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1

Lang, Marina. "Nachlass von Rudolf Mauersberger in der SLUB Dresden." Sächsische Heimatblätter 61, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 53–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.52410/shb.bd.61.2015.h.1.s.53-63.

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2

Eichholz, Nina. "Erschließung, Digitalisierung und Internetpräsentation im Projekt „Die Notenbestände der Dresdner Hofkirche und der Königlichen Privat-Musikaliensammlung aus der Zeit der sächsisch-polnischen Union“ der SLUB Dresden." Bibliotheksdienst 50, no. 2 (February 1, 2016): 210–25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/bd-2016-0023.

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Zusammenfassung: Gegenstand des jüngsten musikbezogenen DFG-Projekts der SLUB Dresden sind die überlieferten Notenbestände der Dresdner Hofkirche und der Königlichen Privat-Musikaliensammlung aus der Zeit der sächsisch-polnischen Union (1697–1763). Die 1.500 Musikalien werden zunächst umfassend mit Angaben zu Kopisten, Wasserzeichen und Provenienzen sowie durch zahlreiche Incipits für die RISM-Online-Datenbank erschlossen. Ein mehrschrittiger Workflow führt schließlich zur Volldigitalisierung der Bestände. Auf diese Weise wird für die musikalische Praxis wie Forschung eine effektive Infrastruktur zur Beschäftigung mit den Quellen der international bedeutenden Sammlungen geschaffen.
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3

Santner, Anita. "Das SLUB TextLab: Offene Werkstatt für analoge und digitale Textarbeit." Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis 44, no. 2 (July 29, 2020): 148–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/bfp-2020-2092.

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ZusammenfassungAuf der Suche nach einem neuen Raumnutzungskonzept für die Zweigbibliothek Erziehungswissenschaft wurde an der SLUB Dresden in den letzten zwei Jahren das SLUB TextLab entwickelt. In Zusammenarbeit mit lokalen Kooperationspartnern unterstützt es Nutzer bei der analogen und digitalen Textarbeit. Die Kombination von Schreibberatung, Digital Humanities und Embodiment in einer wissenschaftlichen Bibliothek als Dritter Ort ist innovativ und zukunftsrelevant, da Bibliotheken aufgrund der zunehmenden Digitalisierung und dem damit verbundenen Rückgang des physischen Bestandes ein neues Profil entwickeln müssen.
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4

Meyer, Julia, and Martin Munke. "Digitale Landeskunde für Sachsen. Programme und Projekte an der SLUB Dresden." Bibliotheksdienst 52, no. 2 (December 27, 2018): 106–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/bd-2018-0015.

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Zusammenfassung Als Landes- und Staatsbibliothek kommt der SLUB Dresden eine koordinierende Rolle in der Digitalisierung des kulturellen Erbes in Sachsen zu. Der Beitrag skizziert die laufenden Aktivitäten auf diesem Feld und zeigt die unterschiedlichen Bereiche auf, in denen digitale Methoden die landes- und regionalkundliche Forschung bereichern können.
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5

Schneider, Nicola. "Christian Heinrich von Watzdorf als Musikmäzen." Die Musikforschung 63, no. 1 (September 22, 2021): 20–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.52412/mf.2010.h1.225.

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Albinoni widmete dem Grafen Christian Heinrich von Watzdorf sein op. 8. Jüngste Archivstudien erlauben eine plausible Datierung des Werks und klären Details in der Biographie Watzdorfs. Der kürzlich in der SLUB Dresden entdeckte und hier zum ersten Mal edierte Katalog der Notensammlung des Grafen wirft neues Licht auf die Musikpflege an sächsischen Adelshöfen in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts.
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6

Bonte, Achim. "Ein offener Wissensmarktplatz mit gesellschaftlicher Relevanz." Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis 43, no. 1 (April 3, 2019): 180–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/bfp-2019-2022.

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ZusammenfassungIn seiner Antrittsrede als Generaldirektor der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, beschreibt Achim Bonte Bibliotheken im digitalen Zeitalter als offene, diversifizierte Lernräume, die wesentlich von der Vielfalt kreativer Mitarbeiter und den Ideen der Benutzer leben. Auf dieser Grundlage sieht er die SLUB als lebendigen Kommunikationsort und Infrastruktureinrichtung, die mit ihren digitalen und nicht-textuellen Angeboten sowie ihren Diensten entlang des Forschungskreislaufs gut gerüstet in die Zukunft blickt.
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7

Tiepmar, Jonas, Jens Mittelbach, Melanie Kaiser, Daniela Dobeleit, Paul Schwanse, Uta Fröhner, and Maik Jähne. "Wissen kommt von Machen." Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis 42, no. 1 (April 4, 2018): 69–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/bfp-2018-0009.

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ZusammenfassungMit der Digitalisierung und der damit einhergehenden technologischen Revolution verschwinden die Grenzen der früher deutlich getrennten internen und externen Anteile der publizistischen Produktionskette. Außerdem befördert das Aufkommen von neuartigen und leicht zugänglichen Technologien wie 3D-Druck oder Lasercutting den Methodenwandel in der Wissenschaft und kommt interdisziplinären Ansätzen entgegen. Der Bedarf an Wissen zu diesen Technologien und dessen Vermittlung steigt aber zeitgleich mit. Die SLUB Dresden versucht, diesem Bedarf mit dem Angebot eines wissenschaftlichen Makerspace zu entsprechen. Erfolge dieses Konzeptes und Herausforderungen bei der Umsetzung werden hier beschrieben.
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8

Maiwald, F., D. Schneider, F. Henze, S. Münster, and F. Niebling. "FEATURE MATCHING OF HISTORICAL IMAGES BASED ON GEOMETRY OF QUADRILATERALS." ISPRS - International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences XLII-2 (May 30, 2018): 643–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-xlii-2-643-2018.

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This contribution shows an approach to match historical images from the photo library of the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) in the context of a historical three-dimensional city model of Dresden. In comparison to recent images, historical photography provides diverse factors which make an automatical image analysis (feature detection, feature matching and relative orientation of images) difficult. Due to e.g. film grain, dust particles or the digitalization process, historical images are often covered by noise interfering with the image signal needed for a robust feature matching. The presented approach uses quadrilaterals in image space as these are commonly available in man-made structures and façade images (windows, stones, claddings). It is explained how to generally detect quadrilaterals in images. Consequently, the properties of the quadrilaterals as well as the relationship to neighbouring quadrilaterals are used for the description and matching of feature points. The results show that most of the matches are robust and correct but still small in numbers.
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9

Hamburger, Klára. "Unveröffentlichte Liszt-Briefe aus Weimar und Dresden." Studia Musicologica 56, no. 1 (March 2015): 39–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/6.2015.56.1.2.

