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In his article "Resistance to Neocolonialism in Contemporary Chinese Literary Theory" Jun ZENG claims that the introduction of Western Literary Theory in the past forty years of China's reform and opening up was carried out under the background of neo-colonialism. "Western imagination" in the discourse of contemporary Chinese literary theory was an important aspect of the strategy of cultural resistance under the overwhelming influence of Western neocolonialism. Contemporary Chinese literary theory no longer simply regards Western literary theory in the twentieth century as a bourgeois literary ideology; instead, it adopts a "de-ideological" attitude to return to the issues of literature, art and aesthetics. However, with political upheavals in the 1980s, the introduction of and reflection on Western literary theories were criticized as "bourgeois liberalization." In the 1990s, despite the fact that Chinese scholars ceased politically opposing the introduction of Western literary theory, there remains an "anti-Western" tendency. Contemporary Chinese literary theory in the new century continues the ideology of "de-Western-centralism" since the 1990s, but it goes further by completely reversing the "teacher-student" relationship between the West and China. If we shall no longer reject western discourse and strengthen the purity of Chinese discourse out of unwillingness to being "colonized," we would fall into another extreme but to construct a new system of discourse of Chinese literary theory with its global influence.

In his article "Restaging World Literature in the Age of Neoliberal­ism/Neocolonia­­lism" Shaobo Xie argues that Goethe's notion of world literature spells a genuine universalism that contributes to resistance to neoliberal imperialism. In the age of neocolonial­ism/ne­oliberalism all conduct, and all spheres of human life are framed and measured by economic terms and metrics and neoliberalism both as a govern­ing rationality and as an economic policy is penetrating into every part of the world. The politics that is really heter­ogeneous or external to the rule of neoliberal capitalism in the neocolonial global present consists in thinking towards new possibilities of organizing our life in ways that are radi­cally different than endorsed by the hegemonic global system itself. The Goethean world-literature mode of thinking, one can argue, richly nurtures such thoughts of the outside, for, while insisting on the universal as articulated in culture-specific forms, it always sees other ways of being human, other modes of making sense, and other possibilities of organizing social life.

The last few years saw the publication of the lectures given by Michel Foucault at the Collège de France from 1970-71 until the year of his death, 1984. In May 2015, Éditions du Seuil published Théories et institutions pénales (1971-1972), which is the last volume of the series. Knowledge of these published lectures has led to a return to the French thinker’s work and to a transformation of the studies on subjectivity and politics both in literary theory and philosophy. The study of his work, in particular of his later theoretical production and of its reception, is therefore necessary and urgent. This special issue attends the influence of the later Foucault’s legacy, focusing on the central theme of the processes of subjectivation and what are considered to be its two of the most important roots: the literary and the political.

In "More Migrants with Nowhere to Go?” Mary Theis reframes the stories of the Tai Dam and discusses this group of people, who migrated from Vietnam and Laos to Thailand and then to Iowa in 1975 after the wars in Southeast Asia when they virtually had nowhere to go. It is based on interviews with some of the 1,200 Tai Dam who were invited by Governor Robert Ray to resettle in Des Moines, Iowa, and nearby cities. The stories are contextualized by research on U.S. policies on immigration and the current precarious fates of other migrants in the United States to reflect not only upon just how many in the United States appear to be retreating from its raison d’être but also upon potential reactions to the inevitable and not-so-distant demographic consequences of climate change.

In her article, “The Colonized Masculinity and Cultural Politics of Seediq Bale,” Chin-ju Lin discusses a Taiwanese blockbuster movie, a postcolonial historiography and a form of life-writing, which delineates the last Indigenous insurrection against Japanese colonialism. This article explores the cultural representations in Seediq Bale. Fighting back as a colonized man for pride and dignity is portrayed as means to restore their masculine identity. The headhunting tradition is remembered, romanticized, praised highly as heroic and even strengthened in an inaccurate way to promote individualistic masculinity and to forge a new national identity in postcolonial Taiwan. Nevertheless, the stereotypical and essentialist representation of Seediq culture is misleading. Director Wei De-sheng’s multicultural misrepresentation depicts Taiwan nationalist claims as Han-male centerd. Seediq culture has thus served as “a violent other” for a Han settler director to strengthen a notion of colonized masculinity.

