Recent Submissions

  • Paper tensions: from flipbooks to scanners - the role of paper in moving image practices

    Egbe, Amanda; University of Bedfordshire (Taylor and Francis, 2023-10-30)
    Concerning the materiality of reproduction and duplication in film, this chapter explores the overlap of moving image and paper technologies to examine aspects of film archiving. It presents an assemblage of paper-related moving image artefacts: paper prints, posters, flipbooks, optical printers, scanners, pre-cinematic, early and digital cinema technologies, to explore what we can understand about the moving image when viewed outside of the cinematic apparatus of screen and auditorium. By considering the moving image and its history in this way as overlapping mediums, we broaden our understanding of moving image technology in its material and immaterial aspects, exploring how subjects and technologies interact to produce what is permissible as film documents. Beginning with Elsaesser’s assertion that there is a need for a new mapping of the moving image in the wake of early cinema research to understand audiovisual media technologies better. This chapter utilises media archaeology and cultural techniques to explore the connections between print media, duplicating film and digital scanners, concluding that practices of archival film production and techniques of archival scanner operators in the process of duplication are dynamically co-created through spaces of exchange.
  • Transforming faces for the screen: horror and romance in the 1920s

    Randell, Karen; Weedon, Alexis (Springer, 2023-11-09)
    * Shows how 1920s culture addressed facial disfigurement in the genres of horror and romance * Shows the legacy of medical advances in World War 1 in the Hollywood films of Lon Chaney and Elinor Glyn * Draws together cross-disciplinary case studies with illustrated film analysis
  • Britain likes to think it ‘stood alone’ against the Nazis. So why did it convict so few for war crimes?

    Silverman, Jon; University of Bedfordshire (2023-09-13)
    Out of 274 suspects investigated in England, Wales and Scotland, there was only a single conviction
  • Some thoughts and reflections on identity, teaching, and writing, and how they might affect one another

    Belas, Oliver (Springer, 2024-01-01)
    This chapter moves through a series of loosely linked reflections on (in no particular order, because the following are not separate from one another) politics, teaching, and writing, and it attempts to think through the ways in which each shapes the other and produces something we might be tempted to call and identity. The main ideas are: that the writer’s sense of self is, at least in part, forged in his writing; and that his teaching shapes his writing just as his writing shapes his teaching.
  • Spin and silence: royal penance and Carolingian propaganda

    Stone, Rachel; University of Bedfordshire; King's College London (De Gruyter, 2024-11-01)
    Since the pioneering work of Mayke de Jong, many historians have studied the political use of penance in the Carolingian empire. This article explores how eighth- and ninth-century texts turned demands for penance and penitential acts by members of the royal family into political propaganda, and changes in such approaches. The earlier Carolingians preferred to remain silent about their own sins, while making limited use of penitential punishment for rivals. Louis the Pious’ more ambitious use of self-confession for Christian exaltation was initially successful, but the rise of rival camps of propagandists led to this confession later being turned against him. By 840, there was a new reluctance by rulers and others to admit culpability, reflected in the rise of the “non-confession confession”, in which penitential tropes were used without any specific personal fault being admitted. Lothar II in the 860s made ingenious attempts to harness penitential discourse to support his divorce and remarriage. His claims show a keen awareness of the possibilities and pitfalls of public confession, but he was finally unable to counter his opponents’ arguments. By the 870s, the development of widespread legal-penitential expertise paradoxically led to a new royal penitential silence, in which no ruler would publicly confess to any offence, however notorious
  • Book review: Reading, wanting and broken economics: a twenty-first-century study of readers and bookshops in Southampton around 1900

    Weedon, Alexis; University of Bedfordshire (2022-12-31)
    review of Reading, Wanting and Broken Economics: A Twenty-First-Century Study of Readers and Bookshops in Southampton around 1900, by Simon R. Frost
  • Broadcast radio: technology, challenges and opportunities in the twenty-first century

    Hallett, Lawrie; University of Bedfordshire (Intellect, 2021-04-01)
    This article focuses on the considerable scale and pace of change in broadcast radio over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, an on-going process showing little sign of abating. Developments in digital broadcasting, the increasing consumption of audio via internet protocol and the arrival of the smart speaker are all major factors impacting the future of radio broadcasting. No longer a stand-alone medium, this article argues that the future of broadcast radio rests on the way in which it addresses the various challenges and opportunities offered by its use of new technologies and multiple platforms. Change is not simply being driven by technological and regulatory developments within the industry (although there have been plenty of those over the past two decades). Equally importantly, change is also being driven by external factors and by wider societal pressures. Arguably, today, radio faces greater levels of challenge and competition than at any time in its century, or so, long history. Any process of change creates both winners and losers. In the medium term, which side of that equation radio broadcasting finds itself on will be determined by its response to the changes, challenges and opportunities encountered over the next few years.
  • Digital broadcasting : challenges and opportunities for European community radio broadcasters

