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This essay explores the various modes of visualities and visual production in Kashmir. It begins with mapping the existing state visualities that use hypervisibilization, victimization, criminalization, and depoliticization as modalities to represent Kashmir. In recent years, long-standing counternarratives to these representations have met with increasing repression, engendering a visual stagnancy. Earlier, countervisuals by photojournalists confronted state visualities by directing the gaze toward Kashmiri bodies. This essay argues that the repeated production and circulation of these realistic images have also reached a point of visual fatigue. At this juncture of a seeming visual impossibility, the essay proposes creative configurations and visual imaginaries through artistic visioning as a means to continue the work of visual production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phad Tradition as a part of visual culture is a performative, ritualistic, audio-visual folk craft of Rajasthan, India. Its cult following is based on its regional Gods, such as Papuji and Devnarayan Ji. Phad Tradition can be broadly divided into three aspects as narratives (tales, myths), paintings (visual), and performance (audio). Phad Paintings has a unique visual language that is painted on muslin fabric (sacred textile) by the Chippa community from Bhilwara, Rajasthan, and are recited by priest singers locally known as Bhopa and Bhopi in form of elaborated performances. The lesser-known Phad Tradition is a part of Indian cultural heritage, yet many communities engaged in this craft-making are perhaps struggling socially and economically. The aim of the current review is to bring different literature resources and discourses on the subject matter and provide a comprehensive knowledge of the traditions with future scope of research. With this reference, the scoping review was conducted by deploying electronic (Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar) and non-electronic (library resources) searching. A total of 70 papers were included to achieve the intended goal. These 70 papers were further divided into three categories based on the relativity of the subject matter. The review established that there are different paradigms where the subject has not been explored extensively. Hence, the review might encourage researchers and designers to engage with the subject from different perspectives to build further knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Black media, cultural, and digital studies, this work considers the relationship between nostalgia and the media, cultural productions, and experiences of Black people in Britain. Engaging with Hesse's (2000) work on 'Diasporicity: Black Britain's Post-Colonial Formations', I explore how media representations of Black Britain and connected production processes have changed since the 90s, in ways entwined with Black nostalgia and generational (be)longing. Since Hesse (2000, p. 97) observed that 'Black Britishness is a discourse whose increasing currency has yet to be conceptualized seriously', research and writing on Black Britishness and Black life in Britain has significantly expanded. Informed by such work, I delve into some of the details of Black media experiences in Britain to consider how Black nostalgia manifests in and through these contexts. Inspired by Ahad-Legardy's (2021) work on 'Afro-nostalgia' and how visual culture aids archives of Black 'historical joy', I consider the digitally mediated, comforting, conflicting, and historical nature of Black media nostalgia in Britain, and Black nostalgia more generally. Such discussion distinguishes between Black people's nostalgic media experiences and Black media nostalgia which centers Black creative expression and the kaleidoscopic gazes of Black audiences. Nostalgia's enigmatic quality cannot be comprehended via empirical analysis, alone. Thus, sculpted by understandings of 'sociopolitical strategies of presence' (Osei 2019, p. 733), this work conceptualizes Black nostalgia in ways based on key media examples, research interviews, researcher reflections and the possibilities and playfulness presented by influx ponderings. Overall, shaped by Hall's (1993; 1997) work on representation and popular culture, this manuscript yields insights regarding dynamics between nostalgia, media, and Black life in Britain. Such work highlights the need for specificity (e.g., whose gaze(s), geographies, generations) when articulating Black people's experiences in Britain, and the power of nostalgia in Black media and culture, which spans decades and different devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diasporic food cultures enter dominant societies through a variety of manners and spaces, in homes, at food fairs, restaurants, through cookbooks, in supermarkets, but also in visual media. This special section investigates how the representations of diasporic food cultures in popular television and film mediate a variety of food traditions which negotiate and challenge dominant societal assumptions about the present, the past and the future of food and eating, and their complex relationships to race, class, gender, identity and the environment. The contributions to the issue note how the meeting of various diasporic culinary traditions and the often already transcultural host food traditions marks the start of new, feminist, decolonial food cultures, identities and futures, which raise critical questions about our food culture. This investigation of the representation of diasporic food cultures not only reveals the continuing transmutation of food cultures but more importantly the transformation of culture as such, within an increasingly polarized, uneven and fortified world where the dominant food system contributes to a social and ecological breakdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this text, the author analyzes the convergence between Christian culture and relevant films of Alfred Hitchcock's suspense filmography. Rather than focusing on Hitchcock's status as a Catholic director, he makes an empirical analysis that allows him to find certain visual