Young Female Protagonists Research Articles

Postcolonial Children's Literature: Songs of Innocence and Experience with Reference to Marina Budhos' Ask Me No Questions (2007), and Cathryn Clinton's a Stone in My Hand (2002)

The purpose of this paper is to show how psychological trauma resulted from conflicts such as colonialism, immigration, racism, wars and invasion; and even gender discrimination makes its way into postcolonial children’s literature. For example, some contemporary writers of children's literature depict the painful experience of young immigrants who are living under constant stress and tension. Others try to depict how the Middle East conflicts and turmoil affect children living under occupation. In all of these cases, children are highly at risk of psychological trauma. This paper is going to discuss two contemporary children’s novels which address the issues of immigration and war conflicts: Marina Budhos’ Ask Me no questions (2007), and Cathryn Clinton’s A Stone in my Hand (2002). They were chosen to reflect not only the variety of children’s literature available, but also the unique struggles faced by young female protagonists living in two different cultural and political environments. The common thread running through these two novels is the experience of emotional trauma that young protagonists go through. The study of such trauma is at the core of the discussion of both novels. The paper will show how the protagonists of the two novels suffer “a double or triple trauma for children, who may witness the forcible removal of the parent, suddenly lose their caregiver, and/or abruptly lose their familiar home environment” (McLeigh).

Guilt, guns, girls and ghettos: Adjacent futures in selected post- apartheid fantasies

Since 1994, a growing number of South African writers of young adult and crossover fiction have experimented with science fiction and fantasy as tools for anticipating potential futures. In this article, three of these works are considered: The Slayer of Shadows by Elana Bregin, Zoo City by Lauren Beukes and The Mall Rats series consisting of Deadlands and Death of a Saint by Lily Herne. The texts are initially briefly contrasted with two texts by authors based in the USA: Lauren St John’s The White Giraffe and Sarah Pinsker’s “The Trans-dimensional Horsemaster Rabbis of Mpumalanga Province” to show that the three local writers’ engagement with the South African present enables them to resist, in varying degrees, prevalent Western tendencies to see positive African futures in terms of either an idealised pre-colonial past or as the result of redemptive agency by external forces. Although almost twenty years separate the Bregin novel from the others, there are clear similarities between them: each is written by a white woman (or women) and each places a young female protagonist within a crumbling, violent and resolutely urban environment. Paradoxically, the future worlds the authors create are at once both profoundly unfamiliar and recognisably South African, perhaps lending credence to Darko Suvin’s view that good fantasy gives rise to “cognitive estrangement” (4) by which the reader is freed to explore troubling issues such as guilt and complicity at a safe emotional remove. By foregrounding and contrasting the presentation of divisive contemporary themes such as gender, race, guilt and violence in these novels, it is hoped to establish whether the repressed fears/desires they articulate are in any way indicative of social attitudes to either present experience or imagined futures and whether such attitudes have changed significantly in the twenty years since the first democratic elections.

Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape by Kelly Oliver

Reviewed by: Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape by Kelly Oliver Christine N. Stamper (bio) Kelly Oliver. Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape. New York: Columbia UP, 2016. Print. Kelly Oliver's study of how society views sexual assault takes a two-pronged approach by examining both real life scenarios from college campuses and youth media portrayals of violence against girls and young women in books and films such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Twilight. Throughout Hunting Girls: Sexual Violence from The Hunger Games to Campus Rape, Oliver "consider[s] the contradictory ways in which social media is changing our attitudes toward sexual assault and the reporting of rape" (8). Throughout the book she compares the strong, "hunting girls" of fiction to the hunted girls at universities in order to investigate the ways media might be shaping how campuses discuss and handle sexual assault for real women. In addressing fiction, Hunting Girls analyzes several protagonists who are generally considered strong female characters. In doing this, Oliver also looks at the way these books and movies continue to perpetuate rape and assault culture, despite their focus on women who "give as good as they get" (27). For instance, in her discussion of the film adaptation of Veronica Roth's young adult novel Divergent, Oliver points out a scene in which protagonist Tris, in a drug induced hallucination showing her worst fears, is attacked by her boyfriend. Here Tris "is afraid that her boyfriend might rape her. This is not a fear of rape in general, or a fear of men, but rather a fear of 'date rape.' . . . [T]he scene makes manifest a deep-seated fear that hits close to home—namely, that like Tris, girls are at risk of being drugged, incapacitated, and raped by those closest to them" (40). Comparing protagonists to the classic tale of Sleeping Beauty and the Greek goddess Artemis, Oliver also includes Katniss from Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, Disney's Maleficent, Bella from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, and Ana from E. L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey to show how these "strong" women are still sexual prey to the men around them. Wondering what this depiction does for younger viewers, Oliver contests that these young female protagonists are "[n]ot your grandma's princesses: rather than passively waiting, these strong girls fight and kill like men, and sometimes they ask for kinky sex. Perhaps this signals some kind of progress" (25). However, this empowered portrayal becomes complicated when viewing the violence through the context of "fraternity brothers [who] are marching around Yale openly chanting, 'No means yes, yes means anal,' [meaning] it is crucial to ask whether this type of progress actually benefits girls and women" (25). In her examination of current events on university campuses, Oliver not only offers statistics that show how much rape and sexual assault affects young women, particularly those in college, but also demonstrates how technology is changing how rape cases are prosecuted. Relying heavily on Kirby Dick's [End Page 282] 2015 documentary The Hunting Ground, Oliver discusses how universities have cultivated serial rapists, not only because victims are hesitant to report but also because administrations tend to keep cases in-house and do not expel students, particularly athletes, for rape cases. However, where the text truly adds to conversations about rape culture is in its demonstration of how technology is changing the ways sexual assault is documented, and therefore how seriously authorities treat victims' claims. Oliver discusses the prevalence of "creepshots" or voyeuristic photos and videos taken of unaware or unconscious women. Photographing or filming rape and assault has become a new and disturbing norm, and Oliver makes a compelling case for how this trend actually allows for the conviction of more rapists: now that there is hard proof that an assault occurred, cases do not depend on conflicting reports from the people involved. She also discusses consent phone apps, which record videos of partners consenting prior to their sexual encounter. However, these apps seem to protect men from future rape charges more than ensuring consent, as they treat consent as a blanket statement...

New Product Launch For Eagle Brand: Marketing Management Case Study – A And B

This two-part case study provides a realistic, thought-provoking, and mildly entertaining venture into the world of new product launches. Structured questions are posed at the end of each case, with suspense and information building from Case A to B.Case A asks whether and how to champion a new product launch internally, while Case B additionally explores how to sell the idea externally with a marketing plan. Both case studies are intended for undergraduate marketing or management classes.Ambitious, young Abbie MacFeldon joined a consumer packaged goods company as Brand Manager of its biggest brand, Eagle shoe care. She identifies the need for a new product, a line extension within her brand – a mature brand in need of new life. Her manager applauds her initiative but says this idea was tried before and failed. The reader learns information about the market, brand, consumer, and company through historical and current data, employee bios, and meetings between Abbie and her colleagues. The reader is asked whether Abbie may have a big idea after all, and if so, how it should be marketed. To make these decisions, readers evaluate external factors (market, competition, consumer, trends) and internal factors (strategic fit, brand image, cost, feasibility, resources). Furthermore, the case provokes the reader to think about how a brand manager can overcome initial rejection, build and motivate a team, and convince top management. The case explores the role of company culture, including age, gender, and tradition, and how the young female protagonist can address these.

‘I don’t wanna walk around with you’: Routes, roots and composing the grrrl geography of rebellion in Stephanie Kuehnert’s I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

Abstract Since riot grrrl’s arrival onto the 1990s’ subcultural scene, there have been numerous scholarly investigations pertaining to young women and punk subcultures. However, the influence of riot grrrl on contemporary fiction, written by female authors who have experienced the transgressive energy of riot grrrl first-hand, remains under-analysed. This article examines Stephanie Kuehnert’s I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone to expose how Kuehnert incorporates her own love for music, the experience of her small-town upbringing, and her fervour for the DIY ethos of punk into fiction that aims to speak to the discerning and discursive grrrl. Through addressing what is often rejected in conventional young adult (YA) fiction, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone builds ideas of a rebellious grrrl geography that explores the remapping of specific gendered spaces. Emily, the young female protagonist of the novel, is transported from the confined boredom of her bedroom as she puts her fantasies into practice and forms a punk band. With this, she carves out a ‘public’ space from which to exhibit her creative agency as a punk rock star. This article argues that through contemporary text, the transgressive objectives of riot grrrl are not merely objects of nostalgia. Instead, it concludes to suggest that Kuehnert’s novel gives riot grrrl a contemporary resonance. Thus, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone plays out notions of how the young woman can still use music to, in a sense, pull her own strings, master her destiny and ultimately become instrumental in composing her creative agency and maintain her political impact.

