University of Bologna Rita Monticelli Principal Investigator Francesco Cattani Researcher Gilberta Golinelli Researcher

University of York Boriana Alexandrova Principal Investigator Nicoletta Asciuto Researcher

Publications Reading for Each Other Creative book reviews that facilitate an exchange of literature between doctoral candidates, allowing them to better understand each other's lives and work. Publications by Doctoral Candidates Publications by Doctoral Candidates A collection of writing – papers, articles, peer-reviewed publications, books and other media produced by the doctoral candidates.

A Conversation with Marta Olivi on Translation In this podcast, doctoral candidate Evangeline Scarpulla speaks with translator Marta Olivi. During the conversation we discuss Marta’s four major English to Italian translation projects: Canta Ancora, Ragazza (2022), a translation of Jacqueline Roy’s The Fat Lady Sings (2000); L’Antropocene Inconscio (2022), a translation of Mark Bould’s The Anthropocene Unconscious (2021); Paradiso Terrestre (2024), a translation of Laura Vandenberg’s State of Paradise (2024); and selected poems from Molly Brodak's The Cipher (2020). Olivi also talks about her approach to translation work, the intersections between translation and academic research, and the importance of translation in today's transnational literary landscape. We hope that you enjoy listening to this podcast. Since recording this episode, Marta Olivi has completed three additional translation projects: Dolce il Frutto, Aspra la Terra (2025), a translation of Rebecca Ley’s Sweet Fruit, Sour Land (2018); Isabella Nagg e il Vaso di Basilico (2025), a translation of Oliver Darkshire’s Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil (2025); and Dungeon Crawler Carl: Il Giorno del Giudizio (2026), a translation of Matt Dinniman’s Carl's Doomsday Scenario (2021). The episode transcript can be accessed here . This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by Evangeline Scarpulla . Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili, Evangeline Scarpulla, and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Medea, Medes, Marjane and Me: Reflections on colonialism, war, and migration in Marjane Satrapi’s 'Persepolis' While reading Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, three major questions emerge. First, who can colonize or be colonized? Second, is war anything but a personal matter? And third, is the idea of a return just as much of a myth as the Golden Fleece? by Ninutsa Nadirashvili 23 July 2025 Medea, Medes, Marjane and Me: Reflections on colonialism, war, and migration in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Between the years of 2000 and 2003, Marjane Satrapi published a quartet of autobiographical comics about growing up in Iran, experiencing the 1979 revolution and dealing with its aftermath. Once translated into English and combined into a two-volume work, it became Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . Centuries earlier, in 431 B.C., Euripides – tragedian of classical Athens – produced a trilogy of plays.[1] Medea – the only surviving work – is often summarized simply as the story of a woman who murdered her two children to make her husband suffer.[2] Yet, like all women, Medea had a complex history of her own before, during and after her marriage to Jason, a prominent hero in Greek mythology. In some ways, just like Marjane’s protagonist, Medea presents a fascinating case study of how conquest, war, and migration can affect an individual; how they can erase our comfortable notions of home, belonging and safety. In Euripides’ text, Medea laments: Let it go! What profit in staying alive? No country, no home, no way to turn from evil. I made a mistake when I abandoned my homeland, trusting in the words of a Greek man. Now he will pay me justice, gods willing.[3] My personal interest in Medea is because I was born in Georgia. In the accounts of her myth, Medea lives in Kolkheti[4] – a very real polity, active between the 13th and 1st centuries B.C., that is considered as the first Georgian kingdom.[5] After being put under a love spell by the gods, Medea assists Jason in getting the Golden Fleece, betraying her family and kingdom in the process, and sails away with him, eventually settling in Corinth. There, after ten years of marriage, Jason decides to abandon his wife and marry the local king’s daughter. Though retellings differ, Euripides has Medea murder her two children as revenge against her disloyal husband.