bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
And in the Future I Don't Remember What Happened Yet: A Back and Forth on the Experience of Memory in relay
Authors: Forté Marie Claire , Zimmer Jacob
Published: March 2013

A dialogue between performer Marie Claire Forté and dramaturge Jacob Zimmer about modes of memory in Ame Henderson/Public Recordings’ relay . Starting from the beginning of the development process and ending up at the performance and touring of the work, they discuss the act of dancers remembering past works on stage and in rehearsal. The focus is on the experience of doing (from Forté’s perspective) and of watching (from Zimmer’s). Issues of distance, ownership, and the dancer’s body as archive emerge from the task of embodying previous works. The role of memory is also important as a touchstone for “futuring”—a system developed in relay for approaching present unison by trying to be together in the future. The role of confidence in the act and performance
Memory's Borderlands: Onelight Theatre's Return Ticket : Halifax-Abadan-Halifax
Authors: Barker Roberta
Published: March 2013

“Memory’s Borderlands” explores the work of Halifax’s Onelight Theatre Company, focusing particularly on their Return Ticket: Halifax-Abadan-Halifax , which premiered at the Neptune Theatre Studio in November 2009. Part of Onelight’s ongoing Civilian Project, this innovative production is a deeply personal reflection on the experiences of Onelight’s Artistic Director Shahin Sayadi and Managing Director Maggie Stewart. Centering on Sayadi’s 2008 voyage to his native city of Abadan, Iran, it mixes live stage action with sophisticated digital media in order to reflect upon themes of family, time, and place within the context of war, loss, and diaspora. Foregrounding the gaps between individual and collective memories and their representations onstage, it also underlines the crucial role of such representations in building a more equitable and intercultural Canadian theatre.
A Trip to Bohemia: The Paranoid Confesses
Authors: Gilbert Sky
Published: March 2013

Confessing the deliberate autobiographical contamination of his works and arguing the case for minority cultu res in need of sharing their experiences, Sky Gilbert criticizes derogatory attitudes in literary criticism towards work based on personal memory.
Revealed by Fire : From the Personal to the Universal
Authors: Pada Lata
Published: March 2013

The dance tradition of bharatanatyam provides dancer Lata Pada with a means of undergoing a traumatic experience of loss and reconstituting a sense of identity.
My Body, Their Story: Performing Medicine
Authors: Nelles Laura Jayne
Published: March 2013

Actors hired to play patients in medical-educational contexts are not only subjected to the medical gaze, but are also often subjected to emotionally and physically demanding roles. Laura Jayne Nelles asks how the actor can create a safe "container" in the often blurred boundaries between acting and not-acting.
Staging Ethics: The Promise and Perils of Research-based Performance
Authors: Sinding Christina , Schwartz Lisa , Hunt Matthew
Published: March 2013

While performance can be an effective vehicle for knowledge transmission, Christina Sinding , Lisa Schwartz , and Matthew Hunt examine the ethical blind spots that can sometimes emerge in research-based performance.
When the Audience is Ourselves: From Intellectual Argument to Visceral Experience
Authors: Selman Jan
Published: March 2013

Sometimes an experience in the classroom can creep up and wallop both teacher and student alike. What then? JAN SELMAN remembers one such instance, and reflects on the value of creating disturbance as part of educational processes in all theatre classrooms.
Judith Thompson's Body and Soul : Tactics of Theatre in the Corporate Strategy
Authors: Moll Sorouja
Published: March 2013

From her insider perspective on The Dove Play , Sorouja Moll considers the dramaturgical tactics whereby the ensemble staged resistance to the media agenda of sponsor Dove/Unilever Canada.
About U th Ink
Authors: Sokoloski Robin
Published: March 2013

U th Ink has professional playwrights and arts facilitators mentor youth in writing, reciting and recording their own short play about a physical space in their community. Here ROBIN SOKOLOSKI presents a photo essay that offers local U th Ink sites with links to online recordings of the plays inspired by those sites.
Funny Girl: An Interview with Mariko Tamaki
Authors: Slone Abi
Published: March 2013

Award winning writer and playwright Mariko Tamaki sits down to talk to Abi Slone about her career as a writer, what it’s like to be on stage, and how queer subject matter just won’t go away.
On the Beauty of Our Perpetual Marginality, and Why it Might be Time for All of Us to Figure Out Our Position on Social Housing
Authors: Youssef Marcus
Published: March 2013

Vancouver’s MARCUS YOUSSEF explains why theatre artists make great politicians, precisely because of their marginality. Marginality, Youssef claims, is OUR GREATEST ASSET!
Synthesis
Authors: Wheeler Michael , Jain Ravi
Published: March 2013

MICHAEL WHEELER of Praxis Theatre and RAVI JAIN of Why Not Theatre put their heads together and try to bridge the divide between their opposing theatrical philosophies.
Writing on the Wall
Authors: Hill Steven , Valiquette Michele
Published: March 2013

