Blending Of Genres Research Articles

Friendships on the stage: co-writing feminist theatrical accounts

ABSTRACT We, as friends, feminists, and Early Career Academics, explore the complex interplay between friendships and the Neoliberal University through an experimental genre blending text: a collaborative performance combining duoethnographic theater, poetry and artistic-academic writings. We offer intimate, embodied insights on friendships – between academics, between academics and non-academics, and between writers and readers. Our work exposes the ambiguity of friendships in the Neoliberal University. Friendship as affective relations without a predefined time frame and purpose is depicted as a danger to be contained, reflecting the denial of relationality in knowledge production. An instrumental framing of friendship is promoted and sustains the normative control of workers and the exploitation of care. Despite these challenges, critical, careful friendships are indispensable for academics to navigate the Neoliberal University's physical and mental consequences. To resist collectively and prefigure alternatives, i.e. for the Caring University to emerge, we need to push the boundaries of friendships.

New Trends in Arabic Novels in the Current Era

This study explores the new trends in contemporary Arabic novels, analyzing the thematic and stylistic shifts that characterize modern Arabic literature. The research highlights several emerging trends, including the diversification of themes, stylistic innovation, cultural hybridity, and the integration of technology into narrative forms. The study discusses how modern Arabic novels have expanded beyond traditional topics like love and politics to include more complex issues such as identity, migration, gender, and the impact of globalization. Stylistically, there has been a move towards more experimental approaches, with authors adopting fragmented structures, multi-layered narratives, and blending of genres. The incorporation of cultural influences from the West and the East has also enriched the content of Arabic novels, reflecting the multicultural experiences of modern Arab writers. Additionally, the use of digital platforms and technologies in storytelling is reshaping the narrative landscape, offering new methods for engaging readers. Through an analytical lens, this study offers a comprehensive look at how Arabic novels are evolving to reflect contemporary societal changes and global cultural interactions.

Alechinsky zien zoals een dichter een merel ziet

The poems written by Hugo Claus (1929-2008) to accompany the work of Cobra artists are abundantly documented and analyzed. In addition to those poems, however, Claus also wrote prose about his artist friends, which until now has remained under-researched in literary studies. ‘Dertien manieren om een fragment van Alechinsky te zien’ (‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Fragment of Alechinsky’) appeared as a catalog text on the occasion of Pierre Alechinsky’s exhibition at the Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, which took place from March 22 to April 29, 1963. In my contribution, I demonstrate how Claus employs intertextuality and genre blending to play an ironic game with conventional art criticism. His investigative, multiperspectival view of Alechinsky’s work offers a creative and critical response to the academic or journalistic interpretation of art.

Scripted resonance or lost in translation?: Storytelling and Chinese reception of Everything Everywhere All at Once

This study delves into the intricate art of screenwriting by critically examining the reception of the 2023 award-winning film, Everything Everywhere All at Once, among Chinese audiences. Notwithstanding its international laurels, Everything has sparked a divided sentiment in Mainland China. While its audacious blend of genres and the poignant depiction of Chinese–American experiences have been recognized, Everything was absent from Chinese theatres, owing to its explicit content. However, its digital footprint on Chinese streaming platforms has painted a picture of ambivalence. Many Chinese viewers expressed reservations about the screenwriters’ frequent use of pop culture references, perceived narrative clichés and the incorporation of elements that seem discordant with conventional Chinese storytelling. Yet, interspersed among these critiques is admiration for its visual brilliance and inclusivity. Grounded in resonance theory, this study scrutinizes Everything, particularly the screenplay’s reliance on the oft-touted ‘universal’ blueprint of the Hero’s Journey. Aligning with critiques suggesting such frameworks might be culturally myopic, this study connects these screenwriting choices to the lukewarm reception among Chinese audiences. Through this lens, the study offers invaluable insights for screenwriters keen on crafting narratives that resonate deeply with Chinese viewers. Moreover, it adds to the larger conversation about the need for diversifying screenwriting templates on the global stage, challenging the dominance of western-centric paradigms such as the Hero’s Journey. At its core, this study deciphers the intricate tapestry of screenwriting elements that strike a chord within the Chinese sociocultural milieu.

Why Triptych? Promoting Student Engagement with Counternarratives via Genre Blending

A new subtype of multigenre paper helps students in both dominant and nondominant groups to connect with counternarratives.

