Books on the topic 'Multi-media thesis'

This ground-breaking book brings theoretical perspectives from twenty-first century media, film, and cultural studies to medieval hagiography. Medieval Saints and Modern Screens stakes the claim for a provocative new methodological intervention: consideration of hagiography as media. More precisely, hagiography is most productively understood as cinematic media. Medieval mystical episodes are made intelligible to modern audiences through reference to the filmic - the language, form, and lived experience of cinema. Similarly, reference to the realm of the mystical affords a means to express the disconcerting physical and emotional effects of watching cinema. Moreover, cinematic spectatorship affords, at times, a (more or less) secular experience of visionary transcendence: an 'agape-ic encounter'. The medieval saint's visions of God are but one pole of a spectrum of visual experience which extends into our present multi-media moment. We too conjure godly visions: on our smartphones, on the silver screen, and on our TVs and laptops. This book places contemporary pop-culture media - such as blockbuster movie The Dark Knight, Kim Kardashian West's social media feeds, and the outputs of online role-players in Second Life - in dialogue with a corpus of thirteenth-century Latin biographies, 'Holy Women of Liège'. In these texts, holy women see God, and see God often. Their experiences fundamentally orient their life, and offer the women new routes to knowledge, agency, and belonging. For the holy visionaries of Liège, as with us modern 'seers', visions are physically intimate, ideologically overloaded spaces. Through theoretically informed close readings, Medieval Saints and Modern Screens reveals the interconnection of decidedly 'old' media - medieval textualities - and artefacts of our 'new media' ecology, which all serve as spaces in which altogether human concerns are brought before the contemporary culture's eyes.

The visual legacy of early modern cardinals constitutes a vast and extremely rich body of artworks, many of superb quality, in a variety of media, often by well-known artists and skilled craftsmen. Yet cardinal portraits have primarily been analyzed within biographical studies of the represented individual, in relation to the artists who created them, or within the broader genre of portraiture. Portrait Cultures of the Early Modern Cardinal addresses questions surrounding the production, collection, and status of the cardinal portrait, covering diverse geographies and varied media. Examining the development of cardinals' imagery in terms of their multi-layered identities, this volume considers portraits of 'princes of the Church' as a specific cultural phenomenon reflecting cardinals' unique social and political position.

Since the appearance of her early-career bestseller Gender Trouble in 1990, American philosopher Judith Butler is one of the most influential thinkers in academia. Her work addresses numerous socially pertinent topics such as gender normativity, political speech, media representations of war, the democratic power of assembling bodies, and the force of nonviolence. The volume Bodies That Still Matter: Resonances of the Work of Judith Butler brings together essays from scholars across academic disciplines who apply, reflect on, and further Butler’s ideas in their own research. It includes a new essay by Butler herself, from which it takes its title. Organized around four key themes in Butler’s scholarship – performativity, speech, precarity, and assembly – the volume offers an excellent introduction to the contemporary relevance of Butler’s thinking, a multi-perspectival approach to key topics of contemporary critical theory, and a testimony to the vibrant interdisciplinary discourses characterizing much of today’s humanities research.

For obvious reasons, the understanding and writing of music history have favoured a linear model founded in causality and chronology. Like many disciplines, however, historiographical studies have been subjected to critiques of various theoretical and imaginative types, particularly, but not exclusively, in recent times. These critiques are outlined here, and three historiographical models critically applied to the understanding of Mahler’s music: historicism, historical materialism (after Walter Benjamin), and a more radical rhizomatic model (after Deleuze). Posited, put into operation and questioned, these models cast multi-perspectival and multi-temporal light on how Mahler’s music continues to participate in contexts of contemporary mass-media and public consciousness.

This chapter explores the key factors involved in the interaction between religion and globalization. It highlights the roles played by transnational networks, fields, and regimes, as well as migrant and religious diasporas, mass culture, and electronic media in the global circulation and appropriation of religious practices, beliefs, symbols, artifacts, and identities. Using the examples of religious networks associated with Islam, Hinduism, and Christianities, the chapter also argues that while the economic dimensions of religion in a context of globalization are central, the dynamics of global religious fields cannot be reduced to those of the world capitalist system. Religious flows and networks are multi-directional. There is thus a need to develop interdisciplinary and multi-sited approaches to these flows and networks, examining the ways in which they challenge fixed center–periphery models and produce alternative power/geometries shaping religious identities, cultures, and embodied as well as spatialized ontologies.

