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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies
This collection is a unique exploration of the heritage and legacy of the Canterbury Sound: a signature style emerging in the 1960s that draws upon psychedelic music, progressive rock, jazz and pop to capture the real and imagined interactions between people, place and music. The volume recounts the stories, and explores the significance, of the Canterbury Sound as heritage, ongoing legacy and scene. Originating from the experiences and ethnographic research of the three editors, all of whom have lived and worked in Canterbury, the book brings together reflections, stories, and critical insights from well-known musicians, researchers, DIY archivists and fans to explore the Canterbury Sound as an inter-generational phenomenon and a source of cultural identity. Associated with acts like Caravan, Soft Machine, Gong, Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers, this romanticised scene has a special place in popular music culture. Chapters examine the emergence of the Canterbury Sound and the associated scene, including the legacies of key figures in forming the Canterbury Sound aesthetic, the documentation of the scene (online and off) and contemporary scenes within the city, which continues to attract and inspire young people.
What caused four recently bar mitzvahed middle-class youths to go on a crime spree of assault and murder in 1954? This book provides a compelling narrative retelling of the boys, their crimes, and a U.S. culture obsessed with juvenile delinquency. After ongoing months of daily headlines about gang shootouts, stomp-killings, and millions of dollars worth of vandalism, by the summer of 1954, America had had enough of juvenile delinquency. It was in this environment that 18-year-old Jack Koslow and the other three teenage members of the Brooklyn Thrill Killers committed their heinous crimes and achieved notoriety. The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s exposes the underbelly of America's mid-century, the terrible price of assimilation, the uncomfortable bedfellows of comic books and juvenile delinquency, and the dystopia already in bloom amongst American youth well before the 1960s. Readers will be engrossed and horrified by the tale of the Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang whose shocking, front-page story could easily have been copy-pasted from today's online news sites. Author Mariah Adin takes readers along for a breathtaking moment-by-moment retelling of the crime spree, the subsequent interrogations, and the dramatic courtroom showdown, interspersed with expository chapters on juvenile delinquency, America's Jewish community in the post-Holocaust period, and the anti-comics movement. This book serves to merge the history of juvenile delinquency with that of the Great Comic Book Scare, highlights the assimilation of immigrants into America's white mainstream gone wrong, and complicates our understanding of America's "Golden Age." Tells a fascinating true crime story involving murder, juvenile delinquency, secret sexualities, and obscene comic books from a time in American history often portrayed as idyllic and innocent Provides revealing insights into the anxieties of the post-Holocaust Jewish-American community Supplies a new angle on the Great Comic Book Scare and the anti-comics movement Based on original, archival research using materials that have never been published
Robots in Popular Culture: Androids and Cyborgs in the American Imagination seeks to provide one go-to reference for the study of the most popular and iconic robots in American popular culture. In the last 10 years, technology and artificial intelligence (AI) have become not only a daily but a minute-by-minute part of American life-more integrated into our lives than anyone would have believed even a generation before. Americans have long known the adorable and helpful R2-D2 and the terrible possibilities of Skynet and its army of Terminators. Throughout, we have seen machines as valuable allies and horrifying enemies. Today, Americans cling to their mobile phones with the same affection that Luke Skywalker felt for the squat R2-D2. Meanwhile, our phones, personal computers, and cars have attained the ability to know and learn everything about us. This volume opens with essays about robots in popular culture, followed by 100 A-Z entries on the most famous AIs in film, comics, and more. Sidebars highlight ancillary points of interest, such as authors, creators, and tropes that illuminate the motives of various robots. The volume closes with a glossary of key terms and a bibliography providing students with resources to continue their study of what robots tell us about ourselves. Provides readers with detailed information on popular examples of robots/AI in American popular culture Provides readers with considerable Further Reading suggestions, including scholarly, pop culture, and scientific readings on each topic Places popular examples of robots/AI in pop culture in proper historical perspective Provides scholarly material that gives readers additional important historical context in five essays Gives equal coverage to a diverse array of robots, from the well-known to the obscure
