The World Is Her Oyster: Negotiating Contemporary White Womanhood in Hollywood’s Tourist Spaces

2018 ◽  
pp. 31-57
Author(s):  
Kendra Marston
Keyword(s):  
White Woman ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Creative Writers ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
White Womanhood

This chapter analyses Hollywood tourist romances Eat Pray Love and Under the Tuscan Sun as examples of texts in which the burdened white woman transcends her melancholic state as a result of travelling beyond US borders. The female protagonists in both films are creative writers who feel stifled by their urban environments and discover that the value systems they encounter outside the US allow them to feel creatively reinvigorated as well as liberated from societal dictates that declare true happiness to reside in marriage, upward mobility, and bodily discipline. In these films, the tourist zone must appear to exist independently of the globalising forces of neoliberal capitalism, with the heroines’ belief that they are divinely guided on a spiritual journey of self-discovery constituting a shift away from the secular ideologies of neoliberalism and postfeminism, while also operating as a form of white exceptionalism within the foreign space.

Music enables the holistic development and discovery of self: A phenomenological study of two Christian musicians

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 400-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annabella S. K. Fung
Keyword(s):  
Music Education ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Phenomenological Study ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Holistic Development ◽  
Human Needs ◽  
Self Discovery

Music draws on body, space, time and relationships to offer a sacred experience. Musicking makes personal, social, emotional and spiritual connections with people. Cultural identity is formed through the arts, and the spirituality in music is a medium through which people explore their identities. This study examines how music facilitates the holistic development of two Melbourne-born Chinese-Australian Christian musicians. The Confucian Evolving Self Model, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs, and music education aims offer conceptualising scaffolds to illuminate their self-discovery. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to report on multiple semi-structured interviews undertaken over three years. This study considered the interaction of various value systems – the fusion of Confucianism, Christian and psychological cultures in the process of musical development and identity formation. It fills a research gap and complements existing approaches to understanding the social contexts influencing the acquisition of musical skills and musicians’ occupational choices. The permissive parenting that both participants experienced might account for them being able to follow a career in music without familial resistance. The current findings can advocate for music education because the spiritual aspects of musical experiences were perceived as a mirror in fostering the holistic development of both participants.

The Ruse of Repair

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Stuelke
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Neoliberal Governance ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Government

Since the 1990s, literary and queer studies scholars have eschewed Marxist and Foucauldian critique and hailed the reparative mode of criticism as a more humane and humble way of approaching literature and culture. The reparative turn has traveled far beyond the academy, influencing how people imagine justice, solidarity, and social change. In The Ruse of Repair, Patricia Stuelke locates the reparative turn's hidden history in the failed struggle against US empire and neoliberal capitalism in the 1970s and 1980s. She shows how feminist, antiracist, and anti-imperialist liberation movements' visions of connection across difference, practices of self care, and other reparative modes of artistic and cultural production have unintentionally reinforced forms of neoliberal governance. At the same time, the US government and military, universities, and other institutions have appropriated and depoliticized these same techniques to sidestep addressing structural racism and imperialism in more substantive ways. In tracing the reparative turn's complicated and fraught genealogy, Stuelke questions reparative criticism's efficacy in ways that will prompt critics to reevaluate their own reading practices.

scholarly journals The Challenge of Implementing Preferred Gender Pronouns: Queer Autonomy in the Age of Information Technologies

2020 ◽  
pp. 6-16
Author(s):  
Zooey Sophia Pook
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Gender Nonconforming ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Age Of Information

