This is the abstract for my paper presented on 31 January 2019 in the third Public Archaeology Twitter Conference. The theme of this year’s conference is STORYTELLING. My paper is a re-telling of an archaeological excavation, inspired by John Swogger’s re-imagining of a peer-reviewed archaeological journal article in comic format. Read the…[Read more]

At the intersection of comics and medicine is the rise of the Graphic Medicine scholarship field. This course examines the ways in which the sequentialized hybrid of word and image is bringing new insights to patient, healthcare, and clinical experiences.

In any manner of ways, the comics medium (whether known as comic books, graphic novels,…[Read more]

Is it worst to be killed by a crazed mob wielding machetes or to die via conveyor belt and filing system? The Better Angels of Our Nature keeps falling victim to the halo effect, creating an aura around reason itself. The question, then, is whether the book should be viewed as a jewel in reason’s crown or as among its costume jewellery.

In an ideal society, all inhabitants would be treated equally, but in reality there are divisions with groups of varying dominance, whether clear or hidden. Usually the dominant groups, powerful either by political, cultural or social hegemony create the narrative of ‘otherness’ and pass laws, some of which could be discriminatory. This is esp…[Read more]

The idea of a critical theory has colonized the social consciousness of academia, and become an integral part of the pursuit of higher knowledge. Competing ideas have thereby become standard bearers in that critical theory acts as a measure of true understanding . The only problem, however, is that many of the distinct theories similarly answering…[Read more]

The Line of Control arbitrarily bifurcates Neelum valley, Kashmir into Pakistan and India. While the border attempts to constrain and categorize, the daily movements and flows of human and more-than-human bodies via “unofficial” routes and routines generate an understanding of Kashmir that is not dependent on geopolitics. Neelum as sculpted and…[Read more]

Chapter in Post-Dance, Edited by Danjel Andersson, Mette Edvarsdsen and Mårten Spångberg. MDT, 2017.
ISBN 978-91-983891-0-4. Based on materials from the workshop ‘Nor Culture Nor Art’, with Mårten Spångberg and Vanessa Ohlraum, at Learning Plays. A School of School, Impulse Theatre Festival in collaboration with Ringlokschuppen Ruhr. Mülheim…[Read more]

We live in an increasingly übercapitalist society. It’s übercapitalist in that a specific version of neoliberalism, characterised by low pay, zero-hours and fixed-term contracts, is growing ever more aggressive; and that the disruptive technology firm Uber offers one of the most high-profile examples of this intensified form of deregulated cap…[Read more]

This essay examines Giambattista Vico’s philology as a contribution to democratic legitimacy. I outline three steps in Vico’s account of the historical and political development of philological knowledge: first, his merger of philosophy and philology, and the effects of that merger on the relative claims of reason and authority; second, his use…[Read more]

Module Summary: Using the aftermath of 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq as a case study, this module asks why states engage in torture, giving particular consideration to why liberal states euphemise, conceal, and downplay this practice. We will examine the ramifications of 9/11 across multiple legal domains, domestically within the US and…[Read more]

In this article we argue that the comics grid, the array of panels, can be understood as a specific technology of ‘revealing’ through ‘enframing’ and as such is the key element in comics technology. We propose Martin Heidegger’s conceptual framework (Gestell: literally, ‘the framework’), primarily discussed in his 1954 essay ‘The Question Concer…[Read more]

¿Es posible construir otras imágenes del pensamiento en América Latina? Esta invitación nos llevó a proponer una excavación hacia el pasado y, almismo tiempo, una apertura hacia el porvenir. Antes que una “filosofía de laliberación”, invitamos a una liberación de la filosofía; antes que orígenes ocánones, artesanías que nunca tocan fondo o sujeta…[Read more]

Se analizan los textos de Rafael Gutiérrez-Girardot sobre F. Nietzsche en torno a latragedia y el pesimismo. Esta aproximación se elabora a partir de tres temas: estilo,nihilismo y estética. Se argumenta que la interpretación de Gutiérrez-Girardot sobreNietzsche impide que este sea visto solo como un crítico literario. Asimismo, estetrabajo brind…[Read more]

An overview of proposed categories for the growing graphic medicine genre of cancer comics (i.e. cancer narratives in comic book form) and an initial theory on the significant linkage between this illness and particular medium.

The term ‘musicalization’ comes from Werner Wolf’s study of intermediality between music and fiction, The Musicalization of Fiction (1999), which proposes the musicalized text as one that has an intentional and sustained connection to music and musical form that moves beyond the purely diegetic or incidental. In this article I draw on Wolf’…[Read more]

Review of LISSA: A STORY ABOUT MEDICAL PROMISE, FRIENDSHIP, AND REVOLUTION (University of Toronto Press) by Sherine Hamdy, Coleman Nye, Sarula Bao, and Caroline Brewer

Anhand der Science-Fiction Animes “Captain Future”, “Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs” und “Cowboy Bebop” wird eine bestimmtes Narrativ innerhalb des Genres des Science-Fiction Anime stichprobenartig über drei Jahrzehnte hinweg betrachtet und die vorzufindenden Geschlechterkonstruktionen beleuchtet: Jede dieser Erzählungen handelt von den A…[Read more]

The concept of the exception has heavily shaped modern political theory. In modernity, Kierkegaard was one of the first philosophers to propound the exception as a facilitator of metaphysical transcendence. Merging Kierkegaard’s metaphysical exception with early modern political theorist Jean Bodin’s theory of sovereignty, Carl Schmitt int…[Read more]

Any social and political arrangement depends on acceptance. If a substantial part of a people does not accept the authority of its rulers, then those can only remain in power by means of force, and even that use of force needs to be accepted to be effective. Gramsci called this acceptance of the socio-political status quo “hegemony.” Every sta…[Read more]