Spread the Word
Influence of Keynesian Economics on Woolf's Feminist Globalism: "As a Woman, My Country Is the Whole World"
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dorothy Dodge Robbins
Virginia Woolf was not well-traveled; beyond a few trips to the European continent, the author spent most of her years living in or near London, England. Woolf announced that "As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world." Her famous declaration provides the catalyst for my study on the influence of Keynesian economics on Woolf's feminist globalism. As fellow Bloomsbury Group members, Virginia Woolf and economist John Maynard Keynes debated ideas; included were discussions about economics as their correspondence and journal entries attest. Woolf herself did not traverse the world to develop her global perspective. During the decades she lived and wrote in London, the capitol was a center of trade. The world came to Woolf's London, and she embraced it. Echoes of Keynesian economics resonate in Woolf's "A Room of One's Own," "Three Guineas," and her London essays. As a corrective to Keynes' theories, Woolf adds her feminist concerns to issues of global supply and demand, whether she mockingly critiques her own desire for the latest fashions (plumes from Africa!) or advocates that women act as cogs in the wheels of England's ultra-masculine war machine.
Discursive (Trans)formation of the Migration Imaginary in Spain
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Maria del Sol del Teso Craviotto
My investigation examines the discursive creation of the Spanish “migration imaginary” (Fortier). Specifically, I conduct a critical discourse analysis of the metaphors used to designate Spanish emigrants in selected newspapers from four crucial migratory periods in Spanish history: late 19c. migration to northern Africa and Latin America, exile in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), economic migration towards Europe in the 1960s, and the recent migratory movements following the 2008 economic crisis. Results show that early emigrants were designated by metaphors that characterize them as a low-skill, uneducated, and poor labor-force, while recent emigrants are described as taking place in a brain-drain of a highly educated and young population. Newspapers also show metaphors that depict Spain as a suffering mother losing her children in the first two periods, in contrast with the proud mother whose offspring work for the well-being of all during the third period. Finally, a third group of metaphors build on the country-as-a-container image, especially during the fourth period, where the limits of that container are being contested in the name of globalization and in the context the European Union. These metaphors help create a "social imaginary" (Taylor) that shapes how Spanish society views national and personal identities and borders, and relationships with "the Others."
When Soldiers Fought to Tell Their Stories: Bloggers before the Internet
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Matias Zibell
The phenomenon of citizen journalism is linked by journalists and academics with new media technologies and digital tools. Experiences like the formation of the news alternative website IndyMedia during the anti-globalization protests of 1999 in Seattle, the creation of the Korean newspaper OhmyNews.com in 2002 made exclusively by citizens, or the surge of Iraqi blogs in a bombarded Baghdad in 2003 appear impossible to separate from computer skills, electronic gadgets, and Internet access. This reductionism has two important consequences: it excludes from the debate modern citizen journalism projects orientated to give voice to ordinary people which do not have access to the web, and it rules out any effort to find precedents to this phenomenon in the past. However, during the First World War, British, French, Canadian, and Australian soldiers produced their own newspapers. The goal of the soldiers was not so different from the aims of anti-globalization activists or Iraqi bloggers: to let the world know their own version of what was happening. Could this be enough to consider trench journals published between 1914 and 1918 an example of citizen journalism? This is the question to be answered by this research.
Weaponized News: Soft Power News Media in the Age of Fake News
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dawn Spring
This paper looks at the current global landscape of soft power news outlets, their relation to the historic role of soft power news outlets in global hegemony, the controversies around outlets labeled as “fake news,” and the country-specific legal restrictions facing some of the news sources. The paper explores soft power, state-funded news sources from Britain, China, Qatar, Russia, and the United States. Focusing on Al Jazeera, BBC News, China Central Television, RT, Sputnik, and the properties managed by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Voice of American), it examines their global reach, languages used, media platforms, and target audiences, as well as the specific use of the English language. In doing so, it will assess the relationship between the news, persuasive information, propaganda, soft power, information weaponization, and global hegemony.