In 1939, Aleksandr Volkov (1891-1977) published Wizard of the Emerald City, a revised version of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Only a line on the copyright page explained the book as a "reworking" of the American story. Readers credited Volkov as author rather than translator. Volkov, an unknown and inexperienced author before World War II, tried to break into the politically charged field of Soviet children's literature with an American fairy tale. During the height of Stalin's purges, Volkov adapted and published this fairy tale in the Soviet Union despite enormous, sometimes deadly, obstacles. Marketed as Volkov's original work, Wizard of the Emerald City spawned a series that was translated into more than a dozen languages and became a staple of Soviet popular culture, not unlike Baum's fourteen-volume Oz series in the United States. Volkov's books inspired a television series, plays, films, musicals, animated cartoons, and a museum. Today, children's authors and fans continue to add volumes to the Magic Land series. Several generations of Soviet Russian and Eastern European children grew up with Volkov's writings, yet know little about the author and even less about his American source, L. Frank Baum. Most Americans have never heard of Volkov and know nothing of his impact in the Soviet Union, and those who do know of him regard his efforts as plagiarism. Erika Haber demonstrates how the works of both Baum and Volkov evolved from being popular children's literature and became compelling and enduring cultural icons in both the US and USSR/Russia, despite being dismissed and ignored by critics, scholars, and librarians for many years.
Making Sense of Ultra-Realism offers readers a unique insight into one of the most significant theoretical advances in 21st century criminology. Drawing upon popular films and television series, including Game of Thrones, Avengers, Pirates of the Caribbean, Fight Club and more, each chapter tackles a particular aspect of ultra-realism. By connecting visual texts to theoretical ideas, the authors help to contextualise and clarify core elements of the ultra-realist school of thought, providing a theoretically rich yet accessible introduction to the topic. Often wrongly viewed as opaque and impenetrable, this concise text demonstrates that ultra-realism is anything but that. Written in a clear and accessible manner, and supported by valuable student insights, this book is ideal for those coming to the subject for the first time. This timely addition to a cutting-edge field is undoubtedly a 'must read' on the reading lists of a number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, as well as a helpful resource for experienced academics in the fields of criminology, social policy, politics, psychology, philosophy, and sociology.
In 1952, there were probably fewer than 200 Baha'is in all of Africa. Today the Baha'i community claims one million followers on the continent. Yet, the Baha'i presence in Africa has been all but ignored in academic studies up to now. This is the first monograph that addresses the establishment of this New Religious Movement in Africa. Discovering an African presence at the genesis of the religon in Iran, this study seeks to explain why the movement found an appeal in colonial Africa during the 1950s and early 1960. It also explores how the Baha'i faith was influenced and Africanized by its new converts. Finally, the book seeks to make sense of the diverse and contradictory American, Iranian, British, and African elements that established a new religion in Africa.
The more than 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border is a focus of intense interest today, as immigration, security, and environmental issues dominate the headlines. This is the first A-to-Z encyclopedia to overview the unique and vibrant elements that make up the borderlands. More than 150 essay entries provide students and general readers with a solid sense of the U.S.-Mexico border history, culture, and politics. Coverage runs the gamut from key historical and contemporary figures, art, cuisine, sports, and religion to education, environment, legislation, radio, rhetoric, slavery, tourism, and women in Ciudad Juarez. The more than 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border is a focus of intense interest today, as immigration, security, and environmental issues dominate the headlines. This is the first A-to-Z encyclopedia to overview the unique and vibrant elements that make up the borderlands. More than 150 essay entries provide students and general readers with a solid sense of the U.S.-Mexico border history, culture, and politics. Coverage runs the gamut from key historical and contemporary figures, art, cuisine, sports, and religion to education, environment, legislation, radio, rhetoric, slavery, tourism, and women in Ciudad Juarez. Alphabetical and topical lists of entries in the frontmatter allow readers to find topics of interest quickly, as does the index. Those looking for more in-depth coverage will find many helpful suggestions in the Further Reading section per entry as well as in the Selected Bibliography. A chronology and historical photos also complement the text.
