Critical and Cultural Studies Commons^™

Review Of Heredity, By Jenny Davidson, David C. Froemke

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Fixations/Solutions, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

When the idea of this issue’s theme came to me, I was standing in a crowd of my peers, members of my generation, listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor. As with all concerts, the performers left the stage to signal their eventual encore, and when they returned, they returned with the announcement that the U.S. military had begun its bombing, and formal invasion, of Iraq. Whether the idea for the issue had come to me prior to this moment, or as a result of it, I am unsure; I had, however, earlier decided that the summer issue we …

War If Necessary, But Not Necessarily War': The Canadian Paradox And 'Iraqi Freedom', Marc Ouellette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The Canadian refusal to join the U.S. led “coalition of the willing” does not mark the first time the nation has chosen not to follow its “traditional allies” into a foolish, ego-driven, imperialistic and vengeful conflict. Indeed, Canada’s record in these matters is flawless. Peter C. Newman points out that “we went along with most presidential global adventures, except the Vietnam War. The other significant time we parted company with the Yanks was over our drive to impose economic sanctions on apartheid South Africa, a policy we initiated and successfully defended despite American objections.” In fact, the objections …

Imperialism & Globalization: Lessons From Frank Herbert's Dune, Kevin Williams

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

These are the words of The Preacher (a character in Frank Herbert's Children of Dune who is simultaneously the metaphorical reincarnation of the fallen prophet, Muad'Dib, and the self-exiled Emperor, Paul Atreides) as he addresses the masses enslaved by their devotion to his messianic Empire. These words, culled from the pages of science fiction, are more than mere exposition from Herbert's narrative, they point toward several important conditions facing the political world today. These conditions concern certain failures of democracy and effects of globalization spawned, in part, by an intensification of imperialist expansion in the name of democracy.

Review Of How A Film Theory Got Lost And Other Mysteries In Cultural Studies, By Robert B. Ray, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

On T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, R. Stewart Varner

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Critical theory never died. It just assumed the façade of an academic discipline that is as spectacular as it is impotent. However, behind the façade there still lurk a few radical lunatics who, at times, may really be on to something. One such figure is Hakim Bey.

Review Of Time For Revolution, By Antonio Negri, John Conley

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

“Parent Teams” And The Everyday Interactions Of Co-Parenting In Stepfamilies, Dawn O. Braithwaite, M. Chad Mcbride, Paul Schrodt

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Family scholars have yet to explore substantially the day-to-day interactions of stepfamily systems. Our focus was on the everyday interactions of parent teams, adults who are co-parenting within different stepfamily households, describing the characteristics of their communication. Twenty-two parents, stepparents, and partners (N = 22) kept diaries for two weeks, each time they interacted with an adult in the other household. Results detail the frequency, timing, location, and length of interactions; initiator, channel, and topics; and reasons for interaction. Interactions were short, everyday encounters rather than extended, planned meetings. The majority of the interactions were via telephone, followed by …

"War If Necessary, But Not Necessarily War”: The Canadian Paradox And “Iraqi Freedom", Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The Canadian refusal to join the U.S. led “coalition of the willing” does not mark the first time the nation has chosen not to follow its “traditional allies” into a foolish, ego-driven, imperialistic and vengeful conflict. Indeed, Canada’s record in these matters is flawless. Peter C. Newman points out that “we went along with most presidential global adventures, except the Vietnam War. The other significant time we parted company with the Yanks was over our drive to impose economic sanctions on apartheid South Africa, a policy we initiated and successfully defended despite American objections.” In fact, the objections to this …

Teaching Merchant-Class Virtues With Chushingura And The London Merchant, David S. Escoffery

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper, "Teaching Merchant-Class Virtues with Chushingura and The London Merchant," David S. Escoffery examines the different styles of teaching merchant-class virtues in eighteenth-century Japan and England through an analysis of the classical Japanese play Chushingura and the didactic British play The London Merchant. He holds that in both Europe and Japan, the eighteenth century saw the rise of a whole new class, the middle class, to either economic or social power or both. That century was also a didactic age for the theatre. For the first time, the audience could see characters from the new merchant class on …

