USB Journals (Univ. Köln)
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The Body of Work - Dorothy Porter\u27s \u27Akhenaten\u27
No full textThis article stages an \u27imagendering\u27 of Akhenaten, a contemporary collection of poems by Australian poet Dorothy Porter. Surviving sculptures of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten depict a hermaphroditic subject who is, for Porter, a muse of transgression. Her fascination is with his challenge to long-held creative conventions of Egyptian art, depicting himself with a combination of breasts, swollen belly, rounded thighs and a penis. This collection of poems is thus a site of gendered reinscription made possible by the death of Akhenaten\u27s physical body. His bodily absence allows for Porter\u27s textual presence. Operating in this speculative historical space, a space in which the body of work physiologically cross-dresses and engages in sexual play across the boundaries of masculine/feminine, history/poetry, symbolic/semiotic, this poetry demonstrates that language itself can never evade embodiment
Heroines of the Gaze: Gender and Self-Reflexivity in Current Espionage Films
Get PDFThe two female spies central to the movies The Long Kiss Goodnight (Renny Harlin, USA 1996) and Shining Through (David Seltzer, USA 1992), indicate that it is time to re-scrutinize Laura Mulvey\u27s now famous analysis of gender-specific ways of looking in Hollywood cinema. Spys - male or female - need to be good observers and usually they are also in possession of optical devices extending their visual capabilities and hence their visual power. Psychoanalytical approaches, however, fail to explain such a character: the female spy provided with optical devices and weapons cannot be explained away as a phallic and therefore \u27false\u27 woman, but transgresses the binary logic by means of her ability to form assemblages with weapons, special devices and hings found. 
Frontmatter and Editorial
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the editorial:
Rac(e)ing Questions III is the third issue of gender forum to address interrelations of gender and race from a variety of perspectives. The four featured articles analyse the mutual implication of race and gender in US-American white gender theory, Black Scottish poetry, British and West-African literature as well as in Australian white queer politics and represent important contributions to this highly productive discourse in new and enlightening ways
Are Remarks History? Gertrude Stein as Conceptual Artist
Get PDFAlthough critics typically characterize Gertrude Stein as a modernist, it is at least as useful to approach her as an antecedent for language-based conceptual art emerging during the late twentieth century. Conceptual artists pose questions rather than make assertions. With her penchant for estranging familiar words from their association with common ideas, Stein challenges readers to think in more abstract terms, to challenge conventions of statement, to contest the constraints of artistic and literary formulas, and to question traditional assumptions about what is good, usual, natural, beautiful, true, or memorable. Stein\u27s work, with its distinctive properties—brazen self-referentiality, preoccupation with mass culture and ready-mades, deformation of narrative strategy and voice, and bold explorations of the edges and interstices of both the body\u27s senses and the mind\u27s symbolic systems (such as images and words), anticipates many of the themes that would later fascinate conceptual artists, including claims to monumental or immutable truths
Racist Bullying or "Girls Being Girls"? Untangling Constructions of Race and Gender in Celebrity Big Brother
Get PDFIt has been suggested that an integrated view of racism that focuses on its complex relationship with hierarchies of gender and class, and other such identity constructions is vital to understanding the differing ways in which racist structures and discourses perpetuate inequalities and resulting positions of oppression or privilege (Hoagland; Schloesser). This article looks at a recent example of what has been termed "racist bullying", which occurred in the 2007 UK Celebrity Big Brother series, and undertakes an examination of the racially privileged position held by the three British women who were accused of racism toward Bollywood actress, Shilpa Shetty. The analysis to follow investigates the manifestation of racism through the complex intersectionality of race and gender. More specifically, this paper will examine the ways in which particular rhetorical devices were deployed to justify the privileged position held by these three women, and the denial of this privileged position through an ongoing construction of "girls being girls".
