Hegemonic Norms Research Articles

EMBRACING THE QUEER ART OF FAILURE IN GERONTOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

Abstract Halberstam describes the queer art of failure as a performance of dissidence in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer plus (LGBTQ+) people willing reject traditional conceptualizations of success. Yet, dominant theoretical frameworks in gerontology are predicated upon notions of success and productivity which may be problematic for understanding the life trajectories of LGBTQ+ people. The use of such heteronormative frameworks has implications for gerontological research in two important ways: 1) Research methods and researchers themselves may be constrained by the normative expectations placed on LGBTQ+ people and 2) Heteronormative frameworks obscure the nuance of LGBTQ+ older adults’ lived experiences and may limit important contributions to gerontological knowledge. This symposium applies the queer art of failure to examine LGBTQ+ aging scholarship that deviates from traditional research and education. Speaker one shares experiences from LGBTQ+ individuals facing dementia, using concepts that counter framing dementia as pathology and decline. Speaker two discusses how participants’ preferences for receiving research results via found poetry may reflect LGBTQ+ participants’ natural inclination to question hegemonic norms. Speaker three describes collaborating with a coalition of LGBTQ+ older adults of color on a participatory action research study, detailing how epistemic tensions shaped the research in unexpected ways. Speaker four discusses how institutional failure led to enthusiasm for LGBTQ+ curriculum development, student mentoring, and knowledge production. These presentations suggest that the inclusion of diverse conceptualizations of success and productivity should inform future aging scholarship, as they may center the experiences of historically marginalized populations such as LGBTQ+ older adults.

‘Complaining’, ‘campaigning’, and everything in between: media coverage of pay equity in women’s tennis in 1973 and 2007

This paper analyzes the media coverage of pay equity in women’s tennis in three newspapers during the 1973 U.S. Open and 2007 Wimbledon tournaments, the first and last Grand Slams to offer equal pay. Through a feminist textual analysis of over 100 articles, this study shows that journalists portrayed the female athletes involved in the pay equity conversations in 2007 as empowered advocates, marking an important shift from the ‘emotional’ and ‘demanding’ descriptions reporters applied to women in 1973. This research ultimately explores the role that the media plays in reflecting and reproducing hegemonic norms around pay equity through representations of leading women athlete activists in the press.

Rethinking Masculinities: Challenging Hegemonic Norms and Embracing Diversity

This paper critically examines the conventional understanding of masculinity, emphasizing the need to transcend hegemonic norms and embrace diverse expressions of gender identity. The introduction highlights the pervasive issue of gender egalitarianism being overshadowed by a focus on women's rights, perpetuating stagnation in perceptions of masculinity. The paper proceeds to challenge the notion of an unchanging and authentic practice of masculinity, known as "the male role," exploring the impact of hegemonic masculinity on subordinated forms. Chapters delve into the complexities of the sexed body, questioning innate versus nurtured perspectives on masculinity, and highlighting the role of societal influence and social practice. The study also explores the dynamics of masculinity concerning ethnology, social class, and race, advocating for an inclusive approach that transcends biological determinism. Furthermore, the paper discusses the evolution of new thinking around masculinity, dissecting the implications of hegemonic masculinity on men's mental health and family dynamics. The concluding chapter emphasizes the dynamic nature of masculinity, urging a departure from rigid stereotypes and encouraging a more inclusive understanding shaped by self-identification and personal decision-making. Overall, the paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on gender by challenging traditional paradigms and promoting a nuanced and adaptable conceptualization of masculinity in contemporary society.

