Sacred Subtexts: Depictions of Girls as Christ Figure and Holy Fool in the Films Moana and Whale Rider

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-103
Author(s):  
Belinda du Plooy
Keyword(s):  
White Women ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Female Child ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Holy Fool ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Film Making ◽  
Christ Figures

Christ figures and holy fools are familiar religious symbols often repeated and adapted in film making. They have historically most often been depicted as male, and among the slowly growing body of female filmic christ figures, they are usually depicted as adult White women. In this article, I consider two films, Niki Caro’s Whale Rider and Disney’s Moana, in which young Indigenous girls are depicted within this trope. I engage in close reading of the films, in relation to Anton Karl Kozlovic’s theoretical framework for structural characteristics of the filmic christ figure, as I focus my discussion here on the christological symbolism of the two female child figures in these films, while also folding this back to the long-standing religious and literary tradition of the holy fool. The aim of this article is to contribute to the growing body of critical and theoretical work about the representation and reading of women and religion in film.

Women, Race, and Ethnicity: Exploring Earnings Differentials in Metropolitan America

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley Williams Reid ◽  
Robert M. Adelman ◽  
Charles Jaret
Keyword(s):  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
White Women ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Earnings Inequality ◽  
Retail Trade ◽  
Asian Women ◽  
Black And White

We draw on leading theories about the structural causes of inequality in the United States to explore inter–metropolitan differences in average earnings for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian women. Our analysis utilizes 2000 census data for a sample of 150 metropolitan areas to investigate the determinants of both women's median earnings and earnings’ inequality by race and ethnicity. We find substantial differences between the earnings of minority and white women across metropolitan areas, although the differences are not in the same direction for all groups. Among other findings, our results indicate: (1) The more retail trade and educational, health, and social service employment, the lower the earnings of most women; (2) the larger the immigrant population in an area, the higher the earnings of white and Asian, but not black or Hispanic women; and (3) residing in the South increases levels of inequality between black and white women. In summary, our results indicate that conventional predictors of aggregate earnings and earnings’ inequality operate differently for white, black, Hispanic, and Asian women at the metropolitan level. Structural characteristics of metropolitan areas all have some influence on women's economic outcomes; but those influences are consistent neither for the earnings of all groups of women nor for earnings’ inequality between groups of women.

Patrick Moore, Arthur C. Clarke and ‘British Outer Space’ in the mid 20th century

2012 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Dunnett
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Audience Participation ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Television Programme ◽  
Human Destiny

This article seeks to explore a notion of ‘British outer space’ in the mid 20th century with reference to the British Interplanetary Society and the works of Patrick Moore and Arthur C. Clarke. Geographies of outer space have been examined following early work by Denis Cosgrove on the Apollo space photographs. Cosgrove’s work has encouraged a growing body of work that seeks to examine both the ‘Earth from space’ perspective as well as its reciprocal, ‘space from Earth’. This article aligns itself with the latter viewpoint, in attempting to define a national culture of ‘British outer space’. This is found to have an important connection with the British Interplanetary Society, founded in 1933 near Liverpool, which went on to influence the works of Patrick Moore, who edited the magazine Spaceflight and presented the television programme The Sky at Night, and Arthur C. Clarke, who became known as a science fiction writer through his early novels in the 1950s. The themes of audience participation and human destiny in outer space are examined in a close reading of these two case studies, and further engagement with cultures of outer space in geography is encouraged.

scholarly journals ‘Peace with a Woman’s Face’: Women, Social Media and the Colombian Peace Process

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-538
Author(s):  
Alexis Henshaw
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Computational Analysis ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Peace Processes ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Growing Body

