Genre Theory

Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor as its subject and was often written by laborers themselves. Several of these working class poets found their lives transformed due to the success of their verse (Stephen Duck most famously), but most faded into literary obscurity. However, a substantial body of “work” poems was produced by a diverse group of poets throughout the century, each manifesting divergent concerns and attitudes about the experience of work. This chapter assesses the formal connections uniting this poetic genre, particularly the frequent use of such literary devices as ironic distancing, litotes, and mock-georgic description. Instead of solely classifying “work” poems on the basis of their subject matter, this chapter demonstrates that such poetry (indeed the genre itself) lends itself to sophisticated literary techniques often associated with other poetic genres. In this fashion the full measure of eighteenth-century working class poetry can be evaluated more fairly, particularly by analyzing the formation of a new genre designed expressly by the poets themselves. The chapter ultimately seeks to demonstrate the connectedness, rather than the alienation, of working class poetry to the eighteenth-century British poetic tradition.

One of the most important tropes for the fantastic is the ghost, a quasi-universal figure that juxtaposes concepts of the real and the unreal, and a very important component of fantastic narrative. Chin Wan (陳雲) notes the way different attitudes towards ghosts in Sinophone culture were shaped by colonialism and public policy: “Influenced by the colonialism of Western culture, Mainland China banned folk customs during the period when modernization was promoted. Chiang Kai-shek’s Republican Party had the (short-lived) ‘New Life Movement,’ while Mao Zedong’s Communist Party of China had ‘Destroy the Four Olds’ and the Cultural Revolution. Only Hong Kong has undergone modernization for one hundred fifty years without doing away with folk customs”[中國大陸受西洋之文化殖民影響，推行現代化期間，都禁制民間風俗，國府之蔣介石有「新生活運動」（為時不長），中共之毛澤東有「破四舊」與文化大革命。唯獨香港現代化一百五十年，不損民間風俗].  Chin’s comments obliquely refer to anti-superstition campaigns that were central to cultural policy from the early modern to the revolutionary period. I return to these campaigns below . . .

This paper is a discussion of the fantastic genre in literature and film. I employ the term genre in this paper in two ways. First, I attempt to define the fantastic as a genre of writing through the emblematic form of the zhiguai. Second, I link this genre of writing to fantastic film, a category of genre film that has dominated the market in China recently. One of the earliest forms of fiction in Chinese literature, zhiguai were often contrasted to textually verifiable historic writing. First, I contrast discussions of zhiguai to modern conceptions of the fantastic and Enlightenment and revolutionary conceptions of narrative and history. The zhiguai share some features with fantastic storytelling in Europe, notably the Gothic tale that emerged in the late eighteenth century. Second, I draw links between state intervention in religion and superstition and the early modern classification of fantastic literature and film. State anti-superstition campaigns in the early twentieth century would frame fantastic films as superstitious (shenguai dianying). Third, I discuss how the fantastic has been framed in the contemporary China. The modern and contemporary fantastic in China is a combination of Chinese and Western categories of the real and the supernatural.

The article discusses the production of live television formats, as they have developed in Europe during the past decade. The analytical examples are taken from entertainment as well as factual television, and from public service as well as commercial contexts. In the article, it is argued that there has been an approximation between the textual features and generic and narrative structures of entertainment and factual live television, and a model is presented that is supposed to account for these narrative patterns.

The article discusses the production of live television formats, as they have developedin Europe the last decade. The analytical examples are taken from entertainment aswell as factual television, and from public service as well as commercial contexts. Inthe article is argued that there have been an approximation between the textualfeatures and generic and narrative structures of entertainment and factual livetelevision, and a model is presented, that is suppose to account for these narrativepatterns.

In the present paper, a genre-based conceptual framework for interpreting and designing content for learning objects is proposed. Learning objects are considered here as multimodal macrogenres. These macrogenres are constituted of content objects which are in fact types of digital microgenres. The successful and coherent information linking of these content objects inside a LO can be achieved through particular rhetorical relations. The knowledge of the several types of digital microgenres as well as the rhetorical relations ...

