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Almost two years ago I reviewed I The Triumph and Tragedy of the Intellectuals i by Harry Redner in these pages; Redner, in turn, around much the same time had reviewed a book by Beibei Guan and myself on Charles Baudelaire and what we considered mistaken about Walter Benjamin's politicized aesthetics. Much of the brilliance of I Ulysses and Faust i shines through in the aperçus that abound throughout, and one can see that Redner is as thrilled by the works he is reading as he is by the discoveries he makes in undertaking the exploration. Just before his death he had completed a book criticizing the managerial ethos of the university and academic publishing - the very project strikes me as a fitting adieu from Harry to an institution that had provided him, and those who learnt from him, with so much only to evaporate before his eyes. [Extracted from the article]

The article reviews the exhibition “ Paper Brains” by Andreas Vesalius at the University of Amsterdam.

Bridget Griffen-Foley's book, "Australian Radio Listeners and Television Viewers: Historical Perspectives," explores the experiences of Australian radio and television audiences throughout the twentieth century. Through six historical case studies, Griffen-Foley examines how radio and television stations engaged their audiences through promotions and initiatives, and how listeners and viewers responded. The book draws on primary sources such as fan letters and regulatory records to provide detailed insights into the lives of Australian media consumers. While the book raises many questions, it serves as a valuable resource for future researchers interested in exploring the relationship between Australian society, media consumption, and cultural identities. [Extracted from the article]

"The Art of the Observer: A Personal View of Documentary" by David MacDougall is a book that offers insights into the role of an anthropological director in documentary filmmaking. MacDougall emphasizes the importance of selective observation and the connection between shots in a film. The book also provides a personal account of MacDougall's fifty-year journey as a filmmaker and world traveler. However, some critics argue that MacDougall's perspective may have a colonialist aspect and that his own story restricts his recognition of the significance of his documentary subjects. Overall, the book offers valuable insights into the filmmaking process but may leave readers with feelings of confusion and awkwardness due to unconscious bias in the author's wording. [Extracted from the article]

"Hollis Frampton: Navigating the Infinite Cinema" is a book that focuses on the work of experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton. The author, Michael Zryd, draws from his own previous scholarship, existing literature on Frampton, Frampton's own writings, and archival materials to explore Frampton's Magellan series. The book examines Frampton's notion of "infinite cinema" and pays attention to the treatment of colonialism in his work. It also discusses themes such as linearity, encyclopedic impulse, and metahistory in Frampton's films. Overall, the book is a valuable resource for understanding Frampton's theories and cinematic goals in the digital age. [Extracted from the article]

New discoveries and knowledge are summarized in thousands of published papers per year per scientific domain, making it incomprehensible for scientists to account for all available knowledge relevant for their studies. In this paper, we present ACCORDION (ACCelerating and Optimizing model RecommenDatIONs), a novel methodology and an expert system that retrieves and selects relevant knowledge from literature and databases to recommend models with correct structure and accurate behavior, enabling mechanistic explanations and predictions, and advancing understanding. ACCORDION introduces an approach that integrates knowledge retrieval, graph algorithms, clustering, simulation, and formal analysis. Here, we focus on biological systems, although the proposed methodology is applicable in other domains. We used ACCORDION in nine benchmark case studies and compared its performance with other previously published tools. We show that ACCORDION is: comprehensive, retrieving relevant knowledge from a range of literature sources through machine reading engines; very effective, reducing the error of the initial baseline model by more than 80%, recommending models that closely recapitulate desired behavior, and outperforming previously published tools; selective, recommending only the most relevant, contextspecific, and useful subset (15%-20%) of candidate knowledge in literature; diverse, accounting for several distinct criteria to recommend more than one solution, thus enabling alternative explanations or intervention directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kara Walker is best known for her depictions of sexualized violence and gendered racism during slavery in the form of black paper silhouettes. Scholars such as Salamishah Tillet argue that Walker's art, along with art by some of her post-civil rights contemporaries, offers 'aesthetic interventions' to problematic racial histories as part of a larger project of memory reclamation and justice. Walker's A Subtlety, Or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant is another such interventionist project. Debuting in the Williamsburg neighbourhood of Brooklyn, New York in May of 2014, A Subtlety explores how a figure like mammy 'survives as a cultural force that influences and reflects a national conscience' (Wallace Sanders [2008]. Mammy: a century of race, gender, and southern memory. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 12). And yet, to say that the historical rootedness of the title, sugar sphinx sculpture, and molasses-covered walls and cherub-faced small figures throughout the installation were ambiguous to some spectators, is an understatement. Hundreds of photographs and videos were uploaded to social media sites with people making gestures towards the figure that some critics deemed highly inappropriate. This paper explores how A Subtlety both understands and undermines representations of Black women's bodies and how Black artists in the African diaspora contend with complex cultural signs of the past in the present. Utilizing studies of Black feminist theory and visual culture, I argue that Walker's A Subtlety – and her art more broadly – offers theoretical and geographic space to ponder where Black pleasure and collective memory can exist in systems of misogynoir, as well as in the Black nostalgic imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fashioning James Bond: Costume, Gender and Identity in the World of 007: LLEWELLA CHAPMAN, 2022 London, NY, Bloomsbury Academic pp. xii + 320, illus., £65.00 (cloth), £19.99 (paper) Bond, James Bond, is synonymous with many iconographic elements, from gadgets and guns to megalomaniac foes with dastardly schemes, but the sharp-suited hero and the bikini-clad Bond girl are undoubtedly some of the franchise's most recognizable icons and absolutely central to its ongoing appeal. But despite being organized by Bond, the focus does not rest exclusively on the hero himself and there is plenty of space dedicated to discussing the costuming of those aforementioned Bond girls, later re-labelled Bond women, his bosses and colleagues, as well as the villains and their inevitable henchmen. [Extracted from the article]

