Cultural Studies

Reconstructing the American Dream
Life Inside the Tiny House Nation
Over the past decade Tiny Housing has become something of a viral sensation in the US. From Instagrammable enclaves for young professionals to vast municipality-supported schemes seeking to address homelessness tiny house sites are proliferating across the country.
This book takes a look at life inside the ‘Tiny House Nation’ shining an intimate light on a phenomenon widely celebrated in the mainstream media. The book presents textured narrative accounts from and striking images of Tiny Home residents their homes and communities while analysing the broader socio-economic structures shaping their lives. In so doing it paints a compelling and complex picture of a trend at the crossroads of several key social cultural and economic shifts at a pivotal moment for America’s housing future.
Fundamentally this is a book about paradoxes. The paradox of tiny housing offering freedom from the constraints of capitalism whilst at the same time remaining embedded within capitalist systems. The paradox of those who ‘go tiny’ both choosing an alternative lifestyle and those who are pushed into tiny housing as a consequence of limited choice. The paradox of Austin Texas as both a countercultural enclave and hyper-capitalist tech haven. And the paradox of tiny house ethoses in Austin as both centring community and shared assets and individualist libertarianism. These paradoxes do not necessarily sit in opposition to one another but are all bound up in the complexity of what tiny housing has to offer as an alternative way of living.
Despite its unattainability for all but the most privileged the American Dream - the home-owning society the suburban bliss the white picket fence - remains emblematic of the residential Good Life. But in the decades since the turn of the millennium the dream has been shrunk down expectations of a decent home literally reduced. Whilst for some this has led to forms of freedom and fulfilment it has also contributed to the normalisation of cities so outrageously expensive that all people can afford are miniature homes on the urban periphery. As this book shows both impacts of tiny housing are equally true and one does not cancel out the other. Tiny housing embodies an important societal crossroads. In some respects it offers an alternative to the prevailing housing status quo. In others it demonstrates what options have already been taken away from us.
from the Introduction
‘In the rest of this book we’ll lead you through our exploration of tiny housing in Texas. We’ll start in the next chapter by introducing some of the places and people we encountered on our travels to set the scene. Then the ‘pathways’ chapter examines the various conditions and journeys through which people end up living tiny. As you’ll see our attempt to produce a diagram of pathways to tiny living escalated into the production of a fully blown board game. We describe this diagrammatic board game to show the complex and nuanced personal and structural circumstances that lead people into tiny housing. From there we go into three empirical chapters focusing on economies of tiny living the materiality of tiny housing as domestic spaces and community culture. We then draw the book to a close and speculate about what tiny housing means for the future of domestic life especially in relation to the American Dream.
‘Throughout the book our descriptions are accompanied by photographs taken by Cian Oba-Smith who accompanied us on our first trip to Texas in 2022. The hype around tiny housing is undoubtedly driven in large part by the aesthetic cultures surrounding it. Tiny homes are the picturesque boutique upmarket cousin of mobile homes and trailers. They are distinguished from these other types of small housing as we’ll argue in this book specifically by their aesthetics. Anyone who ventures into the world of tiny housing for more than five minutes will see how thick this aesthetic culture is. From beautifully curated Instagram pages to countless coffee table books to Etsy shops dedicated to crafted tiny house merchandise a key part of living tiny is enjoying and embracing its aesthetics. By working with Cian we were able to focus (literally) on these aesthetic dimensions of tiny housing. However we were also able to capture some of what’s not presented in promotional tiny house materials; the constraints the challenges and the complexities that come along with the joy and the freedom. We’re positioning this book as something of a disrupted coffee table book. On an initial flick through it might not look too different to the photography books that valorise tiny living but you’ll already know if you’ve read this far that our approach is more nuanced. Our attempt has been to expose the ‘real’ Tiny House Nation. Not to attack it not to deny its beneficial impacts for a huge number of people but to inject some nuance into the debate so that we can take forward the positives of tiny living without normalising the negatives.’