Leprosy is one of the oldest known human diseases, recognized throughout the world. Leprosy causes serious damage to the nervous system, often resulting in deformity in the absence of an effective treatment; sufferers were often left at the mercy of its natural process or were segregated from others due to the fear of contagion. The places ravaged by leprosy became lands of fear. Modern science has shown that leprosy bacilli have a high rate of infectivity but a rather low rate of pathogenicity, and above ninety percent of people are equipped with immunity to leprosy. Leper colonies as described in the life writings of leprosy sufferers, however, represent the politics of segregation, as well as that of fear, and pain. This paper probes into the life writings of leprosy sufferers and discusses the landscapes of illness, politics of segregation, and discourses of empathy in late nineteenth-century cultural memories of Hawaii.

In her article “A Sinful Reaction to Capitalist Ethics in No quiero quedarme sola y vacía (2006)” Celina Bortolotto analyzes how Lozada’s characterization of the main character, La Loca, questions the ideals of free agency offered by consumerist capitalism and the urban gay male ideal under the promise of a liberating gay lifestyle in a social context defined by identity politics. The novel is a fictionalized autobiographical account of Puerto Rican author Angel Lozada’s misadventures in the early 2000s gay scene in New York. This essay plays with the punitive sense of the word “capital” in the seven capital sins as a thematic thread to invite a reflection on the concepts of virtue and value constructed under U.S. Protestant capitalism: the former as emancipatory guilt; the latter as the specific status society grants to objects, practices and people creating, in turn, subjects whose value is purely economic versus those whose lives are deemed (morally) valuable in themselves.

In her article “Disability, Victorian Biopolitics and Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray,” Hiu Wai Wong discusses The Picture of Dorian Gray as Oscar Wilde’s life writing of the androgynous beauty. Extending his praise of Lord Alfred Douglas in De Profundis, Wilde’s descriptions of Dorian as the androgyne can be read as the demonstration of Michel Foucault’s techniques of the self. She argues that the androgynous beauty can be a strategy of bodily practice that overthrows the Victorian biopolitics which enforces a rigid gender role. Moreover, she explores the notion of camp and Judith Butler’s theory of performance to explain the strategy of bodily practice demonstrated by Dorian. However, she has to point out that the strategy of bodily practice of Dorian’s androgynous beauty fails to undermine the able-bodied biopolitics which deprives the disabled the opportunity to re-self-categorize themselves.

In his article “Albert Camus’ social, cultural and political migrations,” Benaouda LEBDAI analyses Albert Camus’ posthumous autofiction The First man, a fascinating self-representation and self -telling. Found after his deadly car accident, the manuscript adds a tragic dimension to the disguised autobiography. This paper demonstrates Camus’ capacity to migrate from one world to another, looks into the reasons behind such attitudes and stresses the significance of an outstanding life account within the on-going debate between France and Algeria about his political stands during colonial Algeria. His vision of the indigenous people, the Algerians, and of the future of colonial Algeria, is addressed in terms of cultural and political memory. The First Man is revisited to understand his psychological and social migrations, which reveal a deep trauma. In fine, this analysis focuses on a colonial time and the exclusive relation between Algeria and France, from a cultural and political viewpoint, and it ponders on the significance of ‘life Writing’ through ‘self-representation’ with its impact on a meaningful comprehension of History, culture and social memory.

This special issue addresses the broad and complex nexus among three topics: belief, subjectivity, and contemporary global capitalism. It explores the intersection of material practices, ideational dimensions, and the subjective dynamics of global capitalism. The interdisciplinary contributions in this special issue come from authors in Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea, Turkey, and the United States. And the articles gathered in this issue are to explore a wide range of topics, varying from entrepreneurship and digital capitalism to neoliberalism and postfeminism; from fundamentalism and terrorism to Protestantism and contemporary homosexual identity; from body and ableism to mind and New Age spiritualism; from ecologies of racial capitalism to transnational adoption. Engaging multimedia texts including memoir, novel, film, critical theory, speech, drama, and performance, their works together open up new avenues of examining the juncture of belief, subjectivity, and global capitalism.

