We Remembered…

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As natural and man-made disasters continue to physically eradicate people and places around the world, questions of destruction, perseverance, resistance, and rebirth ring louder than ever. Can the city make it in such challenging times? Can citizens make it in such challenging times? And at what price, and to what end? Simultaneously, companies compete to release their latest technological wonders: Ipads, Blackberries, Smart Boards, Double-decker planes…wonders that eradicate physical distances. We are all LinkedIn and friended by countless others on Facebook. Does it not matter where and how we live physically anymore because of our addiction to the non-place of virtual existence? This year, we want to pay attention to what happens post-city, when the city is gone or no longer matters, due to both physical disasters and technological inventions. Now, more than ever, we wonder, what is a city? How and why does a city come to be, continue to be, and cease to be? And what happens to the urban self, in the face of economic, geographic, social, technological change? As in previous years, please send your proposals about these and related issues to the Urban Culture Area of MAPACA. Historical or ethnographic studies of public sites and events, poetic accounts of personal geographies through cities, and explorations of highly orchestrated or surprisingly improvised events in designated areas in the city are welcome, as are studies of particular cities. If interested in participating in a workshop on “writing the urban,” in addition to presenting a paper, please, indicate so. June 15th, 2011 is the deadline by which you can send your virus free proposals and short recent bios to Dr. Blagovesta Momchedjikova, bmm...@bmm. This year, the Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture/American Culture Association meets from November 3rd till November 5th, 2011, in Philadelphia, PA. For further information, check www.mapaca.net.

© Joshua for Gopher the Beard!, 2011. | Permalink | |

Volume 7, Issue 2

GENERAL ISSUE

July 2011

Articles

The Hurt Locker: Cinematic Addiction, ‘Critique’, and The War on Terror

Bruce Bennett and Bulent Diken interrogate The Hurt Locker, an enthusiastically-received ‘critical’ film, as a symptom of today’s prevailing cultural and political codes. Dwelling on the homologies between the state of exception and the narrative logic of the film, including its reflection on the banalization of exception, Bennett and Diken emphasize that, ddespite its critical credentials, The Hurt Locker is totally silent on the most crucial aspect of the war against terror, its de-politicizing effects.

Che and the Pre-Eminence of Culture in Revolutionary Cuba: The Pursuit of a Spontaneous, Inseparable Integrity

Clive W. Kronenberg on the triumphs and continuity of the Cuban revolution with regard to the close bond that exists between political and cultural practice on the island. Emblematic of Cuban politics, key aspects of Ernesto Che Guevara’s revolutionary thought find expression in Cuban cultural theory and practices in the national, popular, and expressive arts domains, which strikingly sustains the revolution’s goals to bring about an equal and unified national community, a radical anti-imperialist, internationalist political ethos, and a deeply-rooted universal arts tradition.

A People of Seers: The Political Aesthetics of Postwar Cinema Revisited

Julian Reid probes the politics of Gilles Deleuze’s study of cinematic modernity. Issuing a challenge to film studies’ traditional understanding of the political in Deleuze’s studies, Reid argues that understanding and fulfilling the political potential of his works requires analyzing the importance of Deleuze’s account of the rupture between classical and modern cinema for his political concept of ‘a people’, an argument that moves beyond the impoverished state of the debate on Deleuze and ‘political cinema’ by exploring how his works trace the changing relation of cinema to the historical development of a post-national politics of people-production, and especially his account of what it names ‘a people of seers’.

Masquerade

Phyllis Galembo is an American photographer who has traveled extensively in the Caribbean and Africa to witness and document rituals that involve extraordinarily creative masking and costuming. Over the past 20 years, she has traveled to the Republic of Benin, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti to photograph traditional priests and priestesses, carnival masqueraders, dancers, and Haitian Vodou practitioners, wearing elaborate costumes created for weddings and burials, initiations, chiefs’ coronations, protests and holidays.

On the Political in the Wake: Carl Schmitt and James Joyce’s Political Theologies

Kieran Keohane explores the work of Carl Schmitt and James Joyce and, particular, their response to the crisis of European civilization of the inter-war years. Bringing Schmitt and Joyce into conversation with one another through the mediation of Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, Schmitt as representative and advocate of Apollonian logocentrism and Joyce of Dionysian muthos, Keohane investigates the parallels as well as differences in these authors’ works while illuminating the figure of the dictator and the theme of political theology, to reveal the deep affinity between Schmitt and totalitarianism on the one hand and Joyce and radical and plural democracy on the other.

