Outline & Depth of Otherness: An Interview with Randa Maroufi

In this interview, as part of the special section Art & Borders, Art Editor Elisa Ganivet talks with the artist Randa Maroufi. The shore between Morocco and Europe is particularly questioned, along with Maroufi’s fine work around the more structural, societal and gender boundaries. Her research is synthesized by stagings where a strong and clear-sighted image predominates.

The authority of fashion: The impact of brand credibility and gender blurring on attitudes towards gendered fashion advertisements

<p>Gender identity is increasingly accepted as a continuum. Consumers feel that they are no longer constrained by the norms of gendered consumptions, so they are expressing themselves and their identities through new purchase behaviours. Gender blurring refers to the crossing of gender boundaries, when masculine and feminine traits are swapped. This has been seen in the fashion industry, where brands are featuring male models in womenswear and vice versa. Despite the increasing usage of gender blurring in fashion campaigns, there is little empirical evidence as to how consumers respond to it. This study attempted to fill this gap in knowledge, investigating how brands that can utilise gender blurring in their advertising without eliciting negative consequences. Brand credibility influences the persuasiveness of advertising, and it is evident within luxury fashion brands and their ability to set fashion trends. In this study, a 3x2x2 between-subjects experimental design was used. Subjects were exposed to a fashion advertisement, featuring either a high- or low-credibility brand (Louis Vuitton or the Warehouse), with a male model wearing stereotyped, androgynous, or gender blurred clothing. The clothing was framed in either a work or casual context. As the purpose of the study was to assess responses irrespective of gender or social class, the sample was made up of adult consumers from New Zealand randomly assigned to experimental conditions. The findings indicate that overall consumers respond more negatively to gender blurring in fashion advertising, and more positively to advertising from a high-credibility brand. Interestingly, no main effect of context was found. The analysis suggests that brand credibility moderates the effect of gender blurring, as consumers exposed to gender blurring by the Louis Vuitton advertisements reported more positive attitudes than those in the Warehouse conditions. This normalising effect contributes to our understanding of cultural authority and the movement of meaning. High credibility brands have an authority over consumer culture, and thus can facilitate the movement of fringe issues, like gender blurring, into the mainstream, fostering wider acceptance. Managerially, marketers should be aware of the potential negative impacts of utilising gender blurring, and understand that brand credibility is an important factor.</p>

The authority of fashion: The impact of brand credibility and gender blurring on attitudes towards gendered fashion advertisements

<p>Gender identity is increasingly accepted as a continuum. Consumers feel that they are no longer constrained by the norms of gendered consumptions, so they are expressing themselves and their identities through new purchase behaviours. Gender blurring refers to the crossing of gender boundaries, when masculine and feminine traits are swapped. This has been seen in the fashion industry, where brands are featuring male models in womenswear and vice versa. Despite the increasing usage of gender blurring in fashion campaigns, there is little empirical evidence as to how consumers respond to it. This study attempted to fill this gap in knowledge, investigating how brands that can utilise gender blurring in their advertising without eliciting negative consequences. Brand credibility influences the persuasiveness of advertising, and it is evident within luxury fashion brands and their ability to set fashion trends. In this study, a 3x2x2 between-subjects experimental design was used. Subjects were exposed to a fashion advertisement, featuring either a high- or low-credibility brand (Louis Vuitton or the Warehouse), with a male model wearing stereotyped, androgynous, or gender blurred clothing. The clothing was framed in either a work or casual context. As the purpose of the study was to assess responses irrespective of gender or social class, the sample was made up of adult consumers from New Zealand randomly assigned to experimental conditions. The findings indicate that overall consumers respond more negatively to gender blurring in fashion advertising, and more positively to advertising from a high-credibility brand. Interestingly, no main effect of context was found. The analysis suggests that brand credibility moderates the effect of gender blurring, as consumers exposed to gender blurring by the Louis Vuitton advertisements reported more positive attitudes than those in the Warehouse conditions. This normalising effect contributes to our understanding of cultural authority and the movement of meaning. High credibility brands have an authority over consumer culture, and thus can facilitate the movement of fringe issues, like gender blurring, into the mainstream, fostering wider acceptance. Managerially, marketers should be aware of the potential negative impacts of utilising gender blurring, and understand that brand credibility is an important factor.</p>