Crash (Paul Haggis, 2005) follows a range of diverse but intersecting characters who, in their entirety, are meant to represent a social landscape: modern American urban existence. Through an ensemble cast and a multi-story structure, the film depicts a circuitous society in which one part affects other parts that, in turn, affect all parts. This chapter takes up the complex, multi-discursive world depicted in Crash in order to explore the place—or absence—of emotion in genre studies. Looking specifically at the moments of collision between characters in which the issues of race and gender are inseparable, it considers how anger specifically, and perhaps emotion in general, can be understood to ignite and fuel complex social relations. Such an analysis tells us about the ways in which emotions as cultural phenomena are understood or, equally, overlooked in media and other social representations.

This chapter examines how the multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto has attempted to re-brand itself from a chemical company to a food company through the elaboration of a highly interlaced, multi-platform on-line media strategy. This image enhancement operation is a response to its many critics—from citizen-based groups in India and Mexico to prominent food security activists like Michael Pollan and Vandana Shiva. At the center of analysis is how Monsanto has used the trope of “sustainability” to craft a proactive profile that is responsive to the challenges that the planet is facing. Foregrounding the issue of environmental agency, the chapter provides an assessment of what kinds of environmental discourses the company privileges through its media operations, and how these have been produced as a means to combat those who have challenged Monsanto’s vision of food production and “responsible” environmental stewardship.

Imaging tools in preventive cardiology can be divided into imaging modalities to assess pre-clinical and clinical atherosclerosis and functional assessments of vascular function or vascular inflammation. To calculate the likelihood of pre-clinical atherosclerosis intima-media thickness as well as coronary calcium scoring are most frequently used. However, beyond these two there are other parameters derived by ultrasound and multi-detector computed tomography as well as magnetic resonance imaging and nuclear/molecular imaging which are discussed in the chapter. Functional tests include flow-mediated dilatation, pulse wave analysis, and the ankle-brachial index. In clinical research other invasive measurements such as intravascular ultrasound/virtual histology/elastography, optical coherence tomography as well as thermography are being used. However, their value in clinical prevention still needs to be established.

An ethnographic study of music, performance, migration, and circulation, this book examines how forms of love and intimacy are linked to changing conceptions of political solidarity and forms of belonging, through the lens of Nepali dohori song. The book describes dohori: improvised, dialogic performed poetry that is sung, in which a witty repartee of exchanges is based on poetic couplets with a fixed rhyme scheme, often backed by instrumental music and accompanying dance, performed between men and women, with a primary focus on romantic love. The book tells the story of dohori’s relationship with changing ideas of Nepal as a nation-state, and how different concepts of national unity have incorporated marginality, in the intersectional arenas of caste, indigeneity, class, gender, and regional identity. In the aftermath of Nepal’s ten-year civil war, changing political realities, increased migration, and circulation of people, media, and practices are redefining concepts of appropriate intimate relationships and their associated systems of exchange. Through multi-sited ethnography of performances, media production, circulation, reception, and the daily lives of performers and fans in Nepal and the United Kingdom, this book examines how people use dohori to challenge (and uphold) social categories, while also creating affective solidarities.

Breaking new ground in scholarship on gender and politics, Performing Representation is the first comprehensive analysis of women in the Indian Parliament. It explores the possibilities and limits of parliamentary democracy and the participation of women in its institutional performances. Performing Representation offers a new, multi-method analysis of the gendered nature of India’s Parliament. Through an examination of electoral data, media reports, and life stories of women MPs it sheds light on the performance, aesthetics, and norms of parliamentary life. It explores how the gendered axis of power underpins the performance of Parliament and its members as well as the political economy in which they are embedded. The book makes a strong case for taking parliamentary politics seriously in these times of populism, without either a utopian framing of women MPs as challengers of masculinized institutional politics or seeing them simply as docile actors in a gendered institution. Performing Representation raises critical questions about the politics of difference, claim-making, representation, and intersectionality. It addresses these questions as part of global feminist debates on the importance of women’s representation in political institutions.

Muslim Women in French Cinema: Voices of Maghrebi Migrants in France is the first comprehensive study of cinematic representations of first-generation Muslim women from the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) in France. Situated at the intersection of post-colonial studies, gender studies, and film studies, this book uses the multi-layered concept of ‘voice’ as an analytical lens through which to examine a diverse corpus of over 60 documentaries, short films, téléfilms (made-for-television films), and feature films released in France between 1979 and 2014. In examining the ways in which the voices, experiences, and points of view of Maghrebi migrant women in France are represented and communicated through a selection of key films, this study offers new perspectives on Maghrebi migrant women in France. It shows that women of this generation, as they are represented in these films, are far more diverse and often more empowered than has generally been thought on the basis of the relatively narrow range of media and cultural productions that have so far reached mainstream audiences. The films examined in this study are part of larger contemporary debates and discussions relating to immigration, integration, and what it means to be French.