Author using nineteenth century science fiction as an example tries to convince that the genre studies after cultural turn could be very effective for Literary History. Firstly he analyzes two traditional branches of genre theory: the structural and cognitive one. As he shows both turns out problematic due to their assumptions and their erroneous practice research. The cultural genre-theory overcomes all this obstacles. Researchers repeat after Bachtin that a genre is a kind of an utterance about fears and needs of the society. Thanks to its constructivism and appreciation of the historical context the cultural genre-theory go beyond the hegemonic and authoritative discourse of the traditional genology and provides the tools needed to understand „the positive state of mind”.

Soutenu par le Labex ICCA, ce séminaire entend contribuer à fédérer, dans une perspective pluridisciplinaire, un ensemble de travaux se proposant d’étudier les films ou les cinémas dits « de genre », tout en réfléchissant aux différents sens de ce qualificatif polysémique et à la variété de ses usages créatifs, professionnels et cinéphiliques.
Il déroulera une fois par mois le vendredi (15h-17h) à la Maison de la Recherche de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. Les propositions sont à envoyer avant le 15/09.

Genre foisonnant au XVIIe siècle, l’entretien conserve sa vitalité au XVIIIe siècle et aux siècles suivants, marqués par le journalisme moderne et de nouvelles formes de communication, radio, télévision, internet. Pourquoi un tel succès au fil du temps ?Les études réunies dans ce volume apportent des réponses.

The interview, a prolific genre in the seventeenth century, retained its vitality throughout the eighteenth and the following centuries, which have been marked by modern journalism and new forms of communication : radio, television, the internet. Why has the genre remained so successful over time ? The studies gathered in this volume provide some answers to this question.

For the past eight years, Australian school students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 have engaged in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) writing test, with a one-in-two chance they will be tasked with producing a 'narrative' genre. This paper examines the way in which the very notion of storytelling and narrative is conceptualised in the NAPLAN supporting documentation, and its potential negative consequences. The paper begins by providing a review of the literature on storytelling, paying particular attention to research which has established the 'Complication-Resolution' narrative as one type of storytelling. It then provides an account of how story and narrative are typically characterised and defined in the official NAPLAN documentation, that is, as the 'Complication-Resolution' narrative exclusively. The final section of the paper presents a genre analysis of eight student writing samples and the related comments and gradings from the NAPLAN narrative marking guide. The analysis found a number of student texts in the marking guide that were effectively structured stories, but which had been marked down for Text Structure because they did not comply with the specific structure of the 'Complication-Resolution' narrative. The analysis also found a number of texts that scored highly with respect to the Text Structure criterion, even though they were not instances of the Complication-Resolution narrative sub-type. Drawing on these findings, the paper argues that various inconsistencies and points of apparent confusion in these comments and gradings can be taken as evidence that other sub-types of storytelling are being inappropriately devalued, and that ultimately, there is a lack of understanding in the nature of storytelling in the NAPLAN documentation. By way of conclusion, the paper reflects on some of the negative consequences that may flow from storytelling being defined in this limited way, including the implications for how storytelling is taught by teachers and caregivers, the potential misdirection of students as to what constitutes a 'good' story, as well as the cultural implications of limiting stories to one specific type.

Workshop, or peer-review, is part of writing in many genres. We cannot escape it. It should be beneficial for us as writers, but more often than not, it isn’t. In this article, the author describes how as writers, we fluctuate between the view that we suck and that our peers suck as writers which ultimately shuts down the productive potential of workshops. Sharing from her own experience in a creative writing workshop, the author describes how she learned to see the peer-review process differently after encountering “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” (the often inevitable “jackass” in workshops) who scribbles three meager words of useless judgment on deeply personal poems. At first, the author wants to run for the hills and never look back at writing again. Fortunately, her professor helps her see the value of workshop which the author passes along to us, here.