Abstract The idea that men and women approach conflict resolution differently forms the backbone of the international agenda on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) and is supported by a growing body of scholarship in international relations. However, the role of women who represent insurgent groups in peace talks remains understudied, given the relatively rare appearance of such women in peace processes. The present study examines how men and women from the negotiating team of the Revolutionary Armed Forced of Colombia (FARC) engaged in public-facing discourse on Twitter leading up to a referendum on the peace accords in 2016. Using a mixed-methods approach that includes computational analysis and a close reading of social media posts, I demonstrate that women in the FARC’s negotiating team were more successful social media users than their male counterparts and that they offered a distinct contribution to the discourse on peace, centring the relevance of gender and promoting issue linkages like the need to address LGBTI rights.

scholarly journals QUANTUM MATTERS: PHYSICS BEYOND LANDAU'S PARADIGMS

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (19) ◽  
pp. 2603-2611 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. SENTHIL
Keyword(s):  
Particle Physics ◽  
Order Parameter ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Many Body ◽  
General Validity ◽  
Quasiparticle Excitation ◽  
Body State ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
The Many ◽  
Theoretical Developments

Central to our understanding of quantum many particle physics are two ideas due to Landau. The first is the notion of the electron as a well-defined quasiparticle excitation in the many body state. The second is that of the order parameter to distinguish different states of matter. Experiments in a number of correlated materials raise serious suspicions about the general validity of either notion. A growing body of theoretical work has confirmed these suspicions, and explored physics beyond Landau's paradigms. This article provides an overview of some of these theoretical developments.

scholarly journals The library of nature: reality and metaphor in the botanical classification

Diacronia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ioan Milică
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Testing Ground ◽  
Inflection Points ◽  
Plant Names ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Modern Classification ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Botanical Classification

The metaphorical network that permeates the scientific knowledge and discourse currently attracts the interest of many researchers. In the light of the growing body of references which reveal that the use of metaphor is both beneficial and detrimental to science, the aim of the present paper is to explore the relevance of some metaphors generated by writing and boosted by the prestige of this communicative technology. The close reading of the foundational texts in science would undoubtedly reveal their metaphorical architecture. If one considers them as nodes in a network, the major works of science act as inflection points that drive changes in the trajectory of scientific inquiry and (re)shape the way we understand reality. It clearly falls beyond the scope of this paper to chart the metaphorical map of the reference works in science. Instead, I choose to focus on the writings of Carolus Linnæus, the founder of modern classification in botany, in order to highlight his use of metaphors rooted in the tradition of writing. More precisely, I approach the library metaphor in order to show that the Linnæan conceptualization of nature as a library acted as the testing ground for his theories, accelerated the internationalization of many scientific plant names and consolidated the stability of the vernacular botanical terminologies.

From “German Wolfhounds” to “Ordinary People”

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-89
Author(s):  
Or Rogovin
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
National Character ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
One Dimensional ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
James Phelan

Abstract The image of the perpetrator in Israeli Holocaust fiction changed fundamentally in the mid-1980s: from one-dimensional Nazi beasts, typical of earlier Israeli writing, to humanized individuals, whose vulnerability and multidimensionality may blur the divide between victims and victimizers. This development, which corresponds to similar patterns in other literatures (e.g., George Steiner’s Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.; Jonathan Littell’s Kindly Ones) has received relatively little critical attention, and it is discussed here through a close reading of major Israeli works of fiction—Ka-Tzetnik’s Salamandra, David Grossman’s See Under: Love, A. B. Yehoshua’s Mr. Mani—as well as more minor texts. Using theoretical work in narrative (E. M. Forster, James Phelan) and imagology (Manfred Beller and Joep Leerssen on German national character), this article formulates the recent shift in modes of perpetrator characterization in terms of its poetics and its place in Israel’s literary history.

