Magic, Art, Religion, Science: Blurring the Boundaries of Science and Science Fiction in Marge Piercy's Cyborian Narrative
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: When Genres Collide: Selected Essays from the 37th Annual Meeting of the Science Fiction Research Association p. 133-140
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Piercy's Gendered Cyborgs: Hope, Threat, and the Blurred Boundaries
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Wiscon Chronicles: Volume 1 p. 74-81
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Reconciliation In "The Matter Of Seggri"
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Paradoxa Vol. 21, no. (2009), p. 166-184
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- Description: The fictional separatist society is one of the best recognised tropes of feminist SF, or, one might say, SF that concerns itself with foregrounding and exploring gender issues, as in the work of Joanna Russ, Suzy McKee Charnas, and Pamela Sargent. Unlike texts which depict men and women either live in either a patriarchial or matriarchal gender dystopia, separatist texts usually depict fictional worlds where men and women either live in spatially separate societies, or worlds from which men have excluded altogether. Of course separatist texts can also include a gender hierarchy, with one gender enjoying more privileges and holding some sort of power over the other. In Ursula K. Le Guin's "The matter of Seggri" (1994), for instance, women are perceived to be the superior gender.
Honest reflections: big ideas and real life experiences of a new first year BA
- Authors: Kuttainen, Victoria , Lundberg, Anita , Wight, Linda , Chang, Nigel
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Conference paper
- Relation: Enhancing Learning Experiences in Higher Education: International Conference. Hong Kong p. 1-11
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- Description: In 2009 the bachelor of Arts Degree at James Cook University, a regional multicampus institution in North Queensland, Australia, was flagged by the Vice Chancellor for "deep attention". This paper showcases the work undertaken as part of the university-wide curriculum refresh to improve the first year experience at JCU. It surveys and reflects upon the uptake of research undertaken by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) and the Deans of the Social Sciences and Humanities (DASSH) in their joint report Nature and Roles of Arts Degrees in Contemporary Society: A National Scoping Project of Arts Programss across Australia. (Gannaway and Trent 2008) in the design and implementaion of new first-year core subjects designed to aid with transition, retention, skillbuilding, and cohort-identity in the Bachelor of Arts Degree.
Broken brothers in Arms: Acting the Man in The Warrior's Apprentice
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2013
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Lois McMaster Bujold: Essays on a Modern Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy p. 116-133
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Killing mother: Female influence, authority and erasure in the Daniel Craig James Bond films
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australasian Journal of Popular Culture Vol. 4, no. 2 (2015), p. 177-188
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- Description: The James Bond film franchise has attracted much criticism for its depiction of women. The casting of Judi Dench as M, however, signalled the series’ potential to interrogate its own sexism. This article argues that Casino Royale (2006) by Campbell – the fifth film starring Dench as M and the first starring Daniel Craig as Bond – effects the most significant revision of gender roles in the franchise to date. Taking us back to the beginning of his career, Casino Royale reconfigures Bond as fallible, vulnerable and psychologically unstable, a man struggling to secure his identity as 007. Playing a much more significant role than she did in the Pierce Brosnan films, M criticizes Bond’s weaknesses and mistakes, but she also contributes in important ways to shaping his identity-in-process in her complex role as boss/mentor/mother. Nevertheless, in Quantum of Solace by Forster (2008) and Skyfall by Mendes (2012), M’s power over Bond is contained within a familiar ideology of motherhood, which subordinates her to the active male agent. Furthermore, this article contends that in Skyfall the series reverts to its tradition of undermining, containing and erasing powerful women by killing off the female usurper and restoring MI6 to a male-dominated space.
Killing mother: Female influence, authority and erasure in the Daniel Craig James Bond films
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australasian Journal of Popular Culture Vol. 4, no. 2 (2015), p. 177-188
- Full Text: false
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- Description: The James Bond film franchise has attracted much criticism for its depiction of women. The casting of Judi Dench as M, however, signalled the series’ potential to interrogate its own sexism. This article argues that Casino Royale (2006) by Campbell – the fifth film starring Dench as M and the first starring Daniel Craig as Bond – effects the most significant revision of gender roles in the franchise to date. Taking us back to the beginning of his career, Casino Royale reconfigures Bond as fallible, vulnerable and psychologically unstable, a man struggling to secure his identity as 007. Playing a much more significant role than she did in the Pierce Brosnan films, M criticizes Bond’s weaknesses and mistakes, but she also contributes in important ways to shaping his identity-in-process in her complex role as boss/mentor/mother. Nevertheless, in Quantum of Solace by Forster (2008) and Skyfall by Mendes (2012), M’s power over Bond is contained within a familiar ideology of motherhood, which subordinates her to the active male agent. Furthermore, this article contends that in Skyfall the series reverts to its tradition of undermining, containing and erasing powerful women by killing off the female usurper and restoring MI6 to a male-dominated space.
