Old Email Archive

digest 2006-05-11 #001.txt

litsci-l-digest         Thursday, May 11 2006         Volume 01 : Number
177
In this issue:
Fwd: 4th Marks Conference: "Myth and the New Science"
SUB 06 MADE OVER IN AMERICA FILM SCREENING
SUB 06
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 08 May 2006 12:34:06 -0400
From: "Wayne Miller" 
Subject: Fwd: 4th Marks Conference: "Myth and the New
Science"
From: "E.C. O'Gorman, Classics & Ancient History"
E.C.Ogorman@bristol.ac.uk 
4th Marks Conference
Myth and the New Science
Bristol Institute for Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition
27-29th July 2006
For more information, list of speakers and registration details go to:
http://www.bris.ac.uk/arts/birtha/centres/institute/myth_conference.html

------------------------------
Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 09:20:02 +0200
From: bernadette wegenstein 
Subject: SUB 06 MADE OVER IN AMERICA FILM SCREENING
Dear SLSA:
I am sorry we are late with the submission of our documentary Made Over
in
America for this year=B9s SLSA. I hope you can still accept this
submission.
We would need a total of 90 minutes to present and screen the film
(running
time 71 minutes).
Bernadette Wegenstein
Visiting Associate Professor
Department of Romance Languages and Literature
Johns Hopkins University (starting July 06)
berna@buffalo.edu 
Geoffrey Alan Rhodes
Filmmaker and Fulbright Scholar at York University's PHD Programme in
Communication and Culture
garhodes@garhodes.com 
http://WegensteinRhodes.com 
Abstract:
The documentary Made Over in America  is a collaboration between the
media
theorist Bernadette Wegenstein and the filmmaker Geoffrey Alan Rhodes.
Fox=B9=
s
reality makeover drama The Swan (2004-), has served as a point of focus
and
departure to investigate the makeover culture-complex of cosmetic
surgery,
new media, and celebrities in which young women are coming to adulthood.
No
simple answers are sought; instead the contradictions and ambiguities
through which these young women must forge their identities and body
images
are explored after the values of phenomenology and ethnographic film.
The
project was envisioned as an interdisciplinary approach to popular
culture
criticism, combining sociological analysis, frameworks based on
psychoanalytic, body, and media theory, and experimental video. The
final
feature film product (71 minutes) communicates the responses by
different
voices of the U.S. makeover culture. The film traces the construction of
a
"cosmetic gaze"=8B the underlying looking mechanism according
to which
makeover viewers, cosmetic surgery consumers, image makers, and
cosmetic
surgeons operate =8B in order to show the state of a twentyfirst century
body=
:
not a fixed entity, a given, but something that is always in flux,
volatile=
,
and therefore to be constantly stabilized. Makeover is then a mode of
"stabilization" of such an evasive body identity. This
stabilization and
"fixing" of the body is also the goal of makeover's critics:
both the
practitioners and critics are, in the end, searching for an
"authentic"
self.  The key questions and criticisms are put into the hands of the
documentary's audience to resolve: what does "natural" mean in
a body
context? What does "beauty" mean? What does it mean to
cultivate the desire
for a "better self"? Why not look your very best?  Though we
present no
definitive answers in the film, we deliver differing voices as to what
the
twentyfirst century body means as a place of inscription, as a
performative
realm, and as a platform for a culture's investments in a "better
self," a
"better look," and an ultimately "better life."
Keywords:
Media, Film and Television, Makeover, Body, Popular Culture
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 14:46:15 -0400
From: "Jonathan D. Greenberg" 
Subject: SUB 06
Darwin and Contemporary Theory
Jonathan Greenberg
Assistant Professor=2C English
Montclair State University
Montclair=2C NJ =
greenbergj=40mail=2Emontclair=2Eedu
Although neo-Darwinian thought has been rapidly gaining influence in the
=
natural and social sciences=2C literary theorists have often regarded
att=
empts to extend evolutionary models into descriptions of human behavior
a=
s politically dangerous and methodologically reductionist=2E
Meanwhile=2C=
the Darwinist movement within literary studies has often assumed a
rear-=
guard position in respect to contemporary theory=2C rejecting the last
th=
ree decades of theory outright=2E  Underlying conflict between the
curren=
t historicizing bent in literary study and the universalizing impulses
of=
sociobiology and evolutionary psychology suggest that reconciliation is
=
unlikely=2E  =
Yet Darwin=92s thinking has served as a crucial precursor from
contempora=
ry =93postmodern=94 literary theory=2E  Significant points of overlap
bet=
ween these conflicting schools of thought include=3A (1) a common
emphasi=
s on what Louis Menand has called =93relational thinking=2C=94 the
priori=
ty of difference over essence=3B (2) a common rejection of the
Enlightenm=
ent subject=2C and an accompanying critique of agency=3B (3) a common
ret=
hinking of the physical boundaries of the human=2C shared by Richard
Dawk=
ins=92 notion of the extended phenotype and Katherine Hayles=92s
theoriza=
tion of the posthuman=2E  Indeed=2C various intellectual lines of
descent=
from Darwin through figures such as Nietzsche=2C Freud=2C James=2C and
K=
uhn might reveal such overlap to be more than coincidental=2E 
Furthermor=
e=2C if literary theorists suspect neo-Darwinians of Panglossian
thinking=
=2C then they must apply the same critique to homologous strains of
posts=
tructuralism and neopragmatism=2E =
Keywords=3A Darwin=2C literary theory=2C pragmatism=2C posthuman
Jonathan Greenberg
Asst=2E Professor
Dept=2E of English
Montclair State University
End of litsci-l-digest V1 #177
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