On December 4, 1957, Miles Davis revolutionized film soundtrack production, improvising the score for Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'echafaud. A cinematic harbinger of the French New Wave, Ascenseur challenged mainstream filmmaking conventions, emphasizing experimentation and creative collaboration. It was in this environment during the late 1950s to 1960s, a brief "golden age" for jazz in film, that many independent filmmakers valued improvisational techniques, featuring soundtracks from such seminal figures as John Lewis, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington. But what of jazz in film today? Improvising the Score: Rethinking Modern Film Music through Jazz provides an original, vivid investigation of innovative collaborations between renowned contemporary jazz artists and prominent independent filmmakers. The book explores how these integrative jazz-film productions challenge us to rethink the possibilities of cinematic music production. In-depth case studies include collaborations between Terence Blanchard and Spike Lee (Malcolm X, When the Levees Broke), Dick Hyman and Woody Allen (Hannah and Her Sisters), Antonio Sanchez and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (Birdman), and Mark Isham and Alan Rudolph (Afterglow). The first book of its kind, this study examines jazz artists' work in film from a sociological perspective, offering rich, behind-the-scenes analyses of their unique collaborative relationships with filmmakers. It investigates how jazz artists negotiate their own "creative labor," examining the tensions between improvisation and the conventionally highly regulated structures, hierarchies, and expectations of filmmaking. Grounded in personal interviews and detailed film production analysis, Improvising the Score illustrates the dynamic possibilities of integrative artistic collaborations between jazz, film, and other contemporary media, exemplifying its ripeness for shaping and invigorating twenty-first-century arts, media, and culture.

Tarot cards have been around since the Renaissance and have become increasingly popular in recent years, often due to their prevalence in popular culture. While Tarot means many different things to many different people, the cards somehow strike universal chords that can resonate through popular culture in the contexts of art, television, movies, even comic books. The symbolism within the cards, and the cards as symbols themselves, make Tarot an excellent device for the media of popular culture in numerous ways. They make horror movies scarier. They make paintings more provocative. They provide illustrative structure to comics and can establish the traits of television characters. The Cards: The Evolution and Power of Tarot begins with an extensive review of the history of Tarot from its roots as a game to its supposed connection to ancient Egyptian magic, through its place in secret societies, and to its current use in meditation and psychology. This section ends with an examination of the people who make up today's tarot community. Then, specific areas of popular culture-art, television, movies, and comics-are each given a chapter in which to survey the use of Tarot. In this section, author Patrick Maille analyzes such works as Deadpool, Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman, Disney's Haunted Mansion, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, The Andy Griffith Show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and King of the Hill. The cards are evocative images in their own right, but the mystical fascination they inspire makes them a fantastic tool to be used in our favorite shows and stories.

This book provides theories, experiences, reflections and future directions for social scientists who wish to engage with policy-oriented research in, and for, cities and regions. The '?policy learning?' perspective is comprehensively discussed, focusing on actors promoting '?policy knowledge?' and interaction among different stakeholders. Theoretical frameworks and practical experiences of policy-orientated research for European regions and cities are comprehensively explored in this timely book. The authors review current theories and present novel case studies of policy-orientated research. By combining policy analysis with urban and regional studies, the book highlights how researchers can be agents of policy learning, helping policymakers to learn how to learn. This book will provide unique, real world insights for researchers, practitioners and stakeholders interested in research-based approaches to cities and regions. Contributors include: I. Bakker, S. Bandera, P. Benneworth, M.C. Cattaneo, P. Coletti, A. Colombino, A. Colombo, J.L. De las Rivas Sanz, N. Francesco Dotti, F. Eckardt, A. Gerritsen, S. Giest, D. Greenwood, A. Healy, T. Herrschel, T. Metze-Burghouts, S. Moyson, M. Paris, S. Pazos-Vidal, D. Pojani, P. Scholten, D. Stead, M. Stuiver, C. Termeer, G. Urso, J. Vaesen, W.-J. Velderman, B. Wayens