STEVEN HILL and MICHELE VALIQUETTE of Vancouver’s Leaky Heaven share a wall of provocations and thought pieces in the form of Post-It notes—a photo manifesto.
A Statement of Objectives (and a Conversation)
Authors: Pizano Beatriz , Schwellnus Trevor
Published: March 2013

In their anti-manifesto, BEATRIZ PIZANO and TREVOR SCHWELLNUS of Toronto’s Aluna Theatre consider why their work isn’t “political” and isn’t “ethnic,” and the importance of working with respect, with integrity, and with social responsibility.
Space-ifesto 2012 (A Manifesto Toward Conditions and the Proliferation of Culture in a Better Canada)
Authors: Singh Rebecca
Published: March 2013

Through cheers and chants to be read aloud, REBECCA SINGH of Toronto’s Theatre Local rouses us to fight for better spaces, to BE GOOD and to FEEL GOOD, and to celebrate the traces that creative work leaves in spaces.
Dangers of the Theatrical–Dramaturgical Complex: A Call to Artists to Run Faster and Jump Higher on Their Own Two Feet
Authors: Ferguson Alex Lazaridis
Published: March 2013

Vancouver-based playwright and dramaturge ALEX LAZARIDIS FERGUSON rails against what he feels is the disconcerting amount of power dramaturges wield in Canadian theatre.
TYA = i : Assessing the Fair Market Value of Young People
Authors: Hanson Nicholas
Published: March 2013

In his Theatre 101 final exam, University of Lethbridge’s NICHOLAS HANSON must calculate the “value” of Theatre for Young Audiences in ten minutes. Can he do it?
Dressing Up and Dressing Down: Costumes, Risky Play, Transgender, and Maritime English Canadian Charivari Paradoxes
Authors: Greenhill Pauline
Published: March 2013

Feminist folklorist and gender studies scholar PAULINE GREENHILL explores paradox and risk associated with performance traditions of Charivari. The regional permutations of play with dress and gender help mark and structure festival time.
“Frontstage” and “Backstage” in Heritage Performance: What Ethnography Reveals
Authors: Quick Sarah
Published: March 2013

Questions of authenticity are a longstanding issue in cultural performance, especially those staged for tourists. SARAH QUICK reflects on her experience with Métis dance performance to consider the value of ethnography in understanding the complex ways that identity is performed across boundaries of race and ancestry.
Garden/ /Suburbia : Mapping the Non-Aristocratic in Lawrence Park
Authors: Bennett Melanie
Published: March 2013

Performance artist MELANIE BENNETT has an interest in relational and site specific performance. Combined with autoethnography, these interests shape a performance intervention in a garden suburb that is feeling the pressures of increasing development.
UBU at the Museum—Imaginary Travels through the World of Jean Paul Gaultier
Authors: Jasmin Stéphanie
Published: March 2013

Stéphanie Jasmin explains how recent modes of performance created by Théâtre UBU contributed an immediacy to the museum show of high fashion.
Making Mas: TruDynasty Carnival Takes Josephine Baker to the Caribbean Carnival
Authors: Taucar Jacqueline
Published: March 2013

Jacqueline Taucar traces the negotiation of costume, sculpture, and choreo-graphy of the Queen Mas created by Thea and Dario Jackson for their band in 2011.
What Comes First, Being a Playwright or Being a Jew?: Snapshots of Seven Canadian Writers
Authors: Slotkin Lynn
Published: March 2013

Lynn Slotkin interviews seven playwrights and asks how their Jewishness informs their work.
My Life in Jewish Theatre: A Coming-Out Story
Authors: Gordon Kayla
Published: March 2013

Kayla Gordon, a trailblazer in the Jewish theatre scene, shares her coming-out story as a Jewish artist in Winnipeg and reflects on the future of the field.
"Zealous for Their Own Way of Worship": Defoe, Monarchy, and Religious Toleration during the War of the Quadruple Alliance
Authors: Strawn Morgan
Published: March 2013

Daniel Defoe divides his historical novel Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) into two parts. The first follows King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the Thirty Years War (1618-48); the second examines Charles I and the Bishops' Wars (1639-40). This diptych portrait of kingship highlights the advantages and limits of the monarch's ability to promote religious toleration, resonating with contemporary political developments. During the War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718-20), Britain partnered with Catholic countries in order to preserve the Continental balance of power. The representation of Gustavus Adolphus's ecumenical leadership in Memoirs of a Cavalier reflects Defoe's newfound appreciation for such interfaith co-operation. While eighteenth-century conflict revealed the benefits of co-operating with Catholic foreigners, it also revealed the dangers of weakening religious establishments at home. When Spain attempted to disrupt the British war effort by sponsoring an uprising of Episcopalian Highlanders, many blamed that disturbance on laws that weakened the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. For British readers in 1720, the reenactment of the Bishops' Wars was a timely reminder of the dangers that arose when king and kirk quarrelled.
Barbauld's Richardson and the Canonization of Personal Character
Authors: Hammerschmidt Sören
Published: March 2013