In her article "Personal Geography, floating Identities and Inter-Asian Migration in Stories by Migrant Workers in Taiwan," I-Chun Wang discusses narratives by migrant workers with the purpose of looking into their personal geographies, their possibilities of integration, their floating identities and their dreams of settlement and possible success. This paper stresses the stories of migration show not only common human values, shared across cultures and creolization, but also sad stories of human-rights violations, injustices, discrimination, and even human trafficking. In these fictional stories or witness literature, cross-cultural conflicts, cultural in-betweenness and cultural hybridity are intertwined with the migrants’ ways to map their own personal geographies.

Mao Tse-Tung's famous 1937 essay "On Contradiction" is regarded as a significant attempt to redefine and reapply Marx's notion of a "dialectical contradiction" to the Chinese revolutionary conjuncture of Mao's time. I set out the principles outlined in Mao's essay, before arguing that the revolutionary conjuncture of his time no longer exists in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. I conclude that a new conception of "antagonism" is needed, and revise Mao's position with the aid of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari.

In his article, “Mapping Out Chinese Modernity and Alternative Modernity,” Song Li reviews the writings of Kang Liu, particularly his Aesthetics and Marxism. Kang Liu studies the intellectual trajectory of Chinese Marxism from its inception to its post-Mao phases of transformation by comparing it with the cultural and aesthetic thinking of Western Marxism. It provides not only a new perspective for the study of Marxism in general and Chinese Marxism in particular, but also opens up a new space for mapping out Chinese modernity and alternative modernity. Its 2012 Chinese translation makes it more accessible in China, and it will have a far-reaching impact on the Chinese intellectual scene in the years to come.

In his essay "Maoism in Culture," Ning Wang discusses the importance to literature and art of Mao's famous "Yan'an Talks" as one of his most representative works. Maoism, or Mao Zedong Thought as is generally called in China, is a "glocalized" or "Sinicized" Marxism initiated and developed by Mao and his comrades in arms and successors in China. Wang argues that although Maoism is not a dogmatically "imported" Marxism from the West, it has indeed grasped some fundamental Marxist principles in combination with the concrete Chinese literary and critical practice. Thus a "glocalized" or "Sinicized" Marxist literary theory has contributed and will continue to contribute a great deal to the global Marxist literary and cultural theory, especially in the contemporary era known as that of globalization. Even in today's China, some of Mao's legacies have been given up by his successors, his "Yan'an Talks" and the essence of his literary and art theory is still influential functioning as the guiding principle in current China's literary and art criticism and studies.

In his article, "Rethinking Critical Theory and Maoism," Kang Liu reviews the existing literature in English on the relationship of Critical Theory and Maoism and discusses the need to explore and reconstruct a genealogy of Critical Theory and Maoism within the global context of political, ideological, and intellectual currents and trends. The special issue will focus on three clusters of issues: first, the western invention of Maoism as a universal theory of revolution; second, the reception of Critical Theory in China and its relationship to Maoism; and third, the relevance of Maoism and Critical Theory today. Liu raises the question in the end: can Maoism be seen as a revolutionary universalism, or a nationalist ideology of Chinese Exceptionalism?

In her article, "The Political (Un)conscious: Rethinking Aesthetics from a Cross-Cultural Perspective," Xiaohong Zhang adopts a cross-cultural perspective, examining the cultural-specific nuances of critical terms like race, class and gender, all of which have bearings on our perception and conception of aesthetics. Drawing on Emory Elliot's groundbreaking book, Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age (2002), the paper probes into the aesthetic experience whose primary effect is to depragmatize. Along this line of thinking, the author draws attention to the aesthetic impetus of two Nobel laureates, Mo Yan and Gao Xingjian, whose rewriting of Western classics demonstrates Chinese authors' shared predilection for Western modernity in general and for modernist and postmodernist aesthetics in particular.

