I introduce this volume with distinct pleasure, since it marks the final step in a journey that started seven years ago, at the ICLA 2013 at the Sorbonne. The deci-sion to host the ICLA 2016 at the University of Vienna meant that, from 2013 to 2016, I had to face the biggest organizational challenge of my career, since I had the honour to support Achim Hölter, the chair …
What is going on when a graphic novel has a twelfth-century samurai pick up a telephone to make a call, or a play has an ancient aristocrat teaching in a present-day schoolroom? Rather than regarding such anachronisms as errors, Samurai with Telephones develops a theory of how texts can use different types of anachronisms to challenge or rewrite history, play with history, or open history up to…
How do various forms of comedy – including stand up, satire and film and television – transform contemporary invocations of nationalism and citizenship in youth cultures? And how are attitudes about gender, race and sexuality transformed through comedic performances on social media? The Cultural Set Up of Comedy seeks to answer these questions by examining comedic performances by Chris Rock…
There is a certain sense of strangeness to write the introduction to a book on undoing networks in voluntary self-isolation.1 The once open and connected world is suddenly disconnected and physically more separated than ever before. National borders are being closed, international travel is banned, people are encouraged—orsometimes forced with the threat of a fine—to seek shelter or stayhom…
In the fall of 2014, the small suburban Massachusetts town of Chelmsford was stirred by news about problems with their public school budget. The superinten-dent of schools announced an unexpected budget shortfall caused by various fac-tors within and beyond the school district. As an immediate emergency measure, it was announced that the school would relieve three administrators fr…
The COVID-19 pandemic has reorganized existing methods of exchange, turning comparatively marginal technologies into the new normal. Multipoint videoconferencing in particular has become a favored means for web-based forms of remote communication and collaboration without physical copresence. Taking the recent mainstreaming of videoconferencing as its point of departure, this anthology examines…