Female Subjectivities in the Words, Music, and Images of Progressive Metal

Heavy metal scholarship affirms the genre to be dominated by male performers and points to a preponderance of patriarchal values and hypermasculinity, with performances contributing to an aesthetic production of misogyny, power, and intensity. The notion of heavy metal as a hegemonic discourse has been queried, however, by recent scholars who reveal metal to support a range of gendered and sexualized subjectivities. This paper examines how a specific metal vocalist—Tatiana Shmayluk (of the Ukrainian band Jinjer)—navigates the discourse of progressive metal to challenge hegemonic norms and create space for alternative female subjectivities. Jinjer’s defiance of genre boundaries and Shmayluk’s metal vocal expression emerge through a multi-faceted dialogue with an array of cultural references. To illuminate the unique blend of referentiality and creative expression within Jinjer’s work, this article offers analyses of three music videos: “I Speak Astronomy,” “Perennial,” and “Pit of Consciousness.” With the aim of understanding how Shmayluk navigates the discursive space of metal music, the selected songs are situated in relation to the subgenres to which they refer, and specifically to male-fronted metal bands that mobilize similar thematic materials. The close readings of these music videos are grounded in the existing analytic literature on metal music, with consideration of genre-based compositional, stylistic, and expressive elements to unveil Shmayluk’s challenges to the constraints upon “femininity” in metal music.

The lived experiences of women workers in Africa's transport sector: Reflections from Abuja, Cape Town and Tunis

This paper draws on ethnographic research conducted 2019–2022 in three quite diverse city regions - Abuja, Cape Town and Tunis - to understand women's lived experiences of work in the road transport sector. The strength of connection between male identity and motor-mobility in Africa is ubiquitous and has rarely been questioned by transport sector actors. Women are still largely absent from the story, constrained at least partly by hegemonic norms of femininity and an ‘affective atmosphere’ that deters female entry. However, there are occasional cases across Africa where women have dared to disrupt this masculinist enterprise, either as employees or entrepreneurs. This study explores and compares women transport workers' everyday experiences, drawing principally on in-depth interviews with those in customer-facing roles (taxi and bus drivers, bus conductors). Relevant public sector organisations and major transport employers were also consulted, while focus groups with community groups of men and women explored their attitudes to women employed as transport workers, and with school-girls investigated their career aspirations and views regarding employment in the sector. A final section looks to the future, post-COVID-19. Although new opportunities occasionally emerge for women, they need much more support, not only in terms of skills training, but also through flexible working opportunities, union recognition and action, microfinance and financial management training. This support is essential in order to expand the visibility of women transport workers and thus make the wider transport milieu less overwhelmingly male and more welcoming to women transport users.

Addressing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity Contributions in Academic Review.

The nursing profession and academic environments are increasingly calling for nurse educators to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals and actions into their professional practice. Such work aligns with institutional and professional missions of social justice and antiracism. Historically, there has been an undervaluing and lack of recognition in academia of DEI contributions and qualitative or community-based research focused on health equity. This lack of recognition may disproportionately impact faculty who focus their scholarship and research on marginalized communities. The current state of the academic review of DEI contributions for appointment, promotion, and tenure is presented. Examples for teaching, research and scholarship, practice, and service are provided. Recommendations include expanding recognition and evaluation of academic scholarship and advocacy against efforts to dismantle social justice and antiracism advances within academia. Examining hegemonic norms is vital to promote more equitable power structures in academic environments.

The ritualistic death in (and of) the male friendship: Dismembering embodiments of inter-male homosocial relationships in Beastars

Bromance in media often poses as a farce, but, oddly, also fortifies queer intimacies among men. According to Michael DeAngelis (2014), bromance acts with a dual function: ideologically and mythically. It plays a crucial role in representations of male-to-male friendship through its paradoxical capacity to both reinforce hegemonic norms and refuse heteronormative ideal for men. Imaginative illustrations of the antinomy of bromance is seen in anime, or Japanese animated cartoons whose most popular genre, shonen, depicts the hybridized goal of bromance to solidify male homosociality that often gets borderline homoerotic (if viewed through a queer lens). To demonstrate the hybridized capacity of bromance in media, this study presents a metaphorical analysis of the bromantic inter-male homosocial bonds in Beastars (Matsumi, 2019-2021), an anime featuring anthropomorphic animals. From an analysis based on bromance media studies, three thematic metaphors emerged: proximity, perversity, and concealment. These metaphors illustrate a reverence to “soft masculinity,” an East-Asia-formulated androgynous male performance which indirectly dismantle hegemonic representations of men by preventing the figurative death of the male-on-male friendship at the hands of the heteronormative gaze.