The Angel and the Cholent: Food Representation from the Israel Folktale Archives by Idit Pintel-Ginsberg, translated into English for the first time from Hebrew, analyzes how food and foodways are the major agents generating the plots of several significant folktales. The tales were chosen from the Israel Folktales Archives' (IFA) extensive collection of twenty-five thousand tales. In looking at the subject of food through the lens of the folktale, we are invited to consider these tales both as a reflection of society and as an art form that discloses hidden hopes and often subversive meanings. The Angel and the Cholent presents thirty folktales from seventeen different ethnicities and is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 considers food and taste-tales included here focus on the pleasure derived by food consumption and its reasonable limits. The tales in Chapter 2 are concerned with food and gender, highlighting the various and intricate ways food is used to emphasize gender functions in society, the struggle between the sexes, and the love and lust demonstrated through food preparations and its consumption. Chapter 3 examines food and class with tales that reflect on how sharing food to support those in need is a universal social act considered a ""mitzvah"" (a Jewish religious obligation), but it can also become an unspoken burden for the providers. Chapter 4 deals with food and kashrut-the tales included in this chapter expose the various challenges of ""keeping kosher,"" mainly the heavy financial burden it causes and the social price paid by the inability of sharing meals with non-Jews. Finally, Chapter 5 explores food and sacred time, with tales that convey the tension and stress caused by finding and cooking specific foods required for holiday feasts, the Shabbat and other sacred times. The tales themselves can be appreciated for their literary quality, humor, and profound wisdom. Readers, scholars, and students interested in folkloristic and anthropological foodway studies or Jewish cultural studies will delight in these tales and find the editorial commentary illuminating.

This book focuses on the variety of strategies developed by women athletes in the Pacific Islands to claim contested sporting spaces – in particular, rugby union, soccer, beach volleyball, recreational sports and exercise – as a prism to explore grassroots women’s engagement with heavily entrenched postcolonial (hetero)patriarchy. Based on primary research conducted in Fiji, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu, the book investigates contested sporting spaces as sites of infrapolitics intersected primarily by gender and also by other markers of inequality including ethnicity, sexuality, class and geopolitics. Contrary to historical and contemporary representations of Pacific Island women as victims of gender injustice, it explores how these athletes and those who support them actively carve out space for their transformative agency. Staking Their Claim: Pacific Island Women and Contested Sporting Spaces focuses on a region underexamined by sport or gender studies researchers and will be of key interest to scholars and students in gender studies, sport studies, sociology, and Pacific Studies as well as sport practitioners and policymakers.

In Black to Nature: Pastoral Return and African American Culture, author Stefanie K. Dunning considers both popular and literary texts that range from Beyonce's Lemonade to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones. These key works restage Black women in relation to nature. Dunning argues that depictions of protagonists who return to pastoral settings contest the violent and racist history that incentivized Black disavowal of the natural world. Dunning offers an original theoretical paradigm for thinking through race and nature by showing that diverse constructions of nature in these texts are deployed as a means of rescrambling the teleology of the Western progress narrative. In a series of fascinating close readings of contemporary Black texts, she reveals how a range of artists evoke nature to suggest that interbeing with nature signals a call for what Jared Sexton calls ""the dream of Black Studies""-abolition. Black to Nature thus offers nuanced readings that advance an emerging body of critical and creative work at the nexus of Blackness, gender, and nature. Written in a clear, approachable, and multilayered style that aims to be as poignant as nature itself, the volume offers a unique combination of theoretical breadth, narrative beauty, and broader perspective that suggests it will be a foundational text in a new critical turn towards framing nature within a cultural studies context.