Reconstructing the American Dream
Life Inside the Tiny House Nation
Over the past decade Tiny Housing has become something of a viral sensation in the US. From Instagrammable enclaves for young professionals to vast municipality-supported schemes seeking to address homelessness tiny house sites are proliferating across the country.
This book takes a look at life inside the ‘Tiny House Nation’ shining an intimate light on a phenomenon widely celebrated in the mainstream media. The book presents textured narrative accounts from and striking images of Tiny Home residents their homes and communities while analysing the broader socio-economic structures shaping their lives. In so doing it paints a compelling and complex picture of a trend at the crossroads of several key social cultural and economic shifts at a pivotal moment for America’s housing future.
Fundamentally this is a book about paradoxes. The paradox of tiny housing offering freedom from the constraints of capitalism whilst at the same time remaining embedded within capitalist systems. The paradox of those who ‘go tiny’ both choosing an alternative lifestyle and those who are pushed into tiny housing as a consequence of limited choice. The paradox of Austin Texas as both a countercultural enclave and hyper-capitalist tech haven. And the paradox of tiny house ethoses in Austin as both centring community and shared assets and individualist libertarianism. These paradoxes do not necessarily sit in opposition to one another but are all bound up in the complexity of what tiny housing has to offer as an alternative way of living.
Despite its unattainability for all but the most privileged the American Dream - the home-owning society the suburban bliss the white picket fence - remains emblematic of the residential Good Life. But in the decades since the turn of the millennium the dream has been shrunk down expectations of a decent home literally reduced. Whilst for some this has led to forms of freedom and fulfilment it has also contributed to the normalisation of cities so outrageously expensive that all people can afford are miniature homes on the urban periphery. As this book shows both impacts of tiny housing are equally true and one does not cancel out the other. Tiny housing embodies an important societal crossroads. In some respects it offers an alternative to the prevailing housing status quo. In others it demonstrates what options have already been taken away from us.
from the Introduction
‘In the rest of this book we’ll lead you through our exploration of tiny housing in Texas. We’ll start in the next chapter by introducing some of the places and people we encountered on our travels to set the scene. Then the ‘pathways’ chapter examines the various conditions and journeys through which people end up living tiny. As you’ll see our attempt to produce a diagram of pathways to tiny living escalated into the production of a fully blown board game. We describe this diagrammatic board game to show the complex and nuanced personal and structural circumstances that lead people into tiny housing. From there we go into three empirical chapters focusing on economies of tiny living the materiality of tiny housing as domestic spaces and community culture. We then draw the book to a close and speculate about what tiny housing means for the future of domestic life especially in relation to the American Dream.
‘Throughout the book our descriptions are accompanied by photographs taken by Cian Oba-Smith who accompanied us on our first trip to Texas in 2022. The hype around tiny housing is undoubtedly driven in large part by the aesthetic cultures surrounding it. Tiny homes are the picturesque boutique upmarket cousin of mobile homes and trailers. They are distinguished from these other types of small housing as we’ll argue in this book specifically by their aesthetics. Anyone who ventures into the world of tiny housing for more than five minutes will see how thick this aesthetic culture is. From beautifully curated Instagram pages to countless coffee table books to Etsy shops dedicated to crafted tiny house merchandise a key part of living tiny is enjoying and embracing its aesthetics. By working with Cian we were able to focus (literally) on these aesthetic dimensions of tiny housing. However we were also able to capture some of what’s not presented in promotional tiny house materials; the constraints the challenges and the complexities that come along with the joy and the freedom. We’re positioning this book as something of a disrupted coffee table book. On an initial flick through it might not look too different to the photography books that valorise tiny living but you’ll already know if you’ve read this far that our approach is more nuanced. Our attempt has been to expose the ‘real’ Tiny House Nation. Not to attack it not to deny its beneficial impacts for a huge number of people but to inject some nuance into the debate so that we can take forward the positives of tiny living without normalising the negatives.’

On the Communicative Turn in Philosophy
Exploring Intersubjectivity, Community and the Ethics of Dialogue
The book aims to give prominence to the way the concept of communication has been deployed within philosophical debates. It shows how philosophers have adopted this concept in their discussions on the issues of intersubjectivity community and the ethics of dialogue.
Although mainstream philosophers do not as yet consider the philosophy of communication as a branch in its own right instead subsuming it within the philosophy of language as pragmatics the concept of communication is broader than that of language. This book aims to develop the relationship between communication and philosophy further.
Mangion hopes to encourage others to conduct further research by aligning communication with questions that are of a philosophical nature.

The Neoliberal Self in Bollywood
Cinema, Popular Culture, and Identity
This book explores the consequences of unbridled expansion of neoliberal values within India through the lens of popular film and culture. The focus of the book is the neoliberal self which far from being a stable marker of urban liberal millennial Indian identity has a schizophrenic quality one that is replete with contradictions and oppositions unable to sustain the weight of its own need for self-promotion optimism and belief in a narrative of progress and prosperity that has marked mainstream cultural discourse in India. The unstable and schizophrenic neoliberal identity that is the concern of this book however belies this narrative and lays bare the sense of precarity and inherent inequality that neoliberal regimes confer upon their subjects.
The analysis is explicitly political and draws upon theories of feminist media studies popular culture analyses and film studies to critique mainstream Hindi cinema texts produced in the last two decades. Rele Sathe also examine a variety of other peripheral ‘texts’ in her analysis such as the film star the urban space web series YouTube videos and social media content.

Nuclear Gaia
Media Archives of Planetary Harm
Describes the transformations we have witnessed due to the development of nuclear science and technology accelerating policies interdependent on energy and military procedures that have led us to make a provocative claim that in many respects planet Earth is getting closer to the embodiment of the project we call Nuclear Gaia.
The book examines media archives and online platforms that recover data and memory and shape community knowledge of nuclear events from the distant and nearer past. These are the pieces of evidence that we are on the eve of creating new forms of social justice carried out by open-source investigations (OSINT) groups independent researchers artists media makers activists local communities and civic groups.
Thus analysing nuclear processes and their social and environmental consequences is no longer the exclusive domain of experts scientists politicians and the military. The authors hope that such communities’ practices and decolonial discourses combined with the critiques within our methodology as postnuclear media studies can also change the fate of nuclear industry victims by creating media space to discuss and regain justice as socially sanctioned and shared rules for understanding and using nuclear energy both in past and the future.

The Being of Relation
How does whiteness sediment worlds? How does it format individuality in the name of a neurotypicality that polices how one bodies and how one comes to know? And how does a poetics of relation shift the very logic of this sedimentation?
Edouard Glissant’s poetics of relation are bold in their call to “consent not to be a single being.” This transindividual consent born in the process of worlds crafting themselves in what he would call an “aesthetics of the earth” are felt in Fernand Deligny’s errant lines. These errant lines traced to move with the complex gestures of autistics over a period of several years in Monoblet France (1965-1970) offer an alternative to pathology and individual psychological assessment.
The Being of Relation brings these two projects into encounter exploring what else blackness can be at this non-pathological juncture where what is foregrounded is the very being of relation. On the way trails of whiteness are excavated and interrogated. The aim: to move toward parapedagogies of resistance in a logic of a poetics of relation a logic of neurodiversity minor sociality and the kind of difference without separability that refuses the binary that holds neurotypicality – as whiteness – in place.