Science, Sexuality, And The Novels Of Huxley And Houellebecq, Angela C. Holzer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Science, Sexuality, and the Novels of Huxley and Houellebecq," Angela C. Holzer begins with an introduction to recent discourse about contemporary culture by Francis Fukuyama, notably in his book Our Posthuman Future (2001). Next, Holzer introduces twentieth-century literary representations of genetic engineering. Focusing on Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and on Houellebecq's Les Particules élémentaires (1998), Holzer discusses differences in "utopian" literature when linked to metaphysical aspects of reproduction and that are owing to changes in the life sciences and medicine. Further, Holzer explores the implications for poetics resulting from scientific developments and relates Houellebecq's perspectives to …

Negotiating Boundaries In Divakaruni's The Mistress Of Spices And Naylor's Mama Day, Susana Vega-González

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Negotiating Boundaries in Divakaruni's The Mistress of Spices and Naylor's Mama Day," Susana Vega-González analyzes the intertextual connections between these two novels. In Vega-González's view, the texts discussed transcend their authors' different ethnic and ethno-cultural backgrounds and appeal to universalisms found in literature. Vega-González proposes that writing from a bi-cultural perspective, Indian American Chitra B. Divakaruni and African American Gloria Naylor share both content and stylistic features in their acclaimed novels. Their conscious effort to dissolve established boundaries as well as their ethno-cultural legacies leads these authors to a magic realistic approach, an apt means to reflect …

Corpi, Murakami, And Contemporary Hardboiled Fiction, Cathy Steblyk

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Corpi, Murakami, and Contemporary Hardboiled Fiction," Cathy Steblyk discusses comparatively texts by contemporary detective fiction writers, one an ethnic-minority US-American and the other Japanese. Steblyk proposes that in detective fiction since the late 1980s, morally or ethically contestable sites of history have been given a postmortem by contemporary authors who are interested in restoring the lost parts of cultural histories. Detective fictions by feminist US-Chicana author Lucha Corpi and Japanese writer Murakami Haruki show how recent fiction from around the globe uses the hardboiled genre for the purposes of exploring past injustices and offering revisionist histories. The …

Adventure Tales, Colonialism, And Alexander Montgomery's Australian Perspective, Christine Doran

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Adventure Tales, Colonialism, and Alexander Montgomery's Australian Perspective," Christine Doran discusses an early nineteenth-century example of Australian literature dealing with Southeast Asia. The text analysed is about Borneo, in a collection of short stories by Alexander Montgomery entitled Five-Skull Island and Other Tales of the Malay Archipelago, published in Melbourne in 1897. In the paper, Doran's focus is on Montgomery's adventure tales and she situates the texts within their literary and cultural contexts. Montgomery's writing is then analyzed in the light of postcolonial scholarship. Doran argues that in several important ways this author's work runs counter to …

Professional Wrestling: From Sport To Sports Entertainment, Ryan Diesem

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

A Symbolic Interactionist Study Of Teenagers' Fashionable Dress In Hsimenting, Taipei, Taiwan, Mei-Hsueh Hung

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the Caudill College of Humanities at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts by Mei-Hsueh Hung on May 7, 2003.

College Students' Media Consumption And Their Voting Habits, Peggy Anne Prudhomme

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Mobile Technologies And Boundaryless Spaces: Slavish Lifestyles, Seductive Meanderings, Or Creative Empowerment?, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Detlev Zwick

College of Business Faculty Publications

According to the instrumental theory of technology, mobile technologies - what McLuhan's refers to as electronic prostheses - promise opportunities for greater freedom, creativity, leisure, and productivity by enhancing organic bodily functions. Correspondingly, as (Cavallaro, 2000) would argue, objects such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable physiotherapy units, laptops, and portable stereos - to name just a few - seem to impart a sense of solidity to consumers' lives. Just like prostheses, they are inserted into our everyday lives, helping our "inadequate" bodies along in fulfilling practical tasks. Phenomenologically, these kinds of mobile technologies supposedly support the subject's …

Burn This Journal, Davin Heckman, Sarah Hildebrandt, R. Stewart Varner, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editor introduction]

Originally published in the Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies (1.1), our manifesto appears for its first time online, in its entirety, here (earlier pieces of it appeared in earlier editorials). In so doing, we hope to continue the discussion that it grew out of in a public forum, and to ask our readership to participate as well -- a new manifesto should be written annually. Because Reconstruction is meant to be an organic enterprise, we ask readers to interrogate the efficacy and plausibility of the material herein: What must be changed, and what must be added/subtracted in order …