This article aims to explore the ways in which mental illness is used in contemporary cinema, highlighting the differences of representation of the mentally ill in accordance to genre. Furthermore, this article will examine not only the use of mentally ill characters, but also the narrative structure of films which include the mentally ill, and how the genre of such a film can dictate the resolution of the narrative. The genres studied include horror, comedy, drama, and children’s cinema, as well as sub-genres within these; an analysis of these genres will illuminate the ways in which modern cinema uses mental illness as a narrative drive, and how doing so has implications on the audiences that watch it.

Keywords: Mental illness, narrative, genre, social implications

This experiment investigates what happens to user performance
and disorientation when visual conventions of a genre are
violated. It also looks at what happens to the user performance
and disorientation over time. Twenty-eight participants were
randomly allocated to two independent groups: one was tested
with a conventional website and the other with a convention violating website.

The study comprised of two parts and on each
part participants were tested on a different website. Results
showed that in the first part participants who used the violating
site performed worse and were more disoriented than participants
who used the conventional version. But the performance of the
participants of the convention-violating group improved over time
so that by the end of the first part performance on both groups were equivalent. In the second part performance and disorientation on both groups were equivalent suggesting that users might rapidly adapt to visual convention violations.

Phd-avhandling / PhD thesis

Nyhetene i nettavisene har andre sjangertrekk enn papiravisnyhetene. Det skyldes blant annet at de er tilpasset en annen teknologi, andre produksjonsmønstre, andre lesemåter, andre lesergrupper og andre økonomiske betingelser. Avhandlingen undersøker hvordan sjangerforskjellene arter seg i praksis, og hvordan de påvirker meningen i tekstene. Analysen er avgrenset til de riksdekkende papir- og nettavisene VG, Dagbladet og Aftenposten.

Konklusjonen er at nettkontekstene påvirker både formen, innholdet og den sosiale funksjonen til nyhetene. Nye nettsjangere har vokst fram for å håndtere det løpende publikasjonspresset og utnytte de teknologiske affordansene. De typiske nettsjangrene legger særlig opp til å dekke hendelser og meninger, mens de typiske papirsjangrene er mer innrettet mot erfaringer og fortolkninger. Slik oppstår en diskursiv kløft mellom plattformene, som er designet for å utfylle hverandre. Papirsakene må ofte kontekstualiseres bredere for å beholde relevansen over tid, noe som kan gi mer koherente, men også mer ensidige framstillinger. Nettnyhetene kan på sin side bli mer fragmenterte, men samtidig utvise større diskursiv variasjon. Det innebærer en betydelig differensiering av tekstnormer på nettet.

Avhandlingen viser også at kvalitative casestudier kan være nødvendig for å avdekke de relevante sjangerforskjellene. Tre slike casestudier blir her kombinert med en kvantitativ innholdsanalyse. Konteksten kartlegges dessuten gjennom en formatanalyse av seksjonering og paratekster på begge plattformer, pluss kvalitative intervjuer med redaksjonelle sjefer.

Teoretisk bygger avhandlingen særlig på kritisk diskursanalyse, sosialsemiotikk og nyretorisk sjangerteori. Samtidig søker den å bygge bro mellom medie- og tekstvitenskapen ved å påpeke sammenfallende forskningsinteresser og utfyllende teoretiske perspektiver.

Online news genres differ from print news genres, as they are adjusted to distinct technologies, production routines, reading patterns, audiences and financial conditions. The present dissertation examines how the news genres actually diverge between print and online news, and how the respective genre norms affect the meaning potential of the stories. The analysis is limited to the Norwegian national newspapers VG, Dagbladet and Aftenposten.

Among the findings is that the online context affects the form, the content and the social function of the news. New online genres have emerged to feed the need for continuous publishing and to utilize the technological affordances. These genres are in particular designed to cover happenings and opinions, whereas the print news genres to a larger extent are oriented towards experiences and interpretations. Thus a discursive gap emerges between the platforms, which are designed to complement each other. The print stories often need a broader contextualization to stay relevant over time, which may lead to more coherent stories, but also more biased ones. The online news, on the other hand, may turn out to be more decontextualized and fragmentary, thereby also exposing a greater variety of discourses. This includes a major differentiation of text norms online.

