Online Lightning Talks
Ben Okri's "Laughter beneath the Bridge": Born (Un)free
Virtual Lightning Talk Rosemary Alice Gray
As this prize winning short story from Ben Okri’s "Incidents at the Shrine" (1993) is a child’s eye view of the Nigerian Civil War, I shall begin by briefly contextualizing Biafra’s quest for freedom in the late 1960s. I shall reveal the ideological constructedness of both abstract and concrete aspects of wartime existence in Nigeria and the dynamic between them in relation to the trajectory of “Laughter beneath the Bridge.” The argument will show how the writer’s graphic symbolism mediates perceptions of time and place informed by the ideology of power and violence while, at the same time, also having singular signifying possibilities and so limitations. My approach to the theme of freedom will thus be Rousseauesque. Using Julia Kristeva’s notion of the abject, I probe the fine line between “laughing with” and “laughing at,” between pleasure and pain. Focusing on the pleasure/pain paradox illuminates how satire works in this story; the physical pain and suffering of the characters suggests how readers are implicated in and redeemed from represented systemic violence.
Horizon of Ethnic Expectation: An Anthropological Study of Ethnic Identity in Gilan Province, Northern Iran
Virtual Lightning Talk Somayeh Karimi, Alireza Hassanzadeh, Alireza Hassanzadeh
One of the factors that shape individual and collective identity is experience. Members of an ethnic group during their daily life are involved in different forms of ethnic experience. These experiences are mainly defined and redefined according to the dominant norms and values of the society, ethnic intellectuals, and the media. In Iran, the ideological confrontation and clash between the ethnic culture of the first and second Pahlavi dynasties (1926-1979) culminated in rising sensitivity about folk/ethnic art. On the other hand, after the revolution, the war with Iraq imposed by Saddam Hussein together with a monological discourse of ideology led to the backwardness of ethnic art originating in rural areas compared to the modernity of urban art in Gilan province. In this part of Iran, a contradiction exists between ethnic elites and commoners in their perceptions of ethnic identity. While ethnic intellectuals overemphasize a textual form of ethnic identity and invented ethnic traditions and rituals, the common people disregard these forms in favor of lived experience. This paper opens a new field of discussion under the lens of the idea of horizon of ethnic expectation.
Lived Experiences of Women Over Fifty Who Have Experienced Involuntary Job Loss
Virtual Lightning Talk Roxine Denise Phillips
The purpose of this study was to describe the lived experiences of women over fifty who had experienced involuntary job loss, the barriers faced to reemployment, and the ways women overcame the barriers, and to compare these experiences to the experiences of men. The research questions for this study examined the participants’ perceptions of these three constructs. A qualitative phenomenological design was employed to gather data from a convenience sample of ten women in a northeastern metropolitan city. The theoretical frameworks of Bandura and Leana and Feldman guided this study. Data from transcripts were manually coded and aligned with the appropriate research question. A transcendental approach led to identified themes and meanings of data gathered from audio-taped interviews. The findings indicated that women and men view and cope with job loss differently. The findings can be used to inform organizational leaders of the need for greater emphasis on programs offering solutions to older female workers seeking reemployment. The study promotes potential positive social change by informing organizational leaders of the experiences of women over fifty who had experienced involuntary job loss. These leaders can apply these findings when improving hiring practices and policies that directly affect older workers.
Satirizing Net Neutrality
Virtual Lightning Talk Angela Hart
Satirical programs can invoke framing elements to portray stories in a certain manner. With the ongoing debate surrounding net neutrality, these shows have the potential to educate and influence audiences. My main research questions include: How did “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report,” and “Last Week Tonight” frame their pieces on net neutrality? Did they offer a perspective on both sides of the issue? Were they more favorable to a certain side? If so, how? In what manner did they try to get their point about net neutrality across? To conduct my study, I selected four segments from satirical news programs; one from “The Daily Show” which was a conversation between host Jon Stewart and correspondent John Hodgman, two from “The Colbert Report,” one of which is a standard piece with Colbert as host and the second of him interviewing scholar Tim Wu, as well as a segment from “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver acting as anchor. I conducted a close-read of the selected segments, noting dialogue, news box images, incorporated news footage, and the positions addressed in regards to net neutrality utilizing a framing perspective on the information relayed in the programs.