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This documentary contains 16 Liszt-letters preserved at the Goethe-Schiller- Archiv (GSA) in Weimar and further 14 items from the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (SLUB) in Dresden. The Weimar letters include those in which Liszt addressed (in French) Ignaz Moscheles and Julius Benedict, both German musicians living in London, about his 1840 concert tour in England. Also, he wrote in French to singer Pauline Viardot-Garcìa, Madame Érard, and his Neapolitan pupil Luisa Cognetti. His letters in German to Hermann Levi deal with Richard Wagner. In another letter Liszt is asking the Vienna Home Secretary Baron Alexander von Bach, to have his Gran Mass published at the state administration’s expense. His letters to Count Sándor Teleki and Ede Reményi concern Hungarian musical life. Liszt is giving instructions for the publishing of his work Hymne de l’enfant à son réveil to his Hungarian publisher Nándor Táborszky and writing a dry refusal to his former Hungarian pupil Sándor Bertha. The envelope of a letter to Madame Munkácsy has a mistake in the orthography of the family name. The documents from Dresden include an Albumblatt Liszt wrote for Clara Schumann, a recommendation for Heinrich Ehrlich, the composer of the first Lento-theme of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody no 2. Further letters were written to Laura Kahrer (one of them having been published in a slightly altered manner by La Mara) and a series of eight letters to Liszt’s Swiss disciple Bertrand Roth.
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10

Noort, Reinier van, and Jan Schäfer. "An analysis and comparison of two German thrust-fencing manuscripts." Acta Periodica Duellatorum 5, no. 1 (May 1, 2017): 63–74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/apd-2017-0002.

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Abstract In this contribution, we will discuss two German fencing manuscripts - Mscr.Dresd.C.13 (SLUB Dresden) and Add MS 17533 (BL London). Both manuscripts present texts on thrust-fencing based on the teachings of Salvator Fabris. The dedication of manuscript C13 was signed by the famous fencing author Johann Georg Pascha. The author of one of the texts contained in the 17533 manuscript is named H.A.V.. A textual analysis has been performed on these two books, and then the contents of the works have been compared. This comparison shows that C13 presents a largely identical text to the main treatises contained in 17533, the most significant difference being certain additions in C13, which Pascha also discusses in his dedication. Based on our analysis, both C13 and 17533 appear to present copies of an original text. We further hypothesize that H.A.V., the author of this original text, was Heinrich von und zum Velde, the fencing master of Johann Joachim Hynitzsch.
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11

Ágústsson, Jóhannes. "‘Il grosso pacco della musica’: The Galuppiana Consignments for August III and Count Heinrich von Brühl in Warsaw, 1757–1761." Muzyka 65, no. 2 (July 15, 2020): 62–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.36744/m.447.

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The Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB), holds one of the world’s largest collections of sacred and secular works by the Italian composer Baldassarre Galuppi, “il Buranello”, whose operatic music was very popular in the mid-1750s with the Saxon elector and Polish king August III and other members of his court. This impressive collection of Galuppiana includes numerous copies of liturgical works from the copying house of the Venetian priest and notorius forger Iseppo (Giuseppe) Baldan. Recently, several compositions falsely attributed to Galuppi by Baldan have turned out to be the works of Antonio Vivaldi, including an excellent setting of Dixit Dominus (RV 807). This article demonstrates that the Galuppi-Baldan manuscripts were sent in several batches from Venice to Warsaw (and not Dresden, as originally thought) during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), when August III resided in the Polish capital. The Saxon prime minister count Heinrich von Brühl and his musically gifted daughter Maria Amalia also stayed in Warsaw during this period, as did Brühl’s secretary and musical director Friedrich August von Koenig, who arranged for the purchases from Galuppi and Baldan. The fact that operas were also being sent from Rome to Warsaw during the war shows that the nobility in the Polish capital was up-to-date with all the latest Italian music. Reports of performances of Galuppi’s music in Warsaw is presented through official documents and letters written by Friedrich August de Rossi, secretary of Italian affairs at the Saxon-Polish court. This includes a description of a serenate performed at the fifty-seventh birthday of Brühl in August 1757, and evidence is provided which strongly suggests that the music, the so-called “Endimione” serenate, was specially composed by Galuppi for this occasion. Finally, details of the musical manuscripts being sent from Warsaw to Dresden in 1763 and the cataloguing of the collection is presented, in addition to an account of a previously unknown visit of Galuppi to the Saxon capital in 1765.
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12

Hofer, Christiane. ""Eine Schallplatte ist (k)ein (Papier-)Printmedium" - Archivierung und Dokumentation historischer Tonträger." Mitteilungen der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen und Bibliothekare 68, no. 1 (March 1, 2015): 37–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.31263/voebm.v68i1.995.

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Die Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger (GHT) ist im November 2002 als eingetragener Verein gegründet worden, der einerseits aus der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Diskografie, die sich aus Vertretern der Österreichischen Mediathek, dem Wiener Phonogrammarchiv und dem Wiener Phonomuseum und privaten Diskografen gebildet hatte, und andererseits aus den MitarbeiterInnen eines aus Mitteln der Europäischen Union geförderten Projektes, entstanden ist. Ziel dieser internationalen Gesellschaft ist es, Tondokumente aus der frühen Tonaufnahmeepoche (Daten und Inhalte) zu erhalten, die Erkenntnisse synergetisch unter wissenschaftlichen Standards zu dokumentieren, zu archivieren und zugänglich zu machen. Grundsätzlich auch das allgemeine Bewusstsein für dieses Thema zu heben. Schallplatten sind, auch verständlich aus der Eigenheit des Mediums, das Ende des 19.Jahrhunderts erfunden wurde, unter speziellen Voraussetzungen zu dokumentieren und zu archivieren. Nach Übernahme privater Archive von Schellackplatten und Wachszylindern (insgesamt etwa 30 000 Daten deren bedeutendste die Sammlung Alfred Seiser ist) wurden diese Schallplatten- Daten mit einem dafür geeigneten Archivierungssystem, das im Rahmen eines internationalen Projektes entwickelt wurde, digitalisiert. Label und Spiegel einer Schellackplatte geben uns Informationen, die weit über den eigentlichen Inhalt der Platte hinausgehen. Durch den Aufbau eines Netzwerkes von Schallackplatten-Sammlern und Kooperation in verschiedenen internationalen Projekten (seit 2008 „The Lindström Project“, seit 2014 BEKA-Reise um die Welt), kann auf das Know-how von mehr als 200000 Daten zurückgegriffen werden. Die Kooperation mit dismarc – EUROPEANA seit 2009 und dem Projekt „Archiv der Stimmen“ der SLUB Dresden sichern die gewonnenen Daten und bieten offenen Zugang für die interessierte Öffentlichkeit.
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13

Yaeger, Patricia. "Introduction: Dreaming of Infrastructure." PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 122, no. 1 (January 2007): 9–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2007.122.1.9.

