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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies
Midway between Billings, Montana, and Yellowstone National Park, tourists encounter the quaint little town of Red Lodge. Here one may see cowboys, Indians, and mountain men roaming a downtown that's on the National Register of Historic Places, attend a rodeo on the 4th of July, or join in a celebration of immigrants during the annual "Festival of Nations." One would hardly guess that until recently Red Lodge was really a down-and-out coal-mining town or that it was populated mainly by white Americans. In many ways, Red Lodge is typical of western towns that have created new interpretations of their pasts in order to attract tourists through a mix of public pageants and old-timey facades. In Red Lodge and the Mythic West, Montana-born Bonnie Christensen tells how Red Lodge reinvented itself and shows that the "history" a community chooses to celebrate may be only loosely based on what actually happened in the town's past. Tracing the story of Red Lodge from the 1880s to the present, Christensen tells how a mining town managed to endure the vagaries of the West's unpredictable extractive-industries economy. She connects Red Lodge to a myriad of larger events and historical forces to show how national and regional influences have contributed to the development of local identities, exploring how and why westerners first rejected and then embraced "western" images, and how ethnicity, wilderness, and historic preservation became part of the identity that defined one town. Christensen takes us behind the main street facades of Red Lodge to tell a story of salesmanship, adaptation, and survival. Combining oral histories, newspapers, government records, and even minutes of organizationmeetings, she shows not only how people have used different interpretations of the past to create a sense of themselves in the present, but also how public memory is created and re-created. Christensen's shrewd analysis transcends one place to illuminate broader trends in the region and offer a clearer understanding of the motivations behind the creation of "theme towns" throughout America. By explaining how and why we choose various versions of the past to fit who we want to be -- and who we want others to think we are -- she helps us learn more about the role of myths and myth-making in American communities, and in the process learn a little more about ourselves.
The world of sport is saturated with the signs and images of transnational corporations. But what effect does the relationship between sport and transnational corporate capitalism have on national cultural identities?From baseball in Japan to the growth of womens soccer in the US, from the corporate use of sport after September 11th to the FA Cup and the NBA, sporting events and their corporate partners can have a profound impact on collective imaginations at both transnational and local levels. Sport and Corporate Nationalisms explores the localized logics and practices underlying the marketing initiatives of major conglomerates and their increasing influence on the shaping and experiencing of national cultures. Corporations depend on sport as a vital marketing vehicle for inserting their interests into the lives of local consumers. This book puts forth convincing arguments that relate the role of sport-marketing complexes to national cultural markets in a global age.Sport and Corporate Nationalisms provides a much-needed analysis of the growing evolution of marketing strategies in the world of sport.
From digital-display dresses to remote control couture, this book exposes the revolutionary interface between contemporary fashion and technology. As twenty-first century fashion makes a dramatic departure from traditional methods, designers no longer turn to the past for inspiration, but look to the hi-tech future. The result is techno fashion, the new wave of intelligent clothing that fuses fashion with communication technology, electronic textiles, and sophisticated design innovations that express new ideas about appearance, construction and wearability. Born out of the collaboration between fashion designers, researchers and scientists, this new dialogue could be the most significant design innovation in fashion's history, or indicate its eventual demise. Either way, techno fashion promises to forever disrupt the historical narrative of fashion evolution. Through interviews with designers ranging from innovators such as Hussein Chalayan and Tristan Webber to mavericks like Alexander McQueen, Bradley Quinn examines the impact of this new direction. The fusion of design and technology introduced by Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake has created another direction for clothing, creating a new breed of designer-cum-scientist who redefines the way we dress, communicate, and even respond to environmental changes. As technology begins to shape fashion's future, it redefines the boundaries between clothing, body and machine, forever transforming the ethics and lifestyles traditionally designated by codes of dress.
"Critical Cultural Policy Studies: A Reader" charts cultural policy
as it exerts its powerful - if often overlooked - influence on
every aspect of culture, from the fine arts to popular forms of
entertainment. Key essays by pioneers in cultural policy studies
combine with more recent reflections to define this important field
and demonstrate the substantial role policy plays in the cultural
production, from film, radio, and television to the Internet, the
arts, music, and even sport. The volume explores a dazzling array of subjects from across the humanities and social sciences and around the globe: indigenous media, television and citizenship, film and government, museums, national cultures, suburban culture, international trade, and the shopping mall. Making the claim that no study of culture is complete without a thorough analysis of economic and political determinants, Critical Cultural Policy Studies offers a provocative view that culture is a very public - and very political - concern.
