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"Urbanization Fiction."
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\"It's a city built upwards, not across--where streets are built upon streets, buildings upon buildings. A city that the Ministry rules from the sunlit summit, and where the forsaken lurk in the darkness of Under. Rojan Dizon doesn't mind staying in the shadows, because he's got things to hide. Things like being a pain-mage, with the forbidden power to draw magic from pain. But he can't hide for ever. Because when Rojan stumbles upon the secrets lurking in the depths of the Pit, the fate of Mahala will depend on him using his magic. And unlucky for Rojan--this is going to hurt.\"-- P. [4] of cover.
Book
Thieves in retirement : a novel
Hamdi Abu Golayyel offers a striking portrait of a marginalized Egyptian community, bringing to life the absurd and tragic characters who occupy the margins of society while paying tribute to a historical Cairene neighborhood.
eBook
A Growing Disconnection From Nature Is Evident in Cultural Products
Human connection with nature is widely believed to be in decline even though empirical evidence is scarce on the magnitude and historical pattern of the change. Studying works of popular culture in English throughout the 20th century and later, we have documented a cultural shift away from nature that begins in the 1950s. Since then, references to nature have been decreasing steadily in fiction books, song lyrics, and film storylines, whereas references to the human-made environment have not. The observed temporal pattern is consistent with the explanatory role of increased virtual and indoors recreation options (e.g., television, video games) in the disconnect from nature, and it is inconsistent with a pure urbanization account. These findings are cause for concern, not only because they imply foregone physical and psychological benefits from engagement with nature, but also because cultural products are agents of socialization that can evoke curiosity, respect, and concern for the natural world.
Journal Article
Writing the Black Diasporic City in the Age of Globalization
Writing the Black Diasporic City in the Age of Globalization theorizes the city as a generative, “semicircular” social space, where the changes of globalization are most profoundly experienced. The fictive accounts analyzed here configure cities as spaces where movement is simultaneously restrictive and liberating, and where life prospects are at once promising and daunting. In their depictions of the urban experiences of peoples of African descent, writers and other creative artists offer a complex set of renditions of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Black urban citizens’ experience in European or Euro-dominated cities such as Boston, London, New York, and Toronto, as well as Global South cities such as Accra, Kingston, and Lagos—that emerged out of colonial domination, and which have emerged as hubs of current globalization. Writing the Black Diasporic City draws on critical tools of classical postcolonial studies as well as those of globalization studies to read works by Ama Ata Aidoo, Amma Darko, Marlon James, Cecil Foster, Zadie Smith, Michael Thomas, Chika Unigwe, and other contemporary writers. The book also engages the television series Call the Midwife , the Canada carnival celebration Caribana, and the film series Small Axe to show how cities are characterized as open, complicated spaces that are constantly shifting. Cities collapse boundaries, allowing for both haunting and healing, and they can sever the connection from kin and community, or create new connections.
eBook
Criminal Investigation on Film
This chapter contains sections titled:
Detecting the Genre
The Classical Sleuth
Hard‐boiled Private Eyes
The Police Detective
The Cop Action Hero
The Lawyer
The Criminalist
“Other” Detectives
Conclusion
Book Chapter
Urban growth simulation in different scenarios using the SLEUTH model: A case study of Hefei, East China
As uncontrolled urban growth has increasingly challenged the sustainable use of urban land, it is critically important to model urban growth from different perspectives. Using the SLEUTH (Slope, Land use, Exclusion, Urban, Transportation, and Hill-shade) model, the historical data of Hefei in 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015 were collected and input to simulate urban growth from 2015 to 2040. Three different urban growth scenarios were considered, namely a historical growth scenario, an urban planning growth scenario, and a land suitability growth scenario. Prediction results show that by 2040 urban built-up land would increase to 1434 km2 in the historical growth scenario, to 1190 km2 in the urban planning growth scenario, and to 1217 km2 in the land suitability growth scenario. We conclude that (1) exclusion layers without effective limits might result in unreasonable prediction of future built-up land; (2) based on the general land use map, the urban growth prediction took the governmental policies into account and could reveal the development hotspots in urban planning; and (3) the land suitability scenario prediction was the result of the trade-off between ecological land and built-up land as it used the MCR -based (minimum cumulative resistance model) land suitability assessment result. It would help to form a compact urban space and avoid excessive protection of farmland and ecological land. Findings derived from this study may provide urban planners with interesting insights on formulating urban planning strategies.
