Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

This pivot offers an innovative approach to dance education, bringing a creative and inclusive dance education pedagogy into Chinese dance classrooms. Associate Professor Ralph Buck’s experiences of teaching dance at the Beijing Dance Academy and the possible implications for dance education in China lie at the heart of this text. Through a critical examination of personal teaching practice, pedagogical issues, trends and rationales for dance education in the curriculum are highlighted. Informed by constructivist ideals that recognise dialogue and interaction, this pivot suggests that dance can be re-positioned and valued within educational contexts when pedagogical strategies and objectives are framed in terms of teaching and learning in, about and through dance education.

Tracing the cultural interactions between South and Southeast Asia since prehistoric times, the book critically scrutinizes the current cultural diplomacy initiatives of India´s Look-Act East Policy. Reminding the need to look at culture as a two-way process and the need to re-define the understanding of culture in its Space Age setting, the author emphasizes on India realising its unique multicultural potentiality to broaden the outlook and parameters of cultural diplomacy to suit the unfolding World Order in the region. The nature and composition of the demography of Southeast Asia and its Indian diaspora calls for a balanced approach in covering the land and maritime sectors, the book further observes. Adopting a peoples-centric approach, the author argues for cultural interactions to go beyond the union government and its agencies and advocates for the role of state governments, non-governmental actors, and other community initiatives as well. 

Professor Drew’s latest work makes the case that even great public policy needs to be deliberately and strategically sold in order for it to ultimately be considered a success. However, it seems that most people charged with the task of selling public policy simply do not have the requisite skills to do so.

Selling public policy is an art that draws on disparate strands of scholarship spanning the political sciences, economics, sociology, ethics and the classics. To perform the art of selling public policy one must first master the lessons from the greats in the field. Following this, it is necessary to learn how to apply the knowledge to real-world complex scenarios in such a way that the policy is indeed sold and stays sold over the implied returns period.

This book is unique in the corpus of scholarly literature because it provides both the knowledge and real-world case studies required for students, scholars, and policy practitioners to master the art of selling public policy.

This book is a companion to Political Debasement: Incivility, Contempt, and Humiliation in Parliamentary and Public Discourse. It brings together interdisciplinary contributions to provide a comprehensive and detailed exploration of the nature, function, and effect of debasement language used by selected political leaders in Western and non-Western countries. Among them are Donald Trump (in the USA), Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey), Rodrigo Roa Duterte (Philippines), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Abe Shinzô (Japan), Pauline Hanson (Australia), Kyriakos Mitsotakis (Greece), Geert Wilders (the Netherlands), Beppe Grillo (Italy), and Santiago Abascal (Spain). Chapters focus specifically on the language of these leaders while examining debasement discourse from narrow and broad perspectives. The former includes the use of crude or abusive language (e.g., curses, obscenity, and swearing) to demean, humiliate, mock, insult, or belittle, based on the actual or perceived object or entity (e.g., race, religion, national, gender identity, or sexual orientation); the latter includes the use of devious or indirect irony, sarcasm, cynicism, ridicule, subtlety, and understatement to degrade and discredit other individuals or groups. The book represents the collective wisdom of scholars and researchers, experts in fields such as communication, political science, international relations, and social and political psychology. Cumulatively, the authors develop a global analysis of debasement discourse in societies from West to East and offer a cutting-edge approach to expand a framework assessing the role and effect of such rhetoric in contemporary politics.

This book is a collection of essays in Indonesian history and archaeology dealing with different and multiple trajectories, along four broad themes. The first part of the book covers competing or evolving representations of events, customs or traditions, and historical personae in Indonesian official and popular expression, as they are shaped by economic, political, and cultural forces. The second part deals with memories of war and peace, examining transnational conflict and collaboration, the role of political elites and state projects dealing with the aftermath of military aggression, while also focusing on the impact and responses of civilians. The third part focuses on how state and civil societies frame historical figures, in ways that transcend the dichotomy of heroes and victims. The fourth part of the book looks at the way Indonesian museums and museology serve as sites where new kinds of memory work occur, in a post-1998 era.

The book is designed with the aim ofclearing a space for a plurality of memory works. Discussions in this volume extend from Loloda island in Eastern Indonesia, to Sabang island at the north westernmost end of the archipelago, and to the cosmopolitan centers. Temporally, it covers the colonial, the post-independence and contemporary eras. By juxtaposing diverse works, the book offers a new vista of multiple trajectories of memory being traced out in and about Indonesia.

