Singin' in the Rain, The Sound of Music, Camelot--love them or love to hate them, movie musicals have been a major part of all our lives. They're so glitzy and catchy that it seems impossible that they could have ever gone any other way. But the ease in which they unfold on the screen is deceptive. Dorothy's dream of finding a land "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" was nearly cut, and even a film as great as The Band Wagon was, at the time, a major flop.
In Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter, award winning historian Richard Barrios explores movie musicals from those first hits, The Jazz Singer and Broadway Melody, to present-day Oscar winners Chicago and Les Miserables. History, film analysis, and a touch of backstage gossip combine to make Dangerous Rhythm a compelling look at musicals and the powerful, complex bond they forge with their audiences. Going behind the scenes, Barrios uncovers the rocky relationship between Broadway and Hollywood, the unpublicized off-camera struggles of directors, stars, and producers, and all the various ways by which some films became our most indelible cultural touchstones -- and others ended up as train wrecks.
Not content to leave any format untouched, Barrios examines animated musicals and popular music with insight and enthusiasm. Cartoons have been intimately connected with musicals since Steamboat Willie. Disney's short Silly Symphonies grew into the instant classic Snow White, which paved the way for that modern masterpiece, South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. Without movie musicals, Barrios argues, MTV would have never existed. On the flip side, without MTV we might have been spared Evita.
Informed, energetic, and humorous, Dangerous Rhythm is both an impressive piece of scholarship and a joy to read."

Offering a challenging new argument for the collaborative power of craft, this ground-breaking volume analyses the philosophies, politics and practicalities of collaborative craft work. The book is accessibly organised into four sections covering the cooperation and compromises required by the collaborative process; the potential of recent technological advances for the field of craft; the implications of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaborations for authority and ownership; and the impact of crafted collaborations on the institutions where we work, learn and teach. With cutting-edge essays by established makers and artists such as Allison Smith (US) and Brass Art (UK), curator Lesley Millar, textile designer Trish Belford and distinguished thinker Glenn Adamson, Collaborating Through Craft will be essential reading for students, artists, makers, curators and scholars across a number of fields.

Why use this book? This rich, broad-reaching anthology explores everyday religious practices across several of the world's religious traditions. Organized thematicallypolitics, ethics, and aestheticsthe volume examines topics of war, civil religion, science, women and children, capitalism, nature, education, death and dying, visual art, music, sport, humor, film, and more, with engaging and provocative photographs throughout. A useful resource for diverse courses in religious studies and the social sciences.

An exploration of how writers, artists, and filmmakers expose the costs and contest the assumptions of the Capitalocene era that guides readers through the rapidly developing field of Spanish environmental cultural studies. From the scars left by Franco's dams and mines to the toxic waste dumped in Equatorial Guinea, from the cruelty of the modern pork industry to the ravages of mass tourism in the Balearic Islands, this book delves into the power relations, material practices and social imaginaries underpinning the global economic system to uncover its unaffordable human and non-human costs. Guiding the reader through the rapidly emerging field of Spanish environmental cultural studies, with chapters on such topics as extractivism, animal studies, food studies, ecofeminism, decoloniality, critical race studies, tourism, and waste studies, an international team of US and European scholars show how Spanish writers, artists, and filmmakers have illuminated and contested the growth-oriented and neo-colonialist assumptions of the current Capitalocene era. Focussed on Spain, the volume also provides models for exploring the socioecological implications of cultural manifestations in other parts of the world. CONTRIBUTORS: Eugenia Afinoguenova, Samuel Amago, Daniel Ares-Lopez, Kata Beilin, John Beusterien, Miguel Caballero Vazquez, Jorge Catala, Glen S. Close, Jeffrey K. Coleman, Jamie de Moya-Cotter, Ana Fernandez-Cebrian, Ofelia Ferran, Tatjana Gajic , Pedro Garcia-Caro, Santiago Gorostiza, German Labrador Mendez, Maryanne L. Leone, Shanna Lino, Jorge Mari, Jose Manuel Marrero Henriquez, Maria Antonia Marti Escayol, Christine Martinez, Cristina Martinez Tejero, Micah McKay, Pamela F. Phillips, Merce Picornell, Luis I. Pradanos, Cecile Stehrenberger, John H. Trevathan, Joaquin Valdivielso, William Viestenz, Maite Zubiaurre.

