Vol 8 No 3 - Page 3

Adharshila Chatterjee

 Assistant Professor of English at Women’s Christian College, Kolkata. Email: adharshila.chatterjee@gmail.com

 Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.22

Received April 30, 2016; Revised July 21, 2016; Accepted July 30, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

As we transition into a cybersocial world of infinite ‘glocal’ intersections, much of our perceptions about beauty and body have come to be regulated by the reductive standards of the popular global media, mediated mostly in the US, that seek to gratify specific heterosexist, hypermasculine/ hyperfeminine notions about body image. To create stringently specified standards for men and women is to automatically confine the body into the duality of the masculine and the feminine, thus repressing the self-expression of alternate sexualities and genders. Situating our discourse within the critical paradigm gender performativity, this paper will navigate the processes involved in the visualization and performance of the queer body in Hollywood and American show business and chart the evolution of LGBTQ representations in media. Amidst the pervasive politico-cultural preoccupation with the body, can gender performance through queer bodies truly reach their full potential and self-expressivity, specifically in societies that impose normative regulations and restrictive labels on standards of beauty? Where, then, is the queer, transgendered body situated within the predominantly masculine culture of visual narcissism and cisgender body hysteria? The de-objectification of traditional body images in media, thus, becomes a vital agenda in queer studies. This paper will further interrogate the possibility of a postgender representational mode that can subvert the traditional binaries of the body and accommodate sexual/gender alterities within, what Habermas calls, the “media-steered subsystems”.

Keywords: Queer stereotypes, Hollywood, Non-binary body, Heteronormativity, Gender performance

Sathyaraj Venkatesan¹ & Sweetha Saji²

¹Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Humanities at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India. Email: sathya@nitt.edu. ²Research Scholar at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, India.Email: sweethasaji@gmail.com

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.23

Received June 08, 2016; Revised July 18, 2016; Accepted July 28, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

Affordances, in the context of comics, connote to the general attributes of the medium such as temporality, spatiality, gestures, tone/handwriting and economy. Although comics evinces a dynamic relationship among these elements, it is possible to delineate functional and rhetorical role of these affordances on a conceptual and technical level. Taking these cues, the paper after briefly reviewing the definition and scope of graphic medicine aims to demonstrate the functional and rhetorical role of the aforementioned affordances in communicating illness and illness related experiences. Among other issues this article also seeks to address the following: how do comics engage in the visual and verbal translation of the experiences of chronic illness? how do affordances of comics facilitate the readers’ haptic experience of an author’s subjective trauma? Despite its juvenile legacy, comics capacitates graphic medicine to represent physical and emotional aspects of narrating subjective illness experiences within the medium. The paper concludes that comics is a uniquely suited communicative medium as it diagrams the interiority of illness experience, and, in the process, evolves itself as a locus of tacit knowledge through its translation and mediation of emotional truths and affective states altered by illness.

Keywords: graphic medicine, comics, affordances, spatio-temporality, gestures, handwriting

Tetiana Oleksandrivna Tsepkalo

Faculty of Philology and Journalism, Kherson State University, Ukraine.  E?mail: tanuysya@ukr.ne.

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.24

Received May 26, 2016; Revised July 21, 2016; Accepted July 30, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

This article analyzes the lunar mythologem’s features in the poetic works of the Ukrainian poet Ihor Kalynets in terms of traditional Slavonic concepts and world mythological traditions. This work also explores the myth poetics of the writer, his ideological continuum and specificity of individual author’s myth creation based on the image of the Moon. This also includes an explanation of the said mythological concept as well as its role in the formative process of the myths. The mythologem of the Moon in Ihor Kalynets’ poetry embodies the author’s philosophical and social views via metamorphic manifestations. The relevance of the topic derives both from the lack of thorough analysis and the necessity for systematic study of the Moon’s mythologem in Ukrainian literature in general and in poetry in particular. Synthesis of pagan and Christian thoughts is inextricably intertwined in the author’s artistic models of the universe and is peculiar to individual aesthetic system, so that understanding and interpretation of the author’s approach to depict the archetypal image of the Moon is one of the major issues of the modern Ukrainian literature.

Keywords: mythologem, the image of moon, worldview, myth poetics, myth creation, mythic mentality.

Svetlana Andreevna Petrova

Senior Lecturer, sub-department of Literature and Russian Language, Leningrad State University named after A. S. Pushkin. Email: siversl@yandex.ru.

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.25

Received April 11, 2016; Revised July 07, 2016; Accepted July 25, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

The paper aims to present a possibility of the intermedial analysis of Viktor Tsoy’s rock album “Blood Type”. The rock-album is analyzed as a literary cycle, and different intertextual connections with literary traditions are demonstrated in it. The poet shows the specific art world in which there is a new character like Hamlet, who tries to perceive the world out of illusions. Victor Tsoy used myth and intertext to open the new philosophical problems of the world and also artistic possibilities of music.

