Through extended readings of the works of P. T. Barnum, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, and Fanny Fern, Bonnie Carr O'Neill shows how celebrity culture authorizes audiences to evaluate public figures on personal terms and in so doing reallocates moral, intellectual, and affective authority and widens the public sphere. O'Neill examines how celebrity culture creates a context in which citizens regard one another as public figures while elevating individual public figures to an unprecedented personal fame. Although this new publicity fosters nationalism, it also imbues public life with personal feeling and transforms the public sphere into a site of divisive, emotionally intense debate. Further, O'Neill analyzes how celebrity culture's scrutiny of the lives and personalities of public figures collapses distinctions between the public and private spheres and, as a consequence, challenges assumptions about the self and personhood. Celebrity culture intensifies the complex emotions and debates surrounding already-fraught questions of national belonging and democratic participation even as, for some, it provides a means of redefining personhood and cultural identity. O'Neill offers a new critical approach within the growing scholarship on celebrity studies by exploring the relationship between the emergence of celebrity culture and civic discourse. Her careful readings unravel the complexities of a form of publicity that fosters both mass consumption and cultural criticism.

This volume looks at how the new capabilities of Web 2.0 are changing the worlds of celebrity fandom and gossip. With Ashton Kutcher's record-breaking "tweeting" more famous than his films, and Perez Hilton actually getting more attention than Paris, the actress often covered in his blog, the worlds of celebrity celebration and online social networking are pushing the public's crush on the famous and infamous into overdrive. Celeb 2.0: How Social Media Foster Our Fascination with Popular Culture explores this phenomenon. Celeb 2.0 looks at how blogs, video sharing sites, user-news sites, social networks, and message boards are fueling America's already voracious consumption of pop culture. Full of fascinating insights and interviews, the book looks at how celebrities use blogs, Twitter, and other tools, how YouTube and other sites create celebrity, how Web 2.0 shortens the distance between fans and stars, and how the new social media influences news reporting and series television. Chronologies chart the rise of celebrity entertainment reporting, celebrity journalists, reality television, and mash-up culture Includes an index of key terms related to social networking as well as key players in social media development and social media celebrities

Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion explores the social importance of hair, wherever it grows, explaining the cultural significance of hair and hairiness, and presenting a new critical engagement with hair and its stories, histories, performances and rituals. From heads, legs and underarms, to wigs and beards, and everything in between, the presentation, manipulation and daily experience of human hair plays a central and dynamic role within fashion, self-expression and the creation of social identity. The book's diverse range of cross-cultural essays encompasses the study of hair in fashion, film, art, history, literature, performance and consumer culture. Offering an accessible mix of visual analysis, cultural commentary and critical theory, Hair: Styling, Culture and Fashion will appeal to all those interested in the presentation and analysis of cultural identity and the body.

This book is a detailed examination of one of the most important works of fantasy literature from the twentieth century. It goes through Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock considering how it engages with war on a personal and family level, how it plays with ideas of time as something fluid and disturbing, and how it presents mythology as something crude and dangerous. The book places Mythago Wood in the context of Holdstock's other works, noting in part how complex ideas of time have been a consistent element in his fiction. The book also briefly examines how the themes laid out in Mythago Wood are carried through into later books in the sequence as well as the Merlin Codex

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
--Laura Browder, author of "Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities"

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.

This book is a valuable resource for teachers and other professionals who are looking for a proven way to increase cultural appreciation and awareness. New applications of the ABCs model of Cultural Understanding and Communication are presented and discussed in this new volume, based on studies done in the United States, and Canada and Europe. In this ground-breaking project, the authors describe how the ABCs model complicated and challenged and changed the cultural perceptions of those who participated in it, even those who were initially highly resistant to such possibilities. At the heart of the project is the exchange of narratives - life stories that give insight into the cultural worlds of selves and others. In addition to the narratives, other instruments including the Transcultural Competence Scale (TCC), provide further evidence of the positive impact of the ABCs on participants' receptivity toward cultural differences. In the TRANSABCs project, researchers from both sides of the Atlantic invited teacher candidates, students who will become workplace and other professionals to write an autobiography (A) of themselves from various cultural perspectives, a biography (B) of an individual who is culturally different from themselves along particular dimensions, and to use these documents to conduct cross-cultural comparisons (C) between themselves and the person they interviewed. Furthermore, candidates developed culturally responsive ideas for the school or the workplace (C). These exchanges and analyses produced epiphanies and insights that translated into specific actions to improve cultural understanding and communication in classrooms and workplaces. Educators and professionals can take from these examples to inspire their own personal journey toward greater cultural understanding and sensitivity.

