Other Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Purloined Significance: How Recidivism Algorithms Capture, Transform, And Automate Our Intersubjective Unconscious As Data, Macy Mcdonald

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Ever since ProPublica published their groundbreaking analysis of Northpointe’s Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions Core Risk and Needs Assessment software (COMPAS) in 2016, this web-based decision support system (DSS) has spawned a wide range of critiques and charges of racial bias. COMPAS provides a full suite of decision support applications to the US prison-industrial complex, including algorithmically derived recidivism predictions that increasingly guide parole decisions. The larger conversation surrounding COMPAS raises the question of how we analyze powerful, and yet opaque, data assemblages. In this article, I model an allegorical analysis of data assemblages. I argue the skills …

Community Despite Connection: Resisting The Digital Logics Of Optimization And Failure, Irina Kalinka

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

If a certain brand of aspirational tech-utopian discourse is to be believed, those privileged enough to be plugged into digital information technology are living through a golden age of connection. Platforms claim to facilitate sharing and partaking, bring people together, and bestow upon them new and improved spaces to gather and build communities. While reality differs decidedly from such idealized conceptions, it is nonetheless crucial to ask what kind of guiding vision is being instituted through such representational efforts: namely, the figure of community made operational and optimizable. This project will reject such idealized visions of coherent communities drawn together …

The Social Sinthome, Ryan Engley

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Much of the critical discourse on social media misidentifies its problematic features as bugs, or problems to solve. Supposed solutions to these problems tend to focus on individual actions. We should delete the apps, own our own data, never click on recommended videos, and realize that we are the product. But if predatory algorithms succeed by individuating people—selling people “choice” and “options” as it harvests user data—then an entire online ecosystem arranged through the logic of that design can neither be meaningfully challenged nor effectively understood at the level of the individual alone. Transformative action addressing social media can only …

Everybody Wants To Be A Fascist Online: Psychoanalysis And The Digital Architecture Of Fascism, Anthony Faramelli, Imogen Piper

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Félix Guattari and Franco Berardi have both argued that media ecologies and psychic ecologies are intimately intertwined and as such, any exploration of the collective unconscious must engage with how the mind is formed with and through media. This understanding of networks of interdependence necessitates an exploration of how platformization has impacted users” collective psyche. Drawing from psychosocial theory, psychoanalysis and the work of Félix Guattari, this article analizes the micropolitics of desire of digital platforms, with an explicit focus on how algorithmic structures amplify extreme Right content, allowing fascisms to metastasis throughout digital spaces. It will first examine the …

“There Is No Pandemic”: On Memes, Algorithms And Other Interpassive Forms Of Right-Wing Disbelief, Scott Krzych

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This essay examines several prominent memes that have circulated on Right-wing social media during the Covid-19 pandemic. The memes coordinate what I describe as a mode of interpassive humor, which positions those who “believe” in the crisis as naïve dupes, infantilizing those subjects who have fallen prey to the idea that they should take the pandemic seriously, and thereby delegating fearfulness to the other so that reactionary Covid-19 denialists may continue with their lives unaffected. The essay thereby seeks to draw suggestive lines of affiliation between studies of digital memes, evolutionary mimetics, and psychoanalytic theory, pointing to the algorithmic …

“Love Thy Social Media!”: Hysteria And The Interpassive Subject, Jack Black

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

According to the 2020 docudrama, The Social Dilemma, our very addiction to “social media” has, today, become encapsulated in the tensions between its facilitation as a mode of interpersonal communication and as an insidious conduit for machine learning, surveillance capitalism and manipulation. Amidst a variety of interviewees – many of whom are former employees of social media companies – the documentary finishes on a unanimous conclusion: something must change. By using the docudrama as a pertinent example of our “social media malaise,” and while remaining aware of the problems and unethical practices encompassing international digital/social media companies, this paper …

Lacan And The Algorithm, Clint Burnham

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Exploring the development of algorithms in Lacanian theory, specifically the "R schema" in the 1950s, I argue that psychoanalysis, read through contemporary debates about the "algorithmic cult" of Netflix and other avatars of popular culture, can be said to reveal the inhuman, machinic essence of subjectivity. The etiology of algorithms, mathemes, and other formulae and diagrams in Lacan’s oeuvre has been under-studied, in part because for some readers they are not as attractive as his more bravura flourishes of word play as exegetical excess, and in part because they derive largely from the ‘hard’ structuralist moment of his work in …

Platform Psychoanalysis: What Does The Algorithm Want?, Matthew Flisfeder

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

From Extractivism To Adjacency. A Research Manifesto, Margarita Palacios, Anette Baldauf

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

This essay concerns with the ways in which extractivism continues to be reproduced in academic frameworks despite innumerous initiatives of decolonization. Engaging with artistic research and embracing a materialist approach that emphasizes embeddedness and embodiment, as well as acknowledging the affective-aesthetic flows that accompany research, the authors locate the heart of the problem at the disjuncture between critical epistemology and research practices. This disavowed space of knowledge production, they argue, is where the logics of extractivism and its racialized epistemic dualism are reproduced. The authors put forward the notion of adjacency, as in their view, dwelling on the power of …

