Theory and Praxis: On Launching Sofia Z-4515

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Ernesto Priego
Sofia Z-415 graphic novel cover and inside pages online preview

click on the image for an online preview

“A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.” -Jorge Luis Borges

My PhD discussed how technologies had helped define the formal characteristics of the medium of comics. An important contingent within the global field of digital humanities has denounced the need for “more hack, less yack”, as well as for practicing what one preaches. Though I believe that theory is a form of praxis, there are indeed huge differences between studying stuff and making such stuff happen. In my thesis I wrote about how different technologies imposed limits and possibilities for comics creation, publishing, distribution and reading, but actually dealing with such technologies directly to make a comic book is a different matter. Making a comic and editing and publishing a comic book are not the same thing either, but the latter gives you a privileged perspective into the difficulties involved, the obstacles that authors and publishers face before a book reaches the readers.

So when multilingual children’s book publishers Mantra Lingua in London offered me the chance of managing the editorial project of the English edition of a Swedish educational graphic novel for children, it was a dream come true. Based on an inspiring true life story, Sofia Z–4515 is a graphic memoir about survival and hope which centres around the persecution and murder of the Roma people during the Second World War. It had never been published or available in English before and it told a story not often heard before.  I soon found myself fiddling with professional image editing and desktop publishing software, applying for international funding, liaising with publishers, authors and translators, re-lettering the comic itself, comissioning two afterwords from two fellow scholars, collaborating with in-house designers and editorial and publishing staff, organising audio narrations, editing audio, annotating digital files for coding, organising PR, etc.

A further connection with my academic work and this project is not only formal but thematic. I wrote my MA dissertation about Art Spiegelman’s Maus, now one of the most respected graphic novels in the world, which tells the testimony of the author’s father as a Jewish Holocaust survivor and his own troublesome relationship with him and the process of making the book itself. There I explored how the comics language enabled and communicated processes of mourning, memory and working-through. I also participated in a permanent research seminar on testimony and trauma at the Poetics Centre of the National Autonomous University of Mexico between 2001 and 2004, and I wrote and published articles about authors like Claude Lanzmann, W.G. Sebald and indeed Art Spiegelman.

Needless to say, the Holocaust and comics is not a new concept. Even though most people will unavoidably relate the Holocaust and comics with Art Spiegelman’s Maus (and perhaps the X-Men!), this book, though not really comparable with the ambition and artistic originality of its main referents, is a special case because it centres around the persecution and murder of the Roma people during the Second World War. Moreover, unlike other comics  about the Holocaust or this period of European history, Sofia Z-4515 is addressed to younger readers, from ages 9 and up. There is a real need for educational comics addressed to this audience, especially now that most comics seem to be targeted to either adult readers or readers in their late teens.

Polish Gypsy Sofia Taikon (1931-2005) was 12 when she was taken with her entire family to Auschwitz.  Imprisoned in the ‘Gypsy camp’, she was tattooed with her prisoner number: Z-4515. Through a combination of luck and acts of kindness from several people, Sofia survived to live her story. It took her three years to recount her memories to Swedish writer Gunilla Lundgren, who collaborated with illustrator Amanda Eriksson to create a moving graphic memoir. This was an award-winning partnership which saw them receive the Artists Against Nazism Award granted by the United Sweden Foundation. Unfortunately, Sofia didn’t live to see the book published, dying a few months before the first Swedish edition was released.

I am truly honoured to have worked for Mantra Lingua and having played a part of this unique project by editing this graphic memoir in English for the first time. With their popular TalkingPEN, Sofia Z-4515 comes to life in a sound-enabled bilingual edition making it available to a wider, multicultural audience. The original Swedish text was translated by Janna Eliot, who also provides a truthful, moving audio narration in English. The audio narration is also available in Kalderash Romani, in the voice of Ramona Taikon, Sofia’s relative and Romani teacher and cultural activist. The book promotes good literacy skills whilst its retelling of Second World War history and detailed account of  persecution tie in with citizenship values. This makes Sofia Z-4515 an educational resource that fits well in the National Curriculum for Key Stage 2-4.

