Un/masking Mascar(a/illa)s: Dreadful Engagements With Media, Identity, and (Sous/Sur)veillance

• In Event: Collectivist Curricular Approaches to Construct Communal Ways of Knowing and Belonging

Abstract

The paper details an us-ing, a perpetually-becoming ontological/theoretical concept inviting us/ourselves/each other into a lively packets of relations to articulate our process of becoming-with a television show, Penny Dreadful: City of Angeles. Such a becoming-with allowed us to entangle the content, our contemporary contexts, and our own relational intra-/interactions “as a way to produce newness,” specifically a inquiry/material-entanglement we are calling Mascar(a/illa)s/mask(ing)s. Towards these ends, we created actual masks to materially think with our entanglements, produce new ones, and create concepts. Within the us-ing/material-entanglement that is the mask, we engage with materials like descriptions of particular scenes/characters that present rich case(s), quotations from the show, historical documents related to the setting, contemporary headlines and news, personal thoughts/questions, and theoretical concepts.

Authors

• Rebecca C. Christ, Florida International University

• Bretton A. Varga, California State University - Chico

• Timothy Monreal, California State University - Bakersfield