A letter to Agnes McCausland Richardson Etherington (1880-1854)

“Dear Agnes” is a fictitious correspondence that I shared with Agnes McCausland Richardson Etherington (1880–1954) during my doctoral studies in the Cultural Studies Program at Queen’s University (2014-2019). Agnes Etherington is a key figure in the development of fine arts programs at Queen’s, including its art collection. Owing to her bequest of the Etherington House, the university’s art facility bears her name. The entire correspondence that we shared, and that was inserted as textual interruptions into my final dissertation portfolio, includes personal photos and a genealogy that chronologically records activities of Indigenous resurgence that occurred during my studies. What follows is an excerpt of the correspondence. This text is based on one of the four letters found in the portfolio.

Life and Activities of Garifullah Ishan Gainullin (1894–1984)

The article is the result of extensive research and generalization of available sources and literature that reflect the life and spiritual activities of Garifulla Ishan Gainullin – one of the most authoritative religious figures of the Middle Volga region of the Soviet period. He was the last Tatar Sheikh of the Naqshbandi tariqah, who was related to Dagestani Sheikh Bayazid Ishan Khairullin through Zainulla Ishan Rasulev. In his youth, he received a good theological educa-tion in a pre-revolutionary madrasah, passed many trials and overcame hardships of his time on his life's path. Despite the difficult situation in the country, he managed to gain additional reli-gious knowledge, spiritually improved himself and became an authoritative spiritual mentor (Ishan) in the Middle Volga region. Published for the first time are personal photos and docu-ments of Ishan, with some of them used in his biography. In Russian historiography, the person-ality of Garifulla Ishan Gainullin has not been studied in detail and many of its aspects are little known to general readers.

A Novel Ripple and Cyber Bullies Data Disclose (RACYBDD) Framework to Protect Images on Social Media

Due to the advancement in internet technology, everyone can connect to anyone living anywhere in this world who is far away from us by using social media. Social media became a public place to share everyone's personal photos and videos. These photos or videos are viewed, shared, and even downloaded by their respective friends, someone from their friends' profiles, and even unrelated persons also without their permission. One of the risks from the social media is the cyber bullying or online harassment. Cyber bullies perpetrate either through denigration or doxing. The cyber bullies are anonymous, and it is very difficult for us to catch and punish them. The main aim of this chapter is to provide the privacy and security to the photos that are sharing on social media. This chapter proposes a novel algorithm to keep the photos safe that are uploading on social media and the extension of the novel algorithm to reveal the details of the cyber bullies those who performed morphing on the photos that were downloaded from social media.

Testimonial rallies and the construction of memetic authenticity

This article traces the role of ‘testimonial rallies’ – Internet memes in which participants post personal photos and/or written accounts as part of a coordinated political protest – in the formulation of truth-related values. Rather than endorsing the value of truth per se, rallies such as ‘We are the 99 percent’ or ‘I never ask for it’ valorize what I term ‘memetic authenticity’. This construction of the authentic incorporates four basic components: evidence, self-orientation, affective judgement, and mimesis. By combining ‘external authenticity’ that relates to the aggregation of factual proofs with forms of ‘internal authenticity’ that focus on emotive individual experiences, testimonial rallies serve as a grassroots weapon of the weak against those in power. While ‘external’ and ‘internal’ forms of authenticity are happily married in this genre, I conclude with a reflection on our grim future in the case of divorce.