Unhappy Endings: La fuerza de la sangre and the Novelas ejemplares of Miguel de Cervantes

AbstractAdhering to a revisionary practice already evident in early translations and theatrical adaptations of Miguel de Cervantes’s La fuerza de la sangre, many analyses of this novella presume to explain away the contradictory postures of its heroine, Leocadia, in the opening and concluding stages of the work to uphold the ideal of verisimilitude, which they posit as the foundation of early modern fiction, especially that by Cervantes. Attending instead to the ironic design of La fuerza de la sangre and the concerns that it shares with other of the Novelas ejemplares that feature young female protagonists, the present study argues that these contradictory postures are deliberate and, moreover, designed to compel the reader to question the propriety of the work’s ostensibly happy ending, and thus the dominant values and conventions of aristocratic society of the time.ResumenRespetando las pautas de un revisionismo ya evidente en las primeras traducciones y adaptaciones al teatro de La fuerza de la sangre, de Miguel de Cervantes, muchos análisis de la novela presumen resolver las contradictorias actitudes de su protagonista, Leocadia, en las primeras y las últimas fases de la trama para resguardar el principio de la verosimilitud, sobre el cual consideran edificada la ficción de la temprana edad moderna, especialmente la de Cervantes. Atendiendo, en cambio, al diseño irónico de La fuerza de la sangre y a la problemática compartida entre ésta y otras Novelas ejemplares con jóvenes protagonistas femeninos, el presente artículosostiene que la presencia de dichas actitudes contradictorias es deliberada, buscando urgirnos a cuestionar la conveniencia del desenlace aparentemente feliz y, con ello, los valores y convenciones que prevalecían en la sociedad aristocrática de aquel tiempo.

Postcolonial Children's Literature: Songs of Innocence and Experience with Reference Tomarina Budhos’<i> Ask Me no Questions</i><i> (2007)</i><i>, </i>and Cathryn Clinton’s<i> A Stone in my Hand </i><i>(2002)</i>

The purpose of this paper is to show how psychological trauma resulted from conflicts such as colonialism, immigration, racism, wars and invasion; and even gender discrimination makes its way into postcolonial children’s literature. For example, some contemporary writers of children's literature depict the painful experience of young immigrants who are living under constant stress and tension. Others try to depict how the Middle East conflicts and turmoil affect children living under occupation. In all of these cases, children are highly at risk of psychological trauma. This paper is going to discuss two contemporary children’s novels which address the issues of immigration and war conflicts: Marina Budhos’Ask Me no questions (2007),and Cathryn Clinton’sA Stone in my Hand (2002). They were chosen to reflect not only the variety of children’s literature available, but also the unique struggles faced by young female protagonists living in two different cultural and political environments. The common thread running through these two novels is the experience of emotional trauma that young protagonists go through. The study of such trauma is at the core of the discussion of both novels. The paper will show how the protagonists of the two novels suffer “a double or triple trauma for children, who may witness the forcible removal of the parent, suddenly lose their caregiver, and/or abruptly lose their familiar home environment” (McLeigh)

Creando subjetividades a través del arte cinematográfico. Historias sobre transformación personal en el cine centroamericano de los últimos años

