TORONTO, February 16, 2006 -- The new issue of York-based TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, presents the latest research in contemporary cultural studies from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. This issue features studies of Canadian news media during the war in Afghanistan, representations of "whiteness" in Malibu’s Most Wanted (2003), Undercover Brother (2002), and The Guru (2002), "critical modernity" in the context of 1960s French experimental architecture, the life and death of Border/Lines Magazine, comedic renditions of Canadian "Heritage Minutes", and media narratives of Walkerton, Ontario's E.coli catastrophe.
In Killing Canadians (II): The International Politics of the Accident, Patricia Molloy examines the Canadian media in the aftermath of the April 2002 U.S. “friendly-fire” incident that killed four Canadian soldiers and wounded eight others. She identifies two conflicting narratives used to speak of the accident, which lead to the creation of either "victims" or "heroes” in the reader’s mind. Molloy argues that when war itself is the accident, we must ask whether the creation of “heroes” is desirable or even possible.
In “Malibu’s Most Undercover Guru”: Deconstructing Race Thru a Comical Pedagogy of Whiteness, Sean Brayton explores “whiteness” and its dominance as the unnamed norm of popular culture. He analyzes such films as Malibu’s Most Wanted (2003), Undercover Brother (2002), and The Guru (2002) in terms of how they parody whiteness while also subsuming real racial struggles.
Steve Redhead, in Towards a Theory of Critical Modernity: The Post-Architecture of Claude Parent and Paul Virilio, discusses utopian modernist architect Claude Parent’s partnership with the French critic of the art of technology Paul Virilio. Focussing on their experimental work on oblique architecture from 1963-1969, Redhead assesses their contribution to critical modernity.
In Dead Downtown: Writing the Cultural Obituary of the Alternative Press in Border/lines, Gary Genosko and Kristina Marcellus focus on the Toronto-based cultural studies magazine Border/lines (1984-1999). They concentrate on Border/lines “Junctures” section, which eulogized other journals, as a key to understanding the magazine’s situatedness. Genosko and Marcellus also outline the factors that contributed to Border/lines’ timely demise.
Katarzyna Rukszto, in The Other Heritage Minutes: Satirical Reactions to Canadian Nationalism, considers satiric reactions to the Canadian Heritage Minutes to suggest the possibility of re-imagining Canadian heritage and overcoming the limits of heritage discourse. She argues that the comedic rendition of Canadian heritage speaks to the incongruity between the dominant language of national identity and the varied and multiple experiences of difference and inequality that historicize and politicize counter-narratives of the nation.
Finally, Jody Berland, in Walkerton: The Memory of Matter, takes a multiperspectival look at the Walkerton E.coli catastrophe of 2001. She analyses the conflicting explanatory and temporal frameworks that organized media narratives in the wake of this "natural" disaster. She also provides a critique of neo-liberal environmental policy, and reflects on the challenges this case presents to cultural, theoretical and political approaches to environmental change.
For more information, visit www.yorku.ca/topia