Journal Article
Industrial Heritage Protection from the Perspective of Spatial Narrative
Industrial heritage has historical and cultural value and reuse potential. Urban industrialization has a significant social influence on place identity and emotional identity. Shougang Science Fiction Industrial Park (hereinafter referred to as “Shougang Park”) serves as one of the first pilot projects for the transformation of old industrial areas in China. This study examines Shougang Park through a spatial narrative lens, analyzing its industrial heritage via the “author-text-reader” framework. Research reveals the specific implications of the three dimensions and the connections behind them. The findings offer practical strategies for experiential tourism design and adaptive reuse planning, while establishing theoretical models applicable to global post-industrial heritage revitalization.
Journal Article
Urban Ecocriticism and Kolkata's Metamorphosis: A Narrative Exploration of Environmental Crisis in Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland
The lowland unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly transforming Kolkata, where unchecked industrialisation and urbanisation have significantly impacted the city's ecosystem. The study delves into the theory of \"Urban Ecocriticism\", which examines the intersection of literature, cities, and the environment. The focus is on Kolkata, known as the \"City of Joy,\" and how it is changing due to increased population and demands for resources. The novel serves as evidence of Kolkata's environmental crisis as a symptom of broader societal issues, highlighting themes of environmental justice, sustainability, and the need for alternative development models. This paper posits that Lahiri's depiction of Kolkata's transformation is intricately linked to the environmental challenges experienced by the metropolis. This study employs the framework of urban ecocriticism to assess how pollution, the loss of green areas, and the depletion of natural resources are represented in the novel as effects of urbanisation on Kolkata's ecosystems. The discussion connects the novel's local concerns to global conversations about urban ecology and the fight for a more just and sustainable future. The paper investigates the impact of urbanisation on the city's ecological balance and analyses the author's portrayal of the consequences of rapid development on the natural environment. In addition to describing the city and its surroundings, the study also discusses how infrastructure development threatens nature. The study suggests how a work of fiction can also aid in understanding the actual environmental changes taking place in a metropolis like Kolkata.
Journal Article
The Anthropocene and Apocalypticism in Jeet Thayil’s Low
Jeet Thayil's Low is based on the central theme of grief and agony, which the protagonist, Dom, faces after the sudden loss of his wife, Aki. In search of a haven, he runs to Mumbai, which mirrors the broken protagonist. Along with Dom's struggle to find a clean water source to immerse Aki's ashes, Thayil presents various major environmental concerns like pollution, global warming, the rising sea level, waste management, etc., which can be traced back to the Anthropocene. He also warns against an impending apocalypse. This study addresses the ecocritical elements in Thayil's Low, the representation of urban space plagued by ecological hazards, and a possible global annihilation in the future. Thayil, with a touch of personal grief, moves into the terrains of ecological grief and eco-anxiety as he portrays today's urbanscapes and warns about the times to come, which transverses into the realm of climate fiction.
Journal Article
Women and Crime: Exploring the Role of Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Constructions of Female Criminality
This roundtable on women and crime was inspired by a discussion at a CUNY Dissections Seminar in April 2021, where Gülhan Balsoy presented her work in progress on Ottoman crime fiction in the early 20th century. The focus of her paper was a popular murder mystery series called The National Collection of Murders, which had been published in Istanbul in 1914. The protagonists of this fictional crime series were a mother and daughter known as the Dark Witch and the Bloody Fairy, who led an underground criminal gang living in a secret subterranean world beneath the city of Istanbul. While reading her paper the night before the seminar, I could not help but notice striking parallels between this fictional Ottoman murder mystery and the sensationalized media coverage of a 1921 Egyptian serial murder case, popularly known by the name of its alleged perpetrators, Raya and Sakina. In both the fictive Ottoman story and the Egyptian media coverage of a real crime, two sets of female relatives were presented as the respective leaders of a criminal gang that stole luxury goods from respectable families and turned their homes into human slaughterhouses. In both cases, the female gang leaders used “superstition” to deceive and trap their victims while continually outwitting the police, all against a backdrop of illicit sex.
Journal Article