Este artículo discute los temas de identidad y subjetividad según se muestran dos producciones cinematográficas centroamericanas recientes: El Camino (Ishtar Yasin Gutiérrez, Costa Rica, 2007) y La Yuma (Florence Jaugey, Nicaragua, 2009). En las dos películas, jóvenes adolescentes trascienden sus limitaciones convencionales y se hacen responsables de su propio bienestar, ejemplificando de esta manera el rol del individuo en construir su propio sentido de subjetividad y de pertenencia a la comunidad en la que habita. Tanto Saslaya como Yuma se rebelan contra los roles tradicionales, se oponen a las convenciones sociales y logran fomentar un nuevo sentido de identidad colectiva que se asemeje mejor a su nueva faceta de liberación subjetiva. Este análisis argumenta que crecer en ámbitos de desprotección absoluta y con oportunidades limitadas de desarrollo personal no impide que estas chicas consigan crear su propia identidad. Sin embargo, construir este sentido de individualidad requiere perseverancia, toma de riesgos y voluntariedad, en palabras de Ishtar Yasin, la directora costarricense de El Camino. Se asume que estos relatos giran la atención hacia la recodificación de la identidad contemporánea y confirman la ruptura extensa de los modelos sociales tradicionales en Centroamérica. Además sirven para poner en evidencia los intentos –algunos fallidos, otros exitosos – de reclamar nuevos espacios y un nuevo sentido de subjetividad.

“Murder Me…Become a Man”: Establishing the Masculine Care Circle in Young Adult Dystopia

Young adult (YA) dystopia, a genre which is led almost exclusively by young female protagonists, has gained much scholarly attention in recent years. While most of the academic discussions focus, rightly, on portrayals of female characters and gender performance, portrayals of masculinity have failed to elicit the same scholarly response. This article argues that YA dystopia has begun to model a more inclusive, broader approach to masculine behavior by portraying male characters in nurturing positions and forming care relationships with other characters in the narrative. These relationships form a “care circle” of dependent characters, which guides how male characters approach the performance of masculinity.

Trauma of Immigration and War in Marina Budhos’ <i>Ask Me No Questions [2007]</i>, and Cathryn Clinton’s <i>a Stone in My Hand [2002]</i>

The purpose of this paper is to show how psychological trauma resulted from conflicts such as immigration, wars, colonialism, and invasion; and even gender discrimination makes its way into postcolonial children’s literature. For example, some contemporary writers of children's literature depict the painful experience of young immigrants who are living under constant stress and tension. Others try to depict how the Middle East conflicts and turmoil affect children living under occupation. In all of these cases, children are highly at risk of psychological trauma. This paper is going to discuss two contemporary children’s novels which address the issues of immigration and war conflicts: Marina Budhos’ <i>Ask Me no questions [2007]</i>, and Cathryn Clinton’s <i>A Stone in my Hand [2002]</i>. They were chosen to reflect not only the variety of children’s literature available, but also the unique struggles faced by young female protagonists living in two different cultural and political environments. The common thread running through these two novels is the experience of emotional trauma that young protagonists go through. The study of such trauma is at the core of the discussion of both novels. The paper will show how the protagonists of the two novels suffer “a double or triple trauma for children, who may witness the forcible removal of the parent, suddenly lose their caregiver, and/or abruptly lose their familiar home environment” [McLeigh].

