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Onstage and Behind the Scenes: Autistic Performance and Advocacy
No full textFor many autistic performers in arts and entertainment, the stage can be an important site of self-advocacy and creative expression. Whereas everyday social interactions may be unpredictable, being onstage can allow autistic performers to work from a script and anticipate audience responses. This article explores the affordances and challenges of performance for young autistic adults in Canada through interviews with four autistic performers (two singers and two stand-up comics). While solo performance was the focus, participants discussed the creative employment of diverse media platforms, from the stage to screenwriting and children’s books, and emphasized the need for autistic people to be involved in all creative realms. This research follows a Critical Disability Studies (CDS) framework which challenges deficit models of autism (McGuire, 2016), “supercrip” tropes (Clare, 2015, p. 2), and narratives of overcoming autism (Cheng, 2017). While one participant noted being uncomfortable with the sense that they were a source of inspiration for non-autistic audiences, each found it encouraging that autistic audiences relate to their work and might be motivated to participate in similar forms of self-advocacy; in particular, they noted the value of performance in building confidence. As previous CDS literature is wary of disability as spectacle (Darke, 1994), this research provides insight into how young autistic adults use their work onstage and behind the scenes to promote and perform self-advocacy.
Unravelling Discourses on COVID-19, South Asians and Punjabi Canadians
No full textThis article uses critical discourse analysis to examine how the higher COVID-19 infection rates among South Asians in general, and Punjabis more specifically, have been represented by conservative politicians and their representatives as a consequence of cultural and religious practices. Two counter-narratives are discussed. The first substitutes the negative image of the Sikh Punjabi Canadian community with a celebratory and positive view of Sikh humanitarianism and community service. The second attributes the high numbers to class attributes such as precarious jobs, poverty-level wages, employment insecurity, lack of sick days, over-crowded housing, racism and lack of access to healthcare. We argue that the conservative explanation as well as the first counter-narrative reveal continuities in culturalist understandings of South Asian immigrants, albeit in slightly different ways. The second counter-narrative represents a discursive resistance by advancing a structural analysis of health and disease in immigrant communities
The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Migration, Citizenship, and Temporary Protection in Turkey
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Unfortunate Souls: The People in the Thralls of Mao’s Cultural Revolution
No full textThis research paper examines the impacts, implications, and consequences that Mao Zedong\u27s Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) had on various social groups and classes of people throughout China. The effects of the revolution were seen through the separation of families, educational impacts on children, increased government intervention on farming, and the changing political atmosphere experienced during this revolution. By analyzing individual stories, experiences, and impacts of the disastrous Cultural Revolution, this paper aims to provide a humanizing aspect and thus convey how deeply people suffered, the millions of lives lost, and the depth of the scar left on 20th century Chinese society, culture, and values by the communist leadership
Murder, Greed, and Corrupt Politicians: The Fall of the Roman Republic
No full textWith a prompt that has been written about countless times, this essay argues that the fall of the Roman Republic was inevitable by examining the end of the republic through a new lens- political instability. This paper draws on primary sources and key individuals such as Julius Caesar and the lesser-known Gracchi brothers. The title does not lie – the fall of Rome is filled with exciting twists and turns that are examined within this work. This paper focused on three important political leaders from roughly 130-40BC. The Gracchi Brothers introduced a new strategy to gain power as Tribunes and set a precedent for political violence in the Roman Republic. Lucius Sulla utilized his unstoppable military power to gain control of the Republic as a dictator and removed plebeian favour reforms, removing power from the citizens of Rome. Julius Caesar was the Roman Republic’s final leader; his thirst for power and political self-interest is what eventually caused the Roman Republic to come to an end. The reader will come to find that ancient politics was much more violent than its modern-day counterpart. The Roman Republic did end, but why? Could these key figures have made different choices that might have saved Rome
Extimate Technology: Self-Formation in a Technological World
No full textCiano Aydin asks us to consider how technology has become essential to self-formation and traces a new way of conceptualizing the self in relation to technology. Beginning with the central debates regarding the philosophy of the self, Aydin gives a new perspective on the classic debates regarding selfhood. Rather than existing purely as an external entity, he argues that technology has become extimate, the Other separate and within the self. Due to this shift, there are both negative and positive possibilities for our relationship to technology and how technology shapes our understanding of the self. Aydin intervenes with Technological Sublimation Theory (TST) as an alternative method of conceptualizing self-formation. In his analysis, Aydin demonstrates that the self is an interactionist project that will continue to develop alongside technology
The Politicizing of ESPN: A Content Analysis of Its Perceived Partisanship
No full textSince the 2016 presidential election, there has been the perception that politics has not only taken the forefront in news, but in sports as well. After then NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest social injustice, ESPN’s protest coverage became a source of debate as various media outlets accused the network of exhibiting partisan coverage with a liberal bias. Sports journalism has historically suffered with issues of credibility, especially ESPN because of the blurring of the lines between information and entertainment. Through a content analysis of the sport site’s Facebook comments, this study found that espn.com users were more likely to be uncivil towards other commenters and were less concerned with a perceived bias by the site. This, however, is not conclusive evidence that espn.com does not have some sort of bias but does indicate that the assumed commenters of sports sites are similar to those of hard news sites, often using its platform for their own political messaging and attacking other users who have different views