Mapping globalised Chinese webnovels: Genre blending, cultural hybridity, and the complexity of transcultural storytelling

Recent years have seen a significant surge in the global popularity of Chinese webnovels as an emerging form of participatory transcultural storytelling. This research combines computational and interpretive textual analysis to map the cultural features embedded in webnovel content, aiming to identify the genre elements, common lexicon, and story themes of 4040 translated Chinese webnovels on global platforms. The analysis shows the hybridisation of Chinese cultures, digital cultures, and genre fiction elements in webnovel storytelling, contributing to the growing spectrum of diverse voices in international self-publishing. Simultaneously, webnovels depict a varied mosaic of imagined China, based on both cultural sharing and nonsharing within today's complex Chinese society and beyond the notion of ‘Chineseness’ rooted in common heritage or official values, amplifying diverse perspectives like subcultures and resistances in transcultural storytelling. While webnovels bear witness to China's cultural outreach and digital prowess converging in a new storytelling form, this research posits that their cultural production remains bound within a material process where borderless digital cultures collide with the imposed boundaries of platformed publishing and government control.

Stars and Smoke by Marie Lu

Reviewed by: Stars and Smoke by Marie Lu Aaren Tucker Lu, Marie Stars and Smoke. Roaring Brook, 2023 [336p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781250852816 $19.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781250852809 $11.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 9-12 Nineteen-year-old Winter Young may be the biggest pop superstar in the world, but all the fame and attention can’t make up for the love he craves from his distant mother or the loss of his older brother. When he’s approached by a private spy agency, Panacea, Winter seizes upon the chance to do a selfless good deed: help Panacea infiltrate the criminal organization of Eli Morrison—one of the most wanted men in the world—by performing at his daughter’s birthday party. Meanwhile, Sydney Cossette became a Panacea agent to escape her dismal home life; as the youngest agent, her job is everything to her and now she has a chance at promotion, but it all depends on posing as the bodyguard to Winter, who she assumes will be as shallow and helpless as other celebrities she’s met. Winter manages to impress Sydney during his crash course in spying, but the sparks flying between them will only be a distraction in the dangerous business of international espionage. Lu packs a lot of fun, excitement, and surprises into this spy novel/celebrity romance mash-up with an over-the-top C-drama worthy plot and messy family dynamics. The fantasy of a larger-than-life pop idol hero is balanced by Winter’s heart and vulnerability, and there’s depth and a great partnership between Sydney’s edgy Kim Possible and Winter’s pop star James Bond, both in the field and off. The enemies-to-partners-to-lovers romance and genre blending will ensure this book has wide appeal. Copyright © 2023 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Жанровый сдвиг в «Чернильной трилогии» Корнелии Функе

The “Tintentrilogie” by Cornelia Funke is one of the most well-known works of German fantasy literature. It is meant for children and teenagers, but the first part differs from its sequels as this article demonstrates. The first book of the trilogy strictly follows the canons of children’s literature while the second and the third ones incorporate significant elements of epic fantasy. Such blending of genres allows to expand the reading audience and to treat more seriously the subjects brought up in the text.

Re-Evaluating the Roots of Arabesk Music: Grup Metronom

Grup Metronom played a leading role in the development of Turkish arabesk music during the 1970s. Delineating the social and musical relationships within the Band reveals a new perspective on genre blending, challenging the received view of the history of arabesk. Based on in-depth interviews with prominent actors who shaped the scene and witnessed the historical process, the article attempts to illuminate how a group of musicians with diverse backgrounds-from makam (both folk and art), jazz, and Western symphonic traditions- interacted, performed and were perceived by other musicians in the cultivation of arabesk music, thus challenging the assumption that arabesk music was pioneered by a group of marginal musicians who shared a common cultural ground. The argument is also supported by the musical analysis of selected works to define musical tendencies and eclectic structures. Text analysis (e.g., lyrics, melodic contour, scale, and form), performance analysis (arrangement, orchestration, vocal and instrumental interpretation, and timbre), and other musical inputs (recording, use of decorative sounds, and mix) constitute most of the stylistic interpretations in the paper. The article also attempts to elaborate issues related to Arabic influence on arabesk music; and ground some of them through the stories of the actors in the case and analysis of the sonic environment in their products.

