Disability [sport] and discourse: stories within the Paralympic legacy

This paper aims to encourage critical reflection on what are key and pressing social and political issues surrounding the Paralympics Games. The focus of the paper is personal narratives of six current elite Paralympic athletes who have participated in at least one Paralympic Games. In response to critical stimuli presented in the form of five ‘unfinished stories’, the self-reflexive, personal, compelling narrative reflections of these individuals were (re)presented for each of the stories as a composite narrative. The stories expose questions over fear, despair, freedom, hope, love, oppression, hatred, hurt, terror, (in)equality, peace, performance and impairment. To really learn from London and reflect for Rio, we need academic work that can understand sport, sporting bodies and physical activity as important ‘sites’ through which social forces, discourses, institutions and processes congregate, congeal and are contested in a manner that contributes to the shaping of human relations, subjectivities, and experiences in particular, contextually contingent ways.

Beyond difference: female participation in the Brazilian film revival of the 1990s

In this chapter, I will focus on the female participation in what became known as ‘The Retomada do Cinema Brasileiro’, or the Brazilian Film Revival, by thinking beyond differences of gender, class, age and ethnicity. I will first re-consider the Retomada phenomenon against the backdrop of its historical time, so as to evaluate whether the production boom of the period translated into a creative peak, and, if so, how much of this carried onto the present day. I will then look at the female participation in this phenomenon not just in terms of numerical growth of women film directors, admittedly impressive, but only partially reflective of the drastic changes in the modes of production and address effected by the neoliberal policies introduced in the country in the mid 1990s. I will argue that the most decisive contribution brought about by the rise of women in Brazilian filmmaking has been the spread of team work and shared authorship, as opposed to a mere aspiration to the auteur pantheon, as determined by a notoriously male-oriented tradition. Granted, films focusing on female victimisation were rife during the Retomada period and persist to this day, and they have been, and continue to be, invaluable for the understanding of women’s struggles in the country. However, rather than resorting to feminist readings of representational strategies in these films, I will draw attention to other, presentational aesthetic experiments, open to the documentary contingent and the unpredictable real, which, I argue, suspend the pedagogical character of representational narratives. In order to demonstrate that new theoretical tools are needed to understand the gender powers at play in contemporary world cinema, I will, to conclude, analyse an excerpt of the film, Delicate Crime (Crime delicado, Beto Brant, 2006), where team work comes out as a particularly effective female, and feminist, procedure.

Space, authenticity and utopia in the hip-hop teen dance film

The dance film flourished in the 2000s in the form of the hip-hop teen dance film. Such films as Save the Last Dance (Thomas Carter, 2001), Honey (Billy Woodruff, 2002) and Step Up (Anne Fletcher, 2006) drew on hip-hop’s dominance of the mainstream music industry and combined the teen film’s pre-existing social problem and musical narratives. Yet various tension were created by their interweaving of representations of post-industrial city youth with the utopian sensibilities of the classical Hollywood musical. Their narratives celebrated hip-hop performance, and depicted dance’s ability to bridge cultural boundaries and bring together couples and communities. These films used hip-hop to define space and identity yet often constructed divisions within their soundscapes, limiting hip-hop’s expressive potential. This article explores the cycle’s celebration of, yet struggle with, hip-hop through examining select films’ interactions between soundscape, narrative and form. It will engage with these films’ attempts to marry the representational, narrative and aesthetic meanings of hip-hop culture with the form and ideologies of the musical genre, particularly the tensions and continuities that arise from their engagement with the genre’s utopian qualities identified by Richard Dyer (1985). Yet whilst these films illustrate the tensions and challenges of combining hip-hop culture and the musical genre, they also demonstrate an effective integration of hip-hop soundscape and the dancing body in their depiction of dance, highlighting both form’s aesthetics of layering, rupture and flow (Rose, 1994: 22).

