Mediapolis

Recently published, the new edited issue of the peer review journal Mediapolis’ section Student Voices features the work of INSN member Eleonora Diamanti, co-convenor of the Media and the Night working group, and students enrolled in her undergraduate course Urban Media at John Cabot University, Rome. The issue features three essays and a video essay that focus on the urban night in relation to questions of gender, race and class and the media city.

In the introduction to the issue, Eleonora Diamanti discusses designing the syllabus, assignments and assessment methods as well as class activities and readings. The course maps and explores critical scholarship as well as practice-based research methods on the media city, and, in one of its iterations, it focused on the urban night as a space of constriction, liberation, privilege and disparities.

Particularly, Marica Loffreda’s essay “Fear On and Off Screen: Constructing Women’s Fear of the Urban Night in Film” explores how the female fear of sexual assault at night is nurtured by gender norms and represented in four films: Spider-Man (2002), V for Vendetta(2005), Twilight (2008) and Irréversible (2002). She pairs her film analysis with data and studies on gender-based violence to demystify the association between the urban night, public space and sexual assault. This paper is complemented by a video essay in which the author combines scenes from the films and her own internalized fear of the urban night in a compelling supercut video. 

Ava DeAngelis investigates the “TV Representation of Female Drug Abuse Within the Urban Night” in two popular series: Gossip Girl (The CW: 2007–2012) and Euphoria (HBO: 2019–present). The author scrutinizes the portrayal of the two main characters, Serena van der Woodsen and Rue Bennett, in the spaces they inhabit at night (glamorous New York nightclubs and the dark suburbs of Los Angeles respectively). Taking an intersectional approach, and paying specific attention to race and class disparities, the author looks into the inequities of drug-related policing and its media representation in relation to the urban night. 

Read more here: https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/sections/student-voices/

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