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Baghdad, Banda Aceh, Beirut, Detroit, Dhaka, Harare, New Orleans. In these times chronicling the devastation and annihilation of cities—through capital flight, natural disaster, slum eviction, and war—I gravitate to stories about restoring ruined cities. Halfway through Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut's novel about the firebombing of Dresden, we find an eccentric scene. After surviving Dresden's conflagration, Billy Pilgrim, optician and ex-GI, escapes traumatic memories by becoming “unstuck in time” (93). He journeys with the Tralfamadorians, creatures from outer space who teach him to time-switch so that he can move fluidly through his own private and public histories. Finding a war movie intolerable, Pilgrim imagines it in reverse: “American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen.” Pilgrim changes space by changing time. German guns suck bomb fragments from wounded American airmen as “the formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes” (93–94). How can we shelter or care for, how can we nurture, the ruined city in the belly of the text?
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14

TIKHONOV, R. "STRAY FINDS OF TERRACOTTA STATUETTES FROM THE REPUBLIC OF TAJIKISTAN." TRANSACTIONS OF THE INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF MATERIAL CULTURE Russian Academy of Science 23 (2020): 97–102. http://dx.doi.org/10.31600/2310-6557-2020-23-97-102.

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The paper presents two terracotta statuettes from the Republic of Tajikistan. One of them was found in the course of archaeological reconnaissance works in the Vakhsh valley in 1971. The time and place of discovery of the second statuette are unknown. The first statuette is a slab with relief depicting a female divinity dressed in a long robe with a necklace (fig. 1, 1), while the second rep- resents what appears to be a horseman image (fig. 1, 2). Both statuettes find numerous analogies in the materials of antique settlements of Central Asia, but have also some local specific traits.
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15

"Michael Golsch Stellvertreter des Generaldirektors an der SLUB Dresden." Zeitschrift für Bibliothekswesen und Bibliographie 56, no. 5 (October 15, 2009): 317. http://dx.doi.org/10.3196/1864295009565202.

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16

Golsch, Michael. "Der Neubau der Sächsischen Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (SLUB)." BIBLIOTHEK Forschung und Praxis 27, no. 1-2 (January 2003). http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/bfup.2003.72.

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17

Effinger, Maria, Katja Leiskau, and Annika-Valeska Walzel. "All-In-One – arthistoricum.net auf dem Weg zum Fachinformationsdienst Kunst." Bibliothek Forschung und Praxis 38, no. 1 (January 30, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/bfp-2014-0002.

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ZusammenfassungMit „arthistoricum.net“ betreiben die UB Heidelberg und die SLUB Dresden seit Januar 2012 für ihre Sondersammelgebiete gemeinsam eine integrierte Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Kunst. Die Zusammenführung und Neukonzeption der Angebote stellte die strategischen Weichen für eine kooperative Weiterentwicklung. Ziele hierbei sind der Ausbau des konstruktiven Dialogs mit der Forschung und der Einsatz moderner Technologie im Sinne eines „Fachinformationsdienstes für die Wissenschaft“.
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18

Van Noort, Reinier, and Jan Schäfer. "An analysis and comparison of two German thrust-fencing manuscripts." Acta Periodica Duellatorum 5, no. 1 (April 26, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.36950/apd-2017-002.

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In this contribution, we will discuss two German fencing manuscripts - Mscr.Dresd.C.13 (SLUB Dresden) and Add MS 17533 (BL London). Both manuscripts present texts on thrust-fencing based on the teachings of Salvator Fabris. The dedication of manuscript C13 was signed by the famous fencing author Johann Georg Pascha. The author of one of the texts contained in the 17533 manuscript is named H.A.V.. A textual analysis has been performed on these two books, and then the contents of the works have been compared. This comparison shows that C13 presents a largely identical text to the main treatises contained in 17533, the most significant difference being certain additions in C13, which Pascha also discusses in his dedication. Based on our analysis, both C13 and 17533 appear to present copies of an original text. We further hypothesize that H.A.V., the author of this original text, was Heinrich von und zum Velde, the fencing master of Johann Joachim Hynitzsch.
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19

Aini, Jusratul, Burhanudin Burhanudin, and Saharudin Saharudin. "Konstruksi Perempuan Dalam Lagu-Lagu Berbahasa Sasak: Studi Analisis Wacana Kritis Norman Fairclough." JISIP (Jurnal Ilmu Sosial dan Pendidikan) 5, no. 3 (July 16, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.36312/jisip.v5i3.2196.

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This study purposed to explain the women’s construction in Sasak traditional songs according on Nourman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis with an analysis focus on three aspects, namely text structure, discourse practice, and sociocultural practice. This research is a qualitative descriptive research. Data were collected using observation and interview methods. The results of the research on the structure of the text construct women as bebalu 'widow' and dedare 'girl'. Bebalu is constructed as a woman who is weak, suffering, the material for gossip, no self-awareness, awry, easily fooled by men, the object of ridicule. get married quickly, favored by men, thickly dressed, slut, like to divorce, likes to be ogled and seduced by men, likes to dress up, and easily moving on. Meanwhile, dedare is constructed as a woman who likes someone's husband, mistress, unfeeling, selfish, and a love slave. The discourse practice dimension of the production process, male dominance in the Sasak music industry provides flexibility in constructing women from a male perspective and commercial factors require the music industry to create songs that are loved by the public. Meanwhile, the process of consuming texts by fans of Sasak songs accepts and considers what is constructed in the song as something that is in accordance with reality, natural, and entertaining. In terms of sociocultural practice, patriarchal cultural factors and high public interest provide space for the music industry to be bolder in producing gender-biased songs.
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Vakhrushev, Alexander, Abdellah Kharicha, Ebrahim Karimi-Sibaki, Menghuai Wu, Andreas Ludwig, Gerald Nitzl, Yong Tang, Gernot Hackl, Josef Watzinger, and Sven Eckert. "Generation of Reverse Meniscus Flow by Applying An Electromagnetic Brake." Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B, July 6, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11663-021-02247-x.

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AbstractA numerical study is presented that deals with the flow in the mold of a continuous slab caster under the influence of a DC magnetic field (electromagnetic brakes (EMBrs)). The arrangement and geometry investigated here is based on a series of previous experimental studies carried out at the mini-LIMMCAST facility at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR). The magnetic field models a ruler-type EMBr and is installed in the region of the ports of the submerged entry nozzle (SEN). The current article considers magnet field strengths up to 441 mT, corresponding to a Hartmann number of about 600, and takes the electrical conductivity of the solidified shell into account. The numerical model of the turbulent flow under the applied magnetic field is implemented using the open-source CFD package OpenFOAM®. Our numerical results reveal that a growing magnitude of the applied magnetic field may cause a reversal of the flow direction at the meniscus surface, which is related the formation of a “multiroll” flow pattern in the mold. This phenomenon can be explained as a classical magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) effect: (1) the closure of the induced electric current results not primarily in a braking Lorentz force inside the jet but in an acceleration in regions of previously weak velocities, which initiates the formation of an opposite vortex (OV) close to the mean jet; (2) this vortex develops in size at the expense of the main vortex until it reaches the meniscus surface, where it becomes clearly visible. We also show that an acceleration of the meniscus flow must be expected when the applied magnetic field is smaller than a critical value. This acceleration is due to the transfer of kinetic energy from smaller turbulent structures into the mean flow. A further increase in the EMBr intensity leads to the expected damping of the mean flow and, consequently, to a reduction in the size of the upper roll. These investigations show that the Lorentz force cannot be reduced to a simple damping effect; depending on the field strength, its action is found to be topologically complex.
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Subramanian, Shreerekha Pillai. "Malayalee Diaspora in the Age of Satellite Television." M/C Journal 14, no. 2 (May 1, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.351.