Interacting with Cold War ideology, individuals’ Christian Americanism supported the notion that Korean adoptees would enter “good homes” in a democratic society. Many children felt the brunt of this rhetoric as they were told adoption was in their “best interests” and that if not adoption, they would have fallen through the cracks of economic poverty and degradation in the land of their birth. In doing so, rhetorics of gratitude became cemented in international adoption discourse. This book exposes the growth of the transnational adoption industrial complex (TAIC)—the neo-colonial, multi-million dollar global industry that commodifies children’s bodies—in an examination of South Korean adoptions to the United States. The TAIC accounts for how the South Korean social welfare state, orphanages, adoption agencies, and American immigration legislation facilitated the development of transnational adoption between the two countries. Adoption became a rote process whereby government and non-governmental organizations and actors easily facilitated the exchange of children. Yet, the activism of adoptees and their allies expose the inherent messiness of adoption and reveal that adoption cannot be discussed in black and white terms. Using archival research, media texts, and oral histories, this monograph elucidates greater understanding concerning how the TAIC impacts the lived experiences of adoptees and their families. Notions of adoptees as perpetual children are disabused as I examine adoptees’ efforts to reshape adoption discourse to recognize the inherent rights of birth parents and adoptees. In adulthood, adoptees construct a new type of public personhood, one defined by their autonomy and agency. Cold War, Christian Americanism, Korean adoption, adoption, South Korea, gratitude, industrial complex, orphans, immigration, family, kinship

The association of the attacks of 9/11 with Hollywood science fiction and disaster spectacle was immediate and pervasive. Succeeding calls in media and politics for the reassuring return of ‘strong’ masculine types—predominantly drawn from Hollywood westerns, action and war films—were widespread, revealing renewed cultural fears of threats to America from both within and without.Troubling Masculinities is the first dedicated multi-genre study of representations of masculinity in encounters with terror in post-9/11 American cinema. The book examines the impact of “terror-Others”, from Arab terrorists to giant monsters, across a broad range of sub-genres—including disaster melodrama, monster movies, post-apocalyptic science fiction, discovered footage and ‘home invasion’ horror, action-thrillers and ‘frontier’ westerns—especially in relation to cinematic representations of masculinity in previous periods of national turmoil. The book demonstrates that the supposed reassertion of masculinity and American national identity in post-9/11 cinema repeatedly unravels across genres. Engaging critical arguments about how Hollywood cinema attempts to resolve male crisis in part through Orientalizing figures of terror, he shows how this unraveling reflects an inability to effectively extinguish the threat or frightening difference of terror. The heroes in these movies are unable to heal themselves or restore order, often becoming as destructive as the threats they encounter. The book concludes by showing how interrelated anxieties about masculinity and nation continue to affect contemporary American cinema and politics. By showing how persistent these cultural fears are, Troubling Masculinities offers an important counternarrative in this supposedly unprecedented moment in American history.

The Cultural History of Memory in the Eighteenth Century places in sharp relief the contrast between inspiring ideas that heralded an auspicious future and immemorial traditions that cherished a vanishing past. Waxing large during that era was the European Enlightenment, with its projects for reform and optimistic forecasts about the prospect of making a better world. Heritage was reframed, as martyrs for the cause of religious liberty and heroes for the promotion of the arts and sciences were enshrined in a new pantheon. They served as icons marking a pathway toward a presumed destiny, amid high hopes that reason would triumph over superstition to guide the course of human affairs. Such sentiments gave reformers a new sense of collective identity as an imagined community acting in the name of progress. Against this backdrop, this volume addresses a variety of themes in memory’s multi-faceted domain, among them mnemonic schemes in the transition from theist to scientific cosmologies; memory remodeled in the making of print culture; memory’s newfound resources for introspection; politics reimagined for the modern age; the nature of tradition reconceived; the aesthetics of nostalgia for an aristocracy clinging to a tenuous identity; the lure of far-away places; trauma in an age of revolution; and the emerging divide between history and collective memory. Along the way, contributors address such topics as the idea of nation in early modern politics; the aesthetic vision of Hubert Robert in his garden landscapes; the transforming effects of the interaction between mind and its mnemonic satellites in print media; Shakespeare remembered and commemorated; the role of memory in the redesign of historiography; the mediation of high and popular culture through literature; soul-searching in female autobiography; and commemorative practices during the French Revolution.