The dissertation also argues that qualitative case studies are necessary to reveal relevant distinctions in genre features. Three such case studies are conducted, supplied by a quantitative content analysis. The contexct is mapped by a format analysis covering the content sectioning on both platforms, as well as qualitative interviews with editors of all three newsrooms.

The theoretical foundation includes critical discourse analysis, social semiotics and new-rhetorical genre theory. The dissertation also wishes to bridge the gap between media and text studies by pointing out common fields of research and complementary theoretical perspectives.

Grime is a Black British music genre originating from London in the early 2000s. Linked to inner-city street/road culture, it is a subaltern subculture that initially experienced criminalisation, racialisation and marginalisation through the media and music industries, politicians, legislation, policing – mainstream British society. This ethnographic project reclaims power from the mainstream marginalising gaze by enabling the scene's predominantly Black and White working class members to elucidate and direct Grime's narrative from its inception. The project uses Foucault’s (1997) definition of genealogy to interrogate Grime's emergence musically and subculturally. It uses Lena’s AgSIT (2012) genre model to examine Grime's development teleologically. Hall's (1978) 'Internal Colonies' and Baker's Black Public Sphere (1996) are used in conjunction to examine the significance of local (tangible) and cultural (intangible) influences on Grime and how these...

The concept of genre should not be limited to literary genres, but should be expanded to include all types of texts, including those traditionally considered to be nonliterary. Essentially, many things about writing work the way they do because of genre, and a better understanding of genre can give us a better understanding of writing, reading and texts. Genre offers a great deal since it embodies a rhetorical situation and a discourse community. The form that a text takes represents writers' choices in response to a given situation. Genres allow teachers to see various types of values and audiences, and to generalize about communities and their situations. A better understanding of genre could have a powerful impact on an understanding of the processes of writing and of certain long-standing problems of composition theory. For example, study of the process of revision may be greatly clarified by bringing in issues of genre. Students might write better if they were given a better understanding of genre, allowing them to aim at a generic "ideal" text when revising. Writing instructors would do well to give more pedagogical and theoretical attention to genre than they currently do, starting with the plain fact that it is a powerful concept essential to any understanding of writing. (HB)