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This article proposes that the growing popularity of reality television in the southernmost state of India, Kerala – disseminated locally and throughout the Indian diaspora – is not the product of an innocuous nostalgia for a fast-disappearing regional identity but rather a spectacular example of an emergent ideology that displaces cultural memory, collective identity, and secular nationalism with new, globalised forms of public sentiment. Further, it is arguable that this g/local media culture also displaces hard-won secular feminist constructions of gender and the contemporary modern “Indian woman.” Shows like Idea Star Singer (hereafter ISS) (Malayalam [the language spoken in Kerala] television’s most popular reality television series), based closely on American Idol, is broadcast worldwide to dozens of nations including the US, the UK, China, Russia, Sri Lanka, and several nations in the Middle East and the discussion that follows attempts both to account for this g/local phenomenon and to problematise it. ISS concentrates on staging the diversity and talent of Malayalee youth and, in particular, their ability to sing ‘pitch-perfect’, by inviting them to perform the vast catalogue of traditional Malayalam songs. However, inasmuch as it is aimed at both a regional and diasporic audience, ISS also allows for a diversity of singing styles displayed through the inclusion of a variety of other songs: some sung in Tamil, some Hindi, and some even English. This leads us to ask a number of questions: in what ways are performers who subscribe to regional or global models of televisual style rewarded or punished? In what ways are performers who exemplify differences in terms of gender, sexuality, religion, class, or ability punished? Further, it is arguable that this show—packaged as the “must-see” spectacle for the Indian diaspora—re-imagines a traditional past and translates it (under the rubric of “reality” television) into a vulgar commodification of both “classical” and “folk” India: an India excised of radical reform, feminists, activists, and any voices of multiplicity clamouring for change. Indeed, it is my contention that, although such shows claim to promote women’s liberation by encouraging women to realise their talents and ambitions, the commodification of the “stars” as televisual celebrities points rather to an anti-feminist imperial agenda of control and domination. Normalising Art: Presenting the Juridical as Natural Following Foucault, we can, indeed, read ISS as an apparatus of “normalisation.” While ISS purports to be “about” music, celebration, and art—an encouragement of art for art’s sake—it nevertheless advocates the practice of teaching as critiqued by Foucault: “the acquisition and knowledge by the very practice of the pedagogical activity and a reciprocal, hierarchised observation” (176), so that self-surveillance is built into the process. What appears on the screen is, in effect, the presentation of a juridically governed body as natural: the capitalist production of art through intense practice, performance, and corrective measures that valorise discipline and, at the end, produce ‘good’ and ‘bad’ subjects. The Foucauldian isomorphism of punishment with obligation, exercise with repetition, and enactment of the law is magnified in the traditional practice of music, especially Carnatic, or the occasional Hindustani refrain that separates those who come out of years of training in the Gury–Shishya mode (teacher–student mode, primarily Hindu and privileged) from those who do not (Muslims, working-class, and perhaps disabled students). In the context of a reality television show sponsored by Idea Cellular Ltd (a phone company with global outposts), the systems of discipline are strictly in line with the capitalist economy. Since this show depends upon the vast back-catalogue of film songs sung by playback singers from the era of big studio film-making, it may be seen to advocate a mimetic rigidity that ossifies artistic production, rather than offering encouragement to a new generation of artists who might wish to take the songs and make them their own. ISS, indeed, compares and differentiates the participants’ talents through an “opaque” system of evaluations which the show presents as transparent, merit-based and “fair”: as Foucault observes, “the perpetual penalty that traverses all points and supervises every instant in the disciplinary institutions compares, differentiates, hierarchizes, homogenizes, excludes. In short, it normalizes” (183). On ISS, this evaluation process (a panel of judges who are renowned singers and composers, along with a rotating guest star, such as an actor) may be seen as a scopophilic institution where training and knowledge are brought together, transforming “the economy of visibility into the exercise of power” (187). The contestants, largely insignificant as individuals but seen together, at times, upon the stage, dancing and singing and performing practised routines, represent a socius constituting the body politic. The judges, enthroned on prominent and lush seats above the young contestants, the studio audience and, in effect, the show’s televised transnational audience, deliver judgements that “normalise” these artists into submissive subjectivity. In fact, despite the incoherence of the average judgement, audiences are so engrossed in the narrative of “marks” (a clear vestige of the education and civilising mission of the colonial subject under British rule) that, even in the glamorous setting of vibrating music, artificial lights, and corporate capital, Indians can still be found disciplining themselves according to the values of the West. Enacting Keraleeyatham for Malayalee Diaspora Ritty Lukose’s study on youth and gender in Kerala frames identity formations under colonialism, nationalism, and capitalism as she teases out ideas of resistance and agency by addressing the complex mediations of consumption or consumptive practices. Lukose reads “consumer culture as a complex site of female participation and constraint, enjoyment and objectification” (917), and finds the young, westernised female as a particular site of consumer agency. According to this theory, the performers on ISS and the show’s MC, Renjini Haridas, embody this body politic. The young performers all dress in the garb of “authentic identity”, sporting saris, pawaadu-blouse, mundum-neertha, salwaar-kameez, lehenga-choli, skirts, pants, and so on. This sartorial diversity is deeply gendered and discursively rich; the men have one of two options: kurta-mundu or some such variation and the pant–shirt combination. The women, especially Renjini (educated at St Theresa’s College in Kochi and former winner of Ms Kerala beauty contest) evoke the MTV DJs of the mid-1990s and affect a pidgin-Malayalam spliced with English: Renjini’s cool “touching” of the contestants and airy gestures remove her from the regional masses; and yet, for Onam (festival of Kerala), she dresses in the traditional cream and gold sari; for Id (high holy day for Muslims), she dresses in some glittery salwaar-kameez with a wrap on her head; and for Christmas, she wears a long dress. This is clearly meant to show her ability to embody different socio-religious spheres simultaneously. Yet, both she and all the young female contestants speak proudly about their authentic Kerala identity. Ritty Lukose spells this out as “Keraleeyatham.” In the vein of beauty pageants, and the first-world practice of indoctrinating all bodies into one model of beauty, the youngsters engage in exuberant performances yet, once their act is over, revert back to the coy, submissive docility that is the face of the student in the traditional educational apparatus. Both left-wing feminists and BJP activists write their ballads on the surface of women’s bodies; however, in enacting the chethu or, to be more accurate, “ash-push” (colloquialism akin to “hip”) lifestyle advocated by the show (interrupted at least half a dozen times by lengthy sequences of commercials for jewellery, clothing, toilet cleaners, nutritious chocolate bars, hair oil, and home products), the participants in this show become the unwitting sites of a large number of competing ideologies. Lukose observes the remarkable development from the peasant labor-centered Kerala of the 1970s to today’s simulacrum: “Keraleeyatham.” When discussing the beauty contests staged in Kerala in the 1990s, she discovers (through analysis of the dress and Sanskrit-centred questions) that: “Miss Kerala must be a naden pennu [a girl of the native/rural land] in her dress, comportment, and knowledge. Written onto the female bodies of a proliferation of Miss Keralas, the nadu, locality itself, becomes transportable