Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Multiplex: The Modern American Motion Picture Theatre As Message, Gary Edgerton

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

Gary Edgerton's contribution to "Hark, Ina R. Exhibition, the Film Reader. London: Routledge, 2001. "

An Orthodox Heresy: Scientific Rhetoric And The Science Of Prions., Carol Reeves

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

A significant theoretical shift in the research community examining a class of terminal, infectious neurological disorders that includes Mad Cow Disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and Kuru was assisted by rhetorical production. The local rhetoric of one laboratory, that of Professor Stanley B. Prusiner, involved first situating an heretical hypothesis within the framework of the orthodox narrative and then audaciously promoting that heresy. Another aspect of rhetorical production in this case involved situating a new language associated with the heretical hypothesis. To promote their new lexicon, the Prusiner team evoked orthodox values of consistency, efficiency, and collective ratification. Eventually, what was once …

The English-Speaking Librarians' Club Of The Ukrainian Library Association, G. Jaia Barrett, Janet Dolya

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

We decided to tell this story of the English-Speaking Librarians' Club in this article with the hope that English-speaking librarians living and visiting elsewhere in the former Soviet Union will look for similar opportunities. To our knowledge, none of the library associations in the other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States have yet established such a professional unit. For readers in the U.S., we add a word about the name of the group. The word "club" is commonly used in Ukraine for groups that come together around a common agenda but it does not carry the connotations associated with …

Autotopography: Graffiti, Landscapes, & Selves, Deirdre Heddon

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

For some time now I have been interested in autobiographical performance -- some form of the theatrical, in which performers explicitly use personal material in their work. Within this general field of autobiography and performance, one area of research concerns performances that are dependent on being located in personalised space -- what could be called, then, site-specific autobiographical performance. A recent example of this would be the performance Bubbling Tom (2000), by the UK based performer Mike Pearson, which saw Pearson return to the village of his childhood, to reflect upon and re-enact certain memories, events and persons …

The Mind Museum: Rudolf Schwarzkogler And The Vienna Actionists, Philip Barnes

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Sixth paragraph]

In the following essay I discuss the Austrian artist Rudolf Schwarzkogler. I have enjoyed the process of ferreting out articles and references to him, although these are seemingly as scarce as his own artistic output. Schwarzkogler spent just 2 years staging performance-actions in his apartment in the 1960s. These methodically photographed scenes involved sliced fish, bandages, light bulbs, razor blades, foodstuffs and surgical apparatus, all manipulated by anonymous figures. The photographs, works of art in their own right, have since toured internationally. Schwarzkogler was the least outgoing of a group called the Viennese Actionists, whose orgiastic, bloody Happenings …

The Cyborgian Self: Toward A Critical Social Theory Of Cyberspace, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Contemporary social theory currently remains at a virtual standstill, quivering over the decision to radically leave the past behind or to continue within the historical narrative of the Enlightenment. Postmodern social theorists, advocating the position that we have, in fact, entered a new historical epoch, pose serious challenges to our perception of modernity and cultural identity. As an influential strategy that has infiltrated both the humanities and the social sciences for more than thirty years, postmodernism can no longer be dismissed as merely a fad or trend. In a world where the use of complex, and often mobile, …

Solaris, America, Disneyworld And Cyberspace: Salman Rushdie's Fairy-Tale Utopianism In Fury, Justyna Deszcz

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In this paper, I discuss the figure of professor Malik Solanka, the protagonist of Salman Rushdie's latest novel, Fury (2001), and his attempts at constructing a fairy tale utopia as a means of establishing his identity. I try to elucidate this problem referring to the concepts of the fairy tale utopian as formulated by J. R. R. Tolkien, Ernst Bloch, and Jack Zipes, as their propositions can be regarded as the most effective exponents of the utopian imagination and seem very applicable to Rushdie's utopian attempts. On the basis of such a reading, I also reflect on the …

Rich Earth Below The Sand' And The Origins Of The Thames Embankments, Stuart Oliver

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

This essay explores the designing of the Thames embankments that were built between 1866 and 1874 for the Metropolitan Board of Works. In particular it concentrates on the origins of what might be called the production of the conditions of production of the embankments. By looking at the motivation of those advocating embanking as a means of exerting literal and figurative control over the river, and the ways in which society influenced such advocacy and determined its effectiveness, the essay explores modernity's construction of a regulated natural in the context of an analysis that is sensitive to the …

