Cultural Debates Research Articles

Cultural Property Protection in the Light of the New Law of FRG 2016

Preparations for the adoption of the new Law on Cultural Values Protection, its discussion and debates, that seriously puzzled the German Government, and also caused acute criticism from the representatives of the world of art are analyzed. Attention is focused on approaches to the important and quite complex in this regard issue concerning preservation of illegal movement of cultural objects that belong to the cultural heritage of the state. The main purpose of the bill is to enhance the protection of cultural property and effectively combat the illicit trafficking of them. The intentions of the Federal Government to integrate pre-existing laws in the field of cultural values into one law are very important. The main principles of the law in the new edition are protection from being sold overseas collections of state museums, including exhibits from private ownership that are in museums temporarily. It is highlighted that under current legislation, in each federal state of art and other cultural treasures, including libraries, must be entered in the register of national cultural values. These items have privileges in taxation, their export outside Germany requires special permission from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Germany, which can be stipulated for a number of restrictions and reservations. In the article it is underlined that he XXI century has set new challenges and tasks for German scientists that require operational, but balanced approach in their solution.

‘Den nye kvinde’ i det tidlige 1900-tals kulturdebat og litteratur

Lise Busk-Jensen: ‘The New Woman’ in the early 1900s cultural debate and literature
 In the latter half of the nineteenth century, men expanded their political and social liberties of action to such an extent that they undermined the patriarchal marriage and the traditional gender system. It provoked a heated cultural debate about women’s changing social situation and new identity. After the turn of the century, the fight for the right to vote became the major goal of woman’s rights movements, but opinions were divided concerning the definition of a modern woman and how she could best be included in society. In particular, the article deals with two of the major debates from the first decade of the twentieth century; namely the discussion in 1905 about Gyrithe Lemche’s criticism of Agnes Henningsen’s novels for solely focussing on women’s erotic identity, and the discussion in 1907 about the theatre censorship that banned the staging of Hjalmar Bergstrøm’s play Karen Bornemann about women’s right to enjoy sexual relations outside of marriage. Female writers joined in the debate and contributed with their own literary depictions of ‘the new woman.’ Agnes Henningsen’s heroines would be erotically liberated and would play an active role in their love relationships. Thit Jensen’s heroines would uncover a personal identity and publicly fight for their opinions. Gyrithe Lemche would create space for women’s abilities and motherly experience in the community, while Karin Michaëlis was intent on providing the numerous silent women, young ignorant girls and oppressed housewives with their own voice in literature. The article shows the positions of the gender debates and analyses women types in the four authorships’ early period as a spectrum of the possibilities created by women’s life outside of the family.

Caught between extremes: the culture and economics of traditional mask art in contemporary Sri Lanka

ABSTRACTIn contemporary Sri Lanka, the commodification of local mask production resulting from cultural tourism has caught the traditional mask artisan in a tight spot between “tradition” and “modernity”. The impacts of tourism are diversely received and interpreted within the local mask artisan community, with tourism simultaneously resulting in what can be called a “cultural discovery” and “cultural decline”. Within this cultural debate, this paper is an attempt to understand how the traditional mask artisan arrives at a balance between “tradition” and “modernity”, and culture and commerce. Qualitative research conducted in southern Sri Lanka shows that tradition and modernity are shifting conceptions. Negotiating a balance between tradition and modernity is, therefore, largely a matter of meaning and interpretation. When cultural commodification occurs, tradition and modernity are continuously redefined and reinvented by both the traditional mask artisan and cultural consumer to fit their own needs and agendas. Cultural commodification contributes to the survival and revival of Sri Lanka's mask tradition, a strategy that is simultaneously welcomed and contested within the local mask artisan community.