In their article "Innovations in Self-Consciousness. Towards Oneness with the World" Soon-ok Myong and Byong-soon Chun examine the limitations and vulnerabilities of modern civilization. Asia is a multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural territory of over 40 countries and more than 4.4 billion people, that is, almost half of the population of the world. The One Asia community seeks to question a world made up of strong egos that make up businesses, organization and nations, and embrace communal goals, helping Asia and the world to become 'one community.' Thus, the paper suggests ways of self-innovation through forms of transitional consciousness. Although the modern Sapiens is a highly social being, the human tendency to exclusive superiority over all other creatures falls into self-destructive contradictions as civilization evolves. The research seeks to show how the nature of altruistic cooperation and the empathic abilities inherent to humans can be re-activated by expanding our worldview to larger frame. Only then can humankind be called 'sapiens' in the true sense of the word.

In their article "On the Culturalization of Ethnic Economy in China" Liu Yiand Xiao Jia-Yan examine the cultural impact of autonomous minority regions on national economy. This study surveys the internal factors that include geography and history as well as external factor such as govermental policy. The findings suggest that cultural factors should be taken into greater consideration, as they are an important aspect in the inner motivation to push forward the economic development of ethnic areas at a faster pace. The paper argues that culture can afford the most efficient pathway for these ethnic areas in terms of economic transformation and development, since economic progress can be made by the culturalization of human resources, industries, enterprises, products and institutions.

In his paper "Dayak Lundayeh: A Report from the Border" Luqman H. Zainuri explores the vulnerabilities and potential of national disintegration coming from indigenous communities in Indonesia. In particular, the paper focuses on one of the communities which has been largely ignored, the Dayak people, who have played an important role in the border between Indonesia and Malaysia in Borneo Island. The Dayak indigenous people which inhabit this highland plateau are known as the Lun Bawang, on the Malaysian side, and the Lun Dayeh (or Lundayeh) in the Indonesian side. Both groups are linguistically and culturally the same. This paper provides information on the general condition of their lives, and on how they position themselves towards Indonesia, emphasizing the particularities of the Dayak Lun Dayeh among other Dayak ethnic groups who live in West and Central Kalimantan. Although separated by a national border, the Lun Bawang of the Kelalan Valley and the Lun Dayeh of the Bawan Valley have similar cultural patterns and kingship ties. The paper recognizes Indonesia as a multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural territory, much like Asia in general, and argues for socio-political integration and peace. The paper is part of report based on an exploratory research conducted in Krayan (also known as Kerayan) sub district, Nunukan North Kalimantan in September 2012, under the Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) program, aimed to promote an understanding of the socio-cultural life of the Dayak tribes and of the degree of autonomy of border communities between Indonesia and Malaysia. The paper also stresses the importance of preserving traditional cultures and their integration by means of education and the development of cultural and creative industries in marginalized ethnic areas.

In their article "Portraits of Jeju Haenyeo as Models of Empowerment in the Korean Newspaper Maeilshinbo during Japanese Occupation" Seohyeon Lee and Soon-ok Myong analyze the life of Korean women divers, Jeju Haenyeo, portrayed in the news articles of the Maeilshinbo, the only Korean newspaper during Japanese occupation (1910-1945). In the past, the activities of Haenyeo have been considered the cultural product of Jeju Island. However, within a structure of female repression, Confucian feudalism and colonization, the Haenyeo can be seen as emancipatory pioneers and voluntary economic agents, displaying initiative and pro-activeness and protecting their rights and interests by organizing a democratic decision-making body. From a proto-feminist perspective, the lives of Haenyeo, declared UNESCO World Intangible Cultural Heritage, can function as models of empowerment to contemporary women.