Keywords: Intermediality, Victor Tsoy, Poetry, Rock-Poetry, Rock Album, Cyclization.

Prima Gusti Yanti¹ & Fairul Zabadi²

¹Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, University of Muhammadiyah Prof. Dr. Hamka, Indonesia. Email: pgustiyanti@yahoo.com. ²The Development and Cultivation Language Board, Ministry of Education and Culture, Indonesia.

 Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.26

Received January 29, 2016; Revised July 12, 2016; Accepted July 28, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

This study attempts an analysis of the similarities and differences of an intrinsic structure, the patterns of  intrinsic structure, and  their influence  on  the fairy tales. The research samples consisted of 12 fairy tales. The study finds that the plots consist of:  a male character who wandering in a jungle accidentally comes across a lake where fairies are bathing. He steals a fairy’s shawl and forces her to marry him. The fairy finds her shawl that is stolen and she finally goes back to heaven. The following tales are built on such structure: Arya Menak (East Java), Jaka Tarub (Central Java), Telaga Bidadari (South Kalimantan), Raja Omas dan Bidadari  (Simalungun), Oheo (Southeast Sulawesi), Lahilote (Gorontalo), Datu Pulut (South Kalimantan), Bulalo lo Limbutu (Gorontalo), Mahligai Keloyang (Riau), Putri Mambang Linau (Riau), Tumatenden (Minahasa, North Sulawesi), Rajapala (Bali). The Similarity among some fairy tales seems to have occurred because of the mutual correlation among them and the context of dissemination.

Keywords: fairy tale, intrinsic structure, the stories similarity and difference, and influence studies.

Anitha Devi. V¹ & K. Revathi²

¹Associate Professor of English in VIT University Vellore. Email: vanithadevi@vit.ac.in. ²Professor of English in VIT University Vellore.

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.27

Received January 30, 2016; Revised May 13, 2016; Accepted July 25, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

The role of computer and technology in education is a subject which still shows a lot of scope for further exploration. Out of myriad possibilities that computer offer, the advantage of immediate feedback that it provides, forms the center of discussion in this paper. The paper puts forth certain research questions such as how the provision of immediate feedback works amongst the language learners and what its advantages are over traditional corrective feedback. The answers to these questions are sought through integrated cross sectional literature review which is very much related to this subject and is potent enough to provide explanation to these questions. This paper reviews the literature on the studies on immediate feedback in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL).Technology and Computer based learning is all pervasive in language education for its quick response. The use of feedback through computers being significant, it is necessary to look at how immediate feedback has been effectively used in the past two decades. The paper further develops discussion various advantages of the possibilities of immediate feedback from computer and technology in education.

Keywords: Computer, technology, education, self-study, feedback.

Arijit Ghosh¹ & Madhumathi Pasupathi²

^1,2Assistant Professors in the Department of English, VIT University, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India. ORCID Ids: 0000-0001-9424-8223 &  0000-0001-7751-4470. Email: arijit2net@gmail.com

Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.28

Received June 02, 2016; Revised July 21, 2016; Accepted July 28, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Abstract

Violence against children is continuing in schools across India in spite of the strict laws against the use of Corporal Punishment (CP) at schools. The purpose of this study is to identify the reasons for the perpetration of corporal punishments at a random selection of Indian schools as experienced by the students. The population of the sample is small but and the result may be indicative and at the same time may not reflect the condition in the whole of India. The study focuses on the notions of violence within family and the actions of violence which are socio-culturally judged as acceptable in the form of CP at school. The findings show that students moderately approve violence in the form of CP at schools. The findings also suggest that perceived parental approval of CP highly influenced the children to psychologically adjust and approve the violence at schools. The study further suggests the need to strengthen the bonds of trust among parents-child relationships in order to curb the menace of CP at schools.

 Keywords: Corporal Punishment; Indian students; SPCP; parent-child relationship; child abuse

Rohit K Dasgupta, University of Southampton

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v8n3.29 I Volume 8, Number 3, 2016 I Full Text PDF

Received May 19, 2016; Accepted July 28, 2016; Published August 18, 2016

Straight Girls and Queer Guys: The Heteromedia gaze in Film and Television, Christopher Pullen, 2016 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 9780748694846

Same Sex desire in Indian Culture: Representations in Literature and Film 1970-2015, Oliver Ross, 2016 London: Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 9781137570758

Queer Lovers and Hateful Others: Regenerating Violent Times and Places, Jin Haritaworn, 2015, London: Pluto Press, ISBN 9780745330617

Entering Transmasculinity: The inevitability of Discourse, Matthew Heinz, 2016 Bristol: Intellect, ISBN 9781783205684

Scholarship on queer studies has grown exponentially in the last two decades ever since it emerged in the 1990’s. They have all contributed significantly to various cross-disciplinary fields and regional studies. In this short piece I offer a review of four recent books which have taken queer studies to new forms of critical advancement. All four books offer diverse forms of disciplinary and theoretical grounding and different methodological approaches towards studying queer texts and cultures. Keep Reading