My generation(s): cycles, branding and renewal in E4’s 'Skins'

In an era of fragmenting audience and diversified viewing platforms, youth television needs to move fast and make a lot of noise in order to capture and maintain the attention of the teenage viewer. British ensemble youth drama Skins (E4, 2007-2013) calls attention to itself with its high doses of drugs, chaotic parties and casual attitudes towards sexuality. It also moves quickly, shedding its cast every two seasons as they graduate from school, then renewing itself with a fresh generation of 16 year old characters - three cycles in total. This essay will explore the challenges of maintaining audience connections whilst resetting the narrative clock with each cycle. I suggest that the development of the Skins brand was key to the programme’s success. Branding is particularly important for an audience demographic who increasingly consume their television outside of broadcast flow and essential for a programme which renews its cast every two years. The Skins brand operate as a framework, as the central audience draw, have the strength to maintain audience connections when it ‘graduates’ those characters they identify with at the close of each cycle and starts again from scratch. This essay will explore how the Skins brand constructs a cohesive identity across its multiple generations, yet also consider how the cyclic form poses challenges for the programme’s representations and narratives. This cyclic form allows Skins to repeatedly reach out to a new audience who comes of age alongside each new generation and to reflect shifts in British youth culture. Thus Skins remains ever-youthful, seeking to maintain an at times painfully hip identity. Yet the programme has a somewhat schizophrenic identity, torn between its roots in British realist drama and surrealist comedy and an escapist aspirational glamour that shows the influence of US Teen TV. This combination results in a tendency towards a heightened melodrama at odds with Skins claims for authenticity - its much vaunted teenage advisors and young writers - with the cyclic structure serving to amplify the programme’s excessive tendencies. Each cycle wrestles with a need for continuity and familiarity - partly maintained through brand, aesthetic and setting - yet a desire for freshness and originality, to assert difference from what has gone before. I suggest that the inevitable need for each cycle to ‘top’ what has gone before results in a move away from character-based intimacy and the everyday to high-stakes drama and violence which sits uncomfortably within British youth television.

The king's champion: re-enacting Arthurian romance at the English coronation banquet

Recent scholarship has emphasised the extent to which historical events are reflected in medieval romance. This paper seeks to draw attention to an instance where that relationship appears to have been inverted and a romance motif was carefully recreated at a particularly important event in the historical world. From the fourteenth century onwards, a mounted knight ceremonially rode into the English coronation banquet and issued a challenge to all assembled. The visual detail of the ritual strikingly echoes that of the romance motif of the “intruder at the feast”. This motif crops up in numerous romances, and is particularly associated with Arthurian narratives where it usually serves as a catalyst for adventure, providing the court and the king with an opportunity to justify their authority and reputation. This paper analyses the precise nature of the historical ritual and explores how the romance resonances of the ceremony at the coronation feast could be used to underpin political authority and courtly identity. In doing so, it seeks to underscore the centrality of Arthurian romance to English monarchical self-imagining and the symbolic power which could be ascribed to the genre's themes and conventions.

Otherworlds: fantasy and history in medieval literature

This book offers a new perspective on the otherworlds of medieval literature. These fantastical realms are among the most memorable places in medieval writing, by turns beautiful and monstrous, alluring and terrifying. Passing over a river or sea, or entering into a hollow hill, heroes come upon strange and magical realms. These places are often very beautiful, filled with sweet music and adorned with precious stones and rich materials. There is often no darkness, time may pass at a different pace, and the people who dwell there are usually supernatural. Sometimes such a place is exactly what it appears to be-the land of heart's desire-but, the otherworld can also have a sinister side, trapping humans and keeping them there against their will. Otherworlds: Fantasy and History in Medieval Literature takes a fresh look at how medieval writers understood these places and why they found them so compelling. It focuses on texts from England, but places this material in the broader context of literary production in medieval Britain and Ireland. The narratives examined in this book tell a rather surprising story about medieval notions of these fantastical places. Otherworlds are actually a lot less 'other' than they might initially seem. Authors often use the idea of the otherworld to comment on very serious topics. It is not unusual for otherworld depictions to address political issues in the historical world. Most intriguing of all are those texts where locations in the real world are re-imagined as otherworlds. The regions on which this book focuses, Britain, Ireland and the surrounding islands, prove particularly susceptible to this characterization.

