Ethnicity and Gender in Museum Representations of Human Evolution

Scientific representations of human evolution often embrace stereotypes of ethnicity and gender that are more aligned with socio-cultural discourses and norms than empirical facts. The present study has two connected aims: to understand how ethnicity and gender are represented in an exhibition about human evolution, and to understand how that representation influences learners’ meaning making. First, we analysed an exhibition with realistic reconstructions of early hominids in a museum of natural history, to identify dualisms related to the representation of gender and ethnicity that have been recognised in research. Then, we studied the processes of meaning making in the exhibition during an out-of-school educational activity, in which groups of teenaged students explore and discuss the hominid reconstructions. Our results show that the exhibition displays human evolution in the form of a linear sequence from a primitive African prehistory to a more advanced European present. Behind this depiction of human evolution lies stereotypic notions of ethnicity and gender: notions that were incorporated into the students’ meaning making during the educational activity. When students noticed aspects of ethnicity, their meaning making did not dispute the messages represented in the exhibition; these were accepted as scientific facts. Conversely, when the students noticed aspects related to gender, they often adopted a more critical stance and challenged the representations from different perspectives. We discuss the implications of our findings for exhibit design and evolution education more generally. In doing so, we offer our perspectives on the design of learning environments to salvage inherently sexist, racist, imperial science.

“I want you to help me, you’re family”: A relational approach to women's experience of distress and recovery in the perinatal period

Theoretical approaches have tended to understand perinatal distress through either individual or socio-cultural factors. In contrast, Natasha Mauthner proposed a relational model that understands perinatal distress in the context of interpersonal relationships. This study aims to build on Mauthner's work to explore how women speak about their relationships in connection to their stories of perinatal distress and recovery. Eight women were interviewed for the study. All women had at least one child under the age of three and self-identified as having experienced distress in the perinatal period. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using Voice Centred Relational Analysis. Four broad themes were identified: (i) the role of practical support, (ii) the role of emotional support, (iii) relational dynamics, and (iv) the role of socio-cultural norms. Whilst some women experienced practical and emotional support in their relationships, those who did not linked a lack of support to their feelings of distress. Relationships were also found to reinforce unhelpful social norms around motherhood and mental health, as well as offering a space to resist norms and create wider discourses about what it means to be a mother. This study suggests that organizations supporting women in the perinatal period should focus on women's relational needs and consider the cultural discourses of motherhood that they perpetuate.

Revising Postsocialism

This article reflects on the current explanatory value of concepts such as postsocialism and Eastern Europe by exploring how they are represented in contemporary art projects in Estonia. Through an overview of recent exhibitions in which I collaborated with local artists and curators, the research considers generational differences in relation to cultural discourses of the postsocialist experience. Methodologically, artists and curators were not simply my informants in the field, but makers of analytical knowledge themselves in their practice. Exhibitions were also approached as contact zones, whereby new cultural forms are simultaneously reflected and constructed. Critically, this inquiry gathers new ways of representing and conceptualising cultural changes in Estonia and novel perspectives of interpreting the relations to the Soviet past. The focus is put on art practice because of its capacity of bringing together global and local frames of reference simultaneously. The research also draws attention to the inbetweenness of the first post-Soviet generation (those born near the time of the breakup of the USSR); they are revising established cultural forms as well as historical representations through mixing practices, and therefore updating traditional ideas of identity and attachment to places.

Harmonisasi Tradisi di Tengah Modernitas Umat: Kajian Fenomenologi terhadap Akad Nikah Samin Kudus