Social–Emotional Learning Through Adventure Education in PETE: Strategies for PETE Faculty

The affective domain can be difficult to teach and define and is underactualized in Physical Education (PE) and Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE). Through the lens of Occupational Socialization Theory (OST), affective domain issues are understood as more significant problems within the PE enterprise, starting with PETE faculty members’ training and acculturation into PE of decades-old approaches and conceptions of the subject. Literature indicates that Pre-Service Teachers (PSTs) need more experience participating and teaching affective-based curriculum models and pedagogical content like Adventure Education (AE) during PETE. When PETE and thus secondary PE programs are ruled by the hegemonic norm of multi-sport-based activities, they can miss the mark on cultural competency and teaching and assessing the affective domain. By giving PETE PSTs affective-based experiences as participants and facilitators, PSTs may have more holistic perspectives (learning and teaching through all three domains of learning) and may become more culturally competent teachers. This paper provides four strategies to implement AE within PETE programs and requirements of sequencing. As PETE evolves and improves content and delivery mechanisms to meet learners’ needs (PSTs and students in K-12 PE), the propensity for change in the enterprise of PE increases as positive benefits of affective-based teaching ripple through generations of new students acculturated into the field every day.

Multiculturalism in the Design Work of Indonesian Women Designers

Multiculturalism has become a prominent issue in media communication, serving as both a communication strategy and a form of awareness for creators, particularly in visual communication design media. Most of the previous findings on the study of multiculturalism in the media suggest that different cultural backgrounds must be considered for global brands to reach diverse markets since visual language is not universal. In addition, other studies explore the interpretation of multiculturalism ideas in the media and practice participatory design research to communicate multiculturalism value through visual communication media. Nevertheless, in Indonesia, the interpretation study of multiculturalism in designs, especially those created by women designers, as a manifestation of multiculturalism awareness seems to be underexplored. To narrow the gap, this study uses the visual semiotic theory of Roland Barthes to investigate the multicultural significance represented in visual images in the work of Indonesian women designers by outlining the levels of denotative and connotative meanings which develop into myth. This research reveals that the idea of multiculturalism in the design work of Nita Darsono and Sanchia Hamidjaja can provide other counter-knowledge in representing the diversity amongst the hegemony of a single and standardized body myth, such as white skin, ideal body, and race, in media. This approach better understands the audiences and appreciates cultural diversity. Overall, this study sheds light on the importance of multiculturalism in visual communication design media, particularly in representing diversity and challenging hegemonic norms. It highlights the need for more research in this area, particularly from underrepresented perspectives, such as women designers in Indonesia.

Shame and Adult Learners

In this paper, I explore the ways that educators can nurture transformative learning for adult students by engaging emotions, particularly shame. I discuss how shame mitigates adult student experiences, successes, and failures in higher education, and how a relational pedagogy of vulnerability can support adult learners. This approach not only helps adult learners but reifies liberatory education for students and teachers alike, challenging hegemonic norms in higher education that often limit and exclude adult learners.

“[She] was very eager for men and hated living alone”: Supernatural Women who Pose a Threat to Men in Icelandic Legends

This article examines the ways in which various supernatural women who pose threats to men are presented in the Icelandic folk legend collections from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses on narratives dealing with both female trolls and “hidden” women (elves) that appear to present a danger to male hegemony because of how they challenge the ruling ideology of the time with regard to femininity and sexuality. As the article demonstrates, in most cases, the legends show these threats being mitigated. The article therefore argues that these legends can be read as reinforcing the idea that women should not be tempted to violate hegemonic norms regarding femininity. 

Noise Strike

Noise is said to disturb, disorient, and confuse, but this article looks specifically at the figure of noise “striking” – rather than, say, a rumbling or murmuring disquiet – us to examine its potential to unsettle European liberal hegemonic norms of ordering society and the inequalities they produce. In particular, it focuses on noisy protest, rebellion, and riot which might “awaken” citizens to these injustices and efforts to suppress them. Drawing on work of Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, Lauren Berlant, Fred Moten, Jacques Derrida, and Catherine Malabou, this article replays and dislodges the long-standing distinction between noise and logos by examining the transformative capacity of noise as something differential that inserts inconvenience into non-relational forms of sovereignty.