Women, Crime and Sexual Transgression

Lucy Bland, Modern Women on Trial: Sexual Transgression in the Age of the Flapper, Manchester and New York, Manchester University Press, 2013, 246pp, 17.99[pounds sterling] paperback Lucy Bland's Modern Women on Trial: Sexual Transgression in the Age of the Flapper is an incisive and highly accomplished study of constructions of femininity and sexuality in war and post-war contexts. Through analysis of the role of young female protagonists in a range of British court trials that took place between 1918 and 1924, Bland skilfully weaves together complex arguments about gender, sexuality, class, race and national identity. Although material contained in four of the five chapters has appeared in shorter or altered forms in previously published articles and essays, the thematic synergies between the topics covered means that the book still warrants attention as a single, unified piece of work. The previously unpublished second chapter, 'Butterfly women, Chinamen, dope fiends and metropolitan allure', is an excellent addition, as it helps to bring together the different strands of Bland's arguments about 'types' of women (p4), and examines in depth the meanings generated by recurrent use of Orientalist discourse in trial proceedings, press coverage and other media. Each of the chapters introduces accounts of the key events, protagonists and context, before moving on to investigate the broader social resonances, connections and lasting corollaries of the trials. This structure is readily accessible and makes for compelling reading as it allows Bland to demonstrate her skills as both story-teller and critic. The introduction delineates the cultural significance of the figure of the 'modern woman-cum-flapper', who, Bland argues, represents 'immorality, generational challenge, and the erosion of stability, particularly in relation to gender relations and the family' as well as class and sexuality (pp3-4). Lines of enquiry pertaining to the presentation of women in criminal and legal contexts are laid out, as is the role of the popular press in sensationalising, perpetuating, and occasionally, challenging, a range of female 'types'. Bland carefully maps out important contextual details, including the impact of war and immigration on gender relations, sexuality, leisure and lifestyle, in order to provide the necessary backdrop to the events explored in the book. The legacies of the nineteenth-century newspaper and the famous trials of earlier figures such as Constance Kent and Madeline Smith are also referenced in ways that illuminate the issues under discussion. Chapter one focuses on the libel case raised by dancer Maud Allan against the right-wing MP Noel Pemberton Billing for publishing a paragraph entitled 'The Cult of the Clitoris' in The Vigilante, which implied that Maud was a lesbian. The complexity of the case and its breadth of cultural implications cannot be fully addressed in this short review, so only a brief account is provided here. Bland states that the trial was 'so fascinating at the time, for it involved a rich mix: a decadent play (Salome), a notorious figure of those days (Oscar Wilde), a celebrated Edwardian dancer (Maud Allan), and a paranoid rumour about conspiracy, German infiltration and sexual vice in high places (the Black Book)' (p16). The presentation of Maud as potentially conspiratorial and treacherous, as well as decadent, degenerate and sexually aberrant, meant that 'the defence of this criminal libel resulted, in effect, not in Billing being on trial, but Maud and Salome' (p18). Bland shows how national, wartime, sexual and class concerns were linked in this case, as the dominant idealised notion of English womanhood as patriotic, sexually conformist and morally upright was contrasted with Maud's apparent 'cosmopolitan modernity [...] sexual knowledge and sexualised dancing' which was frequently described using negative racialised discourse (p44). Chapter two explores the array of early-twentieth-century fears associated with Chinese men having relationships with English women. …

Ficción, sexualidad y raza en The Dumb Virgin y The Unfortunate Bride de Aphra Behn

Trabajo que pretende estudiar la representación física de los personajes Belvideera, María y Celesia en las obras de Aphra Behn "The Dumb Virgin: Or the Force of Imagination" y "The Unfortunate Bride: Or the Blind Lady a Beauty". Tiene como objetivo interpretar la importancia de los defectos físicos de las jóvenes heroínas basándose en Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times de Shaftesbury. El artículo relata en primer lugar la ficción de las historias feminocéntricas de Behn en relación con los tratados de moral de Shaftesbury, que dividen y malinterpretan la imaginación maternal como algo defectuoso y monstruoso. Posteriormente, argumenta que la autora da mayor relevancia al tema de la misoginia, dotando a sus jóvenes protagonistas femeninas con una doble deformación, en la que la maternidad imperfecta da a luz a una segunda generación de hijos imperfectos, mientras la feminidad deformada en los mismos sucesos de defectos se entremezcla con las implicaciones exóticas y raciales de la degeneración y el mestizaje. Las historias de amor de la autora, amparadas en el sexo y la raza, son trágicas, mientras que las de Shaftesbury sobre sexualidad y raza emanan del vicio de la monstruosidad y están diseñadas para la perpetración de actos monstruosos. Mediante la dotación de características monstruosas femeninas y raciales, como se explica en el siguiente trabajo, Behn crea una historia para inventar un narrador como resolución dialéctica a la construcción binaria de oposiciones de Shaftesbury en su instrucción moral. Aunque la narradora de Behn cede su poder autoría y se presenta como una mera relatadora de historias, su pluma femenina ejerce su autoridad haciendo justicia a sus personajes y sus fantasías literarias, reconociendo así a la escritora femenina como una artista, una creadora de ficción. Desde el punto de vista de la trascendencia dialéctica, la narradora de las ficciones románticas no solo evita la jerarquía socio-sexual y la dicotomía entre sexualidad y raza, sino que también señala de forma tácita un avance en el dominio discursivo patriarcal generalizado.

Unpleasant Consequences: First Sex in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars , and Gilmore Girls

While many contemporary television series offer young female protagonists agency in terms of physical, social, economic, and intellectual power, they often fail to pursue this progressive ideology in terms of these young women’s sexuality. This article explores a cultural fascination with teenage girls as sexual (or asexual) subjects, particularly with their virginity, and the negative effects of that fascination in the experiences of first sex of teen protagonists in the popular television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Veronica Mars , and Gilmore Girls .

