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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies
This study illuminates the complex interplay between Deleuze and
Guattari's philosophy and architecture. Presenting their
wide-ranging impact on late 20th- and 21st-century architecture,
each chapter focuses on a core Deleuzian/Guattarian philosophical
concept and one key work of architecture which evokes, contorts, or
extends it. Challenging the idea that a concept or theory defines
and then produces the physical work and not vice versa, Chris L.
Smith positions the relationship between Deleuze and Guattari's
philosophy and the field of architecture as one that is mutually
substantiating and constitutive. In this framework, modes of
architectural production and experimentation become inextricable
from the conceptual territories defined by these two key thinkers,
producing a rigorous discussion of theoretical, practical, and
experimental engagements with their ideas.
In the nineteenth century, most American farms had a small orchard
or at least a few fruit-bearing trees. People grew their own apple
trees or purchased apples grown within a few hundred miles of their
homes. Nowadays, in contrast, Americans buy mass-produced fruit in
supermarkets, and roughly 70 percent of apples come from Washington
State. So how did Washington become the leading producer of
America's most popular fruit? In this enlightening book, Amanda L.
Van Lanen offers a comprehensive response to this question by
tracing the origins, evolution, and environmental consequences of
the state's apple industry. Washington's success in producing
apples was not a happy accident of nature, according to Van Lanen.
Apples are not native to Washington, any more than potatoes are to
Idaho or peaches to Georgia. In fact, Washington apple farmers were
late to the game, lagging their eastern competitors. The author
outlines the numerous challenges early Washington entrepreneurs
faced in such areas as irrigation, transportation, and labor.
Eventually, with crucial help from railroads, Washington farmers
transformed themselves into "growers" by embracing new technologies
and marketing strategies. By the 1920s, the state's growers managed
not only to innovate the industry but to dominate it. Industrial
agriculture has its fair share of problems involving the
environment, consumers, and growers themselves. In the quest to
create the perfect apple, early growers did not question the
long-term environmental effects of chemical sprays. Since the late
twentieth century, consumers have increasingly questioned the
environmental safety of industrial apple production. Today, as this
book reveals, the apple industry continues to evolve in response to
shifting consumer demands and accelerating climate change. Yet,
through it all, the Washington apple maintains its iconic status as
Washington's most valuable agricultural crop.
It's been barely twenty years since Dave Eggers (b. 1970) burst
onto the American literary scene with the publication of his
memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. In that time, he
has gone on to publish several books of fiction, a few more books
of nonfiction, a dozen books for children, and many
harder-to-classify works. In addition to his authorship, Eggers has
established himself as an influential publisher, editor, and
designer. He has also founded a publishing company, McSweeney's;
two magazines, Might and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern; and several
nonprofit organizations. This whirlwind of productivity, within
publishing and beyond, gives Eggers a unique standing among
American writers: jack of all trades, master of same. The
interviews contained in Conversations with Dave Eggers suggest the
range of Eggers's pursuits-a range that is reflected in the variety
of the interviews themselves. In addition to the expected
interviews with major publications, Eggers engages here with
obscure magazines and blogs, trade publications, international
publications, student publications, and children from a mentoring
program run by one of his nonprofits. To read the interviews in
sequence is to witness Eggers's rapid evolution. The cultural
hysteria around Staggering Genius and Eggers's complicated
relationship with celebrity are clear in many of the earlier
interviews. From there, as the buzz around him mellows, Eggers
responds in kind, allowing writing and his other endeavors to come
to the fore of his conversations. Together, these interviews
provide valuable insight into a driving force in contemporary
American literature.
Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given
area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject
in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of
travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Providing a critical
overview of cultural economics, this Research Agenda explores the
current state of affairs in the field, suggesting methods of
improvement for the coherency and progressiveness of future
research. Situating work in this area in its historical context,
Samuel Cameron draws together a range of international contributors
to explore the development of cultural economics. Undertaking a
thorough examination of matters of data quality, statistical
methodology and the challenge of new developments in technology,
chapters examine the different approaches to cultural economics.
The book explores the myriad ways in which the topic has been
neglected by mainstream economics, and examines reasons why it
needs to be considered, evaluated and explored in more detail in
our modern world. Current researchers in cultural economics, as
well as cultural policies and leisure studies will find this book
an invaluable read in exploring different ways to integrate
cultural economics into mainstream studies. This Research Agenda
will also be an invaluable aid for advanced students to create
discussions suitable for essay topics and dissertations.
