This project explores luchador Rey Mysterio’s cultural figure and the way it is formed institutionally via ringside commentary and through the WWE’s approach to its media market; through his dialogue and performance of body; as well as the myriad ways his performance is interpreted by U.S. fans and around the world. Through the content analysis of four primary WWE texts, this thesis works to better understand how tropes of geography, space, and body interact with underlying (and sometimes very overt) themes of race, U.S. racial hierarchy, ethnicity, and nation presented via the spectacular theater of WWE performance. Important over-arching questions that this project strives to explicate upon focus on how embodiment and racial difference are presented in the U.S. historically and how Mexican American diaspora are represented through U.S. professional wrestling. / text

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The aim of the research is to examine the multiple spatial frameworks and materially manifested forms of memory by applying current memory studies theory to four areas of memorial experience: personal memory, civic memory, tourism and film. The thesis looks at memory practices based in the North East, particularly those that take place in Newcastle upon Tyne, and explores how the city is remembered in specific memory practices and institutions. Combining work in memory studies and cultural geography, the thesis highlights how memory is spatialized and is particularly concerned with the city that shapes, and is shaped by, memory and memory practices. Changes have taken place in the relationship between space, place and temporality that have affected memory and practices of memorialization. At first glance, the technologies we use and the spaces we inhabit can be interpreted as leading to a pervasive amnesia. The thesis challenges this assumption. It proposes that the concept of heterotopia provides a critical mode of reading memory spaces offering a more positive account of the way memory is currently being experienced. The thesis looks at how memory is realized in the fabric of the city and how the historical city itself is represented through the discursive practices of memorial public art, the museum and the cinema, creating a collective cultural memory. The particular contribution that this thesis makes is that it tests the explanatory power of the concept of heterotopia in relation to memorial sites and it applies memory studies to the city of Newcastle in a time of transition and renewal.

Narratives about the discovery of one’s favourite artist are popular discussion topics among adult pop music fans, as are narratives of rediscovery later in life, suggesting that memory and nostalgia are powerful forces that can repeatedly draw fans back to that affective moment when they first discovered, and perhaps rediscovered, their idols. The impact of cultural influences like pop music during the formative period of adolescence cannot be underestimated. Such early identifications with pop music icons enable some adolescents to then carry those attachments with them their entire lives, forming lifelong fandoms. Through an ethnographic investigation into one such fan community, adult female fans of ’80s heart throbs Duran Duran, this research focuses on ‘mature’ pop fans in an effort to explore an enduring and lifelong fandom that is deeply communal, entrenched in a worldwide network of other fans. Of particular interest is the way in which fans connect via a hybrid of online and offline interactions, as well as how the resulting interaction mix generates complex dynamics and hierarchies. While this research focuses on Duran fan culture, fans of other teen idols were surveyed for comparative purposes, in particular bands that also experienced a resurgence of success after announcing a ‘reunion’, including Take That and the Backstreet Boys. Parallels are also drawn to the lifelong loyalty expressed by fandoms of other artists who were not teen-pop pinups, such as David Bowie (Stevenson 2009) and R.E.M. (Bennett 2010), whose now ‘post-popular’ music (Hills 2010) has seen continued popularity among cult audiences for almost four decades.

This thesis examines the everyday activities of Indian youth on the MTV India Facebook fan page. The two-phase research design included a period of participant observation, combined with conducting online interviews, and a visit to New Delhi, India to conduct offline interviews. The thesis analyzes several aspects of identity performance (e.g. online identity performance, relation between online and offline identity, ideal presentation of an online identity) in relation to Goffman’s (1959) presentation of self in everyday life, and argues that the MTV India Facebook fan page has become a site for identity performance. Since such identity performance is bounded by participants’ everyday activities, the fan page can also be identified as a particular ‘place’. I use Tuan’s (1977) idea of ‘place-making’ and illustrate how the MTV India Facebook fan page has become a meaningful and familiar ‘place’ overtime through performance of routine activities and everyday practices (Seamon, 1979). These activities can be identified as articulating ‘Youngistan’ (voice of Indian youth) and performing Indian-ness, suggesting that fans have appropriated the fan page for performing specific activities that are particular to them. In addition, the thesis takes the local-global character into consideration and argues that local-global combine together to form separate, unique cultures such as MTV India, which safeguard ‘locality’ within the global product and help in ‘place-making’ activities.