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Item Popular Journalism, Religious Morality, and the Canadian Imaginary: Queers and Immigrants as Threats to the Public Sphere(Journal and Religion and Popular Culture, 2014) Mosurinjohn, ShardayIn Canada, opposition toward GLBQ identities and practices has been almost entirely religious in nature. On the other hand, antipathy toward "undesirable" immigrant profiles--ironically, often those perceived as homophobic and misogynistic--has been articulated through arguments about the supposed incompatibility of their religious values (usually Islamic) with "Canadian" mores. This paper analyzes a variety of national news media to demonstrate how the transgressive figures of the immigrant and the queer are composed in a powerful and particular way through journalistic attitudes toward and understandings of religion. In particular, I examine a discursive framework emergent in reporting on two recent tragedies--one, the 2011 suicide of the gay Ottawa teenager Jamie Hubley, and the other, the 2009 Shafia family "honour killings." I argue that this reporting disingenuously evokes a commitment to tolerance without occasioning a substantial interrogation of what is really being tolerated and why.Item South Korean Cort/Cor-tek Guitar Workers’ Action and the Politics of Digital International Solidarity Introduction(Topia (Montreal), 2019-05) Mosurinjohn, ShardayI play a Cort guitar. I inherited it from my mother when she gave up on learning campfire songs. When she gave it to me, she said she had been told that Corts were known for having impressive sound quality for a surprisingly low price, but it was only about a decade later that it occurred to me to wonder why. The reason, I learned, has to do with an ongoing history of corporate violence and workers organizing against the South Korean Cort/Cor-Tek Guitars and Basses company. The company, in turn, has sought yet cheaper and more docile labour in China and Indonesia, keeping prices low and profits high even as Korean Cort/Cor-Tek workers (hereafter "Cort workers") have mounted an international solidarity campaign. Under the page heading "Workers' Stories" of the website Cort Guitar Workers ACTION!: Guitar Workers + Musicians United! (https://cortaction.wordpress.com) a litany of harrowing stories are framed by these lines: For 10, 20, 30 years, Working in solvent and fumes in factories without windows . . . Forced to work overtime, and never able to see your family . . . Injuries, harassment, verbal abuse . . . and the final indignity—a mass firing under the cover of a sham bankruptcy. (Cort Action, n.d.e) This article explores the trajectory of Cort Guitar Workers Action (CGWA) campaign against these injustices, showing how it has used the aesthetic force of popular music as an international language to forge solidary links with Western music industries, often using the enabling constraints of digitally mediated international solidarity.Item Overload, Boredom, and the Aesthetics of Texting(Routledge, 2019-12-12) Mosurinjohn, ShardayItem The dance between artefact, commodity and fetish: a case study of Brendan Fernandes’ Lost Bodies(Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal, 2017-05-02) Mosurinjohn, ShardayIn 2015, artist Brendan Fernandes was invited to interpret ‘African collections’ from the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and the Textile Museum of Canada. The result, Lost Bodies, critiques racist ideologies that justified presenting objects from colonised African peoples as evidence of ‘superstition’ or ‘witchcraft’ in early European museums. Fernandes redirects the deferential gestures of ballet, professionalised in Louis XIV’s court at the same moment of the objects’ collection, to reanimate and apologise to them. Considering Lost Bodies, I explore how it is possible to nuance Western museums’ public development narratives by engaging such artefacts without either ignoring their history or rejecting museums on account of their own.Item Desiring, Departing, and Dying, Affectively Speaking: Epithymia in Philippians(The Bible and Critical Theory, 2019) Mosurinjohn, Sharday; Ascough, Richard S.In a text that has caused no shortage of speculation and consternation, Paul links “desire” (epithymia) with “death” in writing of his “desire to depart and be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23). While “desire” has mostly negative valences in Paul’s letters, often linked to sexual craving, here it is linked to his broad fascination with death that is apparent in his frequent references not only to Christ’s crucifixion but also more generally both to physical death and metaphorical death. Paul’s contemplation of which is preferable, life or death, raises questions about how issues of social and existential meaning are affectively negotiated under the aspect of death, under what conditions one desires death, and what is the nature of desire itself. Thinking in this vein suggests an ecology of instincts vital to the affective valences of desiring death. This paper will explore these issues to show how Paul’s own desire may be expressing both a passionate pull to his idea of Christ and a longing to escape that very passion.