In "Dance, Modernity and Culture," Helen Thomas provides an original, interdisciplinary, approach to the study of dance. By examining the development of modern dance in the US during the inter-war period she develops a framework for analyzing dance from a sociological perspective.
In applying her approach to the works of St Denis, Ted Shawn, and Martha Graham, amongst others, she relates the emergence of modern dance to contemporaneous artistic developments, and locates dance within a wider social and economic context. Thus, she draws attention to the importance of popular culture in the development of modern dance, music and painting, and the crucial role women played in establishing dance as an art form. By way of exemplification, she looks at the work of Yvonne Rainer in order to demonstrate how this sociological approach might be applied to a post-modern work.
"Dance, Modernity and Culture" explores an area of art practice that has long been marginalized by sociologists of art. As an important contribution to dance scholarship this book will be essential reading for all those interested in the performing arts.

Contents:
Part 1: Postmodernism: a new representation? Paradigms of the Postmodern. Modernism and its Consequences: Continuity of Break?. Postmodernism: from Elite to Mass Culture? Conclusion: Resisting the Postmodern. Part 2: Essays on Postmodernism. One: Popular Culture. Introduction. Popular Music and Postmodern Theory, Andrew Goodwin. Recognizing a `human-Thing': Cyborgs, Robots and Replicants in Philip K. Dick's `Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' and Ridley Scott's `Blade Runner', Nigel Wheale. Two: Architecture and Visual Arts. Introduction. Three: Melancholy Meanings: Architecture, Postmodernity and Philosophy, Julian Roberts. Four: `The World Is Indeed and Fabulous Tale': Yve Lomax - a Practice around Photography, Hilary Guest in dialogue with Yve Lomax. Five: Televising Hell: Tom Phillips and Peter Greenaway's `TV Dante', Nigel Wheale. Three: Literature. Introduction. A New Subjectivity? John Ashbery's `Three Poems, Nigel Wheale. Reading the Satanic Verses, Gayatari Chakravorty Spivak. Four: The Real and the True: Documentary Film. Introduction. The Totalizing Quest of Meaning, Trinh T. Minh-Ha

This volume represents a clear attempt to learn something from the events in Eastern European countries. It does not start with simplistic or old assumptions based on convenient Western communication models, but instead takes a new approach. If chaos theory could fundamentally change how physicists looked at order in the universe, then it may be of value for communication scholars to attempt to understand the diversity of chaos or order in the "human" universe, rather than attempt to force existing models on it for their own explanatory purposes.
This book is not merely based on the study of select groups of university students or on laboratory settings created in the minds of social scientists. It seeks to understand some of the "real world," including the historical backgrounds and the theoretical assumptions brought to studies of intercultural conflicts. Using personal and professional insights developed during firsthand contacts with existing situations, chapter authors illustrate some of the realities by using the complexity of changes in Eastern European states during the final decade of the 20th century. From education to business, from the role of women to the role of mass media, from the impact of political systems to the impact of history, communication between those who are culturally diverse, though they may have been arbitrarily forced to live under the same "political roof," is the theme of these scholarly studies.
The editor's reason for developing this volume of original essays is his belief that diversity rather than assumed similarity or even sameness -- based on the use of inadequate terminology -- is necessary for learning from contemporary human experiences. He further believes that diversity and the significant roles of cultural values as well as of history need to become key concepts in the model with which to begin when it comes to the study of various aspects of intercultural communication. It is therefore vital that scholars who represent various points of view and backgrounds contribute to that process. After all, understanding what is happening in the world is centrally anchored in or related to effective and successful "intercultural" communication between scholars who have different academic and personal backgrounds.

Related link: http://www.cce.ed.ac.uk/geddes
eBook available with sample pages: 0203430476

A full-length analysis of social movements from a cultural perspective. This work considers the different approaches to culture, how movements are affected by their cultural environment and internal cultures within the movements themselves.