Archaeologies of Gossip: AIDS in Contemporary Gay Fiction

<p>Queer criticism is now in its third decade and, as critical orthodoxy, running up against its own limitations. What, for example, is a discipline preoccupied with the unspoken, the marginal and the blurring of gender boundaries to do with Edmund White’s unambiguously gay, masculine “red unsheathed fury of the third penis of the afternoon”? The Western AIDS novel is, overwhelmingly, a product of a historically precise, explicitly gay, male experience. This thesis seeks unapologetically to engage with this writing on its own terms, eschewing the queer critical lens as insufficient, and, rather, reading for a specifically gay aesthetic. Grounded in a broader overview of both AIDS novels and existing criticism, this thesis consists of extended close readings of two exemplary AIDS novels: Edmund White’s The Farewell Symphony and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. Firstly, I articulate the centrality of the gay sexual body to the representation of AIDS in The Farewell Symphony, tracing its representation of the disease through the epidemiological mapping of the virus itself, within the highly specific culture of gay New York in the 1970s. Secondly, I examine the way in which the re-imagination of a selective tradition of gay literary predecessors in The Line of Beauty, specifically Henry James and Oscar Wilde, provides an aesthetic solution to articulating AIDS.</p>

Archaeologies of Gossip: AIDS in Contemporary Gay Fiction

<p>Queer criticism is now in its third decade and, as critical orthodoxy, running up against its own limitations. What, for example, is a discipline preoccupied with the unspoken, the marginal and the blurring of gender boundaries to do with Edmund White’s unambiguously gay, masculine “red unsheathed fury of the third penis of the afternoon”? The Western AIDS novel is, overwhelmingly, a product of a historically precise, explicitly gay, male experience. This thesis seeks unapologetically to engage with this writing on its own terms, eschewing the queer critical lens as insufficient, and, rather, reading for a specifically gay aesthetic. Grounded in a broader overview of both AIDS novels and existing criticism, this thesis consists of extended close readings of two exemplary AIDS novels: Edmund White’s The Farewell Symphony and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. Firstly, I articulate the centrality of the gay sexual body to the representation of AIDS in The Farewell Symphony, tracing its representation of the disease through the epidemiological mapping of the virus itself, within the highly specific culture of gay New York in the 1970s. Secondly, I examine the way in which the re-imagination of a selective tradition of gay literary predecessors in The Line of Beauty, specifically Henry James and Oscar Wilde, provides an aesthetic solution to articulating AIDS.</p>

The Dramaturgy of Female Gender in Early Modern English Theatre: An Investigation of the Theatrical Expression of Gender in Selected Jacobean Plays, Their Restoration/Early Eighteenth-Century Adaptations, and Their Original and Contemporary Staging

<p>The adaptations of Shakespeare‘s plays that were written and staged during the English Restoration and eighteenth century form an important part of the performance history of Shakespeare; yet they have never been employed in research on the female characters in the original plays. This thesis analyzes four late Shakespeare plays and their adaptations: The Two Noble Kinsmen (with Fletcher) and Davenant's The Rivals; The Tempest and Davenant and Dryden's The Enchanted Island; The Winter's Tale and Garrick's Florizel and Perdita; and the lost Cardenio (also with Fletcher) and Theobald's Double Falsehood. Investigating the dramaturgy of the female characters from a theatrical point-of-view that includes both a close-reading and imagining of the text with a "directorial eye" and practical staging work, this study examines not only language but the construction and representation of character through emotional and physical states of being, gestures and movement, sound (music and the sound of speech), props, costumes, spectacle, stage directions, use of space and architecture, and the audience. The adaptations have been used as a lens to encounter afresh the female characters in the original plays. Through this approach, I have discovered evidence to challenge some traditional interpretations of Shakespeare's female characters and have also offered new readings of the characters. In addition, I have demonstrated the danger of accepting the widely held critical view that the introduction of actresses on the Restoration stage prompted adaptors to sexualize the female roles in a demeaning, trivial, and meretricious manner. In fact, female roles in the Restoration had some power to subvert gender boundaries just as they did in the Renaissance when played by boy actors. This work explores the treatment of themes and motifs that recur around the staging of women in the early modern period such as madness, cross-gender disguise and cross-gender casting, rape and sexual violence, and the use of silence by female characters. Each chapter draws individual conclusions about the female characters in the plays, often drawing parallels between two central women in particular play. Overall, the thesis demonstrates the complexity and multiplicity of the ways the women in Shakespeare's plays express their agency and desire.</p>

