Shafiqul Islam

This chapter aims to focus on the impacts of some particular fashion adverts which are breaking the prevalent ideas regarding 'the representation of men' on Bangladeshi youths of different ages and areas by making a survey on the youths studying at different Bangladeshi universities. The media of the western countries are acquainted with these types of representation of men while the Bangladeshi media has let its viewers know about this lately through different advertisements specially fashion adverts. This new type of representation of men and "masculinity" or the emergence of "Metrosexual men" in the Bangladeshi media has its own impacts on the youths of Bangladesh whether it is about creating a new concept or it is only about dealing with the consumer culture. However, this chapter points to highlight on the fact that to what extent the concepts of the urban Bangladeshi youths (both male and female of different ages and areas) are molded by the emergence of this type of adverts in Bangladeshi media.

This paper attempts a cybercritical reading of William Gibson's novel Neuromancer (1984) to explore the genesis of cyborgs in the novel, address issues pertaining to cyberpunks and scrutinize the portrayal of a cyberculture set in the futuristic dystopian city of Chiba. The relationship between humans and machines has gone through multiple phases of changes in the recent past. That is why instead of satirizing machinized-humans, science fiction writers have embraced different dimensions of man-machine relationships during the past few decades. 'Cyborg' is no longer represented as the 'mutation of human capabilities', but as 'machines with Artificial Intelligence'. Gibson's Neuromancer, a landmark piece of literary work in the sphere of Sci-Fi literature, specifically predicts a new height of man-machine relationship by employing both human and cyborg characters at the center of his story line. This paper shows how Gibson accurately prophesizes the matrix of machine-human relationship in his novel. It also explores Gibson's depiction of female characters through the lens of cyberfeminist theories. In view of that, this paper uses contemporary critical and cultural theories including Donna Haraway's idea of cyberfeminism, Baudrillard's simulation and simulacra, Foucauldian discourse analysis, Jeremy Bentham's concept of tabula rasa and other relevant theoretical ideas to examine and evaluate the transformative changes.

There are debates whether Pedophilia, a universal psycho-social problem, is a psychiatric disorder or a perverse sexual orientation. Though a few number of pedophilia supporting groups argue that having sexual interests in children is merely a sexual orientation or fantasy, but this paper explores further in analyzing different psychological insights of pedophiles, especially in the contexts of Vladimir Nobokov’s novel Lolita (1955) and its film adaptation of 1962. This paper gives a critical analysis of the views and practices of pedophilia in the contemporary world. In addition to that, this paper explores the binary opposite characters of Humbert and Clare Quilty to determine whether pedophilia is their sexual orientation or they are perverts who are only sexually attracted to young girls. Apart from analyzing this perverse sexual practice, this paper also discusses the established notions of pedophilia, re/de-constructs them and gives an elaborate discussion on this taboo topic from theoretical points of view. In doing so, this paper employs critical commentaries based on a number of established theories like Michel Foucault’s theories on Sexuality, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Laura Mulvey’s envision of scopophilia.