"We're Not Getting the Whole Story" : Community Discussions Concerning the Need for Transparency in Australian News Media Representations of People Seeking Asylum
Virtual Lightning Talk Ashleigh L Haw
In Australia, the issue of people seeking asylum has received widespread media attention, resulting in considerable debate and division among the community. For people who support refugee resettlement in Australia, discourses of humanity and compassion are commonly voiced (Peterie, 2017; Fozdar and Pedersen, 2013). Conversely, those who oppose asylum seekers coming to Australia have routinely constructed them as illegal immigrants (Every and Augoustinos, 2008; Pedersen, et al, 2006; Klocker 2004; Pickering, 2001), queue-jumpers (Markus and Dharmalingam, 2014; Augoustinos and Every, 2007; Pedersen, et al, 2005), and economic migrants (Saxton, 2003; Pickering, 2001). Some empirical evidence suggests that similar negative discourses are pervasive in Australian news content about asylum seekers, often mirroring political discourses that serve to justify punitive policies for managing asylum seekers (e.g. McKay, et al, 2011; Saxton, 2003). While some Australian research has explored media representations of people seeking asylum, no prior studies have focused on community perspectives regarding these news discourses. In this study, Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995) was combined with Audience Reception Theory (Hall, 1993) to examine the perspectives of a sample Western Australians concerning news representations of people seeking asylum. The key discourses observed were concerned with reliability and transparency in Australian news constructions of asylum seekers. Participants often voiced these perspectives in the form of recommendations for how news content can more adequately inform the Australian public about people seeking asylum. This paper discusses these recommendations with emphasis on the wider implications from both a research and policy perspective.
Retrieving Truth: Drama in the Age of Reality Entertainment
Virtual Lightning Talk Carla Rocavert
This study examines the issue of 'post-truth' through two entertainment paradigms: citizen performance in social media and reality television (together discussed as reality entertainment), and artistic performance in traditionally scripted drama. The aim is to compare understandings of truth in both types of performance, linking the possibility of truth in drama to the ethical dimension of what is represented, and the level of critical freedom stemming from the dialogue created by the performance. While it is never possible to assert that any particular genre, era, artist or individual work will bring us closer to truth, it is worth investigating - in the context of our current 'truth' crises - examples of the way drama, in fictionalising human experience, has succeeded in using mimesis to promote various kinds of understanding. Such 'productive searches for truth' will be juxtaposed against the technological apparatus of modern dramatic forms in news, television and online content, to establish how the loss of faith in truth is tied up in new trends of representation. As Harold Pinter noted, drama gives us a perspective on politics through the objective, human experience of its characters. It is for this reason that the current Western crisis of truth, involving our particular set of modern, technological, and media-related problems, requires artistic narration.
Austrian School of Economics: Methodological and Epistemological Presuppositions
Virtual Lightning Talk Ionela Baltatescu
There are important differences between how mainstream economists analyse economic phenomena and formulate economic laws and theories and Austrian economists’ approaches. These differences are rooted in different methodological and epistemological premises and presuppositions. The paper contains a concise overview of the main methodological and epistemological theses and presuppositions of the Austrian School of Economics. A series of key methodological and epistemological issues are briefly tackled: the nature of economic laws, the nature and limits of economic knowledge, and the role of models and imaginary constructions in economic science.
Freedom or Prison? : Árboles Petrificados by Amparo Dávila
Virtual Lightning Talk Jose Miguel Sardinas Fernandez
Since the publication of Tiempo destrozado (1959), the Mexican woman writer Amparo Davila (Zacatecas, 1928) has put into practice an aesthetics of indeterminacy which has shaped narrative settings, times, characters and even the feelings involved in her disturbing short stories. This aesthetics can also be found in Música concreta (1964), her second book, and deepened in Árboles petrificados (1978), her last short story cycle. In this study, I explore how several characters are trapped in love relationships, which, at the beginning, were expressions of individual liberty. I focus on three stories where women have the leading role: “La rueda”, “Griselda”, and “Árboles petrificados.” Amparo Davila is one of the most outstanding writers of the so-called Generation of the 50s of Mexican literature and even though she has denied any association with feminism, she has created several female characters which have revealed real conflicts of Mexican women.
