‘Does he know you like I know you?’: Barbara Kean’s bisexual appeal, the Male Gothic and Gotham’s woman problem

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carey Millsap-Spears

This article discusses how the FOX television series Gotham (2014–19) fits the overall definition of a traditional Male (Horror) Gothic text and how disruptive female characters, like Barbara Kean, push against these seemingly strict Gothic boundaries. Through the development of the bisexual character Barbara Kean, the conservative, Male Gothic foundation is ultimately questioned in the US television series. Gotham’s portrayal of Barbara not only propagates bisexual stereotypes, but it also speaks to the larger discussion of bisexual aversion and eventual erasure present in many media texts. Additionally, Gotham employs the depraved bisexual trope, in which bisexual characters, like Barbara, are shown to be duplicitous. Barbara Kean, however, transgresses the boundaries of the Male Gothic tradition and thrives within the narrative structure of Gotham.

Author(s):  
Volker Scheid

This chapter explores the articulations that have emerged over the last half century between various types of holism, Chinese medicine and systems biology. Given the discipline’s historical attachments to a definition of ‘medicine’ that rather narrowly refers to biomedicine as developed in Europe and the US from the eighteenth century onwards, the medical humanities are not the most obvious starting point for such an inquiry. At the same time, they do offer one advantage over neighbouring disciplines like medical history, anthropology or science and technology studies for someone like myself, a clinician as well as a historian and anthropologist: their strong commitment to the objective of facilitating better medical practice. This promise furthermore links to the wider project of critique, which, in Max Horkheimer’s definition of the term, aims at change and emancipation in order ‘to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them’. If we take the critical medical humanities as explicitly affirming this shared objective and responsibility, extending the discipline’s traditional gaze is not a burden but becomes, in fact, an obligation.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 104
Author(s):  
Eliana Alemán ◽  
José Pérez-Agote

This work aims to show that the sacrificial status of the victims of acts of terrorism, such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings (“11-M”) and ETA (Basque Homeland and Liberty) attacks in Spain, is determined by how it is interpreted by the communities affected and the manner in which it is ritually elaborated a posteriori by society and institutionalised by the state. We also explore the way in which the sacralisation of the victim is used in socially and politically divided societies to establish the limits of the pure and the impure in defining the “Us”, which is a subject of dispute. To demonstrate this, we first describe two traumatic events of particular social and political significance (the case of Miguel Ángel Blanco and the 2004 Madrid train bombings). Secondly, we analyse different manifestations of the institutional discourse regarding victims in Spain, examining their representation in legislation, in public demonstrations by associations of victims of terrorism and in commemorative “performances” staged in Spain. We conclude that in societies such as Spain’s, where there exists a polarisation of the definition of the “Us”, the success of cultural and institutional performances oriented towards reparation of the terrorist trauma is precarious. Consequently, the validity of the post-sacrificial narrative centring on the sacred value of human life is ephemeral and thus fails to displace sacrificial narratives in which particularist definitions of the sacred Us predominate.


Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-127
Author(s):  
Anca-Simina Martin

Jews as a collective have long served as scapegoats for epidemics and pandemics, such as the Bubonic Plague and, according to some scholars, the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic. This practice reemerged in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when more and more fake news outlets in the US and Europe started publishing articles on a perceived linkage between Jewish communities and the novel coronavirus. What this article aims to achieve is to facilitate a dialogue between the observations on the phenomenon made by the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania and the latest related EU reports, with a view to charting its beginnings in Romania in relation to other European countries and in an attempt to see whether Romania, like France and Germany, has witnessed the emergence of “grey area” discourses which are not fully covered by International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-73
Author(s):  
Veronika Bílková

The approaches of EU institutions and the US to democracy assistance often vary quite significantly as both actors choose different means and tactics. The nuances in the understandings of democracy on the part of the EU and the US lead to their promotion of models of democratic governance that are often quite divergent and, in some respects, clashing. This book examines the sources of this divergence and by focusing on the role of the actors’ "democratic identity" it aims to explain the observation that both actors use divergent strategies and instruments to foster democratic governance in third countries. Taking a constructivist view, it demonstrates that the history, expectations and experiences with democracy of each actor significantly inform their respective definition of democracy and thus the model of democracy they promote abroad. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in democracy promotion, democratization, political theory, EU and US foreign policy and assistance, and identity research.