In Relation or Nah? A Review of Black Trans Feminism by Marquis Bey

In Relation or Nah? A Review of <i>Black Trans Feminism</i> by Marquis Bey

Politics of ambivalence: how Zhou Shen’s androgyny survives under Xi Jinping

ABSTRACT Since the recent state crackdown on effeminate stars labeled as niangpao (sissy pants), “insufficient” masculinity has once again become a focus of political controversy in China. Among these stars, Zhou Shen, a male pop singer known for his feminized voice and image, continues to enjoy immense popularity and perform in official programs. His growing fame and tolerance by the state call into question his cultural-political strategy. Conceptualizing Zhou’s androgynous performance as a political effect of a series of co-optation, compromises and negotiations, this essay offers a contextualized reading of the complex ways in which competing and contradictory influences shape his expression. In tracing the practices that configure his stardom, we investigate how Zhou’s androgyny paradoxically reaffirms and unsettles hegemonic norms in non-antagonistic ways. We describe how his engagement with Xi Jinping’s China Dream creates an ambivalent space for negotiating established norms. We argue that Zhou’s phenomenal success rests with the fusion of contradictory elements into his performances and his ability to cut across binary classifications. This process has nurtured a politics of ambivalence marked by ambiguity, confusion and contingency. It also sheds light on the limit and possibility of doing gender politics in an increasingly illiberal setting.

L’Intermédialité en négatif : le rôle du cinéma dans la scène Downtown (New York, 1976-1984)

No Wave cinema of the 1970s is caught in several intermedial mechanisms as one realization of the transmedial punk movement. No Wave is anti-everything and refuses many rules just like punk rock does. No Wave films are interested in No Wave music and use it as their score while their style deviates from the norm just like the music does. In addition, these films were created by a “scene” of artists that had flocked to New York to take advantage of the cheap lifestyle. All refused know-how in accordance with punk DIY ethos, hence they did not attach themselves to any art or media. However, cinema occupied a specific place, first because of its inherent complex multifaceted mediality that could have an affinity with the punk movement, but also because its mainstream was the very media that these artists wanted to attack by creating alternative forms of it, since it was the dominant mass-media that carried the hegemonic norms.

Dissociation as Dislocation From Violence

Those of us with embodied experiences of gender diversity and sexually assault have and continue to be subject to psychiatric diagnosis and categorization that pathologize our acts of dissociation within a medical framework. In this paper we adopt Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham and London: Duke University Press new materialist ontology of agential realism to argue that agentially cutting psychiatric discourse on dissociative symptoms could materialize new realities for embodied people which have been excluded to the psychiatric realm of abjection via gender diversity and sexual assault. Specifically, we explore how approaching dissociative symptoms not as dysfunction but as forms of agential dislocation from hegemonic norms of race and gender could open new political horizons by naming relations of dominance.

Dark Academia: Curating Affective History in a COVID-Era Internet Aesthetic

Abstract Dark academia is an ‘internet aesthetic,’ an aesthetic style used in posts on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Tumblr that resonates the atmosphere of life in boarding schools, prep schools, and (Ivy League) colleges from the last decades of the nineteenth century up until the 1940s. It expresses a fascination with (neo-)gothic architecture; with tweed, lace, wool, and leather; with literature and art, and Romantic longing. Having been a main trend on social media platforms throughout the coronavirus pandemic, dark academia captures and facilitates cultural engagement in times of social isolation and closed college campuses. This article studies the dark academia aesthetic as a mnemonic curatorial practice with tendencies to counter hegemonic norms and narratives. Focusing on the affective dimensions of dark academia, this article argues that the aim of this internet aesthetic is to annul historical distance by capturing a mood and atmosphere associated with early twentieth-century campuses through the means of curated social media representations. This de-historicization allows for the renegotiation of values, like inscribing queerness – associated with secret queer romantics at gender-divided schools – into its representational language, without having to reassert historical gender binaries.