Communication-Oriented Approach to Media and Genre Blending in a Sample of Early Modern English Poetry

The article uses an interdisciplinary approach to selected early modern poems of JohnDonne and aims to delineate the research area which still awaits systematic exploration.The textual analysis of his elegy: The Comparison, operating within the communicationorientedtheory of genre blending, leads to the detection of its multigeneric and dialogicpatterns. It reveals the intricate manner in which features and functions of various literaryand non-literary forms are intertwined and harmonized in one poem. It is also arguedthat Donne’s elegy derives its imagery from an experimental trend toward caricatures(grotesquery) followed by the 15th/16th-century portraitists and genre painters. The general conclusion is that Donne utilizes various, then available, communication channelsto ensure intermediality of his message and that his concept presupposes certain cognitiveand creative processes on the addressee’s side.

To Laugh or to Cry? Ambiguity and Humour in Jason's Graphic Novels

The paper offers a reading of Jason’s use of sparsity, seriousness, and reduction as a concealment of a technique that is based on multifaceted ambiguity involving the blending of genres, a playfully intertextual attitude, and surprising emotional depth of character and story. It discusses the connection between humour and visual, textual, and structural ambiguity in Jason’s works, as well as ambivalence in the reader’s response, illustrates Jason’s combination of incongruous genres and simultaneous employment of motifs from children’s literature and various genre movies (such as science fiction, crime thrillers, heist movies, and horrors), and explores Jason’s technique of subverting expectations of comic relief by withholding certain structural parts of a joke (typically a punchline) or inserting an unexpected element (such as psychological depth).

Critique of Data Visualisation, Graphic Medicine and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Data sets were plentifully used in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although they were utilized for documentation, policy formulation, course correction, and research among others, data sets relentlessly reduced human beings to mere numbers and glossed over the affective and emotional experiences which characterize our lived experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. Quarrelling with such decontextualized, depersonalized, and hegemonic impacts of data, graphic medicine while not entirely dismissive of the performative authority of data, criticizes and supplements data only to arrive at a complex model of data. Using close reading of comic panels created by Andy Warner, Sarah Firth, and Randall Munroe, the present article demonstrates how graphic medicine imagines different ways of engaging data through enfolding the social/individual and structures of feeling to convey the embodied nature of our existence. Put differently, graphic medicine rematerializes and reclaims the individuals from datasets through a process which we call “redrawing.” Redrawing is a textual practice and strategic engagement with the authority of visual/verbal discourses and its attendant technologies through rhetorical operations of irony, satire and genre blending among others. The article concludes by emphasizing the need to humanize, contextualize, and sensitively present data so as to convey the collective, entangled and affective nature of our existence.

Rushing to Judgement: Houellebecq’s Soumission as Formative Fiction

Abstract With his 2015 novel, Soumission, Michel Houellebecq entered the debate, yet again, over the place of Islam in France, this time inspiring defences and condemnations of his depiction of a dystopian Islamic French future. This postsecular novel also intervenes in an academic debate within the field of postsecular studies: the question of passing judgement upon other cultures. In light of Houellebecq’s novel, this article re-examines the question of postsecular judgement as it has been treated by Judith Butler, Talal Asad, and Saba Mahmood. Using Joshua Landy’s idea of ‘formative fiction’, I show how the novel’s blend of genres and thematic treatment of judgement invites readers to train their capacities to slow down their pace of judgement in order to consider the ethical ramifications of judgement itself. Landy’s approach not only sheds light on an overlooked ethical dimension of the novel, it also reconciles the novel’s form with its sensational content, revealing a common thread between Houellebecq’s novel, Landy’s formative approach, and postsecular studies.

Cohesion and Genre Blending in Prophetic Literature, Using Amos 5 as a Case Study

This study draws on Systemic Functional Linguistics and Cognitive Theory to explore genre blending in Amos 5. It demonstrates that Amos 5 is both a plausibly cohesive and coherent text, and that the text is made up of sub-sections of identifiably distinct genres of prophetic literature.

The “tricky business” of genre blending: Tensions between frames of school mathematics and video game play

ABSTRACT Background Educational video games are increasingly used in classrooms because they can offer meaningful contexts for problem solving. However, educational video games bring together two historically disparate activities: school mathematics and video games. How these two activities complement, compromise, or contradict each other influences how mathematical activity takes shape during game play. Methods This paper offers a case analysis of two students: one who engages with the mathematics as intended by the game and is easily seen as on task, and a second who seems to reject the mathematics as intended by the game and is easily seen as off task. The analysis focuses on how each student’s frame of activity influences their mathematical activity during game play. Findings Findings suggest that, considered from their own frame of activity instead of the frame of the design, both students appear engaged in mathematical sensemaking, albeit in different ways: one as intended by the designer, the other as emerging from game play. Contribution By highlighting potential tensions between these official and unofficial frames, this paper contributes to continued reflections on task designs that incorporate youth culture such as video gaming to make mathematics classrooms more inviting to students.