Within a plural society, social and cultural discourses are frequently becoming a scourge. One of them is the blending of traditions in the face of people's modernity, such as the link between Islam and the indigenous Samin's traditional beliefs. The purpose of this study is to conduct a phenomenological investigation into the Samin Kudus custom of marriage contracts. Data was gathered using descriptive techniques such as observation, documentation, and interviews, and then analyzed using Edmund Husserl's phenomenological methodology. According to the findings, the marriage contract was held between the groom and the bride through the Samin custom of the marriage contract procession. This is due to the fact that the potential groom is of Samin custom practitioners who also embraces Islam belief, whereas the bride is a Muslimah. In addition, the marital contract procession is a harmonization across traditions in the study of phenomenology, specifically in harmonizing customs and religion through the stages of nyumuk, mbalesi gunem, ngendek, and paseksen. Diskursus sosial dan budaya kerap kali menjadi momok dalam kehidupan masyarakat majemuk. Salah satu di antaranya ialah harmonisasi tradisi di tengah modernitas umat seperti keterkaitan antara Islam dan adat kepercayaan Samin. Tujuan dalam penelitian ini ialah untuk melakukan pendalaman fenomenologis terhadap akad nikah berdasarkan adat Samin Kudus. Data penelitian dihimpun melalui observasi, dokumentasi, dan wawancara dengan teknik deskriptif, kemudian dianalisis menggunakan teori fenomenologi Edmund Husserl. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa akad nikah yang dilangsungkan antara pengantin pria dan wanita melalui prosesi akad nikah berdasarkan adat Samin. Hal ini disebabkan pengantin pria adalah seorang keturunan adat namun telah berstatus sebagai muslim, sedangkan pengantin wanita beragama Islam. Selain itu, dalam kajian fenomenologi prosesi akad nikah merupakan harmonisasi lintas tradisi, yakni menyelaraskan adat dan agama melalui tahapan nyumuk, mbalesi gunem, ngendek, dan paseksen.

Challenging Hegemonic Gender Norms in Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Rose” and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast

While heteronormativity remained at the core of the classic fairy tale, a queer subtext existed in the form of subtle symbolic codes. By reflecting the changing socio- cultural discourses about sexuality and gender in time, the representation of queer sexuality in fairy tales has also developed. This paper attempts a queer reading of the revisioning of Madame Beaumont’s “Beauty and the Beast” in Emma Donoghue’s “The Tale of the Rose” and the 2017 Disney version. This paper demonstrates how Emma Donoghue’s adaptation deconstructs the heteronormativity of Beaumont’s tale by dismantling the binaries of Beauty/Beast and man/woman and represents queer sexuality and desire through multi-layered language. This paper also examines how in the Disney version the story takes a new dimension in close proximity to twenty-first century media culture and lends itself to queer interpretation.

Visualizing Networks of Cultural Discourses in Latin American Electronic Literature

There are relatively few studies that explore the interdisciplinarity between electronic literature and digital humanities research methods. The present paper addresses this lack by combining close reading and distant reading methodologies to analyze networks of cultural discourses in a corpus of 30 Latin American e-lit works published from 1995 to 2020. To conduct the research, three network graphs were created using Gephi, an open-source software for the exploration and analysis of network visualizations. The graphs study the following relations between the e-lit works and the cultural discourses: the frequency of primary, secondary and tertiary discourses, the degree of multi-discourse, and the degree of cultural discourse co-occurrence. The results show the appearance of unexpected discourse variations and new co-occurrence patterns, the benefits of network graphs for revealing e-lit works’ families, and the potential use of data visualization techniques to study e-lit databases. Overall, the paper demonstrates the utility of digital humanities research methods to further examine electronic literature materials.

Gäwula: The Invention of a Hybrid Drum in Sri Lanka

In the late 1990s, the Sri Lankan drummer Piyasara Shilpadhipathi invented a new drum that he named ‘gäwula’ The gäwula was conceived of as a hybrid between two traditional Sri Lankan drums, namely the double-conical-shaped gäṭa beraya and the barrel-shaped dawula, which are associated with two different regional ritual traditions. A double-headed drum that is tied around the drummer’s waist, the gäwula features the timbres of the gäṭa beraya on one drumhead and those of the dawula on the other drumhead. As prescribed by the drum’s inventor, the gäwula can be played either with two bare heads or with one bare hand and a stick in the other hand, similar to the dawula. Shilpadhipathi also composed a vocabulary of drum-patterns that can be played on the gäwula and created a systematic method for learning to play it. This article discusses the production of the gäwula, the ideologies behind its invention, and the contexts within which it has been practised and performed. Using the history of the gäwula as a case study, this paper explores how cultural discourses and individual agency can influence the invention of new musical instruments.