analogies between the Christian imaginary and the frames of certain films of the master of suspense. This article understands cinema as a kind of mental, psychological, or spiritual cartography/geography, and this is how it connects to the theme of space, where cinema is not just as analogous to physical space but the experience of viewing as a space. The Christian iconography of death, understood as participation in an eternal time, helps to understand the projection of the concept of suspension of judgment in constructing suspense that is not only iconographic but also spatially ontological. The author also suggests an epistemological connection between the mysterious nature of space in medieval art and architecture and the aesthetics of perfect crime in films. The allegory of Christ's Passion will be seen as a recurring thread in Hitchcock's visual analogies. His cinema and his particular way of seeing reality through space continue to demonstrate the validity of his art in writing new episodes in Western culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores a remarkable manuscript, the so-called Hileq and Bileq Haggadah (Paris, BnF Ms. Hébreu 1333), illuminated in southern Germany in the fifteenth century. Our focus, in particular, is on the image that accompanies the Shefokh ḥamatkha prayer, an invocation of God's vengeance upon nonbelievers. Here, we posit the role of the Shefokh ḥamatkha folio within the context of the Hileq and Bileq Haggadah, suggesting that its prominent position and extravagant visual program involve the reader–viewer in a performative scenario that inflects the meaning of the other images in the book as well as the enactment of the Seder ritual itself. The messianic import of the folio is underscored by its enactive language, both visual and oral, and predicated on the emotional communities that coalesced around the Passover ritual in the later Middle Ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens when speech synthesis applications are incompatible with certain software? This essay considers how inaccessibility within the software and programming language Max is sonically, aesthetically, culturally, and ideologically amplified through a case study of "plus noise unlock," which is the sound made by the author's computer when she attempts to use a screen reader within a patcher window. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn this article, I consider the role of emerging digital media technologies in contexts where a scarcity of memory infrastructure contributes to the marginalization of historical figures, places, or events. To do so, I examine Red Summers, a collection of 360-degree virtual reality (360 VR) documentaries that bring to light the impact of domestic White supremacist terrorism on Black communities in incidents across the U.S. occurring between 1917 and 1921. I argue the series relies on a strategy of visual cultural production I deem Black hauntography, which capacities collective acts of critical memory by directing audience visions toward the multiple layers of infrastructural absences left in the aftermath of racial violence. I trace how the series produces a memory of loss which may mediate more truthful, inspired encounters with the weight of history, thereby operating as a critical memory infrastructure suitable for amending amnesiac relations to past injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract\nPoints of interestHuman visual experience is increasingly mediated. As technology facilitates the sharing of diverse images, understanding the world through photography and videos is crucial. However, visuality affects the digital existence of communities with visual impairments. Focusing on the short-video consumption of individuals with visual impairments, this study examines their media experiences in a visually dominant society. Considering its social and technical setting, China is the ideal research site. Using constructivist grounded theory, we implemented open coding on raw data, highlighting initial categories associated with the usage of short-video applications. Contrary to the perception that those with visual impairments are more likely to use auditory-focused devices, we found that this population uses short video apps for entertainment, work, and social interactions and found design barriers and limited accessibility to be additional challenges. This study explains how digital media promotes inclusion and suggests possibilities for more inclusive digital-media development.In today’s society, where visual information is pervasive, the ways in which people with visual impairments engage with media are often overlooked.This study explores how people with visual impairments in China consume short videos. Despite facing challenges in watching these videos, they are able to engage with short video apps by listening to audio and using touch screen functionalities.People with visual impairments use short videos to socialise, which helps enhance their sense of inclusion within society.While expressing themselves on short video platforms, people with visual impairments may inadvertently contribute to the amplification of public prejudice towards their community.In this research conducted in China, participants with visual impairments shared two main aspirations: to access information easily without barriers and to be accepted and recognised in society without conditions.In today’s society, where visual information is pervasive, the ways in which people with visual impairments engage with media are often overlooked.This study explores how people with visual impairments in China consume short videos. Despite facing challenges in watching these videos, they are able to engage with short video apps by listening to audio and using touch screen functionalities.People with visual impairments use short videos to socialise, which helps enhance their sense of inclusion within society.While expressing themselves on short video platforms, people with visual impairments may inadvertently contribute to the amplification of public prejudice towards their community.In this research conducted in China, participants with visual impairments shared two main aspirations: to access information easily without barriers and to be accepted and recognised in society without conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the way a new specifically Georgian post-Stalinist art form (cheduroba , metal engraving) that emerged in the 1960s became a commonly encountered emblematic feature of the equally new urban spaces of the rapidly changing modernist Tbilisi cityscape. This new, and yet seemingly old, art form, which frequently featured the face of a traditional Georgian girl, usually a Khevsur girl from the mountains, came to be a diagnostic part of the modern urban assemblage of Tbilisi in the 1960s. This traditional face from the Georgian past became a paradoxical figure for the alliance of art and architecture in the visual aesthetics of the modern Georgian city in the 1960s, and the art form became the stereotypical "face" of a specifically Georgian post-Stalinist "traditional-modernist" public urban art. This art form soon became diagnostic of modern Georgian urban spaces, like the Tbilisi metro, which also opened around the same time in the 1960s. The recurrent distribution of this face across newly-created modernist urban spaces together formed a Georgian version of "socialist modernism," producing a visually-experienced "brand of socialism" for urban spaces, a procession of images traditional or national (in style or theme) in socialist modernist spaces connecting the traditional architecture of the city to the modernist architectural spaces of the new socialist city of the 1960s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the postwar economic boom, the American market was flooded with amateur cameras. While designed primarily to record domestic life, these cameras have become so ubiquitous that today we expect almost any event, from a family vacation to an act of police brutality, to have been captured on film or video. These moments where everyday citizen becomes accidental journalist highlight the democratic possibility of vernacular cameras to capture unofficial and uncensored records of history. Yet citizen photojournalism is also part of a broader epistemological shift in our perception of history. Such images not only offer evidence of what happened, they also situate the viewer as a citizen witness to history and thus encourage a "first person" affective response. To examine this shift, I focus on the urtext of citizen photojournalism: Abraham Zapruder's home movie of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In contrast to the standard journalistic or forensic camera image, the vernacular Zapruder film offers a more participatory relation to history, but one that is also more subjective. This essay will explore three distinct iterations of the Zapruder film: in the pages of Life magazine, in the irreverent and humorous 1975 performance/video artwork Eternal Frame , and in the experiential museum display of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Each instance engages with amateurs and their cameras in distinct and revealing ways and draws attention to our evolving perception of citizen photojournalism as both empirical evidence and an experiential framework for feeling history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advancements in studying the Ars Notoria, notably through Julian Véronèse's critical edition, have provided insights into its manuscripts and various interpretations. This progress sets the stage for exploring a less examined area: the Jewish reception of the Ars Notoria, a topic ripe for investigation in the current scholarly landscape. This article explores the Jewish engagement with this Christian text, particularly through its Hebrew translation Melekhet Muskelet, as well as a notable discovery that links the Ars Notoria's notae to the Kabbalistic ten sefirot. This connection suggests an early Jewish interest in this Christian magical text. The study, using textual and visual analysis, offers insights into the interplay between medieval Jewish Kabbalah and Christian magical texts, underscoring the need to reevaluate their mutual influences during the 13th and 14th centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since emerging in the early 1990s, Estonian hip-hop has developed in line with other cultural and artistic projects in the country, reflecting attempts to foster a homogeneous society, yet ultimately cultivating one where diversity and multiculturalism prevail. As a genre where minority groups are frequently presented as "authentic," hip-hop and its visual and performative manifestations provide a valuable platform to examine expressions of identity. To this end, several Estonian hip-hop musicians have explored aspects of being "post-Soviet" in contradistinction to official hegemonic discourses, which outright reject the Soviet past and emphasize titular ethnicity as a cornerstone of national identity. This article uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Multi-Modal Discourse Analysis (MMDA) to examine the lyrics and accompanying video of popular hip-hop song "für Oksana" by "Nublu featuring Gameboy Tetris." Doing so highlights how the song's basic narrative acts as a metaphor for experiences of integration processes between ethnic Estonians and Russophones since Estonian independence. I argue that through a combination of linguistic and cultural codeswitching, "für Oksana" constitutes an expression, performance, and negotiation of Russophone Estonian identity from both insider and outsider perspectives, emphasizing the need to understand Russophone Estonians as more than simply "Russians who live in Estonia." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review article discusses a special journal issue on Asta Nielsen, a Danish actress known for her work in German films. The issue contains eight contributions that focus on Nielsen and related themes, such as the advent of the star system and the introduction of long feature films. The articles make extensive use of digitized newspapers and film trade journals as sources, providing valuable information on Nielsen's films and their marketing. The review also highlights the neglect of other early film stars and the presence of women in the silent cinema, suggesting that future research should take a more statistical and vernacular approach to provide a comprehensive understanding of the early film industry. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the visual culture of social network applications (apps), using "safer-sex design" as an anchor to contemplate how different practices of looking at HIV co-constitute viral visibility. Drawing on science and technology studies and queer theories, this article traces viral visibility from its digital production through its marketization, and finally to its implications for gay men's sexual communication in Taiwan. Through interviews with gay Taiwanese men and a social app developer and the visual analysis of Hornet, Grindr, and Scruff, this article describes how the precarity of viruses, knowledge of HIV prevention, and social stigmas against sexual minorities are brought together, staged, and made eligible (and ineligible) for public viewing. This article demonstrates how digital platform designs work to facilitate gay men's sociosexual communication while ironically reinforcing stigmas against HIV/AIDS in Taiwan, and suggests a critical approach to the visual culture of social apps and queer health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While interest in early modern herbaria has so far mainly concentrated on the dried plants stored in them, this paper addresses another of their qualities – their role as manuscripts. In the 1670s, the German botanist Paul Hermann (1646–95) spent several years in Ceylon (today Sri Lanka) as a medical officer in the service of the Dutch East India Company. During his stay he put together four herbaria, two of which contain a wealth of handwritten notes by himself and several later owners. First, it will be shown that these notes provide information on the linguistic skills and interests of those who collected plants in an overseas trading settlement. Hermann's botanical practice demanded and, at the same time, generated knowledge of Sinhalese (an Indo-Aryan language that is spoken by the largest ethnic group on the island) and its script. In his herbarium, observations on the semantics, morphology, and pronunciation of Sinhalese are inextricably intertwined with those of botanical nature. Second, on the basis of these voluminous notes, the character of early modern herbaria as manuscripts will be highlighted. And third, Hermann's herbaria will be integrated into an investigation of scribal practices and publication strategies of eighteenth-century botany. Along with field notes, letters, manuscripts, illustrations, and printed books, herbaria were knots in the textual–visual mesh of early modern botany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus disease-19 pandemic introduced a crisis of safety and relevance for dating apps, as their affordances for facilitating in-person encounters posed the risk of viral transmission. This article examines how eight apps primarily catering to heterosexual markets responded to the pandemic through changes to socio-technical arrangements, new user prescriptions, and the curation of corporate data and success stories. By analyzing corporate social media and promotional materials alongside in-app developments, we find that these companies reimagined app affordances to promote "virtual dating," a set of practices and symbolic meanings that prioritize visual, synchronous digital interaction as the most responsible, reliable, and successful dating approach to the pandemic. Virtual dating centers apps as databases of potential partners while prescribing modes of use aimed toward affective relief, displays of authenticity, and romantic courtship. This reimagining counters moral panics about digitally mediated relationships by resorting to heteronormative dating scripts while overlooking alternative app uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes the visualization of Euro-American medicine and indigenous healing in John Steinbeck's 1941 documentary-drama The Forgotten Village. The movie juxtaposes film and medical discourse as exemplifications of modern, visual culture by showing excerpts from hygiene films and foregrounding medical imagery (e.g., bacteria cultures). The film displaces indigenous medicine by privileging a Euro-American medical model, and the gaze of oppression is perpetuated through humanitarian medical intervention. In short, disease is not simply a material fact but embedded in discourses about community identity, moral values, and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We can no longer realise images solely through semiotic theories of interpretation and judgement fixed to earlier modes of communication, such as print. Instead, we engage with images through various networked digital devices and online social interactions. These engagements offer many possible experiences with images, some of which we have agency and others that are purely autonomic and some interactions resembling a healthy-bodied manifestation of visual agnosia or the loss of ability to recognise and identify. This paper utilises research from the 'Fast Image' study, a study of graphic design students and practitioners and their views on photographic image use, comparing print and online media. The author uses an interpretive approach supported by mixed data-gathering methods, including photo-elicitation, interviews and semi-structured questions. This discussion encourages advancing visual literacy and visual culture discourses to incorporate a Neurophenomenological approach toward understanding the effects of emerging technologies and viewing environments on photographic image use. These effects include sensory and cognitive responses to images and the influences of external stimuli on our phenomenological apprehension of images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1893, China boycotted the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in protest of the Geary Act, which renewed Chinese exclusion for ten years. In the absence of an official Chinese exhibit, a group of Chinese American merchants drew upon a set of theatrical elements associated with Chinatown tours to construct the Chinese Village attraction. For