and transposable” (929). Lukose observes that these women have room to enact their passions and artistry only within the metadiegetic space of the “song and dance” spectacle; once they leave it, they return to a modest, Kerala-gendered space in which the young female performers are quiet to the point of inarticulate, stuttering silence (930). However, while Lukose’s term, Keraleeyatham, is useful as a sociological compass, I contend that it has even more complex connotations. Its ethos of “Nair-ism” (Nayar was the dominant caste identity in Kerala), which could have been a site of resistance and identity formation, instead becomes a site of nationalist, regional linguistic supremacy arising out of Hindu imaginary. Second, this ideology could not have been developed in the era of pre-globalised state-run television but now, in the wake of globalisation and satellite television, we see this spectacle of “discipline and punish” enacted on the world stage. Thus, although I do see a possibility for a more positive Keraleeyatham that is organic, inclusive, and radical, for the moment we have a hegemonic, exclusive, and hierarchical statist approach to regional identity that needs to be re-evaluated. Articulating the Authentic via the Simulacrum Welcome to the Malayalee matrix. Jean Baudrillard’s simulacrum is our entry point into visualising the code of reality television. In a state noted for its distinctly left-leaning politics and Communist Party history which underwent radical reversal in the 1990s, the political front in Kerala is still dominated by the LDF (Left Democratic Front), and resistance to the state is an institutionalised and satirised daily event, as marked by the marchers who gather and stop traffic at Palayam in the capital city daily at noon. Issues of poverty and corporate disenfranchisement plague the farming and fishing communities while people suffer transportation tragedies, failures of road development and ferry upkeep on a daily basis. Writers and activists rail against imminent aerial bombing of Maoists insurgent groups, reading in such statist violence repression of the Adivasi (indigenous) peoples scattered across many states of eastern and southern India. Alongside energy and ration supply issues, politics light up the average Keralaite, and yet the most popular “reality” television show reflects none of it. Other than paying faux multicultural tribute to all the festivals that come and go (such as Id, Diwaali, Christmas, and Kerala Piravi [Kerala Day on 1 November]), mainly through Renjini’s dress and chatter, ISS does all it can to remove itself from the turmoil of the everyday. Much in the same way that Bollywood cinema has allowed the masses to escape the oppressions of “the everyday,” reality television promises speculative pleasure produced on the backs of young performers who do not even have to be paid for their labour. Unlike Malayalam cinema’s penchant for hard-hitting politics and narratives of unaccounted for, everyday lives in neo-realist style, today’s reality television—with its excessive sound and light effects, glittering stages and bejewelled participants, repeat zooms, frontal shots, and artificial enhancements—exploits the paradox of hyper-authenticity (Rose and Wood 295). In her useful account of America’s top reality show, American Idol, Katherine Meizel investigates the fascination with the show’s winners and the losers, and the drama of an American “ideal” of diligence and ambition that is seen to be at the heart of the show. She writes, “It is about selling the Dream—regardless of whether it results in success or failure—and about the enactment of ideology that hovers at the edges of any discourse about American morality. It is the potential of great ambition, rather than of great talent, that drives these hopefuls and inspires their fans” (486). In enacting the global via the site of the local (Malayalam and Tamil songs primarily), ISS assumes the mantle of Americanism through the plain-spoken, direct commentaries of the singers who, like their US counterparts, routinely tell us how all of it has changed their lives. In other words, this retrospective meta-narrative becomes more important than the show itself. True to Baudrillard’s theory, ISS blurs the line between actual need and the “need” fabricated by the media and multinational corporations like Idea Cellular and Confident Group (which builds luxury homes, primarily for the new bourgeoisie and nostalgic “returnees” from the diaspora). The “New Kerala” is marked, for the locals, by extravagant (mostly unoccupied) constructions of photogenic homes in garish colours, located in the middle of chaos: the traditional nattumparathu (countryside) wooden homes, and traffic congestion. The homes, promised at the end of these shows, have a “value” based on the hyper-real economy of the show rather than an actual utility value. Yet those who move from the “old” world to the “new” do not always fare well. In local papers, the young artists are often criticised for their new-found haughtiness and disinclination to visit ill relatives in hospital: a veritable sin in a culture that places the nadu and kin above all narratives of progress. In other words, nothing quite adds up: the language and ideologies of the show, espoused most succinctly by its inarticulate host, is a language that obscures its distance from reality. ISS maps onto its audience the emblematic difference between “citizen” and “population”. Through the chaotic, state-sanctioned paralegal devices that allow the slum-dwellers and other property-less people to dwell in the cities, the voices of the labourers (such as the unions) have been silenced. It is a nation ever more geographically divided between the middle-classes which retreat into their gated neighbourhoods, and the shanty-town denizens who are represented by the rising class of religio-fundamentalist leaders. While the poor vote in the Hindu hegemony, the middle classes text in their votes to reality shows like ISS. Partha Chatterjee speaks of the “new segregated and exclusive spaces for the managerial and technocratic elite” (143) which is obsessed by media images, international travel, suburbanisation, and high technology. I wish to add to this list the artificially created community of ISS performers and stars; these are, indeed, the virtual and global extension of Chatterjee’s exclusive, elite communities, decrying the new bourgeois order of Indian urbanity, repackaged as Malayalee, moneyed, and Nayar. Meanwhile, the Hindu Right flexes its muscle under the show’s glittery surface: neither menacing nor fundamentalist, it is now “hip” to be Hindu. Thus while, on the surface, ISS operates according to the cliché, musicinu mathamilla (“music has no religion”), I would contend that it perpetuates a colonising space of Hindu-nationalist hegemony which standardises music appreciation, flattens music performance into an “art” developed solely to serve commercial cinema, and produces a dialectic of Keraleeyatham that erases the multiplicities of its “real.” This ideology, meanwhile, colonises from within. The public performance plays out in the private sphere where the show is consumed; at the same time, the private is inserted into the public with SMS calls that ultimately help seal the juridicality of the show and give the impression of “democracy.” Like the many networks that bring the sentiments of melody and melancholy to our dinner table, I would like to offer you this alternative account of ISS as part of a bid for a more vociferous, and critical, engagement with reality television and its modes of production. Somehow we need to find a way to savour, once again, the non-mimetic aspects of art and to salvage our darkness from the glitter of the “normalising” popular media. References Baudrillard, Jean. The Mirror of Production. Trans. Mark Poster. New York: Telos, 1975. ———. Selected Writings. Ed. Mark Poster. California: Stanford UP, 1988. Chatterjee, Partha. The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1995. Lukose, Ritty. “Consuming Globalization: Youth and Gender in Kerala, India.” Journal of Social History 38.4 (Summer 2005): 915-35. Meizel, Katherine. “Making the Dream a Reality (Show): The Celebration of Failure in American Idol.” Popular Music and Society 32.4 (Oct. 2009): 475-88. Rose, Randall L., and Stacy L. Wood. “Paradox and the Consumption of Authenticity through Reality Television.” Journal of Consumer Research 32 (Sep. 2005): 284-96.
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Chen, Shih-Wen Sue, and Sin Wen Lau. "Post-Socialist Femininity Unleashed/Restrained: Reconfigurations of Gender in Chinese Television Dramas." M/C Journal 19, no. 4 (August 31, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1118.