Unpleasant Consequences: First Sex in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, and Gilmore Girls

While many contemporary television series offer young female protagonists agency in terms of physical, social, economic, and intellectual power, they often fail to pursue this progressive ideology in terms of these young women’s sexuality. This article explores a cultural fascination with teenage girls as sexual (or asexual) subjects, particularly with their virginity, and the negative effects of that fascination in the experiences of first sex of teen protagonists in the popular television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Veronica Mars, and Gilmore Girls.

American Uncles and Aunts: Generations, Genealogies, Bildungs in 1930s Novels

The essay focuses on the characters of uncles and aunts as they emerge in four novels written in the 1930s by two second-generation immigrant novelists and two American women writers: Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep (1934), Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete (1939), Josephine Herbst’s Pity Is Not Enough (1933), and Catherine Anne Porter’s Old Mortality (1937). In their portrayal of a growing-up young male and female protagonist sharing many autobiographical traits with the authors, these works can be considered late versions of American Bildungsromans in which the presence of uncles and aunts seem to function as an alternative – or complementary – model to the parental one and to play a pivotal role in the (possible or impossible) Bildungs of nephews and nieces. Starting with a brief survey on the rediscovery and mapping of anthropological, ethnological and folkloric genealogies (including recent immigrants’ stories) and their unprecedented entrance into official national narratives during the Great Depression, the essay attempts to show how the figures of uncles and aunts play strategic roles in both the working-class and immigrant Bildungs (or “anti-Bildungs) represented in Call It Sleep and Christ in Concrete , and the female middle-class Bildungs (or “awakenings”) evoked in Pity Is Not Enough and Old Mortality . Whereas Roth and di Donato simultaneously mark the coming of age and the modern watershed of the hyphenated literary tradition of Jewish-American and Italian-American novels by creating impossible narratives of “development” built around ghetto children, Herbst and Porters’ works seem to stem from the genre of the sentimental novel and the novel of “awakening” and to twist them into a modernist version of possible female Bildungs.

Written on the Body

The author considers two recent prize-winning films by women directors (one British and one American) with similar, if not identical themes. Placing them in the category first defined by David Considine as “the cinema of adolescence” the author considers the filmic traditions from which they arise. In both of the films under consideration—Fish Tank and Girlfight—the young female protagonists attempt to resist or subvert socially imposed restrictions. The author considers the way the entrapment of the working-class teenage girls at the centre of these films is represented by non-professional “actresses” selected because they come from the same milieu of run-down sections of cities as their on-screen characters. She explores the way in which these two writer-directors use their actresses to embody on screen issues of class, gender, ethnicity, and culture, and the near-impossible routes out of poverty. To do so, the author utilises theories from sociology, feminist theories of the body, as well as theories derived from film studies to examine these politically driven films.

Not Just Words: Shogunal Politics and the Daijōsai in Mori Ōgai's "Saigo no ikku"