two decades, Chinatown tours had functioned as a form of aggregate entertainment featuring a set of archetypes—including the Restaurant, the Joss House, the Opium Den—that advanced the idea that Chinatown was a "Yellow Peril" to white Americans. The Chinese Village took this aggregate entertainment and attached a different cultural message, one which promoted the Chinese Village as a nonthreatening experience defined by consumption, surface aesthetics, and theatrical performance. In advancing this message, the Chinese Village contributed to a cultural shift that redefined understandings of Chinese immigrants for much of the next century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many archaeological projects of the contemporary past examine sites of abandonment, ruination, decay, and devastation. This contribution takes a step back, looking at the historical trajectories that have created the conditions for abandonment, ruination, and so on, in the first place. Before a site can become abandoned, it needs to be occupied, a practice that is inherently violent in capitalist contexts. Taking inspiration from family history, I offer a visual rendering of a nineteenth-century explorer's (failed) attempt to navigate the Northwest Passage, which eventually led him to occupy a small Arctic Archipelago that is today a Russian military outpost. In the fragmentary comments accompanying my artwork, I propose an archaeological engagement with the hauntings of this Arctic landscape that does not only expose how imperial encounters are embedded within capitalist exploits but inspire us to imagine a radically different political past and future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the much-touted 'sexual revolution', during the 1960s-70s, at the time most Western education systems avoided sex education. This article identifies contradictory discourses about sex as manifested in two distinct cultural expressions that co-occurred in those years in the UK. The first represented mainstream social conservatism – in the form of short sex education films produced for schools and colleges. The second, more radical alternative was the British-Australian underground magazine Oz, which expressed the sexual freedom of the counterculture. Both are discussed from the perspective of visual cultural history as competing agents of sex education – one reproducing the conservative paradigm, and the other aiming to dismantle it. While the films took a biomedical and preventive attitude to sex and embodied a patriarchal heteronormative approach , Oz supported sexual freedom and shattered taboos about such issues as abortion and sexual diversity, as well as celebrated women's sexuality. Nevertheless, male-dominant culture was also reflected on its pages, particularly in gratuitous images of female nudity. Despite this visual sexism, the article highlights the magazine as a countercultural entertainment medium educating for sexual pleasure and offering a creative, nonconformist perspective on sex that was way ahead of its time, and also of our own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biological motion (BM), the movements of animate entities, contains rich social information and has been extensively explored in visual science. Consistent with a fixed-capacity view of working memory (WM), previous studies consistently suggested that at most 4 BM could be retained in WM, which was not affected by the encoding time of the to-be-memorized stimuli. However, recent studies have challenged this view by showing that real-world non-social stimuli benefit from longer encoding time and have a larger WM capacity. In this study, we addressed whether the WM capacity of BM could exceed the traditional 4-item limitation under a high ecological-validity setting with sufficient encoding time. Using virtual reality (VR) equipment, we presented three-dimensional (3-D) avatar BM stimuli at different depths of the environment with sufficient encoding time in a standard change detection task. In two experiments, we found that WM could retain up to 6 BM with sufficient encoding time, regardless of whether the to-be-memorized stimuli were 2-D or 3-D and displayed in one or two different depths. This finding suggests that retaining BM in WM benefits from deeper encoding time, and the depth information of stimuli and environment does not play a key role in determining the WM capacity of BM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study aims to examine Braille usage among consumers with visual impairments, investigating motivations and addressing inherent challenges. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing insights from 16 semistructured interviews with individuals experiencing blindness, this study reveals nuanced aspects of Braille utilization. Findings: Three key motivations for Braille usage are identified: as a coping mechanism for functional needs and to combat stigma; as an embodied experience contributing to pleasure; and as a heritage embodying a culture of visual impairment. Obstacles include cultural and financial barriers to learning, incomplete retail transcriptions limiting practicality and spatial congestion issues. Originality/value: This study underscores Braille's dual function as both coping mechanism and cultural heritage. By highlighting obstacles, it sheds light on challenges faced by consumers with visual impairments, facilitating advocacy and promoting inclusive retail practices. Originality lies in recognizing diverse motivations and experiences among Braille users, offering insights for enhancing tactile engagement in the marketplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drone visuals are rapidly becoming part of our sociocultural imaginaries, generating distinct images that differ from traditional visual conventions and producing unexpected perspectives of the world that reveal hidden aspects of our surroundings. Despite the growing use of camera-laden drones in a range of commercial and non-commercial activities, to date, little scholarly attention has been paid to the semiotics of drone visuals. This article is the first to draw specific attention to the compositional structure of drone visuals, combining social semiotic analysis with ethnographic insights to assess how they are changing the way we think about the world. Exploring drone hobbyists' and developers' perspectives on drone usage and the visuals they generate, the authors identify and examine three frequently occurring characteristics of drone visuals: top-down views, 360-degree panoramic views and 'classic' landscape perspectives. The critical analysis of these peculiarities leads them to argue for the potential of these innovative visions to reshape our visual culture. In their conclusion, the authors aim to open a conversation about the way technological advancements mark important sociocultural changes in sense-making processes, geographical imaginations and everyday life experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Korunk is the property of Korunk and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