Arthur’s refusal to eat: ritual and control in the romance feast

Arthur's refusal to begin feasting before he has seen a marvel or heard a tale of adventure is a recurring motif in medieval romance. Previous comment on this ritual has suggested that the source for such a taboo on eating may be found in earlier narratives in the Celtic languages. This paper argues that, although the ritual almost certainly originates in pre-chivalric society, romance authors adapted and developed it to reflect the courtly-chivalric preoccupations of their own world. Arthur's ritual gesture may be seen as a means of containing and controlling both interior moral threats and exterior physical peril, and is intimately connected to the courtly conception of the feast. This study draws on the evidence of religious writing and courtesy manuals and explores some highly-developed treatments of the motif in romance in order to suggest that literary engagements with Arthur's refusal to eat have much to say about contemporary ideas of ritual and reality as mediated through the symbolically-charged arena of the medieval feast.

Texture, realism, performance: exploring the intersection of transtexts and the contemporary sitcom

Contemporary US sitcom is at an interesting crossroads: it has received an increasing amount of scholarly attention (e.g. Mills 2009; Butler 2010; Newman and Levine 2012; Vermeulen and Whitfield 2013), which largely understands it as shifting towards the aesthetically and narratively complex. At the same time, in the post-broadcasting era, US networks are particularly struggling for their audience share. With the days of blockbuster successes like Must See TV’s Friends (NBC 1994-2004) a distant dream, recent US sitcoms are instead turning towards smaller, engaged audiences. Here, a cult sensibility of intertextual in-jokes, temporal and narrational experimentation (e.g. flashbacks and alternate realities) and self-reflexive performance styles have marked shows including Community (NBC 2009-2015), How I Met Your Mother (CBS 2005-2014), New Girl (Fox 2011-present) and 30 Rock (NBC 2006-2013). However, not much critical attention has so far been paid to how these developments in textual sensibility in contemporary US sitcom may be influenced by, and influencing, the use of transmedia storytelling practices, an increasingly significant industrial concern and rising scholarly field of enquiry (e.g. Jenkins 2006; Mittell 2015; Richards 2010; Scott 2010; Jenkins, Ford and Green 2013). This chapter investigates this mutual influence between sitcom and transmedia by taking as its case studies two network shows that encourage invested viewership through their use of transtexts, namely How I Met Your Mother (hereafter HIMHM) and New Girl (hereafter NG). As such, it will pay particular attention to the most transtextually visible character/actor from each show: HIMYM’s Barney Stinson, played by Neil Patrick Harris, and NG’s Schmidt, played by Max Greenfield. This chapter argues that these sitcoms do not simply have their particular textual sensibility and also (happen to) engage with transmedia practices, but that the two are mutually informing and defining. This chapter explores the relationships and interplay between sitcom aesthetics, narratives and transmedia storytelling (or industrial transtexts), focusing on the use of multiple delivery channels in order to disperse “integral elements of a fiction” (Jenkins, 2006 95-6), by official entities such as the broadcasting channels. The chapter pays due attention to the specific production contexts of both shows and how these inform their approaches to transtexts. This chapter’s conceptual framework will be particularly concerned with how issues of texture, the reality envelope and accepted imaginative realism, as well as performance and the actor’s input inform and illuminate contemporary sitcoms and transtexts, and will be the first scholarly research to do so. It will seek out points of connections between two (thus far) separate strands of scholarship and will move discussions on transtexts beyond the usual genre studied (i.e. science-fiction and fantasy), as well as make a contribution to the growing scholarship on contemporary sitcom by approaching it from a new critical angle. On the basis that transmedia scholarship stands to benefit from widening its customary genre choice (i.e. telefantasy) for its case studies and from making more use of in-depth close analysis in its engagement with transtexts, the chapter argues that notions of texture, accepted imaginative realism and the reality envelope, as well as performance and the actor’s input deserve to be paid more attention to within transtext-related scholarship.

