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Robots as social companions in close proximity to humans have a strong potential of becoming more and more prevalent in the coming years, especially in the realms of elder day care, child rearing, and education. As human beings, we have the fascinating ability to emotionally bond with various counterparts, not exclusively with other human beings, but also with animals, plants, and sometimes even objects. Therefore, we need to answer the fundamental ethical questions that concern human-robot-interactions per se, and we need to address how we conceive of »good lives«, as more and more of the aspects of our daily lives will be interwoven with social robots.

Gaming has never been disconnected from reality. When we engage with ever more lavish virtual worlds, something happens to us. The game imposes itself on us and influences how we feel about it, the world, and ourselves. How do games accomplish this and to what end? The contributors explore the video game as an atmospheric medium of hitherto unimagined potential. Is the medium too powerful, too influential? A danger to our mental health or an ally through even the darkest of times? This volume compiles papers from the Young Academics Workshop at the Clash of Realities conferences of 2019 and 2020 to provide answers to these questions.

Vituperation, disparagement, and debasement seem to have become part of the mainstream discourse in contemporary US-American media culture. Zooming in on a distinct televisual comedy genre, Katja Schulze explores the formal principles, media-specific realizations, and the cultural work of disparagement in contemporary female-led situation comedies. Subsequently, larger patterns of (gender-based) invective strategies and conventions that define the dynamism of this comedic genre come into view. Her study outlines case studies of popular sitcoms, like Parks and Recreation, Mike & Molly, and the revival of hit-sitcom Roseanne, thereby unearthing how the shows are able to stage humor as mass-mediated deprecation - a signifying practice with its own poetics and politics.

Can sound be perceived independently of its social dimension? Or is it always embedded in a discursive network? »Postcolonial Repercussions« explores these questions in form of a collective conversation. The contributors have collected sound stories and sound knowledge from Brazil to Morocco, listened to resonances from the Underground and the Pacific Ocean, from Popular Music and speech recognition.The anthology gathers heterogeneous approaches to emancipatory forms of ontological listening as well as pleas for critical fabulation and a practice of care. It tells us about opportunities, perspectives and the (im)possibility of decolonised listening.

Teheran-ro in Seoul and Mediaspree area in Berlin are pristine examples for public spaces with a history of rapid change in the context of broader political and economic transitions. Dahae Lee shows that in such a transitional context, the public sector alone is incapable to provide and manage public space. Hence, it engages private sector entities in the form of privately owned public space/s (POPS). By analysing the planning instruments used for POPS in both cases, their uniqueness as well as strengths and weaknesses are revealed. Based on the results this study offers a number of policy recommendations for cities that encounter similar problems.

Digitization is transforming our world economically, culturally, and psychologically. The influx of new forms of communication, networking, and business opportunities, as well as new types of distraction, self-observation, and control into our societies represents an epochal challenge. Following Bernard Stiegler's concept of pharmacology, Felix Heidenreich and Florian Weber-Stein propose to view these new forms as digital pharmaka. Properly dosed, they can enable new self-relationships and forms of sociality; in the case of overdose, however, there is a risk of intoxication.In this essay, Felix Heidenreich, Florian Weber-Stein, and, in a detailed interview, Bernard Stiegler analyze this complex change in our world and develop new skills to use digital pharmaka.

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 the complex mediality of this new form of social interaction. Connecting theoretical reflection with material case studies, the contributors question practices, politics and aesthetics of videoconferencing and the specific meanings it acquires in different historical, cultural and social contexts.

We are witnessing a worldwide resurgence of reactionary ideologies and movements, combined with an escalating assault on democratic institutions and structures. Nevertheless, most studies of these phenomena remain anchored in a methodological nationalism, while comparative research is almost entirely limited to the Global North. Yet, authoritarian transformations in the South - and the struggles against them - have not only been just as dramatic as those in the North but also preceded them, and consequently have been studied by Southern scholars for many years. This volume brings together the work of more than 15 scholar-activists from across the Global South, combining in-depth studies of regional processes of authoritarian transformation with a global perspective on authoritarian capitalism. With a foreword by Verónica Gago.

In American visual culture, the 1930s and 1940s were a key transitional period shaped by the era of modernism and the global confrontation of World War II. Christof Decker demonstrates that the war and its iconography of destruction challenged visual artists to find new ways of representing its consequences. Dealing with trauma and war crimes led to the emergence of complex aesthetic forms and media crossovers. Decker shows that the 1940s were a pivotal period for the creation of horrific yet also innovative representations that boosted American visual modernism and set the stage for debates about the ethics of visual culture in the post-9/11 era.