Intellectuals rarely make a significant impact on one field of scholarship let alone several, yet Amos Funkenstein (1937-1995) displayed an intellectual range that encompassed several disciplines and broke new ground across seemingly impenetrable scholarly boundaries. The philosophy of history from antiquity to modernity, medieval and early modern history of science, medieval scholasticism, Jewish history in all of its periods - these are all areas in which he made lasting contributions. Thinking Impossibilities brings together Funkenstein's colleagues, friends, and former students to engage with important aspects of his intellectual legacy. Funkenstein's diverse interests were bound together by common figures of thought, especially the search for pre-modern intellectual groundings of modern ideas and how the seeming 'impossibilities' of one historical moment might become positive resources of conceptual construction and development in another. The essays in this volume take up major themes in European intellectual history, and examine them through the unique lens that Funkenstein himself employed during his career. Of particular interest are ways in which topics of Jewish history are engaged with the larger field of the history of ideas in the West. Richly interdisciplinary and full of fresh insights, Thinking Impossibilities is a fitting tribute to an important twentieth-century scholar.
aRough Writing is much more than a fascinating account of the
little-known relationship between an American president and the
immigrant authors whose work he promoted in the service of a new
national narrative. Meticulously researched and lucidly written,
Rough Writing enables us to see a vital period in American
literature through new eyes.a As the United States struggled to absorb a massive influx of ethnically diverse immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, the question of who and what an American is took on urgent intensity. It seemed more critical than ever to establish a definition by which Americanness could be established, transmitted, maintained, and judged. Americans of all stripes sought to articulate and enforce their visions of the nationas past, present, and future; central to these attempts was President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt fully recognized the narrative component of American identity, and he called upon authors of diverse European backgrounds including Israel Zangwill, Jacob Riis, Elizabeth Stern, and Finley Peter Dunne to promote the nation in popular written form. With the swell and shift in immigration, he realized that a more encompassing national literature was needed to aexpress and guide the soul of the nation.a Rough Writing examines the surprising place and implications of the immigrant and of ethnic writing in Rooseveltas America and American literature.
When a devastating earthquake struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on January 12, 2010, the world reacted with a collective, yet distant, horror. For "Cincinnati Enquirer" reporter Mark Curnutte, hearing the news provoked a far more visceral response. Curnutte had grown to love Haiti and its people as only someone who had lived with Haiti's families could.
Extreme metal--one step beyond heavy metal--can appear bizarre or
terrifying to the uninitiated. Musicians of this genre have
developed an often impenetrable sound that teeters on the edge of
screaming, incomprehensible noise. Extreme metal circulates on the
edge of mainstream culture within the confines of an obscure
'scene', in which members explore dangerous themes such as death,
war and the occult, sometimes embracing violence, neo-fascism and
Satanism. In the first book-length study of extreme metal, Keith
Kahn-Harris draws on first-hand research to explore the global
extreme metal scene. He shows how the scene is a space in which
members creatively explore destructive themes, but also a space in
which members experience the everyday pleasures of community and
friendship. Including interviews with band members and fans, from
countries ranging from the UK and US to Israel and Sweden, Extreme
Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge demonstrates the power and
subtlety of an often surprising and misunderstood musical form.