The circulation of romances from England in late-medieval Ireland

The fifteenth century saw a striking upturn in the number of texts from foreign vernaculars that were translated into Irish. Indeed, one might go so far as to speak in terms of a ‘translation trend’ in Ireland during the mid to late fifteenth century. A notable feature of this trend is that a particularly high number of these Irish translations are of romances; contextual and textual evidence suggests that the original exemplars for many of these translated texts appear to have come from England, though not all of them were necessarily in English. Irish translations of eight romances have survived to the present day: Guy of Warwick; Bevis of Hampton; La Queste de Saint Graal; Fierabras; Caxton’s Recuyell of the Histories of Troie; William of Palerne; the Seven Sages of Rome; and Octavian. This paper addresses two aspects of these texts of particular relevance to romance scholars who do not work within the sphere of Celtic studies. Firstly, it argues that certain aspects of the dissemination and reception of romance in Ireland are quite distinctive. Manuscript and textual evidence suggests that the religious orders, particularly the Franciscans, seem to have played a role in the importation and translation of these narratives. Secondly, examination of the Irish versions of romance tends to bear out an observation made by Flower many years ago, but not pursued by subsequent scholars: ‘texts of an unusual kind were current in Ireland, and it may be that interesting discoveries are to be made here’. Certain narrative features of several of these Irish translations diverge from all the surviving versions of the relevant romance in other languages and may witness to a variant exemplar that has since been lost from its own linguistic corpus.

Order and disorder in fiction labyrinths: the librarians` representations in some contemporary cultural productions

This paper, first result of a larger research, proposes a query about some aspects of social representation of libraries and librarians, as they appear in literary and cinematographic productions. Little by little, this query, which arose from purposes of organizing catalogues, revealed elements that established different series, in which the narrative genre (literary or cinematographic) has no relevance to either libraries or librarians` representations. The presence of these elements seems to show some expectations and utopias in relation to the common knowledge, independently from narratives being located in the past, in the present or in the future, stimulating reflection on some medieval and baroque traditions about the library universe and its main characters, the librarians. The cinematographic material selected for research was The time machine, Farenheit 451, The day after tomorrow, Star Wars - episode II and the novels Martin Eden, The man without qualities, The time machine and La sombra del viento.

Bland amasoner och eunucker : En kvalitativ studie av patografier av kvinnor med bröstcancer och män med prostatacancer

Narratives about life-changing events like cancer have become more common in today’s society. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether gender patterns in society can also be found in pathographies about cancer, and further to investigate how gender is expressed in these cancer related narratives. Questions were posed on characteristics of the autobiographical cancer narratives, how gender is constructed by the authors of these narratives, and what these narratives say about gender structures’ liability to change in the individuals affected by this disease. The material consisted of two Swedish pathographies about breast cancer, written by women, and two Swedish pathographies about prostate cancer, written by men. These works were published in the first decade of the present century. Narrative interpretation was used as the analysis method. The results show that gender patterns expressed in these narratives mainly follow conventional standards. Gender structures appear to be resistant to change in men and women diagnosed with cancer. The narratives by the women authors appear though to be somewhat more open to using the notions of manhood than was sees in narratives by the male authors regarding norms of femininity.

Skolutveckling som diskursiv praktik : Några ideologiska implikationer

This study aims at highlighting the ideological implications of school development as a discursive practice. More comprehensively the aim is also contributing to rearrangements and shifts in perspective when school development is the matter. One of today´s most widespread and dominant discourses are said to be the one which concerns development, and according to many interpreters, development is one of the most prominent commandments in the modern as well as the post-modern narratives. School development as a concept has for the last 15 years established itself firmly in both Swedish school policy and in Swedish school research. It may sound obvious and commendable but also such axioms may be questioned.The design of the study lies in the field of discourse research and more specifically within critical discursive psychology, which draws on both a post-structural and a postmodern conception of discourse. The study is based on the idea that the ideological potential of arguments occurs, develops and changes in discursive practices and not anywhere else or at any abstract level. The starting point is a perception that certain issues and topics within e.g. conversation, depending on time and context will be seen as controversial, while others will be taken for granted.One part of the basis of the study consists of texts with a direct bearing on a specific school research and development project which took place between 2003 and 2008. Participating partners in the collaboration were the Swedish National Agency for School Improvement, Karlstad University, Dalarna University and 13 municipalities in Sweden. Another part of the basis of the study consists of texts in which ‘school development’ is considered and negotiated in more general terms, usually without reference to the project. All texts derive from the period 2003 – 2006.The analysis shows that school development as discursive practice often rely on a set of stereotypical expressions and ways of arguing. Stereotypes, which among other things, tend to divide people into suitable and non-suitable, capable and non-capable, which may be regarded as a somewhat unexpected implication of school development. The material has been dramatized by an intrigue inspired by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman´s texts. He has written extensively on the modern in relation to the postmodern and about the ambivalence which resides in between and school development as discursive practice can be understood in much the similar way.