The book also features essays by Romani Studies scholar Dr Adrian Marsh and comics scholar Greice Schneider, helping the reader locate Sofia’s story within the British Roma Second World War experience and contemporary graphic memoir/autobiographical comics contexts.

It’s been a long and truly collaborative process involving the creativity, generosity, patience and hard work of several individuals, and I am very pleased the book will be finally launched on Monday 28 May 2012 from 6pm at the Free Word Centre, London.

I will chair the event with brief introductions by the book’s authors Gunilla Lundgren and Amanda Eriksson, as well as special guests  Dr Adrian Marsh, researcher in Romani Studies, University of Greenwich and fellow of the Open Society Foundation. We will also count with the presence of  Ramona Taikon,  Karin Sohlgren, librarian and cultural promoter, and Janna Eliot, translator and author. The launch and presence of the authors from Sweden was made possible by the support from the Swedish Arts Council programme for Swedish cultural activities abroad.

Refreshments and a live music set by Razlosko will follow. Razlosko play Roma and traditional Balkan tunes – lively and lilting melodies over strong beats and unusual rhythms. The band comprises: Sarah Filippi (vocals), Jeremy Halliwell (guitar), Sam McKeone (violin), Joseph Pogadi (cajon), Ana Reisinger (accordion) and Cathy Taylor (flute). They have had a long relationship with world music, particularly the music of the gypsy diaspora and all have played with the London Gypsy Orchestra.

For further information:
Free Word Centre: http://www.freewordonline.com/events/detail/sofia-z-515-book-launch
To register for this free event please visit:  http://sofiaz4515launch.eventbrite.com/

The event page on Facebook is at https://www.facebook.com/events/298616840226811/

If you have read this far, thank you very much indeed!

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The origins of Doctoralnet.com

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Tracesea_Slater

The systems, content, and services of doctoralnet.com have been evolving since 2007 when Dr. E. Alana James started to mentor doctoral students through to graduation. Very quickly her work for one University became mentoring for two others as well.  She found that her viewpoints and insights on the work to be done frequently overlapped from one school to another. She found herself spending a lot of time responding to the same questions over and over.  She saw that when dissertations went to committee it was often the same things that bogged them down – lack of understanding of the nature of the dissertation as centered on the study, lack of coordination between the theory, the lit and the methodology. Continue reading →

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Interactive Spectatorships: Explorations of Critical Film Viewing in the context of Digital Culture

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Dario Llinares

It is perhaps already a cliché to suggest that social networking has influenced contemporary society in innumerable ways. Yet despite this ready assertion, politicians, academics and media commentators still grapple awkwardly with the implications and effects of what might broadly be called #digitalculture. On a recent Question Time (@bbcqt) panellists and the audience debated whether racist remarks made on twitter should be a prosecutable offence – opinion inevitably ranged from total free speech to government censoring of the internet (good luck with that). The effects of digital culture, viewed through a theoretical and sociological lens, postulates both positive and negative effects. A more utopian outlook may point to the possibility of an era of increasing political and cultural participation derived from technological change and its attendant new media use. An idealised generation of globally connected netcitizens share thoughts, ideas and solutions, and could eventually break down archaic barriers of national, ethnic, racial, religious and gender identities. Yet the negative implications are arguably just as compelling. Digital communication may be making us even more atomized – a generation of agoraphobes who struggle with real world interactions. New media actually encourage us to submit to more subtle forms of control which derives from a digitally amplified yet wholly superficial obsession with the self? Does the brevity of twitter destroy an already limited ability to process complex information? Obviously I am only skimming the surface here of phenomena that offers scope for myriad philosophical debate (#pretentiousacademic).