In America, the long 1950s were marked by an intense skepticism toward utopian alternatives to the existing capitalist order. This skepticism was closely related to the climate of the Cold War, in which the demonization of socialism contributed to a dismissal of all alternatives to capitalism. This book studies how American novels and films of the long 1950s reflect the loss of the utopian imagination and mirror the growing concern that capitalism brought routinization, alienation, and other dehumanizing consequences. The volume relates the decline of the utopian vision to the rise of late capitalism, with its expanding globalization and consumerism, and to the beginnings of postmodernism. In addition to well-known literary novels, such as NabokoV's "Lolita, " Booker explores a large body of leftist fiction, popular novels, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney. The book argues that while the canonical novels of the period employ a utopian aesthetic, that aesthetic tends to be very weak and is not reinforced by content. The leftist novels, on the other hand, employ a realist aesthetic but are utopian in their exploration of alternatives to capitalism. The study concludes that the utopian energies in cultural productions of the long 1950s are very weak, and that these works tend to dismiss utopian thinking as na DEGREESDive or even sinister. The weak utopianism in these works tends to be reflected in characteristics associated with postmodernism.
This volume approaches China's Belt and Road Initiative as a process of culturalization, one that started with the Silk Road and continued over the millennium. In mainstream literature, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been portrayed as the geo-economic vision and geo-political ambition of China's current leaders, intended to shape the future of the world. However, this volume argues that although geo-politics and geo-economy may play their part, the BRI more importantly creates a venue for the meeting of cultures by promoting people-to-people interaction and exchange. This volume explores the journey from the Silk-Road to Belt-Road by analyzing topics ranging from history to religion, from language to culture, and from environment to health. As such, scholars, academics, researchers, undergraduate and graduate students from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Business will find an alternative approach to the Belt and Road Initiative.
This book presents a sweeping view of boxing in the United States and the influence of the sport on American culture. Boxing has long been a popular fixture of American sport and culture, despite its decidedly seedy side (the fact that numerous boxing champions acquired their skills in prison or reform schools, the corruption and greed of certain boxing promoters, and the involvement of the mob in fixing the outcome of many big fights). Yet boxing remains an iconic and widely popular spectator sport, even in light of its decline as a result of the recent burgeoning interest in mixed martial arts (MMA) contests. What had made this sport so enthralling to our nation for such a long period of time? This book contains much more than simple documentation of the significant dates, people, and bouts in the history of American boxing. It reveals why boxing became one of America's leading spectator sports at the turn of the century and examines the factors that have swayed the public's perception of it, thereby affecting its popularity. In Boxing in America, the author provides a compelling view of not only the pugilist sport, but also of our country, our sources of entertainment, and ourselves. Includes information from the early "bare knuckles" era of boxing up to modern-day stars and matchups, presenting the history of boxing in a chronological fashion
The Parlour and the Suburb challenges stereotypes about domesticity with a reevaluation of women's roles in the 'private' sphere. Classic accounts of modernity have generally ignored or marginalized women, relegating them to the private sphere of home, sexuality and personal relationships. This private sphere has been understood as a gendered space in which a non-modern femininity is opposed to the masculine world of politics, economics, urban life and the workplace. The author argues, however, that home and private life have been crucial spaces in which the interrelations of class and gender have been significant in the formation of modern feminine subjectivitiesFocusing on the first half of the twentieth century, The Parlour and the Suburb examines how women experienced and understood the home and private life in light of modernity. It explores the identities and self-definitions that domesticity inscribed and shows how these were central to women's sense of themselves as 'modern' individuals. The book draws on a range of cultural texts and practices to explore aspects of domestic modernity that have received little attention in most accounts of modern subjectivities. Topics covered include suburbia, consumption practices, domestic service and the wartime figure of the housewife. Texts examined include a range of women's magazines, George Orwell's Coming up for Air, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, BBC Home Service's 'Help for Housewives' and oral history narratives. 'In this persuasively argued book Giles discusses the highly gendered nature of the concept of modernity which has, to date, marginalized the domestic space and women's traditional role as 'homemakers'.'Stephanie Spencer, Literature & History
Volume 10 of the EYIEL focusses on the relationship between transnational labour law and international economic law on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). As one of the oldest UN Agencies, the ILO has achieved considerable progress with respect to labour rights and conditions. The contributions to EYIEL Volume 10 assess these achievements in light of current and future challenges. The ILO's core instruments and legal documents are analysed and similarly the impact labour standards have on trade and investment agreements. In its regional section, EYIEL 10 addresses recent developments in the US and the EU, including the US' trade policy strategy towards China as well as the reform of the NAFTA. In its part on institutions, EYIEL 10 focusses inter alia on the role of the rule of law in relation to current practices of the International Monetary Fund and of the WTO's Appellate Body as an international court. Furthermore, it provides an overview of current cases before the WTO. Finally, the volume entails a section with review essays on recently published books in the field of international economic law and international investment law.