This open access book explores how young people engage with chemical substances in their everyday lives. It builds upon and supplements a large body of literature on young people's use of drugs and alcohol to highlight the subjectivities and socialities that chemical use enables across diverse socio-cultural settings, illustrating how young people seek to avoid harm, while harnessing the beneficial effects of chemical use. The book is based on multi-sited anthropological research in Southeast Asia, Europe and the US, and presents insights from collaborative and contrasting analysis. Hardon brings new perspectives to debates across drug policy studies, pharmaceutical cultures and regulation, science and technology studies, and youth and precarity in post-industrial societies.

Celebrating art and interpretation that take on social challenges, Doris Sommer steers the humanities back to engagement with the world. The reformist projects that focus her attention develop momentum and meaning as they circulate through society to inspire faith in the possible. Among the cases that she covers are top-down initiatives of political leaders, such as those launched by Antanas Mockus, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, and also bottom-up movements like the Theatre of the Oppressed created by the Brazilian director, writer, and educator Augusto Boal. Alleging that we are all cultural agents, Sommer also takes herself to task and creates Pre-Texts, an international arts-literacy project that translates high literary theory through popular creative practices. The Work of Art in the World is informed by many writers and theorists. Foremost among them is the eighteenth-century German poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, who remains an eloquent defender of art-making and humanistic interpretation in the construction of political freedom. Schiller's thinking runs throughout Sommer's modern-day call for citizens to collaborate in the endless co-creation of a more just and more beautiful world.

The Hilton brand is arguably one of the most successful and iconic brands in the hospitality industry in all time. The Story of Hilton Hotels: 'Little Americas' provides both an informative historical analysis of the development of the company, as well an engaging narrative about Conrad Hilton himself, illustrating how he fulfilled the typical American dream of rising from rags to riches and constructing a multinational hotel empire. The Story of Hilton Hotels: 'Little Americas' also engages with the wider historical contexts of politics and culture. It analyses some of the key shifts in the area of hotel management including standardisation, asset-light models and delivering the customer experience. Using original data and the first hand academic research the author can use this iconic hotel brand as a lens through which to analyse some of the key theoretical concepts and practices that are used in the industry today. A vital resource for all students (both postgraduate and undergraduate) on hospitality, marketing, business history and business management courses as well as executive courses delivered to hospitality professionals.

This book brings pragmatic theory and praxis into dialogue with contemporary psychodynamic ideas, practitioners, and clinical issues. Generally considered as a historical footnote to psychoanalysis, the chapters in this volume demonstrate pragmatism's continued relevance for contemporary thought. Not only does pragmatism share many of the values and sensibilities of contemporary psychodynamics, its rich philosophical and theoretical emphasis on active meaning making and agentic being in the world complements and extends current thinking about the social nature of self and mind, how we occupy space in the world, non-linear development, and processes of communication.

The popularization and cult-like following of electronic music has provoked new relations between men and machines, art and technology, and modern shamans and disc jockeys. New technologies and multimedia tools have awakened neo-ritual practices through the emergence of Psychedelic Trance parties, evoking tribal experiences inspired by a new shamanism, mediated by high-tech guide elements. Exploring Psychedelic Trance and Electronic Dance Music in Modern Culture investigates the expansive scope of Electronic Music Dance Culture (EMDC), the rise of Psychedelic Trance culture, and their relationship with new digital platforms. Drawing from perspectives in sociology, anthropology, psychology, aesthetics and the arts, religious studies, information technologies, multimedia communication, shamanism, and ritualism, this book analyzes the impact of new technologies on individual and collective behaviors in cyberspace. This innovative reference source is ideal for use by academicians, researchers, upper-level students, practitioners, and theorists. Focusing on a variety of topics relating to sub-cultures, human behavior, and popular culture, this title features timely research on alternative culture, electronic music festivals, ethnography, music and religion, psychedelic drugs, Psytrance, rave culture, and trance parties.