Plan and project as resistance strategies. Didactics, planning and designing in a continuous changing era

The transformation of physical spaces by means of plans and projects requires knowledge and understanding of what needs to be transformed. In this sense, project work is influenced by the way we get to know things and learn. This way is in turn strongly influenced by the wider socio-cultural context in which we are educated. Cultural debate about learning modalities in the era of “liquid modernity” evidences an epistemological change and a worrying aspect that involves the project-oriented ability of individuals: no person can have experience of stability and it is impossible to design the change. What, then, is the future for all those activities that plan change and transformation? Maybe the answer can be found in imagining the traditional instruments of space transformation, namely plans and projects, as “resistance strategies”. A idea like this implies “resistance” at various levels by an approach to the plan and project that retrieves some of the connotations lost over time and takes on new ones more suitable to these times of crisis: the plan and the project as an instrument of knowledge, as a means of structuring elements of permanency, as an instrument of opposition to standardisation and to steered market forms, and as an activator of forms of collective management.

Hindi, Urdu or Hindustani? Revisiting ‘National Language’ Debates through Radio Broadcasting in Late Colonial India

Asking how the nationalist intelligentsia and Hindi literati sought to interact with and shape the new medium of radio in a period of time that witnessed the establishment of All India Radio’s Lucknow station in 1938, this article embeds colonial discussions of radio broadcasting into the cultural, literary and linguistic debates over Hindi, Urdu and Hindustani. The vibrant debate on the standardisation of Hindi, set against the background of All India Radio policies, is discussed from the perspective of those literary actors and institutions that envisioned diverse oral forms of Hindi and Hindustani for the rural and urban population residing in the Hindi belt and the rest of India. In addition, the article compares the radio broadcasting language to other contributions published in Hindi to show how languages operated not only in parallel but also in intersecting literary spheres. The article shows that language debates over radio broadcasting functioned as a site to probe the flexibility of what was to be officially projected as the language of the nation-to-be.

Painting against the grid: Eugenio Montale's confrontation with the visual arts

This article proposes a new interpretation of the vast and understudied corpus of paintings and drawings produced by the poet Eugenio Montale between the mid-1940s and the 1970s. While critics have mostly discussed these artworks in connection with Montale's poetry from the interwar years, I argue, rather, that they constitute a direct intervention in the postwar cultural debate over the role of the author and the validity of traditional literary and visual languages. The article is subdivided in three parts: the first section surveys the style and prevalent motifs of Montale's art; the second section analyses its flawed critical reception through the close reading of relevant documents; and the third part illustrates the details of my argument on the basis of three major case studies, with references to contemporary artists such as Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri and Piero Manzoni.

McQuillen, Colleen The Modernist Masquerade: Stylizing Life, Literature and Costumes in Russia (review)