For me one of the key effects of digital technology relates to how we conceptualise the ‘audience’. There has undoubtedly been a shift in the dynamic between producer and consumer with interactivity becoming a byword for contemporary media experience. This, in turn, redefines how audiences can be constituted as active or passive. Working as a lecturer in film and digital media I see this first hand on a daily basis in the processes of engagement adopted by the students I teach. Interestingly I began to see a paradox inherent in the clash between the increasing use of social media in education (and as part of viewing practices more generally), and a more traditional understanding of what constitutes the film spectator. In film studies pedagogic practice I would argue that there is an implicit understanding of what a cinematic spectator should be. This primarily begins with the prerequisite that films should be watch in a cinema – the darkened communal space along allied to a large projected image is implicitly the essential starting point. Furthermore, the viewer herself should be model of concentration, total engaged with the cinema image but not in a passive way. She is an active critical viewer interpreting and evaluation the narrative, thematic and aesthetic merits of the cinema as art. Or so one might suppose.

Even before the emergence of social media this construction of spectatorship seems somewhat idealistic. The active/passive dichotomy has been argued over constantly with regard to research on audiences. However, with the increasingly ubiquitous use of digital communications technologies – and there encroachment into the cinematic space – the ‘pure’ practice of viewing film is even more under ‘threat’. Film studies students are expected to forsake their everyday media practice in order to conform to a specific notion of viewership yet still retain an almost philosophical awareness of their interactive engagement. It would seem there are different kinds of activity and passivity but these are sanctioned according to binaries of old and new media, not to mention the generational difference between teacher and student, and the disciplinary parameter of film studies as a subject. It seemed to me that a failure to explore the effect of social media on film spectatorship ignores the very real importance and use of communications technologies in contemporary experience and also denies the possibility that such technology could be reclaimed as a tool to improve pedagogic practice thus creating more critically astute film students.

The project I have designed as an attempt to investigate some of these issues is based on a method of film screening that relays a live twitter feed of viewer comments back to the audience as they watch a film. The aim is to facilitate an immediate, real-time viewer response, thus facilitating debate and discussion without undermining the integrity of the viewing experience, and creating a stream of critiques that can be used as the basis for subsequent seminar discussion. Live blogging and twitter #chatterboxing during live events has become a key effect of social media use and is being actively encouraged my media producers. Film is perhaps the ultimate barrier for this kind of audience participation because of its ingrained connection to a traditional understanding of spectatorship. However, I feel that the research potential of the project it considerable in two specific ways. Firstly, in terms of exploring and improving the active engagement of students who study film. Secondly the project offers a new direction in re-evaluating the very concept of the audience in context of digital communications culture.

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The Psychology of Digital Professionalism

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Pravin Jeya

I have been the position where some people know me both offline and online. It seems to me that digital professionalism is management speak for something we do as a matter of course.

Cat talking to lizard

Our distinct identities only make sense when others recognise us as worth communicating to.

 

I have always considered myself an introvert, which may or may not come as a surprise to those of you who only know me on Twitter or through my blog. I thought it was much easier to communicate online than offline. So as the day of my first meeting with Sarah-Louise Quinnell grew closer, I found my stomach growing tighter. We seemed to have a pretty easy rapport on Twitter (I thought so) and I was concerned that when we met it would be like seeing someone for the first time. My brain would refuse to engage with my mouth. So anxious was I that I warned Sarah beforehand that this might be the case. But I was in for a surprise. As it turned out, Sarah claimed that she did not see any difference between my online and offline personality.

I had arranged for Sarah to present a seminar on social media and academia to the law school at University of Westminster. All through out her talk, I was nervous that I would be exposed as tweeter and blogger, which is not something I’ve discussed with my colleagues before. And I was (thanks, Sarah – no, really lol). The difference between offline and online communication became a topic of discussion and the chair (who happened to by my supervisor) asked me what I found. Interestingly, he reacted with surprise when I said that I found online communication easier.

Already, two proper academics, who I had come to respect, were suggesting that there might not be as a great a difference between my virtual and ‘real-life’ selves as I thought. If that were the case, this raises two questions. Why was I so anxious? Is there really any difference between digital professionalism and just professionalism?

Perhaps the answer came when I realised that a couple of people I knew offline were following me on Twitter. All of sudden I felt the same sense of exposure as in the seminar at the notion of boundaries being transgressed. I thought they would find out things about me that I had not yet shared with them. And then it occurred to me, this sense of exposure was not a new feeling. My whole offline life was full of those boundaries between different aspects. In fact, these two followers knew me offline in different ways and now here they were with the common capacity to know about the rest of my life.