    Hallett, Lawrie; Hintz, Arne; University of Westminster; Central European University (Elsevier, 2009-06-21)
    Access to broadcast infrastructure is vital for community radio services, however the switch-over from analogue to digital, as envisaged by European policy-makers, creates challenges for such stations. In this article, we will set out the general environment within which the transition to digital is occurring, illustrate the current state of the digital migration debate, identify potential difficulties for community radios, but also highlight opportunities that digital technologies may provide. Challenges include the historical tendency of European policy-makers to prioritise the requirements of larger Public Service and commercial broadcasters which has resulted in the promotion of platforms such as DAB that are not designed to cater for smaller-scale local and non-profit’ media. Furthermore the existence of a variety of jurisdiction-specific approaches to digital switch-over in Europe creates uncertainty as to the emerging technical and policy environment.
  • New media community radio

    Hallett, Lawrie (Palgrave, 2012-02-14)
  • Book review: Stoller, classical music radio in the United Kingdom 1945–1995

    Hallett, Lawrie (Taylor & Francis, 2018-02-01)
    book review
  • The changing context of community radio

    Hallett, Lawrie (Bloomsbury, 2023-04-30)
    The modern-day concept of community radio, as a subset of wider community media (sometimes referred to as alternative media) , relates to an international phenomenon with roots dating back to the immediate post-war period. Over time, its objectives and defining characteristics have evolved through practice and have gradually come to be codified though the work of a combination of practitioners, academics and regulators. Predating the digital and social media era (see Lewis 1984) , community radio, particularly in the twenty-first century, has witnessed not only a variety of evolving challenges, but also a range of emerging opportunities within a changing media landscape. Here, the inter-relationships between community radio and society are considered, particularly in relation to how community services can justify their existence through the provision of a broad range of community benefits. This chapter also considers the relationship between community radio and other forms of broadcast radio.
  • The community DAB handbook

    Buckley, S.; Hallett, Lawrie; Best, B. (Community Media Association, 2022-12-31)
  • Elinor Glyn and her legacy

    Randell, Karen; Weedon, Alexis (Routledge, 2023-09-30)
    This introduction to British Elinor Glyn's life and legacy reviews the cross-disciplinary debate sparked by renewed interest in Glyn by film scholars and literary and feminist historians, and offers a range of views of Glyn's cultural and historical significance and areas for future research. Elinor Glyn was a celebrity figure in the 1920s. In the magazines she gave tips on beauty and romance, on keeping your man, and on the contentious issue of divorce. Her racy stories were turned into films – most famously, Three Weeks (1924) and It (1927). Decades on the ‘It Girl’ remains in common currency, defining the sexy, sassy and alluring young woman. She was beloved by readers of romance, and her films were distributed widely in Europe and the Americas. They were viewed by the judiciary as scandalous, but by others—Hollywood and the Spanish Catholic Church—as acceptably conservative. Glyn has become a peripheral figure in histories of this period, marginalized in accounts of the youth-centred ‘flapper era’. This book reviews the cross-disciplinary debate sparked by renewed interest in Glyn by film scholars and literary and feminist historians, and offers a range of views of Glyn's cultural and historical significance and areas for future research. It features scholarship by Stacy Gillis Annette Kuhn, Nickianne Moody, Caterina Riba and Carme Sanmartí, Lisa Stead, Karen Randell, and Alexis Weedon and includes translated for the first time the intertitles for Márton Garas, 1917 film of Three Weeks, Három hét by Orsolya Zsuppán.
  • Towards a new history of literary media

