What if Jesus Had a Sister? : Virginia Woolf's Messianic (re)Imaginings

Erik Fuhrer (University of Glasgow)

This essay unearths Virginia Woolf's messianic resurrections and re-inventions in order to show how Woolf provided a counter narrative to the patriarchal construction of Christological knowledge. The metaphorical resurrection of Judith Shakespeare in A Room of One's Own provides a framework from which this essay builds outward. The essay starts off, like Room, as a polemic call for gender reversals and then, also following in the steps of Room, begins to question and deconstruct gender binaries and sexual difference. It then tracks the de/regendered Christological body in Orlando and 'Street Haunting.' Woolf uses the messianic bodies to construct alternate imaginative histories and narratives, to give voice to those who have been denied it by the orthodoxy of the Church, to speak for, and through, those at the margins.

Christian Identities: An Imaginative and Innovative Quest for Heterogeneous unity

Judith Gruber (University of Salzburg)

Postmodern and postcolonial concepts of identity undermine traditional hermeneutical models of the history of Christianity. Essentialist teleological paradigms are replaced by approaches which stress the unstable, inconclusive, and hybrid character of all identity constructions. Against this background, identity can no longer be understood as a fixed, stable, and homogeneous entity, but appears to be continuously reconstructed and reformulated vis-à-vis the Other. Rather than being a singular, essentialist entity, identity is a discursive, pluriform product emerging out of innovative and imaginative appropriations of cultural signs. The history of Christianity, then, can be read as a matrix of plural, partly conflicting and antagonistic, Christian identities. Its pluriformity is juxtaposed with a perspective of unity – based on the anamnesis of the Christ event, Christianity claims and is believed to be ultimately one and unitary. This tension of plurality and unity can not only be historically verified. Moreover, based on the canon of Christian Scriptures as a compilation of differences, it proves to be a normative structure of Christian theology.

Out of the tension of plurality and unity, Christian identity thus emerges as a continuous struggle of innovative and imaginative reconstructions and transformations of tradition.

Eurovision in Moscow: Re-imagining Russia On The Global Stage

Paul Jordan (University of Glasgow)

The Eurovision Song Contest is often dismissed as a kitsch and not very serious event, yet even a brief examination of the contest's history shows that it has in fact had tremendous economic, political and socio-cultural significance for a number of European countries. Scholarly neglect of the subject is all the more surprising given that the event has the capacity to illuminate current socio-political debates. This article considers how the event is used as a platform for image building. It focuses on the 2009 competition which was staged in Moscow. Dubbed “the Beijing Olympics of Eurovision” , the 2009 spectacle was on a scale like no other before and was seen by media commentators as an opportunity to promote a more positive image of Russia to the international media and therefore the imaginations of millions of viewers. However, like the Beijing Olympics in 2008, a series of controversies and striking counter narratives dogged Eurovision in 2009. In recent years Russia has not fared well on the international stage. The deaths of Kremlin critics Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvenenko as well as the on-going unrest in Chechnya and the 2008 war with Georgia, which in itself was played out in the gaze of the global media has meant that Russia's international image has been adversely affected. Eurovision was therefore a chance for Russia to manage its own image on its own terms. This paper, based on empirical research conducted in Moscow at the competition itself and from previous research in Estonia and Ukraine, explores the debates surrounding the competition and considers how it can be seen as much more than just a song contest . Popular culture events such as the Eurovision Song Contest are opportunities for the host nation to take centre stage in the imaginations of millions of Europeans and because of this it therefore has tremendous significance in terms of raising a country's international profile.

Elucidating and Enigmatizing: the Reception of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in the Early Modern Period and in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries 

Efthymia Priki (University of Glasgow)

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili is a dream romance published in 1499 in Venice. Though complex both in terms of language and of content, it attracted the interest of many learned individuals throughout the ages, who interpreted and used it in their own unique way. This paper explores Hypnerotomachia's impact on the literature, art and typography of the early modern period and compares it to its reception in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, aiming to illustrate how versatile this romance is to different interpretations (alchemical, antiquarian, pornographic etc.) and, furthermore, to provide a view of the book as innovative in itself, re-using and transforming past literary traditions, and as an imaginative basis for the creative endeavors of later generations.    
The investigation of the reception of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili in the early modern period and in our age follows a parallel, rather than a linear, pattern, since the two periods are quite distinct from each other, separated by a chronological gap. This paper's aim is to demonstrate how each period's cultural background provided the right circumstances for the emergence or re-emergence of an interest in the book through an exploration of both primary and secondary sources, using the abundant Special Collections of the University of Glasgow, particularly the Stirling Maxwell collection and the digitization projects of Italian and French emblem books.   