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Abstract:
In post-socialist China, gender norms are marked by rising divorce rates (Kleinman et al.), shifting attitudes towards sex (Farrer; Yan), and a growing commercialisation of sex (Zheng). These phenomena have been understood as indicative of market reforms unhinging past gender norms. In the socialist period, the radical politics of the time moulded women as gender neutral even as state policies emphasised their feminine roles in maintaining marital harmony and stability (Evans). These ideas around domesticity bear strong resemblance to pre-socialist understandings of womanhood and family that anchored Chinese society before the Communists took power in 1949. In this pre-socialist understanding, women were categorised into a hierarchy that defined their rights as wives, mothers, concubines, and servants (Ebrey and Watson; Wolf and Witke). Women who transgressed these categories were regarded as potentially dangerous and powerful enough to break up families and shake the foundations of Chinese society (Ahern). This paper explores the extent to which understandings of Chinese femininity have been reconfigured in the context of China’s post-1979 development, particularly after the 2000s.The popular television dramas Chinese Style Divorce (2004, Divorce), Dwelling Narrowness (2009, Dwelling), and Divorce Lawyers (2014, Lawyers) are set against this socio-cultural backdrop. The production of these shows is regulated by the China State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), who has the power to grant or deny production and distribution permits. Post-production, the dramas are sold to state-owned television stations for distribution (Yu 36). Haiqing Yu summarises succinctly the state of Chinese media: “Chinese state manipulation and interference in the media market has seen the party-state media marketized but not weakened, media control decentralized but not reduced, and the media industry commercialized but not privatized” (42). Shot in one of the biggest cities in Shandong, Qingdao, Divorce focuses on Doctor Song Jianping and his schoolteacher wife Lin Xiaofeng and the conflicts between Song and Lin, who quits her job to become a stay-at-home mom after her husband secures a high-paying job in a foreign-invested hospital. Lin becomes paranoid and volatile, convinced that their divorced neighbour Xiao Li is having an affair with Song. Refusing to explain the situation, Song is willing to give her a divorce but fights over guardianship of their son. In the end, it is unconfirmed whether they reconcile or divorce. Divorce was recognised as TV Drama of the Year in 2004 and the two leads also won awards for their acting. Reruns of the show continue to air. According to Hui Faye Xiao, “It is reported that many college students viewed this TV show as a textbook on married life in urban settings” (118). Dwelling examines the issue of skyrocketing housing prices and the fates of the Guo sisters, Haizao and Haiping, who moved from rural China to the competitive economically advanced metropolis. Haiping is obsessed with buying an apartment while her younger sister becomes the mistress of a corrupt official, Song Siming. Both sisters receive favours from Song, which leads to Haiping’s success in purchasing a home. However, Haizao is less fortunate. She has a miscarriage and her uterus removed while Song dies in a car accident. Online responses from the audience praise Dwelling for its penetrating and realistic insights into the complex web of familial relationships navigated by Chinese people living in a China under transformation (Xiao, “Woju”). Dwelling was taken off the air when a SARFT official criticised the drama for violating state-endorsed “cultural standards” in its explicit discussions of sex and negative portrayals of government officials (Hung, “State” 156). However, the show continued to be streamed online and it has been viewed and downloaded more than 100 million times (Yu 34). In Lawyers, Luo Li and Chi Haidong are two competing divorce lawyers in Beijing who finally tie the knot. Chi was a happily married man before catching his wife with her lover. Newly divorced, he moves into the same apartment building as Luo and the drama focuses on a series of cases they handle, most of which involve extramarital affairs. Lawyers has been viewed more than 1.6 billion times online (v.qq.com) and received the China Huading award for “favourite television drama” in 2015. Although these dramas contain some conventional elements of domestic melodramas, such as extramarital affairs and domestic disputes, they differ from traditional Chinese television dramas because they do not focus on the common trope of fraught mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships.Centred on the politics of family ethics, these hugely popular dramas present the transformation in gender norms as a struggle between post-socialist and pre-socialist understandings of femininity. On the one hand, these dramas celebrate the emergence of a post-socialist femininity that is independent, economically successful, and sexually liberated, epitomising this new understanding of womanhood in the figures of single women and mistresses. On the other hand, the dramas portray these post-socialist women in perpetual conflict with wives and mothers who propound a pre-socialist form of femininity that is sexually conservative and defined by familial relationships, and is economically less viable in the market economy. Focusing on depictions of femininity in these dramas, this paper offers a comparative analysis into the extent to which gender norms have been reconfigured in post-socialist China. It approaches these television dramas as a pedagogical device (Brady) and pays particular attention to the ways through which different categories of women interrogated their rights as single women, mistresses, wives, and mothers. In doing so, it illuminates the politics through which a liberal post-socialist femininity unleashed by market transformation is controlled in order to protect the integrity of the family and maintain social order. Post-Socialist Femininity Unleashed: Single Women and Mistresses A woman’s identity is inextricably linked to her marital status in Chinese society. In pre-socialist China, women relied on men as providers and were expected to focus on contributing to her husband’s family (Ebrey and Watson; Wolf and Witke). This pre-socialist positioning of women within the private realm of the family, though reinterpreted, continued to resonate in the socialist period when women were expected to fulfil marital obligations as wives and participate in the public domain as revolutionaries (Evans). While the pressure to marry has not disappeared in post-socialist China, as the derogatory term “leftover women” (single women over the age of 27) indicates, there are now more choices for single women living in metropolitan cities who are highly educated and financially independent. They can choose to remain single, get married, or become mistresses. Single women can be regarded as a threat to wives because the only thing holding them back from becoming mistresses is their morals. The 28-year-old “leftover woman” Luo Li (Lawyers) is presented as morally superior to single women who choose to become mistresses (Luo Meiyuan and Shi Jiang) and therefore deserving of a happy ending because she breaks up with her boss as soon as she discovers he is married. Luo Li quits to set up a law firm with her friend Tang Meiyu. Both women are beautiful, articulate, intelligent, and sexually liberated, symbolising unleashed post-socialist femininity. Part of the comic relief in Lawyers is the subplot of Luo’s mother trying to introduce her to “eligible” bachelors such