Distinction and Survival: Zoroastrians, Religious Nationalism, and Cultural Ownership in Shiʿi Iran

AbstractThis article argues that the notion of Iranian culture employed in the public discourse of Zoroastrians allows them to tackle the dilemma of Shiʿi-dominated Iranianness without provoking Shiʿi authorities. The piece offers an analysis of ethnographic data, including detailed speech acts documented in Zoroastrians’ ritual spaces and cultural exhibitions. It explores the Zoroastrian configuration of an Iranian culture that summons and encodes pre-Islamic tropes and modern nationalist sentiments by constantly maneuvering around national, religious, and ethnic categories. This configuration's underpinning assumptions, narratives, and texts have powerful platforms in Iranian nationalist imagination. I propose that this arrangement attempts to carve out a space for Zoroastrians’ distinct identity by connecting the history of the Muslim Arab invasion of Persia to the Shiʿi hegemonic norms of Iranian culture today. It further invokes Zoroaster's indigeneity and teachings as the foundation of authentic Iranianness to establish Zoroastrians’ survival as a cultural system.

현대 미국 아방가르드 시학에 대한 비판적 고찰

This paper provides a critical examination of the twentieth-century poetic avant-garde, a broadly radical and innovative aesthetic practice that constitutes an important contribution to the development of modern and contemporary American poetry. This study was motivated by the recognition that Conceptual poetry, a contemporary culmination of appropriation art, not so much embodies a provocative and progressive subversion of the hegemonic norms and values as represents artistic mediocrity and moral laxity of increasingly reified and alienated avant-garde poetics. Rooted in experimental modernism of the early twentieth century and the New American Poetry of the 1950s/60s, American avant-garde poetry has developed a distinct poetic lineage, offering a powerful corrective to the privileged lyric tradition and simultaneously serving as a critique of culture and ideology. However, I argue that twentieth-century avant-garde poetics has also exposed limits and pitfalls in its formation and promotion of the collectively prescribed aesthetic vision as well as inevitable blind spots and biases particularly concerning the issues of gender and race. Finally, this paper aims at suggesting the need to move beyond the reductive dichotomies between hegemony/revolution, conformity/oppositionality, and tradition/experimentation that have been normalized by the radical rhetoric of the avant-garde and to find “what will suffice,” to borrow Wallace Stevens’ words, in the new era marked by unprecedented existential challenges.

“I try to encourage my students to think, read, and talk science” intelligible identities in university teachers' figured worlds of higher education biology

AbstractHigher education biology is often imagined, perceived, and described as having reached gender equality in terms of who gets to participate in disciplinary practices. However, like any other natural science discipline, higher education biology is a world whose landscapes are shaped by (re)productions of historical, cultural, and social norms. We explore these norms through the lens of identity, asking what identities are recognized by university biology teachers at a large Swedish university, analyzing 94 teaching statements written when applying for faculty positions in biology. We argue that in and through teaching statements, university biology teachers negotiate and perform overarching academic and disciplinary norms and discourses with the goal to present themselves as intelligible candidates. As statements of value, they thereby display implicit and explicit identities recognized in worlds of higher education biology. Using a discourse analytical framework, we identified two university teacher identities imagined as intelligible: Research Science Teachers and Facilitating Science Teachers. Research Science Teachers position research and associated masculine‐coded competences as anchor points of biology practice. They consider researchers to be ultimate knowers and consequently to be best suitable for university teaching with the goal to recruit students into research. Facilitating Science Teachers, even though aware of the hegemonic position of research, disentangle imaginaries of what makes a researcher from what makes a university teacher. They transgress dominant imaginaries of research as the ultimate competence for themselves and students, and create spaces for alternative identity work. These findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of (re)productive processes in science education, providing perspectives of how to together infract intergenerational (re)productions of hegemonic norms of doing science. Additionally, this study provides further evidence that higher education biology is not a gender‐neutral higher education landscape.