Not Just Words:Shogunal Politics and the Daijōsai in Mori Ōgai's "Saigo no ikku" Doris G. Bargen (bio) At a banquet a palace woman (uneme 釆女) offered the royal wine cup to the Emperor, unaware that a leaf had fallen into it from a giant zelkova tree next to the Hall of First Fruits (niinaeya 新嘗屋). Seeing this, the Emperor put his sword to her neck and almost killed her, had she not been able to soothe him with a poem. Her staggering song celebrated the journey of the leaf through the entire imperial realm—from the upper through the middle to the lower branches, swirling like a brine-churning spearhead into the "moist, gem-glistening cup" of the Child of the Sun. Trembling, she bore irrefutable testimony, "The story,The words of the storyAre these words."And the Emperor was moved to forgive her.1 Kojiki, Book 3, Chapter 133 This episode from Japan's most ancient chronicle powerfully reflects the magic of words inspired by narrative tradition to restrain the severe hand of authority. The uneme saves her own life at the site of the annual Harvest Festival by singing a song for her ruthless ruler, often thought to be Emperor Yūryaku 雄略 (traditional reign dates, 456-479). Her verbal triumph over her sovereign's threat of brute force has a remarkable affinity to the story "Saigo no ikku" 最後の一句 (1915) by [End Page 1] Mori Ōgai 森鴎外 (1862-1922). In both tales, feasting—at the Hall of First Fruits and the Great Feast of Enthronement (Daijōsai 大嘗祭, or daijō-e 大嘗会), respectively—forms the ritual frame for the clash between ruler and subject. Ōgai's story celebrates the victory of self-sacrifice over formal legal procedures. In this article I illuminate aspects of "Saigo no ikku" that have not yet been examined in detail, such as economic conditions under shogunal rule and the political repercussions of self-sacrifice inside and outside a court of law and within the ritual context of the Daijōsai. Although this imperial enthronement rite is mentioned only at the end of the tale, its significance must be appreciated in order to feel the force and understand the extraordinary efficacy of the young female protagonist's offer to die in her father's place. The Daijōsai, to which no previous critic has given more than passing attention, enables the reader to untie the knots in Ōgai's formidably complicated narrative. Ōgai wrote "Saigo no ikku" in a very short time—virtually "in one sitting" (ikki kasei 一気呵成), according to Takita Choin 滝田樗陰 (Tetsutarō 哲太郎, 1882-1925), the noted liberal and editor in chief of Chūō kōron 中央公論. Having finished the story on 17 September 1915, Ōgai handed it three days later to Takita, who published it in Chūō kōron in October under the author's given name of Rintarō 林太郎, rather than his nom de plume of Ōgai.2 This short piece of historical fiction belongs to a group of stories that Ōgai himself characterized as rekishibanare 歴史離れ (departing from history), in contrast to his earlier tales that follow his sources more closely, although never slavishly so. Written a few months after his somewhat perplexing—and hence much discussed—historiographical essay "Rekishi sonomama to rekishibanare" 歴史其儘と歴史離れ (January 1915), which deals with the search for truth both in and aside from recorded "fact,"3 it takes as its principal source an account by Ōta Nanpo 大田南畝 (1749-1823) of the so-called Katsuraya Incident. The Katsuraya Incident in Nanpo's Ichiwa Ichigen Nanpo's text, titled "Genbun sannen Ōsaka Horiebashi kinpen Katsuraya Tarobē no koto" 元文三年大坂堀江橋近辺かつらや太郎兵衛事 (The 1738 Incident Involving Katsuraya Tarobē in the Horiebashi Neighborhood of Osaka), appears in chapter 17 of Ichiwa ichigen 一話一言 (1779-1820), his monumental collection of various writings (zuihitsu 随筆).4 According to the postscript, the account is a faithful copy, made by [End Page 2] an unidentified person on 1739.3.23, of notes set down, immediately after the case was settled, by an official named Kin'ya. Ōgai's story, then, is thrice removed from the historical event by Kin'ya's report, the copy of Kin'ya's report, and Nanpo's reproduction of both. The Ichiwa ichigen episode begins with the jailing of a...

Fantastic Spiritualities: Monsters, Heroes, and the Contemporary Religious Imagination (review)

