In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood, in which character change is important. The term comes from the German words Bildung and Roman ("novel").
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse characterized by skepticism toward the "grand narratives" of modernism; rejection of epistemic (scientific) certainty or the stability of meaning; and sensitivity to the role of ideology in maintaining political power. Claims to objectivity are dismissed as naïve realism, with attention drawn to the conditional nature of knowledge claims within particular historical, political, and cultural discourses. The postmodern outlook is characterized by self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism; it rejects the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.
Post-structuralism is a philosophical movement that questions the objectivity or stability of the various interpretive structures that are posited by structuralism and considers them to be constituted by broader systems of power. Although post-structuralists all present different critiques of structuralism, common themes among them include the rejection of the self-sufficiency of structuralism, as well as an interrogation of the binary oppositions that constitute its structures. Accordingly, post-structuralism discards the idea of interpreting media within pre-established, socially constructed structures.
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world by area, extends across eleven time zones, and shares land boundaries with fourteen countries. It is the world's ninth-most populous country and Europe's most populous country. The country's capital and largest city is Moscow. Saint Petersburg is Russia's second-largest city and "cultural capital". Other major urban areas in the country include Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Kazan.
A military alliance is a formal agreement between nations that specifies mutual obligations regarding national security. In the event a nation is attacked, members of the alliance are often obligated to come to their defense regardless if attacked directly. Since the end of the Second World War, military alliances have usually behaved less aggressively and act more as a deterrent.
The voiced palatal nasal is a type of consonant used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɲ⟩, a lowercase letter n with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is J. The IPA symbol ⟨ɲ⟩ is visually similar to ⟨ɳ ⟩, the symbol for the retroflex nasal, which has a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem, and to ⟨ŋ⟩, the symbol for the velar nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem.
American singer Madonna has released 78 music videos, eleven concert tour videos, two documentary videos, four music video compilations, two music video box sets, four promotional videos, and four video singles. Nicknamed as the "Queen of Videos" or "Queen of MTV", her music videos were often considered by critics as works of art, depicting various social issues. Her early videos also received a significant academic attention. Madonna has won 20 MTV Video Music Awards, including the 1986 Video Vanguard Award for which she became the first female honoree. In 2003, MTV named her "The Greatest Music Video Star Ever", saying "Madonna's innovation, creativity and contribution to the music video art form is what won her the award." In 2020, Billboard ranked her at the top of their list "100 Greatest Music Video Artists of All Time".
Madonna studies is the study of the work and life of American singer-songwriter Madonna using an interdisciplinary approach incorporating cultural studies and media studies. In a general sense, it could refer to any academic studies devoted to her. After Madonna's debut in 1983, the discipline did not take long to start up and the field appeared in the mid-1980s, achieving its peak in the next decade. Educator David Buckingham deemed her presence in academic circles as "a meteoric rise to academic canonisation". The rhetoric academic view of that time, majority in the sense of postmodernism, generally considered her as "the most significant artist of the late twentieth century", thus she is understood variously and as a vehicle to open up issues. In the 21st century, academic studies about Madonna have remained and continued in many aspects. At the height of its developments, authors of these academic writings were sometimes called "Madonna scholars" or "Madonnologists", and both E. Ann Kaplan and John Fiske were classified as precursors.
East Timor, also known as Timor-Leste, officially the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, is a country in Southeast Asia. It comprises the eastern half of the island of Timor, of which the western half is administered by Indonesia, the exclave of Oecusse on the island's north-western half, and the minor islands of Atauro and Jaco. Australia is the country's southern neighbour, separated by the Timor Sea. The country's size is 14,874 square kilometres (5,743 sq mi). Dili is its capital and largest city.
A hybrid regime is a type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. Hybrid regimes are categorized as having a combination of autocratic features with democratic ones and can simultaneously hold political repressions and regular elections. Hybrid regimes are commonly found in developing countries with abundant natural resources such as petro-states. Although these regimes experience civil unrest, they may be relatively stable and tenacious for decades at a time. There has been a rise in hybrid regimes since the end of the Cold War.
Spain and Portugal acceded to the European Communities, now the European Union, in 1986. This was the third enlargement of the Communities, following on from the 1973 and 1981 enlargements. Their accessions are considered to be a part of the broader Mediterranean enlargement of the European Union.
American singer-songwriter Madonna has had a social-cultural impact on the world through her recordings, attitude, clothing and lifestyle since her early career in the 1980s. Madonna has built a legacy that goes beyond music and has been studied by sociologists, historians and other social scientists. This contributed to the rise of the Madonna studies, an academic and critical response dedicated to her work and persona for which Madonna's semiotic and image was diversified in a wide-ranging of theoretical stripe from feminism to queer studies among others.
Fourth-wave feminism is a feminist movement that began around 2012 and is characterized by a focus on the empowerment of women, the use of internet tools, and intersectionality. The fourth wave seeks greater gender equality by focusing on gendered norms and the marginalization of women in society.
Joseph Anthony Buttigieg II was a Maltese-American Marxist literary scholar and translator. He served as William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame until his retirement in 2017, when he was named professor emeritus. Buttigieg co-translated and co-edited the three-volume English edition of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks.
Pelagia Goulimari is a Greek-British author, editor, and academic. She specialises in literary criticism, feminist theory, continental philosophy, and writing in English from 1740 to the present. Goulimari is a Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, a Senior Fellow in Feminist Studies within the Humanities Division, and a member of the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford. She co-directs the interdisciplinary MSt programme in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, as well as the Intersectional Humanities network at TORCH . In 1993, Goulimari co-founded Angelaki, an academic journal in literary criticism and theory, philosophy, and cultural studies published by Routledge. She remains the journal's editor-in-chief.
Andrew MayFRAS is an Australian social historian. He is a professor of Australian history in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies of the University of Melbourne.
The contributions and influence of American artist Madonna in the landscape of underground and contemporary arts have been documented by a variety of sources such as art publications, scholars and art critics. As her footprints in the arts are lesser-known compared to her other roles, this led a contributor from W to conclude that both her impact and influence in the art world have been "made almost entirely behind the scenes". She is noted for taking inspiration from various painters in her career. Once called a "continuous multi-media art project", a panel of art critics explained that she condenses fashion, dance, photography, sculpture, music, video and painting in her own artwork.