Removing the Educational Silos
Models of Interdisciplinary and Multi-disciplinary Education
This collection was written by educators who are engaging in multi- and interdisciplinary education and are led by curiosities encompassing the collaborative nature of cognitive and kinesthetic engagement and awareness.
The chapters are designed as sources for inspiration replication and adaptation. They are a place to start or continue. Each chapter in varying modalities addresses interdisciplinary course development and implementation in institutions of higher education. The common themes that emerge in the collection include navigating administrative systems and solving the challenges encountered when crossing departments or colleges whether it be regarding listing of courses or the intricacies of course load on each professor.
Many chapters also provide detailed information on the nuts and bolts of the specific course or courses taught including syllabi lesson examples and both formal and informal assessments implemented. Multiple case studies are included in this collection with many chapters providing specific examples of students’ work.
Contributors candidly offer discussions of failures and successes of their interdisciplinary collaborations be it in course design lesson planning or complications brought in by unforeseen pandemics. Most chapters end with a section entitled ‘Lessons learned’ where experiences from the field provide opportunities for growth and continued exploration.
Readers can follow the book from cover to cover or dip in finding the chapters that serve a particular project or teaching endeavour. The varying writing styles and topics are in direct relationship with the exact nature of the inspiration for this text. The over-arching themes of collaboration (diverse backgrounds ideas and skill sets multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity) are the consistent touchstones that create a thematic self-guided journey of exploration through the book.
The chapters offer readers guidance and encouragement to implement some of the approaches described and inspiration to forge their own paths in the world of multi- and interdisciplinary teaching and research. The depth and breadth of collaborative possibilities are exciting and the editors’ goal is to spark further experimentation.
An excellent and practical resource for any educator hoping to teach his or her subject matter through an interdisciplinary approach and for all courses revolving around topics of pedagogy. The key audience will be graduate students and teachers in all stages of education from primary to higher education.

Islamic and Islamicate Architecture in the Americas
Transregional Dialogues and Manifestations
Architectural expressions resonant with Islamic traditions appear in diverse modes across the Americas from Andalusian-inspired colonial patios in Peru to the modern and contemporary patronage of immigrant communities in the United States and Canada. This volume examines the multiple manifestations of Islamic architecture that permeate the region’s built environment to invite an expanded framing of this architectural legacy via a hemispheric consideration of aesthetics narrative and patronage.
Chapters consider a broad range of topics from the migration of aesthetic traditions and construction techniques tied to the architectural forms of the Islamic world in the colonial “New World” to the direct contributions of modern and contemporary migrants in shaping a collective identity and the built environment.
By placing in productive dialogue sites that represent Islamic and Islamicate architecture across North and South America – two areas outside of the traditional conceptions of the Islamic world– this volume bridges transregional and transcultural gaps in the current literature.

Entrepreneurial Arts and Cultural Leadership
Traits of Success in Nonprofit Theatre
Traits is timely and needed. It provides a pathway to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset in nonprofit arts management students and in those in the nonprofit field. Traits is not another academic hypothetical imagining text. Rather Traits is a tactical centred on entrepreneurial leadership offering a concrete case example Imagination Stage.
2020 brought significant changes to the world’s business and social fabric. The nonprofit arts has been greatly impacted with the highest unemployment rate during the peak of the pandemic response to the slow and inconsistent return of patrons. Internally organizations had to address often long-over-due adaptations to the inclusive and accessible practices demanded by their communities including equitable pay scales diversity inclusion and access on stage staffs and boards.
Consequently many nonprofit arts organizations are now less viable; many have gone out of business; and most are struggling to adopt new post-pandemic practices that promote a new culture in their organization. The authors contend that those organizations that have survived are led by social entrepreneurs who were always ahead of the curve and able to adapt.
The authors’ underlying assumption is that while entrepreneurship may be innate in some in most it is not - even in those who lead organizations. But it can also be taught – just like any form of leadership. And this is what Traits does.

Hip-Hop Archives
The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production
This book focuses on the culture and politics involved in building hip-hop archives. It addresses practical aspects including methods of accumulation curation preservation and digitization and critically analyzes institutional power community engagement urban economics public access and the ideological implications associated with hip-hop culture’s enduring tensions with dominant social values.
The collection of essays are divided into four sections; Doing the Knowledge Challenging Archival Forms Beyond the Nation and Institutional Alignments: Interviews and Reflections. The book covers a range of official unofficial DIY and community archives and collections and features chapters by scholar practitioners educators and curators.
A wide swath of hip-hop culture is featured in the book including a focus on dance graffiti clothing and battle rap. The range of authors and their topics span countries in Asia Europe the Caribbean and North America.

The Social Object
Apprehending Materiality for Industrial Design Practice
The Social Object uses the methods of design history material culture studies and the social construction of technology to analyse the domestic spaces and objects in the homes of the middle class in India. The book describes how people make meaning of the objects they buy own and gift.
This is a book about the biography of projects and objects. The projects in the book serve as book ends to a detailed and affectionate account of the biographies of objects within the homes of the not so rich.
The aim of the author has been to silence the voice of the designer to allow the accounts of objects to emerge as periodic irruptions that reveal a hidden maelstrom of passion ideas and failed projects. The book opens with the biography of a project dealing with waste leading the reader to a very particular kind of object the bads. This object is illicit handled by criminals and in the writing by the author serves to invert the dominant discourse of objects as commodities. This book makes the case that the program of design is better seen as a democratic community where the householders the zietgiest technology and all manner of hidden agents collide to allow unforseen periodic objects to emerge.
Varadarajan argues against a simplistic universal account off the way we think about how objects are designed. As an enterprise the book was a journey to assemble the evidence - of places and objects - and observe the enactment of practices with the objects. It was also a project of speculation upon the possible ways in which objects come to be as local collaborations of action.