The Politics of Transcendence

Harald Wydra on modern politics and its dogmatic separation of politics from religion, of the state from promises of salvation. Making a case for the fundamentally political nature of transcendence, Wydra argues that the changing relationships between authority and salvation depend on culturally crafted engagements of the spiritual and the temporal. Examining configurations of the political in the history of the west, which can be grasped as extraordinary form of “absolute” politics, he shows how ultimate ends influenced the emergence of secular forms of power and how the politics of transcendence must go beyond the friend-enemy distinction by incorporating the potentiality of forms of non-violent political action, where the ends are superior to the means.

Traveling Spies and Liminal Texts: Cold War Culture in Asian Spy Films

Leong Yew examines little known Asian spy films and their relationship with Cold War cultural studies. While their Anglo-American counterparts could be discursively analyzed for the way they portrayed Western anxieties about communism, constructed own identities as opposed to the alterity of Russians and communists, these films defy easy categorization because they not only reproduced these cinematic tropes but also weaved in politics, themes, and conventions outside the mainstream Cold War narrative. Exploring four spy/cop action films made by Filipino director, Bobby Suarez, and surveying how a global cinematic circularity shapes the creative and industrial aspects of Asian spy films, Yew considers how the importation of cinematic styles like blaxploitation and the Hong Kong kung fu genre reconfigured Asian culturalist positions and redrew conflict positions from that of capitalism versus communism to that of Asians versus Westerners.

Book Review Essay

The Limits of Control

Seb Franklin on Raiford Guins’ Edited Clean Version: Technology and the Culture of Control and Jussi Parikka and Tony D. Sampson (Eds.)’ The Spam Book: on Viruses, Porn and Other Anomalies from the Dark Side of Digital Culture. Beginning with Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the control society, Franklin analyzes its substantial role in shaping scholarly discourse on new media and politics over the past twenty years prior to foregrounding the problems associated with this perspective and presenting a variety of approaches to the difficulty of critique related to new media.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

About Cultural Politics

“Cultural Politics is a welcome and innovative addition.  In an academic universe already well populated with journals, it is carving out its own unique place—broad and a bit quirky.  It likes to leap between the theoretical and the concrete, so that it is never boring and often filled with illuminating glimpses into the intellectual and cultural worlds.” Lawrence Grossberg, University of North Carolina, USA.

Edited by

John Armitage, Northumbria University, UK
Ryan Bishop, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Cultural Politics is an international, refereed journal that explores the global character and effects of contemporary culture and politics. It analyzes how cultural identities, agencies and actors, political issues and conflicts, and global media are linked, characterized, examined and resolved. In doing so, the journal explores precisely what is cultural about politics and what is political about culture. It investigates the marginalized and outer regions of this complex and interdisciplinary subject area.

Each issue publishes artwork by selected artists reflecting contemporary cultural and political issues.

Official website here: http://www.bergpublishers.com/BergJournals/CulturalPolitics/tabid/520/Default.aspx

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http://www.blueskyscrubs.com/categories/Scrubs/Scrubs-for-Men/

© Joshua for Gopher the Beard!, 2011. | Permalink | |

Tuesday, 28 June 2011, 9.00 – 17.30
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/insis/events/Pages/howsmyfeedback.aspx

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

There is hardly anything these days that is not being evaluated on the web.
Books, dishwashers, lawyers, teachers, health services, ex-boyfriends,
haircuts, prostitutes and websites are just some examples targeted by novel
review, rating and ranking schemes. Used in an increasing number of areas,
these schemes facilitate public assessment by soliciting and aggregating
feedback and distributing it as comments, ranks, scales and stories. While
some have greeted this development as an innovative way of fostering
transparency, accountability and public engagement, others have criticized
the forced exposure and alleged lack of accuracy and legitimacy, pointing to
the potentially devastating consequences of negative evaluations.

Now research is under way to tackle these issues head-on and evaluate the
various types of review, rating and ranking schemes in a collaborative
design experiment. Under the title ‘How’s my feedback?’, a group of experts,
including designers, managers, reviewers, policy-makers, consumer
spokespeople, academics and users have explored the idea of a website that
allows users to publicly assess their experience with review and rating
schemes – a feedback website for feedback websites.

