Tag Archives: internet

Monsters and Killjoys: Feminist Activism in Galician Audiovisual Culture, Friday 4 November 2022 – Seminar Write-up

This post is part of our Research Initiation Scheme for 2022-2023.

On Friday 4th November 2022, Dr Catherine Barbour (Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Spanish Peninsular Studies, Trinity College Dublin) delivered a seminar on the Galician webseries Monstras, directed by Eire García Cid, and how its feminist perspective compares with work more typical of what is known as Galician noir.

At the beginning of her presentation, Dr Barbour introduced the concept of Galician noir, a media genre sharing the key characteristics of Scandi noir with a strong sense of culture specific to the Galician community. There is frequently an undercurrent of rebellion, with anti-state sentiments mirroring the feelings of the region towards the Spanish state. Programmes and novels are almost exclusively in the Galician language – Monstras takes this a step further by having English subtitles rather than Spanish.

Still from Monstras.
Image credit: Corentena Producións 2020

Dr Barbour then turned more specifically to Monstras itself, which was made available exclusively on YouTube from July 2020, the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. It follows a group of women hiding out in their friend’s apartment after a violent act of revenge upon the man who sexually assaulted one of their friends. The production itself exudes anti-institutionalism; it was completely crowd-funded, with an exclusively female team.

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Lexical Innovation and Terminological Advice in Breton and French: The Role of Online Spaces, 12 March 2021 – Seminar write-up

This post is part of our Research Initiation Scheme for 2020-2021.

Merryn Davies-Deacon, personal archive

On Friday the 12th of March 2021, I attended Dr Merryn Davies-Deacon’s talk on Lexical Innovation and Terminological Advice in Breton and French: The Role of Online Spaces. I was intrigued by this presentation, because as part of my level 2 studies, I completed an assignment on the regional language of Breton as a token of identity. Furthermore, after having spent my year abroad in Spain, I became familiar with attitudes towards Spanish regional languages, and so, I was eager to find out more about the situation with regional languages in France.

Merryn’s talk certainly satisfied my desire for more information on the Breton language. Firstly, she broke down the complex title so that those who are not experts on the topic (like myself) were able to grasp it. From my understanding, lexical innovation involves words and phrases that Breton speakers coin from other languages, such as English and French, and adopt as part of their own dialogue. Terminological advice, however, involves the influences and guidance of official sources and authorities. As the focus of Merryn’s research was on online spaces, she delved into what the internet and social media means for the evolution of the Breton language. She raised the possibility of the internet being a leveling space, as it is a tool that all speakers can use to give their input. However, she juxtaposed this theory with the suggestion that given the Internet is subject to the control of authorities who own it, in fact, it replicates hierarchies instead of being an equal space.

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