Jurisdiction is the foundational concept for both national laws and international law as it provides the link between the sovereign government and its territory, and ultimately its people. The internet challenges this concept at its root: data travels across the internet without respecting political borders or territory. This book is about this Jurisdictional Challenge created by internet technologies. The Jurisdictional Challenge arises as civil disputes, criminal cases, and regulatory action span different countries, rising questions as to the international competence of courts, law enforcement, and regulators. From a technological standpoint, geography is largely irrelevant for online data flows and this raises the question of who governs “YouTubistan.” Services, communication, and interaction occur online between persons who may be located in different countries. Data is stored and processed online in data centres remote from the actual user, with cloud computing provided as a utility. Illegal acts such as hacking, identity theft and fraud, cyberespionage, propagation of terrorist propaganda, hate speech, defamation, revenge porn, and illegal marketplaces (such as Silkroad) may all be remotely targeted at a country, or simply create effects in many countries. Software applications (“apps”) developed by a software developer in one country are seamlessly downloaded by users on their mobile devices worldwide, without regard to applicable consumer protection, data protection, intellectual property, or media law. Therefore, the internet has created multi-facetted and complex challenges for the concept of jurisdiction and conflicts of law. Traditionally, jurisdiction in private law and jurisdiction in public law have belonged to different areas of law, namely private international law and (public) international law. The unique feature of this book is that it explores the notion of jurisdiction in different branches of “the” law. It analyses legislation and jurisprudence to extract how the concept of jurisdiction is applied in internet cases, taking a comparative law approach, focusing on EU, English, German, and US law. This synthesis and comparison of approaches across the board has produced new insights on how we should tackle the Jurisdictional Challenge. The first three chapters explain the Jurisdictional Challenge created by the internet and place this in the context of technology, sovereignty, territory, and media regulation. The following four chapters focus on public law aspects, namely criminal law and data protection jurisdiction. The next five chapters are about private law disputes, including cross-border B2C e-commerce, online privacy and defamation disputes, and internet intellectual property disputes. The final chapter harnesses the insights from the different areas of law examined.

Direct experience, scientific reports, and international media coverage make clear that the breadth, severity, and multiple consequences from climate change are far-reaching and increasing. Like many places globally, the northeastern United States is already experiencing climate change, including one of the world’s highest rates of ocean warming, reduced durations of winter ice cover on lakes, a marked increase in the frequency of extreme precipitation events, and climate-mediated ecological disruptions of invasive species. Given current and projected changes in ecosystems, communities, and economies, it is essential to find ways to anticipate and reduce vulnerabilities to change and, at the same time, promote sustainable economic development and human well-being.The emerging field of sustainability science offers a promising conceptual and analytic framework for accelerating progress towards sustainable development. Sustainability science aims to be use-inspired and to connect basic and applied knowledge with solutions for societal benefit. This approach draws from diverse disciplines, theories, and methods organized around the broad goal of maintaining and improving life support systems, ecosystem health, and human well-being. Partners in New England have been using sustainability science as a framework for stakeholder-engaged, interdisciplinary research that has generated use-inspired knowledge and multiple solutions for more than a decade. Sustainability science has helped produce a landscape-scale approach to wetland conservation; emergency response plans for invasive species that threaten livelihoods and cultures; decision support tools for improved water quality management and public health for beach use and shellfish consumption; and the development of robust partnership networks across disciplines and institutions. Understanding and reducing vulnerability to climate change is a central motivating factor in this portfolio of projects because linking knowledge about social-ecological systems with effective policy action requires a holistic view that addresses complex intersecting stressors.One common theme in these varied efforts is the way that communication fundamentally shapes collaborative research and social, technical, and policy outcomes from sustainability science. Communication as a discipline has, for more than two thousand years, sought to understand how environments and symbols shape human life, forms of social organization, and collective decision making. The result is a body of scholarship and practical techniques that are diverse and well adapted to meet the complexity of contemporary sustainability challenges. The complexity of the issues that sustainability science aspires to solve requires diversity and flexibility to be able to adapt approaches to the specific needs of a situation. Long-term, cross-scale, and multi-institutional sustainability science collaborations show that communication research and practice can help build communities and networks, and advance technical and policy solutions to confront the challenges of climate change and promote sustainability now and in future.