Dr. Natalia Igl | Abstract zum Beitrag "Die Sichtbarkeit der Narration" Erscheint in: Susanne Knaeble / Katharina Mertens-Fleury (Hg.): Bildhaftigkeit [2016] Natalia Igl: Die Sichtbarkeit der Narration. Semiotische Strategien bildhaften Erzählens in Wolf Haas' Meta-Roman Verteidigung der Missionarsstellung "The reading of a graphic novel is an act of both aesthetic perception and intellectual pursuit." (Eisner 2008: 2) Wolf Haas' Roman Verteidigung der Missionarsstellung (2012) ist keine ‚graphic novel' im Sinne der spezifischen Gattungsbezeichnung -dennoch fordert seine Lektüre ähnliche Kompetenzen vom Leser wie die Lektüre eines Comics: Der Roman erzählt bi-bzw. multimodal (vgl. Stöckl 2004, Bucher 2011), nicht nur in Worten, sondern auch in (Schrift-)Bildern. Das heißt: Die Materialität der Schrift wird in Haas' Roman nicht nur betont, sondern zur Basis einer narrativen Strategie, die zwei semiotische Systeme -Bild und Schriftfunktional verknüpft. Was hier als semiotische Strategien ‚bildhaften Erzählens' bezeichnet wird, meint also entsprechend solche Phänomene, bei denen ein narrativer Text mit Aspekten der Schriftbildlichkeit und Materialität von Text und Zeichen arbeitet -und zwar in der Weise, dass die materiell-visuellen Elemente nicht kumulativ zur Narration hinzukommen, sondern funktional in die narrative Struktur eingebettet sind. So lässt sich in Wolf Haas' Roman beispielsweise die bewusste narrative Funktionalisierung der graphemischen ‚Abbildung' von Sprache durchgängig beobachten. Diese Perspektive bedeutet dabei, dass ‚Bildhaftigkeit' im Folgenden also nicht als ein rhetorischtropologisches Phänomen betrachtet wird, sondern als literarisch-narratives Phänomen, bei dem die Materialität und visuelle Qualität von Schrift-/Sprachzeichen in den Vordergrund rückt und eine ‚Multimodalisierung'eines Textes bzw. einer Gattung beobachtbar wird (vgl. Bucher 2010, Gibbons 2012). Mit Blick auf das dynamische Zusammenspiel von Textelementen und kognitiven Leistungen vor kulturhistorischem Hintergrund zeigt der Beitrag, dass semiotisch-visuelle Formen bildhaften Erzählens als metanarrative Strategien fungieren. Diese Strategien, so eine zentrale These, lenken den Blick auf die Erzählinstanz selbst: Diese wird in ihrer perspektivierenden und evaluierenden Funktion vordergrundiert. Die Basis der hier eingenommenen Untersuchungsperspektive ist die Konzeptualisierung von ‚Narrativität' als spezifischem Diskursmodus (vgl. Igl/Zeman 2016). Charakterisiert ist dieser zum einen durch die grundlegende diskursive Doppelstruktur, die sich in der Unterscheidung von Erzähler-und Figurenebene manifestiert (vgl. Zeman 2016, Igl 2016b sowie grundlegend Phelan 2001, Margolin 1991); zum anderen durch die auf dieser Doppelstruktur basierende Ausfaltung einer evaluativen Ebene, von der aus das Erzählte bzw. genauer: die Relation zwischen dem Erzähler und dem Erzählten bewertet wird. Dabei ist auch die Ebene der Rezipient*innen miteinzubeziehen. Insgesamt wird Haas' Roman nicht zuletzt durch die Hinzufügung einer bildhaften Ebene der Narration zum Meta-Roman, dessen Fokus auf dem Erzählen selbst liegt. Den Leserinnen und Lesern wird dabei mittels der semiotischen Strategien des Textes nicht nur eine Adressaten-sondern auch eine Beobachter-Rolle zugewiesen (vgl. Tobin 2014; Igl 2016a: bes. 351-357), wodurch die Bildhaftigkeit der Erzählung als ganzer im Sinne ihrer visuell-piktorialen Inszenierung noch weiter in den Vordergrund tritt. Dr. Natalia Igl | Abstract zum Beitrag "Die Sichtbarkeit der Narration" Erscheint in: Susanne Knaeble / Katharina Mertens-Fleury (Hg.): Bildhaftigkeit [2016]

En hommage aux femmes déguisées en hommes pour accéder à la parole sur la place publique, sur les lieux  où les « halqa» sont l’unique  apanage des hommes
En hommage, aussi, aux hommes déguisés en femmes pour remplacer les femmes absentes(ifiées) de l’espace publique des « halqa »
FATIMA- ZAHRA SALIH

This paper describes the KRYS I corpus, consisting of documents classified into 70 genre classes. It has been constructed as part of an effort to automate document genre classification as distinct from topic detection. Previously there has been very little work on building corpora of texts which have been classified using a non-topical genre palette. The reason for this is partly due to the fact that genre as a concept, is rooted in philosophy, rhetoric and literature, and highly complex and domain dependent in its interpretation ([11]). The usefulness of genre in everyday information search is only now starting to be recognised and there is no genre classification schema that has been consolidated to have applicable value in this direction. By presenting here our experiences in constructing the KRYS I corpus, we hope to shed light on the information gathering and seeking behaviour and the role of genre in these activities, as well as a way forward for creating a better corpus for testing automated genre classification tasks and the application of these tasks to other domains.