In The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (1804), Anna Barbauld assured readers that the novelist's personal character (as displayed in his letters) corresponded to his authorial moral character (as inferred through his novels) in order to present him as an appropriate father of the modern British novel—a process I call the canonization of personal character. Barbauld's editorial work presented Richardson as a benevolent patriarchal figure whose moral authority over the domestic life of his extended family guaranteed the morality of his novels and personal character alike. As my study of Richardson's correspondence with Sarah Wescomb shows, Barbauld's interventions muted challenges to Richardson's authority on questions of paternal control and filial obedience. Life writing, textual criticism, and literary history intertwined so intimately in Barbauld's treatment that they mutually constituted and sustained each other. Her contributions to the elevation and institution of novels as national genre in the Correspondence and The British Novelists (1810) should therefore be read alongside her canonization of Richardson as the first properly moral, modern novelist.
Le don de soi. La valeur des tableaux dans les testaments épiscopaux français (fin XVII e –fin XVIII e siècle)
Authors: Regard Laurent
Published: March 2013

Although paintings are often seen as part of material culture, the wills of 18th-century bishops have reserved a special fate for certain works. The singular aspect of these works resides in their ability to embody an aspect of the donor. Focusing on this singularization process (by the way the paintings are depicted or exhibited or by the stories they convey) allows us to understand how these images build and strengthen links of affection or service. The way the various values associated with paintings interact and play out depending on the recipient reflects the perceived equivalence in the bishop’s mind between the value of a gift and the value of the recipient, and serves to intermingle related material, affective, and social aspects. The aim of this study is to identify the conditions contributing to the singularization of objects and their involvement in affective links. It is also intended to contribute to the history of the value of art, with less emphasis on the ontological than on the historical and social.
Le sport dans la France du gouvernement de Vichy (1940–1944)
Authors: Pécout Christophe
Published: March 2013

Over history, sport has become an ideological and political issue used by authoritarian regimes. In France under the Vichy Government (1940–1944), sport became an instrument for constraining and indoctrinating the population in general and youth in particular. Decreed to constitute the new modern chivalry, sport played a role in the Vichy policy of maintaining order by promoting precepts of the National Revolution to the population. Extensive sports propaganda was actively used to glorify the cult around Pétain. Finally, the partisans of collaboration saw sport as an additional means of supporting Hitler’s new Europe.
Empathy and Authority in Oral Testimony: Feminist Debates, Multicultural Mandates, and Reassessing the Interviewer and her “Disagreeable” Subjects
Authors: Saujani Sheyfali
Published: March 2013

Les archives spécialisées dans l’histoire orale décrivent peu la vie de leurs propres chercheurs, et les spécialistes de l’histoire orale s’intéressent rarement aux difficultés d’interpréter les entrevues réalisées par autrui. Cet article s’inspire des mémoires détaillées de la professeure féministe Vijay Agnew, qui a enregistré les témoignages d’immigrantes sud-asiatiques au Canada pour constituer une archive de l’histoire ethnique du Toronto des années 1970 afin d’étudier la relation entre l’empathie et la lutte pour le pouvoir dans les témoignages oraux. En situant l’archive dans le discours alors naissant au Canada sur le multiculturalisme officiel, l’article montre comment s’y prenaient tant l’intervieweuse que l’interviewée pour faire leurs, combattre ou propager les discours postcoloniaux qui s’affrontaient durant cette période afin de révéler la façon dont les immigrantes de la classe moyenne réagissaient à l’étiquette d’ethnicité qui leur était accolée et au racisme accru dont elles faisaient l’objet au milieu des années 1970.
Italy, World Football Champion 1982: A New Risorgimento ?
Authors: Mourlane Stéphane
Published: March 2013

Les compétitions de la Coupe du monde offrent une excellente occasion à l’Italie de s’unir à l’enseigne du patriotisme national. Si la victoire de 1982 en Coupe du monde n’a pas réussi à supprimer la double loyauté (locale et nationale) et pierre angulaire de l’identité italienne, elle n’en a pas moins resserré le lien avec la nation. La victoire de l’Italie sur les terrains de football de l’Espagne a eu des effets importants puisqu’elle coïncidait avec l’éveil grandissant au renouveau de l’identité italienne.
La permanence de la condition d’immigré sportif africain: Une socio-histoire des footballeurs professionnels camerounais en France (1954–2010)
Authors: Frenkiel Stanislas
Published: March 2013

This study examines the lives of four generations of professional Cameroonian soccer players in first and second division French clubs from 1954 to 2010. Through qualitative analysis of 15 “life story” interviews conducted in France and Cameroon, we study the conditions of African sport immigrants in France. From the 1950s to the present, their status has evolved little. Although players’ monthly salaries have increased and they now enjoy stronger legal protection through FIFA and improved representation through their agents, the similarities between the periods are striking. Just as those who went before them, players in the 2000s are regularly victims of discrimination and racism, as evidenced by their systematic salary inequality in relation to their European counterparts, the pressures around quotas for authorized foreign players and their nationality, and the insults hurled from the stands. We see as permanent the conditions affecting African sports immigrants in France and Europe.
"Who's Selling Here?": Sounds Like The Music Man Is Selling and We're Buying
Authors: Canton Kimberly Fairbrother
Published: March 2013