The goal of the conference is to reflect on this process and the emerging
prototype. How are we to judge the effectiveness of these schemes? What
modes of governance are implicated in their operation? What counts as a
‘good’ scheme, what as a ‘bad’ one? What strategies and methodologies are
employed in their development, maintenance and use? How successful is the
project as a design intervention? What is it to evaluate the evaluators –
and will this business ever end?

SPEAKERS INCLUDE

Malcolm Ashmore, Loughborough University
Roland Bal, Erasmus University
Andrew Balmer, University of Sheffield
Christine Hine, University of Surrey
James Munro, Patient Opinion
Stefan Schwarzkopf, Copenhagen Business School
Ian Stronach, Liverpool John Moores University
Alex Wilkie, Goldsmiths, University of London
Steve Woolgar, University of Oxford
Sally Wyatt, Masstricht Virtual Knowledge Studio
Malte Ziewitz, University of Oxford

ORGANISERS

Malte Ziewitz and Steve Woolgar, University of Oxford, in cooperation with
James Munro, Patient Opinion

REGISTRATION

The event is free of charge, but registration is required. Places are
limited, so please sign up early:

http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/insis/events/Pages/howsmyfeedback.aspx

Project website: www.howsmyfeedback.org
Twitter: twitter.com/howsmyfeedback
How to find us: goo.gl/maps/hLW8

For more information, please visit

http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/centres/insis/events/Pages/howsmyfeedback.aspx

or contact malt...@malt.

© Joshua for Gopher the Beard!, 2011. | Permalink | |

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/index.html

PDF version of this CFP: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/EJIS_CFP_MISM.pdf

Special Issue on Mobile Information Systems and Mobility

In 2006, an EJIS special issue on mobile user behaviour published seven papers that explored
the ways in which “increased mobility of the users violates some of the assumptions traditionally
associated with the use of IS” (van der Heijden & Junglas, 2006, p. 249). In the five years since
that special issue was published, mobile devices have become much more powerful, and users
have become more demanding of mobile access to information systems. Many individuals now
carry powerful computing devices with them at all times, blurring the boundaries between
personal and organizational systems and uses. Individuals are becoming “experiential”
computing users, with personal computing devices embedded in their everyday activities.

The increased power and prevalence of mobile devices presents an opportunity, if not an
obligation, for information systems researchers to revisit fundamental assumptions embedded in
our theories. What changes when we assume that mobile access is a key component of
information systems and that mobility is a key expectation of users? Should IS theories that
were developed to investigate the deployment of fixed systems in bounded environments
controlled by organizations be revisited in the context of mobility?

We invite theoretical and empirical papers that explore the meanings and implications of
mobility for information systems research and researchers. We encourage broad definitions of
mobility and information systems, in recognition that mobility can dissolve organizational
boundaries, reshape information systems, and change the nature of use and users. Potential
topics include, but are not limited to:

• Design of mobile information systems environments
• Management challenges in a mobile information systems environment
• Mobile content and services development, the rise of the mobile ‘app’ and cloud computing
• Perspectives on the “always on, always connected” mobile society, the mobile device as instrument of societal change
• Understanding the mobile content consumer, opportunities and threats for content providers
• Theorising the mobile ICT artefact
• New affordances of mobility
• Understanding the materiality of mobility, exploring the mobile artifact
• New actors in a mobile information systems environment, including machine to machine interaction
• Mobility in the workforce, including overlapping contexts of mobile technology use (work, leisure, social), the business value of mobility, and mobility considerations in ICT strategy
• The role of digital infrastructures in enabling mobility

Guest Editors for the Special Issue
Catherine Middleton, Ryerson University (cath...@cath)
Rens Scheepers, Deakin University (rens...@rens)
Virpi Kristiina Tuunainen, Aalto University (virp...@virp)

Submission Guidelines and Important Dates

Papers may be submitted to the special issue any time before December 31, 2011.

Follow the EJIS formatting guidelines at http://ejis.msubmit.net/cgibin/main.plex?form_type=display_auth_instructions

Submit using the EJIS online paper submission system at http://ejis.msubmit.net/cgibin/main.plex and select the Mobile Information Systems and Mobilty (MISM) Special Issue during submission

Note that papers should not exceed 8000 words.
The guest editors will screen all submissions, before sending papers out for review.