This dissertation examines the effect of intertextuality on interpretive deci­sions about the genre and literary unity of the Revelation of John. In chapter one, the use of the concept of intertextuality in literary theory is examined. Its uses by Harold Bloom, Michael Riffaterre, and Roland Barthes are compared and contrasted, and a reader-oriented definition is offered as the working definition for purposes of this study. In chapter two, the extent and complexity of intertextuality in Revelation is illustrated. First, the intertextuality of its language is discussed; next, its intertextual connections with Paul's letters are considered; and then the entire text of Revelation is surveyed in order to suggest the multiple intertextual connections that readers have made in order to understand the book. In chapter three, the complex intertextuality of Revelation is shown to contribute to the difficulty of specifying its genre. A reader­-oriented genre theory is described in detail, and then the debate over Revelation's genre is examined in light of that theory. In chapter four, the concept of intertextuality is connected with the debates over Revelation's literary unity. Due to a change in presuppositions, interpreters of Revelation have shifted their focus this century from highlighting the gaps in the text to tying the text together into a seamless whole. Texts inevitably contain gaps that must be filled by readers, and the more intertextual the text, the more gaps there tend to be. Revelation is a highly intertextual book with many gaps that allow for readers to tie the text together in multiple ways. Chapter five offers some brief concluding reflections on the connection between Revelation's bibli­ cal and nonbiblical intertextuality and its placement in the canon. While it closes and completes the canon, it is also on the margins of the canon. Its intertextuality con­ tributes to its marginality. The conclusion of this study is that the high degree of inter­ textuality in Revelation contributes to its function as a writerly or open work, a text that invites readers to rewrite it in multiple ways.

A speculative examination of some manifestations of contemporary Horror through the lens of the Zombie; this article considers the relationship between Zombie Apocalypses, Zombies as agents (or not), and wider aspects of genre and theory including comic books and graphic novels, Science Fiction, and Fantasy.   

It surveys multimedia interest in zombies, mash-up novels, alternate universes, and the meetings of zombies with a range of other tropes in diverse narratives.

Full article online; please follow the link to read more.

Telling the story of the American frontier and the rise of a nation, the Western has usually been associated with what is called ‘Americanness.’ Of the richest genre of Hollywood both in number of the films produced, and the timespan survived through, Westerns have been produced in and outside of the U.S. with different, yet not so different, stories. The dynamism of the genre is shaped by cultural, political, and economic contexts in which its examples circulate. To understand the generic evolution within a culture, as well as cross-cultural inflections on genre, and the ways objects operate in different temporo-spatialities, I will analyze cross-cultural adaptations of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films.
The effect of multiple cross-cultural encounters on the use of objects and the spaces in which they operate in the formation of Western genre conventions will be discussed through Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Antoine Fuqua’s post-western The Magnificent Seven (2016). With Leone’s spaghetti western, even though the obvious cross-cultural encounter will be the one with Asia and Europe, the other interaction is the one which is among the genres; in other words, how something that is associated with Americanness founds a voice in another space (Italy) and the ways in which the same genre makes and remakes itself in different spaces while sharing the same temporality. While looking at Antoine Fuqua’s 2006 Magnificent Seven, on the other hand, even though the product situates itself to the same space (U.S./Hollywood), I will look at cross-cultural encounters in terms of time and how genre changes itself within the same culture/space. While I use Rick Altman’s “semantic/syntactic” approach as the overarching theoretical discussion of this paper to understand the materiality of the narrative and the evolution of the genre, I will also refer to theories of remaking and the ways in which space is used and misused within given structures, by analyzing selected films. These case studies will enable me to analyze the relationship between remake and genre, and remake as genre.

This paper analyzes a parody of the tango "A media luz" that was performed by Rodolfo García, a Mexican American comedian who worked in his family's tent show, the Carpa García, in the early 1940s. I argue that by juxtaposing the generic conventions of the tango with those of the canción ranchera and by introducing carni valesque humor, Mr. Garcia's parody articulated a distinctly local Mexican American identity which was strongly linked to a sense of working-class masculinity. In this way, the parody highlights the class-and gender-based contradictions that were inherent in ongoing processes of Mexican American identity formation at mid-century.

