The Stories We Adopt By: Tracing “The Red Thread” in Contemporary Adoption Narratives

González, Macarena García; Wesseling, Elisabeth

doi:10.1353/uni.2013.0021

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…12 The color of this one egg is not insignificant, evoking associations with blue blood, suggesting that this one bird is very special indeed. Many adoptive origin stories attribute an exclusive, if not royal status to the to-be-adopted child, as a fictive compensation for the trauma of abandonment, see Garcia Gonzales & Wesseling, 2013. prospective adopters attributes the same heroic ethos to the birth mothers who will hopefully select them, but with an added advantage: contrary to the mulberry bird mother, who bravely continues to fend for herself after losing her baby, there is a promise in FCA that the birth parent may somehow join the "warm feathered bodies" and the singing "chorus" of the alluring adoptive families. All these pastoral metaphors and references to animals also serve -again -to naturalize the adoption process and to downplay its social, cultural, and economic aspects.…”

Section: Dramatis Personaementioning

confidence: 99%

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Engaged Humanities

2022

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For some reason, the anxiety of usefulness has been itching the humanities for a long time. When Jacob Grimm in 1846 convened the Germanisten (scholars of the German language, literature, and legal history) to a conference in Frankfurt's Paulskirche, one of the main items on the agenda was to find themes and topics with which these scholars, newly incorporated in dedicated university departments, could demonstrate their usefulness to the public. (In one of the great ironies of history, politics would cater to their craving soon enough: two years later, in the same Paulskirche, many Germanisten would meet again, this time as delegates in the 1848 Frankfurt Parliament, and many of them would claim a role as intellectual counselors to emerging German nationalism.)Anything to avoid looking like a bookworm, or a dilettante erudite. Perhaps the strongest argument for a socially useful humanities was made by Matthew Arnold around the same period. Drawing on the German concept of Bildung, he formulated a pedagogical usefulness in his classic Culture and Anarchy (1869). Writing in a dourly pragmatic, intolerantly moralistic Victorian climate, Arnold stressed society's need for a creative, mental agility to break through the blinkered vision of those he called "Philistines," "people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich" (1869, p. 16). The power of the creative imagination to dispense "sweetness and light," he argued, would allow people to imagine a world beyond their narrow self-interest, to connect more easily with other people and other nations, and to replace the default attitude of mistrust and competition by an open-minded curiosity. That was the power of culture, "the best that is known and thought in the world"; and people were needed to "learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world" (Arnold, 1865, p. 283).Readers may sense how uncannily Arnold's mission reflects our modernday needs. The heyday of the humanities culminated (and ended) in the 1970s and 1980s when humanities scholars, fired by new theories, played a vanguard role in ethnic and sexual emancipation movements. That heyday has now passed. The humanities are everywhere embattled when it comes About the AuthorJoep Leerssen holds the Chair of Modern European Literature at the University of Amsterdam and is an Endowed Research Chair at Maastricht University. For his work on national stereotypes and self-images and on the comparative history of European nationalisms, he received the Spinoza Prize in 2008. He is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe (2018).

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Section: Dramatis Personaementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For a full analysis of the trope of the red thread in children's books about adoption from China, see GarciaGonzalez & Wesseling, 2013. …”

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confidence: 99%

Engaged Humanities

2022

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“…Inspired by "The Red Thread of Fate" (紅線) from Chinese folklore (Williams, 1976) and other East Asian narratives (González & Wesseling, 2013), these unbreakable, invisible red threads link people who are pre-destined to be together, similar to the Western concept of a soulmate. In recent years, Western literature has used the concept to refer to the process of adoption and related narratives (González & Wesseling, 2013): "An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break."…”

Section: Iterations 0-1mentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Identity Through Gameplay: The Intersections of Tabletop Role-Playing Games, Game Design, and Queerness

Morris¹

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<p>Tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) are an effective vehicle for exploring facets of personal identity, but are a product of masculinity and have historically only catered to heterosexual, cisgender, white men. LGBTQIA+ players have long been ignored as a minority in the TTRPG sphere, particularly those that have more intersectional and marginalised identities. Based on the opinions of 331 queer TTRPG players and concepts surrounding roles, identity, character creation, game design and queerness, this research portfolio discusses how TTRPG design can better meet the need for LGBTQIA+ identity play and exploration via queer mechanics, systems, themes and premises instead of mere representation and tokenism, and provides an example of a play-tested game designed by such principles. This will allow game designers to gain a better understanding of queer game design, and rainbow players’ wants and needs in this ever-expanding field of research and design.</p>

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Protestant Missionaries, Chinese Intellectuals, and Children’s Literature

Chen

2019

Children’s Literature and Transnational Knowledge in Modern China

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The Stories We Adopt By: Tracing “The Red Thread” in Contemporary Adoption Narratives

Cited by 6 publications

References 14 publications

Engaged Humanities

Engaged Humanities

Exploring Identity Through Gameplay: The Intersections of Tabletop Role-Playing Games, Game Design, and Queerness

Protestant Missionaries, Chinese Intellectuals, and Children’s Literature

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