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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies > General
As mobile communication, social media, wireless networks, and flexible user interfaces become prominent topics in the study of media and culture, the screen emerges as a critical research area. This reader brings together insightful and influential texts from a variety of sources-theorists, researchers, critics, inventors, and artists-that explore the screen as a fundamental element not only in popular culture but also in our very understanding of society and the world. The Screen Media Reader is a foundational resource for studying the screen and its cultural impact. Through key contemporary and historical texts addressing the screen's development and role in communications and the social sphere, it considers how the screen functions as an idea, an object, and an everyday experience. Reflecting a number of descriptive and analytical approaches, these essays illustrate the astonishing range and depth of the screen's introduction and application in multiple media configurations and contexts. Together they demonstrate the long-standing influence of the screen as a cultural concept and communication tool that extends well beyond contemporary debates over screen saturation and addiction.
A Cultural History of The Human Body presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of the human body as a physical, social, spiritual and cultural object. Volume 1: A Cultural History of the Human Body in Antiquity (1300 BCE - 500 CE) Edited by Daniel Garrison, Northwestern University. Volume 2: A Cultural History of the Human Body in The Medieval Age (500 - 1500) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University Volume 3: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance (1400 - 1650) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University and William Bynum, University College London. Volume 4: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Enlightenment (1600 - 1800) Edited by Carole Reeves, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London. Volume 5: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire (1800 - 1920) Edited by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Stephen P. Rice, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Volume 6: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Modern Age (1900-21st Century) Edited by Ivan Crozier, University of Edinburgh, and Chiara Beccalossi, University of Queensland. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: 1. Birth and Death 2. Health and Disease 3. Sex & Sexuality 4. Medical Knowledge and Technology 5. Popular Beliefs 6. Beauty and Concepts of the Ideal 7. Marked Bodies I: Gender, Race, Class, Age, Disability and Disease 8. Marked Bodies II: the Bestial, the Divine and the Natural 9. Cultural Representations of the Body 10. The Self and Society This means readers can either have a broad overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Superbly illustrated, the full six volume set combines to present the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on the human body through history.
Who has the right to speak? How is this right acquired? What happens when this right is denied or inhibited? These are the questions examined by Michel de Certeau in this foundational exploration of political expression and participation. In The Capture off Speech, de Certeau moves beyond formal or legal definitions of rights. He argues that to "communicate" in a contemporary political system means not only having the abstract possibility of utterance, but possessing the conditions that allow being heard. De Certeau emphasizes that all too often free speech is upheld in the abstract while social institutions work in such a way as to deny access to effective communication. The book's title essay was written in response to the revolutionary events of May 1968. Almost thirty years later, these essays remain a central resource for exploring de Certeau's political thought.
Focusing on the contributions of civic reformers and political architects who arrived in New York in the early decades of the 20th century, this book explores the wide array of sweeping social reforms and radical racial demands first conceived of and planned in Harlem that transformed African Americans into self-aware U.S. citizens for the first time in history. When the first slave escaped bondage in the American South and migrated to the Northeast region of the United States, this act of an individual started what became known as the "great migration" of African Americans fleeing the feudal South for New York and other Northern cities. This migration fueled an intellectual, social, and personal pursuit-the long-standing quest for identity by a lost tribe of African Americans-by every black man, woman, and child in America. In Harlem, that quest was anchored by a wide array of civic, business, and prominent leaders who succeeded in establishing what we now know as modern African American culture. In Harlem: The Crucible of Modern African American Culture, author Lionel C. Bascom examines the accuracy of the established image of Harlem during the Renaissance period-roughly between 1917 and the 1960s-as "heaven" for migrating African Americans. He establishes how mingled among the former tenant farmers, cotton pickers, maids, and farmhands were college-educated intellectuals, progressive ministers, writers, and lecturers who formed various organizations aimed at banishing images of Negroes as bumbling, ignorant, second-class citizens. The book also challenges unfounded claims that political and social movements during the Harlem Renaissance period failed and dramatizes numerous attempts by government authorities to silence black progressives who spearheaded movements that eventually ended segregation in the armed forces, drafted plans that led to the first sweeping civil rights legislation, and resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that finally made racial segregation in schools a federal crime. Documents the Harlem Renaissance period's important role in one of the greatest transformations of American citizens in the history of the United States-from slavery to a migration of millions to parity of achievement in all fields Extends the definition of one of the most progressive periods in African American history for students, academics, and general readers Provides an intriguing reexamination of the Harlem Renaissance period that posits that it began earlier than most general histories of the period suggest and lasted well into the 1960s
Technology for Facilitating Humanity and Combating Social Deviations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives provides a state-of-the-art compendium of research and development on socio-technical approaches to support the prevention, mitigation, and elimination of social deviations with the help of computer science and technology. This book provides historical backgrounds, experimental studies, and future perspectives on the use of computing tools to prevent and deal with physical, psychological and social problems that impact society as a whole.