A preferred gender pronoun or PGP is the gender pronoun, or set of gender pronouns, an individual uses to represent themselves and by which they would like others to use when they represent them (PFLAG). The use of PGPs is meant to show respect to the autonomy of individuals whose gender identity may not conform to the appearance of others, or individuals whose identity is gender non-binary (HRC). The use of PGPs is suggested as a best practice by nearly every major LGBT+ organization in the US (PFLAG, HRC, etc.). Today, systems for implementing PGPs exist everywhere from college applications, hospital intake forms, dating websites, and beyond. While the use of PGPs shows respect for transgender and gender nonconforming individuals, these practices have unintended consequences as they contribute to the ever-expanding economies of data collection, made possible through the rise of information technologies. This work will explore questions of economy and power related to the collection of PGPs and the challenge of queer autonomy in the age of neoliberal capitalism.

scholarly journals The Last Mother: From Enrico Pau’s L’accabadora (2015) to Valeria Golino’s Miele (2013)

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 85-95
Author(s):  
Bernadette Luciano
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Female Figure ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Physical Mobility ◽  
Care Giving ◽  
Spanish Word ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Discovery ◽  
Political Landscapes

L'accabadora, is a Sardinian term deriving from the Spanish word 'acabar' which means to finish or complete. It refers to a female figure in Sardinian popular tradition, 'the last mother', an angel of mercy who assists the terminally ill in leaving the world. In this paper I explore variations of this female figure in two contemporary films. Enrico Pau's film L'accabadora set in pre- and World War II Sardinia, revolves around a protagonist (Annetta) who is a direct descendant of this Sardinian tradition. The second film, Valerio Golino's Miele, proposes what might be considered a contemporary variant of the Sardinian folk figure. While the tabu subject of euthanasia certainly forms the backdrop to the films, what is foregrounded is the isolation and alienation of the female protagonists who carry out care-giving roles tied to death. Torn between the conviction that the tasks they perform as “last mothers” console or provide final moments of serenity to the dying and an intangible discomfort with their execution of the task, they remain seemingly haunted by their roles, exhibiting an unease that arises from societal discomfort with administering death and a profession that requires that they direct their care to the dying rather than to the living. The representation of the films’ protagonists, their framing and the construction of the journeys they undertake, turn both films into narratives of self-discovery, motivated by encounters with others and otherness, and visually configured by the physical mobility across transformed geo-political landscapes that is central to the films.

I'm here, I'm listening : short stories

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jennifer Julian
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
The Political ◽  
University Of Missouri ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Creative Writers ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Creative Dissertation ◽  
The University

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] I'm Here, I'm Listening is a creative dissertation that makes the case for non-realist speculation as a fundamental tool for creative writers. The collection's twelve short stories push against the boundaries of realism, borrowing from genre conventions found in historic fiction, fabulism, and sci-fi to investigate the uncanny intersection of ecology, technology, and the human experience. The critical introduction, "New Worlds, Green Futures," argues for the political potential in science fiction and speculative writing. It close reads two novels -- Margaret Atwood's Surfacing (1972) and Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being (2013) -- and argues that the cathartic instances of time travel in these novels serve to break down the societal limitations of gender, time, environment, and species. The creative component of the dissertation depicts variations on womanhood and loss. The stories' many female protagonists contend with missing parents, siblings, and partners, absences both physical and emotional. Non-realist and speculative genres highlight the estranging experience of mourning. Characters must navigate strange and perilous dystopias, and many face external conflicts typical of a Cold War era sci-fi film--mutant spiders, doorways to other dimensions, sentient plant people, and cyber-ghosts. At the same time, the collection hones in on these women's interior lives, exploring, not only what makes their world strange and surreal, but what sense of beauty can be found and what connections can be forged in the wake of their own personal apocalypses.

