scholarly journals Negotiating the Nation Through Superheroes

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 41-57
Author(s):  
Lee Easton ◽  
Kelly Hewson
Keyword(s):  
Canadian Shield ◽  
Close Reading

This case study focuses on Canadian students’ responses to our invitation to imagine their own nationalist superheroes whose costumes and powers represent a nation. We provide a close reading of 34 student artifacts to show how they draw on discourses that position Canada as a benevolent, multicultural country—a rhetorical formation we call the Canadian Shield. We also reveal how some artifacts negotiate tropes of the Shield, adapting or revising them in distinctive ways. We conclude, however, that when invited to create Canadian superheroes, many of the student creations reaffirm dominant visions of the country, and such habits of thought, we venture, are best considered as ideological bottlenecks.

Irrigation in the Medieval Islamic Fayyum: Local Control in a Large-Scale Hydraulic System

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yossef Rapoport ◽  
Ido Shahar
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Local Control ◽  
Water Allocation ◽  
Hydraulic System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Unique Case ◽  
Islamic Period ◽  
Distinctive Aspect

Abstract Because of the unique set of sources available, the Fayyum in Middle Egypt offers a unique case study of large-scale irrigation from antiquity to the Islamic period. A close reading of a cadastral survey of the province from 641/1243-4 shows that the distinctive aspect of the Islamic period was the local control of water supply and management. Drawing on the engineering experience of the villagers, water allocation and management in the gravity-fed canals of the Fayyum were in the hands of iqṭāʿ holders and tribal groups along the main canals, a pattern similar to that which pertained in mediaeval al-Andalus.

scholarly journals The Musicality of 140: Tempo, Rhythm and Structure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Browne
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Traditional Music ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Interactive Nature ◽  
Spatio Temporal

This paper explores relationships between video games and music through a close reading of the minimalistic platform game 140 (Carlsen, 2014). Of particular interest to this investigation are concepts of tempo, rhythm and structure, and how these ideas can be extended to discuss the immediate case study as well as video games as a medium. Most importantly, this analysis is concerned primarily with these elements in a performative, spatio-temporal sense as opposed to an expression of sonic qualities. Comparisons between video games and other forms of media, while certainly valuable, can become problematic as the interactive nature of games is inherently unique. While cinema or literary texts can be seen as interactive, it is the explicit nature of the interactivity that games manifest which sets them apart from other disciplines. It is in this sense, that commonality can be found between games and music through the act of play. 140 facilitates a unique dialogue on this topic as it is a game that is intensely musical while also functioning outside of some of the precincts of traditional music games, providing a distinctive lens for analysis without being distracted by its own aesthetics. Evidence of this can be seen in the game’s design, aesthetics, mechanics and spatiality—a game where the player becomes part of a greater performance, enacting the musicality of space through play.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Lena Cowen Orlin
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Textual Practices ◽  
Parallel Lives ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Natal Family

To introduce both the subject of the book and its methodological approach, the Introduction takes up the case study of the date of Shakespeare’s baptism: 26 April 1564. Those who want to believe that the national poet was born on the national feast day (23 April, or St George’s Day), have compiled ‘evidence’ to prove it, but under close analysis the evidence disintegrates. We know his day of baptism but cannot know his birthday. Much of Shakespeare’s biography has been built out of similar ‘evidence clusters’. The book interrogates many of these old clusters and also assembles new ones. This involves close reading familiar historical documents contextually, referring to other examples from the same record classes to show how their conventions and textual practices shape their meaning. A further strategy is to include mini-biographies for some of Shakespeare’s cognates in Stratford-upon-Avon, the stories of parallel lives through which we can learn more about his own. The chapter also introduces the members of Shakespeare’s natal family.

Criminal justice in the middlebrow imagination: The punitive dimensions of Making a Murderer

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel LaChance ◽  
Paul Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
Crime And Punishment

Popular documentary representations of crime and punishment have traditionally tended to fall into two camps: programs that are critical of law enforcement agencies and those that are sympathetic to them. In this article, we show how programs that present themselves as critical of legal authorities can nonetheless reinforce the “law and order punitivism” that underlay the ratcheting up of harsh punishment in the late 20th century. In a case study of the popular documentary miniseries Making a Murderer, we show how this can happen when texts fetishize the question of a criminal defendant’s innocence, adopt a “good versus evil” approach to players in the criminal justice system, and perpetuate a procedural rather than substantive vision of justice. Arguments are supported by a close reading of Making a Murderer and illustrated by a line of discussion it inspired in an internet forum.

Steadily Attached to His Majesty? Varieties of Loyalism in Revolutionary New York

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 163-198
Author(s):  
Sophie H. Jones
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Geographic Regions ◽  
The City

This paper responds to most recent works on the complexity of loyalist identities during the American Revolution. It forms a close reading of over 400 claims submitted by self-identified loyalist claimants from the former colony of New York to the Loyalist Claims Commission. Through a case study of three New York counties (the city and county of New York, Albany County and Tryon County), the paper demonstrates that the loyalist experience differed greatly between the three distinct geographic regions; different counties entered the war at different stages, while demonstrations of loyalism and the range of services provided by loyalists to advance the British cause varied considerably. The paper also outlines (and justifies the use of) the potential of three broad categories by which to analyze loyalist claimants: namely, ‘active’, ‘reluctant’ and ‘passive’. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the varying nature of loyalism was largely the product of local contextual circumstance.