Supposing A Space: The Detecting Subject In Paul Auster’S City Of Glass, Richard Swope

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Rorty's Complicit American Neo-Pragmatism, Haidar Eid

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Despite the obvious French origin of poststructuralism, its paradigmatic resonance can be found in the American philosophical scene, an essential part of which is Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatism -- the theoretical basis of American (post)modernism. However, different from poststructuralism's apparent antagonism to the authoritarian establishments, Rorty adopts the Derridean poststructuralist motifs of the decentering of the subject, and the disappearance of meaning and truth in order to defend the establishment -- or rather, the status quo.

On Guillermo Gomez-Peña's El Mexterminator And Cyber Vato, Michael Benton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

While attending Bowling Green State University in 1997 I had an experience that changed my worldview. I was a teaching assistant in the Popular Culture department and part of my responsibilities included teaching Introduction to Popular Culture (POPC 100) and Introduction to Mass Media (POPC 165). I had been struggling to engage my students in examining the way in which social reality is represented to them through popular entertainments [2]. The majority of my students were white, middle class students from the surrounding Northern regions of Ohio. My students were well-versed in the ongoing controversy over whether or …

Review Of Up, By Peter Gabriel, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Passaic Boys Are Hell: Robert Smithson's Tag As Temporal And Spatial Marker Of The Geographical Self, Felicity Colman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Robert Smithson seductively created stories about his activities as an artist with attention to his duration; his time of existence. Born in 1938 in the New Jersey suburb of Passaic, Smithson lived in the New Jersey suburbs of Rutherford and Clifton with his family until 1957 when he moved to live in downtown Manhattan, New York (Hobbs 1981, 231-232; Tsai 1991, 6). Smithson's adult life was undeniably shaped by his Pascalian/Sopranos awareness of engaging the circumference by which to navigate the centre of everyday life. In 1972 Smithson described New Jersey as: a kind of destroyed California, …

The Ruse Of The Social: Human Waste And The Gated Community, Liam Mcnamara

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

One of the central problems of contemporary society is that of “the social”: how it is defined, constituted, conjured into existence, and supported. Jean Baudrillard has employed the term “the social” in his work, but it is never explicitly defined; it is best understood as a form of simulation that has sprung into existence in the absence of symbolic social relations. The social is constituted of all the phenomena that are generally studied by sociology, so is therefore ideologically conceived of as an organic structure that is waiting for analysis. The “social” is society, both as it stands …

On Bell Hooks' Feminism Is For Everybody, David Alan Sapp

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Taking a decidedly radical feminist position, bell hooks, the writing voice of Gloria Watkins, promotes the learning of feminist theory and history as essential parts of the process of self-actualization and the practice of freedom. In Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, hooks provides an overview targeted to readers new to interdisciplinary feminism. Importantly, hooks argues in strong opposition to the anti-feminist public voice in contemporary culture. In particular, she speaks to young female readers who know little about feminism, many of whom falsely assume that sexism is no longer a problem or is no longer relevant since …

Framing Intelligibility, Identity And Selfhood: A Reconsideration Of Spatio-Temporal Models, Sally Munt

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The relationship between intelligibility and identity over the past thirty years has largely been approached through the linguistic construct of the subject. Proposing that our subjectivities be theoretically comprehended (made intelligible) as discursive effects is now common sense. Poststructuralism, following particularly Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan, has ensured that the subject is a cardinal category of contemporary thought; in any number of disciplines, it is one of the first concepts we teach to our undergraduates. But are we best served by continuing to insist on the intellectual primacy of the subject, formulated as it has been …

To Blend In The Place You're In, But With A Mind To Do Something: The Practice Of Merging In James Dickey's To The White Sea, Casey Clabough

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In a final sortie the day before the great fire-bombing raid on Tokyo in the last months of World War II, Muldrow (his first name is purposefully never given), an American tail gunner, parachutes from his burning B-29 into the city. Protected at first by the smoke-blackened anarchy on the ground, he journeys north, away from the chaos and ruin of Tokyo, instinctively drawn toward Japan's sparsely-populated northern island of Hokkaido, a frozen, desolate sanctuary he is certain will assure his survival. With little more than a knife and a small map of Japan he makes his way …