With The Music Man , Meredith Willson deliberately positions himself (and his sympathies) in the middle of the "brows" controversy. The result is an extended panegyric on the superiority both of the middlebrow aesthetic – as epitomized especially by the boys' band, the barbershop quartet, and the genre of the musical itself – and of the fundamentally American values it supposedly generates.
“[The] Things What Happened with Our Family”: Property and Inheritance in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson
Authors: Alexandre Sandy
Published: March 2013

This article examines how property operates in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson . It locates particular questions about property within the historical context of the play’s setting and delineates notions of black property and inheritance both in relation to and in contradistinction to the tradition of white property rights and privilege. The author also explains how the piano (as property) functions as both a divisive and a unifying family member among the Charleses.
Living at the End of the Irish Century: Globalization and Identity in Declan Hughes’s Shiver
Authors: Buchanan Jason
Published: March 2013

The Celtic Tiger – Ireland’s economic boom of the 1990s – has often been read as either exemplifying or demonizing the economic and cultural effects of globalization. This essay uses an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the history of the Celtic Tiger and to show how Declan Hughes’s play Shiver was one of the first post-Tiger Irish works to assess critically the effects of globalization on Irish culture. Hughes’s drama stages Ireland’s reaction to the Celtic Tiger as one of paralysis, a harsh critique that destabilizes narratives of newness – with their promises of being transformed into something different – by showing how fulfilment is perpetually deferred in the logic of global capitalism. Trying to authenticate the “new” Ireland is a double bind that dislocates both history and the present. Hughes’s play helps to triangulate what globalization can tell us about contemporary Ireland and what Ireland can tell us about contemporary globalization.
''Form Follows Function'': Meaning and Politics in Martin Crimp's Fewer Emergencies
Authors: Sierz Aleks
Published: March 2013

This article shows how Crimp, in his 2005 trilogy of short playlets, both constructs meaning and explores the difficulties of constructing meaning. The article analyses the form and content of Fewer Emergencies in two contexts: what Hans-Thies Lehmann calls ''postdramatic'' theatre and what Frank Furedi calls the ''culture of fear.'' Crucially, both of these considerations feed into another, more important question: in what is sometimes seen as a ''post-radical'' or ''post-human'' world, what exactly are the politics of Fewer Emergencies? The article shows how Crimp's trilogy is radical in both its form and its content, but that this radicalism is achieved at a cost.
Classical German Drama on the British Stage: Schiller's Wallenstein at the Chichester Festival
Authors: Guthrie John
Published: March 2013

The steady stream of adaptations of foreign plays for the British stage in recent decades has grown to include those of Germany's greatest classical dramatist, Friedrich Schiller, whose plays have been adapted by the British stage writer Mike Poulton. This article considers Poulton's adaptation of Schiller's Wallenstein , his largest-scale and arguably greatest work for the theatre, against the background of earlier attempts to create a one-part version for the stage. It undertakes a close comparison of the original with the modern English version, showing that Poulton has skilfully simplified, compressed, or transposed elements and sharpened aspects of the play to compensate for the British audience's lack of familiarity with the Thirty Years War. It analyses structure and characterization, language, gesture, and the staging of the Chichester Festival production of the adaptation (2009).
Toward a Definition of Post-Brechtian Performance: The Example of In the Jungle of the Cities at the Berliner Ensemble, 1971
Authors: Barnett David
Published: March 2013

'Post-Brechtian' is a term whose meaning is suggestive but whose terms have never been carefully defined. This article considers the implications of the post-Brechtian in performance by proposing five theses that might apprehend the term's multifarious manifestations onstage. The theses proceed from conditions of epistemological uncertainty and articulate points of confluence with and divergence from Brecht's own performance practices, which he developed at the Berliner Ensemble. Ruth Berghaus's production of Brecht's In the Jungle of the Cities at the same theatre in 1971 provides an early example of the epiphenomena associated with the post-Brechtian. The article seeks to locate the impulses that lay behind the production's performance decisions in order to generalize a series of principles that can be applied to the work of other directors, such as Robert Wilson, Christoph Marthaler, and Einar Schleef.
A Centenary of Missed Opportunities: A Guide to Assembling an Accurate Volume of Samuel Beckett's Dramatic "Shorts"
Authors: Gontarski S.E.
Published: March 2013

Despite the costly efforts and best intentions of both English-language publishers of Samuel Beckett's work and the labours of textual scholars during and just after Beckett's centenary year, Beckett's texts have improved only incrementally and inconsistently in these new centenary and post-centenary editions. This article traces some of the editions of Beckett's work generated by the centenary celebrations, the promises made for them, and the incomplete fulfilment of those promises. In particular, the article traces some of the issues surrounding the Faber editions of 2009-10, especially the author's volume of Krapp's Last Tape and other Short Plays , and appends to this critique the introduction or "Preface" as written before in-house editors at Faber truncated it. In the centenary and post-centenary years, not only have major publishing opportunities been lost, but current efforts may have retarded future corrections. It may be some time before other such efforts to correct Beckett's texts in uniform editions are launched.
Censorship and Immorality: Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple
Authors: Kent Brad
Published: March 2013

