Ocean-themed picture books are important educational resources that promote marine science literacy. At the same time, these picture books also carry messages about gender to child readers. Through an analysis of 100 ocean-themed informational and narrative non-fiction picture books, the authors uncover various ways in which ideas about gender are communicated to child readers, whether in relation to human or animal characters or animals with human traits and qualities. The article tests the hypothesis that marine science picture books educate children about gender in traditional, normative and binarized ways. The findings suggest that marine science picture books are male-dominated, with narrow, often stereotyped gender roles ascribed to both human and sea animal characters. Despite a male-dominated presence, the authors describe ways in which contemporary picture books might begin to fill the gaps in diverse gender representation in this genre.
{"title":"Whose eggs are these? Gender in ocean-themed picture books","authors":"Paul Venzo, Lara Hedberg, P. Francis","doi":"10.1386/jspc_00029_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jspc_00029_1","url":null,"abstract":"Ocean-themed picture books are important educational resources that promote marine science literacy. At the same time, these picture books also carry messages about gender to child readers. Through an analysis of 100 ocean-themed informational and narrative non-fiction picture books, the authors uncover various ways in which ideas about gender are communicated to child readers, whether in relation to human or animal characters or animals with human traits and qualities. The article tests the hypothesis that marine science picture books educate children about gender in traditional, normative and binarized ways. The findings suggest that marine science picture books are male-dominated, with narrow, often stereotyped gender roles ascribed to both human and sea animal characters. Despite a male-dominated presence, the authors describe ways in which contemporary picture books might begin to fill the gaps in diverse gender representation in this genre.","PeriodicalId":120325,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Science & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133066123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In contemporary Indigenous Australian fiction, all (non-)human animals, plants and the land are interconnected and interdependent. They are aware that they are not in the environment but are the environment. The planet and its non-human inhabitants have a creative agency and capacity for experience that demands our ethical consideration. In this article we investigate how Ambelin Kwaymullina’s Tribe novels and Ellen van Neerven’s novella Water empower environmental awareness by promoting sustainability and protection of the environment – within their fictional worlds and beyond. We argue that the human–nature relationship explored in these science fiction texts conveys the importance of Indigenous biocultural knowledge for resolving twenty-first-century global challenges. We clarify the role of fictional texts in the broader cultural debate on the power and importance of Indigenous biocultural knowledge as a complement to western (scientific) understanding and communication of environmental vulnerability and sustainability. Contemporary Indigenous Australian literature, this article shows, evokes sympathy in readers, inspires an ecocentric view of the world and thus paves the path for a sustainable transformation of society, which has been recognized as the power of fiction. Indigenous Australian fiction texts help us to rethink what it means to be human in terms of our relationship to other living beings and our responsibility to care for our planet in a holistic and intuitive way.
在当代澳大利亚土著小说中，所有(非)人类、动物、植物和土地都是相互联系和相互依存的。他们意识到他们不在环境中，但他们就是环境。这个星球和它的非人类居民有创造性的机构和经验的能力，这需要我们的道德考虑。在这篇文章中，我们探讨了Ambelin Kwaymullina的部落小说和Ellen van Neerven的中篇小说《水》是如何通过促进可持续发展和保护环境来增强环境意识的——无论是在小说世界还是在小说世界之外。我们认为，这些科幻小说文本中探讨的人与自然的关系传达了土著生物文化知识对解决21世纪全球挑战的重要性。我们澄清了虚构文本在更广泛的文化辩论中的作用，即土著生物文化知识的力量和重要性，作为对西方(科学)对环境脆弱性和可持续性的理解和交流的补充。这篇文章表明，当代澳大利亚土著文学唤起了读者的同情，激发了一种以生态为中心的世界观，从而为社会的可持续转型铺平了道路，这被认为是小说的力量。澳大利亚土著小说文本帮助我们重新思考人类与其他生物的关系，以及我们以整体和直观的方式照顾我们星球的责任。
{"title":"Being the environment: Conveying environmental fragility and sustainability through Indigenous biocultural knowledge in contemporary Indigenous Australian science fiction","authors":"Isabel Richards, Anna-Sophie Jürgens","doi":"10.1386/jspc_00031_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jspc_00031_1","url":null,"abstract":"In contemporary Indigenous Australian fiction, all (non-)human animals, plants and the land are interconnected and interdependent. They are aware that they are not in the environment but are the environment. The planet and its non-human inhabitants have a creative agency and capacity for experience that demands our ethical consideration. In this article we investigate how Ambelin Kwaymullina’s Tribe novels and Ellen van Neerven’s novella Water empower environmental awareness by promoting sustainability and protection of the environment – within their fictional worlds and beyond. We argue that the human–nature relationship explored in these science fiction texts conveys the importance of Indigenous biocultural knowledge for resolving twenty-first-century global challenges. We clarify the role of fictional texts in the broader cultural debate on the power and importance of Indigenous biocultural knowledge as a complement to western (scientific) understanding and communication of environmental vulnerability and sustainability. Contemporary Indigenous Australian literature, this article shows, evokes sympathy in readers, inspires an ecocentric view of the world and thus paves the path for a sustainable transformation of society, which has been recognized as the power of fiction. Indigenous Australian fiction texts help us to rethink what it means to be human in terms of our relationship to other living beings and our responsibility to care for our planet in a holistic and intuitive way.","PeriodicalId":120325,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Science & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126123413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Parth Thaker, Anna-Sophie Jürgens, Karina Judd, Anastasiya Fiadotava, Anne Hemkendreis, C. Holliday