[6] After this, she flees Corinth and, according to Herodotus, ends up in the Iranian plateau among the Aryans who, in her honour, eventually change their name to Medes.[7] So, in one version of history, a Georgian princess, tricked, taken and then abandoned, spends the last years of her life on the same land that will later give birth to Marjane Satrapi, who, in turn, gives life to Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . Persepolis , like Euripides’ play, is the story of one woman. Marjane is only ten when revolutionaries sweep through Iran, collectively devolving into an oppressive regime upheld by religious fanaticism. This eventually leads to a war between Iran and Iraq, forcing Marjane’s parents to send their daughter away. Marjane spends nearly a decade in Austria, lost and aimless, eventually ending up on the street. Unable to go on, she returns to Iran only to become severely depressed, even attempting suicide. Here, she echoes Medea again, writing, “I was a Westerner in Iran. An Iranian in the West. I had no identity.”[8] In other words, “No country, no home, no way to turn from evil.”[9] Migration – especially one that is forced – forever alters the migrant’s position from an “insider” to someone in the in-between. This is so painful that both women are driven to extremes. Understanding her survival from the suicide attempt as a miracle, Marjane obtains a degree in graphic design, marries, divorces, and finally decides to leave for Europe again – understanding that, in her mother’s words, “You are a free woman. The Iran of today is not for you.”[10] While reading Satrapi’s work, three major questions emerged for me. First, who can colonize or be colonized? Second, is war anything but a personal matter? And third, is the idea of a return just as much of a myth as the Golden Fleece? The answers, simply put, are: everyone, no, and yes. Still, I would like to delve deeper into Marjane’s story and explore these questions while keeping the author, myself, and Medea in mind. In 1980, Marjane’s father hoped that after centuries of “tyranny and submission”, the revolution was finally waking Iranians up.[11] Since Persepolis is a graphic novel, this statement is followed with a visual depiction of Iranian history: first, subjugated by their own emperors, then the Arabs, followed by Mongolians and finally, the modern imperialists of the global West. Here, the first set of questions come to mind – Who can colonise, who can be colonised and who benefits from the claim that this must be an unchanging dynamic? For example, while Satrapi’s Iran is presented as a colonised territory, the nation where I was born considers Iran a coloniser. In the 4thand 5th centuries, Persians controlled the Georgian Kingdom of Iberia, only to be replaced by Arabian tribes.[12] Ten centuries later, Persians re-conquered Georgia, ruling over the country until 1800s, only ceding power to the Russian Empire which continues to oppress Georgians and currently occupies approximately 20% of our territory.[13] Persepolis is a novel that understands the possibility within all nations to become the “evil” that Medea has no way to turn from. This is why Satrapi begins to tell the country’s 2,500-year story by pointing out that the people were subjugated by their own emperors – the same ones who demanded expansion to foreign lands. This is also why, when Marjane is in Austria, she comes to the realisation that “In every religion, you find the same extremists.”[14] This is why, to Marjane’s old Iranian schoolmates, “making themselves up and wanting to follow Western ways was an act of resistance.”[15] Satrapi, by allowing for her personal story to be the focal point of the novel, manages to get this point across. Everyone can be an oppressor, and anyone can be oppressed. The only group that benefits from the establishment of rigid rules around colonisation is the one that decides to become a conqueror next as it makes it easy to claim innocence that way: “Us? No, never! We’ve been the victims before; how could we?” Empires obliterate others and themselves, there are no set guidelines for who can be the “bad guy.” After all, Jason is supposed to be a hero; and yet he fails at it spectacularly. Once Persepolis proposes that anyone can turn into a tyrant, the novel shifts its focus to the consequences of tyranny – mainly war. In a chapter titled “The Water Cell”, Marjane is told a story that is eerily like one I have heard from my own mother. The reader finds out that Marjane’s grandfather was the son of Iran’s last emperor, subject to frequent threats, and jailed on several occasions.