https://journals.sfu.ca/wt/index.php/westerntributaries An interdisciplinary journal hosted by the West Coast Graduate Liberal Studies programs Simon Fraser University en-US Western Tributaries 2817-0113 https://journals.sfu.ca/wt/index.php/westerntributaries/article/view/89 <p>Rome is a physical place, a container of memories, and simultaneously a psychical entity. This paper takes a present-day reader on a meandering stroll through the eternal city with the twelfth-century guidebook <em>Mirabilia Urbis Romae </em>and the fourteenth-century map of Rome by Fra Paolino da Venezia as companions to explore the relationship between place (or location), history, cartography, imagination, and memory.</p> You Jia Zhu Copyright (c) 2022 You Jia Zhu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2022-12-01 2022-12-01 8 https://journals.sfu.ca/wt/index.php/westerntributaries/article/view/88 <p>Recent studies in the social and political sciences are uncovering how today’s societal disruptions and increasingly pervasive technological advances are uniquely affecting people’s personal and collective sense of “self.” These effects are becoming especially prevalent as human activities become increasingly tracked, formed into data objects, managed, and transacted algorithmically. This paper will explore several aspects of this transformation and their impact on the performative of conceptualizing the self. They include autonomy in decision-making, forming relationships, and the trend from a neoliberal ideal of self-entrepreneur toward a “post-neoliberal” model of self-colonization. Paralleling these trends is the emergence of counter-narrative strategies for navigating the self, including an experiment in collective resistance referred to as <em>participative circumvention.</em></p> Thor Madsen Copyright (c) 2022 Thor Madsen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 2022-12-01 2022-12-01 8