Decoding impermanent narratives: A study of transient migrants as digital influencers on YouTube
Students migrate from India annually for higher education in large numbers. Social media has become an essential network for disseminating information related to aspects of migration like student visas college applications residence and finances. YouTube engages vigorously in this dispersion of information. Many times the sources of these kinds of information are found to be transient migrants themselves. YouTubers and influencers like Tushar Bareja Nidhi Nagori Gursahib Singh Bani Singh and Saloni Verma among others have made a niche creating content and sharing information about the experience of being a transient migrant. Much like the status of being transient creating one’s brand on social media is both dynamic and fleeting which cannot be defined in a sense of permanence. The analysis of content created by YouTube influencers enables an insight into the definition of transient migrant identity. The topics that are covered in the content showcase the particular components of international student life that add to the concept of a transient migrant identity. The article attempts to ask the question of how the YouTube videos made by student migrants end up contributing to the transient migrant identity. It also attempts to decipher how the transient identity itself is packaged as a commodity to be monetized by these student migrant influencers on YouTube. Using theoretical frameworks of influencer culture social media and migration the article attempts to unravel the workings of YouTube in commodifying the transient migrant experience.

Cosmetics Marketing: Strategy and Innovation in the Beauty Industry, Lindsay Karchin and Delphine Horvath (2023)
Review of: Cosmetics Marketing: Strategy and Innovation in the Beauty Industry Lindsay Karchin and Delphine Horvath (2023)
London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts 253 pp.
ISBN 978-1-35029-943-6 p/bk $44.95

Tribal and the Cultural Legacy of Streetwear, G. James Daichendt (ed.) (2024)
Review of: Tribal and the Cultural Legacy of Streetwear G. James Daichendt (ed.) (2024)
Bristol: Intellect Books 240 pp.
ISBN 978-1-78938-808-4 p/bk EUR 29.99

Hang Ups: Reflections on the Causes and Consequences of Fashion’s ‘Western’-Centrism, Benjamin Linley Wild (2024)
Review of: Hang Ups: Reflections on the Causes and Consequences of Fashion’s ‘Western’-Centrism Benjamin Linley Wild (2024)
London New York New Delhi and Sydney: Bloomsbury Visual Arts 292 pp.
ISBN 978-1-35019-724-4 h/bk $103.50
ISBN 978-1-35019-723-7 p/bk $34.15
ISBN 978-1-35019-725-1 e-PDF $27.32
ISBN 978-1-35019-726-8 e-book $27.32

Butts: A Backstory, Heather Radke (2022)
Review of: Butts: A Backstory Heather Radke (2022)
New York: Avid Reader Press 310 pp.
ISBN 978-1-98213-548-5 h/bk $28.99
ISBN 978-1-98213-549-2 p/bk $18.99
ISBN 978-1-98213-552-2 e-book $14.99

Dress and Identity in America: The Baby Boom Years 1946–1964, Daniel Delis Hill (2024)
Review of: Dress and Identity in America: The Baby Boom Years 1946–1964 Daniel Delis Hill (2024)
London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts 242 pp.
ISBN 978-1-3503 h/bk $80.50

Latin American and Latinx Fashion Design Today: ¡Moda Hoy!, Tanya Meléndez-Escalante and Melissa Marra-Alvarez (2024)
Review of: Latin American and Latinx Fashion Design Today: ¡Moda Hoy! Tanya Meléndez-Escalante and Melissa Marra-Alvarez (2024)
New York: Bloomsbury 272 pp.
ISBN 978-1-35034-395-5 h/bk $42.40

Shirts, Shifts and Sheets of Fine Linen: British Seamstresses from the 17th to the 19th Century, Pam Inder (2024)
Review of: Shirts Shifts and Sheets of Fine Linen: British Seamstresses from the 17th to the 19th Century Pam Inder (2024)
London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts 311 pp.
ISBN 978-1-35025-296-7 h/bk $115.00
ISBN 978-1-35025-297-4 e-PDF $103.50
ISBN 978-1-35025-298-1 e-book $103.50

Textiles on Film, Becky Peterson (2024)
Review of: Textiles on Film Becky Peterson (2024)
London: Bloomsbury 184 pp.
ISBN 978-1-35002-655-1 h/bk $70.00

New Approaches to Decolonizing Fashion History and Period Styles: Refashioning Pedagogies, Ashley Bellet (ed.) (2024)
Review of: New Approaches to Decolonizing Fashion History and Period Styles: Refashioning Pedagogies Ashley Bellet (ed.) (2024)
New York: Routledge 228 pp.
ISBN 978-1-03223-542-4 p/bk $42.95

Fashion Projects: 15 Years of Fashion in Dialogue, Francesca Granata (ed.) (2024)
Review of: Fashion Projects: 15 Years of Fashion in Dialogue Francesca Granata (ed.) (2024)
Bristol: Intellect 225 pp.
ISBN 978-1-78938-893-0 h/bk $134.95
ISBN 978-1-78938-894-7 e-book $103.95
ISBN 978-1-78938-895-4 e-PDF $103.95

Luxury Fashion and Media Communication: Between the Material and Immaterial, Paula von Wachenfeldt and Magdalena Petersson McIntyre (eds) (2024)
Review of: Luxury Fashion and Media Communication: Between the Material and Immaterial Paula von Wachenfeldt and Magdalena Petersson McIntyre (eds) (2024)
New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts 214 pp.
ISBN 978-1-35029-106-5 h/bk £85.00