Between Standardization and Serialization: Kenneth Burke, Fredric Jameson, and Radical Criticism in the Post-Fordist Era

2019 ◽  
pp. 60-91
Author(s):  
Jason Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Dynamic System ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Kenneth Burke ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Fredric Jameson

This chapter considers the odd status of literary and rhetorical critic Kenneth Burke within English Studies. It does so by examining a debate between Burke and Fredric Jameson that occurred in the late 1970s in the journal Critical Inquiry; careful attention to the nuances of their exchange reveals why Burke has come to occupy such a central role within the discourse of rhetorical theory but has been largely overlooked within literary and critical theory. Although Burke and Jameson share many similarities concerning methodology and a host of related issues, they ultimately split on the structural characteristics of late capitalism. Whereas Burke asserts that capitalism operates by producing conformity and standardization, Jameson argues that capitalism must be understood as a much more dynamic system. Their differences on this matter illuminate a number of underlying tensions within theoretical work produced in the humanities today.

Bored to Death: Improvisations on a Theme

CounterText ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-331
Author(s):  
Maria Frendo
Keyword(s):  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Good Number

Since Petronius and Ovid wrote about the Sybil lamenting the loss of her freedom, which she had traded for eternal life, boredom has not ceased to fascinate and allure. Plato and Aristotle broached the topic philosophically, followed by a whole range of philosophers, writers, painters, and musicians. In this paper, Maria Frendo traces a genealogy of a host of characters in fiction and literary tradition who are afflicted by boredom, from Petronius’ Sybil to Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon, from Shakespeare's Antonio to Tennyson's Lotos-Eaters, from Huysmans’ Count des Esseintes to Eliot's Prufrock, but not forgetting woman: signally, through Flaubert's Emma Bovary. The essay's development and focus bear on two further considerations: firstly, the relation of boredom with death and desire, whereby the longing for relief from the situation in which one is trapped is accompanied by disinclination to resist and an accommodation to paralysis; and, secondly, patterns of duality and doubling across a good number of the predicaments depicted. Halfway through, the paper formally performs a boredom and irritation of its own in the process of highlighting existential angst and postmodernist neurosis in literature and the post-literary, and shifts its focus onto the poetry of Baudelaire and Mallarmé. This apparent randomness is deliberate: hence the subtitle ‘Improvisations on a Theme’, suggestive of thematic and structural characteristics to the paper and its argument.

The Foreskin Aesthetic or Ugliness Reconsidered

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 558-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Allan
Keyword(s):  
North American ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
American Media ◽  
Sex Manuals ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Way

This article argues that to understand the role and place of the foreskin, we must address the aesthetic question that sits at its root. North American media often describe the foreskin as “ugly,” “gross,” or pejoratively “European”; all of which present, fundamentally, an aesthetic comment on what is pleasing. As such, this article investigates the aesthetic discourse surrounding the foreskin in relation to a range of materials that speak at or around the foreskin. In particular, it looks at sources deemed to be “common”—sex manuals, pregnancy manuals, and film and television—alongside theoretical and scientific studies. Undertaking a close reading of these materials, this article sheds light on the striking similarities that these distinct bodies of literature share and the way that aesthetics undergirds their arguments, often as a silent statement rather than exerted forcefully. Through this argument, this article breaks new ground on the way that we consider the foreskin, and, importantly, the aestheticization processes that shape our understanding of this seemingly ancillary component of the penis. Accordingly, this article contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the politics of the foreskin and circumcision by shifting the debate to consider the aesthetic.

Networks and Trade

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew B. Bernard ◽  
Andreas Moxnes
Keyword(s):  
Large Firm ◽  
Firm Heterogeneity ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Transaction Data ◽  
Dynamic Matching ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Trading Partners ◽  
Empirical Regularities

Trade occurs between firms both across borders and within countries, and most trade transactions include at least one large firm with many trading partners. This article reviews the literature on firm-to-firm connections in trade. A growing body of evidence coming from domestic and international transaction data has established empirical regularities that have inspired the development of new theories emphasizing firm heterogeneity among both buyers and suppliers in production networks. Theoretical work has considered both static and dynamic matching environments in a framework of many-to-many matching. The literature on trade and production networks is at an early stage, and there are many unanswered empirical and theoretical questions.

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