Performative Ponderings
University of San Jorge
Performing Dante's "Divine Comedy" Behind Bars: Incarcerated Individuals Reimagine Dante's Journey Out of Hell View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ron Jenkins
Based on a decade of experience facilitating theater workshops in prisons in Italy, Indonesia, and the United States, this paper documents the responses of incarcerated men and women to Dante's "Divine Comedy" with special attention to the ways in which they see Dante's journey out of Hell, through Purgatory, and up to Heaven as parallel to their life journeys through the personal hells that brought them to prison and the heavens they hope to achieve after their release.
The Reconfiguration of Homme Fatal in The Third Millennium Joker Adaptions View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amira Rihab Saidi
The relevance of the Joker as a prominent character in popular culture and film industry merited a tremendous scholarly attention. It has been analyzed through the lenses of various critical theories, inter alia the Bakhtinian “carnival”, the Freudians psychoanalysis, and several others but nearly there is no critical development of the Joker as a homme fatal. It is thus the novelty of my paper to do so; on the one hand, I aim to reconfigure the conceptualization of the homme fatal beyond its classical seductive and inveigling power within women’s world. Here, my endeavor is to redefine the fatality of homme fatal from the perspective of the Joker that is centralized more on an outlawed destructive personality far from being sexually desirable man. I focus on the “fatal men” and “fatal rebel” by Mario Praz in his Romantic Agony (1933). My study focuses the reconfiguration of homme fatal in two joker adaptations: The Dark Knight (2008) and The Suicide Squad (2016).
Co-creating Community and Connection Through Digital Storytelling: The Use of Online Workshops to Foster Relationships
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mihaela Slabe, Kathleen Sitter
Human beings need connection. The pandemic required us to adapt the way we form connection, particularly in online forums. For disabled youth, the pandemic has increased online access to arts, culture, and educational spaces fostering more inclusive communities. This paper describes a research project that explored disabled youth’s experiences as they transitioned into adulthood through online digital storytelling workshops. Over a period of 12 months, disabled youth created short films about their experiences with life transitions related to education, employment, community living. An unexpected outcome of this study was the quality of social connections that formed within these online workshops. The research study integrated a participatory-informed model where individuals who completed peer-facilitator training subsequently co-facilitated future workshops. While the focus of the study was on accessibility within a (re)imagined digital storytelling model, a community was formed consisting of facilitators, participants, and co-facilitators resulting in continued connections outside of the online workshop platform. Findings indicated that co-facilitators strengthened their relationships with both facilitators and participants in this process. This paper includes an overview, the research design, and key findings with a particular focus on learnings related to fostering online connections through purposeful processes and activities aimed at fostering connection and community building. A digital story is shared along with considerations that center social connection when facilitating digital storytelling workshops.
