The Stacks (Library of Anglo-American Culture & History - FID AAC, Göttingen State and University Library)
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Thomas Honegger: 'Tweaking Things a Little. Essays on the Epic Fantasy of J.R.R. Tolkien & G.R.R. Martin'
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Aesthetics
No full textFollowing a period of decline into near obscurity, the manifesto has reemerged in the 21st century as a popular and provocative cultural form. No longer confined to printed pamphlets, contemporary manifestos are often published online, enabling new modes of anonymity, inclusivity, and intertextual engagement. While their tone may range from earnest to ironic, all manifestos share a defining impulse: the mobilization of a collective “we” to challenge dominant structures through bold, declarative rhetoric. In contemporary practice, however, this rhetoric is frequently accompanied by a self-conscious aesthetic—one that reflects on the manifesto’s own conventions, cultural authority, and historical legacy. This essay examines two key manifestos that exemplify such aesthetic strategies: Julian Rosefeldt’s theatrically bombastic art installation and feature film Manifesto (2015, 2017) and Martine Syms’s satirical “The Mundane Afrofuturist Manifesto” (2013, 2014, 2015). These works show how contemporary manifestos are deeply self-aware, using intertextuality, meta-reflection, and parody to engage with and critique their own form. Through intertextual dialogue, they expose the manifesto’s limitations; meta-reflection allows them to question their rhetorical excesses and effectiveness, while parody exposes and subverts established conventions. Where Syms deconstructs the manifesto from within—quietly undermining its radical posture through irony and restraint—Rosefeldt approaches the genre through theatrical excess. Alongside digital applications like the “Manifesto Machine” and the card game MANIFESTO!, these works invite playful engagement while also revealing how easily the genre’s once-revolutionary rhetoric can be modularized, rebranded, and repurposed
Evidence from Six Countries
No full textThe use of social networking sites is associated with objectification tendencies of the self and others. However, only few studies investigate how users actually perceive sexualizing content on Instagram. In a recent study, we showed that perceiving sexy Instagram posts as appropriate and less revealing goes along with self-sexualization in German participants and that Instagram users tend to be more sexist than non-users. The present study aimed to replicate these findings in a cross-nations study to test for cultural differences. We asked N = 2055 persons from six different countries (Germany, Spain, United States, Italy, Turkey, and South Africa) to rate sexy Instagram posts with respect to revealing clothing, appropriateness, and attractiveness and collected self-report data on sexism, enjoyment of sexualization, and Instagram usage behavior. Our results show associations between the perception of the presented posts as appropriate, sexism, and self-sexualizing tendencies in all countries. Strength of the associations are mainly the same across all countries. Participants from Spain, the U.S., and Italy reported the lowest sexism scores and the most liberal ratings for the presented photos. We find no substantial main effect of mere Instagram use on sexism or photo ratings. The results suggest that Instagram use does not necessarily alter the perception of sexualized stimuli, but that greater appreciation of self-sexualizing others goes along with self-sexualization. This effect seems to be culturally invariant. The found mean differences between countries are plausible, but future studies should aim to obtain representative samples to allow serious assumptions about cultural effects.Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (1040
A Data-Driven Analysis of Ted Talks on YouTube
No full textScience communication is evolving: Increasingly, it is directed at the public rather than academic peers. Understanding the circumstances under which the public engages with scientific content is therefore crucial to improving science communication. In this article, we investigate the role of affect on audience engagement with a modern form of science communication: TED Talks on the social media platform YouTube. We examined how two aspects of affect, valence and density are associated with public engagement with the talk in terms of popularity (reflecting views and likes) and polarity (reflecting dislikes and comments). We found that the valence of TED Talks was associated with both popularity and polarity: Positive valence was linked to higher talk popularity and lower talk polarity. Density, on the other hand, was only associated with popularity: Higher affective density was linked to higher popularity—even more so than valence—but not polarity. Moreover, the association between affect and engagement was moderated by talk topic, but not by whether the talk included scientific content. Our results establish affect as an important covariate of audience engagement with scientific content on social media, which science communicators may be able to leverage to steer engagement and increase reach
Literacy and the Quest for Selfhood in Percival Everett’s 'James'
No full textPercival Everett's novel James won the National Book Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024. This masterful retelling of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, narrated from the perspective of the enslaved Jim/James, offers a key point of engagement with the questions of who and what regulates access to the means of material and literary production—and who, consequently, is entitled to a voice in the American democratic machinery. In his reading of the novel, Professor Emeritus Robert Stepto explores the ways in which Black identity and literacy interact with, and speak back to, the “whiteness” of Huckleberry Finn's own canonical status