[16]In one of the illustrations, we see a young girl (Marjane’s mother) opening the door to police officers looking for her dad. This is how my mother’s story starts as well, though she rarely tells it. After she opens the door, her father – my grandfather – is taken away by police. His crime was nothing more than having the same last name as a high-ranking politician who opposed the government. This type of intimidation can only foster political unrest, eventually culminating in a war. Marjane and I were both 10 when war took us by surprise, as it always does.[17] In her novel, Satrapi highlights the direct nature of violence, especially when it reaches proportions of such magnitude. The writer tells us about a classmate who writes a eulogy to her father, the refugees who flood Tehran from the South, the maid whose son is given a golden key and told to die for his country in exchange for paradise.[18]When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, our nanny came to my mother in panic because her son had just been drafted. I remember vividly that she worried about him leaving before dinner, how they had taken him in a hurry, and she had only found time to put a bar of chocolate in his pocket. Satrapi’s focus on the fates of individual citizens answers the second question – No, war is never anything but personal. So then, once Medea has betrayed her father, started a war in several cities, and killed her own children, can she return to Kolkheti? After all, Persepolis is in ruins, and I have not been truly fluent in Georgian since the age of thirteen. We will never know how much of Euripides’ play is based on facts, but I would argue that the act of returning is entirely mythological. In Austria, Marjane denies her heritage, refuses to watch the news about Iran, and tries desperately to fit in.[19] Instead, she is repeatedly discriminated against, tokenised, isolated, and ultimately ends up on the street with no one to care for her. Soon after, unable to assimilate because much like returning, assimilation is a myth, she flies to Iran. She writes, “After four years living in Vienna, here I am back in Tehran. From the moment I arrived at Mehrabad Airport and caught sight of the first customs agent, I immediately felt the oppressive air of my country.”[20] Welcome home, indeed. In chapters to follow, Marjane compares her city to a cemetery, is labelled a whore for having sexual experiences in Austria, discovers the duality of revolutionary men who preach about freedom while refusing to let their wives speak.[21] If Herodotus is telling the truth, Medea only goes home as a conqueror. Meanwhile, Marjane is barely recognisable to her own parents. As for me, after living in Georgia for a year during my twenties, I know I will spend the rest of my life trying to find the same feeling of “home” that I had at thirteen, only to fail. (Though it was not always good, I once belonged to that place, and it belonged to me). There is no rest for the migrants. And belongings get left behind. Then again, as Satrapi points out on the final page of the novel, freedom has a price.[22] Bibliography Euripides. Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation . Translated by Diane Rayor. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Herodotus. Herodotus . Translated by A. D. Godley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920. Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . London: Vintage, 2008. Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia . London: Reaktion Books, 2019. [1] Euripides, Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation , trans. Diane Rayor (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013), xiv. [2] Ibid., xiii. [3] Ibid., 37. [4] Or Colchis. [5] Ibid., 69. [6] Ibid., xiii. [7] Herodotus, Herodotus , trans. A. D. Godley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920), 7.61. [8] Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return (London: Vintage, 2008)., 118. [9] Euripides, Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation , 37. [10] Ibid., 343. [11] Ibid., 11. [12] Donald Rayfield, Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia (London: Reaktion Books, 2019). [13] Ibid. [14] Satrapi, 180. [15] Satrapi, 261. [16] Ibid., 18-25. [17] Ibid., 81. [18] Ibid., 86 – 99. [19] Ibid., 157-246. [20] Ibid., 248. [21] Ibid., 248 -339. [22] Ibid., 343.