Understanding Fashion Scandals: Social Media, Identity, and Globalization, Annamari Vänskä and Olga Gurova (2024)
Review of: Understanding Fashion Scandals: Social Media Identity and Globalization Annamari Vänskä and Olga Gurova (2024)
London: Bloomsbury Publishing 235 pp.
ISBN 978-1-35024-896-0 h/bk £15.11

Fragmentation, taboos and advocacy: An examination of the Indian-Australian ethnic media
This article examines the advocacy role of Indian-Australian ethnic media and their efforts to address sociocultural issues within the Indian diaspora in Australia. Based on interviews with twelve media producers the study explores how these outlets raise awareness of challenges such as casteism dowry practices and sociopolitical divides. Ethnic media play a vital role in multicultural societies expressing cultural identity while managing relationships between minority and majority groups. However the findings show that financial and structural constraints often lead to editorial caution especially regarding contentious topics. This restraint is largely driven by reliance on advertising revenue from community businesses and government sources which affects editorial decisions. The study also reveals that these outlets often prioritize a broader national identity over engaging with internal divisions within the Indian diaspora such as those related to religion caste and class. The concept of multi-ethnic public sphere further supports the idea that ethnic media can promote inter-cultural dialogue though their potential is limited by ongoing financial challenges. This article highlights the need for greater institutional and financial backing to strengthen ethnic media’s ability to serve their communities. Supporting these outlets would allow for more active engagement with marginalized groups and internal dynamics positioning Indian-Australian ethnic media as key advocates for community interests within Australia’s multicultural framework and contributing to social change.

Experiences of self-gifting luxury fashion during the COVID-19 pandemic
Consumer behaviour is known to change during trying times as consumption has implications for the self. In fact the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a rise in self-gifting. Adopting a psychological lens this novel study explored females’ experiences of self-gifting luxury fashion during the pandemic. Given the under-researched area an exploratory qualitative approach was adopted and interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to understand participants’ experiences. A homogenous sample of four females were interviewed using semi-structured interviews to elicit rich data. Findings demonstrated that self-gifting of luxury fashion during the pandemic was a complex phenomenon that seemed to contribute to participants’ psychological well-being. The discussion links and extends the literature on self-gifting luxury consumer behaviour and consumption during trying times. It highlights implications for academic research individuals brands and retailers.

Contemporary queer fashion media as personal liberations: Qwear, digital media and twenty-first-century queer fashion shows
In the twenty-first century the emergence of numerous fashion brands catering to queer and trans communities has been accompanied by the establishment of notable queer-focused fashion media platforms. Noteworthy among these are DapperQ and Qwear which specialize in exploring the intersections of fashion style and the experiences of queer and trans individuals. This study delves into the history and intricacies of Qwear one of these contemporary groundbreaking queer media outlets. By examining this outlet we aim to unravel the multifaceted layers that distinguish them as influential conveyors of queer and trans sensibilities. To achieve our purpose we employed a historical research method incorporating the analysis of primary sources and oral history. Overall Qwear has become more than just outlets for style that is they stand as pillars of empowerment offering safer havens for individuals to explore celebrate and redefine their relationship with fashion. Sonny Oram’s founding journey of Qwear rooted in personal healing through clothing underscores the transformative power of fashion as a tool for self-discovery activism and solidarity within the queer and trans communities.

Analysis and optimization strategies for key factors in children’s clothing design
This study delves into the critical factors influencing children’s clothing design through a multifaceted approach. The investigation elucidates the most significant design elements by employing qualitative research methods the fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) and the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP). Initially semi-structured interviews were conducted with experienced professionals encompassing children’s clothing designers and related specialists with a minimum of fifteen years of expertise. These interviews served to gather valuable insights and experiences. Subsequently the FDM was utilized to assess the relative importance of identified design elements. Finally the FAHP was implemented to determine the weights assigned to each factor establishing a hierarchy of importance. The findings reveal that safety reigns supreme as the most critical design consideration. Following safety are comfort style elements and practicality. Safety prioritizes the utilization of non-toxic materials and secure fastenings. Comfort emphasizes breathable fabrics and textures that are gentle against the skin. Style elements encompass colour palettes patterns and the incorporation of creative design aspects. Practical considerations delve into age-appropriateness freedom of movement garments with multifunctional purposes and enduring durability. This comprehensive study offers invaluable guidance for the field of children’s clothing design. It empowers designers to effectively address the needs of children while aligning with parental expectations. Ultimately this approach propels market development and fosters children’s enhanced quality of life.

Turning puzzle games into fashion: Exploring personal outfits through symbol-based clothing assembly
The intersection of gaming and fashion opens a novel avenue for personal expression through symbol-based clothing assembly akin to puzzle games. This study delves into the transformative potential of integrating the mechanics of puzzles into creating personal outfits fostering a platform for individuals to manifest their distinctive style and creativity. The research scrutinizes the design process highlighting the symbiotic relationship between self-expression and individuality and the cognitive stimulation provided by the puzzle-solving aspect that enhances the wearer’s brainstorming capabilities. Implementing this concept poses a unique set of challenges and opportunities aiming to redefine the paradigms of fashion design. Ultimately this innovative approach seeks to revolutionize personal style creating a dynamic and interactive experience that resonates with the wearer’s identity and ingenuity.

Fashion influences of women university administrators
Women administrators are responsible for a broad array of difficult management tasks that affect their higher education institutions. There exist great societal expectations regarding women’s dress and appearance management practices. In this study we identify the clothing-related influences women leaders used to develop their roles as university administrators. We interviewed 36 women in high-level administrative leadership roles at a Midwestern doctoral-granting land grant university. Qualitative thematic analysis revealed four major influences: (1) the importance of complying with the (unofficial) university dress code or ‘uniform’ (2) the comparison negotiation and influence of others (3) dressing for their roles and (4) fitting into social and cultural norms. Through the lens of social identity theory findings revealed that administrators’ practices were negotiated through a process of observation contemplation of their own individuality and responsibilities and close identification of themselves as leaders within their specific university setting. Implications for retailers and aspiring leaders are included.