The Houellebecq Cure. All Malady Will End in the Neohuman
Get PDFMichel Houellebecq’s characters frequently suffer from an obsessive thought of death: an insufferable torment undergone especially by ageing individuals. The genetically modified human clone, the neohuman, and his regime, are especially designed to at once eradicate this obsession through immortality and apprehend it through intellectual and scientific lucidity. Paradoxically however, it is seen to return and disrupt also this existential state. Focusing on Maurice Blanchot’s question of the secret, ‘The Houellebecq Cure’ seeks to more closely define this obsession that is pivotal to Houellebecq’s tragic scenarios. Moreover, it traces out the significant interaction between the thought and the “irrational” drives of love and carnality. In this light, it argues that the failure of the neohuman predicament hinges on a suppression of these drives. Its impassive detachment is seen to be similar to the existential state of the ageing human. What this points to is ultimately the futility of all efforts of subjectivity at mastering an anguish that comes from what is exterior to it; an anguish that, in truth, constitutes it
Review: Eric Anderson’s Inclusive Masculinity: The Changing Nature of Masculinities
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
As the sub-title indicates, Eric Anderson’s Inclusive Masculinity describes changes in the ways some men conceive of and enact their masculinity. Employing ethnographic methods and “social-feminist thinking” (14), Anderson claims that “university-attending men are rapidly running from the hegemonic type of masculinity that scholars have been describing for the past 25 years” (4). In the “acknowledgments,” Anderson dedicates his volume to three of those scholars: Michael Messner, Michael Kimmel and Donald Sabo, whom he credits for having published “academically accessible, cutting edge, meaningful gender scholarship” (xi). In so doing, Anderson effectively (unwittingly?) establishes the bar for his own work. Inclusive Masculinity readily achieves that bar, being both “accessible” and “cutting edge,” and will, in this reader’s opinion, eventually exceed it by proving not only “meaningful” but also prescient
Interview: Shifting Tides. A Multidisciplinary Creative Process Fusing Dance, Somatics and Black Feminist Theory: An Interview with the Choreographer
No full textIn this article, I discuss my artistic intent and creative process for creating my Master of Fine Arts thesis concert, Shifting Tides, in a transcribed interview done by my friend and teacher, Nii Armah Sowah. As an artist, I am interested in human connection, and I am conceptually interested in exploring the ways connection heightens our self-awareness and understandings of cultural and gender difference. In addition to exploring means of connection, I explain how black feminist standpoint theory can be applied to choreography. The interview depicts how I pushed the performers to discover who they are on a deeper psychosomatic level, to develop self-awareness in their whole bodies, in order to cultivate a higher communal cognizance, while staying aware of their racial and gender biases. The essay displays how a multi-disciplinary performance process can be used to create growth, and to help communities shift into a higher consciousness based on the hypothesis that when we truly know ourselves, we can know each other and accept differences that are based on race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality through the application of cultural narratives, holistic dance rituals, and feminist practices
Die Poesie der Pixel – ein Wohlfühlraum für Lernende? Das literatur- und mediendidaktische Potenzial von Idyllen in Videospielen
Get PDFIn Videospielen tauchen Spieler:innen in vielfältige idyllische Welten ein, die eine facettenreiche Palette an Erfahrungen bieten. Der Beitrag zeigt zunächst auf, wie der Begriff der Idylle definiert werden kann und auf welche Weise Videospiele Idyllen entwerfen. Anschließend steht die Frage im Mittelpunkt, welche Kompetenzen im Umgang mit Computerspiel-Idyllen im Literaturunterricht erworben werden können. Im Rückgriff auf Matthis Kepsers Kompetenzmodell zur Computerspielbildung werden an zwei Beispielen die produktiven didaktischen Anknüpfungspunkte an idyllische Szenen und Spiele vorgeführt: zum einen anhand der Anfangsidylle des Mittelalter-Rollenspiels Kingdom Come: Deliverance, zum anderen durch eine Fokussierung auf das Genre cozy games, für das sich exemplarisch auf Journey konzentriert wird. Zu den zu erreichenden Kompetenzen zählen dabei Kenntnisse über die Medienästhetikvon Computergames, narrative Kompetenzen, Interpretationsfähigkeit, politische Werturteile und nicht zuletzt ästhetische Erfahrungen.
