Cultural narratives and the succession scenario: Slumdog Millionaire and other popular films and fictions.

An approach to the analysis of cultural narratives is proposed drawing inspiration from Lévi-Strauss's analysis of myths as fantasied resolutions of conflicts and contradictions in culture and of typical dilemmas of human life. An example of such an analysis revolves around contradictions in the Western cultural construction of the succession of generations. The logic of the structural analysis of cultural representations is explicated, the schema of the succession scenario is laid out, and the conflicts that generate it are identified.

Trapped children: popular images of children with autism in the 1960s and 2000s.

The lay public inherits much of its information about disability and mental illness through the media, which often relies on information from popular scientific works. Autism, as it was defined during the dominance of psychogenic paradigms of mental illness, generated certain tropes surrounding it, many of which have been popularized through media representations. Often inaccurate, these tropes have persisted into contemporary times despite a paradigmatic shift from psychogenic to biological explanations and treatments for mental illness.

Obesity, the Jews and psychoanalysis: on shaping the category of obesity.

Hilde Bruch was one of the most important researchers into the question of weight during the 20th century. Best known for her popularization of anorexia nervosa, she was equally important in articulating a psychological aetiology for obesity. This work was rooted in her historical experiences in Germany and in the USA, and specifically the claim made at that time for the predisposition of the Jews to obesity.