scholarly journals Living in between a house and a home: Where’s the comfort zone anyway? Dislocated identities in Morrison’s "The Bluest Eye" and Cisneros’ "The House on Mango Street"

Oceánide ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
Alcina Pereira de Sousa ◽  
Alda Maria Correia
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Comfort Zone ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Cultural Experiences ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Linguistic Structures ◽  
Selection Of

This paper aims to provide a reflection on literary representations of home alternatively to current collocations in the media, in the psychological and sociological realm (home vs comfort zone). The selection of two postcolonial texts, one by Morrison, The Bluest Eye (1970), and another by Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984), provides ways-in to discuss changing social and cultural experiences with a focus on characters’ search for identity in a multicultural and multilingual setting, as is the one in the United States. The study will depart from a brief theoretical survey (Anderson 1991) to a corpus-based approach which maps such shifts and changes (Baker 2006) while resorting to a close analysis of contexts of occurrence of the keywords home and house, along with their patterns of collocation, in the texts under scope (from the sentence to the textual levels, following Biber et al. 1998; Sinclair 2004, among other). The analysis is meant to unveil ways in which writers make use of linguistic structures and most importantly what it means to be at home when characters never felt welcome there, or characters’ inner / outer struggle to develop a sense of belonging in disrupted settings.

scholarly journals Muslim Diaspora in the West

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 111-113
Author(s):  
Anna Piela
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Moral Conviction ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
American Muslim ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Selection Of

This excellent edited collection unpicks and disputes multifarious and intricate processes that underpin the homogenization, otherization, and vilification of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Muslim citizens, and individuals with a Muslim cultural background in the group of countries known as “the West.” It does so through presenting a selection of essays that offer an insight into the localized, day-to-day realities of people whose lives are currently defined by their link to Islam. The focus on gender, home, and belonging emphasizes the particular challenge faced by Muslim women: Their bodies are the battleground for the ideological wars fought by western governments on the one hand, and by political Islamists on the other (pp. 30-31). At the same time, media outlets and governmental policies portray and essentialize all Muslims as a single, uniform community defined exclusively by their Muslimness, thereby ignoring any of their differences based on “national origin, rural-urban roots, class, gender, language, lifestyle and degree of religiosity, as well as political and moral conviction” (p. 2). As all of the essays demonstrate, these concerns about representation remain valid, despite the critiques of historical and contemporary orientalism published by Edward Said over thirty years ago notwithstanding: Orientalism (1979) and Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World (1981). The collection is a result of two conferences held in Toronto (2006) and Amsterdam (2008) to discuss these issues. It is organized around four themes: discourse, organizations, and policy; sexuality and family; youth; and space and belonging. The first theme is represented by different perspectives from the Netherlands, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Halleh Ghorashi analyzes the disempowering effects of supposedly “empowering courses” for immigrant women of Muslim backgrounds and indicates how women themselves critique the terms on which such courses are delivered. Fauzia Erfan Ahmed writes about the deteriorating situation for female American Muslim community leaders who are forced into silence despite a long history of female leadership since the time of slavery. Cassandra Balchin’s chapter focuses on Muslim women’s refusal to cede the discourse of their legal rights to both the governments and to patriarchal males within Muslim communities, who are ...

Raanan Rein, Fútbol, Jews and the Making of Argentina, trans. Marsha Grenzeback. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014. 166 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orthodox Jewish ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Common Theme ◽  
American Jews ◽  
The Common ◽  
The One

This chapter reviews the books Fútbol, Jews and the Making of Argentina (2014), by Raanan Rein, translated by Marsha Grenzeback, and Muscling in on New Worlds: Jews, Sport, and the Making of the Americas (2014), edited by Raanan Rein and David M.K. Sheinin. Rein’s book deals with the “making” of Argentina through football (soccer), while Muscling in on New Worlds focuses on the “making” of the Americas (mainly the one America, called the United States) through sports. Muscling in on New Worlds is a collection of essays that seeks to advance the common theme of sport as “an avenue by which Jews threaded the needle of asserting a Jewish identity.” Topics include Jews as boxers, Jews and football, Jews and yoga, Orthodox Jewish athletes, and American Jews and baseball. There are also essays about the cinematic and literary representations of Jews in sports.

Digital Resources: Chile’s Centro de Investigación y Documentación (CIDOC) and Anti-Communism in the 1964 Elections

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Botto Stuven
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Christian Democracy ◽  
Salvador Allende ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right

The Documentation Center of the Contemporary History of Chile (CIDOC), which belongs to the Universidad Finis Terrae (Santiago), has a digital archive that contains the posters and newspapers inserts of the anti-communist campaign against Salvador Allende’s presidential candidacy in 1964. These appeared in the main right-wing newspapers of Santiago, between January and September of 1964. Although the collection of posters in CIDOC is not complete, it is a resource of great value for those who want to research this historical juncture, considering that those elections were by far the most contested and conflicting in the history of Chile during the 20th Century, as it implicted the confrontation between two candidates defending two different conceptions about society, politics, and economics. On the one hand, Salvador Allende, the candidate of the Chilean left; on the other, Eduardo Frei, the candidate of the Christian Democracy, coupled with the traditional parties of the Right. While the technical elements of the programs of both candidates did not differ much from each other, the political campaign became the scenario for an authentic war between the “media” that stood up for one or the other candidate. Frei’s anticommunist campaign had the financial aid of the United States, and these funds were used to gather all possible resources to create a real “terror” in the population at the perspective of the Left coming to power. The Chilean Left labeled this strategy of using fear as the “Terror Campaign.”