Becoming Beethoven: Theorizing Bonner Zeit Transitions

Beethoven wrote about thirty sonata movements before leaving Bonn. Often disparaged as awkward (when not neglected entirely), these pieces deserve rehabilitation for the insights they can bring to the composer's masterworks. Influenced by local Rhenish models—Christian Gottlob Neefe, Andrea Luchesi, and Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel, the Bonner Zeit music imbues a galant style with Empfindsam colorings, producing an idiosyncratic approach to transitions and genre blending—particularly involving cue play surrounding multiple medial caesuras, elisions, phrase expansions, and undermined secondary themes—that responds immediately to Janet Schmalfeldt's perspective on the process of becoming as well as a mix of ideas from Heinrich Schenker, William Caplin, and the work of James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy, all applied here. Three of Beethoven's Bonn sonatas, as well as several works by Rhineland contemporaries, are given close study for their transition-related harmony, voice leading, phrase rhythm, topics, and formal implications.

Alternate World Building: Retrofuturism and Retrophilia in Steampunk and Dieselpunk Narratives

This essay draws on William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s steampunk and alternate history novel The Difference Engine (1990) and Len Deighton’s dieselpunk and alternate history thriller SS-GB (1978) for the purpose of discussing the blurring of genres within speculative fiction and addressing retrofuturism and retrophilia within an alternate world building framework. Thus, it provides a background for the analysis of the concept of genre blending and the merging of pre-determined tropes and topics within the scope of science fiction, fantasy, adventure and mystery plots so as to characterize alternate history as a blended genre.

L’uomo è l’animale irritato. Una rilettura distopico-odeporica de Il pianeta irritabile di Paolo Volponi

Author(s): Pifferi, Stefano | Abstract: Looking at italian contemporary literature, specifically novels, there are some literary works that emerges with predominance for their precursory blend of genres and also socio-cultural perspectives. This is the case of Paolo Volponi’s Il pianeta irritabile, a sort of stratified novel in which sci-fi, fable, bildungsroman, allegory, social complaint, experimentation on language, philosophy enquiries etc. form a new way of analyzing the complexity of a modernity totally involved in an economic and capitalistic trend, renewing the idea of a literature that is conflict and also a warning for the future generations. This paper intends to address and often overlooked issue for an approach to the Volponi’s novel that is at the same time a dystopian one, for the environmental issue, for example, but also for the “post-apocalyptic” point of view, but especially an hodoeporic one, because the macro-phenomenon of voyage intended as a transformation force is an undeniable fulcrum of the entire novel.

Fake News as Discursive Integration: An Analysis of Sites That Publish False, Misleading, Hyperpartisan and Sensational Information

ABSTRACTAfter the 2016 US presidential election, the concept of fake news captured popular attention, but conversations lacked a clear conceptualization and used the label in elastic ways to describe various distinct phenomena. In this paper, we analyze fake news as genre blending, combining elements of traditional news with features that are exogenous to normative professional journalism: misinformation, sensationalism, clickbait, and bias. Through a content analysis of stories published by 50 sites that have been labeled fake news and the engagement they generated on social media, we found that stories employed moderate levels of sensationalism, misinformation and partisanship to provide anti-establishment narratives. Complete fabrications were uncommon and did not resonate well with audiences, although there was some truth-stretching that came with genre blending. Results suggest that technocentric solutions aimed at detecting falsehoods are likely insufficient, as fake news is defined more by partisanship and identity politics than misinformation and deception.

“Salve atque vale, aselle.” Satire and Consolation in Laura Cereta’s In asinarium funus oratio

The humanist Laura Cereta of Brescia (1469-1499) produced during her lifetime one collection of letters and a Latin dialogue entitled asinarium funus oratio (Oration on the Funeral of a Donkey). In this dialogue, Cereta herself appears as the chief interlocutor, consoling the donkey’s owners with a blend of ancient philosophies. This paper will further the understanding of Cereta’s Oratio in three ways: first, by placing it in the context of the humanist and classical genres of dialogue, consolation, and satirical encomium; second, by considering the relevance of the donkey to the work as a whole; and finally, by exploring Cereta’s reception of classical authors in the context of her consolation. The paper argues that Cereta’s blending of genres and use of a donkey as the subject of her oration work to create a safe space for the humanist woman to showcase her rhetorical talents.