"Locating Lesbian and Gay Subjects" collects some of the best papers from the Fifth Annual Lesbian and Gay Studies Conference, held at Rutgers University in 1991. These essays are distinguished by their concern with a politics of location, ' shifting emphasis from gay and/or lesbian identity to the location of these subjects in material experiences or events.
Within this framework, the writers examine literature, art, psychoanalysis and personal experience. A number of the essays explore the role specific racial and ethnic constructions in the construction of gay men and/or lesbians, and conversely, the role of sexual identities in forming racial and ethnic constructs. Other are focused on the body and how it it created in reponse to American cultural forces.
The diversity of the contributors--academics, filmmakers, activists and authors--results in a book of broad scope, and will be an important work for those with an interest in issues of sexuality, race and gender.
Contributors: Joseph A. Boone, Julia Creet, Samuel Delany, Monica Dorenkamp, Richard Fung, Yukiko Hanawa, Richard Henke, Marcia Ian, Richard Meyer, Sylvia Molloy, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jennifer Terry, Simon Watney.

Tony Bennett's invigorating study enriches and challenges our understanding of the modern museum placing it at the centre of modern relations of culture and government.
Bennett argues that the public museum should be understood not just as a place of instruction but as a reformatory of manners in which a wide range of regulated social routines and performances take place. Discussing the historical development of museums alongside that of the fair and the international exhibition, he sheds new light upon the relationship between modern forms of official and popular culture.
In a series of richly detailed case studies from Britain, Australia and North America, Bennett investigates how nineteenth- and twentieth-century museums, fairs and exhibitions have organised their collections, and their visitors. His use of Foucaltian perspectives and his consideration of museums in relation to other cultural institutions of display provides a distinctive perspective on contemporary museum policies and politics.

This volume presents a representative cross-section of the more than 200 papers presented at the 1994 conference of the Rhetoric Society of America. The contributors reflect multi- and inter-disciplinary perspectives -- English, speech communication, philosophy, rhetoric, composition studies, comparative literature, and film and media studies. Exploring the historical relationships and changing relationships between rhetoric, cultural studies, and literacy in the United States, this text seeks answers to such questions as what constitutes "literacy" in a post-modern, high-tech, multi-cultural society?

Discover the truth about sex in the city (and the country). Mapping Desire explores the places and spaces of sexuality from body to community, from the 'cottage' to the Barrio, from Boston to Jakarta, from home to cyberspace.
The contributors bring a wealth of approaches to ways in which the spaces of sex and the sexes of space are being mapped out across contemporary culture - lesbians at home and on the streets, gay men out shopping, sex, work and sex at work, popular music, film and fiction, queer politics, identities and communities, country boys and urban dykes, sexual citizenship and sexual intimacy ... and more.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203427890

Discover the truth about sex in the city (and the country). Mapping Desire explores the places and spaces of sexuality from body to community, from the 'cottage' to the Barrio, from Boston to Jakarta.

The contributors bring a wealth of approaches to ways in which the spaces of sex and the sexes of space are being mapped out across contemporary culture.

Lesbians at home and on the streets, gay men on fantasy islands, bisexual identities, the heterosexualisation of the workplace, bachelor farmers and spinsters, surveillance and sexuality, prostitution, queer politics, Jamaican ragga and gay resistance, perverse dynamics, sexual citizenship and the transformation of intimacy.....and more.

This book examines the issues of ecological crisis and sustainable development through critical reading of literary texts. By analysing writings of Rabindranath Tagore, Amitav Ghosh, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hannah Arendt, and Lawrence Buell, it discusses themes like oriental representations of ecological consciousness; environmental evocations; misogyny and its postmodern creations; tracing nature's footprints in English literature; statelessness and consequent environmental refugees; ecocriticism and comics; and, absolute trust in the goodness of the earth. The volume argues that within the ambit of debates between ecological threats and socio-economic concerns, culture plays a vital role particularly in relation to parameters such as identity and engagement, memory and projection, gender and generations, inquiry and learning, wellbeing and health. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, English literature, social anthropology, gender studies, sustainable development, environmental studies, ecological studies, development studies, and post-colonial studies.