A Conversation with Eugenia Seleznova In this episode, doctoral candidates Tamara Cvetković and Samriddhi Pandey interview Eugenia Seleznova, an author, researcher, and cultural manager from Ukraine. Currently, Eugenia is a PhD Candidate at Central European University, where she conducts a research on queer Ukrainian relationalities during the war. In conversation with Tamara and Samriddhi, Eugenia shares how the contexts of the post-Soviet, then revolutionary, and then, finally, wartime Ukraine have shaped her experience as an author, and directed her own shifts and transitions: between identities, regionalities, languages, genres, occupations — and ways to love and write. The conversation also touches on transnational and translingual experiences of writing through displacement, and on finding one's way as a "peripheral researcher" amidst the Western academia. The podcast transcript is available upon request. If you require a copy of the transcript please email seleznova_eugenia@phd.ceu.edu to request a copy. This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by Samriddhi Pandey and Tamara Cvetković . Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Kimberly Campanello: "I don't want to be the poet who never thought about the meanwhile" On overlapping chronologies, intersecting geographies, translation and how writing can bring this all together. Kimberly Campanello - poet, performer, writer and professor at the University of Leeds - converses with Alice Flinta about her transnational belongings between the US, the UK and the south of Italy, and how this all comes together in her most recent project, a rewriting of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. For more info on Kimberly Campanello’s events and publications, see her official website https://www.kimberlycampanello.com/ An Interesting Detail (poetry collection): https://www.kimberlycampanello.com/an-interesting-detail Use the Words You Have (novel): https://www.kimberlycampanello.com/use-the-words-you-have-debut-novel Cover photo: Olivia Braggs. The episode transcript can be accessed here . This episode is part of the EUTERPE Podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by: Alice Flinta Thank you to Alexander Walker and Lilu for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Review of 'White is for Witching' by Helen Oyeyemi Helen Oyeyemi’s 'White is for Witching' combines elements of the gothic tradition, vampire stories and haunted house stories to craft a narrative which probes issues of xenophobia and racism in contemporary British society. The novel follows Miranda, a young woman with vampiric qualities, as a sentient house intervenes in her life to protect, control and possess her. by Séamus O’Kane 23 April 2025 Review: Oyeyemi, Helen. White is for Witching. Helen Oyeyemi found literary success early. She wrote her prodigious debut, The Icarus Girl (2005), and secured a publisher while she was still in secondary school. The years since then have seen her produce a tremendous output: seven more novels, two plays and one short story collection. Born in Nigeria and raised in London, Oyeyemi’s nomadic trajectory has taken her to Paris, Berlin, New York, and, finally, Prague, where she now resides. White is for Witching (2009) is Oyeyemi’s third novel and garnered her the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award in 2010, placing her in the company of such luminaries as Doris Lessing, Angela Carter and Zadie Smith. White is for Witching opens with a cryptic and disorienting prelude as its protagonist, Miranda, lies already dead, with competing accounts of how this occurred. These segments set the stage for the narrative perspectives that make up the novel: Miranda herself, Eliot (her twin), Ore (her friend and partner), and the house itself, 29 Barton Road. The house is in Dover, a coastal town in England which serves as a major port to Calais, and therefore acts as a main entry point into England for many migrants and refugees. This setting allows Oyeyemi to examine contemporary issues of racism and xenophobia in her setting of England in the year 2000. Much like the welcoming façade of the house, the locals of Dover are superficially friendly but harbour a deep-seated racism. Refugees from Kosovo are stabbed, with Miranda’s twin, Eliot, blaming other refugees for the crime. Chinese migrants die in a truck trying to cross the border. There are protests outside the immigrant detention centre after a man commits suicide. When Miranda and Eliot’s mother, Lily, inherited the house, their father, Luc, persuaded his wife to turn the seven-bedroom Devon home into a B&B. Upon moving into the house, Miranda develops the same eating disorder which afflicted her great-grandmother. This disorder, pica, causes her to constantly chew on chalk and plastic, spurning regular food unless she makes a sustained effort to eat, usually to please her parents. When Miranda and Eliot’s mother dies, shot dead at a polling station in Haiti, Miranda finds herself in a psychiatric clinic for six months. Her memory of the events is already untrustworthy as she cannot recall how she got there. Consequently, an ambiguity persists when events are recounted from Miranda’s perspective. Physically weak from her eating disorder, her