In his paper "Collective Memory in Advocating Peace. The Nanjing Incident as a case study" Idham Badruzaman provides an example of how to build a peaceful Asian Community. The Foundation is establishing forms of bilateral cooperation at the educational level; mostly in universities and higher education institutions across the world. These programs are contributing to create cross-cultural ties within the Asian Community and across the world, surpassing national interests and boundaries, fostering inter-culturalism, and promoting tolerance amid differences. By focusing on the Nanjing Incident, the paper provides an example of how the building of collective memory can help reconciliation, showing the efforts made by Japan and China to maintain a neighbor-relationship. The study collects information about the different actions undertaken to create a collective memory of the Nanjing Incident in order to turn this public recollection into reconciliation. There have been at least seven efforts made to make public recollection about the Nanjing Incident. They include the following activities: publishing a book about Nanjing, building the National Memorial Hall, Annual Commemoration, setting up a National Memorial Day, registering the inscription with UNESCO, establishing the Peace and Research Institute, and eventually registering the city of Nanjing to become A City of Peace. In addition, there are many other events and elements that are worth-remembering as part of the collective memory for both the Chinese and the Japanese people. All of them are directed to the normalisation of neighbour relations, in the spirit of peace and reconciliation.

PREPRINT, to be published as: Steiner, Tobias (2019). “Bron/Broen, the Pilot as Space between Cultures, and (re)negotiations of Nordic Noir”. In: The Scandinavian Invasion: The Nordic Noir Phenomenon and Beyond. ed. / Richard McCulloch; William Proctor. Peter Lang, (forthcoming). ------------------------------------------------------- Nordic Noir has, since the early-2000s, evolved into a globally-popular genre that now easily transcends media-specific boundaries. Television has always been at the forefront of that development: Scandinavian TV productions either turned literary successes such as the Henning Mankell novel universe of Wallander into distinct and easily-recognizable television scripts, or developed independent shows such as Forbrydelsen (DR, 2007-12), which, with foreign adaptations such as The Killing (US) (AMC/Netflix, 2011-14) – themselves grew into international format successes. The most recent wave of Nordic Noirs – including blockbuster shows like Bron/Broen [The Bridge] (DK/SWE, 2011-), Dicte (DK, 2012-), Blå ögon [Blue Eyes] (SWE, 2014), Arvingerne [The Legacy] (DK, 2014-), Frikjent [Acquitted] (NOR, 2015-), Herrens veje [Rides upon the Storm] (DK, in development) or Kongen af Danmark [The King] (DK, in development, 2017-) – continues to employ a particular Nordic Noir template. But while doing so, many of these shows also simultaneously transform Nordic Noir through processes of remaking and adaptation that become evident in examples such as Gomorrah (ITA, 2014-) and Les Témoins [Witnesses] (FR, 2015-), within correspondingly-changing generic, narrative, and locational contexts such as ‘Italian’ or ‘French Noir’. This most recent wave thus both affirms and dissolves the specificity of Nordic Noir as a genre.This chapter is particularly interested in the status that Nordic Noir as a genre has as a source for formatting within television, and the specific (re)negotiations that take place when Nordic Noir is transferred to different cultural settings. Following a brief introductory framing of Nordic Noir and its role in larger processes of the global format trade, I will use the analytic perspective of Performance Studies which, as I argue, allows for a more nuanced view on the workings behind the circulation of Nordic Noir formats in the global television business. In particular, I will employ Navarro’s understanding of format adaptation as processual ‘space between cultures’ (2012), and try to identify the onsets of this liminal space in the specific setting of the pilot. It is exactly here, I argue, where adaptation processes first become visible – processes that take a known template and rework it via narrative modulation into transcultural TV remakes.Subsequently, I will illustrate this perspective via the example of Bron/Broen, one of the recent Nordic Noir television series that has itself become a format – travelling on a global scale and thus renegotiating the meaning of Nordic Noir in a variety of cultural settings. This will be done via a comparative analysis of Bron/Broen’s pilot and two of its international iterations – The Bridge (US), and The Tunnel (FR/UK).