Reviewed by: Fantastic Spiritualities: Monsters, Heroes, and the Contemporary Religious Imagination Geoffrey B. (Monty) Williams SJ J'annine Jobling . Fantastic Spiritualities: Monsters, Heroes, and the Contemporary Religious Imagination. London: T & T Clark International: A Continuum Imprint, 2010. Pp. 224. Cloth $100.00. ISBN 9780567030467. We live in a postmodern age, and one of its characteristics is a secular quest for an authentic spirituality usually outside of the confines of a traditional religious institution. A significant part of today's television, film, and literary world now concerns itself with spiritual quests, the supernatural, alien life forms, and the occult. The predominance of this material in today's market suggests that it answers a contemporary need. Jobling in her book suggests this need is to find a narrative that allows its purveyors to deal with truth, morality, otherness, authority, and identity. Her spirituality is really ethics. When she examines her four major examples of the fantastic, she admits they all "lay considerable emphasis on the significance of both human choice and human responsibility in universes with no discernible transcendent external authority. . . . All are rooted in a robust sense of ethical commitment; the significance of personal engagement and discernment in ethical matters is foregrounded" (200). She examines four major examples of the fantastic genre—the Harry Potter series (Rowling), His Dark Materials (Pullman), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Whedon), and the Earthsea cycle (Le Guin)—and shows that the world views of these four are actually marked by profoundly modernistic assumptions. Her book is divided into ten chapters and looks at four major themes of two chapters each, along with an introduction and conclusion. Those themes are "transforming selves," "metaphysics and transcendence," "transforming worlds," and "the good and the monstrous." "Transforming selves" examines how one becomes one's true self. Here one looks at Harry Potter's journey to self-realization, and the coming of age of the young female protagonist in Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan from her Earthsea trilogy. Both provide templates for contemporary readers to examine and appropriate their own growth to individuation. The background to that sense of independence is traced in the next two chapters on "metaphysics and transcendence," which examines the structures against which one struggles to come to an authentic sense of self. For this Jobling uses Pullman's Dark Materials and Le Guin's Earthsea. Pullman presents the antagonistic world as organized religion and the institutional Church (63), and it is against those soul-destroying forces that the hero and heroine of Pullman's trilogy fight, just as it is against patriarchal ethnocentrism that Le Guin posits a new world order where the hero myth does not prevail but a new thing emerges. In her work that new thing, disempowered and disenfranchised by patriarchy, brings forth a changed way of living where "care, community and a network of relations" (102) determines one's identity. Thus changed, one now has a new and different relationship with the world as one finds it. "Transforming Worlds" are the next two chapters in Jobling's book and in these she looks at Buffy the Vampire Slayer, not as a young woman, characterized as the innocent little female victim, prey to demonic and secular forces, but rather as one who destroys [End Page 299] those forces. A similar thing happens in the Harry Potter series. Both show that the world of oppression and evil can be challenged, overcome, and changed. The last major theme to be explored in the book is entitled "The Good and the Monstrous." It looks at the struggle every human engages in while trying to discern good from the monstrous and in aligning oneself with the forces of good. To explore this theme Jobling uses Pullman's Dark Materials to come to the conclusion that in that text "human knowledge, responsibility, and potentiality are valorised" (167). One does not need God or institutionalized religion to know how to behave. To be human is sufficient for discernment. Similarly, in Buffy, "there may be no religious absolutes, but there remains powers, for both good and evil" (169). Buffy is read as a "liminal creature, poised between dark and light" (179), and like the postmodern subject, caught up...

“Do You Understand What You're Accusing Me of?”: Confrontational Conversation in MTV's The Hills as a Means of Identity Construction and Social Positioning in Young Female Adults

MTV's The Hills is a “reality” television program that follows the lives of four young female protagonists as they deal with concerns around work, friends, and relationships. The Hills presents a world of female friendships which is potentially continuous with the peer socialization of teen viewers and, as such, I argue offers a template to examine the importance of peer conversations in the construction of young female identities. In this article I draw on Harré's (1995) theory of social positioning to examine conversations around a particular confrontational incident in The Hills. Analysis of these interactions helps to make visible the roles of different types of conversation and interlocutors in the shaping of identity. I conclude that the ways in which this television program imparts modes of communication to young viewers reveals much about the importance of confrontation in conversational exchanges during the formative years.

Lesbian minor cinema

This essay reframes the question of the relative paucity of lesbian feature films by looking at works that deploy a certain ‘poverty’ – in terms of means of production or aesthetic approach – in order to deflect audience demand for familiar stories, happy endings, repeatable pleasures, identity assurances. Although such practices do not and should not circumscribe the field of audiovisual work by and about lesbians, they enact the intersection of authorship and audience, form and subject matter, and desire and identification in crucial ways. Chantal Akerman's Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels (1994) and Sadie Benning's Flat Is Beautiful (1998), in their length, mode, spare formal language and thematic concern with the liminal sexual and gender identities of their young female protagonists, actively engage the process of exclusion by the mainstream and suggest the appellation ‘minor cinema’. The concept of lesbian minor cinema draws on Deleuze and Guattari's notion of minor literature and Alison Butler's modification of their work in the context of women's cinema. Exemplifying the ‘collective enunciation’, relative poverty of means, and political potential that characterizes the minor, lesbian work that deals with girlhood also addresses the ‘minor’ as a subject of sexuality.