There was not one ‘me’ that existed in the real world but several ‘me’s. For example, I did not share every detail of my life with my parents but, at the same time, they knew about the worst aspects of my life. I acted with different groups of friends in different ways. I was generally much more reserved with people I work with, until I had the opportunity to know them better and become more comfortable with them (or got drunk). I realised from my experience with Twitter that how I acted with people, and how much I shared, was only partly connected to the context. Whatever the context, it came down to how comfortable I felt sharing particular information with them. The context perhaps dictated the speed of opening up. What I found is that when people from different contexts interacted, it did lead to a further opening up, which is why I put effort into maintaining the boundaries in the first place. In that respect, the ‘me’ that existed on Twitter was just another ‘me’ in life, the only difference was that I opened up a lot faster, because my followers and those I followed comprised people whom offline would be categorised into different groups. The Twitter ‘me’, @notaphdthesis, was also the ‘me’ that blogged as Not A PhD Thesis, unsurprisingly. Was the ‘me’ who tweets and blogs a more true ‘me’? (I choose not to answer that question.)

But, of course, just as I don’t reveal everything to everyone in the offline world, I don’t share everything about my life online either. I may be more comfortable having a discussion about faith or 90210 in full view of phd and academic connections on Twitter than I would in real life, for example, but  I certainly do not talk about <censored>. I have even had second thoughts about sending certain tweets and blogs and deleted other and so many times I  have felt the need to apologise to people in case they get the wrong idea and/or are offended.

This is partly because I am aware that a future employer (or even partner or in-law) could google me and see something that reduces me in their estimation. In this respect, I have deliberately created boundaries online by using different versions of my name on different sites (Pravin Jeya is not my full name) or by setting the privacy settings on Facebook and LinkedIn. But it is also due to a general uncertainty about who else may actually know the information (i.e. security); I’m not too keen to be Sandra Bullock in The Net.  This really is no different to controlling who has access to information about me offline. If you like, the different offline contexts are like different privacy settings. In other words, the question that I ask myself when it comes to sharing online is “Am I comfortable or is it a good idea for my followers to know this about me?” and “Am I comfortable for anyone else to know this about me?” They are the same questions I ask offline, the only difference is that the second question is to how much I trust this person; online, the information is publicly available so trust may not necessarily be an issue or at least a different sort of trust. In a nutshell, I set up boundaries because, rightly or wrongly, I do actually care what people think about me.

I experienced this recently when I raised a question about dealing with procrastination on the #phdchat Twitter hashtag; I anticipated questions about what I should have been and the fear pushed to get on with my workload. For a brief moment, #phdchat became like an accountability group. Also, on Christmas Day, I was challenged by another follower/followee, @ConsultaGecko (aka Nathalie). when I was wallowing in self-pity on Twitter.

Having said that, there will be things that will never say online either as a matter as pride or, more simply, I do care about others’ feelings, privacy and reputation.

This post is not meant to be an argument for or against digital professionalism, because in reality there is no such thing as digital professionalism or even professionalism (unless I have completely misunderstood it). It’s something we have always done as a way of getting through the various contexts of life. But, even though we do attempt to be digitally professional, it is obvious that being on Twitter or blogging can lead to a blurring of different offline contexts. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Just as neuroscientific research shows that bonds between neurons are strengthened as more and more information is communicated, so the sharing of information between people whether online or offline helps create and strengthen interpersonal relationships. The more we communicate, the stronger those relationships are. If we are using social media ultimately for networking and collaboration, then we are in the process of developing relationships.

As Hegel describes the dialectic between each one of us, having a distinct digital identity is meaningless unless other distinct digital identities recognise us as worth communicating with and we do the same. In that sense, our identity is not something we build up in isolation but in relation to others. I am not just a PhD student but a student of my superviser at my university. I am a son, brother, a former and hopefully prospective employee, a colleague, a friend, a follower and someone to follow and so on. In each case, my identity is distinct but connected to someone else.