perception of reality is also unreliable, meaning that it is difficult to separate the supernatural events of the novel from Miranda’s own hallucinations. The house itself often casts aspersions on the reliability of Miranda and Eliot’s stories, whilst slyly suggesting multiple possibilities of its own. When recalling the fate of one of Miranda’s predecessors, the house presents two competing stories: she could have been strangled to death or allowed to reside within the house’s walls until she reached middle age. As the novel progresses, we learn more about the house, including the origins of its sentience, beginning at the time of Miranda’s great-grandmother. Thereafter, the house’s desire to “protect” the female members of the family becomes a corrupted, unwanted inheritance, as its desire manifests as possession and control, seeking to deny them any agency or autonomy. Miranda’s eating disorder is implied to be part of this supernatural inheritance as it afflicts subsequent generations who are connected to the house. As part of this disorder, she symbolically internalises chalk, connecting to the novel’s larger themes of racialisation and whiteness. This repeated act not only allows the house to symbolically extend its xenophobia beyond its physical boundaries, but it also weakens Miranda, causing her to become reliant on the house, and foreshadows the novel’s ending where the ultimate aims of the house’s idea of protection becomes clear. One of the novel’s focalisers is Ore, a woman with a Nigerian mother and white adoptive parents, who strikes up a friendship and romance with Miranda in Cambridge in some of the novel’s most touching scenes. Her perspective gives an insight into the discomfort and impostor syndrome of an elite academic environment. Furthermore, we see how Ore is subjected to the casual, mocking racism of her white cousins, who read aloud sections of leaflets distributed by the fascist British National Party. These scenes further add to the various manifestations of racism within the novel, emphasising how the xenophobia that the reader encounters is not simply a supernatural curse that is generations old, but a contemporary reality which can personally impact characters even in a familial context. In White is for Witching , neither the family nor the home, both traditionally associated with safety, can provide refuge. Oyeyemi’s novel subverts the trope of the monstrous, racialised Other, turning it back onto the white, colonial culture of England (indeed, the house has a fondness for the glory days of Rule Britannia). The uncanny is now the British family home. Sade, the Yoruba housekeeper, uses her culture’s charms and superstitions to counter the house’s malevolence. Ore, meanwhile, recalls the Nigerian folktale of the soucouyant, a shape-shifting old woman who feeds on the souls of her victims. She projects her understanding of this tale onto her experience of the haunted house, allowing her to defend herself against it. Miranda’s eating disorder leaves her pale and thin, visually recalling the vampire, a metaphor for the parasitic, colonial draining of resources and, indeed, her relationship with Ore leaves her lover in a similarly weakened state. A kissing scene towards the novel’s climax also heightens the novel’s supernatural elements and further troubles the boundaries between perception and reality. Drawing on Gothic tropes, Oyeyemi’s novel brilliantly conveys a sense of unease, foreboding, creeping uncertainty and inescapable decline throughout its narrative. Oyeyemi’s pages list various authors of dark fairytales and gothic stories which presumably shaped her writing, including the Brothers Grimm, E. T. A. Hoffman, and Sheridan LeFanu. However, it is the influence of Edgar Allen Poe which is felt most strongly in the novel. Humorously, one scene features Miranda and Eliot discuss how they could easily deal with the events of a Poe story. Indeed, one could view the novel as a reworking of The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), with its sentient home tied to a doomed bloodline. Oyeyemi’s story, like Poe’s, hints that there is an incestuous connection between the twins. Miranda possesses many characteristics shared by the Usher twins: she suffers from a mental illness which manifests itself physically, she has uncanny, pale white skin, and soft, ethereal hair. Like Roderick Usher, her fate is inseparable from the home. The reader is left to question whether she has control of her own actions. Upon the novel’s conclusion, it is natural to return once again to the prelude, now armed with the knowledge of what happens to Miranda and able to slice through its disorienting opacity. Yet, despite everything they have read, the reader will wonder about her fate long after the book is closed. This encouragement of circularity mimics the novel’s own themes, triggering many questions and unsettling any easy resolution. Although there are scattered, individual acts of resistance to the house and its xenophobia, it ultimately achieves its goal, raising the question of whether it is possible to break the cycle of victimhood and the continuity of a colonial past. Will the house, and by extension, the racist spectre of empire, continue to haunt British society forever?