This essay challenges the tendency in censorship studies to focus on banned works and causes célèbres . It suggests that critics need to attend more carefully to adversarial works that have eluded detection by authorities to better understand censor-avoiding and censor-baiting techniques. In examining Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple , I argue that Shaw was subversive of morality and censorship through encoded attacks on the institution of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. This becomes clearer through analysis of Shaw’s censorship discourse in the years following the writing of the play in which he taps into its ethos and adopts the perspective of the title character, especially in his promotion of American-style post-performance trials of plays as against the British system of applying for licences before production. Shaw also undertook auto-intertextuality by drawing upon The Devil’s Disciple in composing The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet , a play that intentionally provoked British censors and provided him with ammunition when he appeared before the Joint Select Committee on the Censorship of Plays in the summer of 1909. I end by noting how Shaw himself refused war-time productions of The Devil’s Disciple because of its threats to morality and its potential for instigating radical change.
Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman and Time
Authors: Sørensen Eli Park
Published: March 2013

This article discusses Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman and the play's engagement with the difficulties of reconciling dramatic time and prosaic or subjective time. I argue that John Gabriel Borkman can be read as a meta-fictional text that explores the time after traditional drama has come to an end. The actual drama (or what would have been the drama had the playwright adopted a traditional dramatic form) has been displaced to the past and replaced by a present that is characterized by an undramatic, prosaic, or subjective temporality. At the same time, this is , of course, the drama of John Gabriel Borkman , and thus, the play meta-fictionally explores a split temporality. Ibsen's penultimate play examines with painstaking insistence dramatic time's lateness, a lateness that, on the one hand, displaces everything; while on the other hand, it renders all the unresolved issues of the past meaningless, insignificant.
Revisiting Marat/Sade : Philosophy in the Asylum, Asylum in the Theatre
Authors: Beggs Anne
Published: March 2013

This article stresses the continuing relevance of Peter Weiss’s 1963 drama Marat/Sade to both production and study, reconsidering the work in the light of recent reassessments of the relationship between drama and the practice of philosophy. In her analysis of the play as a philosophical dialogue, the author deprivileges Peter Brook’s directorial choices, which were based on an Anglo-American reading of Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, and focuses instead on the dialogic and physical potentials inherent in the text itself as a work of philosophical drama more akin to the works of Nietzsche and the historical de Sade himself. In the play, the effecting of politics on the body is illustrated, then interrupted and discussed, and the resulting performance presents us with the unresolved dialectic of individual agency and democratic sovereignty.
“These Noxious Microbes”: Pathological Dramaturgy in George Bernard Shaw’s Too True to Be Good
Authors: Wixson Christopher
Published: March 2013

This essay charts the interdependency of form and content in Bernard Shaw’s Too True to Be Good (1931). In this late play, the playwright, building upon his well-known attacks against medical theory and practice, views class privilege, colonial relations, and dramatic structure itself through the lens of disease. Angrily taking the stage in act one, the unusual, acerbic Microbe inaugurates Shaw’s dissection of imperialist discourse and attempt to purge the theatrical textual body of its pathogenic conventions.
L. Ron Hubbard’s Alternative to the Bomb Shelter: Scientology’s Emergence as a Pseudo-science During the 1950s
Authors: Manca Terra
Published: March 2013

In the 1950s, L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology and offered it as the key to surviving nuclear fallout. Hubbard’s success in promoting his claims depended on his ability to convince some people that Scientology was a unique science with more authority to state the truth than orthodox science. These claims contributed to both Scientology’s and Hubbard’s financial well-being, but provided little to no benefit for followers and may have harmed some patients. Despite diminished fears of nuclear holocaust, Scientology continues to promote purification programs based on the radiation claims Hubbard made.
New Frontiers: Wild at Heart and Post-Promise Keeper Evangelical Manhood
Authors: Harper Ryan
Published: March 2013

John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul is one of the most popular works of contemporary evangelical non-fiction. Attending to the historical context of the book’s release and to Eldredge’s rhetoric, this essay argues that Wild at Heart represents and commends a distinctly “post–Promise Keeper” masculinity operant in twenty-first-century evangelicalism. Eldredge substitutes the Promise Keepers’ prescriptive gender rhetoric for a descriptive language of male self-discovery. Eldredge overturns Promise Keeper mistrust of secular men’s media and their view of boyhood as in need of supersession—using the popularity of Hollywood “guy” movies and the material culture of boyhood as prooftexts for his essentially “wild” masculinity.
The Humorous Reproduction of Religious Prejudice: "Cults" and Religious Humour in The Simpsons, South Park, and King of the Hill
Authors: Feltmate David
Published: March 2013