Resilience has lately emerged as a recurrent notion to explain how territorial socio-economic systems adapt successfully (or not) to negative events. Resilience, Crisis and Innovation Dynamics uses resilience as a bridging notion to connect different types of theoretical and empirical approaches, helping improve understanding of the impacts of economic turbulence at both system and actor levels. Providing a unique overview of the recent financial crisis, as well as assessing the importance of innovation dynamics for regional resilience, the international array of contributors offers an engaging and thought-provoking debate as to how regional resilience can be improved as well as exploring the social aspects of vulnerability, resilience and innovation. In offering a set of challenges from different regional and structural perspectives, the book helps to consolidate the research surrounding resilience in regional science. Essentially, the contributions consider the relevance of innovation systems, knowledge networks and the role innovation actors play to create new possibilities for preparing for, and adapting to, both present shocks and future problems that may arise. Offering a wealth of refreshing studies with great value for academia, industry and government, this book will be relevant for students and researchers of economics, urban and regional studies, and innovation as well as regional scientists and planners. Contributors include: P. Bary, T. Baycan, M.B. Baypinar, M. Benke, A.B.S. Bravo, R. Comunian, P. Cooke, K. Czimre, A.S. Dogruel, F. Dogruel, L. England, A. Faggian, M.E. Ferreira, K.R. Forray, T. Heinonen, D. Kallioras, T. Kozma, B. Martini, S. Marton, F.J. Ortega-Colomer, B.S. OEzen, Y. OEzerkek, P. Pantazis, E. Pekkola, T.S. Pereira, H. Pinto, Y. Psycharis, M.M. Ridhwan, M. Sipikal, M. Siserova, R.R. Stough, V. Szitasiova, K. Teperics, B.J. Valencia

This book offers an outside-in look at American cultural peculiarities that helps Americans, see ourselves as others see us -and vice versa. "American Cultural Baggage" lets both Americans and the rest of the world in on things most Americans don't know, about themselves and their values and how those things are perceived by others. Americans will learn of the impression they make, while others will gain insight into the curious tribal values of Americans.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. How can financial services, such as credit, deposit accounts, financial transfers, and insurance be provided to people in need? This challenging and complex issue has been a topic of interest for the international aid community for decades. Drawing on renowned experts in microfinance and financial inclusion, this Research Agenda sheds much-needed light on this multifaceted challenge and points the way ahead for future research. Providing a critical and multidisciplinary approach to research in microfinance and financial inclusion, the authors provide a state-of-the-art overview of current scholarly knowledge on the provision of financial services to disadvantaged populations worldwide. Reviewing the literature on the subject from the fields of economics, management science and development studies, they discuss the limitations and challenges of current research and chart avenues for future developments. With its fascinating insights, this Research Agenda will be of interest to students of finance and economics, development, and business and management, as well as researchers with a specific interest in microfinance and financial inclusion. Contributors include: J. Bastiaensen, A. Cozarenco, B. D'espallier, K.O. Djan, M. Duvendack, A. Garcia, J. Goedecke, I. Guerin, V. Hartarska, B. Hathaway, N. Hermes, F. Huybrechs, R. Lensink, R. Mersland, J. Morduch, S. Morvant, D. Nadolnyak, T. Ogden, J.-M. Servet, T.W. Sommeno, A. Szafarz, G. Van Hecken, B. Venet, L. Weill, T. Wry, S. Zamore

The much-anticipated definitive account of China's Great Famine

An estimated thirty-six million Chinese men, women, and children starved to death during China's Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early '60s. One of the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century, the famine is poorly understood, and in China is still euphemistically referred to as "the three years of natural disaster."

As a journalist with privileged access to official and unofficial sources, Yang Jisheng spent twenty years piecing together the events that led to mass nationwide starvation, including the death of his own father. Finding no natural causes, Yang attributes responsibility for the deaths to China's totalitarian system and the refusal of officials at every level to value human life over ideology and self-interest.

"Tombstone" is a testament to inhumanity and occasional heroism that pits collective memory against the historical amnesia imposed by those in power. Stunning in scale and arresting in its detailed account of the staggering human cost of this tragedy, "Tombstone" is written both as a memorial to the lives lost--an enduring tombstone in memory of the dead--and in hopeful anticipation of the final demise of the totalitarian system. Ian Johnson, writing in "The New York Review of Books," called the Chinese edition of "Tombstone ""groundbreaking . . . One of the most important books to come out of China in recent years."

