Innovation Showcases
Asynchronous Session
From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond: A Critique of Douglas Kellner’s Re-conceptualization of Cultural Studies View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Manmohan Singh
The purpose of this paper is to critically examine Douglas Kellner’s re-conceptualization of domain of cultural studies since its inception in Birmingham School of Cultural Studies and its anticipations in Cultural Marxism. The emphasis on the role of consciousness or culture as opposed to economic base has been one of the central concerns of the Western Marxist tradition which emerged in response to the failure of the working class movements in Western Europe, the degeneration of the Soviet system into a totalitarian state and the rise of Nazism and Fascism in Germany and Italy respectively. Kellner is one of the outstanding theorists in this tradition to have drawn attention to the significance of the other cultural studies models or paradigms proceeding and following Birmingham School, and to have expanded, revised and updated the field of cultural studies in view of the changing socio-cultural configurations of capitalism. Synthesizing the crucial insights from British Cultural Studies, Frankfurt School critical theory and postmodernism, he re-conceives cultural studies project as part of media pedagogy which heightens an individual’s critical consciousness, enables him to resist media manipulation and to struggle for emancipation. An attempt will be made to examine the validity and viability of Kellner’s radical enterprise in the age of rapidly proliferating new technologies, corporate media culture in which an individual seems to have become an object of manipulation or control – an effect of this or that discourse, media, fashion or consumption – rather than being a free subject, truly critical or reflective.
Featured Decolonize The Surf: The Ocean as Contested Space in Surf Culture View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase David Crellin
The Pacific Coast of the United States, especially California, defines much of its identity in the public imagination through the sport and cultural formations of surfing. This identity has been almost exclusively associated with white men as the accepted standard bearers of surfing’s evolution and excellence. This narrative runs parallel to the larger political and social discourses of Whiteness and racialized exclusion in American society, and throughout the global, colonial settler project. “Decolonize The Surf- The Ocean as Contested Space in Surf Culture,” explores the history of racism and representation in the formation the sport of surfing, presenting research interrogating white supremacy and illuminating surf culture's complicity in perpetuating the legacies of racism, exclusion and hegemony, while pointing toward contemporary efforts to expand diversity, equity, agency, and inclusion in all aspects of surf culture. Decolonize The Surf utilizes popular forms of digital media technologies to break down barriers of access to forums of scholarly communication embedded and interwoven throughout the project. In conjunction with the overall content structure and style, designed to engage and educate the viewing public, these strategies create greater access to the research embedded and interwoven throughout. Decolonize The Surf challenges conventional creative and scholarly research modes, standing as a multivalent synthesis of scholarship, research and embodied experience as a contemporary expression of academic and public-facing knowledge production. Decolonize The Surf presents an exciting opportunity to expand definitions of performance practices and pedagogies, enhancing discoverability, outreach, access, and the dynamics of learning and experience.
New Approaches to Engagement with Canonical Texts: Interlinking Fashion and Identity through Digital Exhibition in A. Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (1823-1831) View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Elizabeth La Fave, Elena Murenina
This digital humanities project explores the role and representation of fashion in A. Pushkin’s novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin (1823-1831) and aims to showcase the visual potential of the canonical literary text to future readers, by linking the original Russian citations and corresponding English translations with a pictorial gallery of textual references and cross-cultural glossary of Russian and French fashion terms. Implementing interdisciplinary modes of critical reasoning through the dialogical examination of the interlinked narratives of Pushkin’s novel itself and fashion-related visual artifacts (paintings, drawings, costume, etc.), this project utilizes the literary criticism methods within a broader framework of cultural semiotics, fashion studies, art and design history, archival research, and digital humanities. Specifically, archival aquarelles from Hillwood Museum’s Middleton Album, painted by Middleton’s daughter at the time of his service as an American diplomat in 1820s Russia, are used to interpret the evolution of fashion trends found in the text, from the Neo-Classical era to the Romantic period. Uncovering interdependences between literary characters and their dress choices accentuated by seminal poet but often ‘lost’ in translation, we argue that such re-creation of ‘fashionability through clothing’ is critical for construction of characters’ identities in Pushkin’s novel. Through close examination of its Western-European fashion patterns - from Paris to London – this interactive digital guide reveals the sociocultural, ideological, linguistic, and literary significance of ‘fashionable imagery’ in Pushkin’s masterpiece, promising to stimulate a digitized museum environment as a critical form of knowledge within a specified literary landscape, and thus proposing new directions for humanities studies.
Digital Storytelling as a Reclamation Project: A Wider Critical Canvas for Black History View Digital Media
Innovation Showcase Gretchen Rudham, Kendrick Kenney
Digital Storytelling can serve as both a reclamation project and process for erased and omitted stories — in history and in classrooms. This workshop examines two different humanities learning communities that used digital media to excavate stories and reflections of students. Digital media is an interdisciplinary research tool and medium for self-reflection and assessment. Digital storytelling helps to paint a “wider critical canvas” and critique different ways of being and knowing for both teachers and learners. The presenters share their experiences with two Digital Humanities projects, where digital storytelling meets experiential learning. The first project was Reading the South: The History of Racial Terrorism in America which read texts and places in the American South, allowing students to capture their learning about terrorism and resistance. The second project, The Search for Founding Black Mothers, used digital storytelling to unearth narratives of Founding Black Mothers, while navigating and naming erasure, misrecognition, and dismissal. They highlight the power of digital storytelling and its role as a research method and as a new future for making meaning and reclaiming erased knowledge about Black History.