Visual merchandising in fashion retail: The diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) perspective
Diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) has been at the forefront of many disciplines in recent years. Utilizing three different aspects of visual merchandising in the context of fashion retail this study investigates the effects of (1) colours of mannequins (2) sizes of mannequins and (3) the presence of a rainbow flag as signage in a physical store on consumers’ feelings towards the store and related clothing styles in addition to their perceptions of the store’s commitment to DEI. Using an online survey data were collected from a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial experimental design with 382 responses. Findings suggest that mannequin sizes influenced the participants’ overall feelings towards a store in addition to mixed interaction effects among mannequin sizes colours and/or use of a rainbow flag. Discussion and implications are provided.

New Queer Television
From Marginalization to Mainstreamification
Though queer critics and queer theory tend to frame queer identities as marginal this edited volume draws attention to a dynamic field in which a wide variety of queer identities can be put on display and consumed by audiences. Cementing a foundational understanding of queerness that is at odds with current shifts in media production contributors present a broad variety of queer identities from across a range of televisual shows and genres to reconsider the marginalization of queerness in the twenty-first century. Doing so challenges preexisting notions that such “mainstreamification” necessitates being subsumed by the cisheteropatriarchy. This project argues the opposite showing that heteronormative assumptions are outdated and that new queer representations lay the groundwork for filling gaps that queer criticism has left open.
Thomas Brassington is a researcher whose work explores intersections of queerness and the Gothic in contemporary popular culture. Debra Ferreday is a feminist cultural theorist whose research concerns gender feminist theory sexuality critical race theory queer theory and embodiment. Dany Girard is a queer researcher whose work primarily explores representations of gender asexualities and queer theory in television and film.

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.

A Pandemic Crisis Seen from the Screen: A Reflection on Pandemic Imagination
Since the COVID-19 pandemic faded in early 2022 the agenda has been overtaken by other major issues such as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and this has led to a certain tiredness if not bare repression of the pandemic experience. However we believe it is important to revisit the cultural experience of the pandemic not only to reflect on how it challenged us and our societies but also to point out alternatives that are still relevant now even if other problems have occurred (see figure 12.1). In fact the very experience of the pandemic as a hyperobject might be worth reflecting on as we will attempt to do below in order to understand and deal with other continuing hyperobject crises such as racism inequality and climate destruction (Morton 2013). Our focus in the following will be on our research on electronic literature digital artists and the pandemic which we will present below including a focus on our chosen work by the artist Ben Grosser The Endless Doomscroller which will be put in relation to other works from our exhibition collection and documentary.

How Language Conceptualized the Pandemic
This chapter explores how people deal with the pandemic today. For the purpose of the analysis a perceptual-linguistic perspective was adopted using methodological tools proposed by cognitive linguistics. The general thesis assumes that when faced with a new experience humans need to give it meaning and the way they do that is expressed in language. Selected language structures appearing in the Polish media during the pandemic (2020-2021) were analysed. From the perceptual point of view how the pandemic was framed launched a category related to the medical domain which in turn triggered a sense of agency and responsibility and not – as before – external control understood as delegating responsibility to gods or higher forces.

Encountering the Plague
This chapter provides an introduction to the edited collection exploring the relationship between plague and the humanities through time. The chapter draws on the Hittite tablets ‘Plague Prayers’ to explore the social metaphorical and political impact of pandemics on humanity. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the structure of the book and a description of individual chapters.

Pandemic Discourse: From Intimidation to Social Distancing
The paper is about the COVID-19 discourse in the mainstream news portals in Lithuania presented as a critical review of contradicting approaches that developed together with the chronology of the events. It is supplemented by the linguistic analyses of the discourse concentrated on its semantics especially disrupted use of abstract notions.

The Power of the Humanities
This chapter serves as a conclusion to the volume summarizing the findings from the individual chapters. It also argues that the humanities often misunderstood as “soft science” or as being limited to theoretical deliberations can address not only philosophical questions but also the global challenges of our time.

Recounting the Plague in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century London
This article compares two first-hand accounts of the plague in London in the early and mid-seventeenth century those of Thomas Dekker “The Wonderful Year 1603” and Nathaniel Hodges ‘Loimologia or an historical Account of the Plague in London in 1665” with the aim of understanding how within a two-generation gap two Londoners described the plague and its consequences. It is set in the political and intellectual context of the contemporary literature on the plague in particular that of the treatises published in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century.

Decolonizing Islamic Art in Africa
New Approaches to Muslim Expressive Cultures
This collection explores the dynamic place of Muslim visual and expressive culture in processes of decolonization across the African continent. Presenting new methodologies for accentuating African agency and expression in the stories we tell about Islamic art it likewise contributes to recent widespread efforts to “decolonize” the art historical canon.
The contributors to this volume explore the dynamic place of Islamic art architecture and creative expression in processes of decolonization across the African continent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bringing together new work by leading specialists in the fields of African Islamic and modern arts and visual cultures the book directs unprecedented attention to the agency and contributions of African and Muslim artists in articulating modernities in local and international arenas. Interdisciplinary and transregional in scope it enriches the under-told story of Muslim experiences and expression on the African continent home to nearly half a million Muslims or a third of the global Muslim population.
Furthermore it elucidates the role of Islam and its expressive cultures in post-colonial articulations of modern identities and heritage as expressed by a diverse range of actors and communities based in Africa and its diaspora; as such the book counters notions of Islam as a retrograde or static societal phenomenon in Africa or elsewhere. Contributors propose new methodologies for accentuating human agency and experience over superficial disciplinary boundaries in the stories we tell about art-making and visual expression thus contributing to widespread efforts to decolonize scholarship on histories of modern expression.