© Joshua for Gopher the Beard!, 2011. | Permalink | |

http://fibreculturejournal.org/

The Unnatural Ecologies issue is a contribution to a cutting edge field of
contemproary media research namely media ecologies. In the words of the
fibreculture managing editor Dr Andrew Murphie: “the leading scholars
writing for the Unnatural Ecologies issue do not perfrom media ecology as we
have known it …. they are rewriting media ecology, exploring its limits
from inside and outside. In the process the Fibreculture Journal believes
this issue makes a crucial contribution to thinking about all media from the
perspective of digital and networked media. In thinking through the
unnatural ecologies that contemorary media make increasingly obvious, the
issue challenges us to rethink not only what media are, or what they do, but
what they might have been and what they have done.”

Coinciding with this issue, Fibreculture has introduced a new interface
permitting the one click  downloading of the issue as an ePub or pdf
document.

© Joshua for Gopher the Beard!, 2011. | Permalink | |

Media Industries Project Manager

Job # CFTM 1105

UC Santa Barbara’s Carsey-Wolf Center seeks a project manager for the Media Industries Project (MIP). Now entering its third year, MIP is a multidisciplinary project that examines major trends reshaping the media industries and their consequences for producers, distributors and consumers. Our research agenda focuses on digitization, globalization, and creative labor. Collaborators include media studies and communication scholars, as well as experts in related fields (http://www.carseywolf.ucsb.edu/mip). We are looking for an individual with managerial and research expertise, as well as outstanding leadership skills. The project manager will devote 50% of her/his time to organizational duties and the rest to a program of research devoted to one or more of the above-mentioned MIP areas of emphasis.

The project manager works with a team of faculty, graduate students, and industry researchers under the direction of the project’s Principal Investigators and the Carsey-Wolf Center Executive Director. Applicants should have expertise with issues related to the convergence of traditional and new media industries, including familiarity with relevant technologies, industry trends, professional practices, policy concerns, and social issues. Applicants should also have excellent communication skills and be comfortable interacting with high-level media professionals, scholars, and the public. A Ph.D. in media studies, communication, or a related field is required, and candidates should be published in her/his field of expertise and currently engaged in a relevant program of scholarly research.

The position is an Academic Coordinator II, Step 4 at 100% time for 12 months, which is renewable based on satisfactory performance reviews. Full health and disability benefits are included.

Specific duties are to:

· Manage and further develop MIP research projects, publications, and online web resources

· Manage MIP correspondence regarding research, conferences, interviews, outreach and development

· Provide leadership and oversight of MIP staff and graduate student research assistants

· Serve as the point person for MIP’s interactions with industry professionals, academics, public interest advocates, and policymakers

· Convene conferences and working group meetings in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley with media professionals, researchers, and social critics to address key questions affecting the media industries

· Collaborate with university development staff in raising funds from external donors, foundations, and corporations

· Coordinate activities with MIP project leaders, graduate student researchers, Carsey-Wolf Center staff, and university development staff

Apply by 6/10/11. Open until filled.

Please submit application letter, CV and contact information for at least 3 references to:

Academic Coordinator – CFTM 1105; Carsey-Wolf Center; Attn: LeeAnne French; 4431 SSMS Building University of California; Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4010

The Center is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community. University of California is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer.

LeeAnne French, MESM
Associate Director
Carsey-Wolf Center
4431 SSMS Building
University of California Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4010

Ph: 805 893-2186
lfre...@lfre
www.carseywolf.ucsb.edu

© Joshua for Gopher the Beard!, 2011. | Permalink | |

I’m very glad I’m able to take a group tae kwon do class. I feel confident I can defend myself, and have a great way to stay in shape and have a great time doing so. Tae kwon do works well with my schedule, too. A couple times a week, I come home, change clothes, grab something to eat, and set my home security alarm (HOME ALARM SYSTEMS information) before I leave to tae kwon do. When I come home, it’s not too late, and I have just enough time to relax and get a little work done before work the next day. It’s a great program for me.

© Arden Wallace for Gopher the Beard!, 2011. | Permalink | |

2. Also link to any internal pages of the website with the appropriate and relative anchor texts of your choice.

© Joshua for Gopher the Beard!, 2011. | Permalink | |