A Conversation with Author Alejandra Ortiz In this podcast episode, doctoral candidate Maria Auxiliadora Castillo Soto and transnational author Alejandra Ortiz took a walking tour around different places in Amsterdam that are important to the author. Ortiz is the author of the book De Waarheid zal me Bevrijden , published in 2022 by Lebowski Publishers. In her book, Ortiz recounts her migratory experience from Mexico to the United States and Netherlands and her varied experiences in these countries as a trans migrant woman. Together with some information about her book, this podcast invites listeners to experience Amsterdam from Ortiz’s transnational gaze, far away from the touristic places and the typical representations of the city. At each stop, Alejandra’s short monologues explaining why these places are meaningful to her were recorded. The audios contain ambient sounds and noises that were experienced that day with the intention to offer listeners the experience of the movement of the conversation and the city. This small project also has photographs that were taken during the walk. These photographs and Alejandra’s experience will be published as a written report in an edited volume titled Amsterdam Diaries, Life Writing and Identity: Urban Lives in October 2025 by Amsterdam University Press. Check out the links below for more information about this piece. Edited volume - Amsterdam Diaries, Life Writing and Identity: Urban Lives (forthcoming, Amsterdam University Press, 2025): www.vu.nl/en/events/2023/urban-lives-amsterdam-diaries-and-other-stories-of-the-self Boost Amsterdam: www.boostamsterdam.nl T-Huis: www.transhuis.nl Papaya Kuir: www.papayakuir.com Winq Community Awards: www.winq.nl/winaar-winq-community-award-2023-alejandra-ortiz/103934 The episode transcript can be accessed here. An English translation of the transcript can be accessed here. This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by: María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Morality, Branding, and the Marketplace: A Review of Big Brands Are Watching You by Francesca Sobande In 'Big Brands Are Watching You', Francesca Sobande conducts in-depth research to challenge the role that brands and marketing have in the construction of societal morality, and how this construction influences people’s perception of their own activism and their stance on specific issues. Furthermore, the book offers an intersectional approach to media philosophy and digital studies, addressing an important gap in previous research concerning race. By María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto 5 July 2026 Review: Sobande, Francesca. Big Brands Are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture Dr. Francesca Sobande is a lecturer at the University of Cardiff in Wales. Her research interests span Black feminism, diaspora(s) , archives , and pop culture ; politics of media and marketplace; digital remix culture , music , and the internet ; and cultural memory . Before becoming a university lecturer, Dr. Sobande worked in different communications roles in higher education, the arts, and the non-profit sector. She is the author of influential works such as Consuming Crisis: Commodifying Care and COVID-19 published by SAGE in 2022, and The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020. She also co-authored Black Oot Here: Black Lives in Scotland with layla-roxane hill published by Bloomsbury in 2022 (readers may visit the author’s website to access a full list of her publications). Big Brands Are Watching You is situated within the fields of Black media philosophy and Black digital studies, employing a critical perspective on race in the marketplace. Dr. Sobande’s book touches on different concepts, specific examples, and collected quantitative data to offer the reader an informed analysis of how big brands and the highly interconnected and mediatized world affect consumers’ decisions. From the concept of morality to activism, marketing, influencer culture, and the use of nostalgia, Big Brands Are Watching You provides an insightful account on how, as Dr. Sobande puts it, “Big Brands are (and will keep) watching you (watching them)” (xi). Consequently, the book asks: Who holds the power? Are we really choosing freely? Francesca Sobande refers to the purpose of her book as an “attempt to bridge gaps between critical studies of branding, consumer culture, digital media, sociology, and the marketization and monetization of morality and social (in)justice” (34). An ambitious objective, but one that the author successfully accomplishes by morality, activism, marketing, influencer culture, and nostalgia through compelling examples and experiences relatable to a wider variety of readers. As a starting point, she deals with data mainly from the United States and United Kingdom, and though she also includes the former Tony’s Chocolonely Superstore and Chocolate Bar in Amsterdam, these two research sites provide plenty data for an analysis of two of the most established marketing hubs. Dr. Sobande’s book deals with different questions, themes, and topics, but “what ties them together is how they demonstrate some of the many ways that morality is (re)defined and negotiated in the marketplace, and how they illustrate various shaky bridges and boundaries