Honorable Mention for the 2008 Robert Park Outstanding Book Award given by the ASA's Community and Urban Sociology Section Mardi Gras, jazz, voodoo, gumbo, Bourbon Street, the French Quarter-all evoke that place that is unlike any other: New Orleans. In Authentic New Orleans, Kevin Fox Gotham explains how New Orleans became a tourist town, a spectacular locale known as much for its excesses as for its quirky Southern charm. Gotham begins in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina amid the whirlwind of speculation about the rebuilding of the city and the dread of outsiders wiping New Orleans clean of the grit that made it great. He continues with the origins of Carnival and the Mardi Gras celebration in the nineteenth century, showing how, through careful planning and promotion, the city constructed itself as a major tourist attraction. By examining various image-building campaigns and promotional strategies to disseminate a palatable image of New Orleans on a national scale Gotham ultimately establishes New Orleans as one of the originators of the mass tourism industry-which linked leisure to travel, promoted international expositions, and developed the concept of pleasure travel. Gotham shows how New Orleans was able to become one of the most popular tourist attractions in the United States, especially through the transformation of Mardi Gras into a national, even international, event. All the while Gotham is concerned with showing the difference between tourism from above and tourism from below-that is, how New Orleans' distinctiveness is both maximized, some might say exploited, to serve the global economy of tourism as well as how local groups and individuals use tourism to preserve and anchor longstanding communal traditions.
High Culture is the symbolic culture inherited from classical literature that is transmitted to French children by the "Schools of the Republic" in the form of citations and cliches that represent a conventional cultural capital. The book follows the process of learning how to read and write in French primary and secondary schools as it is represented in the fiction written by authors whose experience was that of pupils born from North and sub-Saharan African immigrant parents during the 1960-2000 period. Autobiographical novels by 'beur' and Afro-French authors (1980s and 1990s respectively) and one film by Merzak Allouache (1996) disclose some of the strategies for learning how to read and write that challenge the conventions of a State-controlled school system inherited from the Third Republic during colonial times. From the experience of Kassa Houari's self-initiation to French literature in his autobiographical text, to revaluating cultural cliches in and out of school by Zair Kedadouche, Azouz Begag or Calixthe Beyala, a postcolonial mentality emerges from the literature of a post-1980s multicultural France where Orality plays a key role in reinterpreting cliches from High Culture and informs a new moral Code. Rethinking Reading, Writing, and a Moral Code astutely suggests a need for the school system to rethink its didactic approach to teaching language and literature, if French education is to reflect the postcolonial character of contemporary cosmopolitan culture and facilitate the integration of communities of diverse ethnic origins.
Terry Teachout's thought-provoking observations on everyone from Louis Armstrong to The Sopranos, and on everything from American opera to serials on TV. Terry Teachout, one of our most acute cultural commentators, here turns his sharp eye to every corner of the arts world--music, dance, literature, theater, film, TV, and the visual arts. This collection gathers the best of Teachout's writings from the past fifteen years. In each essay he offers lucid and balanced judgments that invariably illuminate, sometimes infuriate, and always spark a response--the mark of a critic whose thoughts, however controversial, cannot be ignored. In a thoughtful introduction to the book, Teachout considers how American culture of the twenty-first century differs from that of the last century and how the information age has altered popular culture. His selected essays chronicle America's cultural journey over the past decade and a half, and they show us what has been lost--and gained--along the way. With highly informed opinions, an inimitable wit and style, and a genuine devotion to all things cultural, Teachout offers his readers much to delight in and much to ponder.
In 1940, Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey built two bikes, packed what they could, and fled wartime Paris. Among the possessions they escaped with was a manuscript that would later become one of the most celebrated books in children's literature-Curious George. Since his debut in 1941, the mischievous icon has only grown in popularity. After being captured in Africa by the Man in the Yellow Hat and taken to live in the big city's zoo, Curious George became a symbol of curiosity, adventure, and exploration. In Curious about George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism, author Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre argues that the beloved character also performs within a narrative of racism, colonialism, and heroism. Using theories of colonial and rhetorical studies to explain why cultural icons like Curious George are able to avoid criticism, Schwartz-DuPre investigates the ways these characters operate as capacious figures, embodying and circulating the narratives that construct them, and effectively argues that discourses about George provide a rich training ground for children to learn US citizenship and become innocent supporters of colonial American exceptionalism. By drawing on postcolonial theory, children's criticisms, science and technology studies, and nostalgia, Schwartz-DuPre's critical reading explains the dismissal of the monkey's 1941 abduction from Africa and enslavement in the US, described in the first book, by illuminating two powerful roles he currently holds: essential STEM ambassador at a time when science and technology is central to global competitiveness and as a World War II refugee who offers a "deficient" version of the Holocaust while performing model US immigrant. Curious George's twin heroic roles highlight racist science and an Americanized Holocaust narrative. By situating George as a representation of enslaved Africans and Holocaust refugees, Curious about George illuminates the danger of contemporary zero-sum identity politics, the colonization of marginalized identities, and racist knowledge production. Importantly, it demonstrates the ways in which popular culture can be harnessed both to promote colonial benevolence and to present possibilities for resistance.