as the “PhD man” (Episodes 20–21). Luo is unwilling to lower her standards to escape the stigma of being a “leftover woman” and she is rewarded for adhering to her ideals in the end when she convinces the marriage-phobic Chi Haidong to marry her after she rejects a marriage proposal from her newly divorced ex-lover. While Luo Li refuses to remain a mistress, many women do not subscribe to her worldview. Mistresses have existed throughout Chinese history in the form of concubines and courtesans. A wealthy and powerful man was expected to have concubines, who were usually from lower socio-economic backgrounds (Ebrey and Watson; Liu). Mistresses, now referred to as xiaosan, have become a heated topic in post-socialist China where they are regarded as having the power to destroy families by transgressing moral boundaries. Some argue that the phenomenon is a result of the market-driven economy where women who desire a financially stable life use their sexuality to seek rich married men who lust for younger mistresses as symbols of power. Ruth Y.Y. Hung characterises the xiaosan phenomenon as a “horrendous sex trade [that is] a marker of neoliberal market economies in the new PRC” (“Imagination” 100). A comparison of the three dramas reveals a transformation in the depiction of mistresses over the last decade. While Xiao Li (Divorce) is never “confirmed” as Song Jianping’s mistress, she flirts with him and crosses the boundaries of a professional relationship, posing a threat to the stability of Song’s family life. Although Haizao (Dwelling) is university-educated and has a stable, if low-paying job, she chooses to break up with her earnest caring fiancé to be the mistress of the middle-aged Song Siming who offers her material benefits in the form of “loans” she knows she will never be able to repay, a fancy apartment to live in, and other “gifts” such as dining at expensive restaurants and shopping at big malls. While the fresh-faced Haizao exhibits a physical transformation after becoming Song’s mistress, demonstrated through her newly permed hair coupled with an expensive red coat, mistresses in Lawyers do not change in this way. Dong Dahai’s mistress, the voluptuous Luo Meiyuan is already a successful career woman who flaunts her perfect makeup, long wavy hair, and body-hugging dresses (Episodes 12–26). She exudes sexual confidence but her relationship is not predicated on receiving financial favours in return for sexual ones. She tells Dong’s wife that the only “third person” in a relationship is the “unloved” one (Episode 15). Another mistress who challenges old ideas of the power dynamic of the rich man and financially reliant young woman is the divorced Shi Jiang, Tang Meiyu’s former classmate, who becomes the mistress of Tang’s husband (Cao Qiankun) without any moral qualms, even though she knows that her friend is pregnant with his child. A powerful businesswoman, Shi is the owner of a high-end bar that Cao frequents after losing his job. Unable to tell his wife the truth, he spends most days wandering around and is unable to resist Shi’s advances because she claims to have loved him since their university days and that she understands him. In this relationship, Shi has taken on the role traditionally assigned to men: she is the affluent powerful one who is able to manipulate the downtrodden unemployed man by “lending” him money in his time of need, offering him a job at her bar (Episode 17), and eventually finding him a new job through her connections (Episodes 23–24). When Cao leaves home after Tang finds out about the affair, Shi provides him with a place to stay (Episode 34). Because the viewers are positioned to root for Tang due to her role as the female lead’s best friend, Shi is immediately set up as one of the villains, although she is portrayed in a more sympathetic light after she reveals to Cao that she was forced to give up her son to her ex-husband in America (who cheated on her) in order to finalise her divorce (Episode 29).The portrayal of different mistresses in Lawyers signals a transformation in the representation of gender compared to Divorce and Dwelling, because the women are less naïve than Haizao, financially well-off because of their business acumen, and much more outspoken and determined to fight for what they want. On the surface these women are depicted as more liberated and free from gender hierarchies and sexual oppression. Hung describes xiaosan as “an active if constrained agent . . . whose new mode of life has become revealingly defensible and publicly acceptable in socioeconomic terms that reflect the moral changes that follow economic reforms” (“State” 166). However, the closure of these storylines suggest that although more complex reasons for becoming a mistress have been explored in the new drama, mistresses are still regarded as a threat to social stability and therefore punished, challenging Hung’s argument about the “acceptability” of mistresses in post-socialist China. Post-Socialist Femininity Restrained: Wives and MothersCountering these liberal forms of post-socialist femininity are portrayals of righteous wives and exemplary mothers. These depictions articulate a moral positioning grounded in pre-socialist and socialist understandings of a woman’s place in Chinese society. These portrayals of moral women check the transgressive powers of single women and mistresses with the potential to break families up. More importantly, they remind the audience of desired gender norms that retain the integrity of the family and anchor a society undergoing rapid transformation.The three dramas portray wives who are stridently righteous in their confrontations with women they perceive as a threat to their families. These women find moral justification for the violence they inflict on transgressors from cultural understandings of their rights as wives. Lin Xiaofeng (Divorce) repeatedly challenges Xiao Li to explain the “logic” underlying her actions when she discovers that Xiao accompanied Song Jianping to a wedding (Episode 14). The “logic” Lin refers to is a cultural understanding that it is her right as wife to accompany Song to public events and not Xiao’s. By transgressing this moral boundary, Xiao accords Lin the moral authority to cast doubt on her abilities as a doctor in a public confrontation. It also provides moral justification for Lin to slap Xiao when she suggests that Lin is an embarrassment to her husband, an argument that underscores Lin’s failure and challenges her moral authority as wife. Jiang Miaomiao (Dwelling) draws on similar cultural understandings when she appears at the apartment Haizao shares with Song Siming (Episode 33). Jiang positions herself in the traditional role of a wife as a household manager (Ebrey) whose responsibilities include paying Song’s mistresses. She puts Haizao into a subordinate position by arguing that since Haizao is less than a mistress and slightly better than a prostitute, she is not worth the money Song has given her. When Haizao refuses to return the money a tussle ensues, causing Haizao to have a miscarriage. Likewise, Miao Jinxiu (Lawyers) draws on similar cultural understandings of a wife’s position when she laments popular arguments that depict mistresses such as Luo Meiyuan as usurping the superior position of wives like herself who are less attractive and able to navigate the market economy. Miao describes these arguments as “inverting black into white” (Episode 19). She publicly humiliates Luo by throwing paint on her at a charity event (Episode 17) and covers Luo’s car with posters labelling Luo a “slut,” “prostitute,” and “shameless” (Episode 18). Miao succeeds in “winning” her husband back. The public violence Miao inflicts on Luo and her success in protecting her marriage are struggles