Learning to be men : Masculinities, pedagogy, and science fiction
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: The Pedagogies of Cultural Studies (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies series) Chapter 3 p. 39-50
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- Description: Like many cultural studies practitioners, my research, learning, and teaching are concerned with critiquing and contesting taken-for-granted assumptions that posit that human identities and social structures are fixed, natural, and inevitable. These are assumptions that can contribute to social disadvantage, oppression, and inequity. My research has focused in particular on problematizing hegemonic ideals of masculinity and in exploring the potential for science fiction to critique and offer alternatives to these dominant models. This chapter reflects on the embodied experience of doing this form of cultural studies in the classroom, of exploring these ideas in the context of a pedagogical exchange with undergraduate university students enrolled in a fantasy and science fiction course. Both the experience of masculinity— for men and women—and the activities of learning and teaching are deeply embodied. The purposes of this chapter are therefore twofold. First, I argue that science fiction is a useful tool for encouraging students to develop their awareness of how popular culture functions as a form of public pedagogy that frames how each of us experience masculinity. While some science fiction takes hegemonic ideals of gender for granted and encourages us to do the same, other texts problematize these assumptions by showing us the potential for bodies to be lived and experienced differently. Second, by reflecting on my own embodied experience of teaching science fiction in a university classroom, this chapter aims to encourage teachers to think about how we actually do cultural studies with our students and to move beyond conceiving of the classroom as a purely intellectual space to also embrace the bodily dimension of our practice.
Sublime and grotesque: The aesthetic development of weird fiction in the work of H.P. Lovecraft and China Mieville
- Authors: Wight, Linda , Gadd, Nicole
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Revista Abusoes Vol. , no. (2017), p.
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- Description: Weird Fiction is identifiable by its atomosphere of cosmic fear and unease which is produced through the sublime and grotesque. H.P. Lovecraft's Weird Fiction invokes the sublime through other-worldly creatures that inspire awe and terror; beyond the grasp of limited human consciousness, they are both unfathomable and unspeakable. Cosmic fear is further heightened in Lovecraft's fiction through transgressive meldings of human and animal bodies into grotesque creatures which refute the laws of nature and systems of classification by which humans understand their world. While the sublime and grotesque remain crucial elements of recent Weird Fiction, China Mieville responds to Lovecraft's oeuvre by exploring the loss of the sublime in the postmodern era and positioning the grotesque as, not only a cause for horror, but also a source of creative potential and rebellion. This essay compares Kraken (2010), in which Mieville playfully engages with the Cthulhu mythos, with four of Lovecraft's most celebrated Weird stories, "Pickman's Model" (1927), "The Call of Cthulhu" (1928), "The Dunwich Horror" (1929) and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" (1936). In both Lovecraft's early and Mieville's more recent Weird Fiction, the sublime and the grotesque play a significant role in creating the Weird aesthetic. However Mieville's interrogation of the sublime as it appears in Lovecraft's work, as well as his exploration of the technological grotesque and framing of the grotesque as an opportunity for self-empowerment and emancipation, marks his Weird Fiction as distinctly of its own time.