This is an open access book.

This book summarizes and classifies 100 wonderful Chinese industrial heritage cases, starting from the path of cultural tourism industry's involvement in the transformation and renewal of industrial heritage. With the development of industrialization for more than 100 years, China, which has been a major industrial heritage country, is often ignored in the field of industrial heritage research. This is the first book in the world to systematically explore the cultural and tourism industry's involvement in the transformation and renewal of Chinese industrial heritage. It fully contributed the wisdom and experience of the transformation of China's industrial heritage to the world, and provided important experience for the transformation of industrial heritage in other parts of the world. This book is not only a reference book for scholars, planners, and decision makers, but it will also inspire other readers who are concerned about China's urbanization and industrial heritage.

Through engaging media coverage of the public lives of Bollywood actresses, this book unveils understandings of idealized femininity and gender within this cultural context. Beyond its own borders, such a context is unique given the global relevance of content from and about Bollywood with members of the diaspora as well as those culturally Indian individuals that are no longer part of the diaspora. This book thus engages these actresses as global Indian celebrities who are framed and presented as contemporary urban Indian exemplars of gender via media coverage about them. The book therefore offers a robust and detailed case study of the Bollywood star system so as to demonstrate how the nuances of this unique cultural context influence the dimensions of postfeminism and celebrity culture therein.

This collection of original chapters reflects the increasing interest over the past few decades in the relationship between political humor (as a distinct form of political discourse) and a country’s culture: Beliefs, values, norms, institutions, and processes that are affected, shaped by, and related to historical experiences, socialization processes, social structure, religion, the economic system, and majority/minority relations. Written by contributors from various fields of study – political science, communication, linguistics, sociology, culture studies, and political psychology – the book looks at the central role played by “culture” in shaping and affecting the sundry aspects of political humor, including satire and parody. The chapters, focusing on diverse countries such as the USA, UK, Greece, Philippines, Israel, Poland, Italy, and Spain, as well as ethnic groups, offer a comprehensive overview of political humor as used by public figures, including politicians, artists, performers, as well as comedians, talk shows hosts and the general public. By presenting fresh perspectives on the relationship between culture and political humor as employed during political debates in parliament, in media interviews and shows, on the internet and in art, the book opens up new avenues for discussion regarding the factors that shape political humor across the globe in a variety of political and media systems.

This book explores the dynamics of the Chinese regulation of internet firms. Sitting at the crossroad of regulation studies, communication studies, political economy, and the social movements, it conceptualises China as a “double-bind regulatory state”, defined as a two-step autonomy-enabling process. First, the party-state’s pursuit of competiting objectives creates a predicament for regulators. In the second step, private internet firms consciously exploit regulators’ predicament to enlarge their maneuvering room. The approach of “double-bind regulatory state” challenges some current academic accounts that exaggerate the capacity of the Chinese party-state to establish seamless control. This book is of interest to scholars of Chinese politics, digital law, political economy, and more.

This anthology of studies is a follow-up to Political Humor Worldwide: The Cultural Context of Political Comedy, Satire, and Parody. It further examines political humor as a distinct sub-discipline of political communication, influenced and shaped by a country’s culture. The book’s contributors, experts drawn from the academic fields of political science, communication, linguistics, sociology, culture studies, political psychology, and others, offer an assortment of studies from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on political humor in the media, the authors offer a panorama of political humor—including political satire, parody, and cartooning—in Spain, Poland, Montenegro, Turkey, Japan, Australia, Iran, Brazil, Argentina, Malaysia, and Indonesia, among others. They detail political humor’s multifaceted and versatile nature, suggesting that national culture and political humor expressed in the news media are intertwined; thus, understanding political humor requires looking at the cultural landscape of a given country or society. The book helps readers to better understand the factors that shape political humor across the globe in a variety of political and media systems. 

This book serves as a critical examination of contemporary American literature by examining David Foster Wallace's incorporation of corporeal narrative techniques in his novels, with a particular focus on The Broom of the System, Infinite Jest, and The Pale King. By employing corporeal narratology as a conceptual framework, it sheds light on Wallace's profound exploration of the human body and its societal implications. Through detailed analysis, the book reveals how Wallace's narratives serve as a critique of contemporary issues such as self-alienation, consumerism, and the dehumanizing effects of modern society. Designed for scholars and students of literature, cultural studies, and narrative theory, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of Wallace's literary legacy and his keen observations on the complexities of human existence in the modern world.