SEER, 94, 1, JANUARY 2016 154 McQuillen, Colleen. The Modernist Masquerade: Stylizing Life, Literature and Costumes in Russia. Studies of the Harriman Institute. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, 2013. xiii + 282 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $29.95 (paperback). Given the number of publications attempting to find a master trope for early modernist aesthetics, the venture is clearly an alluring one. For any new efforts the yardstick of comparison would be Green and Swan’s The Triumph of Pierrot (University Park, PA, 1986) and Douglas Clayton’s Pierrot in Petrograd (Montreal, 1993) — vast interpretative works exploring the notion of commedia dell’arte as an extended metaphor for the modernist imagination and an expression of fin-de-siècle cultural views. Coleen McQuillen hangs her own interpretation of the modern from a different kind of peg; the motif of masquerade (comprising masked and costume balls) is seen as a prism for refracting the diversity of artistic cross-currents of the time, and as a unifying platform for the wide spectrum of political and cultural debates. Such an analysis, without doubt, provides a valuable contribution to modernist studies, but in order to appreciate this vantage point the reader would still have benefitted from a brief comparison with the established scholarly landmarks. The book’s sub-title specifies clearly the terrain of examination, focused on ‘stylizing life, literature and costume in Russia’. The same type of clarity, however, does not apply to the chronological boundaries of the study, which range from 1872 to 1914 (p. 3). These limits require further explanation and justification, for the earlier date is most commonly associated with the Russian realist doctrine, while the activities of Russian avant-garde authors (extensively discussed in various chapters) would extend far beyond 1914. The book is divided into two parts, the first concentrating primarily on the theoretical issues of ‘parody, imitation and stylisation as discursive strategies in literature and in social performances of personal identity’ (p. 29). The three chapters in this section are well researched and suggest an original reading of the era’s social and cultural agenda (ethical, political and gender issues); but the whole is unfortunately somewhat less than the sum of its parts: in their totality these chapters do not coalesce into a coherent interpretation of the modernist imagination, defined here in terms of ‘relativistic approaches to art and self’ (p. 25), or more specifically through loosening the links between the signifier and signified. The first two chapters seem to demonstrate the opposite. When examining costume parties in Sologub’s Petty Demon and Dostoevskii’s Demons, chapter one affirms a strict one-way correlation between ethics and aesthetics, when everything beautiful speaks of goodness, and impurity reveals itself through the distorted. The same kind of referential rigidity is asserted in chapter two, which associates political conservatism with national costumes, as opposed to the widespread trend of impersonating foreign nationals among terrorists in the years surrounding 1905. REVIEWS 155 The second part explores the issues of reception by treating costume design as a legible poetic language. Informative, engaging and meticulously researched, this is, surely, the strongest section of the book. Some justification is offered for the study’s chronological starting point as it mentions the weakening of the Russian state control of visual and performing arts in the 1870s–80s (p. 119). The overall narrative also becomes more spontaneous, more fluid, and effectively more in tune with the playful and carnivalesque subject-matter of the work (as compared to the discourse of the first part, heavily charged with specialized, and at times cumbersome, terminology). Chapter four interprets non-representative costumes (such as ‘Dawn’, ‘Fantasy’ or ‘Duma’) worn at the series of balls hosted by the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, while chapter five ‘constructs an imaginative projection of the cultural legacy through the character costumes of mythological and historic figures’. In both chapters insightful parallels are drawn with the writings of Leonid Andreev (Black Maskers), Anna Akhmatova and Viacheslav Ivanov, leading (chapter six) to the inquiry into the abstract costume practices in the avant-garde works of Blok, Maiakovskii and Kruchenykh. Seen as an utmost representation of semantic freedom, their works are juxtaposed (chapter seven) to its antithetical...

More than an Indian teen shrew: Postcolonialism and feminism in Isi Life Mein

This essay explores a Bollywood movie entitled Isi Life Mein (dir. Vidhi Kasliwal, 2010), which exploits The Taming of the Shrew as a play-within-the-film for the first time in Bollywood, and even as an intertext on some occasions. Although apparently a mere teen movie, this article sheds light on the importance of the Indian location, which invites postcolonial readings of the text. From a postcolonial perspective, it is the aim of this essay to rethink how The Taming of the Shrew is caught up and shaped in another culture. The film experiments with, and offers a parody of Shakespeare and his text, to the extent that they are both “reborn.” The movie also reflects on Indian modernity characterized by endless migration and diaspora. This essay equally explores the significance of using The Taming of the Shrew, since cultural debates concerning gender relations are involved. The movie adds to the multiple cultural products that rewrite the play’s ending. One of Isi Life Mein’s main attractions lies in its ability to challenge patriarchy explicitly. Interestingly, postcolonialism and feminism are intertwined in Isi Life Mein, providing new understandings of the Shrew and, ultimately, the Bard.

Pentecostals and the World

This article raises a number of theoretical and methodological issues for studying global Pentecostalism. More specifically, it examines a range of internal debates among Pentecostals about the nature of orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and orthopathy, including related questions about authority and authenticity. The argument maintained in this article is that globalization and the development of global society is uneven and all religions, including Pentecostalism, are attempting to come to terms with the meaning of social change and the role of religion. This can be observed through a range of social interactions, such as those among Pentecostals about the process of social change, the nature of global society, and the role of religion. A number of cases are presented to examine these cultural debates among Pentecostals, including a discussion of the implications for Pentecostal scholarship. The article concludes with a series of methodological questions for scholars of Pentecostalism.

The whole versus the sum of some of the parts: toward resolving the apparent controversy of clitoral versus vaginal orgasms.