The Dramaturgy of Female Gender in Early Modern English Theatre: An Investigation of the Theatrical Expression of Gender in Selected Jacobean Plays, Their Restoration/Early Eighteenth-Century Adaptations, and Their Original and Contemporary Staging

<p>The adaptations of Shakespeare‘s plays that were written and staged during the English Restoration and eighteenth century form an important part of the performance history of Shakespeare; yet they have never been employed in research on the female characters in the original plays. This thesis analyzes four late Shakespeare plays and their adaptations: The Two Noble Kinsmen (with Fletcher) and Davenant's The Rivals; The Tempest and Davenant and Dryden's The Enchanted Island; The Winter's Tale and Garrick's Florizel and Perdita; and the lost Cardenio (also with Fletcher) and Theobald's Double Falsehood. Investigating the dramaturgy of the female characters from a theatrical point-of-view that includes both a close-reading and imagining of the text with a "directorial eye" and practical staging work, this study examines not only language but the construction and representation of character through emotional and physical states of being, gestures and movement, sound (music and the sound of speech), props, costumes, spectacle, stage directions, use of space and architecture, and the audience. The adaptations have been used as a lens to encounter afresh the female characters in the original plays. Through this approach, I have discovered evidence to challenge some traditional interpretations of Shakespeare's female characters and have also offered new readings of the characters. In addition, I have demonstrated the danger of accepting the widely held critical view that the introduction of actresses on the Restoration stage prompted adaptors to sexualize the female roles in a demeaning, trivial, and meretricious manner. In fact, female roles in the Restoration had some power to subvert gender boundaries just as they did in the Renaissance when played by boy actors. This work explores the treatment of themes and motifs that recur around the staging of women in the early modern period such as madness, cross-gender disguise and cross-gender casting, rape and sexual violence, and the use of silence by female characters. Each chapter draws individual conclusions about the female characters in the plays, often drawing parallels between two central women in particular play. Overall, the thesis demonstrates the complexity and multiplicity of the ways the women in Shakespeare's plays express their agency and desire.</p>

Female migration in the Cape Verde islands: From islandness to transnationalism

Following island studies scholars’ suggestion to think “with the archipelago” in order to denaturalize and de-territorialize the object of study and grant more attention to decolonization processes and mobilities, this paper uses a gender perspective and multi-sited ethnographic research to explore changes in Cape Verdean identity perception related to islandness and migration issues. The tension between ‘openness’ and ‘closure’ is significant in the case of Cape Verde, where the relationship between the island and islanders represents a condition of being in the world. The sea opens to the outside, but it also closes off and imprisons islanders within the borders of the island. Before the 1970s, when most Cape Verdean migrants were men, inside/outside boundaries were played out as gender boundaries along the male/female opposition: external/internal, Terra Longe (the outside world)/Terra Mamaizinha (the motherland), danger/security. On the isle of Santo Antão, however, this has been changing with the gradual feminization of emigration to Europe. This shift has revolutionized the previous sense of home, giving rise to a new form of transnational female family that connects places of immigration and places of origin while also reorienting Cape Verdean female belonging from insular to transnational.

Physical Education, Sports, and Gender

Researching gender across physical education (PE), sport, and physical activity (PA) has firm associations with feminism. As a political movement for gender justice, feminist research examines the ways in which active bodies are dynamic and evolving. This feminist scrutiny is underpinned by scholarship that explores both formal educational and sporting contexts as well as informal activities. The term sport incorporates a range of physical practices, and a review of extant literature demonstrates the persistence of gendered power relations and the consequences this has for PE, sport, and PA. While the disengagement of girls in formal PE has been recognized as a longstanding and ongoing challenge, PE remains narrowly conceived and defined, often with negative consequences for the young people involved. Attempts to be inclusive in research practice expose a persistent dominance of the Global North in knowledge production in sport, PE, and PA scholarship and highlight prevailing discourses that impact negatively on engaging with complex issues in different contexts. Empirical research studies inform praxis whereby feminist researchers analyze barriers to participation across a wide range of contexts that are not limited to young people and that extend to policy matters far beyond PE, such as public health and numerous sites of negotiation for access at community level and to a vast array of informal activity. Key themes for researching active bodies include space and alternative contexts, shifting gender boundaries and disrupting binaries, intersections and difference, exclusion and inequalities, healthism and wellbeing agendas.