Through an examination of how generic "cults" are presented in three specific episodes of The Simpsons, South Park , and King of the Hill , this article illustrates how humorous prejudice is reproduced through popular entertainment. It argues that a generic "cult" stereotype has developed over time in mass media and is reproduced in these programs for comedic effect. After demonstrating how specific correlations between historic fears about specific groups have found their way into these programs, it concludes with a discussion of the political significance of these programs' satire.
Narrating Armageddon: Antichrist Films and the Critique of Late Modernity
Authors: Gerlach Neil
Published: March 2013

The recurrence of the figure of the Antichrist in mainstream horror films is a culturally significant development since its origins in the 1970s. This paper argues that Antichrist films can be read as products of contemporary risk society characterized by a widespread reflexivity towards the outcomes of the modernization process, a deep insecurity over class relations, and an ambivalence towards expert knowledge within late modernity. These themes are expressed in the films through techniques of inversion and defamiliarization that have the effect of representing a society fearful of its stability and with no clear vision of the way forward.
The Horror of (a) Playing God: Job's Nightmare and Michael Haneke's Funny Games
Authors: Herling Bradley
Published: March 2013

Michael Haneke's film Funny Games (1997; American remake 2007) offers a potent critique of violence as entertainment, but on a deeper level, in its depiction of the diabolical games that can produce horrific suffering, the film reasserts the philosophical/theological "problem of evil." Placing Funny Games in dialogue with the Book of Job, this article argues that Haneke's film poses a radical challenge to standard narratives of redemption and exposes the experiential core of the often abstracted "problem" of seemingly unwarranted suffering.
Hell to Pay: Christian Haunted Houses and Audience Reception
Authors: Hoedt Madelon
Published: March 2013

Christian haunted houses, like ordinary scare attractions, have been largely ignored by academics. However, the methods employed by these particular venues provide an interesting case study in terms of audience position to and reception of the event. This paper will discuss the intentions of Christian haunted houses, as well as the potential emotional impact of the displays, based on an exploration of the setup of the various venues. Drawing from academic work, interviews with those involved, and treatment of the phenomenon by secular sources, the aim of this paper is to provide new insights in what Christian haunted houses intend to do, and how they do it.
Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Assorted Creatures: The Apocryphal Bestiary of Chick Publications
Authors: Phillips Alan G.
Published: March 2013

For decades, Chick tracts and comics have relied on provocative images drawn from an eclectic blend of popular culture, urban legend, and self-professed, religious authorities. Ostensibly, they endorse a King-James-only interpretation of the Bible in all areas of Christian belief and practice. In this paper, I will argue that many images and themes in Chick Publications produce results consistent with what the historians George Marsden and Martin Marty identify as the paradoxical and ironic elements in modern, American fundamentalism. While criticizing Catholicism and other faith traditions for relying on apocryphal texts and themes, Chick's publications use many extra-biblical images of monsters in otherworldly locales, thus creating a modern bestiary analogous to those from the Middle Ages. In spite of setting his biblical fidelity apart from Catholic doctrine and practice, Chick's tracts and comics are replete with monstrous beings and personalities on the margins of a strict reliance on the Authorized Version of the Bible. Ironically, as a long-standing opponent of both Catholic and non-Christian thought and practice, Chick's publications end up using non-Protestant imagery and iconography when representing demonic and monstrous beings in its widely distributed books, comics, and tracts.
The Combat Myth and the Gospel's Apocalypse in the Harry Potter Series: Subversion of a Supposed Existential Given
Authors: Barber Peter John
Published: March 2013

There appear to be strong parallels between the Christian Gospels and Joanne Rowling's Harry Potter series that have gone largely unnoticed in the literature to date surrounding the Potter phenomenon. Identification of these correspondences likely indicates that Rowling performed a fantastical representation of the Gospel in one of the most popular novel series ever written. René Girard's anthropology of violence and religion is employed here to illuminate the shared content of battling ideologies. The similarities between these writings appear in the use of equivalent literary techniques by the respective writers: combat myth plot and imagery, subversive Hebrew-style parallelism known as the "reflection narrative," and metaphors of consumption creating an abstract understanding of the psychosocial pursuit of life, all of which engage to form a polemic between two types of logic: violence and love.
(Carrying the Fire on) No Road for Old Horses: Cormac McCarthy's Untold Biblical Stories
Authors: Walsh Richard
Published: March 2013

Three "major" movies have been based on the novels of Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men , and The Road . In a landscape of loss, these fictions realize strange, new biblical stories about those who are neither chosen nor special and thus those who do not find the promise, are the prey of demons, and live after a secular apocalypse. These fictions are strange, new versions of Job in which no whirlwind answers, Job's adversary roams unbound, and Job's self-curse has become a luxury. Amidst an implacable fate, the fictions' call to "carry the fire" differs from biblical faith in election and providence and from popular assumptions about US exceptionalism.
Sacred Symbols with a Secular Beat?: A Content Analysis of Religious and Sexual Imagery in Modern Rock, Hip Hop, Christian, and Country Music Videos
Authors: Morgan Tanja N. , Hampton Cheryl A. , Davenport Shanise , Young Ellen , Badzinski Diane M. , Richardson Kathy Brittain , Woods Robert H.
Published: March 2013