between brands, activism, digital culture, and pop culture” (204). The concept of morality is not static. It changes through time and cultures and consumers hold different definitions of the term. Dr. Sobande shows how the (re)definition and negotiation of morality influence consumers’ decisions, and their support for specific brands, events, products, and lifestyles. She demonstrates how brands position themselves depending on what their customers may like, intentionally relating capitalism to liberation. However, through various examples and data analysis, the author effectively proves that this behavior is a planned illusion of brand activism inserted into our present consumer culture. To support her arguments Dr. Sobande analyzes different data collected through a bricolage methodology. She describes this methodology “in terms of both using a diverse range of research methods and analyzing a diverse range of marketing material, artifacts, and representations” (21). The author carries out an in-depth analysis of survey responses, archival material, interviews, and pop culture content, such as tv shows and her own experience at the “When We Were Young” music festival in Las Vegas. More specifically, she analyzes four hundred responses to a survey focused on the perception of concepts such as ‘woke-washing’ and the relationship between consumer culture and activism. For the archival material, she visits the Library of Congress and Smithsonian Institution Archives. She also interviews six experts on media, marketing, and retail; and she refers to concrete examples of brands and tv shows such as Ben & Jerry’s, BrewDog, Levi’s, Lush, Tony’s Chocolonely, and Industry, Partner Track, Severance, Succession, You, and The Bold Type . All these examples add credibility to her arguments and guide the reader through her in-depth research on digital remix culture to analyze how morality is used by brands as a scapegoat to impact consumers’ decisions. Throughout her book, Dr. Sobande creates pertinent connections across the different material, providing examples and allowing sufficient discussion space to question these brands’ decisions and behaviors in the past years. As a result, she presents plenty of evidence to demonstrate how brands decide who to support and what causes to favor based on structural whiteness both in the United States and United Kingdom. Although the book is well organized and the argument is easy to follow due to her writing style, readers may feel lost if they do not know the brands and/or the tv shows the author refers to. Ultimately, some background knowledge is needed to fully grasp the author’s aim. The book consists of four chapters and a short preface. In Chapter 1, Dr. Sobande sets the scene for her book. She presents the context and research while explaining her objectives and methodology. In Chapter 2, she navigates the politics of morality, and focuses on power struggles while using an intersectional analysis; for instance, she discusses the role of colonialism in forming capitalism. She points out the importance of this action since earlier research on similar topics does not refer to the association between colonial practices and economic structures. Chapter 3 discusses the relationship between influencer culture and social justice, revealing branding practices and activist approaches. Dr. Sobande questions the interactions of influencers and activism, expanding on the concept of ‘culture wars,’ by citing Stuart Hall and other influential scholars. Finally, in Chapter 4, she challenges the idea that brands can portray a coherent image between what they say they believe in and the corporate actions they make. In other words, they would rather sell diversity instead of really achieving it. Following Dr. Sobande’s work, it would be interesting to see more research done around this topic, an analysis of different brands and other countries outside of the United States and United Kingdom, for example. As mentioned before, this study is written with a European and American audience in mind, and approaching its content without any knowledge of these contexts might be challenging. Readers may benefit from conducting a light search before engaging with the book; for instance, watching TV show trailers or learning major brand names. Otherwise, this book is a valuable educational tool to understand how brands use the (re)construction of morality in the marketplace to create a connection between activism and capitalism. Considering this is a fundamental issue globally due to the growth of social media and consumer markets, we must approach it from a critical transnational perspective. References Sobande, Francesca. Big Brands Are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture . University of California Press, 2024.

Overview Based upon a truly interdisciplinary gendered approach to knowledge production, EUTERPE offers a new and innovative quality of PhD training characterized by synergy between research, training, and supervision Objectives EUTERPE is envisaged as a complex, multilayered project, which has several long-term objectives, connected with very concrete tasks in the intersecting fields of gender studies, literary studies, translation studies and European studies.

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