BackgroundThe nature of a woman’s orgasm has been a source of scientific, political, and cultural debate for over a century. Since the Victorian era, the pendulum has swung from the vagina to the clitoris, and to some extent back again, with the current debate stuck over whether internal sensory structures exist in the vagina that could account for orgasms based largely on their stimulation, or whether stimulation of the external glans clitoris is always necessary for orgasm.MethodWe review the history of the clitoral versus vaginal orgasm debate as it has evolved with conflicting ideas and data from psychiatry and psychoanalysis, epidemiology, evolutionary theory, feminist political theory, physiology, and finally neuroscience.ResultsA new synthesis is presented that acknowledges the enormous potential women have to experience orgasms from one or more sources of sensory input, including the external clitoral glans, internal region around the “G-spot” that corresponds to the internal clitoral bulbs, the cervix, as well as sensory stimulation of non-genital areas such as the nipples.ConclusionsWith experience, stimulation of one or all of these triggering zones are integrated into a “whole” set of sensory inputs, movements, body positions, autonomic arousal, and partner- and contextual-related cues, that reliably induces pleasure and orgasm during masturbation and copulation. The process of integration is iterative and can change across the lifespan with new experiences of orgasm.

Black Atlas: Geography and Flow in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature by Judith Madera

MADERA, JUDITH. Black Atlas: Geography and Flow in Nineteenth-Century African American Literature. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. 312 pp. $94.95 cloth, $25.95 paperback. Simply put: Black Atlas flows. It is not narratively or conceptually simplistic--far from it. Rather, the flow of Black Atlas surfaces by way of a consistent unmooring of static meanings of geography. Adroitly, Madera conducts readers through fluid valences of locale, terrain at once domestic, international, human, and economic. Indeed, by volume's end, one grasps that territory is discursive and ideological, yet material and felt. In Black Atlas, milieu defies scale, while at the same time directly mediating architecture and aesthetics. Setting is productive and participatory. Further, land articulates a set of relationships in the nineteenth century: between the United States, Mexico, and Central America; in and between Caribbean sites such as Cuba and Haiti; and between West Africa, the Niger Valley, and Canada. Problematizing dominant space versus place binaries as well as exclusionary, temporal attributes of space, Madera traces the ways black authors have troubled normative topographic distinctions embedded in North/South and industry/agriculture, as well as in legal domains such as that created by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Even the boundaries of relatively invariable entities such as antique maps exist in flux. Black Atlas flows. Foregrounding novels, travelogues, black serials, and national maps published in the period from 1849 to 1900, Madera engages process geography and close reading methodologies to interrogate of dissension (following Michel Foucault) and nonrepresentational geographies (following Bruno Latour) as traverse broad cultural debates on diaspora and hemispheric expansionism. Pinpointing how African American intellectual production maps ways of knowing slavery and Native American removal, for instance, Madera exposes cartographic imagining as a mode of complicity and resistance. Ultimately, Black Atlas situates an agile worldview not on the outskirts but as a hallmark of early black literature and performance. Chapter one, National Geographic: The Writings of William Wells emphasizes Brown's attentiveness to the relationship between travel and subjectivity in Clotel; or, the President s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853). To do so, Madera showcases moments of literary counter-transit in Brown's representation of Quaker homesteads and the Ohio River, as well as in panic such as Vicksburg. Virginia. Panic cartographies are spaces of dissimilitude, straining against their containing form. Madera writes: they are alternately sites of eruption and sites of quietude. But in their form house the potential to undo not only what is close or proximate, but the broader collective (26). Nineteenth-century black authors such as Brown mobilize spatial representation--often regional in scope and riddled with conflict--to contest the jurisdiction of North American law and nation. By juxtaposing midcentury Mississippi and Connecticut, the slave pens of Washington, DC, and labor discord in Richmond, VA, and Brown's striking emblems of place including iron collars, Madera captures the stakes of black self-making-as-world-making in the context of slavery and its aftermath. Indigenes of Territory: Martin Delany and James Beckwourth, the second chapter, pairs a text by an African American writer as eminent as Brown, Martin Delany's Blake: or, the Huts of America (1859-62), with one comparatively less well known, James Beckwourth's The Life and Adventures of James P. …

The Anthropology of Ontology Meets the Writing Culture Debate: Is Reconciliation Possible?

The Anthropology of Ontology Meets the Writing Culture Debate: Is Reconciliation Possible?