Capitalism drives our global food system. Everyone who wants to end hunger, who wants to eat good, clean, healthy food, needs to understand capitalism. This book will help do that. In his latest book, Eric Holt-Gimenez takes on the social, environmental, and economic crises of the capitalist mode of food production. Drawing from classical and modern analyses, A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism introduces the reader to the history of our food systemand to the basics of capitalism. In straightforward prose, Holt-Gimenez explains the political economics of why--even as local, organic, and gourmet food have spread around the world--billions go hungry in the midst of abundance; why obesity is a global epidemic; and why land-grabbing, global warming, and environmental pollution are increasing. Holt-Gimenez offers emblematic accounts--and critiques--of past and present-day struggles to change the food system, from voting with your fork, to land occupations. We learn about the potential and the pitfalls of organic and community-supported agriculture, certified fair trade, microfinance, land trusts, agrarian reform, cooperatives, and food aid. We also learn about the convergence of growing social movements using the food system to challenge capitalism. How did racism, classism, and patriarchy become structural components of our food system? Why is a rational agriculture incompatible with the global food regime? Can transforming our food system transform capitalism? These are questions that can only be addressed by first understanding how capitalism works.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Drawing on a wide range of examples from literature, comics, film, television and digital media, Nerd Ecology is the first substantial ecocritical study of nerd culture's engagement with environmental issues. Exploring such works as Star Trek, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, the fiction of Thomas Pynchon, The Hunger Games, and superhero comics such as Green Lantern and X-Men, Anthony Lioi maps out the development of nerd culture and its intersections with the most fundamental ecocritical themes. In this way Lioi finds in the narratives of unpopular culture - narratives in which marginalised individuals and communities unite to save the planet - the building blocks of a new environmental politics in tune with the concerns of contemporary ecocritical theory and practice.
This book foregrounds the figure of the perpetrator in a selection of British, American, and Canadian comics and explores questions related to remembrance, justice, and historical debt. Its primary focus is on works that deliberately estrange the figure of the perpetrator-through fantasy, absurdism, formal ambiguity, or provocative rewriting-and thus allow readers to engage anew with the history of genocide, mass murder, and sexual violence. This book is particularly interested in the ethical space such an engagement calls into being: in its ability to allow us to ponder the privilege many of us now enjoy, the gross historical injustices that have secured it, and the debt we owe to people long dead.
As timely as the latest tweet, this book tracks the digital revolution as a paradigm shift that is transforming popular culture in as yet unforeseen ways. Bloggerati, Twitterati: How Blogs and Twitter Are Transforming Popular Culture explores the ongoing digital revolution and examines the way it is changing-and will change-the way people live and communicate. Starting from the proposition that the Internet is now the center of popular culture, the book offers descriptions of blogs and Twitter and the online behavior they foster. It looks at the demographics of users and the impact of the Internet on knowledge, thinking, writing, politics, and journalism. A primary focus is on the way blogs and tweets are opening up communication to the people, free from gatekeepers and sanctioned rhetoric. The other side of the coin is the online hijacking of the news and its potential for spreading misinformation and fomenting polarization, topics that are analyzed even as the situation continues to evolve. Finally, the book gathers predictions from cultural critics about the future of digital popular culture and makes a few predictions of its own. Sidebars featuring original and exclusive interviews with media personalities Tina Brown, Arianna Huffington, Martha Stewart, and others A timeline showing the history of the Internet, blogs, Twitter, and social media Cartoons depicting humorous aspects of Internet culture Snapshot views of blogs A bibliography and listings of selected blogsites
The Long Life invites the reader to range widely from the writings
of Plato through to recent philosophical work by Derek Parfit,
Bernard Williams, and others, and from Shakespeare's King Lear
through works by Thomas Mann, Balzac, Dickens, Beckett, Stevie
Smith, Philip Larkin, to more recent writing by Saul Bellow, Philip
Roth, and J. M. Coetzee.
In "Selling Air Power," Steve Call provides the first comprehensive study of the efforts of post-war air power advocates to harness popular culture in support of their agenda. In the 1940s and much of the 1950s, hardly a month went by without at least one blatantly pro-air power article appearing in general interest magazines. Public fascination with flight helped create and sustain exaggerated expectations for air power in the minds of both its official proponents and the American public. Articles in the "Saturday Evening Post," "Reader's Digest," and "Life" trumpeted the secure future assured by American air superiority. Military figures like Henry H. "Hap" Arnold and Curtis E. LeMay, radio-television personalities such as Arthur Godfrey, cartoon figures like "Steve Canyon," and actors like Jimmy Stewart played key roles in the unfolding campaign. Movies like "Twelve O'Clock High ," "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell," and "A Gathering of Eagles" projected onto the public imagination vivid images confirming what was coming to be the accepted wisdom: that America's safety against the Soviet threat could best be guaranteed by air power, coupled with nuclear capability. But as the Cold War continued and the specter of the mushroom cloud grew more prominent in American minds, another, more sinister interpretation began to take hold. Call chronicles the shift away from the heroic, patriotic posture of the years just after World War II, toward the threatening, even bizarre imagery of books and movies like "Catch-22," "On the Beach," and "Dr. Strangelove." Call's careful analysis goes beyond the public relations campaigns to probe the intellectual climate that shaped them and gave them power. "Selling Air Power" adds a critical layer of understanding to studies in military and aviation history, as well as American popular culture.
