A Digital Toolkit for Turning Cabin Fever Into Creative Fervour — Foreword Back in mid-March of 2020, panic about a globally mandated lockdown as a result of the spread of the COVID-19 virus infiltrated every news source, social media post, and university cafeteria conversation. Gradually, most people began scrambling for the first flight home — especially several international students across the world…

In “Gender and Early Telephone Culture”, Michèle Martin cites a source stating that telephone-company managers believed “women’s use of men’s technology would come to no good end (1988, p. 23). This misconception is perhaps even more ill advised when considering a racialized view of gender in the context of the…

In his book Promotional Culture: Advertising, Ideology and Symbolic Expression, Andrew Wernick (Emeritus Professor of Cultural Studies and Sociology at Trent University) claimed that in terms of content, “the most obvious effect of media dependency on advertising is to create a situation where not only are ads designed with available…

Before delving into the mechanics of how BoJack Horseman simultaneously accumulated a dedicated fan base and equally appreciative critics and film scholars, it would help to dive deeper into the past of the animation industry itself. Going as far back as the 1870s, this was the period where the vaudevillians…

How do warehouse environments complicate ways we typically think about work in the digital era? Gabriel Mac’s (formerly known as Mac McLelland at the time of publication) investigative piece on the harsh realities of warehouse work environments seemed reminiscent of notions regarding infrastructures hidden in plain sight. Much like how…

The horror films The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973) and The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014) both have varying representations of gender and sexuality that fit their own unique narrative style. The concepts of psychoanalysis and the Oedipus complex are deeply embedded in the characterization and interrelationships within The Babadook. Chris Dumas…

“Nosedive” was the first episode of the third season of the dark science-fiction anthology series Black Mirror and it was released on October 21, 2016. This particular episode, like most of the rest of the series, is social satire in the context of modern technology. Let me explain how. The…

Luchino Visconti’s film Bellisima (1951) and Pedro Almodovar’s film All About My Mother, or Todo sobre mi madre (1999) both delve distinctively into the overarching theme of “motherhood” in its various forms. …

Pedro Almodóvar’s film Volver (2006) is a blend of several themes including maternity, the countryside as a setting, as well as a female universe as the family. …