All Dressed Up: Modern Irish Historical Pageantry by Joan Fitzpatrick Dean

Joan Fitzpatrick Dean. All Dressed Up: Modern Irish Historical Pageantry. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014. Pp. xvii + 335 + 8 color plates. $39.95. In 2004, Irish theatre scholar Lionel Pilkington called for an expansion of the focus of Irish theatre studies to include more sustained investigations of forms of performance outside of the theatre itself, including mumming, pageantry, and political demonstrations. Dating from William Butler Yeats, Edward Martyn, George Moore, and Lady Augusta Gregory's founding of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899 (which would become the Abbey, Ireland's national theatre), the critical cachet of the playwright and the literary power of the legitimate stage have had remarkable staying power in Ireland, and remain in most cases the go-to method for organizing surveys of the Irish theatre. In the ensuing decade since Pilkington's call to action, the field has certainly expanded in a variety of dynamic ways to meet his challenge. Professor Joan Fitzpatrick Dean's All Dressed Up represents a substantial addition to this discourse, focusing as it does on forms of performance occurring outside the traditional theatre. Her work is the summation of years of primary-source research: Dean has mined a vast array of private papers, newspapers, and archival collections to produce a formidable work that shall certainly remain required reading for anyone interested in examining the complex interplay between historical pageantry and the changing cultural realities of postcolonial Ireland in the twentieth century. Pageantry has been critically discussed in Irish cultural debates before, but in a piecemeal fashion, centering (as Dean notes) on events such as the loyalist parades in Northern Ireland celebrating the Protestant victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 and the various, opposing nationalist commemorations of events such as the 1798 rebellion and the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. All Dressed Up builds on earlier works, such as Mairin Ni Dhonnchadha and Theo Dorgan's collection Revising the Rising (1991) and Ian MacBride's edited collection, History and Memory in Modern Ireland (2001) to provide a more comprehensive examination of how pageantry specifically functioned in a vast array of contexts. Dean also situates her work within contemporary theatre and performance studies debates about the interplay between performance and the literary, text-centered tradition of the legitimate stage. Taking her bearing from Diana Taylors well-known work The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (2003), Dean asserts that the various forms of Irish pageantry that covered the century possessed affective, ludic, and cultural powers (2). Developing alongside the more easily archived, literary works of the legitimate stage, she stresses the popular appeal of pageantry as a barometer of cultural memory: if one asks what theatrical experience was both routine and popular with ordinary Irish people in the twentieth century, pageantry surfaces as a likely candidate (2). More people within that time period saw pageants than saw legitimate plays by several orders of magnitude. Equally influenced by the work of Pierre Nora and his conception of lieux de memoire (places of memory), Dean focuses on where and when these pageants transpired and on the cultural work they were doing in their specific milieus. Although it was generally celebrating] rather than interrogating] the past, Dean maintains that historical pageantry consistently reflected a desire to imagine, understand, or recover the Irish past by dramatizing a narrative (3). Pageants occupied and transformed non-traditional spaces: halls, squares, public parks, and sporting arenas attracted people that might not ever attend a play in a traditional theatre. The pageants' enormous popularity and broad appeal demanded a more sustained examination of the cultural work they were doing in Ireland, and Dean certainly delivers such. …

Między polityką a prawem, czyli o sprawiedliwości okresu przejściowego

Artykuł jest teoretyczną analizą strategii prawnych wprowadzonych w krajach przechodzących transformację polityczną (w państwach postkomunistycznych w Europie, w Australii, w Południowej Afryce), używanych przy radzeniu sobie ze skutkami dawnych reżimów politycznych. Zdaniem autora rozpoczęcie dyskusji na temat zła dawnych reżimów jest ważne dla zwiększenia zaangażowania społeczeństwa w budowaniu nowego ładu prawnego. Prawna «odpłata» jest wyrazem publicznego potępienia popełnionych zbrodni i potwierdza istnienie norm publicznych. Jednak idąc tropem argumentów Judith Shklar i Niklasa Luhmanna, autor ostrzega przed wewnętrznymi ograniczeniami instrumentów prawnych w definiowaniu przestrzeni stosunków społecznych i relacji o charakterze moralnym. Antidotum na ewentualną instrumentalizację prawa dla celów politycznych i dominację regulacji prawnych w sferze publicznej należy w związku z tym szukać w niezależnych badaniach historycznych i debacie kulturowej, która zmierza do głębszego zrozumienia przeszłości.

