Cultural Studies

Product Design, Technology, and Social Change
A Short Cultural History
This cultural history critically examines product design and its development from pre-industrial times to the present day considering major milestones in the mass production of goods and services aiming to incorporate a more inclusive worldview than traditional surveys of the topic.
The breadth and versatility of product design through history has been profound. Products have long supported the integration and interpretation of emerging technologies into our lives. These objects include everything from tools accessories furniture and clothing to types of transportation websites and mobile apps. Products provide singular or multiple functions are tangible and intangible and in many instances have impacted the quality of our lives by saving time or money or by increasing feelings of personal satisfaction. At the same time many products have negatively impacted people and the environment. For nearly every product that makes it into the hands of a consumer there is also a designer who created it and someone who laboured to make it.
Examines the relationship between products consumption sustainability politics and social movements. This "pocket history" surveys product design from the agricultural revolution and the birth of cities through industrialisation and a digital design revolution.

Product Design, Technology, and Social Change
A Short Cultural History
This cultural history critically examines product design and its development from pre-industrial times to the present day considering major milestones in the mass production of goods and services aiming to incorporate a more inclusive worldview than traditional surveys of the topic.
The breadth and versatility of product design through history has been profound. Products have long supported the integration and interpretation of emerging technologies into our lives. These objects include everything from tools accessories furniture and clothing to types of transportation websites and mobile apps. Products provide singular or multiple functions are tangible and intangible and in many instances have impacted the quality of our lives by saving time or money or by increasing feelings of personal satisfaction. At the same time many products have negatively impacted people and the environment. For nearly every product that makes it into the hands of a consumer there is also a designer who created it and someone who laboured to make it.
Examines the relationship between products consumption sustainability politics and social movements. This "pocket history" surveys product design from the agricultural revolution and the birth of cities through industrialisation and a digital design revolution.

Engaging youth students in community issues: The efficacy of a citizenship education programme in Kenya
This article explores the implementation and impact of a local democracy programme as a citizenship education framework in Kenya. Focusing on the pedagogical approach of ‘Transmission Transaction and Reflection’ in Kenya it examines how secondary students engage with local democratic governance and societal issues by creating and distributing reports in their newsletters. The study reveals the benefits and challenges of integrating citizenship education into the curriculum highlighting the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application and demonstrates that experiential learning activities such as student-led reporting can significantly enhance students’ understanding of democratic values and active citizenship. It underscores the necessity of bridging the theoretical–practical divide to effectively prepare students for their roles as engaged empowered and ethical citizens. These valuable insights into pedagogical strategies can foster more inclusive and participatory citizenship education in Kenya and similar African contexts.

Encountering the Plague
Humanities Takes on the Pandemic
This edited collection features fourteen newly commissioned articles each of which responds to the theme of plague from different disciplinary perspectives. Contributors focus on the effects of COVID-19 on everyday life drawing also on insights from different historical experiences of plague as a way of exploring human responses to epidemics past and present.
Each chapter opens with a different illustration that serves as a source for subsequent discussion enabling readers to make connections between everyday objects experiences and broader critical debates about plague and its impact on humanity. Thought-provoking commentaries stem from a variety of humanities disciplines including archaeology electronic literature history linguistics media and cultural studies and musicology.
Encountering the Plague explores ways in which humanities research can play a meaningful role in key social and political debates and provides compelling examples of how the past can inform our understanding of the present.

Outback
Westerns in Australian Cinema
Focusing on the incidence of the ‘Westerns’ film genre in the 120-odd years of Australian cinema history exploring how the American genre has been adapted to the changing Australian social political and cultural contexts of their production including the shifting emphases in the representation of the Indigenous population.
The idea for the book came to the author while he was writing two recent articles. One was an essay for Screen Education on the western in Australian cinema of the 21st century; the other piece was the review of a book entitled Film and the Historian for the online journal Inside Story . Between the two he saw the interesting prospect of a book-length study of the role of the western genre in Australia’s changing political and cultural history over the last century – and the ways in which film can without didacticism provide evidence of such change. Key matters include the changing attitudes to and representation of Indigenous peoples and of women's roles in Australian Westerns.
When one considers that the longest narrative film then seen in Australia and quite possibly the world was Charles Tait’s The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) it is clear that Australia has some serious history in the genre and Kelly has ridden again in Justin Kurzel’s 2020 adaptation of Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang.

Representation of the Plague in Ancient Greek and Byzantine Texts and Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Plagues occurred several times in history and were also often described in literary contexts. In his essay the author addresses these issues exploring in particular the question of what ancient texts can still tell us today in terms of responses to the current pandemic.

Repetition and Revision: The Plague, ‘St James’ and the Humanities in Times of Crisis
This chapter examines the way in which fictional accounts of plague can tell us much about human experience of a pandemic. Examining the inter-relationship between Albert Camus's 1947 novel The Plague and the blues song ‘St James Infirmary’ the chapter explores the way in these texts meaningfully engage with human emotions and help people deal with encounters with plague. The chapter reiterates the importance of arts and culture in everyday life and examines the new creative ways of thinking about the arts and culture as they illuminate and reflect on the spread and proliferation of viruses.

‘Let every man drinke in his own cup, and let none trust the breath of his brother’: Encountering Plague in Early Modern Port Cities
This chapter explores the social and spatial ramifications of plague in early modern towns and cities with special reference to intoxicants and intoxicating spaces. Focussing on the cases of Amsterdam Hamburg London and Stockholm –all of which experienced multiple ‘visitations’ during the so-called second plague pandemic – it explores the implications of disease with no cure for the use and governance of urban spaces (especially those designed for sociability such as alehouses and coffeehouses) and considers the role of intoxicants both old and new in medical repertoires.