Across Rampart Street from the French Quarter, the Faubourg Treme neighborhood is arguably the most important location for African American culture in New Orleans. Closely associated with traditional jazz and "second line" parading, Treme is now the setting for an eponymous television series created by David Simon (best known for his work on The Wire). Michael Crutcher argues that Treme's story is essentially spatial-a story of how neighborhood boundaries are drawn and take on meaning and of how places within neighborhoods are made and unmade by people and politics. Treme has long been sealed off from more prominent parts of the city, originally by the fortified walls that gave Rampart Street its name, and so has become a refuge for less powerful New Orleanians. This notion of Treme as a safe haven-the flipside of its reputation as a "neglected" place-has been essential to its role as a cultural incubator, Crutcher argues, from the antebellum slave dances in Congo Square to jazz pickup sessions at Joe's Cozy Corner. Treme takes up a wide range of issues in urban life, including highway construction, gentrification, and the role of public architecture in sustaining collective memory. Equally sensitive both to black-white relations and to differences within the African American community, it is a vivid evocation of one of America's most distinctive places.
A discussion of the rapidly growing field, from a thinker at the forefront of research at the interface of technology and the humanities, this is a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary developments in Continental philosophy and philosophy of technology. Philosophy of technology regularly draws on key thinkers in the Continental tradition, including Husserl, Heidegger, and Foucault. Yet because of the problematic legacy of the 'empirical turn', it often criticizes 'bad' continental tendencies - lyricism, pessimism, and an outdated view of technology as an autonomous, transcendental force. This misconception is based on a faulty image of Continental thought, and in addressing it Smith productively redefines our concept of technology. By closely engaging key texts, and by examining 'exceptional technologies' such as imagined, failed, and impossible technologies that fall outside philosophy of technology's current focus, this book offers a practical guide to thinking about and using continental philosophy and philosophy of technology. It outlines and enacts three key characteristics of philosophy as practiced in the continental tradition: close reading of the history of philosophy; focus on critique; and openness to other disciplinary fields. Smith deploys the concept of exceptional technologies to provide a novel way of widening discussion in philosophy of technology, navigating the relationship between philosophy of technology and Continental philosophy; the history of both these fields; the role of imagination in relation to technologies; and the social function of technologies themselves.
Liminal Fiction at the Edge of the Millennium: The Ends of Spanish Identity investigates the predominant perception of liminality-identity situated at a threshold, neither one thing nor another, but simultaneously both and neither-caused by encounters with otherness while negotiating identity in contemporary Spain. Examining how identity and alterity are parleyed through the cultural concerns of historical memory, gender roles, sex, religion, nationalism, and immigration, this study demonstrates how fictional representations of reality converge in a common structure wherein the end is not the end, but rather an edge, a liminal ground. On the border between two identities, the end materializes as an ephemeral limit that delineates and differentiates, yet also adjoins and approximates. In exploring the ends of Spanish fiction-both their structure and their intentionality-Liminal Fiction maps the edge as a constitutive component of narrative and identity in texts by Najat El Hachmi, Cristina Fernandez Cubas, Javier Marias, Rosa Montero, and Manuel Rivas. In their representation of identity on the edge, these fictions enact and embody the liminal not as simply a transitional and transient mode but as the structuring principle of identification in contemporary Spain.
Untapped collects twelve previously unpublished essays that analyze the rise of craft beer from social and cultural perspectives. In the United States, the United Kingdom, and Western Europe there has been exponential growth in the number of small independent breweries over the past thirty years - a reversal of the corporate consolidation and narrowing of consumer choice that characterized much of the twentieth century. While there are legal and policy components involved in this shift, the contributors to Untapped ask broader questions. How does the growth of craft beer connect to trends like the farm-to-table movement, gentrification, the rise of the "creative class," and changing attitudes toward both cities and farms? How do craft beers conjure history, place, and authenticity? At perhaps the most fundamental level, how does the rise of craft beer call into being new communities that may challenge or reinscribe hierarchies based on gender, class, and race?