The urban lighting in the rehabilitation of the minor historical centre. The design scenarios for the architectural valorisation and the energy efficiency improvement of the urban environment

<p>In the last decades, the topic of lighting of the historical minor centres is taking a prominent role in the cultural debate on the urban recovery interventions, because of the development of a greater awareness of the regenerative potential role that a careful planning system of urban lighting can take in this context.</p><p>The latter, which had a purely functional role in the past, has recently taken a figurative and emotional role, associated with the vision of the urban light scene during the night and its valorization.</p><p>The study of light, therefore, has inevitably turned into an instrument of knowledge and critical interpretation of the urban spaces, aimed both to functional recovery of the lighting network technology, and the regeneration of the urban image and its night scenes.</p><p>The needs that this sector should satisfy are multiple and, sometimes, conflicting: the need for road safety, the reduction of light pollution, the need for energy and cost savings.</p><p>The research aims to define an operative methodology to deal with the light planning in complex contexts as the minor historical centers, in which the concept of transformation of the urban scene clashes directly with the concept of preserving the identity features of the places and its constructive values and materials.</p><p>Among the goals, there is therefore the aim of highlighting the main gaps in the network, due both to plant engineering reasons and to the obsolescence of the existing lighting fixtures.</p><p>We operatively work in the urban voids system field, as spaces that characterize the urban scene. Through the knowledge of their dominant features it is possible to preserve their identity and, at the same time, enhance their singularity, with a suitable lighting project, which requires the study of materials, colors and consumption.</p><p>The purpose is to promote an urban development, able to produce positive economic, social and cultural effects, oriented to improve the quality of life, as well as to value the architectural and environmental heritage giving importance to energy and economic saving.</p>

Winx, Orzowei, Pik e altre rappresentazioni della razza. Una prospettiva comparata sui libri per l'infanzia in Italia

Children’s literature seems to occupy a secondary position compared to general literature in terms of relevance for the cultural debate. Actually, being on the margins of ‘serious’ literature allows it to avoid the canonical control over literary appropriateness and to introduce “subversive” elements. As an academic subject, a commercial business and a cultural phenomenon, children’s books move more freely between mass culture, entertainment, and educational environments: they can become the symbol of transnational cultural struggles, as well as unconsciously embodying the functioning of dominant stereotypes and taboos. They can certainly bring to our attention the material factors of their production, distribution and reception, and the ways these are enmeshed in contemporary debates over race and gender. This paper discusses ‘race’ in Italian children’s literature in a comparative perspective, taking into account mainly books and characters, but also cartoons, merchandising, and textbooks. I analyze different processes of racialization: how ‘race’ tends to be suppressed and normalized in commercial products such as The Winx, how it is idealized in works with an educational purpose like the novel Orzowei , by Alberto Manzi, how it is reduced to an easily recognizable stereotype in picturebooks like Pic Badaluk , which borrows the language and images of the colonial fascist era trying to obliterate their implications; and then, how anything that has to do with ‘race’ tends to be identified with social issues and trauma, erasing, for example, the whole post-migrant experience, and limiting access to more interculturally nuanced stories of adventure, experiment and personal growth.

Book Review: Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Individualism in Modern China: The Chenbao Fukan and the New Culture Era, 1918-1929, by Xiaoqun Xu

Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Individualism in Modern China: The Chenbao Fukan and Culture Era, 1918-1929. Xiaoqun Xu. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014. 254 pp. $23.70 pbk.In this book, Xiaoqun Xu explores complicated interactions between and nationalism in Chinese intellectual life by examining history of journalism in early 20th-century China. It is a thought-provoking addition to rapidly expanding body of literature on history of modern Chinese mass media, cultural globalization, and discourse on nature of Chinese nationalism/internationalism. To explain current trends in intellectual discourse among Chinese media and intelligentsia, author focuses his research in turbulent 1920s, which he claims are essential to understanding Chinese history and culture.Xiaoqun Xu is a professor of history at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. He specializes in history of Chinese modernization and intellectual discourse. In work under review, Xu addresses three important questions: Which materials were published in The Chenbao Fukan? What was role played by this newspaper supplement in growing Chinese print media, in forming and informing the and public opinion? And what does all this say about historical significance of cultural era in China?The six chapters of monograph discuss various aspects of what author calls New Cultural Era spanning 1918 to 1928, post-World War I years that saw consolidation of China as a republic and an emerging modern nation-state (the Chinese Empire was abolished in 1911). The issue of media and cultural globalization in China has of course been quite intensively researched by both Western and Chinese scholars (Doug Guthrie 2006, Huike Wen 2013, etc.). Yet, Xiaoqun Xu believes he can offer a fresh look at political and cultural discourses through analysis of a single, but very influential media outlet: The Chenbao Fukan, literary supplement to Morning Post newspaper published in Beijing. He argues that importance of The Fukan derives from the growing role of newspaper supplements in shaping men and women's reading habits and engaging their political, intellectual and literary interest. In turn, emerging media contributed significantly to influencing opinion on various issues, such as rising nationalism and what he terms cosmopolitanism and individualism throughout new cultural era.The book conceptualizes dynamics of political and intellectual history, and specifically history of Chinese journalism, by utilizing content analysis and case studies of The Chenbao Fukan. The first chapter deals with background of cultural debates in China in general and its capital Beijing in particular, and role of Chinese media in these debates. In addition, Xu looks at editorial policy of newspaper, attempting to explain how and why The Chenbao Fukan became so popular and influential. Chapter 2 assesses emergence of three important topics in newspaper: cosmopolitanism, nationalism, and what author calls Colonial hierarchy. …

Children, Adolescents, and the Media: Ten Mistakes We've Made and How to Fix Them.