A powerful claim for the virtues of a more thoughtful and collegiate approach to the academy today. This book offers a response to the culture of metrics, mass digitisation, and accountability (as opposed to responsibility, or citizenship) that has developed in higher education world wide, as exemplified by the UK's Research Excellence Framework exercise (REF), and the increasing bureaucracy that limits the time available for teaching, research, and even conversation and collaboration. Ironically, these are problems that will be solved only by academicsfinding the time to talk and to work together. The essays collected here both critique the culture of speed in the neoliberal university and provide examples of what can be achieved by slowing down, by reclaiming research and research priorities, and by working collaboratively across the disciplines to improve conditions. They are informed both by recent research in medieval studies and by the problematic culture of twenty-first century higher education. The contributions offer very personal approaches to the academic culture of the present moment. Some tackle issues of academic freedom head-on; others more obliquely; but they all have been written as declarations of theacademic freedom that comes with slow thinking, slow reading, slow writing and slow looking and the demonstrations of its benefits. CATHERINE E. KARKOV is Professor and Chair of Art History at the University of Leeds. Contributors: Lara Eggleton, Karen Jolly, Chris Jones, James Paz, Andrew Prescott, Heather Pulliam

Ancient Magic and the Supernatural in the Modern Visual and Performing Arts examines the impact of ancient religious, mythological and magical models on modern mentalities and ideologies as expressed in the visual and performing arts.To what extent did mythological figures such as Circe and Medea influence the representation of the powerful "oriental" enchantress in modern Western art? What role did the ancient gods and heroes play in the construction of the imaginary worlds of the modern fantasy genre? What is the role of undead creatures like zombies and vampires in mythological films? The heroes, gods and demons of the ancient world always played a prominent role in the post-classical imagination.Similarly, the great adventures and the love affairs between gods and mortals have always influenced the reception of Classical culture and still features prominently in modern constructions of antiquity. Examples such the use of magic in Medea's myth as a symbol of cultural and political strangeness, the transformation of Circe in a femme fatale, the reshaping of the oriental cults of the Roman Empire as a menace to new-born Christianity and the revival and adaptation of ancient myths and religion in the arts provide an important backdrop for the exploration of contemporary fears, hopes and ideals across centuries. The volume further aims to deconstruct certain scholarly traditions by proposing original interdisciplinary approaches and collaborations and to show to what extent the visual and performing arts of different periods interlink and shape cultural and social identities.This book offers an original approach to different media - from comics to film, from painting to opera - by authors from different fields and countries. The volume provides the reader with a clear insight into mechanisms of re-elaboration and reception which can be steadily seen at work in artistic and commercial productions. It also supplies new approaches to the most debated questions of the relationship between magic, religion and superstition in the ancient and in the modern worlds. It shows and discusses the shifting and biased interpretations of these concepts in modern visual culture.

Despite the brevity of its run and the diminutive size of its audience, The English Intelligencer is a key publication in the history of literary modernism in the British Isles. Emerging in the mid-1960s from a dissatisfaction with the prevailing norms of 'Betjeman's England', the young writers associated with it were catalysed by the example of Donald Allen's The New American Poetry as they sought to establish a revitalised modernist poetics. Late Modernism and The English Intelligencer gives the first full account of the extraordinary history of this publication, bringing to light extensive new archival material to establish an authoritative contextualisation of its operation and its relationship with post-war British poetry. This material provides compelling new insights into the work of the Intelligencer poets themselves and, more broadly, the continued presence of an international poetic modernism as a vital force in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century.

