How We Remember 1947

In my Major Research Project, I explore how the India-Pakistan partition of 1947 is conceptualized in a popular media text. Specifically, I look at a TV series produced in Pakistan that explores the partition and the events immediately preceding it, that led to the splitting of India into India and Pakistan from a nationalistic perspective. Major themes that are noteworthy of analysis include gender relations, notions of belonging and community, nationalism and identity, contextualization and impact of media, and trauma. Moreover, I pay attention to how gender relations and notions of family are conceptualized in relation to nationalistic ideologies, and how both are impacted during traumatic events. In particular, my research interest includes studying how this media depiction of the partition plays into or contests dominant narratives of the nation and citizenship along the lines of religious and gender classifications. The literature review below aims to explore theoretical conceptualizations of my areas of interest in order to enable my media text analysis to be situated in relation to existing literature.

How We Remember 1947

In my Major Research Project, I explore how the India-Pakistan partition of 1947 is conceptualized in a popular media text. Specifically, I look at a TV series produced in Pakistan that explores the partition and the events immediately preceding it, that led to the splitting of India into India and Pakistan from a nationalistic perspective. Major themes that are noteworthy of analysis include gender relations, notions of belonging and community, nationalism and identity, contextualization and impact of media, and trauma. Moreover, I pay attention to how gender relations and notions of family are conceptualized in relation to nationalistic ideologies, and how both are impacted during traumatic events. In particular, my research interest includes studying how this media depiction of the partition plays into or contests dominant narratives of the nation and citizenship along the lines of religious and gender classifications. The literature review below aims to explore theoretical conceptualizations of my areas of interest in order to enable my media text analysis to be situated in relation to existing literature.

India in the United States Press: Framing us South Asia policy

This article employs qualitative research to examine the media depiction of India in The Washington Post after the Cold War. The published literature has laid out that India and the USA became allies on a host of issues in recent decades. Using indexing theory and framing as a theoretical construct, this research identified key themes in the news reporting about India over a 24-year-period, finding that the press portrayals match the academic literature. The research methodology employed confirms that indexing theory remains a viable research tool for examining high-quality press coverage.

The Social Construction of Ageing Masculinities in Neoliberal Society – Reflections on Retired German Men.

Low fertility rates, advances in medicine and improved living standards have dramatically altered the worldwide demographic landscape of age and ageing. The world’s population is growing older, and as a result of this demographic trend, scholarly research in a variety of academic disciplines in the West have turned their focus towards socio-cultural understandings of old age. Research-based in cultural gerontology suggests that within the context of western neoliberal societies perceptions of older age mainly unfold within two hegemonic narratives, namely ageing as related to decline, frailty and dependency and successful ageing characterised by youthfulness, productivity and continued personal autonomy. Since recent multi-disciplinary approaches to age presume that western views of ageing are shaped by the socio-cultural environment and its hegemonic narratives, the role media play in the dissemination and preservation of these hegemonic narratives has been an important site of investigation, particularly in relation to the portrayal of older women. However, the media depiction of older males and related cultural narratives and how older men experience these narratives within a cultural environment other than the U.S. have received less academic attention. Paradoxically, whilst the representation of older male ageing is strikingly less in the focus of scholarly debate than female ageing, the action film genre has recently brought older male characters into focus through the revival of tough-guy action films featuring older male protagonists. This thesis analyses three ‘geri-action films’, The Expendables, The Expendables 2 and The Expendables 3, in order to explore current representational contextualisations of masculine ageing within the hegemonic socio-cultural constructions of successful ageing and ageing as decline. In so doing, it furthers an understanding of the dominant socio-cultural frames of reference which influence older men’s constructions of older male identities. Subsequently, this thesis explores the ways that ageing impacts on the later lives of men who would have been judged during their working lives to fulfil the criteria of hegemonic masculinity in that they are heterosexual, white and were, before retirement, in white-collar, affluent, middle- and upper-managerial positions. The in-depth semi-structured interviews with four retired German men offered genuine and novel views of older German men’s inner worlds in relation to the specificities of their life-course narratives and self-perceptions within the socio-cultural and theoretical contexts of ageing and masculinity. Through qualitative research underpinned by theoretical and conceptual understandings of media, ageing and representation, cultural gerontology and masculinity studies, this thesis offers a critical analysis of previously unheard narratives about ageing and masculinity.

Real or Created?: Representation of the “Refugee Crisis” in Lithuanian Press Discourse 2015-2017

The article analyses the media portrayal of publicly named “refugee or migration crisis”, after a Syrian migration through the Mediterranean Sea to European countries seeking asylum due to a military conflict in the Syrian Arab Republic. The article presents research data on refugee discourse of the most popular Lithuanian Internet news portals in the period of March 2015–February 2017. The article aims to discuss the parallels between Lithuanian and Western European media depiction of refugees and the “refugee crisis”. The article analyzes main topics and their changes in time, as well as identifies the threats constructed in the media, which are related to asylum of refugees and their integration in host countries. In addition, the article discusses the possible influence of such depiction on public attitudes.

Visibly Unknown: Media Depiction of Murdered Transgender Women of Color

Specific examples of transgender people misgendered and misidentified in media have been well-documented; however, little work explores how media depicts the murder of transgender people. The current work examines media coverage of the 23 transgender women of color murdered in 2016. Utilizing content analysis, we identified five themes including the brutality of these murders, the trivialization of the murders, misgendering the victims, the emotional toll on significant others, and resiliency among the transgender community. In general, media reports of deaths of transgender women of color in 2016 reveal the saliency of stigmatization. Did these lives matter?

An Introduction to the Millennial Suburban Ensemble Film

Part III uses the hermeneutics and narrative theory established in the first half of the book to investigate a film genre that emerged at the end of the millennium: the suburban ensemble dramedy. The first chapter makes the case that suburban ensemble cinema comparatively amalgamates a number of conventions from a range of antecedent genres: infidelity dramas, family trauma dramas, the midlife crisis film and the coming-of-age film, along with works from other media, including socially conscious domestic TV sitcoms. It compares the history of suburban media depiction in American cinema with the lived realities of residentially dispersed contexts as they developed over the second half of the 20th century.

“Fighting and Cutting and Shooting, and Carrying On”: Saloons, Dives, and the Black “Tough” in Manhattan’s Tenderloin, 1890-1917

Most historical studies of early twentieth-century American saloons focus on white ethnic immigrants and largely neglect black drinking dives. To understand the significance of saloons to African Americans it is necessary to differentiate the black experience from the dominant historical narrative. Scrutinizing the media depiction of black male Tenderloin residents as “toughs” I question whether some black men refashioned masculinity with public acts of mayhem, a purposefully heedless perspective, and a willingness to disregard the law. Employing countless media accounts, prison case files, trial transcripts, and correspondence between saloon owners and progressive organizations I argue that black saloons became centers of licit and illicit economies and physical spaces where black men reimagined their masculine identities.