This thesis examines Internet memes, a unique medium that has the capability to easily and seamlessly transfer ideologies between groups. It argues that these media can potentially enable subcultures to challenge, and possibly overthrow, hegemonic power structures that maintain the dominance of a mainstream culture. I trace the meme from its creation by Matt Furie in 2005 to its appearance in the 2016 US Presidential Election and examine how its meaning has changed throughout its history. I define the difference between a meme instance and the meme as a whole, and conclude that the meaning of the overall meme is formed by the sum of its numerous meme instances. This structure is unique to the medium of Internet memes and is what enables subcultures to use them to easily transfer ideologies in order to challenge the hegemony of dominant cultures.Dick Hebdige provides a model by which a dominant culture can reclaim the images and symbols used by a subculture through the process of commodification. Using the Pepe the Frog meme as a case study, I argue that Hebdige’s commodification model does not apply to Internet memes, because traditional concepts of ownership and control affect Internet memes differently. As such, the medium enables subcultures to claim and redefine an image to challenge a dominant culture. Unlike with other forms of media, it is difficult for the dominant culture to exert its power or control over Internet memes. Internet memes, therefore, have significant real-world implications and potential to empower subcultures.

The tooling of theatrical spectacle requires collaboration between stagecraft technicians and designers in an increasingly globalized and standardized manufacturing process. While hand skills are still used and remain useful, digital fabrication and other tools are now incorporated in labour processes in scenery manufacturing workshops, altering collaborative work in complex ways. This thesis is an inquiry into the epistemological role of software and digital fabrication tools in stagecraft practices and explores how the politics of craft labour intersect with material practices in media production labour. The technical aspects of the fabrication of theatrical spectacles and display environments, the way objects are used to think, and the ways tools mediate practices suggest how tacit knowledge is produced and reproduced in scenery manufacturing workshops that build theatrical sets and corporate display environments. The articles in this thesis draw from case study research of a community of craft technicians who work in the industry of theatrical display in southern Ontario, Canada. Each of the four articles focuses on different facets of this case study. The technician’s work in labour processes in scenery workshops is compared to repair and bricolage. Autonomy or self-determination over tasks in the workshop sites is explored in its material and embodied sense. The collaboration between the designer and scenic artist is mediated with digital media and this complicates established occupational roles. A case of collective organizing exemplifies the individualistic/collective dichotomy of craft labour. Using an inductive approach, the empirical research for this community case study was accomplished with participant observation and semistructured interviewing. My analysis of interview transcripts and interpretation of field data utilizes an autoethnographic methodology to reflect on and draw from my past work experience in theatre production labour as a builder and scenic artist. In this integrated article thesis, I consider how material practices constitute culture in media production labour.

In his article "Pantheism and Escapism in Abu Madi's 'Enigmas' and 'The Evening' From English Romanticism Perspectives" Yasser K. R. Aman investigates and analyses the possibilities of pantheism's encirclement of escapism in Elia Abu Madi's two poems from English Romanticism perspective. The article compares Abu Madi's fluctuating attitude towards escapism and pantheism to William Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour July 13, 1798," Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," highlighting the affinities and differences. The argument of the article is that Abu Madi's skepticism in "Engimas" (الطلاسم), a representative poem of his works and of contemporary Arab romanticism, hinders him from finding an escape from "the here" and "the now;" while in "The Evening" (المساء), which displays overflow of feelings, Abu Madi makes his escape from the burdens of life and mingles with nature. Therefore, Abu Madi represents the fluctuation of contemporary Arab romantic poets, especially Al Mahjar School: either to embrace pantheism or to retreat in an impenetrable shell of self-isolation.

In his article "Disoriented Nationalist Discourse of the Wenxuan Group amidst Manchukuo's Anti-Modern Chorus" Chao Liu analyzes the proposal of "native-land literature" made by left-wing Chinese writers in occupied northeast China. As it turns out, inheriting the nationalist discourse of the May Fourth Movement and further radicalizing it via a "new romanticism," those writers over-emphasized the socio-political function of literary production and took native-land literature as the most effective tool for nationalist mobilization. Accordingly, they repelled modern civilization as it was associated with the colonists, relying instead on natural wilderness and primitive force and thus adopting subject matters as well as stylistic features that paradoxically celebrated the Japanese imperial ideology of "overcoming modernity." In this sense, the Wenxuan group involuntarily lapsed into an anti-modern chorus with the colonial regime.