While the Minimalist Program argues that Spanish-English code-switches between pronominal subjects and finite verbs are ungrammatical (Van Gelderen & MacSwan, 2008), the MLF/4-M models (Myers-Scotton, 1993; Myers-Scotton & Jake, 2000) predict their grammaticality when overt pronouns are obligatory in both languages (e.g., contrastive focus). In this study, we test the contrary predictions of these models using a code-switching production task. Thirty-eight Spanish-English bilinguals (31 female; Age: 18–23 years) completed a concurrent memory-loaded repetition task where visual primes forced broad or contrastive focus interpretations. We also examined the effects of switch direction, code-switching frequency, and language dominance. The results showed that code-switches between a Spanish overt pronoun and an English inflected verb were more accurately produced in the contrastive focus than the broad focus condition, lending support for the MLF/4-M models. No effect of code-switching frequency was found. Finally, higher Spanish dominance resulted in more accurate production of these code-switches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces visual analyses by art teachers of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Intersex, Asexual, Two Spirit (LGBTQIA2S+) representations in Disney animations as a teaching tool for enhancing critical visual literacy. Topics discussed include role of child-oriented media in understanding power dynamics within visual culture, concept of intersectionality, and representation of LGBTQIA2S+ characters in "Moana," "Zootopia," "Coco," "Encanto" and "Raya and the Last Dragon."

This paper investigates the role of the dark knight archetype in the theory of sovereignty. The dark knight archetype has repeatedly emerged in popular culture, but has never been fully explored in jurisprudence and political theory. The aim is to develop a new visual method to bridge the distance between the theory and the tropes that have historically been used to create and justify the notion of sovereignty. Sovereignty is understood here not only as a founding concept of modern legal theory, but also as a trope: a special kind of narrative, illustrated, capable of being modernized, and yet maintaining its initial trends; one that is foundational and colonial, and capable of institutionalizing subjects and sovereigns. Strategically following the works of Agamben, Benjamin, Jung and Warburg, this paper analyses – in a psychoanalytical sense – the unconscious dimensions of sovereignty from evidence collected in popular culture and political history. From fallen medieval knights to Zorro; from fascist Blackshirts to Darth Vader, this paper examines the pervasive repetition of dark knight figures in Western tropes of sovereignty and its consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is presented as a methodological proposal for the field of fashion studies based on the interpretive model Somatheque (2013) of the theorist and activist Paul B. Preciado. Through this theoretical model, which draws lines of feminist post-structuralism and queer phenomenology, this study argues that the enunciation of the body as an archive is divided into four layers of analysis: (1) the biological body as a medical discourse, (2) power practices, (3) body techniques and (4) apparatus of verification. This study will provide a detailed analysis of the CK One advertising campaign called 'Altered States', launched by Calvin Klein in 1995. Specifically, it will assess the applicability of the Somatheque model in fashion studies by considering perfume as a central object of study within the fashion system. Thus, the study of this campaign serves as an example that illustrates how perfume not only plays a pivotal role in fashion studies but also acts as a significant element in the shaping, producing and encoding of the body within its context and allows for the exploration of fashion as a cultural and biopolitical practice influenced by privilege, asymmetrical power relations and colonial institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture is the property of University of California Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture is the property of University of California Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture is the property of University of California Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture is the property of University of California Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture is the property of University of California Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Latin American & Latinx Visual Culture is the property of University of California Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