    Weedon, Alexis; University of Bedfordshire (Routledge, 2023-08-30)
    This chapter argues that the history of literary media from the early 20th century to today’s immersive fictions should be viewed as three movements. Each movement illustrates a change in the expectations of storytelling within society. Such a history is not a linear timeline of technological development, rather it focuses on the innovative techniques in storytelling. Initially it is a move to increased reciprocation between the author and the reader characterized by a rise of fandom, author celebrity, and the development of audiences who cross-media in the first half of the 20th century. Then in the second movement there is a desire for interaction with the reader with examples from Choose Your Own Adventures stories and analogue games to interactive electronic fictions and gamification of narratives. Thirdly, it discusses the desire for immersion by the reader in the storyworld with examples from trompe-l’oeil architectural illusions to immersive virtual reality. The discussion of each movement references a range of examples which illustrate the key themes and motifs, and discusses the forces within society which have resisted authors’ and readers' attempts to fulfil these aesthetic aspirations. It argues that we need to undertake Christine Gledhill’s ‘micro-analysis of the conditions of historical practice’ to understand the complexity of this history. In two tables, it tabulates the characteristics of each movement and the socio-economic resistances which need to be considered as we trace the origins of literary transmedia storytelling.
  • Modern media adaptations

    Weedon, Alexis; University of Bedfordshire (Cambridge University Press, 2023-07-31)
    This chapter focuses on media adaptations from the late twentieth century to today, exploring how writers have responded to the ‘knowing audience’ with allusions to other media forms, or to the original novel, and have updated the story with intertextual references to issues in the news. For instance, modern versions of Collins’s two most adapted novels The Woman in White and The Moonstone have demonstrated the stories’ relevance to debates over gender identity, mental health, and decolonization in the twenty-first century.
  • The origins of transmedia storytelling in early twentieth century adaptation

    Weedon, Alexis; University of Bedfordshire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021-06-19)
    This book explores the significance of professional writers and their role in developing British storytelling in the 1920s and 1930s, and their influence on the poetics of today’s transmedia storytelling. Modern techniques can be traced back to the early twentieth century when film, radio and television provided professional writers with new formats and revenue streams for their fiction. The book explores the contribution of four British authors, household names in their day, who adapted work for film, television and radio. Although celebrities between the wars, Clemence Dane, G.B. Stern, Hugh Walpole and A.E.W Mason have fallen from view. The popular playwright Dane, witty novelist Stern and raconteur Walpole have been marginalised for being German, Jewish, female or gay and Mason’s contribution to film has been overlooked also. It argues that these and other vocational authors should be reassessed for their contribution to new media forms of storytelling. The book makes a significant contribution in the fields of media studies, adaptation studies, and the literary middlebrow.
  • Islamism in Egypt

    Mellor, Noha (Taylor and Francis, 2021-03-31)
    Focusing on Islamism in Egypt, this chapter argues that although the state can exercise the power of coercion, it has had to negotiate some of its power with religious groups and institutions, including al-Azhar, Salafists, and the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood. The chapter discusses the power dynamics among the various Islamic institutions and groups in Egypt, as well as the relationship between those actors and other religious minorities. The chapter concludes that the successive Egyptian governments have sought to tighten their grip on the religious sphere to curb the power of religious institutions while allowing them to substitute for the state’s welfare programs.
  • Book review: Paul Crosthwaite, The market logics of contemporary fiction, Cambridge studies in twenty-first century literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. xi 306pp ISBN 978-1-108-49956-9 (Hbk)

    Weedon, Alexis (2021-03-15)
    New Economic Criticism has worked across the disciplinary boundaries of literary and cultural history and postmodern economics. Crosthwaite cites as a starting point of this book Pierre Bourdieu’s criticism of neoliberalism as a programme aimed at removing all structures which get in the way of market logics – that is the commercial forces which drive sales. He sets this against Modernist aesthetic isolationism and pitches Frederic Jameson’s argument that the independent cultural sphere preserved by Modernism was over thrown by the invasive commercialism which pervades Postmodernism. His argument is that the literary sphere has been invaded by financialisation and fiduciary exchangeability which leads us to trust imaginary things from paper money to hedge funds and suspend out disbelief. From this position he presents his reading of the economic storylines in fiction, and the book trades’ constructs of price-points, genres, formats, agreements, prizes, and the performative stances of authors who interrogate the market economics of their fiction.
  • Stereotyping

    Weedon, Alexis (Princeton University Press, 2021-03-31)
    Expert contribution on stereotyping as a printing and distribution technology in the Princeton University Press reference book.
  • Theatre practices and meta-narratives: a reading of the illustrated gestures in the Chludov Psalter

    Poesio, Giannandrea (Centro Italiano di Studi sull'Alto Medioevo, 2019-12-31)

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