The Lady Composer at the End

2020 ◽  
pp. 205-254
Author(s):  
Wanda Brister ◽  
Jay Rosenblatt
Keyword(s):  
Sudden Death ◽  
Song Cycles ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Memorial Service ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Brain Aneurysm ◽  
Music Festival ◽  
The Us ◽  
First Time

The letters sent to American composer and pianist Eugene Hemmer allow Dring to speak in her own voice for the first time since the early diaries, documents that allow a glimpse into her musical as well as her personal life. There is a brief discussion of The Florida International Music Festival, which featured the US premiere of her most popular instrumental composition, the Trio for Flute, Oboe, and Piano, a work which provides a splendid example of her later musical style. Other works that are discussed include The Real Princess, a ballet written for Mari Bicknell’s Cambridge Ballet Workshop, and four song cycles: Dedications, Love and Time, Five Betjeman Songs, and Four Night Songs. Also documented are the first professional recordings of her compositions and the spiritual journey she undertook in her last years, the latter illustrated by talks that she gave at the Centre for Spiritual and Psychological Studies. Finally, her sudden death from a brain aneurysm is related through letters of Roger Lord and other documents, followed by her memorial service and concerts in her honor at the RCM.

After. Economics and politics of the post-pandemic world

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gr. W. Kolodko
Keyword(s):  
Developed Countries ◽  
Gradual Transition ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Face ◽  
Ecologically Sustainable ◽  
Two Sides

The coronavirus pandemic that has shaken the world will lay a long shadow for many years. It puts humanity in the face of incredible challenges that coincide with other negative mega-trends and unresolved economic, social and political problems. The enormous consequences and costs of the pandemic — human and social, economic and financial — will be known only ex post. While some lose nothing, others lose everything, sometimes even their lives. The heterogeneous, post-pandemic future — in which under the conditions of irreversible globalization various political and economic systems will interact with each other — will follow many paths, with the position of highly developed countries becoming relatively weaker. Tensions on the US—China line will increase, geopolitics and geoeconomics will change. The confrontation between democracy and authoritarianism will intensify, the synergy of the market and the state will be transformed. It will be particularly dangerous to turn two sides of the same counterfeit coin as an alternative: neoliberal capitalism versus populist capitalism. Chances for the better future may be created by a gradual transition to new pragmatism. It is a strategy of moderation in economic activities and a triple — economically, socially and ecologically — sustainable development based on the outline of an innovative, unorthodox and holistic economic theory. Pandemic is also an immense challenge for social sciences, not only for economics, because old manner of thinking will often occur to be useless for analyzing and explaining new situations.

Neoliberalism and the weaponising of language and education

Race & Class ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry A. Giroux
Keyword(s):  
Full Scale ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
Collective Resistance ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology ◽  
Educational Theorist ◽  
The Government ◽  
Language And Education

This forceful piece by a leading educational theorist, examines the ways in which democracy is under attack in the US by a combination of neoliberalism and white supremacist Trumpism. What we are witnessing is a mode of governing fuelled by fantasies of exclusion accompanied by a full-scale attack on morality, thoughtful reasoning and collective resistance rooted in democratic forms of struggles. As more people revolt against this dystopian project, neoliberal ideology and elements of a fascist politics merge to contain, distract and misdirect the anger that has materialised out of legitimate grievances against the government, controlling privileged elites and the hardships caused by neoliberal capitalism. The current crisis of agency, representation, values and language demands a discursive shift that can call into question and defeat the formative culture and ideological scaffolding through which a savage neoliberal capitalism reproduces itself.

scholarly journals Neoliberal Fascism’s War on Immigrants Echoes a Dark and Haunting Past

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-53
Author(s):  
Henry A. Giroux
Keyword(s):  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
State Violence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Violence Against Children ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
The Us ◽  
Detention Camps ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Way

In this paper Henry Giroux, the US theorist of critical pedagogy, examines the treatment of immigrants in America likening it to fascism’s extreme nationalism. He draws a parallel between neoliberal capitalism and fascism to explain the suppression of freedom, anti-democratic sentiments and the growth of racism leading to a demonisation of the other. Giroux speaks to the formation of a form of “neoliberal fascism” under Trump and considers the horrors of the perpetration of state violence against children. He documents the way that Trump mobilises “fascist passions” to set up immigration detention camps that involves the separation of children from their parents. [Ed.]

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