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.
Helen Small argues that if we want to understand old age, we have to think more fundamentally about what it means to be a person, to have a life, to have (or lead) a good life, to be part of a just society. What did Plato mean when he suggested that old age was the best place from which to practice philosophy - or Thomas Mann when he defined old age as the best time to be a writer - and were they right? If we think, as Aristotle did, that a good life requires the active pursuit of virtue, how will our view of later life be affected? If we think that lives and persons are unified, much as stories are said to be unified, how will our thinking about old age differ from that of someone who thinks that lives and/or persons can be strongly discontinuous? In a just society, what constitutes a fair distribution of limited resources between the young and the old? How, if at all, should recent developments in the theory of evolutionary senescence alter our thinking about what it means to grow old?
This is a groundbreaking book, deep as well as broad, and likely to alter the way in which we talk about one of the great social concerns of our time - the growing numbers of those living to be old, and the growing proportion of the old to the young.

This book provides a critical reflection on the ways dance studio teachers recognize, reflect and respond to cultural difference within their dance studio classes, particularly in the rural context in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Through dance teachers' narratives, it reveals the complexities of multiculturalism within dance studio classes and examines related issues of inclusion and exclusion within dance education. Understanding the dance practices provided by teachers like those in rural communities within Aotearoa/New Zealand is an increasingly urgent concern in an era of growing political, social and cultural tensions, for students and scholars of performing arts, leadership and community development. While previous research and publications have investigated cultural difference and global multicultural arts practices, this book presents a critical lens on performing arts practice and socio-cultural challenges experienced by local dance teachers within rural communities in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

This book tells the story of the Mount Songshan area architecture in simple terms, while also providing detailed information on the history of Buddhist architecture. The history of the Mount Songshan area can be traced back to the Xia Dynasty in the 23rd century B.C. The heritage architecture in this area has seen the rise and fall of various powers - including the Han Dynasty, Northern Wei Dynasty, Tang and Song Empires, Jin Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty, and the Ming and Qing Empires - and reflects the character of each historical period. Over the past 2,000 years, history has been continuously woven into the architecture. The Mount Songshan area is, therefore, a perfect representation of the perpetual Chinese civilization, and the most magnificent museum of ancient Chinese architecture. Most importantly, these various types of architecture offer valuable insights into the architectural design and technologies of each historical period. The products of ingenuity and innovation, they are marvellous creations that ancient Chinese people took great pride in.

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.

This book provides a management perspective on the full historical, contemporary, and geographic landscape of hospitality and tourism (H&T) in Africa. In so doing, it critically assesses and challenges the applicability of Western theories within the African context and draws attention to the insights offered by African management concepts. A variety of key topics are examined, including, for example, H&T management practices and management innovation in Africa, the drivers of and variation in uptake of Western management practices, policies and strategies to promote the development of H&T organizations, the influence of management practices on the competitiveness of African countries as tourism destinations, and areas for improvement of H&T organizations in Africa in the digital age. The approach is multidisciplinary. Both local and global perspectives are presented by authors from Africa, Europe, North America, and Asia, with inclusion of intra- and inter-country comparisons. This book will be essential reading for scholars, students, businesses, and policy makers with an interest in H&T in Africa.

The organisation of higher education across the world is one of several factors that conspire to create the assumption that our own map of the intellectual disciplines is, broadly speaking, valid cross-culturally. Disciplines in the Making challenges this in relation to eight main areas of human endeavour, namely philosophy, mathematics, history, medicine, art, law, religion and science. Lloyd focuses on historical and cross-cultural data that throw light on the different ways in which these disciplines were constituted and defined in different periods and civilisations, especially in ancient Greece and China, and how the relationships between them were understood, particularly when one or other discipline claimed hegemonic status (as happened, at different times, with philosophy, history, religion and science). He also explores the role of elites, whether positive (when they foster the professionalisation of a discipline) or negative (when they restrict recruitment to the profession, when they insist on adherence to established norms, concepts and practices and thereby inhibit further innovation). The issues are relevant to current educational policy in relation to the ever-increasing specialisation we see, especially in the sciences, and to the difficulties encountered in making the most of the opportunities for inter- or trans-disciplinary research.

This book brings together mobilities and possibility studies by arguing that the possible emerges in our experience in and through acts of movement : physical, social and symbolic. The basic premise that mobility begets possibility is supported with evidence covering a wide range of geographic and temporal scales. First, in relation to the evolution of our species and the considerable impact of mobility on the emergence and spread of prehistoric innovations; second, considering the circulation of people, things and creative ideas throughout history; third, in view of migrations that define an individual life course and its numerous (im)possibilities; and fourth, in the 'inner', psychological movements specific for our wandering - and wondering - minds.This is not, however, a romantic account of how more mobility is always better or leads to increased creativity and innovation. After all, movement can fail in opening up new possibilities, and innovations can cause harm or reduce our agency. And yet, at an ontological level, the fact remains that it is only by moving from one position to another that we develop novel perspectives on the world and find alternative ways of acting and being. At this foundational level, mobilities engender possibilities and the latter, in turn, fuel new mobilities. This interplay, examined throughout the book, should be of interest for researchers and practitioners working on mobility, migration, creativity, innovation, cultural diffusion, life course approaches and, more generally, on the possibilities embedded in mobile lives.