..".awash under a brown tide...the relentless flow of immigrants..like waves on a beach, these human flows are remaking the face of America...." Since 1993, metaphorical language such as this has permeated mainstream media reporting on the United States' growing Latino population. In this groundbreaking book, Otto Santa Ana argues that far from being mere figures of speech, such metaphors produce and sustain negative public perceptions of the Latino community and its place in American society, precluding the view that Latinos are vested with the same rights and privileges as other citizens. Applying the insights of cognitive metaphor theory to an extensive natural language data set drawn from hundreds of articles in the Los Angeles Times and other media, Santa Ana reveals how metaphorical language portrays Latinos as invaders, outsiders, burdens, parasites, diseases, animals, and weeds. He convincingly demonstrates that three anti-Latino referenda passed in California because of such imagery, particularly the infamous anti-immigrant measure, Proposition 187. Santa Ana illustrates how Proposition 209 organizers broadcast compelling new metaphors about racism to persuade an electorate that had previously supported affirmative action to ban it. He also shows how Proposition 227 supporters used antiquated metaphors for learning, school, and language to blame Latino children's speech--rather than gross structural inequity--for their schools' failure to educate them. Santa Ana concludes by calling for the creation of insurgent metaphors to contest oppressive U.S. public discourse about minority communities.
A Cultural History of The Human Body presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of the human body as a physical, social, spiritual and cultural object. Volume 1: A Cultural History of the Human Body in Antiquity (750 BCE - 1000 CE) Edited by Daniel Garrison, Northwestern University. Volume 2: A Cultural History of the Human Body in The Medieval Age (500 - 1500) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University Volume 3: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance (1400 - 1650) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University and William Bynum, University College London. Volume 4: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Enlightenment (1600 - 1800) Edited by Carole Reeves, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London. Volume 5: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire (1800 - 1920) Edited by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Stephen P. Rice, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Volume 6: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Modern Age (1900-21st Century) Edited by Ivan Crozier, University of Edinburgh, and Chiara Beccalossi, University of Queensland. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: 1. Birth and Death 2. Health and Disease 3. Sex and Sexuality 4. Medical Knowledge and Technology 5. Popular Beliefs 6. Beauty and Concepts of the Ideal 7. Marked Bodies I: Gender, Race, Class, Age, Disability and Disease 8. Marked Bodies II: the Bestial, the Divine and the Natural 9. Cultural Representations of the Body 10. The Self and Society This means readers can either have a broad overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Superbly illustrated, the full six volume set combines to present the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on the human body through history.
Creativity is crucial to the Information Age economy. It is the basis of production in the cultural industries. In this excellent book, Ruth Towse provides an analysis of the interaction between creativity, the law, and markets for cultural goods and services. Copyright law establishes property rights that create economic incentives to cultural production and Ruth Towse uses her analysis to draw conclusions about policy on copyright. This unique study is of interest to a range of disciplines in economics, law, cultural studies and management.
When it comes to any current scientific debate, there are more than two sides to every story. Controversies in Science and Technology, Volume 4 analyzes controversial topics in science and technology-infrastructure, ecosystem management, food security, and plastics and health-from multiple points of view. The editors have compiled thought-provoking essays from a variety of experts from academia and beyond, creating a volume that addresses many of the issues surrounding these scientific debates. Part I of the volume discusses infrastructure, and the real meaning behind the term in today's society. Essays address the central issues that motivate current discussion about infrastructure, including writing on the vulnerability to disasters. Part II, titled "Food Policy," will focus on the challenges of feeding an ever-growing world and the costs of not doing so. Part III features essays on chemicals and environmental health, and works to define "safety" as it relates to today's scientific community. The book's final section examines ecosystem management. In the end, Kleinman, Cloud-Hansen, and Handelsman provide a multifaceted volume that will be appropriate for anyone hoping to understand arguments surrounding several of today's most important scientific controversies
The digital divide is an global phenomenon that negatively affects groups around the world. International Exploration of Technology Equity and the Digital Divide: Critical, Historical and Social Perspectives explores and presents research that centers on the historical, political, sociological, and economic factors that engender global inequities. Acquiring such insights and knowledge is an important step towards rectifying socially ingrained inequities and a necessary step in working towards global justice in meaningful ways. This book aids those researching, teaching, and studying in the area of digital equity or in the broader contexts of social and global justice. Moreover, this reference provides valuable insights for professionals and researchers interested in examining issues of technology equity from various critical social theories.