A content analysis of music videos for the 2008 top-rated songs in four musical genres was conducted in order to gauge change in the presence of religious and sexual symbols since the mid-1990s and to determine if sexual and religious images were prevalent in the increasingly popular hip hop genre. Religious images appeared in about one-third of videos across genres, and sexual images appeared in more than half the videos and in all of the hip hop videos. Hip hop and country videos had the highest co-occurrences of religious and sexual imagery, although there was co-occurrence in each genre. The significance and possible interpretations of the symbols and their co-occurrence are discussed.
"I've never murdered anyone in my life. The decisions are up to them.": Ethical Guidance and Cultural Pessimism in the Saw Series
Authors: Walliss John , Aston James
Published: March 2013

In this article, we examine the ethical vision presented in the Saw series of films, focusing in particular on how it represents a trend within popular culture post-9/11 toward increasing cultural pessimism. We will locate the Saw films within this cultural trajectory, primarily focusing on the "games" and the use of torture and how these rituals disturb a clear moral and ethical vision as the franchise moves unsteadily between conservative and liberal ideologies. Human beings, the films show, are riddled with vice and invariably cannot, even when put in a life or death situation, develop the self-awareness to overcome them. Indeed, humans have become so debased and disconnected from life that those liberal, progressive attempts to help them and legal attempts to sanction them are doomed to failure. In the end, the only way in which they can be "saved," and social order be protected, is through vigilantism and a never-ending cycle of torture.
Reconsidering Apocalyptic Cinema: Pauline Apocalyptic and Paul Thomas Anderson
Authors: Congdon David
Published: March 2013

Apocalypticism has been a consistent theme in modern culture. In recent religious studies, the definition of "apocalyptic" has undergone extensive revision and expansion, resulting in the articulation of a distinctively "Pauline" apocalyptic theology. This new conception of apocalypticism offers a new way to interpret works of popular culture, especially film. This paper argues that Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 movie, Magnolia , is properly viewed as an apocalyptic film in this revised Pauline sense. Viewing it from this perspective helps to make better sense of its key themes and plot developments. The goal of the paper is to initiate a broader conversation regarding the field of apocalyptic cinema in light of the latest theological research.
Academic Search Engine Optimization ( ASEO ): Optimizing Scholarly Literature for Google Scholar & Co.
Authors: Beel Jöran , Gipp Bela , Eilde Erik
Published: March 2013

This article introduces and discusses the concept of academic search engine optimization (ASEO). Based on three recently conducted studies, guidelines are provided on how to optimize scholarly literature for academic search engines in general, and for Google Scholar in particular. In addition, we briefly discuss the risk of researchers' illegitimately 'over-optimizing' their articles.
Scholar as E-Publisher: The Future Role of [Anonymous] Peer Review within Online Publishing
Authors: Gould Thomas H.P.
Published: March 2013

The advent of online journals has opened a vast opportunity for small journals published by a variety of institutions. It also has given scholars many more options, from more general publications to far more journals addressing very narrowly defined subjects, and it suggests that in the near future the role of online journals and peer review will radically change. The author proposes roles for user-generated content and university libraries in the evaluation and publication of research.
MLA Regional Journals: Accountability, Innovation
Authors: Roth Laurence
Published: March 2013

All scholarly journals face similar challenges – small audiences, tight budgets, and editorial policies and practices that sometimes harden into dogma. Modern Language Association (MLA) regional journals offer a focused example of how member-driven scholarly journals can meet these challenges and, in doing so, change our notions of what such journals can do and how they should look. As publications of smaller-scale professional organizations, MLA regional journals are in a good position to hear and act on their members' needs; when the duty of serving those members is carried out in an entrepreneurial spirit, editors open up, and can take advantage of, new opportunities for publishing.
Manuscript Makeovers: A Rhetorical Study of Revisions Made to Dissertations Turned into Books
Authors: Brown Robert
Published: March 2013

This study is a rhetorical analysis of revisions made to the introductions of dissertations successfully transformed into monographs. The author compares parallel passages taken from six dissertation–book pairs representing a cross-section of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. He interprets changes from dissertation to book with reference to the body of literature written for aspiring book authors by experienced scholarly editors. The author's objective is to put their editorial advice on an empirical footing by illustrating it with these texts 'grown in the wild.' His hope is that junior scholars will find the analysis instructive when they turn a revisionary eye on their own dissertations and that scholarly editors will find it useful when they prepare publishing workshops for junior faculty and graduate students.
Sustaining Scholarly Publishing: New Business Models for University Presses: A Report of the AAUP Task Force on Economic Models for Scholarly Publishing
Authors: Withey Lynne , Cohn Steve , Faran Ellen , Jensen Michael , Kiely Garrett , Underwood Will , Wilcox Bruce , Brown Richard , Givler Peter , Holzman Alex , Keane Kathleen
Published: March 2013