Writing Identity Into Space: The Relationship Between Ethnography, Autobiography, And Space In Bronislaw Malinowski's A Diary In The Strict Sense Of The Term And Claude Lévi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques, Lawrence Phillips

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

From a number of disciplinary perspectives autobiography has always presented a challenge to more or less discrete modes of reading and evaluating the text. To read autobiography as a literary text is to suppress its close relationship to the writer, however fictionalised and evasive the writing subject might be about a textual identity so closely related to his or her public persona. On the other hand, to read it as history or a documentary presentation of a life is to fail to acknowledge the heavy use of literary techniques and imbedded subjectivity that makes autobiography what it is. …

See Me, Touch Me, Feel Me':(Im)Proving The Bodily Sense Of Masculinity, Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Ultimately, this paper stems from two cultural strands which intersect in one cultural form, self-improvement advertising aimed at men. The first of these is the figure of the new man, which appeared in the mid-1980s. The novelty lies in the positioning of masculine bodies precisely for the purpose of being seen. The available criticism was not equipped to account for these positionings. The second cultural strand, the proliferation of technologies which alter the body itself, as opposed to its coverings, makes the gap in the criticism more apparent. The two cultural trends intersect most noticeably in the advertisements …

Ideology And Public Sphere: A Preliminary Bibliography, Giorgio Bertellini, C. Paul Sellors

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Bibliography accompanies Bertellini & Sellors article Breaking the Mimetic Contract: Notes on Ideology, Intersubjectivity, and Film Theory

Navigating The Starless Night: Strategies For Understanding Autobiogeography, Matthew Wolf-Meyer, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Ancient mapmakers relied upon the presence of celestial bodies for their conceptualization of the world, for their external knowledge-making tools, as if a far-off body could help to make sense of our terrestrial life/as if it couldn't. Cosmology, as a practice, relied on the construction of an external body of knowledge that the local meaning-maker could situate him- or herself into, and more broadly, their entire society and culture -- the interior is determined by its relationship to the exterior (or the exteriorized). For the ancient Greeks then, the font of Western culture, this cosmology works at once …

Processes Of Embodiment And Spatialization In The Writings Of Paul Auster, Markus Rheindorf

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Processes of embodiment and the spatialization of interior categories such as thought and memory are defining characteristics of Paul Auster's novels, essays, and poetry, and a brief survey of these aspects can offer a new perspective on Auster's oeuvre as an organic whole. It is the underlying assumption of this paper that the transformation of interior into exterior constitutes a specific instance of the transpositional processes discussed therein. Within the theoretical framework of cultural studies -- as opposed to the more narrowly defined literary studies -- such transformations can be regarded as processes of embodiment, that is to …

Motivations And Gratifications For Selecting A Niche Television Channel: Byu Television, Diena L. Simmons

Theses and Dissertations

The growth of direct broadcast satellite television distribution to the home as a viable competitor to cable and terrestrial broadcast has fostered the availability of special interest or niche channels and therefore provided greater choice to the viewer. This study, based on uses and gratifications theory, examined the relationships among ritual and instrumental viewing motivations and satisfactions, viewer religiosity, and viewing attentiveness as they related to the selection of a niche television channel, Brigham Young University Television.
The uses and gratification approach provides an appropriate framework for studying "media consumption, the interrelated nature of television user motives, and the relationships …

Analisis Strategi Retorik Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Iii Tentang Isu-Isu Perlembagaan Negeri Brunei Dan Rancangan Malaysia, 1959-1963, Kee Foong Choong

Student Works (2000-2009)

Kajian retorik ini merupakan satu kajian ke atas teks titah Sultan Omar. Kajian ni meneliti strategi-strategi retorik yang digunakan oleh Sultan Omar ke atas isu Perlembagaan Negeri Brunei dan isu Rancangan Malaysia. Dalam setiap isu itu, aspek-aspek lnvensi, Disposisi dan Gaya Bahasa dikenal pasti dan dihuraikan. Untuk korpus kajian ini, 36 buah titah terpilih Sultan Omar telah digunakan untuk analisis. Satu perbandingan perbezaan kekerapan penggunaan strategi retorik falam ketiga-tiga aspek itu dilakukan bagi setiap isu tersebut. Di samping itu, seni pertitahan Sultan Omar turut dipaparkan. Kaedah analisisnya adalah berdasarkan Hukum Retorik Klasik Aristotle. Dapatan kajian ini menunjukkan :iahawa terdapat 35 …