Encountering Ghosts Of The Capitalocene On Northern German Walkways, Lara-Lane Plambeck

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

Walking is a two-fold practice of both transcendence reflecting capitalist conformity as well as of potential for resistance. Applying the theory on walking traditionally associated with the subject in the modern city (Benjamin 1999) to today‘s Northern German countryside, I will argue that the dominant structures of feeling reflected in the walking culture and rural people‘s engagement with the land today is characterized by a sense of capitalist realism (Fisher 2009) and informed by the feeling of alienation leading to the fetishization of landscape. I, too want to explore walking‘s potential to step out of capitalist conformity. When intentionally walking …

Commedia Dell’Arte: The Mechanisms Of Othering, Olly Crick

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This chapter proposes that the dramaturgic flexibility within historical Commedia dell’Arte was predicated on a performance methodology that demanded a changing pattern of othering, depending on the class, economic strength and region of their audiences.

Exhibiting Blackface Puppets From The German Imaginary, William T.F. Condee

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

German puppet collections face the problem of how—and whether—to display their extensive holdings of blackface puppets that are built on grotesquely racist stereotypes, including the Imagined Turk, the Imagined African, the Imagined African American, and the Imagined Multicultural German.

Sicilian Puppet Theater: Alterity Or Diversity?, Jo Ann Cavallo

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

From the perspective of alterity, the predominant figure of the Other in Sicilian puppet theater is undoubtedly the Saracen (Muslim) aggressor. Yet the Paladins of France cycle, with its over 300 nightly episodes, is replete with stories that eschew an opposition between an “us” and a “them” and instead underscore our common humanity across borders of all kinds. Indeed, camaraderie, friendship, and even romance can readily develop between individuals from the most disparate corners of the globe. My paper focuses on a selection of examples under the guise of both alterity and diversity, the latter achieved especially through heterogamous marriages.

The Other In Southeast Asian Puppetry, Kathy Foley

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

Southeast Asian wayang/nang talung puppetry presents the local hero as refined. Three types of “others” repeat: 1) comic foreigners, 2) Raja Sabrangan (“Overseas King”) and followers, and 3) physically deformed clown servants. The last two groups are important and may relate to Austronesian concepts of spirit siblings accompanying each person through life.

The Western Tourist As Exotic Other: Coping With The Aggressive Ways Of The Casual Stranger, John Emigh

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

In the summer of 2004, the author traveled with Prof. Barbara Hatley to see a performance by the Ludruk Karya Budaya troupe of Mojokerto in Eastern Java and while there, the author participated in the performance; this chapter reflects on the minefield of cultural issues involved in their improvised sketch.

Raising Ourselves Up: Oral Histories From First Generation College Students At Bcc, 2016-19, Cynthia Tobar, Oscar Zamora Flores

Finding Aids

Finding aid for Raising Ourselves Up: Oral Histories from First Generation College Students at BCC, 2016-19, prepared by Bronx Community College Archives

Alterity In The Arabic And Near Eastern Puppet Theater, Marvin Carlson

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This essay studies uses of alterity in the medieval plays of Egyptian Ibn Daniyal and selected modern Karagoz plays from Turkey, considering the alterity of the puppet itself and also the social alterities represented by the puppets in these works.

How To Signify Otherness And Diasporic Bodies Through Puppetry: Two Plays By Kossi Efoui, Francesca Di Fazio

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

French-speaking writer of Togolese origin Kossi Efoui resorts to puppetry as a means of communicating the diaspora of the African people and the condition of Otherness experienced by a portion of humanity throughout history.

Deities Of The Indigenous Snake People In Religious Marionette Plays, Fan Pen Chen

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This chapter shows how deities of the indigenes of southeastern China competed with and reacted to the invading mainstream Han culture through six sacred string-puppet plays.

Ralph Chessé And Forman Brown: When Carving The Other Is Carving The Self, Ben Fisler

Representing Alterity through Puppetry and Performing Objects

This article examines two “closeted” puppeteers, Forman Brown and Ralph Chessé, who demonstrate alterity’s ability to disrupt itself. Their puppets are both exotic (“different from me”) and incorporated (“like me”), as the artists’ hidden racial and sexual identities blur the boundaries between self and other.

Artists In Legacy-Land: Endowing Foundations To Balance Market And Philanthropic Activity, Lucas Mischler

MA Theses

In this paper, artist-endowed foundations are examined to assess the direct and indirect impact of their philanthropic activity on the art market. Beginning with an overview of historical and contextual variables paving the way for private philanthropy in the 20th century, specific case studies are analyzed--established foundations, as well as varying formats for smaller foundations, that illustrate the symbiotic relationship between the art market and artist-endowed foundations. Emphasis is placed on the newfound popularity of artists establishing foundations, and securing legacy, within their lifetimes rather than upon death, as this has the potential to yield the best results. Best practices …

A Line In The Sand: The Acceptance Of Changes To Folk Traditions Observed In The Activities Of Folksong Collector, Creative Participant, Performer, And Festival Organizer Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1882-1973), Zachary R. Ray