This book provides a fascinating, up-to-date overview of the social, cultural, economic, and political landscapes of Tanzania. In Culture and Customs of Tanzania, author Kefa M. Otiso presents an approachable basic overview of the country's key characteristics, covering topics such as Tanzania's land, peoples, languages, education system, resources, occupations, economy, government, and history. This recent addition to Greenwood's Culture and Customs of Africa series also contains chapters that portray the culture and social customs of Tanzania, such as the country's religion and worldview; literature, film, and media; art, architecture, and housing; cuisine and traditional dress; gender roles, marriage, family structures, and lifestyle; and music, dance, and drama. Describes historical events from the late 1800s to the present day Provides several maps depicting Tanzania's location in Africa, major physical features, administrative units, urban areas, ethnic groups, and population distribution Contains an interdisciplinary bibliography of sources in the areas of geography, history, anthropology, and popular culture Includes a glossary of key terms, places, cities, ethnic groups, and personalities
Patrick Barr-Melej here illuminates modern Chilean history with an unprecedented chronicle and reassessment of the sixties and seventies. During a period of tremendous political and social strife that saw the election of a Marxist president followed by the terror of a military coup in 1973, a youth-driven, transnationally connected counterculture smashed onto the scene. Contributing to a surging historiography of the era's Latin American counterculture, Barr-Melej draws on media and firsthand interviews in documenting the intertwining of youth and counterculture with discourses rooted in class and party politics. Focusing on ""hippismo"" and an esoteric movement called Poder Joven, Barr-Melej challenges a number of prevailing assumptions about culture, politics, and the Left under Salvador Allende's ""Chilean Road to Socialism."" While countercultural attitudes toward recreational drug use, gender roles and sexuality, rock music, and consumerism influenced many youths on the Left, the preponderance of leftist leaders shared a more conservative cultural sensibility. This exposed, Barr-Melej argues, a degree of intergenerational dissonance within leftist ranks. And while the allure of new and heterodox cultural values and practices among young people grew, an array of constituencies from the Left to the Right berated counterculture in national media, speeches, schools, and other settings. This public discourse of contempt ultimately contributed to the fierce repression of nonconformist youth culture following the coup.
Winner of the 2013 John Hope Franklin Book Prize presented by the American Studies Association A necessary read that demonstrates the ways in which certain people are devalued without attention to social contexts Social Death tackles one of the core paradoxes of social justice struggles and scholarship-that the battle to end oppression shares the moral grammar that structures exploitation and sanctions state violence. Lisa Marie Cacho forcefully argues that the demands for personhood for those who, in the eyes of society, have little value, depend on capitalist and heteropatriarchal measures of worth. With poignant case studies, Cacho illustrates that our very understanding of personhood is premised upon the unchallenged devaluation of criminalized populations of color. Hence, the reliance of rights-based politics on notions of who is and is not a deserving member of society inadvertently replicates the logic that creates and normalizes states of social and literal death. Her understanding of inalienable rights and personhood provides us the much-needed comparative analytical and ethical tools to understand the racialized and nationalized tensions between racial groups. Driven by a radical, relentless critique, Social Death challenges us to imagine a heretofore "unthinkable" politics and ethics that do not rest on neoliberal arguments about worth, but rather emerge from the insurgent experiences of those negated persons who do not live by the norms that determine the productive, patriotic, law abiding, and family-oriented subject. |
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