The Oxford Guide To Style, Priscilla Finley

Library Faculty Research

Oxford's style manual will be essential to users previously dependent on Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers (39th ed., 1986)--those preparing manuscripts for Oxford University Press and other British publishers--which Ritter revises and enlarges. Chapters cover general publication topics such as front matter and preparation of copy and proofs; editorial issues like punctuation, numbers, and capitalization; special conventions regarding science and mathematics; and "specialist subjects" including British and EU law, music, poetry, drama, and sacred works.

"Woman Arise!": Political Work In The Writings Of Lu Dalton, Sheree Maxwell Bench

Theses and Dissertations

In 1872, Mormon plural wife, educator, and suffragist Lucinda Lee Dalton began writing fiery political essays and insightful poetry for the Woman's Exponent from her small community in southern Utah. Through her writings Dalton endeavors to shape the opinions of Exponent readers by working within public discourse toward the goal of equality for women. At times both optimistic and troubled, she uses the rhetorical strategies of humor, irony, reason, identification, and persuasion to educate men and women on disparities and to encourage women to participate actively in their own emancipation. She often engages in a dialogical process with other writers …

Activist Desire, Cultural Criticism, And The Situationist International, David Banash

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In the world of Anglo-American criticism, Situationism was once the province of hip theorists, progressive art historians, and a few scattered Marxists. No more, for the nineties saw Situationism come from obscure movement to the defiant avant of our cultural-critical-garde. Not only has the past decade seen the publication of a dozen books, countless articles, dissertations, and both academic and activist web-sites, the Situationists have moved right into the main line of pop-culture. Situationist graffiti turns up as the epigraph for gen-xer Elizabeth Wurtzel's Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (1988), and, with Rolling Stone darling Greil Marcus's …

The Rural Public Television System: The Paradox Of Identity And Role, James C. Jones Jr.

Masters Theses

The American television broadcasting system is preparing for it's greatest upgrade since color television. This change will not only effect commercial television it will also effect our community public television stations.

Since it's inception in 1967 the public television system has been the innovation leader in the broadcast industry for using new technologies to benefit education and servicing the public. Public television was the leader in satellite programming distribution, descriptive television services and closed captioning. Public television has defined and demonstrated its role as a technology leader. This research study was undertaken to define from the public's perspective what it …

Making Friends To Last A Lifetime: An Ethnographic Study Of Parasocial Relationships And Soap Opera Characters, Emmalee Elizabeth Haight Pryor

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to build theory about parasocial relationships and to examine what affect, if any, religion had on parasocial relationships. Using qualitative methods, the researcher watched the show three times with five women followed by an in-depth interview. The women chosen were LDS stay-at-home moms who had watched a soap opera for at least a year.
From this data came several surprising findings about religion and soap opera viewing. The women said they did not feel guilty about the content of the shows, rather the time required to watch. This guilt was alleviated by structuring their …

Mabopa : Sejarah Dan Perkembangan Persatuan Penerbit Buku Malaysia, Suhaillah Abdullah

Student Works (2000-2009)

Laporan Penyelidikan ini dijalankan untuk mengetahui sejarah dan perkembangan Persatuan Penerbit Buku Malaysia (MABOPA) sepanjang 31 tahun penubuhannya (1969-2001). Persatuan Penerbit Buku Malaysia merupakan antara persatuan yang bergiat aktif dalam mempertingkatkan industri perbukuan negara. Walaupun begitu, terlalu kurang sumber bertulis yang menceritakan tentang kegiatan dan peranan Persatuan Penerbit Buku Malaysia dalam arena penerbitan negara. Oleh itu, kajian ini dijalankan sebagai 'sambungan' kepada kajian perintis yang pemah dilakukan oleh saudari Rabiatuladawiah Arshad pada tahun 1991. Dalam tempoh hampir 10 tahun, kajian susulan yang di buat menunjukkan Persatuan Penerbit Buku Malaysia telah mengalami pelbagai perubahan. Realitinya Persatuan Penerbit Buku Malaysia semakin matang …