Saluting the Yellow Emperor tells the fascinating story of a group of Swedish scholars who rediscovered the pronunciation of the Chinese classics, buried Silk Road cities, and a Chinese Stone Age, while spiriting antiquities out of Asia. Mining Swedish archives and drawing on letters, diaries, personal papers, and published accounts, it is the first collective history on this group of China scholars. In his analysis, Perry Johansson turns Edward Said's argument about orientalism inside out. Rather than simply serving Western imperialism, Bernhard Karlgren, Johan Gunnar Andersson, Sven Hedin, Osvald Siren, and Jan Myrdal were opportunists who highly appreciated the Chinese Empire whose civilizing mission in East and Central Asia they supported in word and deed. Whether friendly with Mao or Hitler, their occidentalist disdain of Western egalitarian societies made them champions of the Chinese mythology of obedient peasants ruled by an enlightened autocracy.

Addressing the pleasures and dangers of cultural identity in the age of mass media and global migration, these essays range from a commentary on the redrawing of the boundaries of contemporary art to a mapping of the controversial theory of hybridity.

In The Objects of Life in Central Africa the history of consumption and social change from 1840 until 1980 is explored. By taking consumption as a vantage point, the contributions deviate from and add to previous works which have mainly analysed issues of production from an economic and political perspective. The chapters are broad-ranging in temporal and geographical focus, including contributions on Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Angola. Topics range from the social history of firearms to the perception of the railway and include contributions on sewing machines, traders and advertising. By looking at the socio-economic, political and cultural meaning and impact of goods the history of Central Africa is reassessed.

In recent years, India has emerged as a major economic and political power: on the basis of purchasing-power parity, it was the world's third largest economy in 2013. Yet the country's cultural influence outside India has not been adequately analyzed in academic discourses. As the world's largest democracy with a vibrant and pluralist media system, India offers an excellent case study of the power of culture and communication in the age of mediated international relations. This book, a pioneering attempt, from an international communication/media perspective, is aimed to fill the existing gap in scholarship in this area. The discussion of India's rising soft power is located within a historical context, thus problematizing the notion of Soft Power itself. The book will be aimed at university courses on global media/international relations/area studies - among others.

Drawing on a broad cultural and historical canvas, and weaving in the author's personal and professional experience, The Israeli Mind presents a compelling, if disturbing, portrait of the Israeli national character. Emerging from the depth of Jewish history and the drama of the Zionist rebellion against it, lsraelis are struggling to forge an identity. They are grand and grandiose, visionary and delusional, generous and self-centered. Deeply caring because of the history of Jewish victimization, they also demonstrate a shocking indifference to the sufferings of others. Saying no is their first, second and third line of defense, even as they are totally capable of complete and sudden capitulation. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for the collective but also to sacrifice that very collective for a higher, and likely unattainable ideal. Dr. Alon Gratch draws a vivid, provocative portrait of the conflicts embedded in the Israeli mind. Annihilation anxiety, narcissism, a failure to fully process the Holocaust, hyper-masculinity, post-traumatic stress, and an often unexamined narrative of self-sacrifice, all clash with the nation's aspiration for normalcy or even greatness. Failure to resolve these conflicts, Gratch argues, will threaten Israel's very existence and the stability of the Western world.

Gathering scholars from five continents, this edited book displaces the elitist image of cosmopolitan as well as the blame addressed to aesthetic cosmopolitanism often considered as merely cosmetic. By considering aesthetic cosmopolitanism as a tool to understand how individuals and social groups appropriate the sphere of culture in a global world, the authors are concerned with its operationalization on two strongly interwoven levels, macro and micro, structural and individual. Based on the discussion of theoretical perspectives and empirically grounded research (qualitative and quantitative, conducted in many countries), this volume unveils new insights, on tourism and food, architecture and museums, TV series and movies, rock, K-pop and samba, by providing resources for making sense of aesthetic preferences in a global perspective. Contributors are: Felicia Chan, Vincenzo Cicchelli, Talitha Alessandra Ferreira, Paula Iadevito, Sukhmani Khorana, Anne Krebs, Antoinette Kujilaars, Franck Mermier, Sylvie Octobre, Joana Pellerano, Rosario Radakovich, Motti Regev, Viviane Riegel, Clara Rodriguez, Leslie Sklair, Yi-Ping Eva Shi, Claire Thoumelin and Dario Verderame.