This article explores how environmental knowledge about global warming and the melting of ice is communicated through humour in the computer-animated films Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) and Happy Feet Two (2011) and the educational role that ecocritical narratives can play. Bringing together approaches drawn from science communication, humour and animation studies, popular entertainment studies and the environmental humanities, we argue that both films communicate environmental fragility and awareness through comedy without ridiculing the seriousness of climate change, with humour serving to highlight the representation of climate change across both fictional and real-life contexts.
{"title":"Humour for change? Melting ice and environmental fragility in the animated film comedies Ice Age: The Meltdown and Happy Feet Two","authors":"Parth Thaker, Anna-Sophie Jürgens, Karina Judd, Anastasiya Fiadotava, Anne Hemkendreis, C. Holliday","doi":"10.1386/jspc_00028_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jspc_00028_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how environmental knowledge about global warming and the melting of ice is communicated through humour in the computer-animated films Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) and Happy Feet Two (2011) and the educational role that ecocritical narratives can play. Bringing together approaches drawn from science communication, humour and animation studies, popular entertainment studies and the environmental humanities, we argue that both films communicate environmental fragility and awareness through comedy without ridiculing the seriousness of climate change, with humour serving to highlight the representation of climate change across both fictional and real-life contexts.","PeriodicalId":120325,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Science & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128252540","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We explore themes related to societal concerns about robotics and AI represented in the first season of the current HBO TV series Westworld and compare them to those expressed in a corpus of similar length comprising Michael Crichton’s original feature film Westworld from 1973, its sequel Futureworld and the ensuing TV series Beyond Westworld. In the context of science communication, science in popular culture has most often been studied in terms of the influence it can exert on the audience’s understanding, awareness and engagement with science. Our analysis is framed in the approach of viewing films and TV as a ‘virtual witnessing technology’ and ‘social thought experiments’ through which they provide valuable information about perceptions, misconceptions, fears and expectations by the public on science and technology issues. Authors and filmmakers are considered representatives of society, giving a voice to those affected by developments in science and technology. Our analysis explores not only current perceptions and concerns on robotics and AI but also how that may have changed over this crucial period of their development.
{"title":"Representations of robotics and AI in Westworld (1973–2016): A sociological analysis of the imagery of science and technology in popular culture","authors":"A. Stengler, Antonio Camorrino, Anna Rutenbeck","doi":"10.1386/jspc_00030_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jspc_00030_1","url":null,"abstract":"We explore themes related to societal concerns about robotics and AI represented in the first season of the current HBO TV series Westworld and compare them to those expressed in a corpus of similar length comprising Michael Crichton’s original feature film Westworld from 1973, its sequel Futureworld and the ensuing TV series Beyond Westworld. In the context of science communication, science in popular culture has most often been studied in terms of the influence it can exert on the audience’s understanding, awareness and engagement with science. Our analysis is framed in the approach of viewing films and TV as a ‘virtual witnessing technology’ and ‘social thought experiments’ through which they provide valuable information about perceptions, misconceptions, fears and expectations by the public on science and technology issues. Authors and filmmakers are considered representatives of society, giving a voice to those affected by developments in science and technology. Our analysis explores not only current perceptions and concerns on robotics and AI but also how that may have changed over this crucial period of their development.","PeriodicalId":120325,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Science & Popular Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131976352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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