The year 2017 was a genuine breakthrough year for horror cinema, with multiple massive box office successes and surprising dominance on both critics lists and award shows. I’d like to look at the three successes that defined the genre in 2017 and seemed to indicate a resurgence in film’s importance to the broader landscape of horror. The horror landscape is far too variegated at this point to be adequately represented by three theatrically released movies, but they are useful objects in that we see in them a representation of the influences of TV, games, screamers, etc. These show how the cinema can serve as a point of convergence for the traditions inaugurated, emphasized, and, even, elevated by other mediums.

Article is devoted features of origin and formation of the theory of speech genres as special direction of modern linguistics. Problems of base units of the theory of speech genres are considered, and also the basic vectors of the future development of this discipline are shined.
Статья посвящена особенностям зарождения и становления теории речевых жанров как особого направления современной лингвистики. Рассматриваются проблемы базовых единиц теории речевых жанров, а также освещаются основные векторы будущего развития этой дисциплины.
Стаття присвячена особливостям зародження та становлення теорії мовленнєвих жанрів як особливого напряму сучасної лінгвістики. Розглядаються проблеми базових одиниць теорії мовленнєвих жанрів, а також висвітлюються основні вектори майбутнього розвитку цієї дисципліни.

Introduction / Richard J. Gray II and Betty Kaklamanidou -- Globalization. Exceptional Recognition: The U.S. Global Dilemma in The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and Avatar / Anthony Peter Spanakos -- "You Took My Advice About Theatricality a Bit -- Literally": Theatricality and Cybernetics of Good and Evil in Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and X-Men / Johannes Schlegel and Frank Habermann -- Power, Choice, and September 11 in The Dark Knight / Christine Muller -- Gender. The Mythos of Patriarchy in the X-Men Films / Betty Kaklamanidou -- Vivacious Vixens and Scintillating Super-Hotties: Deconstructing the Superheroine / Richard J. Gray II -- Evolving Portrayals of Masculinity in Superhero Films: Hancock / Christina Adamou -- Genre. Genre and Super-Heroism: Batman in the New Millennium / Vincent M. Gaine -- Super-Intertextuality and 21st Century Individualized Social Advocacy in Spider-Man and Kick-Ass / Justin S. Schumaker -- The Watchmen, Neo-Noir and Pastiche / Phillip Dav...

Focusing on the 1920s publications of the Mozambican intellectual C. Kamba Simango (1890–1966), this article explores the transformations of a single story across the pages of amateur ethnomusicology (Natalie Curtis’s Songs and Tales from the Dark Continent, 1920), African American children’s literature (Jessie Redmon Fauset’s The Brownies’ Book, 1921), and professional anthropology (Franz Boas’s Journal of American Folklore, 1922). In each instance, Simango’s name and individual identity is crucial to the presentation of the text, yet the emphasis on the name does not necessarily indicate authorship, which instead emerges more strongly through the interaction of institutional norms, racial prestige, and genre expectations. The transnational author is thus formed through both genre and biography. Revising the formulations of Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes, I propose a performative notion of authorship that can reflect both the literary paradigm that desires individual expressivity and the ethnographic one that seeks collective culture.

Artykuł poświęcony analizie zarówno poszczególnych tekstów dostępnych na stronach internetowych pisarzy polskich, jak i samych stron jako tekstów. Na kształt stron internetowych wpływ mają przede wszystkim narzędzia i formy komunikacji elektronicznej, które następnie wykorzystywane są także do przenoszenia pozainternetowych gatunków na grunt dyskursu elektronicznego. Pisanie w sieci staje się pisaniem elektronicznym, multimedialnym, czerpiącym z różnych systemów semiotycznych. Nowo powstałe formy są hybrydami zarówno w sensie retorycznym (zbierają różne pod-gatunki wypowiedzi), jak i multimedialnym, a samo pisanie nie ogranicza się już wyłącznie do medium słowa drukowanego – zostaje uzupełnione materiałami z innych mediów.