Why our democracies need urgent reform, before it's too late A generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world is once again on the edge of chaos. Demonstrations have broken out from Belgium to Brazil led by angry citizens demanding a greater say in their political and economic future, better education, heathcare and living standards. The bottom line of this outrage is the same; people are demanding their governments do more to improve their lives faster, something which policymakers are unable to deliver under conditions of anaemic growth. Rising income inequality and a stagnant economy are threats to both the developed and the developing world, and leaders can no longer afford to ignore this gathering storm. In Edge of Chaos, Dambisa Moyo sets out the new political and economic challenges facing the world, and the specific, radical solutions needed to resolve these issues and reignite global growth. Dambisa enumerates the four headwinds of demographics, inequality, commodity scarcity and technological innovation that are driving social and economic unrest, and argues for a fundamental retooling of democratic capitalism to address current problems and deliver better outcomes in the future. In the twenty-first century, a crisis in one country can quickly become our own, and fragile economies produce a fragile international community. Edge of Chaos is a warning for advanced and emerging nations alike: we must reverse the dramatic erosion in growth, or face the consequences of a fragmented and unstable global future.

This text comprehensively covers the rituals, traditions and receipts of ancestral processes of bread making from multiple countries, including the scientific and technological character of the science of bread making and sourdough biotechnology. Individual chapters cover the scientific aspects of bread making in different cultures and traditions as well as the technological phenomena occurring during the bread making process, utilizing the full network of SOURDOMICS from the COST initiative. Pictures and illustrations are used to explain the science behind bread making processes and the cultural, historical and traditional elements associated with bread making in multiple countries. Authored by bread making experts from the breadth of Europe, the process of bread fermentation in each country and region is covered in detail. The traditions surrounding bread making are simply the empirical know-how passed between generations, and this book's main purpose is to perpetuate these traditions and know-how. Provides a description of the culture of European peoples with respect to the technology of bread making and sourdough biotechnology; Explains the process of bread fermentation using simple language combined with scientific rigor; High quality pictures and illustrations enrich the scientific and cultural elements mentioned in each chapter.

A Companion to Border Studies introduces an exciting and expanding field of interdisciplinary research, through the writing of an international array of scholars, from diverse perspectives that include anthropology, development studies, geography, history, political science and sociology. * Explores how nations and cultural identities are being transformed by their dynamic, shifting borders where mobility is sometimes facilitated, other times impeded or prevented * Offers an array of international views which together form an authoritative guide for students, instructors and researchers * Reflects recent significant growth in the importance of understanding the distinctive characteristics of borders and frontiers, including cross-border cooperation, security and controls, migration and population displacements, hybridity, and transnationalism

This is a book about the dynamics of the aspirational society. It explores the boundaries of permissible thought--deviations and transgressions that create constant innovations. When confronted with a problem, an innovative mind struggles and brings forth something distinctive--new ideas, new inventions, and new programs based on unconventional approaches to solve the problem. But this can be done only if the culture creates large breathing spaces by leaving people alone, not as a matter of state generosity but as something fundamental in being an American. Consequently, the Constitutional mandate of "Congress shall make no law..." has encouraged fearless speech, unrestrained thought, and endless experimentation leading to newer developments in science, technology, the arts, and not least socio-political relations. Most of all, the First Freedoms liberate the mind from irrational fears and encourage an environment of divergent thinking, non-conformity, and resistance to a collective mindset. The First Freedoms encourage Americans to be iconoclastic, to be creatively crazy, to be impure, thus, enabling them to mix and re-mix ideas to design new technologies and cultural forms and platforms, anything from experimental social relations and big data explorations to electing our first black president.