Calligraphy in Mauritania: Creating a Lost Identity
This paper focuses on the role of calligraphy in contemporary painting in Mauritania. I begin by outlining the history and contemporary status of Arabic calligraphy in this country after which I trace the role of calligraphy in contemporary painting through the work of three artists representing three generations since the inception of a modern art movement in the late 1950s. I argue that the use of calligraphy in contemporary painting reflects an exploration of changing conceptions of Mauritanian identity as situated between North and Sub-Saharan African and between an Arab present and an Amazigh past.

Cybernetics and Postcolonial Utopias
This article argues that in the pre-1965 square-based abstraction by Mohammed Melhi Islamic art as a cultural heritage is mobilized as a space of both creation and re-invention only to be immediately destabilized with a larger project that seeks universalism by transcending national and religious belonging. He locates these abstractions within cybernetics and the language of IBM mobilizing them towards a vision of modernity that is not regional and instead argues that the fundamental question of the era was in his words “the common point between Human and Science.” This work connects Islamic art with a belief in borderless technological modernity as a predecessor to the later strategic nationalism of the Casablanca School. Yet these paintings are also a utopic vision of a modern world of connection and possibility that could exist outside of the ongoing enmeshment of colonialism – not just decolonizing but rejecting the grounds of colonization entirely.

Possessed: The Mystical Post-Surrealism of Wifredo Lam, Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar, and Ibrahim El-Salahi
This essay compares three paintings made by three prominent global modern artists: the Cuban Wifredo Lam (1902–82) the Egyptian Abdel Hadi El-Gazzar (1925–66) and the Sudanese Ibrahim El-Salahi (b.1930). Combining Surrealist techniques with references to mystical practices of their natal communities they express the state of possession of the non-white modern artist. Because of the asymmetrical power relations of colonization they were both ‘possessed’ by a European style of easel painting and ‘possessed’ by local movements that demanded nationalist symbolism. Within this demanding context it is no surprise that they decided to paint their dreams.

Between Art and Architecture, Modernism and Makhzen
This chapter discusses how two architects Abdeslam Faraoui and Patrice de Mazières commissioned artists such as Farid Belkahia Mohamed Chebaa and Mohamed Melehi to create artworks for new building projects across a newly independent Morocco. It considers how artists and architects collaborated to experiment with what a distinctly Moroccan modernism could be and it asks how these artist-architect collaborations intersected with state efforts to promote foreign tourism and repress those it viewed as dissident.

Dispersal, Decolonization, and Dominance: African Muslim Objects from the Swahili Sultanate of Witu (1858–1923)
This article examines four objects associated with the Sultanate of Witu (1858–1923) the last of coastal East Africa's independent Swahili Muslim city-state. The objects were removed from Witu between the late 19th and early 20th centuries and dispersed into British and American collections. They include: 1)an illuminated Qur'an manuscript in the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in London UK; 2) an ivory-inlaid chair in the British Museum in London UK; 3) a pair of carved wooden sandals in the Brooklyn Museum; and 4) a carved door in the Museum of Science Boston US. The study argues that decolonizing African Muslim material culture requires accounting for how present-day structures and institutions of power as well their everyday practices reproduce coloniality and dominance over these objects.

Kader Attia's Alternative History of the Grands Ensembles, from France to Algeria and Back
The French phrase “grand ensemble” designates a modernist residential housing typology consisting of the repetition of standardized units into vast-scale compositions. The grands ensembles were imported from France to Algeria by way of colonialism. At the onset of the postcolonial era the dense migration of groups of people in the other direction from Algeria to France where more grands ensembles were constructed to house them brought this episode of architectural history full circle. How have French-Algerian residents of postcolonial grands ensembles perceived metabolized and responded to this circulation of people and architectural forms in time and space? To answer this question this chapter turns to the collages of Kader Attia (b. 1970) a French-Algerian artist who spent his formative years as a resident of grands ensembles in postcolonial France. This chapter argues that Attia's collages tell a resident-centric architectural history of the grands ensembles across France and Algeria thus proposing alternative conceptions of modernity and its relation to vernacular traditions.

Tattooing as Subversive Archive: Safaa Mazirh's Reclamation of Tattoos in Postcolonial Morocco
This chapter concentrates on the photographs of Moroccan artist Safaa Mazirh and her 2017 series “Amazigh.” In this series of 13 black and white photographs Mazirh uses a multiple exposure technique in the camera to place North African tattoo designs over her nude or semi-nude body. She creates a multi-layered palimpsest that critiques colonial-era efforts to record tattooed women as ethnographic objects. The practice of tattooing has largely faded from fashion in Morocco as it is understood to be counter to Islam. Mazirh sees tattoo symbols as an expression of Amazigh identity that should not be forgotten. Mazirh's method of superimposing tattoo symbols over her own body contributes to the subversive nature of her photographic project that reclaims the past and also archives its destruction.

Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa
Presents new perspectives on queer visual culture in the Southwest Asia North Africa region from queer artists as well as scholars who work on queer themes. With contributions from both scholars and artists this volume demonstrates that queer visual culture in the SWANA region is not only extant but is also entering an era of exciting growth in terms of its versatility and consciousness. The volume focuses on artworks produced in the contemporary era while recognizing historical and contextual connections to Islamic art and culture within
localities and regions from the pre-modern and modern eras.
By framing this volume as unambiguously located within queer studies the editors challenge existing literature that merely includes some examples of queer studies or queer representation but does not necessarily use queer studies as a lens through which to engage with visual culture and/or with the SWANA region. Through four interrelated sections - Gender and Normativity Trans* Articulations Intersectional Sexuality and Queer SWANA - this volume probes several previously unexplored academic areas namely the intersections of queer studies with other fields.
Part of the Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series.