In this book, film scholars, anthropologists, and critics discuss star-making in the contemporary Hindi-language film industry in India, also known as "Bollywood." Drawing on theories of stardom, globalization, transnationalism, gender, and new media studies, the chapters explore contemporary Hindi film celebrity. With the rise of social media and India's increased engagement in the global economy, Hindi film stars are forging their identities not just through their on-screen images and magazine and advertising appearances, but also through an array of media platforms, product endorsements, setting fashion trends, and involvement in social causes. Focusing on some of the best-known Indian stars since the late 1990s, the book discusses the multiplying avenues for forging a star identity, the strategies industry outsiders adopt to become stars, and the contradictions and conflicts that such star-making produces. It addresses questions such as: What traits of contemporary stars have contributed most to longevity and success in the industry? How has filmmaking technology and practice altered the nature of stardom? How has the manufacture of celebrity altered with the recent appearance of commodity culture in India and the rise of a hyper-connected global economy? By doing so, it describes a distinct moment in India and in the world in which stars and stardom are drawn more closely than ever into the vital events of global culture. Hindi films and their stars are part of the national and global entertainment circuits that are bigger and more competitive than ever. As such, this is a timely book creates opportunities for examining stardom in other industries and provides fruitful cross-cultural perspectives on star identities today. "Grounded in rigorous scholarship as well as a palpable love of Hindi cinema, this collection of 19 essays on a dizzying array of contemporary Hindi film stars makes for an informative, thought-provoking, illuminating, and most of all, a joyful read. Pushing boundaries of not only global Star Studies but also film theory as a whole, this de-colonised and de-colonising volume is a must read for film scholars, students and cinephiles!" Dr. Sunny Singh, Senior Lecturer - Creative Writing and English Literature, Sir John Cass School of Art, Architecture & Design, London Metropolitan University "A wide-ranging overview of Hindi cinema's filmi firmament today, focussing on its most intriguing and brightest-burning stars. The variety of approaches to stardom and celebrity by both established and upcoming scholars reveals a web of interconnecting stories and concerns that provide fascinating new insights into the workings of today's Hindi film industry, while shining fresh light on contemporary India and the world we live in." Professor Rosie Thomas, Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM), College of Design, Creative and Digital Industries, University of Westminster

This Pivot book examines literary elements of urban topography that have animated Alan Moore, Peter Ackroyd, and Iain Sinclair's respective representations of London-ness. Ann Tso argues these authors write London "psychogeographically" to deconstruct popular visions of London with colonial and neoliberal undertones. Moore's psychogeography consists of bird's-eye views that reveal the brute force threatening to unravel Londonscape from within; Ackroyd's aims to detect London sensuously, since every new awareness recalls an otherworldly London; Sinclair's conjures up a narrative consciousness made erratic by London's disunified landscape. Drawing together the dystopian, the phenomenological, and the postcolonial, Tso explores how these texts characterize "London-ness" as estranging.

Born in Pakistan to Baptist missionaries from rural Georgia, Jonathan S. Addleton crossed the borders of race, culture, class, and religion from an early age. Some Far and Distant Place combines family history, social observation, current events, and deeply personal commentary to tell an unusual coming-of-age story that has as much to do with the intersection of cultures as it does with one man's life. Whether sharing ice cream with a young Benazir Bhutto or selling gospel tracts at the tomb of a Sufi saint, Addleton provides insightful and sometimes hilarious glimpses into the Muslim-Christian encounter through the eyes of a young child. His narrative is rooted in many unlikely sources, including a southern storytelling tradition, Urdu ghazal, revivalist hymnology, and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The natural beauty of the Himalayas also leaves a strong and lasting mark, providing solidity in a confusing world that on occasion seems about to tilt out of control. This clear-eyed, insightful memoir describes an experience that will become increasingly more common as cultures that once seemed remote and distant are no longer confined within the bounds of a single nation-state.