This title is a guide to doing research in the burgeoning field of food studies. Designed for the classroom as well as for the independent scholar, the book details the predominant research methods in the field, provides a series of interactive questions and templates to help guide a project, and includes suggestions for food-specific resources such as archives, libraries and reference works. Interviews with leading scholars in the field and discussions of how the study of food can enhance traditional methods are included. Food Studies: An Introduction to Research Methods begins with an overview of food studies and research methods followed by a guide to the literature. Four methodological "baskets" representing the major methodologies of the field are explored together with interviews from leading scholars in: food history (Ken Albala); ethnographic methods (Carole Counihan); material culture and media studies (Psyche Williams-Forson); and quantitative methods (Jeffery Sobal). The book concludes with chapters on research ethics, including working with human subjects, and technology tools for research.
The Darfur conflict has presented the international community with a number of challenges. How can the fighting be stopped in Darfur? What can be done to save lives and help the two million people displaced by the conflict? And how to help bring about peace, while ensuring that the peace agreement for the Second Sudanese Civil War (1983 - 2005) is implemented? Drawing on original research, and tracing the history of international responses to the conflicts in Sudan, Richard Barltrop investigates what has determined the outcomes of international mediation and relief in Sudan. In the process, he shows that Darfur must be seen within the wider context of conflict in Sudan, and that lessons should be drawn both for Sudan and for the effective practice of conflict resolution.
HBO's Girls and the Awkward Politics of Gender, Race, and Privilege is a collection of essays that examines the HBO program Girls. Since its premiere in 2012, the series has garnered the attention of individuals from various walks of life. The show has been described in many terms: insightful, out-of-touch, brash, sexist, racist, perverse, complex, edgy, daring, provocative-just to name a few. Overall, there is no doubt that Girls has firmly etched itself in the fabric of early twenty-first-century popular culture. The essays in this book examine the show from various angles including: white privilege; body image; gender; culture; race; sexuality; parental and generational attitudes; third wave feminism; male emasculation and immaturity; hipster, indie, and urban music as it relates to Generation Y and Generation X. By examining these perspectives, this book uncovers many of the most pressing issues that have surfaced in the show, while considering the broader societal implications therein.
This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Under what conditions does 'sensation' become 'sensational'? In the early nineteenth century murder was a staple of the sensationalizing popular press and gruesome descriptions were deployed to make a direct impact on the sensations of the reader. By the end of the century, public concern with the thrills, spills, and shocks of modern life was increasingly articulated in the language of sensation. Media sensationalism contributed to this process and magnified its impact, just as sensation was, in turn, taken up by literature, art and film. In the contemporary world the dramatization of these experiences in an era of media panics over terrorism and paedophilia has taken an overtly melodramatic form, in which battles of good and evil play out across the landscapes of our lives. Sensational Subjects develops an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to exploring these themes, their impact and their implications for understanding the modern world. A companion volume, Sympathetic Sentiments: Affect, Emotion and Spectacle in the Modern World is published simultaneously by Bloomsbury.