Courtesan Editor

T oung Pao ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 99 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 173-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daria Berg
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Textual Production ◽  
Comme Agent

This article focuses on female editorship and sexual politics in late Ming and early Qing China, using Hua suo shi, an anthology edited by the courtesan poet Xue Susu, as a case study. It traces textual production and transmission, and reconstructs the literary and cultural contexts of this work to explore the courtesan’s editorial gaze and representation of gender through a close reading of it. The analysis of its two main themes—women as commodities, and women as agents—shows how the courtesan editor re-imagined China’s cultural landscape from her point of view. New examples of female agency are discovered in analyzing the cultural process of editing as a “web of discourses,” providing a window on the emergence of a new female editorial voice in early modern China’s cultural discourse.
Cet article se concentre sur le rôle éditorial des femmes et sur les politiques sexuelles en Chine à la fin des Ming et au début des Qing. Une anthologie éditée par la courtisane et poétesse Xue Susu, le Hua suo shi, sert d’étude de cas. Le processus de production et de transmission textuelle est examiné et le contexte littéraire et culturel de l’ouvrage restitué, permettant d’explorer le regard éditorial et le jeu de genre de la courtisane à travers une lecture serrée du texte. L’analyse des deux thèmes dominants — la femme comme marchandise, la femme comme agent — démontre la façon dont la courtisane éditrice ré-imagine le paysage culturel chinois de son propre point de vue. D’autres exemples d’intervention féminine se révèlent lorsqu’on analyse le processus culturel d’édition en tant que “réseau de discours”. Ainsi s’ouvre une fenêtre sur l’émergence d’une nouvelle voix éditoriale féminine au sein du discours culturel chinois au début des temps modernes.


scholarly journals On the “body’s absence”: The embodied experience of exile in Joseph Brodsky’s “To Urania”

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-39
Author(s):  
Anne Holm
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Metaphor ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Conceptual Metaphor Theory ◽  
Embodied Mind ◽  
The Past ◽  
Metaphor Theory ◽  
Vicarious Experiences

Abstract With Joseph Brodsky’s poem “To Urania” as a case study, this article argues that a cognitive stylistic approach offers a new way into exploring literary representations of the experience of displacement. Drawing on the notion of the embodied mind in Conceptual Metaphor Theory, it presents a close reading of the poem’s portrayal of exile as a “felt” absence. The tension between the immediacy of embodied experience and what lies beyond its grasp is investigated with a particular consideration of enactivism and the dynamics of reading. Metaphor is seen as a tool for enacting vicarious experiences, but also as a means of conveying the difficulty of representing an experience of displacement. The analysis thus focuses on the poem’s strategies for negotiating the discrepancy between the past and the present. These include expressions viewing memory as a space, the juxtaposition of the personal and the generic, and projected movement.

Crossing Borders in the Summer of 1935: Fritz Fürstenberg’s Photographs of Persecution in National Socialist Germany

2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-89
Author(s):  
Christoph Kreutzmüller ◽  
Theresia Ziehe
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Holocaust

Abstract While there are hundreds of written accounts of the Holocaust, there are only a few photographs known to document the fate of the persecuted from their own point of view. This article presents the case study of a photographic series taken inside Germany by Jewish businessman Fritz Fürstenberg in order to provide evidence of National Socialist persecution beyond its borders. After a close reading that reveals where and under which circumstances Fürstenberg took his photographs, the article broadens its scope to discuss how the images were eventually used in the Netherlands as a means of documenting National Socialist persecution. In the process, the article’s authors add another layer to the ‘integrated history’ famously advocated by Saul Friedländer, and call attention to the astonishing fact that research into such private photographs is still a desideratum—and as such a promising field for future research.

Love and compassion for the community: Emotions and practices among North Indian Muslims, c. 1870–1930

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margrit Pernau
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Social Emotion ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Ethical Reflections ◽  
Aristotelian Tradition

This article investigates how philosophical and ethical reflections, rhetorical strategies, and emotional practices intersect. In the first section, it lays out the traditional emotion knowledge found in Persian and Indo-Persian texts on moral philosophy written in the Aristotelian tradition, which still held an important place in the education of people writing in and reading journals like Aligarh’s Tahzību-l Akhlāq. The second section looks at the transformation of this knowledge in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and provides a close reading of texts that address education and self-education issues while simultaneously exhorting readers to feel more compassionate (and often to prove their compassion through specific actions). The last section, finally, uses the Punjabi traders of Delhi as a case study to show how practices of philanthropy contributed to community building. Compassion, the article argues, is a social emotion, but not necessarily an unequivocally benign emotion. It serves to construct a community and to negotiate its boundaries, but it is also a tool of exclusion and helps fortifying the communities’ internal hierarchies. The perception of the pain of others is as unequally distributed as the practices for its alleviation.

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