The Watchdog Still Barks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth Knobel
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Newspaper Industry ◽  
Investigative Reporting ◽  
Ownership Structures ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
Important Form ◽  
Better Than

Perhaps no other function of a free press is as important as the watchdog role. It is easier for politicians to get away with abusing power, wasting public funds, and making poor decisions if the press is not shining its light with what is termed “accountability reporting.” This need has become especially clear as the American press has come under direct attack for carrying out its watchdog duties. This book presents a study of how this most important form of journalism came of age in the digital era at American newspapers. The book examines the front pages of nine newspapers, located across the United States, for clues on how papers addressed the watchdog role as the advent of the Internet transformed journalism. It shows how papers of varying sizes and ownership structures around the country marshaled resources for accountability reporting despite significant financial and technological challenges. Although the American newspaper industry contracted significantly during the 1990s and 2000s due to the digital transformation, the data collected in this book shows that the papers held fast to the watchdog role. The newspapers all endured budget and staff cuts during the 20 years studied as paid circulation and advertising dropped, but the amount of deep watchdog reporting on their front pages generally increased over this time. The book contains interviews with editors of the newspapers studied, who explain why they are staking their papers' futures on the one thing that American newspapers still do better than any other segment of the media—watchdog and investigative reporting.

De beleidsagenda en het 'wereldbeeld' dat Vlaamse media aanreiken

Res Publica ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-196
Author(s):  
Peter Janssens
Keyword(s):  
News Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Main Question ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
International Issues ◽  
International Status ◽  
World Image ◽  
Selection Of

Given the two important functions of the media, offering a world image and setting the public agenda, the main question in this article is : "What is the image of society offered by the media ?" For that purpose three years of the radio programme "BRT-Aktueel" are analyzed on the basis of a printed index. A distinction is made between home news, news on states, news on groups of countries and international organizations. The main conclusions are :1. Most of the coverage concerns foreign issues ;2. Within each category there is a clear influence of temporary events. This influence seems more important for foreign topics ;3. The news coverage is strongly concentrated on a relatively small number of issues. This conclusion applies on all categories ;4. Social and domestic policy dominate the home news ;5. The coverage of international issues deals mostly with Europe, then with the USSR, and the United States. Other countries are part of the periphery and get attention when a major crisis occurs.The question rises which factors determinate the selection of issues. Within the limits of this research a few factors can be mentioned : geographical proximity, the structure of the media, the role of press agencies, the international status of a country, the selection by the journalist. It is quite clear that this problem of objectivity ofthe media is a major problem which is linked to the role of the media in a democratie society.

scholarly journals The American Reception and Settlement of Hungarian Refugees in 1956–1957

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 197-205
Author(s):  
Peter Pastor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
High Educational Level ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
The People ◽  
Us Government ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One

In the wake of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, close to two hundred thousand Hungarians crossed into Austria.  About thirty thousand of these refugees were allowed to enter the United States. Their common experience of living under totalitarian communism and participating or being a witness to the exhilarating thirteen days of the revolution and their sudden, previously unplanned, departure from the homeland gave them a collective identity that was different from the one shared by the people of previous waves of Hungarian influx to the United States. The high educational level of the refugees attained before and after their arrival made their absorption into the mainstream relatively easy. The integration process was facilitated by the shaping of a positive image of the 1956 refugees by the US government and the media.  The reestablishment of the communist system in post-1956 Hungary contributed to the perception that, for the refugees in the United States, there was no hope for return to the homeland.  This assumption strengthened the attitudes of those who wished to embrace the American melting pot model.  Many of the 1956-ers in the United Sates, however, were also comfortable with the notion of ethnic pride and believed in the shaping of a dual national identity.

scholarly journals Different from Us: Teaching About the Rich After Occupy and the Great Recession

2015 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Richard Ohmann
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
College Students ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Ernest Hemingway ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The One

In a famous imaginary exchange, F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "The rich are different from us."  Ernest Hemingway replied, "Yes, they have more money."   Most critics have thought the epigram attributed to Fitzgerald more perceptive about class in the United States than the one attributed to Hemingway.  But if we're looking for a wry take on how class has been understood, in the media and among college students, Hemingway's comment is pretty good.  