West Chester University Master’s Theses

Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1882-1973) was a folksong collector, performer, recording artist, festival organizer. Lunsford was at once a mountaineer (a member of the Appalachian culture he collected from) and a college educated outsider. This duality complicates analysis of his views and activities, which exist along a continuum from efforts at near-exactness (preserving folksong repertory and performance practices as exactly as possible) to creative participation (actively making changes to folksong style or repertoire). Lunsford’s views often contradicted other folksong collectors, American and European, during the early 20th century. This includes his apparent assertion that folksong is a living tradition – it …

Jogakpo Window (7 Feet X 4 Feet), Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Materials: glass, sunlight, post-it notes. Image description: Photographs show a large window covered with a 조각보 patchwork of colorful post-it notes. Sunlight illuminates the paper.

Art As Ritual: The Realm Between Identities, Haley Scarboro

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Ritualism is everywhere in the world and something that everyone takes part in, whether we acknowledge it or not. Rituals can be as simple as a morning routine or as monumental as memorializing a loved one. The works in this thesis are within the covenant of southern witchcraft and how it comes together in Ritual Art. Through documentation, memory-fueled found objects, and time-based installation I consider how growing up in Georgia and being a practicing witch played a role in my identity formation. Rituals are vital to the identities themselves and the history they hold. Symbolism plays a major role …

Dance In Art, Michaela S. Lantrip

Visual Studies | Senior Theses

Dance in art can be seen in paintings created by artists such as Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Pierre Auguste-Renoir (1841-1919), Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), William Blake (1757-1827), John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), and Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Edgar Degas was a French Impressionist artist who was known for his work of arts featuring ballerinas. Pierre Auguste-Renoir was also a French Impressionist artist like Degas, but he was more so known for his real-life scenario paintings. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, a French artist was known for his Art Nouveau and Post-Impressionist style. Toulouse-Lautrec illustrated some posters and paintings on Moulin Rouge. William Blake was an English poet, …

Teaching Social Justice Through Gothic Young Adult Literature, Lindsey I. Carman Williams, Ashley S. Boyd

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

In this article, authors argue that teaching young adult Gothic novels helps secondary students reflect on social justice issues, such as racism and sexism. We selected four young adult novels (The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White, Dark Companion by Marta Acosta, Open Mic Night at Westminster Abbey by Mary Amato, and Black Spring by Alison Croggon) and paired them with Gothic texts (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe’s tales, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre) to draw readers’ attention to issues of privilege and oppression . We offer in-class activities …

Communal Appropriation: Considerations Of Heritage And Cultural Preservation, Nikia Chaney

CGU Theses & Dissertations

While cultural appropriation is widely taken as a negative phenomenon that should be avoided, aspects of cultural appropriation are desirable for cultural preservation and heritage. These aspects can expand upon a museum's function by fostering an authentic connection to the community that would enhance the exhibition of cultural artifacts with authenticity, sustainability, diversity, and accessibility. This paper interprets auto-ethnographical visits to two sites, the Watts Tower Community Center in Los Angeles, CA, and the Fairfield House in Bath, England as a way of understanding community appropriation. Both the Watts Tower Community Center and the Fairfield House are inhabited by black …

Diy Beef: Why Some Montana Ranchers Are Gambling On Direct Marketing, Izaak John Opatz

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ranchers in Montana direct market their cattle for several reasons, but many have done so to relieve their dependence on the national beef market, which critics claim is unfairly controlled by a consolidated packing industry. Pandemic-related disruptions to the U.S. meat supply chain created uncertainty and exposed vulnerabilities for producers and consumers that drove a renewed interest in direct-marketed beef. Casey Buffington ranches near Chester, MT, and began direct marketing his cattle in 2019 to assert more control over his market and create more profit for his ranch. In telling Buffington’s story, this narrative explores how beneficial direct marketing can …

How Bollywood Has Influenced Cinema And Viewers Both Locally And Globally, Bhumi Patel

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The evolution and impact of Bollywood cinema follows its journey from silent films to contemporary masterpieces. Bollywood reflects India's rich cultural heritage while adapting to societal shifts and embracing progressive themes. From timeless tales of romance to modern explorations of feminism, LGBTQ+ rights, and mental health, Bollywood has evolved into a dynamic force for social commentary and cultural expression. Through integration of deep emotions and universally enjoyable music and dance, Bollywood transcends language and cultural barriers, captivating audiences worldwide. While facing setbacks such as lack of diversity, Bollywood is gradually embracing inclusivity and evolving with the times. By addressing taboo …

Problematizing Progress: Building A Postcapitalist Present, Cole G. Shepard

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In the past three decades, the term post-capitalism has found its way into several disciplines ranging from economics to feminist studies. Over these years, its use and definition have made a noticeable shift, from a focus on grassroots resistance meant to carve out noncapitalist spaces within a capitalist system to a focus on utilizing modern technology like automation and universal basic income to demand more freedom for the working class. This project traces the academic discourses of postcapitalism in the United States today. I analyze who is using the term and how to understand postcapitalism’s place in a larger movement/series …