In this highly original volume, Gunnar Karlsson offers new answers to the question concerning the relationship between belonging to a specific sex as a male and striving for a masculine identity. This book offers a uniquely psychoanalytic and phenomenological perspective on masculinity. Karlsson considers masculinity and traditional masculine ideals through a psychoanalytic lens before taking phenomenological concepts to chisel out the relationship between sex and gender. This perspective is developed throughout the volume to inspire readers to further their understanding of traditional gender assignment – female, male and intersex – in light of gendered characteristics such as femininity and masculinity. Chapters span topics such as the characteristics of typical, so-called ‘phallic masculinity’, its allure and psychogenetic explanation, as well as looking at what phallic masculinity disregards. Throughout, Karlsson maintains that phallic masculinity is unattainable, as it seeks to escape the existential conditions of helplessness, vulnerability, and dependence. He makes the case for the importance of considering the notion of ego-identity in the field of sex/gender studies, encouraging a liberation from gender stereotypes. Psychoanalytic and Phenomenological Reflections on Masculinity will be of great interest to researchers, clinical psychoanalysts, and psychotherapists, as well as anyone interested in masculinity, Gender Studies and the relationship between sex and gender.

For over a century, Europe has been characterized by a plurality of capitalist modernities. At any moment, each country possesses its own distinctly modern qualities which are partly shaped through interrelationships with other countries. Each European commodity society has experienced successive, but different overlapping, periods of industrial modernity (large scale factories and urban growth), high modernity (social modernization promoted by social engineering) and hypermodernity (the acceleration of modernity, yielding new circumstances and sensibilities). Interrogating contemporary, hypermodern Europe thus requires an exploration of industrial and high modern Europe. "Re-"cognising" European Modernities" explores a century of civilization through a critical examination of the extreme case of Sweden. Using montage - relayering multiple pasts and on-going present - the book challenges the contemporary obsession with "postmodernity", demanding a deeper, more connective understanding of the pleasures and dangers of the European present. The author visits three spectacular spaces: the Stockholm Exhibition of 1897, the Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 and the Globe.

Revised and expanded, this volume deals with the religious traditions of ancient Egypt. New material allows a much more precise allocation of religious texts and ideas in terms of time, place and social context.

A thorough survey of great interest and value to scholars in this field.

In the context of the growing diversity of contemporary societies and the central importance of the electronic media, the place of popular culture in the school curriculum has become an increasingly controversial political issue. Based on in-depth research in an ethnically mixed, working-class secondary school, Cultural Studies Goes to School is concerned with the relationships between young people's involvement in popular culture outside school and their experiences of media education within the formal school curriculum. The first part of the book provides a detailed analysis of students' readings and uses of popular media, ranging from computer games and soap operas to comics and rap music. It offers a further challenge to received notions of young people as passive victims of ideological manipulation by the media and develops a social theory of reading that acknowledges the complex roles of gender, race and social class. The second part describes a number of classroom projects involving both critical and practical aspects of media education. Through analysis of students' work in a range of media, including photography, video and print, the authors develop a challenging theory of learning about popular culture and its place in the school curriculum. This book offers an exciting and accessible account of young people reading and making popular culture, which challenges many of the political claims and received wisdoms of academic Cultural Studies.

This book explores the characteristics in the writing, marketing and reception of science fiction which distinguish it as a genre. Damien Broderick explores the postmodern self-referentiality of the sci-fi narrative, its intricate coded language and discursive "encyclopaedia". He shows how, for perfect understanding, sci-fi readers must learn the codes of these imaginary worlds and vocabularies, all the time picking up references to texts by other writers. The book includes close readings of paradigmatic cyberpunk texts and writings by SF novelists and theorists including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Brian Aldiss, Patrick Parrinder, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Varley, Roger Zelazny, William Gibson, Fredric Jameson and Samuel R. Delaney. Damien Broderick is an award-winning freelance writer who published his first collection of stories as an undergraduate, has since written eight SF novels, and recently completed a PhD in the semiotics of SF writing.