Rising Sulphur and Raising Sheep: Landscape, Identity and Amateur Film in New Zealand c.1923-1939

<p>Looking at early examples of amateur filmmaking from the period 1923-1939, which have been deposited in New Zealand's national film archive, Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision, this thesis considers how amateur practice both relates to and deviates from other contemporary forms of visual culture such as professional cinema. Internationally, scholars and archivists have recently begun to examine ways that amateur films or home movies, which document personal, local and everyday experience, supplement other sources of visual history. There have, however, been few studies to date of this aspect of New Zealand's film history. While the idiosyncratic language of films intended for private use complicates their interpretation in an archive, it is argued that home movies display a 'referential coherence' in relation to other media, which offers a way of understanding amateur films as historical documents in the public domain. This relationship is explored looking at holiday films recorded at a popular sightseeing destination and films depicting working life on sheep farms. Portrayed as an exotic wonderland with spectacular geothermal activity and authentic Māori culture on display, Rotorua, as seen in promotional media, exemplified the widespread representation of New Zealand as a scenic playground. Amateur films offer a more ambivalent view of the tourist locality's geography and inhabitants. Made by outsiders familiar with popular representations, amateur tourist films resemble the imagery of professional media in many respects, however, they do so largely without articulating the simplistic narratives of publicity material. Picturesque images depicting rural New Zealand as an idyllic pastoral paradise have a long history across a wide range of media. While idealised scenic views of the countryside, which consistently ignored the social realities of rural existence, appear to presuppose the unfamiliar gaze of an (urban) outsider, rural residents recorded their own impressions of their surroundings on film. Less concerned with scenery than with the scene of daily life, amateur farming films document specific concrete experiences in a particular time and place, yet simultaneously appear to share, if not so much the iconography or aesthetics of professional media, at least some of the wider aspirations of cultural discourses in circulation. It may be concluded therefore that the study of amateur media production contributes to an understanding of how individuals and groups internalise and reproduce, or alternatively disregard, prevailing social ideologies.</p>

Rising Sulphur and Raising Sheep: Landscape, Identity and Amateur Film in New Zealand c.1923-1939

<p>Looking at early examples of amateur filmmaking from the period 1923-1939, which have been deposited in New Zealand's national film archive, Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision, this thesis considers how amateur practice both relates to and deviates from other contemporary forms of visual culture such as professional cinema. Internationally, scholars and archivists have recently begun to examine ways that amateur films or home movies, which document personal, local and everyday experience, supplement other sources of visual history. There have, however, been few studies to date of this aspect of New Zealand's film history. While the idiosyncratic language of films intended for private use complicates their interpretation in an archive, it is argued that home movies display a 'referential coherence' in relation to other media, which offers a way of understanding amateur films as historical documents in the public domain. This relationship is explored looking at holiday films recorded at a popular sightseeing destination and films depicting working life on sheep farms. Portrayed as an exotic wonderland with spectacular geothermal activity and authentic Māori culture on display, Rotorua, as seen in promotional media, exemplified the widespread representation of New Zealand as a scenic playground. Amateur films offer a more ambivalent view of the tourist locality's geography and inhabitants. Made by outsiders familiar with popular representations, amateur tourist films resemble the imagery of professional media in many respects, however, they do so largely without articulating the simplistic narratives of publicity material. Picturesque images depicting rural New Zealand as an idyllic pastoral paradise have a long history across a wide range of media. While idealised scenic views of the countryside, which consistently ignored the social realities of rural existence, appear to presuppose the unfamiliar gaze of an (urban) outsider, rural residents recorded their own impressions of their surroundings on film. Less concerned with scenery than with the scene of daily life, amateur farming films document specific concrete experiences in a particular time and place, yet simultaneously appear to share, if not so much the iconography or aesthetics of professional media, at least some of the wider aspirations of cultural discourses in circulation. It may be concluded therefore that the study of amateur media production contributes to an understanding of how individuals and groups internalise and reproduce, or alternatively disregard, prevailing social ideologies.</p>