Configuring the Other: Sensing War through Immersive Simulation

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Suchman

This paper draws on archival materials to read two demonstrations of FlatWorld, an immersive military training simulation developed between 2001 and 2007 at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies. The first demonstration is a video recording of a guided tour of the system, staged by its designers in 2005. The second is a documentary created by the US Public Broadcasting Service as part of their “embedded” media coverage of the system while it was installed at California’s Camp Pendleton in 2007. I critically attend to the imaginaries that are realized in the simulation’s figurations of places and (raced, gendered) bodies, as well as its storylines. This is part of a wider project of understanding how distinctions between the real and the virtual are effectively elided in technoscientific military discourses, in the interest of recognizing real/virtual entanglements while also reclaiming the differences that matter.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Twomey

This book is very aptly named, for it was Alan Plaunt, more than any other individual, who set the philosophical and organizational foundations of the CBC and its progenitor, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission. Plaunt's pivotal role in the genesis of public broadcasting in Canada was initially set out by Michael Nolan as his doctoral study for the University of Western Ontario where today Nolan teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism. CBC Enterprises published Nolan's work along with several other books in the fall of 1986 in celebration of CBC's 50 years of public broadcasting service. The 162 page narrative is enhanced by its thorough footnoting and seven pages of reference sources on Canadian broadcasting history.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 342-363
Author(s):  
John L. Sullivan

The revival of the BBC series Doctor Who in 2005 heralded the successful rebirth of a defunct science fiction series that had been cancelled in 1989. While the 2005 incarnation was designed as a slick, high-budget media product with cross-national appeal, the initial series, which was broadcast regularly from 1963 to 1989, was quite different – quirky, low-budget and distinctly British. In fact, the roll-out of Doctor Who on American television screens in the late 1970s was marred by missteps thanks in part to structural differences between the US and British broadcasting systems. This essay explores the initial expansion of Doctor Who into the United States beginning in the late 1960s, first via syndication to commercial stations with Time Life Television and later to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations nationwide through the BBC's US distribution arm, Lionheart Television. The attempt to internationalise the Doctor Who audience in its first two decades is examined through the larger lens of shared British and American broadcasting history and policy before and during the Thatcher era. Ironically, while the BBC scrapped Doctor Who in the 1980s due to market pressures and personal rivalries, it attracted an engaged and loyal fan base in the United States, ultimately boosting the fortunes of American public television.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E. Twomey

This book is very aptly named, for it was Alan Plaunt, more than any other individual, who set the philosophical and organizational foundations of the CBC and its progenitor, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission. Plaunt's pivotal role in the genesis of public broadcasting in Canada was initially set out by Michael Nolan as his doctoral study for the University of Western Ontario where today Nolan teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism. CBC Enterprises published Nolan's work along with several other books in the fall of 1986 in celebration of CBC's 50 years of public broadcasting service. The 162 page narrative is enhanced by its thorough footnoting and seven pages of reference sources on Canadian broadcasting history.


Author(s):  
David Willetts

Universities have a crucial role in the modern world. In England, entrance to universities is by nation-wide competition which means English universities have an exceptional influence on schools--a striking theme of the book. This important book first investigates the university as an institution and then tracks the individual on their journey to and through university. In A University Education, David Willetts presents a compelling case for the ongoing importance of the university, both as one of the great institutions of modern society and as a transformational experience for the individual. The book also makes illuminating comparisons with higher education in other countries, especially the US and Germany. Drawing on his experience as UK Minister for Universities and Science from 2010 to 2014, the author offers a powerful account of the value of higher education and the case for more expansion. He covers controversial issues in which he was involved from access for disadvantaged students to the introduction of L9,000 fees. The final section addresses some of the big questions for the future, such as the the relationship between universities and business, especially in promoting innovation.. He argues that the two great contemporary trends of globalisation and technological innovation will both change the university significantly. This is an authoritative account of English universities setting them for the first time in their new legal and regulatory framework.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-376
Author(s):  
Justine Tally

Abstract Long before Toni Morrison was extensively recognized as a serious contender in the “Global Market of Intellectuals,” she was obviously reading and absorbing challenging critical work that was considered “provocative and controversial” by the keepers of the US academic community at the time. While no one disputes the influence of Elaine Pagels’ work on Gnosticism at the University of Princeton, particularly its importance for Jazz and Paradise, the second and third novels of the Morrison trilogy, Gnosticism in Beloved has not been so carefully considered. Yet this keen interest in Gnosticism coupled with the author’s systematic study of authors from the mid-19th-century American Renaissance inevitably led her to deal with the fascination of Renaissance authors with Egypt (where the Nag Hammadi manuscripts were rediscovered), its ancient civilization, and its mythology. The extensive analysis of a leading French literary critic of Herman Melville, Prof. Viola Sachs, becomes the inspiration for a startlingly different reading of Morrison’s seminal novel, one that positions this author in a direct dialogue with the premises of Melville’s masterpiece, Moby-Dick, also drawing on the importance of Gnosticism for Umberto Eco’s 1980 international best-seller, The Name of the Rose.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-75
Author(s):  
Alan Glasper

In light of recent media coverage, Emeritus Professor Alan Glasper, from the University of Southampton, discusses polices and guidance pertinent to the duty of candour


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (7) ◽  
pp. 797-811 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianne Suldovsky ◽  
Asheley Landrum ◽  
Natalie Jomini Stroud

In an era where expertise is increasingly critiqued, this study draws from the research on expertise and scientist stereotyping to explore who the public considers to be a scientist in the context of media coverage about climate change and genetically modified organisms. Using survey data from the United States, we find that political ideology and science knowledge affect who the US public believes is a scientist in these domains. Our results suggest important differences in the role of science media attention and science media selection in the publics “scientist” labeling. In addition, we replicate previous work and find that compared to other people who work in science, those with PhDs in Biology and Chemistry are most commonly seen as scientists.


2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Liao ◽  
Pirkko Markula

In November 2010, the US media reported that basketball player Diana Taurasi tested positive for a banned substance while playing in Turkey. In this study, we explore the media coverage of Taurasi’s positive drug test from a Deleuzian perspective. We consider the media coverage as an assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Malins, 2004) to analyze how Taurasi’s drug using body is articulated with the elite female sporting body in the coverage of her doping incident (Markula, 2004; Wise, 2011). Our analysis demonstrates that Taurasi’s position as a professional basketball player in the US dominated the discussion to legitimize her exoneration of banned substance use. In addition, Turkey, its “amateur” sport and poor drug control procedure, was located to the periphery to normalize a certain type of professionalism, doping control, and body as the desirable elements of sporting practice.


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