Hour of the Furnaces is one of those films you never forget watching, at least I never did. Coming in at about 4 hours, the documentary demands to be seen and heard. Shot clandestinely between 1966 and 1968 by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, the film is a revolutionary call to action meant to awaken and inspire socio-political revolution. Despite the decades that exist between myself and this film, it felt more relevant than anything I have seen in years. The documentary speaks of the ever-present legacy of colonialism and neo-colonial policies which devastates the poor and elevates the rich, while illuminating the consumerist ideologies which pacify its citizens and render revolution unthinkable. Solanas and Getino do not think revolution should be dismissed, and this film makes that unmistakably clear. Using guerrilla film tactics, the films produces what Solanas and Getino call Third Cinema, an active subversion of Hollywood cinema. This forces active spectatorship and is meant to awaken the political consciousness of the passive Argentinian viewer, creating an uncomfortable viewing experience, as if to mirror the historical and emotional realities of the Argentinian revolution. It is an abrasive, shocking, and extremely informative documentary, one which left me with the unshakable need to write about it.

Since the 2016 United States election the topic of ‘fake news’ has been an ongoing public concern, creating anxiety around the reliability of information circulating the Internet and appearing on our social media. There is difficulty in defining exactly what ‘fake news’ is, much less devising methods to help people identify truthful content. There are even fewer discussions revolving around similar past instances that might be able to offer some valuable insight on understanding, not just ‘fake news, but also our contemporary relationship with our media. I argue in this paper that the historical War of the Worlds radio broadcast — popularly remembered as the broadcast that caused ‘hysteria’ across America—orchestrated by Orson Wells in 1938, bears semblance to our present-day trepidations surrounding fake news. In my research, I triangulate the following theoretical frameworks: discourse networks theory, the social genesis of sound fidelity, and media publics, and investigate whether War of the Worlds can be a useful case study in providing a more solid perspective on today’s issue of ‘fake news’ and what it might say about our current relationship with our media environment.

We are of an era in which digital technology now enhances the method and practice of archaeology. In our rush to embrace these technological advances however, Virtual Archaeology has become a practice to visualize the archaeological record, yet it is still searching for its methodological and theoretical base. I submit that Virtual Archaeology is the digital making and interrogating of the archaeological unknown. By wayfaring means, through the synergy of the maker, digital tools and material, archaeologists make meaning of the archaeological record by engaging the known archaeological data with the crafting of new knowledge by multimodal reflection and the tacking and cabling of archaeological knowledge within the virtual space. This paper addresses through the 3D (re)imagination of a 16th century pre-contact Iroquoian longhouse, by community paradata blogging and participatory research, how archaeologists negotiate meaningmaking through the use of presence and phenomenology while also addressing the foundations of the London Charter: namely agency, authority, authenticity and transparency when virtually representing constructed archaeological knowledge. Through the use of Ontario Late Woodland longhouse excavation archaeological data, archaeological literature, historical accounts and linguistic research in combination with 3D animation and visual effects production methodologies, and engaging this mental construction made real in virtual reality by deploying these assets in a real-time gaming and head mounted immersive digital platform, archaeologists can interact, visualize and interrogate archaeological norms, constructs and notions. I advocate that by using Virtual Archaeology, archaeologists build meaning by making within 3D space, and by deploying these 3D assets within a real-time, immersive platform they are able to readily negotiate the past in the present.

The representation of transgender people in popular media has been overwhelmingly problematic. Historical representations of transgender characters in fictional television have featured stereotypical and negative portrayals that do not accurately reflect the real experiences of transgender people. Both the quantity and quality of transgender representation across all forms of media is an issue. This research examines two popular television shows that feature transgender characters. Using a mix methods approach of Content Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, the first four seasons of Orange is the New Black and The Fosters are examined. This research seeks to examine how the fictional transgender characters are constructed through their interaction with other characters and their place in the storyline. Of particular interest are the ways in which the transgender character is treated by others, the topic of conversations when the transgender characters are discussed, and whether they are victims of physical or psychological violence. This research found that the improvement of representation in these shows is indicative of a trend towards more positive representation. The characters of Cole, Sophia, and Aaron are represented in some positive ways; however, it is noteworthy that all three continue to uphold the gender binary. Although there are still improvements that need to be made towards fair and complex representation, these characters’ signal a step in the right direction.