This book takes a hemispheric approach to contemporary urban intervention, examining urban ecologies, communication technologies, and cultural practices in the twenty-first century. It argues that governmental and social regimes of control and forms of political resistance converge in speculation on disaster and that this convergence has formed a vision of urban environments in the Americas in which forms of play and imaginations of catastrophe intersect in the vertical field. Schifani explores a diverse range of resistant urban interventions, imagining the city as on the verge of or enmeshed in catastrophe. She also presents a model of ecocriticism that addresses aesthetic practices and forms of play in the urban environment. Tracing the historical roots of such tactics as well as mapping their hopes for the future will help the reader to locate the impacts of climate change not only on the physical space of the city, but also on the epistemological and aesthetic strategies that cities can help to engender. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Urban Studies, Media Studies, American Studies, Global Studies, and the broad and interdisciplinary field of Environmental Humanities.
Renee Moreau Cunningham's unique study utilizes the psychology of C. G. Jung and the spiritual teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. to explore how nonviolence works psychologically as a form of spiritual warfare, confronting and transmuting aggression. Archetypal Nonviolence uses King's iconic march from Selma to Montgomery, a demonstration which helped introduce America to nonviolent philosophy on a mass scale, as a metaphor for psychological and spiritual activism on an individual and collective level. Cunningham's work explores the core wound of racism in America on both a collective and a personal level, investigating how we hide from our own potential for evil and how the divide within ourselves can be bridged. The book demonstrates that the alchemical transmutation of aggression through a nonviolent ethos, as shown in the Selma marches, is important to understand as a beginning to something greater within the paradox of human violence and its bedfellow, nonviolence. Archetypal Nonviolence explores how we can truly transform hatred by understanding how it operates within. It will be of great interest to Jungian analysts and analytical psychologists in practice and in training, and to academics and students of Jungian and post-Jungian studies, American history, race and racism, and nonviolent movements.
This is an exploration into how a certain plant became a global commodity, creating fortunes and despair, bringing people together and tearing them apart, playing a starring role in the awakening of the modern world.
The fifth and final volume of the Collected Letters of Katherine
Mansfield covers the almost thirteen months during which her
attention at first was firmly set on a last chance medical cure,
then finally on something very different--if death came to seem
inevitable, how should one behave in the time that remained, so one
could truly say one lived?
Despite their peaceful, bucolic appearance, the tree-lined streets of South African suburbia were no refuge from the racial tensions and indignities of apartheid's most repressive years. In "At Home with Apartheid, " Rebecca Ginsburg provides an intimate examination of the cultural landscapes of Johannesburg's middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods during the height of apartheid (c. 1960-1975) and incorporates recent scholarship on gender, the home, and family. More subtly but no less significantly than factory floors, squatter camps, prisons, and courtrooms, the homes of white South Africans were sites of important contests between white privilege and black aspiration. Subtle negotiations within the domestic sphere between white, mostly female, householders and their black domestic workers, also primarily women, played out over and around this space. These seemingly mundane, private conflicts were part of larger contemporary struggles between whites and blacks over territory and power. Ginsburg gives special attention to the distinct social and racial geographies produced by the workers' detached living quarters, designed by builders and architects as landscape complements to the main houses. Ranch houses, Italianate villas, modernist cubes, and Victorian bungalows filled Johannesburg's suburbs. What distinguished these neighborhoods from their precedents in the United States or the United Kingdom was the presence of the ubiquitous back rooms and of the African women who inhabited them in these otherwise exclusively white areas. The author conducted more than seventy-five personal interviews for this book, an approach that sets it apart from other architectural histories. In addition to these oral accounts, Ginsburg draws from plans, drawings, and onsite analysis of the physical properties themselves. While the issues addressed span the disciplines of South African and architectural history, feminist studies, material culture studies, and psychology, the book's strong narrative, powerful oral histories, and compelling subject matter bring the neighborhoods and residents it examines vividly to life.
TV cookery shows hosted by celebrity chefs. Meal prep kitchens. Online grocers and restaurant review sites. Competitive eating contests, carnivals and fairs, and junk food websites and blogs. What do all of them have in common? According to authors Kathleen LeBesco and Peter Naccarato, they each serve as productive sites for understanding the role of culinary capital in shaping individual and group identities in contemporary culture.Beyond providing sustenance, food and food practices play an important social role, offering status to individuals who conform to their culture's culinary norms and expectations while also providing a means of resisting them. "Culinary Capital" analyzes this phenomenon in action across the landscape of contemporary culture. The authors examine how each of the sites listed above promises viewers and consumers status through the acquisition of culinary capital and, as they do so, intersect with a range of cultural values and ideologies, particularly those of gender and economic class. |
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