Disrupted Knowledge: Scholarship in a Time of Change is a collection of essays that reflects the important work being done by the faculty in the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University since 2020.
It focuses on the intersecting disruptions of Covid-19, #BlackLivesMatter, political extremism, gender justice, the commodification of LGBTQ lives, and social media influence. Chapters in this book interrogate the themes of discourse, materiality, and affect; neoliberalism and commodification; media, citizenship, social relations and objects; the cultural politics of (in)visibility; and self-reflexivity and auto-ethnography.
Contributors are: James Barker, David Bates, Alexander Brown, Briony Carlin, Deborah Chambers, Abbey Couchman, Richard Elliott, Chris Haywood, Joss Hands, Sarah Hill, Gareth Longstaff, Joanne Sayner, Tina Sikka, Steve Walls, Michael Waugh, and Altman Yuzhu Peng.
Gareth Longstaff is Lecturer in Media & Cultural Studies at Newcastle University, UK. His research is connected to queer theory, history, archiving, and the contours of how this relates to gay male sexuality, celebrity, pornography and the self. In his book Celebrity, Pornography, and the Politics of Desire he engages and applies this approach to self-representational media, pornography/sexual representation, and digital/networked archives of desire.
Tina Sikka is Reader in Technoscience and Intersectional Justice at Newcastle University, UK. She has published two monographs and several articles on a range of topics including gender, race, and health/environmental science; sexual ethics; restorative justice; and continental philosophy.
Steve Walls is Lecturer in Media & Cultural Studies at Newcastle University, UK. He has previously published Examining Male Service Work: Gendered and Sexualised Aesthetics. His research/scholarship explores advertising and consumption, fashion communications, masculinities and sexuality.
Publication date: May 28, 2024
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: ‘Then, There and Everywhere’ – Situating Disrupted Knowledge
Tina Sikka, Gareth Longstaff, and Steve Walls
1 ‘Pubs, Primark & Pasta-Making Machines’: Social Class, the ‘Covidiot’ & Neoliberal Narratives of Consumer Practice
Steve Walls
2 ‘A Huge Social Experiment’: Postdigital Social Connectivity under Lockdown Conditions
Deborah Chambers
3 The Colour of Technology: Covid-19, Race, and the Pulse Oximeter
Tina Sikka
4 The Pedagogy of the Distressed: Truth-Twisters and Toxification of Higher Education
Joss Hands
5 ‘This Is Britain, Get a Grip’: Race and Racism in Britain Today
David Bates
6 Traditional Chinese Medicine Is Fake: Politicised Medical Commentaries in China in the covid -19 Pandemic
Altman Yuzhu Peng
7 Representing the Stasi: Archives, Knowledge, and Citizenship in the Former German Democratic Republic
Alexander D. Brown and Joanne Sayner
8 (Not) Being the ‘Cool Disabled Person’: Queering / Cripping Postfeminist Girlhood on Social Media
Sarah Hill
9 ‘Self, Self, Self’: Masculine Modes of Sexual Self-representation and the Disruptive Politics of Jouissance on OnlyFans.com
Gareth Longstaff
10 Pandemic Dating: Masculinity, Dating Practice and Risk within the Context of Covid-19
Abbey Couchman
11 Post-lockdown Sex: Uncertain Intimacies, Cultures of Desire, and UK Sex Clubs
Chris Haywood
12 Pain and Suffering, Uterus Trumpets and the Wild Ride: Autoethnographic Aca-Fandom, Para-Social Relationships and Diane Podcast
Michael Waugh
13 ‘Standing in Your Cardigan’: Evocative Objects, Ordinary Intensities, and Queer Sociality in the Swiftian Pop Song
James Barker, Richard Elliott, and Gareth Longstaff
14 My Doubtful Cézanne Assembling Emergent Knowledges of Matter and Mattering through Painting-by-Numbers and Autoethnography during Covid
Briony A. Carlin
Conclusion
Tina Sikka, Gareth Longstaff, and Steve Walls
Index