Bland äckliga fittor och kunskapsluckor : En kritisk analys av tonårstjejers sexuella agens och dess frigörande och diciplinerande potential, baserat på berättelser av barnmorskor och kuratorer

Ett använt begrepp när det gäller tonårstjejer och sexualitet är sexuell agens, att handla efter egna beslut. Avsikten med denna studie är att nå en ökad förståelse av vad som påverkar utvecklingen av sexuell agens hos tonårstjejer, utifrån berättelser av två professioner vid ungdomsmottagningar. Syftet är också att göra en kritisk analys och en sociologisk teoretisering av upplevelsen av sexuell agens samt utifrån ett maktperspektiv utreda dess disciplinerande och frigörande potential. Tidigare forskning visar främst att det finns en avsaknad av lust och kunskap hos tonårstjejer samt att deras förmåga att ta självständiga beslut i relation till sexualitet är avhängt deras agens. I denna studie genomfördes kvalitativa intervjuer med barnmorskor och kuratorer vid ungdomsmottagningar. Tematisk analysmetod användes vid tolkningsförfarandet. Det empiriska materialet visade bland annat att tonårstjejers agens är influerat av yttre påverkan, gränssättning, skam, självförtroende och kunskap. För att nå en sociologisk förståelse av det empiriska materialet har sociologiska perspektiv på sexualitet, makt samt Foucaults teori om kroppens disciplinering använts. Baserat på professionerna vid ungdomsmottagningarna visade analysen att utvecklingen av sexuell agens gynnas av kunskap och självförtroende, hämmas av påverkan och skam samt både gynnas och hämmas av gränssättning. Den fördjupade analysen visade att sexuell agens kan skapa autonoma beslut, vilket minskar sårbarheten för maktens disciplin och därmed verkar frigörande inom disciplinens egendefinierade gränser. En avslutande slutsats var att upplevelsen av sexuell agens bör förstås som främst disciplinerande.  

Utbrändhet som arbetsskada och motståndsberättelse

Burnout as occupational injury and narrative of resistance During the last years of the 1990s and the first years of the 2000s, burnout was a common diagnosis for sick listing in Sweden. That burnout is directly related to working life was acknowledged by medical experts as well as in the public debate. The number of applications for occupational compensation due to social and organizational factors in work rose from a very modest degree to nearly a forth of the claims among occupational diseases. In this article 48 individual claims for compensation in cases of burnout as occupational disease are analyzed as narratives of resistance. In this respect they are seen as alternative accounts of risk in working life, but also as narratives about resistance. The concept, narratives of resistance, is used to understand the claimants’ argumentation for rights to compensation, as well as how the claimants draw upon public narratives of societal transformation to understand how they themselves have become ill from occupations that normally are not thought to be hazardous. One conclusion from the analysis is that the claimants regard their illness as the resistance of the body against changes in society and working life. 

Förlåtelse, försoning och oförsonlighet i överlevandes berättelser efter kriget i Bosnien

Forgiveness, reconciliation and implacability in narratives of survivors after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina In this article I analyze verbally portrayed experiences of 27 survivors from the 1990s’ war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One aim of the article is to analyze markers for reconciliation and implacability, the second is to describe the terms for reconciliation which are actualized in those stories. The interactive dynamics, which occurred during the war, make the post-war reconciliation wartime associated. Narratives about reconciliation, implacability and terms for reconciliation, are not only formed in relation to the war as a whole but also in relation to one’s own and others’ wartime actions. The narratives about reconciliation become an arena in which we and them are played against each other in different ways – not least by rejecting the others’ acts during the war. In the interviewees stories implacability is predominant but reconciliation is presented as a possibility if certain conditions are met. These conditions are, for instance, justice for war victims, perpetrators’ recognition of crime and perpetrators’ emotional commitment (for example the display of remorse and shame).