Gender and migration: A continuum of gender-based violence echoing across the Sinai Desert and into Israel
Gender-based violence (GBV) is widespread globally and is based on social roles. These social roles represent society’s expectations of men and women carrying out stereotyped functions and behaviours. These gendered social expectations vary across culture space and time. Drawing from an empirical study in Israel and building on the previous literature on these issues this qualitative and interdisciplinary article identifies various forms of GBV along Eritrean women’s journey from their home country into Israel. The empirical work helps to examine the findings of previous theoretical studies. This article establishes that there is a continuum of violence for women especially refugees and asylum seekers rooted in the standard system of oppression – patriarchy. This has triggered the flight and trafficking of refugees from Eritrea through the Sinai Desert and into Israel. The article argues that structural and cultural violence emanating from both the hosted community and the host community play significant roles in allowing the circumstances for GBV to thrive throughout the entire refugee cycle. What can be seen is the creation of multiple layers of vulnerabilities particularly the specific social–legal–economic marginalization of segments of the population including Eritrean asylum-seeking women. Reacting to this continuum of violence many participants in the study argued that it was necessary to adopt strategies to create a continuum of resilience and resistance grounded on women’s sorority support and agency.

Carving spaces of hospitality: Place attachment among migrant and non-migrant residents in a rural town undergoing rapid demographic change
This article explores the complex and evolving nature of place attachment in the rural Lincolnshire town of Boston a new immigration destination. Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with residents it examines the ways in which migrant and non-migrant communities make Boston their home how they react to change and disruption navigate (in)hospitable encounters and narrate their belonging in the town post the EU referendum which saw residents overwhelmingly voting against EU membership. The findings show that in the face of place alteration and turbulence both migrant and non-migrant residents demonstrate a nuanced and differentiated form of commitment to place and despite intractable systemic challenges actively work to bring communities together and reframe negative place narratives. Community leadership emerges as integral to the collective effort of creating spaces of hospitality. For migrant and non-migrant communities place attachment is a dynamic and fluid process shaped and constantly reshaped by socio-economic and political factors media discourses and experiences of hospitality/hostility. It is an embodied and emotional process that involves individual and collective discursive efforts to reframe dominant narratives material and social ways of connecting as well as pragmatic ways of distancing.

Infrastructure in Dystopian and Post-apocalyptic Film, 1968-2021
Dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies from 1968 to 2021 usually conclude with optimism with a window into what is possible in the face of social dysfunction - and worse. The infrastructure that peeks through at the edges of the frame surfaces some of the concrete ways in which dystopian and post-apocalyptic survivors have made do with their damaged and destroyed worlds.
If the happy endings so common to mass-audience films do not provide an all-encompassing vision of a better world the presence of infrastructure whether old or retrofitted or new offers a starting point for the continued work of building toward the future.
Film imaginings energy transportation water waste and their combination in the food system reveal what might be essential infrastructure on which to build the new post-dystopian and post-apocalyptic communities. We can look to dystopian and post-apocalyptic movies for a sense of where we might begin.

Heart to Heart: Baseera Khan in Conversation with Yasmine K. Kasem
A excerpt from a long form conversation between artists Baseera Khan and Yasmine K. Kasem about Baseera's inspiration and concept behind their poster “Muslim = America”. In this conversation Khan and Kasem discuss their experiences as American muslims the aftermath of 9/11 the lead up before and contextualizing islamophobia through Edward Said's writings.

Sa'dia Rehman's Queer Cartographies: Convivial Opacities
The work of queer Muslim visual artist Sa'dia Rehman (she/they) animates a queer call for no borders. These queer cartographic logics are clear in projects like Mihrab (2019) and The Land of Promise (2020). Through queer aesthetic strategies such as conviviality and opacity Rehman gathers traces as a brown visual commons that cultivates unforeseen affiliations. Their works of art are portals into queer theory committed to dismantling borders to prompting social re-ordering and to ungovernability. As a result she frustrates regulatory logics undergirding visuality announcing the possibility of another kind of visuality altogether.

Viscosities of the known and unknown <img src="UF013-001.jpg"/>
This collaborative poem and drawing series incorporates images and words to create memory maps. Playing with language recognition and embodied attachments the images and poems recall Arab feminist foremothers in speaking to solidarity community and diaspora.

Transing Contemporary Art: Aïcha Snoussi and Khaled Jarrar
Over the past decades trans has been mobilized to emphasize the unsettling borders and boundaries in that which is across or beyond. Akin to the instability and multi-directionality of queer trans in this sense provides a method of reading for non-normative subtleties and a resistance to categorizations fixed within hegemonic matrices of domination. In this chapter we take up the framework of trans for its potential in reading works from Aïcha Snoussi and Khaled Jarrar that we suggest benefit from an approach that unsettles the fixed and the singular. We do not consider these works within the context of the artists' gender identities but investigate transing as a method of critical inquiry into the works' substance. This chapter takes as a starting point the myriad of suffixes including and beyond - gender that could be attached to the prefix trans- to think expansively about how trans- can be queer.

Queer Heavens: Rethinking the Islamic Garden in Contemporary Art
This chapter examines the use of flower and garden imagery as indicators of spaces for homoerotic and same-sex encounters. Creating links between contemporary artistic production in the SWANA region and aesthetic traditions of the Islamic world it allows us to situate contemporary queer subjectivities within the cultural fabric of Muslim society and history.