Within the scholarly communications ecosystem, scholarly publishers are a keystone species. University presses—as well as academic societies, research institutions, and other scholarly publishers—strive to fulfil our mission of 'making public the fruits of scholarly research' as effectively as possible within that ecosystem. While that mission has remained constant, in recent years the landscape in which we carry out this mission has altered dramatically. The expertise residing within university presses can help the scholarly enterprise prosper in both influence and impact as it moves ever more fully digital. However, the simple product-sales models of the twentieth century, devised when information was scarce and expensive, are clearly inappropriate for the twenty-first-century scholarly ecosystem. This report (a) identifies elements of the current scholarly publishing systems that are worth protecting and retaining throughout this and future periods of transition; (b) explores business models of existing projects that hold promise; (c) outlines the characteristics of effective business models; (d) addresses the challenges of the transitional period we are entering; and (e) arrives at recommendations that might allow us to sustain high-quality scholarship at a time when the fundamental expectations of publishing are changing.
Journal des Savants: From the Republic of Letters to the Cloud Library
Authors: Potts Claude H.
Published: March 2013

As more books, journals, and newspapers make the inevitable transition to the electronic format, academics get the sense that the only scholarly materials one really needs can be found in the digital realm. Through the imagined voice of the Journal des Savants —the world's oldest scholarly journal still active today—this article brings to the surface valid concerns about print scarcity, familiar terrain for not only Europeanists but for anyone who works in area studies. It objects to conventional metrics for determining scholarly value and reconfirms known perils of relying solely on the mass-digitization efforts of Google Books. Most importantly, the article questions an over-reliance on digital preservation repositories such as LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, Portico, and HathiTrust—key players in the so-called Cloud Library, or external network of trusted digital library collection and service providers. The push toward cloud-sourced collections comes at a time when research libraries are hastily embarking on ambitious cooperative regional initiatives to systematically de-duplicate their costly, problematic, redundant, and very much terrestrial print collections.
The Scholarly Book Review in the Humanities: An Academic Cinderella?
Authors: East John W.
Published: March 2013

This article examines the status of the book review as a form of scholarly publication in the humanities, looking at the role and characteristics of humanities book reviews and at who writes them and why. It examines evidence for the influence and impact of book reviews in the humanities and makes suggestions for the future of the scholarly book review in an online information environment.
When You’re Criticized
Authors: Martin Brian
Published: March 2013

What should you do when you or your organization is subject to lengthy, published criticism that you think is seriously distorting and misleading? The three main options are to ignore the criticisms, to counter-attack, and to respond with information and arguments. To make a choice, it is important to assess the way audiences’ perceptions are likely to be influenced by your response.
Sustainability and the Scholarly Enterprise: A History of Gutenberg-e
Authors: Seaman John T. , Graham Margaret B. W.
Published: March 2013

This article analyses the origins, development, and impact of Gutenberg-e, a digital publishing program in historical scholarship sponsored by the American Historical Association (AHA), with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Intended as an experiment in developing and legitimizing new modes of historical scholarship, Gutenberg-e quickly evolved, under pressure to become economically sustainable, into a traditional publishing enterprise bent on making books cheaper and paying for itself in the process. Digital technology, which had the power to transform the whole scholarly enterprise, instead became a means to shore up the existing system of scholarly publishing, with all its flaws intact. Though Gutenberg-e has much to teach us about the costs and consequences of that system, especially for the scholars it is meant to serve, it also offers a glimpse of an alternative future. Almost in spite of itself, Gutenberg-e produced a handful of innovative works of digital scholarship, experimented with new forms of scholarly collaboration and community, and highlighted the opportunities of an expanded audience for specialized academic work. These modest achievements suggest the potential of digital technology to create things which scholars value and thereby sustain the scholarly enterprise over the long term.
Lester J. Cappon, Scholarly Publishing, and the Atlas of Early American History , 1957-1976
Authors: Cox Richard J.
Published: March 2013

The Atlas of Early American History: The Revolutionary Era 1760-1790 , published in 1976, remains one of the lasting legacies of the US Bicentennial. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and a variety of private foundations, the publication was only incidentally a product of the celebration of the birth of a nation. The Atlas was the product of twenty years of effort by Lester J. Cappon—historian, archivist, and documentary editor—and because of his commitment to maintaining his own personal archives, we can learn more about this scholarly publishing venture than most. His rich diaries, personal papers, and Atlas archives enable us to follow the trials and tribulations of this publishing venture. We also learn that the kinds of issues facing scholarly publishing today, with a few differences (such as e-publishing), are not unique at all from those of half a century ago.
Risible Christianity?: Kierkegaard versus Žižek
Authors: Stan Leo
Published: March 2013

This article brings to light the idiosyncratic presuppositions and demythologizing aims of Slavoj Žižek’s deconstruction of Christianity. My goal is to discuss critically this secularist reinterpretation of theology by taking a close look at the questionable hermeneutic strategies and even plain distortions of Žižek’s (favourable) treatment of Kierkegaard. Particular attention will be paid to the doctrinal-salvific foundations of Kierkegaard’s authorship, which are almost completely ignored by the Slovenian philosopher. From a theological standpoint, by delineating the oddities and limitations of Žižek’s approach, the article hopes to contribute to a competent discussion of the most recent resurgence of atheism.