It is  relationships that lead to opportunities, including: a job (Sarah interning at the UN or being a human geographer talking to a law school) ; an article (a Hegelian/Nietzschean dialectic of the Wizard of Oz); contributors (my blog, From Tweet to Thesis); or crowdfunding.

Posted in #phdchat, academia, blog, digital identity, digital professionalism, higher education, micro-blogging, networking, sarah-louise quinnell, social media, twitter | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Have a Read, Help a Hen – How Social Media Can be Used to Raise Awareness …

Posted on December 29, 2011 by sarahlouq

This probably isn’t the type of post you would expect to find on this site however, it does show how social media can be used to network and connect with likeminded folk, who you possibly wouldn’t have come across using traditional techniques. I met Jo, the original author of the blog quoted below in 2010 on Facebook talking about Strictly Come Dancing. If you have ever visited my personal blog you will know I love Strictly and sheep. over the following 12 months I have come to learn alot from Jo about the plight of ex battery hens. This Christmas 1200 hens were rescued from a battery farm in Cornwall where, had they been left, they would have been sent to slaughter. We’ve featured posts about bringing offline and online worlds together and how crowd sourcing can raise funds for different endeavours, so as its Christmas I thought id share the story with you all and if you can have a read and help a hen by retweeting the link to the blog then maybe we can help find forever homes for some of these hens.

There are currently 1,200 very fortunate little hens sitting in a barn in Camelford awaiting their forever homes. Their miraculous last minute reprieve from slaughter truly sums up the compassionate sentiments of the season.

With the barren cage ban imminent and battery farms all over the country furiously emptying their cages of hens, December has been a manic month for rehoming. What made it more heartbreaking for us rescuers  is that any hens not rehomed would be going for slaughter. In Cornwall alone, over three re-homings in December, BHWT Cornwall Co-ordinator Michelle Boulton and her team had re-homed some 1,500 lucky hens.

At 7am, two days after Christmas, the dedicated Cornwall Re-homing team met at the farm for what they thought would be the last time to rescue 400 girls, before the slaughter lorry came the next day to take the remaining 1,200 away. It was something we had all been dreading, the joy of re-homing overshadowed by having to walk past rows upon rows of expectant little faces, knowing what the next 24 hours would bring for them. As we filled the final crate with the lucky ones, all of us trying to hold back the tears, Michelle suddenly decided that she simply could not let the remaining girls go to their deaths so in a moment of brilliance (or madness – you decide!) she asked the farmer if she could take them.  He agreed and within minutes the slaughter lorry was cancelled and the girls booked to go to Michelle’s barn the next day.

It was something of a mammoth task which, after the rehoming of the original 400 hens, meant rearranging the barn and stables to be ready to accommodate these lucky ladies, organising transport and help and, most importantly, vast quantities of feed.

However, all 1,200 girls are now safely housed in the barn, keeping Michelle very busy and eating about eight sacks of feed a day!

I appreciate not everyone is in the position to offer homes to these hens but you can help find homes for these 1,200 little angels by tweeting and facebook sharing about them, sharing this blog and passing on the word. Also, the eight bags of feed a day are not cheap so if you are able to donate a small amount towards their feed, we would be so very grateful. Within 12 hours of first asking for help with costs, Michelle had received over £300 from some wonderful, generous souls. Payments can be sent via Paypal to Michelle’s paypal account – mj4b@aol.com . Any surplus money, once all the girls have been rehomed, will go to the BHWT to help other hens.

People around the country have already shown so much kindness and support, both to offering homes for the girls earlier in the month and now by trying to find homes for these lucky 1,200. Their generosity and love has been quite humbling and has restored my faith in the kindness and compassion of our kind.

A final word then for Michelle who has shown dedication far and beyond anything any of us mere mortals could imagine. As the rest of us fell by the wayside, exhausted and emotionally drained, she has kept on and on and hasn’t given up until every last one of these girls was safe. She has barely eaten for days she has been so busy with the girls but can finally rest easy now, knowing she has saved so many precious little lives.

Originally posted on www.lifewiththeexbatts.wordpress.com on 29th December 2011

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