The Phantasmagorical Imagination: From Singular Perversion To Curious Celebration

Douglas Small (University of Glasgow)

The aim of this article is to examine a particular type of imaginative vision, one that is specifically 'phantasmagorical' and characterised by rapidly transforming collections of imaginary and fantastic forms. The attraction of the monstrous, the grotesque and the strangely beautiful is at the heart of this phantasmagorical imagination and it produces an aesthetic based on collections of oddities and exotica. However, in different periods this aesthetic is viewed in markedly different ways. This article examines two eras with contrasting views of this same imaginative 'taste' - the eighteenth century and the fin-de-siècle. In the eighteenth century the phantasmagorical aesthetic is tied to the contemporary fashionability of curiosity. From fashionable collections of curiosities and 'curious' travel accounts there evolved an aesthetic based on wonder, peculiarity and spectacle. Contemporary accounts, though, show a tendency to criticise this aesthetic, labelling it as superficial and immoral, an attitude that can be seen clearly in satiric descriptions of collectors or curiosi such as Sir Nicholas Gimcrack in Thomas Shadwell's The Virtuoso. By contrast, fin-de-siècle writers such as Lord Dunsany, Oscar Wilde and J. K. Huysmans liberate the phantasmagorical imagination from the moral dubiousness it possessed during the eighteenth century. These writers have a propensity to celebrate their imaginative strangeness and excesses because of its obvious departure from bland normality. The phantasmagorical imagination is often depicted as an imagination that rebels against the common and the everyday and substitutes a more intense and more vital imaginative experience.

Expressions of Identity from Colonization to Globalization: Tracing Connections in the Process of Identification

Veronica Marie Whale (University of Gloucestershire)

In striving to address the fundamental issues of an age, the imagination creates narratives which not only display innovative ways of engaging with change, but may also give voice to current concerns.  As globalization increases and accelerates, social interaction is being facilitated on a grand scale and it is reasonable to ask to what extent and how globalization is affecting identity. 

The issues of identity being raised today must necessarily differ from the 'loss of Self' which resulted from the displacement of colonialism.  In The Location of Culture, Homi K. Bhabha outlines three conditions which are at the roots of the colonial 'process of identification in the analytic of desire' (1994, p.63). The first condition is that the Self is established and articulated by a recognition of the Other.  Identity is confirmed by the distinguishing differences and location of the Other and accompanied by a desire and demand to occupy the place of that Other.  Secondly, identity is split by the desire to occupy the space of the Other while simultaneously wanting to retain the essential qualities of the Self.  Thirdly, the Self can neither adopt the Otherness which it demands and desires, nor be assimilated into it.  Accordingly, identity is constructed by transforming the Self into an image of Otherness which must always display its difference and its splitting.

I shall use Bhabha's conditions as a framework for analysing issues of identity in two contemporary novels and to trace connections that may exist between colonial and global issues of identity.  The novels themselves portray contrasting issues of identity.  The Impressionist by Harry Kunzru illustrates the confusion of an alienated hybrid identity with an incomplete history.  The Inheritance of Loss by Anita Desai illustrates the security afforded by love, home and tradition and the disturbance to identity that occurs when they are threatened.

'Creative Bloody Futures': Discourses of Creativity in BBC Children's Production

Lynn Whitaker (University of Glasgow)

Mark Thompson's appointment as Director-General of the BBC in 2004 heralded a renewed institutional discourse on notions of quality, innovation and creativity, as illustrated in the plethora of sound-bite strategies by which the BBC now seeks to be framed: e.g. 'Fewer, Bigger, Better', 'Creative Futures', 'BBC Vision', etc. Despite this rhetorical emphasis on innovation, several commentators from both within and outwith the BBC have criticised the climate of creativity currently operational in BBC in-house production, pointing to a matrix of institutional factors that limit creative autonomy and therefore programme quality. Drawing on extensive interviews with the production community, and my own experience as a participant observer in children's programme-making, this paper examines the work of one BBC in-house production facility – BBC Scotland children's department – with specific reference to how notions of creativity and innovation are interpreted in both the production practices and professional discourse operational in the department during a time of unprecedented structural upheaval in the broadcasting landscape. It is argued that the particular inflection made of creativity in BBC children's television is structured around the commissioner's personal tastes which dictate a specific mode of address and construction of childhood.