'This voyage into culinary myth-making is essential reading... I couldn't love it more!' Nigella Lawson 'Enchanting, fascinating and humorous' Claudia Roden 'Reads like an engrossing unputdownable novel about the perpetual soup of humanity. And it made me think so much!' Olia Hercules ________ In National Dish, award-winning food writer Anya von Bremzen sets out to investigate the eternal cliché that "we are what we eat". Her journey takes her from Paris to Tokyo, from Seville, Oaxaca and Naples to Istanbul. She probes the decline of France's pot-au-feu in the age of globalisation, the stratospheric rise of ramen, the legend of pizza, the postcolonial paradoxes of Mexico's mole, the community essence of tapas, and the complex legacy of multiculturalism in a meze feast. Finally she returns to her home in Queens, New York, for a bowl of Ukrainian borscht -a dish which has never felt more loaded, or more precious. As each nation's social and political identity is explored, so too is its palate. Rich in research, colourful? characters and lively wit, National Dish peels back the layers of myth and misunderstanding around world cuisines, reassessing the pivotal role of food in our cultural heritage and identity. Featuring an epilogue on Ukrainian borscht, recently granted World Heritage status by UNESCO ________ FURTHER PRAISE FOR NATIONAL DISH 'Anya is your perfect guide to the profound subjects of nationalism, food and identity. And she's often funny as hell' René Redzepi, chef and co-owner of NOMA 'Will seduce the gastronomic curiosity of any world traveller' Lawrence Osborne, author of The Forgiven and On Java Road 'A legend of food writing... a must-read of all those who believe in building longer tables where food is what brings us all together' José Andrés 'Revealing and richly detailed... Fans of food and travel writing will want to sink their teeth into this' Publishers Weekly 'In this piquant platter of a book, von Bremzen tackles questions of culture, history, and the meaning of a good meal... Her vivid narrative is packed with intriguing characters' Kirkus Reviews

Young adult literature featuring LGBTQ characters is booming. In the 1980s and 1990s, only a handful of such titles were published every year. Recently, these numbers have soared to over one hundred annual releases. Queer characters are also appearing more frequently in film, on television, and in video games. This explosion of queer representation, however, has prompted new forms of longstanding cultural anxieties about adolescent sexuality. What makes for a good "coming out" story? Will increased queer representation in young people's media teach adolescents the right lessons and help queer teens live better, happier lives? What if these stories harm young people instead of helping them? In Queer Anxieties of Young Adult Literature and Culture, Derritt Mason considers these questions through a range of popular media, including an assortment of young adult books; Caper in the Castro, the first-ever queer video game; online fan communities; and popular television series Glee and Big Mouth. Mason argues themes that generate the most anxiety about adolescent culture - queer visibility, risk taking, HIV/AIDS, dystopia and horror, and the promise that "It Gets Better" and the threat that it might not - challenge us to rethink how we read and engage with young people's media. Instead of imagining queer young adult literature as a subgenre defined by its visibly queer characters, Mason proposes that we see "queer YA" as a body of transmedia texts with blurry boundaries, one that coheres around affect - specifically, anxiety - instead of content.

Rather than a media history of the region or a history of southern media, Remediating Region: New Media and the U.S. South formulates a critical methodology for studying the continuous reinventions of regional space across media platforms. This innovative collection demonstrates that structures of media undergird American regionalism through the representation of a given geography's peoples, places, and ideologies. It also outlines how the region answers back to the national media by circulating ever-shifting ideas of place via new platforms that allow for self-representation outside previously sanctioned media forms. Remediating Region recognizes that all media was once new media. In examining how changes in information and media modify concepts of region, it both articulates the virtual realities of the twenty-first-century U.S. South and historicizes the impact of "new" media on a region that has long been mediated. Eleven essays examine media moments ranging from the nineteenth century to the present day, among them Frederick Douglass's utilization of early photography, video game representations of a late capitalist landscape, rural queer communities' engagement with social media platforms, and contemporary technologies focused on revitalizing Indigenous cultural practices. Interdisciplinary in scope and execution, Remediating Region argues that on an increasingly networked planet, concerns over the mediated region continue to inform how audiences and participants understand their entree into a global world through local space.