Preface Barbara Wilson Introduction Dorothy G. Singer Chapter 1 Children and Adolescents: Unique Audiences Media Enviornment and Habits of Today's Youth Children Are Different From Adults Children Are Different from Each Other Adolescents Are Different From Children Develpomental Differences in Processing the Mass Media Conclusion Exercises References Chapter 2 Advertising Historical Changes in Advertising to Children Content Analyses of Television Advertising Cognitive Processing of Advertising Persuasive Impact of Advertising Phases of Consumer Behavior During Childhood Marketing Strategies in the 21st Century Regulation of Advertising Targeted to Youth Teaching Advertising LIteracy Conclusion Exercises References Chapter 3 Educational Media Economic and Regulatory Forces That Affect Educational Media Children's Learning From Media Learning to Learn From Media Conclusion Exercises References Chapter 4 Prosocial Effects of Media Prosocial Media for Adolescents National and International Prosocial Efforts Ratings Exercises References Chapter 5 Media Violence How Violent Are American Media? Does Media Violence Attract Youth? Can Media Violence Lead to Aggression? Can Media Violence Desensitize Young People? Can Media Violence Produce Fear? Cultural Debates About Media Violence Guns and the Media Suicide and the Media Marketing Violence to Youth Government Regulation of Media Violence Japan Verses the United States: A Cross-Cultural Comparision Can Media Violence Have Positive Effects? Conclusion Exercises References Chapter 6 Sexuality and the Media Background Television as a Source of Sexual Information What Do Children and Teenagers Learn From Television? Why Teenagers May Be Particularly Susceptible to Sexual Content in the Media Movies Questionable Language and Taste in Movies and Television: A New Trend? Print Media The Nature of the Research Prosocial Sexual Content on Television Contraceptive Advertising Pornography Solutions Conclusion: Unanswered Questions Exercises References Chapter 7 Drugs and the Media Adolescent Drug Use Determinants of Child and Adolescent Drug Use Impact of Advertising on Children and Adolescents Cigarettes Alcohol Drugs Solutions Exercises References Chapter 8 Rock Music and Music Videos Rock 'n' Roll Music How Teenagers Use Music Music Videos and Music Television (MTV) Conclusion Exercises References Chapter 9 Eating and Eating Disorders Food Advertisements The Impact of Food Advertisements on Behavior Food in Television Programming and Movies Food Advertised in Schools Does Television Viewing Increase Childhood Obesity? Eating Disorders and Body Image Disordered Body Image Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Conclusion Solutions Exercises References Chapter 10 Video Games Definitions The Development of Video Games Time Commitment Why Are Video Games Popular? Game Preference Game Ratings A Closer Look at Violent Video Games The Importance of a Preference for Violent Video Games Research on the Effects of Playing Violent Video Games A Brief Word About Online Games Video Games and Health The Positive Potential of Video Games Video Games and Education Implications for Public Policy and for Parents Exercises References Chapter 11 The Internet Are Children and Adolescents Using the Internet? Are Parents Concerned? The Internet: What Is It? Concerns About the Net Sex on the Net: A Primary Concern Advertising Food Products to Children: The Latest Concern Other Areas of Concern Solutions to Internet Concerns On the Positive Side Conclusion Exercises References Chapter 12 The Family and Media The Home as a Multimedia Environment Socialization to Media Use Within the Family Context Parental Mediation of Children's Media Use Theoretical Perspectives Reducing Screen Time in the Home Exercises References Chapter 13 Media Literacy/Media Education: Solution to Big Media Demands for Change Big Media: Part of the Solution? Defining Media Literacy Media Education Uses of Media Literacy Does Media Literacy Work? Reviewing the Literature Teaching Media Literacy Skills Media Literacy and Public Health: Tobacco, Alcohol, and Drugs Use of Emotion Conundrum: Big Money Media Literacy and Public Health: Nutrition and Obesity Media Literacy and Public Health: Body Image Media Literacy and Violence Violence: Changing the Media Diet Violence: Coviewing and Mediation Media Literacy Programs as Violence Intervention Using Media Productions Channel One: The Largest Media Literacy Experiment Channel One's Media Literacy Curriculum The Research on Channel One Media Literacy and Parents Media Literacy and Corporate Funding Teaching Media Literacy Content of Media Literacy Student-Produced Anti-Ads Skills of Media Literacy A Sample Deconstruction Media Literacy Production Creating Counter-Ads Activism and Media Education Summary Exercises References

The battle to open Australia's airwaves: the Whitlam government and youth station 2JJ

Australia's public youth radio station, Triple J, turns forty in 2015. The station was one of the few achievements to arise from the Whitlam government's intended bold, wide-sweeping media reforms. Radio was seen as a vehicle for strengthening the nation's democracy through improving citizen access to, and participation in, national political and cultural debate. Expansion of the media industry was also viewed by the Whitlam government as key to increasing employment opportunities. However, the challenging political environment, debates about the technical capacity for media expansion, and an economic recession reduced the grand plan for broadcast reform to something much more cautious, including 2JJ, a rock-style station. Since then, 2JJ has undergone multiple transformations in response to changing technologies, political agendas and audience tastes. In 1980, Double Jay moved to the FM band and became known as Triple J. By the late 1980s, Triple J was broadcasting beyond Sydney to capital cities and then, throughout the 1990s, rolled out to regional Australia to realise the National Youth Network. This paper considers the rather fraught campaign by the Whitlam government to open Australia's airwaves, which eventually led to the birth of Australia's first youth radio station.

Nat Turner and the Work of Enthusiasm

The discourse of enthusiasm in the antebellum United States played a pivotal role in cultural debates surrounding the right of black people to participate in the “age of Revolution,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson called the era in 1837. This argument is explored through the textual archive of Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831). During this period, enthusiasm could refer to either a democratic-sublime or a fanatical-delusional passion for freedom. The term was applied to Turner pejoratively, not so much because his rebellion represented an instance of wild fanaticism to white audiences but because it represented an instance of familiar democratic revolt inadmissibly claimed by black people. Turner makes his own rhetorical claims for the meaning of enthusiasm: the word signifies an ardent zeal that inspires both direct dissent against slavery and acts of communication that transmit to readers a fervor for occluded black freedoms.