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Tourism in national parks is on the rise and contributes to shaping notions of the non-human world (often depicted as 'nature'). One country that is currently facing a shift towards an enhanced emphasis on tourism in its national parks is Sweden. This article aims to unravel, illuminate, and problematize ways of seeing the non-human world in tourists' Instagram posts about Swedish national parks, and also to consider the productive effects these might have on the relationship between humans and the non-human world. In a discursive and visual cultural analysis, representations of the non-human world, how they are situated in historically inherited ways of seeing, and what implications they might have for how humans approach and understand the non-human world are traced and reflected upon. These representations construct ways of seeing the non-human world as a sublime, desolate, and physically challenging treasury of unique character. In this way, a romantic tourist gaze is constructed, which approaches the national parks as isolated enclaves and commodified havens that offer tourists an escape from humanity, grand views, and seclusion. The main implication of this tourist gaze is a sustaining of the approach to the human world and the non-human world as separated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay Vilém Flusser outlines a liberating approach to aesthetic education that overcomes the disintegration of culture exemplified by the disastrous tripartition of science, politics, and art. Flusser views this tripartition as an inevitable consequence of the unmanageable quantity of information available to modern humans that prevents them from participating completely and acquiring true competence in culture. The response to these overwhelming quantities of information is a turn to specialization. Flusser contrasts this current state of culture with the imagined unity of the Stone Age before the dissolution of a unified culture. As part of his solution to this dilemma, Flusser rejects the view that knowledge of every aspect of culture must be the prerequisite for competence with culture. He posits instead that the task of future education will be to train students to access, connect, and manipulate the information that modern technologies allow us to store. In this way the goal of school will be to train generalists, not specialists. Knowledge transfer is out. These generalists are quasi artists who participate actively in the growth of culture. Flusser evokes an original meaning of art from before the tripartition, art as method, in this case a method that facilitates communication between different subcultures and generates new information from what our technologies have stored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research aims to study and analyze the role of visual culture in the field of scientific knowledge and practical training in tourism and cultural heritage, from the point of view of the formation of socio-cultural competence and behavioral adaptability. Outlining the problems and prospects for educational tourism and cultural heritage, an attempt is made to derive the thesis that the flows of visual images and signs dominating the modern cultural situation are the basis of the processes of formation and construction of mental visual perceptions. They bring to the fore the power of images in public and cultural life, outline the density of visual narrative and participate in the creation of a new visual world. Other essential aspects on which the research focuses are the scope of the visual way of presenting the objects and subjects of cultural heritage protection, the processes of impact on users, public and audiences, as well as the problems related to visual discursive digital-media presentations and representations. Against this background is advocated the idea of the formation of new aesthetic needs and the delineation of the symbolic and performative dimensions of postmodern visual culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With Hitler's seizure of power in 1933, the Bauhausler Xanti Schawinsky sought refuge in fascist Italy until the uncertain political situation and a career choice prompted him to move to the United States in 1936. Identified as the link between Italy and the Bauhaus, Schawinsky holds a special place in the history of Italian graphic design. However, his key role as promoter of modernism has not been subjected to scrutiny by looking at the work he did, networks he established, and design exchange he fostered. Schawinsky's propaganda poster for the plebiscitary elections of 1934 is the focus of this article. Drawing on photographic documents and primary sources—including correspondences, archival documents, and autobiographic accounts—we seek to clarify the circumstances under which someone fleeing Nazi Germany eventually designed works that served as vehicles for fascist propaganda. To this end, we ground the poster "1934-XII SI" within the larger sociocultural and professional context, historical and political circumstances of early 1930's Italy. We pair close visual analysis with a contextualized understanding to employ the poster as a case study to explore how fascist ideology was ingrained in everyday practice and show how the line between political and commercial discourses was blurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relics and the legends surrounding them are often deeply connected to a monastic community's commemoration of its foundations, patrons, and sacred objects within a framework that deepened their meaning in the present. This article addresses the depiction of Geoffrey Martel, eleventh-century founder of the Benedictine abbey of La Trinité, in the sculptural program of a thirteenth-century stone shrine erected to house the abbey's relics. Despite Geoffrey's historically less-than-virtuous character, the monks commemorated him as a loyal Capetian vassal and valiant crusader who transported from Constantinople to Vendôme a tear shed by Christ at the tomb of Lazarus, known as the Holy Tear, and donated it to La Trinité. Unfurling across the shrine's arch and spandrels, the sculptural program augmented Geoffrey's role in the Holy Tear legend. Comparing the shrine's translatio narrative to a later vernacular poem recounting the legend of the Holy Tear, I contend that shrine and poem were part of a visual and textual culture that grew out of established crusader legends celebrating men who transported relics from the Holy Land and Constantinople to Europe and donated them to monastic foundations. The shrine itself is no longer extant, but a drawing of it remains in one of the portfolios of medieval patrimony commissioned by the seventeenth-century