Contributors include: S. Cameron, C. Peukert, J. Snowball, H.
Sonnabend, M. Zieba
Howard Cruse is the first biography to tell the life story of one
of the most important figures in LGBTQ+ comics. A preacher's kid
from Alabama who became "the godfather of queer comics," Cruse
(1944-2019) was a groundbreaking underground cartoonist, a wicked
satirist, an LGBTQ+ activist, and a mentor to a vast network of
queer comics artists. His comic strip Wendel, published in The
Advocate throughout the 1980s, is considered a revolutionary moment
in the development of LGBTQ+ comics, as is his inaugurating the
editorship of Gay Comix with Kitchen Sink Press in 1979, which
furthered the careers of important artists like Jennifer Camper and
Alison Bechdel. Cruse's graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby, published
in 1995, fictionalizes his own coming out in the context of the
civil rights movement in 1960s Birmingham and was a significant
forerunner to contemporary graphic novels and memoirs. Howard Cruse
draws on extensive archival research and interviews and covers
Cruse's entire body of work: the cute and zany Barefootz, the
unexpected innovations of the Gay Comix stories, the domestic
intimacies of Wendel, and the complexity and power of Stuck Rubber
Baby. The book places Cruse's art in the context of his life and
his times, including the historic movements for gay rights and
against the AIDS crisis, and it celebrates this extraordinary and
essential figure of LGBTQ+ comics and American comics art more
broadly.
On December 4, 1957, Miles Davis revolutionized film soundtrack
production, improvising the score for Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour
l'echafaud. A cinematic harbinger of the French New Wave, Ascenseur
challenged mainstream filmmaking conventions, emphasizing
experimentation and creative collaboration. It was in this
environment during the late 1950s to 1960s, a brief "golden age"
for jazz in film, that many independent filmmakers valued
improvisational techniques, featuring soundtracks from such seminal
figures as John Lewis, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington. But
what of jazz in film today? Improvising the Score: Rethinking
Modern Film Music through Jazz provides an original, vivid
investigation of innovative collaborations between renowned
contemporary jazz artists and prominent independent filmmakers. The
book explores how these integrative jazz-film productions challenge
us to rethink the possibilities of cinematic music production.
In-depth case studies include collaborations between Terence
Blanchard and Spike Lee (Malcolm X, When the Levees Broke), Dick
Hyman and Woody Allen (Hannah and Her Sisters), Antonio Sanchez and
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Birdman), and Mark Isham and Alan
Rudolph (Afterglow). The first book of its kind, this study
examines jazz artists' work in film from a sociological
perspective, offering rich, behind-the-scenes analyses of their
unique collaborative relationships with filmmakers. It investigates
how jazz artists negotiate their own "creative labor," examining
the tensions between improvisation and the conventionally highly
regulated structures, hierarchies, and expectations of filmmaking.
Grounded in personal interviews and detailed film production
analysis, Improvising the Score illustrates the dynamic
possibilities of integrative artistic collaborations between jazz,
film, and other contemporary media, exemplifying its ripeness for
shaping and invigorating twenty-first-century arts, media, and
culture.
Tarot cards have been around since the Renaissance and have become
increasingly popular in recent years, often due to their prevalence
in popular culture. While Tarot means many different things to many
different people, the cards somehow strike universal chords that
can resonate through popular culture in the contexts of art,
television, movies, even comic books. The symbolism within the
cards, and the cards as symbols themselves, make Tarot an excellent
device for the media of popular culture in numerous ways. They make
horror movies scarier. They make paintings more provocative. They
provide illustrative structure to comics and can establish the
traits of television characters. The Cards: The Evolution and Power
of Tarot begins with an extensive review of the history of Tarot
from its roots as a game to its supposed connection to ancient
Egyptian magic, through its place in secret societies, and to its
current use in meditation and psychology. This section ends with an
examination of the people who make up today's tarot community.
Then, specific areas of popular culture-art, television, movies,
and comics-are each given a chapter in which to survey the use of
Tarot. In this section, author Patrick Maille analyzes such works
as Deadpool, Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman, Disney's Haunted
Mansion, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, The Andy Griffith Show,
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and King of the Hill. The cards are
evocative images in their own right, but the mystical fascination
they inspire makes them a fantastic tool to be used in our favorite
shows and stories.
