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This article explores the connection between the online commentary on the South Korean novel, and later film, Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982 (2016; film released in 2019), and the perception of feminism within South Korea. To capture how Kim Ji-Young’s “meaning” is entangled with popular beliefs about feminism, I analyze audience reception through Kim Ji-Young’s paratexts: (a) tweets and (b) comments responding to newspaper articles mentioning the novel and/or film Kim Ji-Young from the Korean platform Naver. I examine paratexts to reveal that the “meaning” Kim Ji-Young has in online spaces is not determined solely by the novel or film-as-referent. I show that Kim Ji-Young the source text has become inextricable from the mélange of preconceptions regarding what constitutes a “feminist” stance in Korea, ranging from the stereotype of the selfish “feminist” who shirks her maternal duty towards the nation to the discontent of stay-at-home moms. I show that online misogyny has forced those who support Kim Ji-Young’s feminist message to employ what rhetorician Leah Ceccarelli describes as “strategic ambiguity.” This involves simultaneously disavowing Kim Ji-Young‘s feminism while praising the text’s feminist politics, a tactic used to shield themselves from attacks by misogynistic trolls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emily Ennis's book, "Writing, Authorship and Photography in British Literary Culture, 1880–1920: Capturing the Image," explores the relationship between photography and literary authorship through the works of four British authors: Thomas Hardy, Bram Stoker, Joseph Conrad, and Virginia Woolf. Ennis examines how these authors engaged with popular photography and its impact on their perception of art and authorship. The book argues that photography can be seen as both a representation and an index, and that the artistic possibilities of photography are best realized when mediated by writing. Overall, the book offers insights into how photography challenges traditional notions of authorship in the age of mechanical reproduction. [Extracted from the article]

The photographer Peter Henry Emerson (1856–1936) is known today for the splash he made on the Victorian photographic scene in the 1880s with his bold refusal to follow his fellow art photographers (collectively known as the Pictorialists) in latching the new medium on to the aesthetic conventions of painting. His conventional position within art history is thus as a precursor to the Modernist conception of photography's medium-specificity. Yet even if Emerson's work was ahead of its time in its proto-Modernist refusal of painterly conventions, it also has qualities that place it more squarely within late-Victorian discourses. In particular, I argue, Emerson's ongoing efforts to secure his photographs via copyright law need to be understood as reflective of a distinctly nineteenth-century cultural imaginary. This essay addresses the relationship between Emerson's aesthetic theory and copyright law by dividing Emerson's career into two stages, before and after 1891, this being the year in which Emerson abruptly disavowed photography as an artistic medium in his short pamphlet 'The Death of Naturalistic Photography'. Examining two photography books – Pictures of East Anglian Life (1888) and On English Lagoons (1893) – alongside late-Victorian debates about photographic copyright, I show that Emerson's earlier belief in photographic copyright's ability to retain the integrity of an artist's vision breaks down after 1891. He loses faith in the 'copyrightability' of photography in 1891 when he recognizes the mechanical nature – or automaticity – of the camera. That is, Emerson realizes that the photograph is never purely the product of the artist. In sum, this case study shows that by the 1890s, photographic copyright was becoming detached from the notion of creativity and thus could no longer be the guarantee of a photographer's claim to artistic individuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the South Korean cyberfeminist community Womad, a community currently under fire in South Korea due to its exclusionary politics, i.e., its antagonism towards anyone biologically male and ethnically Korean. In an attempt to go beyond scholarship which focuses mostly on the subversive role played by South Korean cyberfeminism, this paper situates Womad in research on trolling. It also engages in a two-tiered analysis that examines how Womad's origin in trolling was influenced by (a) the South Korean national context and (b) the specific layout of Womad's platform, resulting in a community that endorses identity politics. The analysis reveals how Womad's trolling tactics, its platform, and the specificity of South Korea's national context all interact in ways that results in the counterpublic that is Womad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]