antiquarian François-Roger de Gaignières. While Geoffrey's presence on the shrine has not garnered much scholarly attention, the drawing may be seen as evidence of the monks' success in transforming him from a midlevel member of the French nobility into a great crusader and vassal of the king of France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the 2018 Colombian films ¿Cómo te llamas? and Eva menos Candela, directed by Ruth Caudeli. Both cinematic texts explore the lives of two lesbian characters who live amidst heteropatriarchal contexts that tend to ignore or reject diverse identities. By examining these narratives authored and driven by women, this study illustrates how such cultural products offer unprecedented cinematic representations of lesbian and feminocentric subjectivities, revealing a performative, self-referential, and autobiographical nature. Informed by the works of Kate McNicholas Smith (2020) on twenty-first-century lesbian representations on-screen and Ochy Curiel (2013) on feminist lesbianism in the Colombian context, this article addresses Caudeli's 2018 films as key cultural devices that posit an innovative, diverse, and lesbian discourse. The article recognizes how both productions amplify the deconstruction process that the heteronormative regime of Colombia has been going through since the 2000s and queer/cuir representation in twenty-first-century Colombian and Latin American visual culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores an under-researched area: NGOs' efforts to provide humanitarian relief during armed conflict. It examines visuals posted on the Instagram accounts of 14 NGOs whose mission is to support civilians impacted by the Gaza humanitarian crisis. This preliminary, pilot study employs critical-cultural and rhetorical methodological approaches of textual analysis and visual rhetoric to analyze Instagram posts (n = 3,014) of 14 NGOs posted during the first 90 days of the crisis. NGOs' strategic communication through their Instagram accounts is situated in three key attributes: appeals to credibility, affect, and solidarity to appeal to stakeholders needed to enact advocative and relief efforts. NGOs frequently used a combination of these attributes, sometimes highlighting all three in a single image. The blending of appeals in this manner can help NGOs dislodge or construct messages that resist restriction by and within existing strategic narratives. The dataset evokes a pattern of intentional deliberative rhetoric tempered by some forensic tendencies within three motivating appeals: appeals to credibility, affect appeals, and appeals to solidarity. Given this is one of the first studies on the humanitarian crisis, this study provides important understanding of it and how NGOs are responded to it. This study enhances understanding of the potential influence of NGOs' strategic communication and potential for social media to produce a critically engaged perspective on conflict and humanitarian crises with international audiences. This study gives a valuable insight into the Instagram posting practices of NGOs' advocacy and humanitarian relief efforts, and to understand the challenges and, literal and figurative, roadblocks to conduct those efforts. Given the recency of the data set, this originality of the study is clear. It is likely the first study of its kind that analyzes NGOs' strategic communication during the current humanitarian crisis. The study is of value to researchers in a wide range of interdisciplinary range from media and communication studies to political science to crisis management, and to strategic communication professionals, including NGO administration and volunteers, those conducting online content creation, social media campaign management, particularly for the crisis relief and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual scene recognition is predominantly based on visual textures representing an object's material properties. However, the single material texture varies in scale and illumination angles due to mapping an object's shape. We present a comparative study of the colour histogram, Gabor, opponent Gabor, Local Binary Pattern (LBP), and wide-sense Markovian textural features concerning their sensitivity to simultaneous scale and illumination variations. Due to their application dominance, these textural features are selected from more than 50 published textural features. Markovian features are information preserving, and we demonstrate their superior performance for scale and illumination variable observation conditions over the standard alternative textural features. We bound the scale variation by double size, and illumination variation includes illumination spectra, acquisition devices, and 35 illumination directions spanned above a sample hemisphere. Recognition accuracy is tested on textile patterns from the University of East Anglia and wood veneers from UTIA BTF databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advertising of state socialism is often referred to as a paradox or oxymoron, yet it has produced images that shaped the consumer imagination and consumer values of socialist society. One of the critical topics in Czechoslovak socialist television advertising discourse was using an actor or a model. The socialist values of leveled consumption refused to promote consumption for property and create social distinctions through advertising and consumption. These beliefs fundamentally shaped the image of the body in socialist advertising. In this text, therefore, I discuss how the morality of socialist advertising, together with the evolving gender discourse, supported the methods of hiding, masking, or fragmenting the female body in socialist screen advertising. Based on the analysis of a vast corpus of advertisements, I follow the development of this trend from the 1960s to the 1980s, compare screen advertising with other types of advertising media, and argue that the reason for restraint in the explicit representation of the female body was, among other things, the specific hierarchy of the media in the geography of the consumer imagination of socialist Czechoslovakia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]