This thesis examines the relationship between youth and new media practices in fostering political participation in online spaces during the impeachment proceedings against Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first woman president. In the midst of the political turmoil revolving around the 2016 impeachment case in Brazil, young people actively adopted Social Network Sites (SNS) as vehicles to circulate political user-generated memes. Despite the fact that Brazil is one of the largest democracies in the world, the country still has a long way to go in diversifying its media channels to allow impactful youth participation in the public opinion. However, the number of youth in online spaces continue to increase, as Brazil becomes one of the most active countries on SNS, despite the economic recession. Aside from their reoccurring reactionary, ahistorical, tautological, and superficial elements, Internet memes about the impeachment represent an emerging type of digital labor that is not driven by a particular media text as most memes. Instead, these Internet memes largely gain symbolic meaning and popular appeal through the merging of seemingly unrelated juxtaposition of visual texts, hero and anti-hero characters, and dramatic plotlines. In conjunction, these memes demonstrate to be deeply rooted in the local tradition of cultural cannibalism and popular imagination drawn from Brazilian telenovela conventions. Considering memes both as participatory culture artifacts and as a paratexts for civic engagement, this new gateway for participation suggests that Brazilian youth are not passive consumers of traditional media, but rather active, creative, and influential in online spaces and, potentially, in the public sphere.

Esta tese interroga a relação entre cinema e direitos humanos, com base em uma abordagem fundamentalmente teórica e conceitual que tem como objetivo último a abertura de um programa mais amplo de pesquisa: a elaboração do que denomino atlas cosmopoético. Historicamente, os principais modos de relação entre cinema e direitos humanos consistem nos usos de imagens como documentos para denunciar violações e como parte do trabalho de memória em torno dessas violações. Nesse tipo de contexto, o cinema participa da construção de um arquivo do mal, contra o qual a “consciência da humanidade” declara os princípios de dignidade universal do projeto cosmopolítico dos direitos humanos. Ao mesmo tempo, o cinema participa da construção de um arquivo do comum, no qual os princípios dos direitos humanos assumem forma sensível. Ao interrogar o problema do devir- sensível da “consciência da humanidade”, é preciso reconhecer que um dos motivos recorrentes da relação entre cinema e direitos humanos consiste no tema do inimaginável e no problema das imagens que faltam. Introduzido a partir da leitura da Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos de 1948, o exemplo histórico paradigmático das imagens dos campos nazistas e da experiência concentracionária assume um lugar central entre os diversos objetos estudados, numa análise do processo de arquivamento das imagens dos campos como evidências sensíveis do inimaginável e das formas de montagem das imagens dos campos como tentativas de pensar seus sentidos e de construir o arquivo de sua memória. Enquanto a ficção tende, com Samuel Fuller e Orson Welles, por exemplo, a revisitar o arquivo e a reorganizar seus elementos em função de narrativas e de interesses alheios aos contextos originários das imagens, o documentário encontra na denegação do arquivo o seu impulso, como evidencia a obra de Claude Lanzmann. Entre o rearquivamento ficcional e a denegação, emergem possibilidades experimentais de remontagem do arquivo, com base na abertura anarquívica que desestrutura e reorganiza suas imagens, em filmes de Alain Resnais, Mikhail Romm e Jean-Luc Godard. Assim como o projeto cosmopolítico dos direitos humanos depende do devir-sensível da “consciência da humanidade” para sua disseminação universal, conceitos jurídicos como “genocídio” e “crime contra a humanidade” encontram nas imagens cinematográficas uma de suas formas privilegiadas de inscrição sensível.