Une crise de la masculinité, dit-on, sévit dans nos sociétés trop féminisées. Les hommes souffriraient parce que les femmes et les féministes prennent trop de place. Parmi les symptômes de cette crise, on évoque les difficultés scolaires des garçons, l’incapacité des hommes à draguer, le refus des tribunaux d’accorder la garde des enfants au père en cas de séparation, sans oublier les suicides. Pourtant, l’histoire révèle que la crise de la masculinité aurait commencé dès l’antiquité romaine et qu’elle toucherait aujourd’hui des pays aussi différents que le Canada, les États-Unis et la France, mais aussi l’Inde, Israël, le Japon et la Russie. L’homme serait-il toujours et partout en crise?

Dans ce livre, Francis Dupuis-Déri propose une étonnante enquête sur ce discours de la «crise de la masculinité», dont il retrace l’histoire longue et ses expressions particulières selon le contexte et les catégories d’hommes en cause, notamment les «hommes blancs en colère» ainsi que les Africains-Américains et les «jeunes Arabes». Il analyse l’émergence du «Mouvement des hommes» dans les années 1970 et du «Mouvement des droits des pères» dans les années 1990 et leurs échos dans les réseaux chrétiens et néonazis. Il se demande finalement quelle est la signification politique de cette rhétorique, qui a pour effet de susciter la pitié envers les hommes, de justifier les violences masculines contre les femmes et de discréditer le projet de l’égalité entre les sexes.

This theoretical paper considers genre as the epistemological foundation for fiction retrieval systems, in particular the relationship between the individual work and generic systems. It explores the characteristics of literary genres, and how they are determined, and examines ontological and historical aspects of genre. It considers the relationship between historically contingent generic transformations and literary genre as categorising principle. Finally, it offers some suggestions for future design of fiction KOS.

"A suggestive Mix of Divinity and Bestiality". Friedrich Schlegel's Concept of the (Un-)Human. The mix of "divinity" and "bestiality" as the embodiment of mankind conceived as "infinitely opposed" in Friedrich Schlegel's (1772-1829) earlier essays has eventually been represented as a "harmonious composition" (KFSA 1: 230) in his novel Lucinde (1799). The present paper investigates the extent to which Friedrich Schlegel's narrative transposition of "divinity" and "bestiality" proves itself as relevant for the reflection upon anthropological concepts around 1800 as well as its continuities. Keywords: Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde, divinity, bestiality, mix.

Trans rights advocacy is a social justice movement that is transforming language practices relating to gender. Research has highlighted the fact that language which constructs gender as binary harms trans people, and some trans studies researchers have developed guidelines for honouring trans people's names and pronouns. The language of academic writing is an area of discussion where questions of trans rights and trans experiences have not yet been addressed. This paper draws on two data sources to explore the citation experiences and practices of trans scholars and activists: a web-based archive of writers' perspectives built between 2015 and 2016; and a corpus-based study of 14 research articles published in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Our analysis highlights the sensitivity that is required of colleagues who work with transgender authors' writing, furthering our understanding of citation as a collaborative and potentially intimate and caring practice. Practices of referring to work by trans scholars pose ethical questions about the social relations expressed in citation in general, enabling applied language scholars to develop a new and different awareness of the sociality of citation.

Mother earth tied to the train tracks: The scriptive implications of melodrama in climate change discourse abSTracT This article examines the way climate change narratives have mobilized melodramatic frameworks, by examining An Inconvenient Truth (Guggenheim, 2006) as paradigmatic. It engages with recent scholarship that recuperates melodrama from the realm of the pejorative to observe how it structures political discourse and expands on that scholarship by introducing a performance studies methodology to examine how melodrama offers the broad outlines of a script that the would-be hero is asked to improvise within. The essay examines the tropes of melodrama – which include Manichaean dichotomies of good and evil, the implication that suffering is a marker of virtue, and the imperative of a dialectic of pathos and action – in order to analyse their implications for the potential to solve the impending tragedy of devastating climate change. This essay engages in close readings of performances struc-tured by generic scriptive discourse to argue that, for climate change activists, the forms that environmental narratives take, may communicate as much as the content of those narratives.