyond The Boundaries Of Media, Luke Arnott

FIMS Publications

Noting the resurgence of popular and academic interest in epics across disparate media, this essay proposes a theory of the epic genre that transcends particular media and cultures. It seeks to reconcile discussions of the epic in Aristotle, G.W.F. Hegel, Georg Lukács, Mikhail Bakhtin, Erich Auerbach, and Northrop Frye, arguing that traditional definitions of epic narrative are instead subsets of a greater generic structure. The epic is, following Gregory Nagy and Franco Moretti, among others, a literary “super-genre” that encompasses as many other kinds of narrative as possible. The essay explains how epic narrative, disembedded from earlier oral poetry, is …


A Polyphonic Approach To The 'Dark Side' Of Making Video Games, Johanna Weststar, Amanda Pettica-Harris, Steve Mckenna Jan 2012

A Polyphonic Approach To The 'Dark Side' Of Making Video Games, Johanna Weststar, Amanda Pettica-Harris, Steve Mckenna

Management and Organizational Studies Publications

This paper considers the video game industry and how it is represented through social media blogs and tweets. It aims to disentangle the polyphony of voices communicating through different stories about what it means to work in the gaming industry. The multiple voices found within the blogs and tweets weave a complex and contested narrative about the carnivalesque way in which video games are made, poignantly illustrating the good, the bad, and the ugly. Using the work of the Russian literary theorist and philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin (1984, 1993), and particularly his notions of monologic and dialogic stories and narratives (McKenna, …


Picture Imperfect: Re-Reading Imagery Of Aborigines In Walkabout, Mitchell Rolls Jan 2009

Picture Imperfect: Re-Reading Imagery Of Aborigines In Walkabout, Mitchell Rolls

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

The representation of Aborigines in the popular Australian magazine Walkabout has attracted the attention of a small number of scholars. For the most part their analyses draw a distinction between the portrayals of primitive natives and those of the emergent modernising Australian nation. It is argued that Aborigines appear as debased, as noble savages, or as bearers of an idealised and imagined traditional culture. These representational strategies are evident in both photo- graphs and text in Walkabout. Whilst not necessarily disagreeing with these critiques, more nuanced readings of Aboriginal photographic representation in Walkabout are possible. This article seeks to reveal …


Harold Innis And 'The Bias Of Communication', Edward Comor Jan 2001

Harold Innis And 'The Bias Of Communication', Edward Comor

FIMS Publications

Fifty years after his death, Harold Innis remains one of the most widely cited but least understood of communication theorists. This is particularly true in relation to his concept of ‘bias’. This paper reconstructs this concept and places it in the context of Innis’ uniquely non-Marxist dialectical materialist methodology. In so doing, the author emphasizes ongoing debates concerning Innis’ work and demonstrates its utility in relation to contemporary analyses of the Internet and related developments.