"Yuh has composed a complex, provocative, and compassionate
portrayal of the experiences of Korean military brides from the
1950s through the 1990s. . . . Delving into how these women face
isolation and alienation from both Korean and US societies because
of their transnational status, Yuh's masterful history demonstrates
that these women have resisted perceptions of both societies and
forged communities based on their claiming Korean and US identities
as Korean military brides. A wonderful resource... Highly
recommended." "Ji-Yeon Yuh's book poignantly illustrates the human costs and
benefits of militarized migration in the context of American-Korean
relations." "Impeccably researched and seamlessly executed." "IThis is one of the most compelling books I have read this
year...Ji-Yeon Yuh's account is alternately heart breaking and
inspiring." "Ji-Yeon Yuh uses a wealth of sources, especially moving oral
histories, to tell an important, at times heartbreaking, story of
Korean military brides. She takes us beyond the stereotypes and
reveals their roles within their families, communities, and Korean
immigration to the U.S. Without ignoring their difficult lives, Yuh
portrays these women's agency and dignity with skill and
compassion." "Ji-Yeon Yuh's study is to be commended on several counts, not
the least of which is the aunique prisma (dust jacket) she gives
the contemporary reader into the social and cultural contract
between Korea and the United States, clearly a template that we
would be advised to heed in these troubledtimes." "By studying the lives and history of Korean amilitary brides, a
Ji-Yeon Yuh pays tribute to an important group that has not
received the understanding, attention, and respect that it
deserves. Full of compelling stories, Beyond the Shadow of the
Camptowns is sure to inspire new ways of thinking about U.S. and
especially immigration history, as well as Asian American and Asian
history." "Where do marriage, diaspora, racism and the politics of global
alliances converge? In the dreams and dailiness of the thousands of
Korean women living in the United States today. Ji-Yeon Yuh's
engaging and revealing book shows us that by listening attentively
to the Korean women married to white and black American men, we can
become a lot smarter about the realities of globalized
living." ""Beyond the Shadoe of Camptown" is a readable and poignant
piece of scholarship. There is much worth praising in this
book." "In general, the fluid writing style demonstrates Yuh's background in journalism, and helps explain why this work made its way from dissertation to hardcover so rapidly. It is a study that demands attention from scholars of foreign relations and migration between Korea and the United States, and deserves attention from ethnic studies scholars and immigration scholars as well."--"Journal of American Ethnic History" "Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in
America, immigration historian Ji-Yeon Yuh explores how Koreanwomen
relate to American men in these cross-cultural relationships, and
how the military link between the dominant U.S. and subservient
Korea tends to complicate their marriages, already challenging for
many other reasons, with a dose of international politics as
well." "Through compelling oral histories, she traces the lives of
women form successive generations of brides." Since the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, nearly 100,000 Korean women have immigrated to the United States as the wives of American soldiers. Based on extensive oral interviews and archival research, Beyond the Shadow of the Camptowns tells the stories of these women, from their presumed association with U.S. military camptowns and prostitution to their struggles within the intercultural families they create in the United States. Historian Ji-Yeon Yuh argues that military brides are a unique prism through which to view cultural and social contact between Korea and the U.S. After placing these women within the context of Korean-U.S. relations and the legacies of both Japanese and U.S. colonialism vis A vis military prostitution, Yuh goes on to explore their lives, their coping strategies with their new families, and their relationships with their Korean families and homeland. Topics range from the personal--the role of food in their lives--to the communalthe efforts of military wives to form support groups that enable them to affirm Korean identity that both American and Koreans would deny them. Relayed with warmth and compassion, this is the first in-depth study of Korean military brides, and is a groundbreaking contribution to AsianAmerican, women's, and "new" immigrant studies, while also providing a unique approach to military history.
This study argues that, in early medieval South India, it was in the literary arena that religious ideals and values were publicly contested. While Tamil-speaking South India is today celebrated for its preservation of Hindu tradition, non-Hindu religious communities have played a significant role in shaping the religious history of the region. Among the least understood of such non-Hindu contributions is that of the Buddhists, who are little understood because of the scarcity of remnants of Tamil-speaking Buddhist culture. However, the two exant Buddhist texts in Tamil that are complete - a sixth-century poetic narrative known as the Manimekalai and an eleventh-century treatise on grammar and postics, the Viracoliyam - reveal a wealth of information about their textual communities and their vision of Buddhist life in a diverse and competitive religious milieu. By focusing on these texts, Monius sheds light on their role of literature and literary culture in the information, articulation, and evolution of religious identity and community.
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
Kitchens are where we cook, clean, cry, talk, laugh, break things. Hugely symbolic - as well as practical - kitchens evoke thoughts of hearth and home, family and domesticity. People today commonly spend more refurbishing their kitchens than refurbishing any other room in the home. On kitchen units alone, annual expenditure in England has been around the billion pound mark for some time. And this only represents part of what people spend on a kitchen. For, when they do up their kitchens, people frequently also buy new machinery and nearly always buy new accessories. To get at the heart of the meaning, design and purpose of the modern kitchen, the author interviewed a sample of seventy four homeowners. She follows them through the process of shopping and purchasing a new kitchen, and she discusses the importance of layout, colour, shape and texture. She explores the dominant role that women play in shaping the appearance of a new kitchen and considers the evolution of the modern kitchen in the context of the consumer age. The first history of the fitted kitchen in England, this innovative new book will appeal to anyone interested in design, sociology, gender studies and cultural history. |
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