Game culture and material culture have always been closely linked. Analog forms of rule-based play (ludus) would hardly be conceivable without dice, cards, and game boards. In the act of free play (paidia), children as well as adults transform simple objects into multifaceted toys in an almost magical way. Even digital play is suffused with material culture: Games are not only mediated by technical interfaces, which we access via hardware and tangible peripherals. They are also subject to material hybridization, paratextual framing, and processes of de-, and re-materialization.

We witness an era with more screens than ever before, and within each screen, a multitude of visual varieties. Lisa Gotto investigates this medial diversity as a field of tension between large and small forms of digital image culture. This includes, on the one hand, the immersive potential of large image arrangements, such as digital 3D cinema, and, on the other hand, the compactness of mobile image forms, such as those of the smartphone film or the media practices of Instagram. Weaving together a rich variety of examples and sources, this book presents a multifaceted collection of essays that explore the transformational potential of digital media culture, contextualize its media-technical conditions, and reflect on its social consequences.

Technologies and techniques have informed artistic practices and discourses since the avantgardes' heyday, and their proliferation, now in an increasingly digital culture, has continually transformed the very idea of the medium in global contemporary art. The contributions from internationally renowned scholars, curators, and artists gathered in the present volume map and interrogate this intimate nexus by forging diverse pathways through the political force fields, technological milieus, and ecological environments in which both art and media are situated and interwoven in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As a festschrift, the book also pays tribute to the impact and influence of the art historian Eric C. H. de Bruyn's work.

Inspired by the success of the US Christian Right and the rise of the global far-right, ultraconservative Christians in Europe are joining forces and seek to reshape Europe. By assembling in anti-gender movements and sharing anti-Muslim narratives, they actively influence the political landscape and shape government policies. The contributors offer new perspectives on the protagonists and the entangled networks that work to abolish liberal democracy in Europe behind the scenes. This anthology is the first to bring together case studies on the Christian Right in over 20 European countries, providing a transnational perspective and an accessible insight for clergy, politicians, and academics alike.

High-profile events such as the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar have made one thing abundantly clear: Much of today's economic growth would be unthinkable without the low-wage employment of migrant workers. But which cultural, economic, and political infrastructures in the »source« countries make these types of migration possible in the first place? Based on multi-sensory ethnographic research in Nepal, Hannah Uprety retraces the practices of recruitment and instruction that - step by step - transform Nepali labor into an internationally marketable commodity. In doing so, she uncovers a migration regime that effectively turns local men and women into »migrant workers« before they even leave the country.

Studying the entangled histories of the areas conceptualized as Middle Eastern and North Atlantic World in the interwar years is crucial to understanding the two areas' respective and common histories until today. However, many of the manifold connections, exchanges, and entanglements between the areas have not received thorough scholarly attention yet. The contributors to this volume address this by bringing together various innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to the topic. They thereby further the understanding of the two areas' entangled histories and diversify prevailing concepts and narratives. Through this, the volume also offers enriching insights into the global history of the early 20th century.

In the Hobsbawmian long 19th century, gender and processes of sexualization and feminization have been crucial in the construction of the »Jewish Other«. Ulrike Brunotte explores how these processes came about by addressing imaginative, aesthetic, and epistemological questions. She analyzes how literature, psychoanalysis and the performing arts traverse and react to the ambivalence of racialized stereotypes. The »femininity puzzle« presents itself in two ways: first in the role of effeminization of the male Jew in antisemitic discourse, and then in the transgressive forms of femininity connected to Jewish women, especially the allosemitic orientalization in the figure of the »Beautiful Jewess«.

Hysteria, a mysterious disease known since antiquity, is said to have ceased to exist. Challenging this commonly held view, this is the first cross-disciplinary study to examine the current functional neuroimaging research into hysteria and compare it to the nineteenth-century image-based research into the same disorder. Paula Muhr's central argument is that, both in the nineteenth-century and the current neurobiological research on hysteria, images have enabled researchers to generate new medical insights. Through detailed case studies, Muhr traces how different images, from photography to functional brain scans, have reshaped the historically situated medical understanding of this disorder that defies the mind-body dualism.