While films such as Rambo, Thelma and Louise and Basic Instinct have operated as major points of cultural reference in recent years, popular action cinema remains neglected within contemporary film criticism.
Spectacular Bodies unravels the complexities and pleasures of a genre often dismissed as `obvious' in both its pleasure and its politics, arguing that these controversial films should be analysed and understood within a cinematic as well as a political context.
Yvonne Tasker argues that today's action cinema not only responds to the shifts in gendered, sexual and racial identities which took place during the 1980s, but reflects the influences of other media such as the new video culture. Her detailed discussion of the homoeroticism surrounding the muscleman hero, the symbolic centrality of blackness within the crime narrative, and the changing status of women within the genre, addresses the constitution of these identities through the shifting categories of gender, class, race, sex, sexuality and nation. Spectacular Bodies also examines the ambivalence of supposedly secure categories of popular cinema, questioning the existing terms of film criticism in this area and addressing the complex pleasures of this neglected form.

Making it National argues that we need to rethink the way national identity is constructed in Australia today. Graeme Turner takes a series of recent instances - the mythologising of Bond and the larrikin entrepreneurs, the Spycatcher trials, Maralinga and the Bicentenary - showing how popular images of national identity are used to serve specific rather than national interests.'Graeme Turner's writing has a remarkable power to engage its readers with all the immediacy, vividness and drama of our very best journalism, while putting cultural theory to work in new and creative ways.' - Meaghan Morris'Making it National could be to the 1990s what Richard White's Inventing Australia was to the 1980s.' - Tony Bennett, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University

eBook available with sample pages: 0203111141

"Foreign Bodies" analyzes how our culture elaborates for us the bodies we have by natural evolution. Calling on the new means contemporary thinkers have used to understand the body, Alphonso Lingis explores forms of power, pleasure and pain, and libidinal identity.
The book contrasts the findings of theory with the practice of the body as formulated in quite different kinds of language--the language of plastic art (the artwork body builders make of themselves), biography, anthropology and literature. Lingis explains how we experience our own powers of perception, our postures, attitudes, gestures and purposive action; how our susceptibility to pain and excitability by pleasure acquiesce in and resist the ways they are identified and manipulated today; how cultures code our sensuality with phallic and with fluid identities; how others dress appeals to and puts demands on us.

Concern with various matters related to humans as they communicate has led to an increase in both research and theorizing during the second half of the 20th century. As a matter of fact, so many scholars and so many disciplines have become involved in this process that it is virtually impossible to understand and appreciate all that has been accomplished so far. This book focuses on one important aspect of human sense-making -- theory building -- and strives to clarify the thesis that theories do not develop in some sort of social, intellectual, or cultural vacuum. They are necessarily the products of specific times, insights, and mindsets. Theories dealing with the "process" of communication, or communicating, are tied to socio-cultural value systems and historic factors that influence individuals in ways often inadequately understood by those who use them. The process-orientation of this book inevitably leads to an emphasis on the perceptions of human beings. Thus, the focus shifts from the subject or area called "communication" to the "act of communicating." Finally, this volume offers insight into how the process of human sense-making has evolved in those academic fields commonly identified as communication, rhetoric, speech communication or speech, within specific socio-cultural settings.

The final volume of four, the authors, all specialists in the areas of the curriculum, consider how the concerns of ethnic groups may be addressed within the framework of the National Curriculum. Despite the indecision surrounding the structure, content, pedagogy and assessment of many components of the primary school curriculum, it remains that the multicultural nature of the population and of schools will develop. These developments and their educational implications must be considered if the educational system is to respond adequately.

A new approach to the analysis of cultural reproduction focusing on the impact of economic change. The book demonstrates the reinforcement of cultural stereotypes in recruitment caused by interaction between corporate restructuring and the education system.; This book is intended for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates in sociology with an interest in the sociology of work and the sociology of education as well as researchers and students within human resource management and cultural studies.

1. This practical guide provides all of the information practitioners need to consider when making the decision to engage with young children and their carers. 2. This is the first book to provide practical guidance on how to attract young children and their carers into the museum. This will ensure that the book is essential reading for experienced and junior professionals, who are working in museums large and small around the world. 3. There is no competition to this book. Drawing on current neurological research and best practices in early childhood education and development, this guide presents case studies from a variety of different institutions around the world and will be truly unique as a result.