to reinforce the boundaries defining the categories of wife and mistress as these limits become increasingly challenged in China. In contrast to the violent strategies that Lin, Jiang, and Miao adopt, Tang Meiyu resists Shi Jiang’s destructive powers by reminding her errant husband of the emotional warmth of their family. She asks him, “Do you still remember telling me what the nicest sound is at home?” For Cao, the best sounds are Tang’s laughter, their baby’s cries, the sound of the washing machine, and the flushing of their leaky toilet (Episode 43). The couple reconciles and even wins a lottery that cements their “happy ending.” By highlighting the warmth of their family, Tang reminds Cao of her rightful place as wife, restrains Shi from breaking up the couple, and protects the integrity of the family. It is by drawing on deeply entrenched cultural understandings of the rights of wives that these women find the moral authority to challenge, restrain, and control the transgressive powers of mistresses and single women. The dramas’ portrayals of mothers further reinforce the sense that there is a need to restrain liberal forms of post-socialist femininity embodied by errant daughters who transgress the moral boundaries of the family. Lin Xiaofeng’s mother (Divorce) assumes the role of the forgiving wife and mother. She not only forgives Lin’s father for having an affair but raises Lin, her husband’s love child, as her own (Episode 23). On her deathbed, she articulates the values underlying her acceptance of this transgression, namely that one needs to be “a little kinder, more tolerant, and a little muddleheaded” when dealing with matters of the family. Her forgiveness bears fruit in the form of the warm companionship and support she enjoys with Lin’s father. This sends a strong pedagogical message to the audience that it is possible for a marriage to remain intact if one is willing to forgive. In contrast, Haizao’s mother (Dwelling) adopts the role of the disciplinary mother. She attempts to beat Haizao with a coat hanger when she finds out that her daughter is pregnant with Song Siming’s child (Episode 31). She describes Haizao’s decision as “the wrong path” and is emphatic that abortion is the only way to right this wrong. She argues that abortion will allow her daughter to start life anew in a relationship she describes as “open and aboveboard,” which will culminate in marriage. When Haizao rejects her mother’s disciplining, her lover dies in a car accident and she has a miscarriage. She loses her ability to speak for two months after these double tragedies and pays the ultimate price, losing her reproductive abilities. Luo Li’s mother (Lawyers), Li Chunhua, extends this pedagogical approach by adopting the role of public counsellor as a talk show host. Li describes Luo’s profession as “wicked” because it focuses on separating the family (Episode 9). Instead, she promotes reconciliation as an alternative. She counsels couples to remain together by propounding traditional family values, such as the need for daughters-in-law to consider the filial obligations of sons when managing their relationship with their mothers-in-law (Episode 25). Her rising ratings and the effectiveness of her strategy in bringing estranged couples like Miao Jinxiu and Dong Dahai back together (Episode 26) challenges the transgressive powers of mistresses by preventing the separation of families. More importantly, as with Haizao’s and Lin’s mothers, the moral force of Li’s position and the alternatives to divorce that she suggests draw on pre-socialist and socialist understandings of family values that underscore the sanctity of marriage to the audience. By reminding errant daughters of deeply embedded cultural standards of what it means to be a woman in Chinese society, these mothers are moral exemplars who restrain the potentiality of daughters becoming mistresses. ConclusionMarket reforms have led to a transformation in understandings of womanhood in post-socialist China. Depictions of mistresses and single women as independent, economically successful, and sexually liberated underscores the emergence of liberal forms of post-socialist femininity. Although adept at navigating the new market economy, these types of post-socialist women threaten the integrity of the family and need to be controlled. Moral arguments articulated by wives and mothers restrain the potentially destructive powers of post-socialist womanhood by drawing on deeply embedded understandings of the rights of women shaped in pre-socialist China. It is by disciplining liberal forms of post-socialist femininity such that they fit back into deeply embedded gender hierarchies that social order is restored. By illuminating the moral politics undergirding relationships between women in post-socialist China, the dramas discussed underscore the continued significance of television as a pedagogical device through which desired gender norms are popularised. These portrayals of the struggles between liberal forms of post-socialist femininity and conservative pre-socialist understandings of womanhood as lived in everyday life serve to communicate the importance of protecting the integrity of the family and maintaining social stability in order for China to continue to pursue development. ReferencesAhern, Emily. “The Power and Pollution of Chinese Women.” Women in Chinese Society. Eds. Margery Wolf et al. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1975. 193–214. Brady, Anne-Marie. Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. China Huading Award. “Top 100 TV Series Satisfaction Survey.” 9 Aug. 2015. Chinese Style Divorce. Writ. Wang Hailing. Dir. Shen Yan. Beijing Jindun Xintong Film & Television Culture, 2004. Divorce Lawyers. Writ. Chen Tong. Dir. Yang Wenjun. JSTV, 2014. Dwelling Narrowness. Writ. Liu Liu, Teng Huatao, Cao Dun. Dir. Teng Huatao. Shanghai Media Group, 2009. Ebrey, Patricia. The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.Ebrey, Patricia, and Rubie Watson, eds. Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991. Evans, Harriet. Women and Sexuality in China: Dominant Discourses of Female Sexuality since 1949. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997. Farrer, James. Opening Up: Youth Sex Culture and Market Reform in Shanghai. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2002. Hung, Ruth Y.Y. “The State and the Market: Chinese TV Serials and the Case of Woju (Dwelling Narrowness).” boundary 2 38.2 (2011): 155–187. ———. “Imagination in the Box: Woju’s Realism and the Representation of Xiaosan.” Television, Sex and Society: Analyzing Contemporary Representations. Eds. Basil Glynn et al. New York: Continuum, 2012. 89–105. Kleinman, Arthur, et al. “Introduction: Remaking the Moral Person in a New China.” Deep China: What Anthropology and Psychiatry Tell Us about China Today. Eds. Arthur Kleinman et al. Berkeley: U of California P, 2011. 1–35.Liu, Jieyu. “Gender and Sexuality.” Understanding Chinese Society. 2nd ed. Ed. Xiaowei Zang. London: Routledge, 2016. 53–66. Wolf, Margery, and Roxane Witke, eds. Women in Chinese Society. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1975. Xiao, Fuxing. “Woju Is a Sting Aimed at Reality.” ChinaNews.com.cn, 19 Nov. 2009. Xiao, Hui Faye. Marital Strife in Contemporary Chinese Literature and Visual Culture. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2014. Yu, Haiqing. “Dwelling Narrowness: Chinese Media and Their Disingenuous Neoliberal Logic.” Continuum 25.1 (2011): 33–46. Yan, Yunxiang. Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949–1999. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2003. Zheng, Tiantian. Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2009.
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