Dualistic thinking has been questioned by some writers associated with the material, ontological, and affective turns. Yet, these and other writers linked to the >turns< have themselves reproduced dualistic theorizing. Caroline Braunmühl also shows that there are dualistic patterns in significant contributions to queer theory as well as Foucauldian diagnoses of the present. From a perspective sympathetic to the critical efforts made by poststructuralist and related theorists, she analyzes works by Sara Ahmed, Karen Barad, Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, Michel Foucault, and others. The book suggests specific alternatives to dualistic as well as identitarian ways of framing conceptual pairs such as matter/mind, affect/discourse and negativity/affirmation.

During the early republican period, architectural interventions in rural Turkey took the form of social engineering as part of the state's modernization and nationalization policies. Özge Sezer demonstrates how the state's particular programs had a powerful effect on rural life in the countryside. She examines the regime's goals and strategies for controlling the rural people through development projects and demographic shaping to create a strong Turkish identity and a loyal citizenry. The book outlines the implementation of new rural settlements, particularly following the 1934 Settlement Law, with a geographic focus on two cities - Izmir and Elazig - with varied socio-economic and ethnic standing in the state program.

What makes up a public, what governs dominant discourses, and in which ways can counterpublics be created through narrative? This edited collection brings together essays on affect and narrative theory with a focus on the topics of gender and sexuality. It explores the power of narrative in literature, film, art, performance, and mass media, the construction of subjectivities of gender and sexuality, and the role of affect in times of crisis. By combining theoretical, literary, and analytical texts, the contributors offer methodological impulses and reflect on the possibilities and limitations of affect theory in cultural studies.

This book calls for an investigation of the >borderlands of narrativity< - the complex and culturally productive area where the symbolic form of narrative meets other symbolic logics, such as data(base), play, spectacle, or ritual. It opens up a conversation about the >beyond< of narrative, about the myriad constellations in which narrativity interlaces with, rubs against, or morphs into the principles of other forms. To conceptualize these borderlands, the book introduces the notion of »narrative liminality,« which the 16 articles utilize to engage literature, popular culture, digital technology, historical artifacts, and other kinds of texts from a time span of close to 200 years.

Across the globe, a growing number of social movements, such as demonstrations in support of equal civil status or reproductive freedom and against sexualized violence, show that women's and gender rights are highly contested. Against the backdrop of a long history of unequal rights implementation, the contributors to this volume deal with the questions of why and in which ways gender equality has become contested in various political contexts. Local case studies examine the relevant structural, institutional, and socio-cultural causes of the global challenges to equality. This book follows an interdisciplinary approach and unites scholars from law, linguistics, cultural studies, history, social sciences, and gender studies in diverse contexts.

Depicting the world, territory, and geopolitical realities involves a high degree of interpretation and imagination. It is never neutral. Cartography originated in ancient times to represent the world and to enable circulation, communication, and economic exchange. Today, IT companies are a driving force in this field and change our view of the world; how we communicate, navigate, and consume globally. Questions of privacy, authorship, and economic interests are highly relevant to cartography's practices. So how to deal with such powers and what is the critical role of cartography in it? How might a bottom-up perspective (and actions) in map-making change the conception of a geopolitical space?

How to study a media object on the web that is at the same time a documentary, a reportage, and a game which combines both fiction and non-fiction elements? Nicole Braida digs into the discursive and material structures and infrastructures of serious games, text-adventures, newsgames, interactive maps, and data visualizations, in which refugees and migrants become the subject of humanitarian discourse. Although the goal is to arouse empathy towards migrants, these »interactive practices« distinguish who is vulnerable and who is not. It supports the idea of a »migratory crisis«, which, the author argues, is actually the symptom of a deeper crisis of the humanitarian system itself.

Ayse Güngör investigates art practices between art and anthropology in Turkey, as well as the implications of contemporary art for those disciplines. She discusses various approaches based on anthropological theories on the forms of relation and theories of artistic practices on socio-political issues. Based on long-term research with contemporary artists such as Nil Yalter, Gülsün Karamustafa, Esra Ersen, Kutlug Ataman, Tayfun Serttas, Köken Ergun, Dilek Winchester and Artikisler Collective, this book analyzes the objectives of art and anthropology in order to determine new possibilities and divergences arising from this interdisciplinary confluence.

The increasing platformization of urban life needs critical perspectives to examine changing everyday practices and power shifts brought about by the expansion of digital platforms mediating care-services, housing, and mobility. This book addresses new modes of producing urban spaces and societies. It brings both platform researchers and activists from various fields related to critical urban studies and labour activism into dialogue. The contributors engage with the socio-spatial and normative implications of platform-mediated urban everyday life and urban futures, going beyond a rigid techno-dystopian stance in order to include an understanding of platforms as sites of social creativity and exchange.