'I came to find my father": Indiana Jones and the quest for the lost father
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Excavating Indiana Jones : essays on the films and franchise p. 114-125
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- Description: “I came to find my father”Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Lost Father Linda Wight Numerous commentators have observed the pervasive concern with father- son relationships in the films of Steven Spielberg. Lester D. Friedman writes, “No matter the genre, father figures—good and bad, dependable and unreliable, genetic and assumed—pervade Spielberg’s movies” (95). Spielberg has been particularly noted for his repeated depiction of “psychologically and emotionally lost boys” and “missing, consumed, distant, or malevolent father figures” (34), a pattern often attributed to Spielberg’s own well-publicized troubled relationship with his emotionally distant father (34). Father- son relationships are a feature of each of the Indiana Jones films,though it is in the third and fourth installments that the quest for father- son reconciliation takes thematic primacy. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy’s seduction of the teenage Marion is framed as a betrayal of her father, Abner, who loved Indy “like a son,” while Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom positions Indy as surrogate father to eleven- year-old Short Round and the Indian children whom he frees from a Thuggee cult. The later films expand on these concerns. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade explores the adolescent rebellion implied by Indy’s betrayal of Abner in Raiders, attributing Indy’s immaturity and search for surrogate father figures to the emotional neglect of his bio-logical father, Henry Jones. Last Crusade emphasizes that a positive father-son relationship is crucial to both father and son’s achievement of a mature, well- rounded masculine identity. Thus, the quest for the Holy Grail becomes inextricably bound up with, and indeed secondary to, the quest for father-son reconciliation. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull again positions father- son reconciliation as crucial in the quest for a secure and respected masculine identity. Building upon his role as surrogate father in Temple of Doom, Indy discovers he has a biological son, “Mutt,” with Marion.
- Description: “I came to find my father”Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Lost FatherLinda WightNumerous commentators have observed the pervasive concern with father- son relationships in the films of Steven Spielberg. Lester D. Friedmanwrites, “No matter the genre, father figures—good and bad, dependable andunreliable, genetic and assumed—pervade Spielberg’s movies” (95). Spielberghas been particularly noted for his repeated depiction of “psychologicallyand emotionally lost boys” and “missing, consumed, distant, or malevolentfather figures” (34), a pattern often attributed to Spielberg’s own well-publicized troubled relationship with his emotionally distant father (34). Father- son relationships are a feature of each of the Indiana Jones films,though it is in the third and fourth installments that the quest for father- sonreconciliation takes thematic primacy. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy’s seduc-tion of the teenage Marion is framed as a betrayal of her father, Abner, wholoved Indy “like a son,” while Indiana Jones and the Temple of DoompositionsIndy as surrogate father to eleven- year-old Short Round and the Indian chil-dren whom he frees from a Thuggee cult. The later films expand on theseconcerns. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusadeexplores the adolescent rebellionimplied by Indy’s betrayal of Abner in Raiders, attributing Indy’s immaturityand search for surrogate father figures to the emotional neglect of his bio-logical father, Henry Jones. Last Crusadeemphasizes that a positive father-son relationship is crucial to both father and son’s achievement of a mature, well- rounded masculine identity. Thus, the quest for the Holy Grail becomesinextricably bound up with, and indeed secondary to, the quest for father-son reconciliation. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skullagainpositions father- son reconciliation as crucial in the quest for a secure andrespected masculine identity. Building upon his role as surrogate father inTemple of Doom, Indy discovers he has a biological son, “Mutt,” with Marion,
Cruising into the future : the redemption of ‘authentic’ masculinity in the science fiction films of Tom Cruise.”
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Starring Tom Cruise Chapter 8 p. 152-168
- Full Text: false
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Binge-watching: Cultural Studies and developing critical literacy in the age of surveillance capitalism
- Authors: Wight, Linda , Cooper, Simon
- Date: 2022
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Continuum Vol. 36, no. 5 (2022), p. 711-722
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- Description: With the rise in the twenty-first century of streaming services such as Netflix, binge-watching has become a significant new mode of media consumption. This article contends that binge-watching, with its extended duration, forms of absorption, attention and surveillance-commodification marks a challenge for teaching the kinds of critical understanding around representation that underpins Cultural Studies. We ask whether binge-watching can be understood through the existing frames of Cultural Studies, or whether the economies of attention, commodification, privatization and surveillance require a different form of critical reflection upon this contemporary practice. We investigate how binge-watching might differ from other forms of cultural consumption and how critical educative practices could interrogate binge-watching, and the streaming services that encourage this practice, as increasingly significant modes of cultural production and consumption. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
“Somebody to love”: The queer possibilities of Amazon Prime's good omens
- Authors: Wight, Linda
- Date: 2023
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of the fantastic in the Arts Vol. 34, no. 1 (2023), p.
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