Paratextuality And Economic Disavowal In Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity, Sarah Brouillette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Dave Eggers' recent novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002), concerns two friends who suddenly stumble upon a lot of money, feel guilty about it, and travel around the world trying to give it away. Like almost all of what Eggers is involved in producing, Velocity is profoundly self-justifying. In fact, if we follow Gerard Genette's model and understand a work's paratexts to be all the physical and social texts that attend its existence, controlling its dissemination and reception, then Velocity thematizes paratextuality and practices it, as a text about Eggers' career and his overriding concern with the …

Text As Technology: Reading N. Katherine Hayles' Writing Machines, Davin Heckman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

N. Katherine Hayles' Writing Machines is a beautiful little book. Thanks to the innovative spirit of MIT Press' Peter Lunenfeld, the graphic design prowess of Anne Burdick, the multimedia talents of Sean Donahue (creator of the book's website ), and the insights of N. Katherine Hayles, Writing Machines arrives as one of the first installations of the Mediawork Pamphlet Series, and offers one possible line of development to follow for any scholar concerned with the future of The Book.

Review Of Subject, Society, Culture, By Roy Boyne, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Mediums And Media: Review Of Ghostwriting Modernism, By Helen Sword, And Haunted Media, By Jeffrey Sconce, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Time Wounds All Heels: Duncan, Ballet, And Bataille, Joanne Pearson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Any study of the birth of modern dance draws upon the work of Isadora Duncan and for too long her dance has been placed in opposition to ballet. Even today the contemporary Duncan dancer reifies the image of Duncan as natural, harmonious, unique and rounded [1]. This opposition of free dance versus ballet presents a two-dimensional portrait of past representations of femininity. I aim to re-think Duncan's disdain for the pointe shoe and her belief that barefoot dancing would encourage a liberated movement that would in turn free woman from her disgraceful position in dance and …

Review Of Burger With The Works, Please! A Webjournal For Students Of The Humanities, Alexandra Ganser

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Nobel In Literature 2000 Gao Xingjian's Aesthetics Of Fleeing, Mabel Lee

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Nobel in Literature 2000 Gao Xingjian's Aesthetics of Fleeing," Mabel Lee explores the aesthetic dimensions of Gao Xingjian's play Taowang (Fleeing 1990), and its significance in establishing the recurring motif of "fleeing" in Gao's later writings on literature. Lee argues that the intensely emotional times during which Gao wrote Fleeing were comparable to those seventy years earlier confronting May Fourth writers. Urging his compatriots not to be "bystanders," Lu Xun, the most influential of May Fourth writers, had chosen to allow his creative self to suicide, as shown in the prose-poems of Yecao (Wild Grass 1927). For …

Cultures Matter: A Review Article Of Books By Harrison And Huntington, Segesváry, And Breckenridge, Pollock, Bhabha, And Chakrabarty, William H. Thornton

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Comparing Anew: A Review Article Of New Work By Kushner, Zhang, Halio And Siegel, And San Román, Nicoletta Pireddu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

And The 2002 Nobel Prize For Literature Goes To Imre Kertész, Jew And Hungarian, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "And the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature Goes to Imre Kertész, Jew and Hungarian" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek presents an introduction to the recepient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, Imre Kertész, and his work. Tötösy de Zepetnek places Kertész's work in the context of Central European culture and within that in the genre of Central European Jewish memoir literature (but not autobiography). In Tötösy de Zepetnek's opinion the cultural and social relevance of Jewish memoir writing today is of particular importance precisely for the same reasons Kertész articulates when he says, "I am a survivor. …

Nobel In Literature 2002 Imre Kertész's Aesthetics Of The Holocaust, Sára Molnár

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her paper, "Nobel in Literature 2002 Imre Kertész's Aesthetics of the Holocaust," Sára Molnár discusses aspects of Nobel Laureate Imre Kertész's reception in Hungary. In her analysis, Molnár discusses aesthetic features of the author's use of language. Molnár's study illuminates the problem of authorship and questions relating to intersections of fiction and autobiography in Kertész's oeuvre. Molnár's argument is that although the author's personal history is indeed important in his texts, this "author" should not be identified with Kertész himself and that although Kertész's themes and subjects appear to be autobiographical, not even his diaries should or can be …