Abstract (english): The poetry of pixels - a comfortable space for learners? Literature- and media-didactic potentials of idylls in video games
In video games, players immerse themselves in a variety of idyllic worlds that offer a wide range of experiences. The article first shows how the term idyll can be defined and how video games create idylls. Afterwards it points out which skills can be acquired in dealing with computer game idylls in literature lessons. With reference to Matthis Kepser’s competence model for computer game education, the productive links to idyllic scenes and games are demonstrated using two examples: firstly, by using the initial idyll of the medieval role-playing game Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Secondly, by focusing on the cozy games genre, for which Journey is used as an example. The skills to be achieved include knowledge of the media aesthetics of computer games, narrative skills, interpretation skills, political value judgments and aesthetic experiences
The Student Movement at the University of Buenos Aires during the Last Military Dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983)
Get PDFIn this article, I analyze the reorganization of the student movement during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976–1983). In the context of the Latin American Cold War, university youth engaged in political activism became a specific target of the systematic repressive plan perpetrated by the armed forces after the 1976 coup d’état. I describe how and why students managed to carry on with or began their educational and political activism despite universities being subject to state terrorism. Based on an empirical reconstruction from documentary sources and testimonies of former student activists at the University of Buenos Aires, I present a three-stage reorganization process with continuities and changes. I describe the kinds of actions (recreational, cultural, or political), revindications, and organizational methods based onthe heritage of the 1918 Reforma Universitaria (University Reform) that activists relied on to build an agenda of their own to contest higher education policies. I argue that the university student movement survived the dictatorship with notable changes but also continuities, becoming a respectable and notorious political actor during the transition to democracy in Argentina.In this article, I analyze the reorganization of the student movement during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976–1983). In the context of the Latin American Cold War, university youth engaged in political activism became a specific target of the systematic repressive plan perpetrated by the armed forces after the 1976 coup d’état. I describe how and why students managed to carry on with or began their educational and political activism despite universities being subject to state terrorism. Based on an empirical reconstruction from documentary sources and testimonies of former student activists at the University of Buenos Aires, I present a three-stage reorganization process with continuities and changes. I describe the kinds of actions (recreational, cultural, or political), revindications, and organizational methods based onthe heritage of the 1918 Reforma Universitaria (University Reform) that activists relied on to build an agenda of their own to contest higher education policies. I argue that the university student movement survived the dictatorship with notable changes but also continuities, becoming a respectable and notorious political actor during the transition to democracy in Argentina.En el presente artículo analizo la reorganización del movimiento estudiantil universitario argentino durante la última dictadura militar (1976–1983). En el marco de la Guerra Fría en Latinoamérica, la juventud universitaria con militancia política fue un blanco predilecto del plan represivo sistemático perpetrado por las Fuerzas Armadas luego del golpe de Estado de 1976. Aquí describo cómo y por qué los y las estudiantes procuraron continuar o comenzar con una militancia universitaria a pesar del terrorismo de Estado desplegado sobre las universidades. A partir de la reconstrucción empírica mediante fuentes documentales primarias y secundarias, así como testimonios de activistas estudiantiles en la Universidad de Buenos Aires durante el período seleccionado, presentamos tres subetapas en el proceso de reorganización estudiantil con sus particularidades y continuidades. Explicamos cómo las y los activistas recurrieron a diferentes tipos de convocatorias (recreativas, culturales y políticas), así como a reivindicaciones y formas de organización históricas del movimiento estudiantil argentino ancladas en la herencia de la Reforma Universitaria de 1918, para construir e instalar en la arena pública una agenda propia contra la política universitaria vigente. El movimiento estudiantil universitario sobrevivió a la última dictadura con cambios notables, pero también continuidades, y se constituyó como un actor político respetable y de notoriedad pública en el marco de la transición democrática