2020 ◽  
pp. 350-360
Author(s):  
V. Bolshakov ◽  
Yu. Maznichenko ◽  
Yu. Holub ◽  
M. Molyboha ◽  
I. Samoilenko

The systematic analysis of the world experience of civilian use of knives not as cold weapons showed that at present the knife did not become the main attribute of equipping tourists, fish men and even hunters. In particular, today there are very few types of hunting, during which the knife is used to finish off the beast or to protect against it. At the same time, as the practice of hunting management proves, during hunting there are many uses for the knife, even without considering it as a means for cooking. This, in particular, sharpening various stakes (for a tent, a hut, a campfire), skinning a game, preparing chips for a fire, scraping ice from skis or marsh mud from shoes. To do this, in accordance with current state technical standards, any folding knife must have a lock, and the blades of all knives must be of sufficient thickness so as not to break from the load. Handles of hunting knives should be comfortable to hold so that your hand will not get tired during long-term work. For all knives, according to the technical requirements, the length and thickness of the blade must be consistent, as well as the angle of inclination of the tip relative to the axis of the blade. With regard to the above, an interesting example is the collection of knives by the Swedish company Eriksson, consisting of four models, made in the configuration of the Swedish finca. The knives have a handle and a blade of a classic Finnish knife, but with a one-sided stopper. Their blades, depending on the color of the handle, are made of different types of steel. Knives with blue plastic handles have stainless steel blades, and knives with red handles are made of carbon steel. It is believed that in Sweden almost every construction worker walks with such a knife in his pocket. It should be noted that according to the current method of forensic investigation of cold weapons and structurally similar products in it, these knives can be attributed to cold weapons by the size of the blade. It is also interesting an urban-type knife, which is not a cold weapon of the Worden Tactical Medium Company. Renowned wizard Kelly Warden, an instructor for American Rangers, designs this knife. Since 2001, Kelly Warden has been the main consultant on impact and blade weapons of Detachment 1 of the US Special Forces. He trains Special Forces hand-to-hand combat with the use of a knife, machete, baton, sticks, as well as the method of forceful detention. The blade length of the knife described is 74 mm, thickness – 3.8 mm; the handle has a sub-finger protrusion to prevent the arm from slipping on the blade. The knife does not have a standard stopper, which, in addition to protecting it from slipping the hand on the blade, must prevent the hand from sinking into the victim’s body. By all measures, this knife is not a cold weapon in accordance with the requirements of the criminal law of Ukraine. Kelly Warden believes that the knife as a means of self-defense levels the difference in weight, height and physical strength, but its main drawback is its damaging ability. The proposed article is devoted to this circumstance, the definition of the role of the restrictor in classifying a knife as a cold weapon.


2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (79) ◽  
pp. 117-134
Author(s):  
Sara Tanderup Linkis

Departing from an analysis of Mark Z. Danielewski’s serial novel The Familiar, the article investigates how contemporary literature at once imitates and resists the serial logics of modern media culture. Thus, focusing especially on the aspects of transmediality and participatory culture, I point out how Danielewski’s work adapts the narrative structure as well as the modes of promotion and reception that characterize e.g. modern television series while also positioning itself in contrast to new media culture and emphasizing the ‘literariness’ of the literary series.


2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Han-Chung Lien ◽  
Chen-Chi Wang ◽  
Shou-Wu Lee ◽  
Jeng-Yuan Hsu ◽  
Hong-Zen Yeh ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
V. I. Vinokurov
Keyword(s):  
The Us ◽  

The article gives a definition of public diplomacy, reveals the dualism of its functions, emphasizes the role and place of public diplomacy in upholding national and bloc interests.


2021 ◽  
pp. e1-e9
Author(s):  
Mónica García

The earliest sickness survey of the US Public Health Service, which started in 1915, was the Service’s first socioeconomic study of an industrial community. It was also the first to define illness as a person’s inability to work. The survey incorporated the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s definition of illness, which, instead of sickness rates, focused on duration of illness as a proxy of time lost from work. This kind of survey took place in the broader context of the reform movements of the Progressive Era and the social surveys conducted in the United States, which led to the creation of the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, where the Service’s sickness survey originated. The Service’s focus on the socioeconomic classification of families and definition of illness as the inability to work enabled it to show the strong link between poverty and illness among industrial workers. The leader of the survey, Edgar Sydenstricker, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company came up with new ways to measure the health of the population, which also influenced the Service’s studies of the effects of the Great Depression on public health and the National Health Survey of 1935–1936. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print October 28, 2021: e1–e9. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306454 )


Author(s):  
Jack Fennell

This book looks at Irish Gothic and horror texts, in both English and Irish, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, examining how this kind of fiction represented the cultural and political concerns of the day through the deployment of monsters, both as characters and as representative figures. Monsters disrupt both our definition of ‘history’ (as a record of past events arranged into a narrative structure) and our scientific, political, or ‘common sense’ understanding of what is possible or impossible; the monster exists outside any notion of a universal morality (or even moral relativism), and with its strange biology it complicates ideologies of gender and race. To be confronted by a monster is to witness the breakdown accepted models of reality, and plunges the subject into a nihilistic world where human action is meaningless. Since Irish history is often conceived of as a sequence of ‘ruptures’ (e.g. the Plantations, the 1641 Rebellion, the Great Famine, the Anglo-Irish War and the Troubles), monstrosity is an apt lens through which to scrutinise Irish culture. Each chapter of this book looks at a different category of monster in turn, and looks at the distinctive ways in which they rupture human history.


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