The Angel and the Cholent: Food Representation from the Israel
Folktale Archives by Idit Pintel-Ginsberg, translated into English
for the first time from Hebrew, analyzes how food and foodways are
the major agents generating the plots of several significant
folktales. The tales were chosen from the Israel Folktales
Archives' (IFA) extensive collection of twenty-five thousand tales.
In looking at the subject of food through the lens of the folktale,
we are invited to consider these tales both as a reflection of
society and as an art form that discloses hidden hopes and often
subversive meanings. The Angel and the Cholent presents thirty
folktales from seventeen different ethnicities and is divided into
five chapters. Chapter 1 considers food and taste-tales included
here focus on the pleasure derived by food consumption and its
reasonable limits. The tales in Chapter 2 are concerned with food
and gender, highlighting the various and intricate ways food is
used to emphasize gender functions in society, the struggle between
the sexes, and the love and lust demonstrated through food
preparations and its consumption. Chapter 3 examines food and class
with tales that reflect on how sharing food to support those in
need is a universal social act considered a ""mitzvah"" (a Jewish
religious obligation), but it can also become an unspoken burden
for the providers. Chapter 4 deals with food and kashrut-the tales
included in this chapter expose the various challenges of ""keeping
kosher,"" mainly the heavy financial burden it causes and the
social price paid by the inability of sharing meals with non-Jews.
Finally, Chapter 5 explores food and sacred time, with tales that
convey the tension and stress caused by finding and cooking
specific foods required for holiday feasts, the Shabbat and other
sacred times. The tales themselves can be appreciated for their
literary quality, humor, and profound wisdom. Readers, scholars,
and students interested in folkloristic and anthropological foodway
studies or Jewish cultural studies will delight in these tales and
find the editorial commentary illuminating.
This book focuses on the variety of strategies developed by women
athletes in the Pacific Islands to claim contested sporting spaces
– in particular, rugby union, soccer, beach volleyball,
recreational sports and exercise – as a prism to explore
grassroots women’s engagement with heavily entrenched
postcolonial (hetero)patriarchy. Based on primary research
conducted in Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu, the book
investigates contested sporting spaces as sites of infrapolitics
intersected primarily by gender and also by other markers of
inequality including ethnicity, sexuality, class and geopolitics.
Contrary to historical and contemporary representations of Pacific
Island women as victims of gender injustice, it explores how these
athletes and those who support them actively carve out space for
their transformative agency. Staking Their Claim: Pacific Island
Women and Contested Sporting Spaces focuses on a region
underexamined by sport or gender studies researchers and will be of
key interest to scholars and students in gender studies, sport
studies, sociology, and Pacific Studies as well as sport
practitioners and policymakers.
In Black to Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture,
author Stefanie K. Dunning considers both popular and literary
texts that range from Beyonce's Lemonade to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage
the Bones. These key works restage Black women in relation to
nature. Dunning argues that depictions of protagonists who return
to pastoral settings contest the violent and racist history that
incentivized Black disavowal of the natural world. Dunning offers
an original theoretical paradigm for thinking through race and
nature by showing that diverse constructions of nature in these
texts are deployed as a means of rescrambling the teleology of the
Western progress narrative. In a series of fascinating close
readings of contemporary Black texts, she reveals how a range of
artists evoke nature to suggest that interbeing with nature signals
a call for what Jared Sexton calls ""the dream of Black
Studies""-abolition. Black to Nature thus offers nuanced readings
that advance an emerging body of critical and creative work at the
nexus of Blackness, gender, and nature. Written in a clear,
approachable, and multilayered style that aims to be as poignant as
nature itself, the volume offers a unique combination of
theoretical breadth, narrative beauty, and broader perspective that
suggests it will be a foundational text in a new critical turn
towards framing nature within a cultural studies context.
This book offers an outside-in look at American cultural
peculiarities that helps Americans, see ourselves as others see us
-and vice versa. "American Cultural Baggage" lets both Americans
and the rest of the world in on things most Americans don't know,
about themselves and their values and how those things are
perceived by others. Americans will learn of the impression they
make, while others will gain insight into the curious tribal values
of Americans.
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