"Abortion Care is Health Care" by Barbara Baird provides a historical account of abortion services in Australia from the 1990s to the 2020s. The book argues that although abortion has been effectively pro-choice for decades, access to abortion services remains uneven and inequitable. Baird highlights that the majority of abortion services are provided by private clinics, resulting in limited access for marginalized and disadvantaged women. The book is meticulously researched and provides comprehensive information on providers, laws, regulations, and events in each Australian state and territory. However, it may be more suitable for scholars than a general audience. [Extracted from the article]

"Enacting Anti-Racist and Activist Pedagogies in Teacher Education: Canadian Perspectives" is a book that explores the experiences and perspectives of educators in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) who work with a diverse student population. The book emphasizes the need for teacher education programs to address issues of racism and privilege, and provides strategies for disrupting deficit thinking and creating inclusive learning environments. The authors, who represent the diversity of the Canadian population, share their personal stories and offer practical suggestions for anti-racist teaching practices. The book is accessible and includes discussion questions, glossaries, and comprehensive bibliographies, making it useful for both professional development and teacher preparation. [Extracted from the article]

Martha Nussbaum has an impressive list of books to her credit, including the great I Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities i (2016), and her latest, I Citadels of Pride: Sexual Abuse, Accountability, and Reconciliation i (2021). Nussbaum's critical inclusion of economic need is a useful correction to the cosmopolitan course, but her treatment of the subject can only go so far as it makes the following assumptions. Lastly, Nussbaum's treatment of the influence of religion is sparing, but religion is a powerful force around the world that can either support cosmopolitan aspirations or drive separation and division. [Extracted from the article]

Much has been written on Video, or more precisely magnetic recording and playback, since its encroachment into mainstream consumer pathways in the late 1970s (although its technological basis can be traced back to 1893 with Valdemar Poulsen and the Telegraphon device): Roy Armes with his I On Video i (1988), Sean Cubitt with I Videography: Video Media as Art and Culture i (1993) and then later forays such as James Moran, I There's No Place Like Home Video i (2002) all offer fascinating select accounts of the technology. Rewind, Replay: Britain and the Video Boom, 1978-92: JOHNNY WALKER, 2022, Edinburgh, UK, Edinburgh University Press, pp. xi + 253, illus., £19.99 (paper) Chapter two then moves into further developmental aspects of the British Video "boom" exploring the beginnings of the video shop and its positioning within a larger British economic framework. [Extracted from the article]

Lynn Spigel's book, "TV Snapshots – An Archive of Everyday Life," offers a fresh perspective on the impact of television on our culture. Instead of focusing solely on what people watched or how they watched, Spigel examines a collection of photographs from the 1950s to the 1970s, featuring people posing in front of their television sets. By analyzing these images, Spigel uncovers insights into the diverse uses of television in the home and the relationships within families. The book also explores the performative aspects of television, with people imagining themselves as TV characters or capturing live events on their screens. Spigel's work provides a new methodology for understanding mid-century TV culture and encourages readers to reflect on their own past experiences with television. [Extracted from the article]

The historiographical debate over the Great War continues. This essential tome is a good example of how the Great War has been instrumentalized over the years by various individuals and groups eager to achieve their political objectives, no matter how reasonable and legitimate they were. [Extracted from the article]

The book is also perfect for any student of filmmaking interested in producing MSMF films or starting a festival for smartphone filmmaking. I Smartphone Filmmaking: Theory and Practice i by Dr. Max Schleser is a comprehensive book that covers the major developments in mobile, smartphone and mobile filmmaking from the earliest instances through to contemporary processes and practices. I also teach Smartphone filmmaking and have developed Smartphone Filmmaking courses for both SAE and Collarts, two independent Australian media colleges based in Melbourne, Australia. [Extracted from the article]