The Glory and the Burden: Teaching a Course on Politics and the Media

1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-23
Author(s):  
David L Paletz
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Television News ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Benign Neglect ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One ◽  
American Political Science

The article describes the genesis, purposes and construction of an innovative course relating politics and the media of communication. Focusing on authority, the course (the glory) is designed to assist students to understand, on the one hand, how and why the media depict authority systems, structures, positions, individual authority wielders, and sanctioned policies in particular ways; and, on the other hand, to understand how public officials in the United States and other nations try to use the mass media to enhance their authority. Feature and “documentary” film, videotapes of television news and political campaign commercials are analyzed for their structures, codes, and possible effects. The success of the course is indicated by the range of quality of original, media-using, student projects. The teacher of such a course encounters a heavy “burden”. It includes administrative difficulties, technical obstacles, and the unavailability of visual material. Facing such problems directly, the Task Force on Audio-Visual Instruction in Political Science of the American Political Science Association (of which the author was a member) issued a series of sweeping recommendations in the areas of information and evaluation of technological resources and media material production, exhibition, distribution, circulation, and preservation. Most of these recommendations have thus far encountered benign neglect.

All Het Up!: Rescuing Heterosexuality on the Oprah Winfrey Show

1996 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Epstein ◽  
Deborah Lynn Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Heterosexual Relationships ◽  
Oprah Winfrey ◽  
Self Help ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Order ◽  
Selection Of

The Oprah Winfrey Show provides an interesting set of contradictions. On the one hand, it appears to challenge common-sense assumptions about relationships, specifically heterosexual relationships (for example, by consistently raising issues of sexual violence within a heterosexual context). Yet, at the same time, Oprah's presentation often works to reinforce precisely the norms she seeks to challenge. Through a close analysis of a selection of programme clips from one particular programme among many about relationships, sexuality and families, this article will consider the ways in which the Oprah Winfrey Show both problematizes and yet normalizes the boundaries of heterosexuality. Here we shall discuss both the resolute exposure and exploration of what could be termed the casualities of normative (and compulsory) heterosexuality and, paradoxically, its recuperation as a ‘rational’ ideal. In exploring the ways in which this recuperation takes place, we shall begin with a brief consideration of two of the key discourses which shape the show: the discourse of therapy and that of kinship. Our analysis of the sexual politics of the Oprah Winfrey Show in these terms will focus on the programme, ‘How to Make Love Last’ (18 January 1993). Like so many other programmes, ‘How to Make Love Last’ intends to highlight and deal with problems within heterosexual relationships as distressing but solvable (through the medium of therapeutic self-help). At another level, however, the programme also (unwittingly) reveals a different order of problems which, ironically, can only be reinforced by the mode of rescue proposed and staged.

A Taste of Capitalism? Competing Notions of Cuban Entrepreneurship in Havana's Paladares

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-114
Author(s):  
Ted A. Henken ◽  
Gabriel Vignoli
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
State Supervision ◽  
Home Based ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Balance State ◽  
Transition To Capitalism ◽  
The Media ◽  
The One

This essay examines the meaning, function, and possible future(s) of entrepreneurship in Cuba. Within the larger process of Raúl Castro's unprecedented economic reforms and in the midst of an ongoing “normalization” of relations between Cuba and the United States, we ask: How is entrepreneurship being reconfigured both from above and from within? What effects will that reconfiguration have in shaping the popular response to the simplistic either-or model of a mere “updating” of socialism, on the one hand, versus an implicit “transition” to capitalism on the other? What was—and is—the meaning of entrepreneurship in the Cuban context, especially from the perspective of entrepreneurs themselves? To address these questions, we focus on a particular site: Havana's private, home-based restaurants, known popularly as paladares in Cuba 1 . Paladares are the most widespread, dynamic, and profitable mode of entrepreneurship in today's Cuba and—we argue—the quintessential experimental space for the articulation of different, competing notions of entrepreneurship. In other words, how do private restaurateurs balance state supervision and regulation with their need for innovation and flexibility especially since the enactment of major entrepreneurial reforms in late-2010? Our focus on entrepreneurship acquires more urgency (and demands deeper analysis) in the rapidly changing context of U.S.-Cuba bilateral relations following the historic thaw initiated on December 17, 2014, culminating in the establishment of diplomatic relations and the opening of embassies on July 20, 2015. Indeed, President Barack Obama's new “empowerment through engagement” policy explicitly targets Cuba's emerging entrepreneurial class as agents of change following Raúl Castro's 2010 liberalizations. Thus, we conclude by addressing how new state policies on each side are impacting Cuban entrepreneurs and how entrepreneurs themselves are strategically taking advantage of their role as economic protagonists in a new Cuba. 1 Except in cases where we discuss paladares whose travails have been covered in the media— “El Hurón Azul” and “El Cabildo”—all other names have been altered. Translations from the Spanish are our own. Henken carried out ethnographic interviews with nearly two-dozen paladar proprietors on multiple visits to Cuba between July 2000 and April 2011. Henken's ethnographic work was augmented by that done between 2010 and 2014 by Vignoli.

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