The historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States had a significant impact on both America and the world at large. By voting an African American into the highest office, those who elected Obama did not necessarily look past race, but rather didn't let race prevent them for casting their ballots in his favor. In addition to reflecting the changing political climate, Obama's presidency also spurred a cultural shift, notably in music, television, and film. In Movies in the Age of Obama: The Era of Post-Racial and Neo-Racist Cinema, David Garrett Izzo presents a varied collection of essays that examine films produced since the 2008 election. The contributors to these essays comment on a number of films in which race and "otherness" are pivotal elements. In addition to discussing such films as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Black Dynamite, The Blind Side, The Butler, Django Unchained, The Help, and Invictus, this collection also includes essays that probe racial elements in The Great Gatsby, The Hunger Games, and The Mist. The volume concludes with several essays that examine the 2013 Academy Award winner for best picture, 12 Years a Slave. Though Obama's election may have been the main impetus for a resurgence of black films, this development is a bit more complicated. Moviemakers have long responded to the changing times, so it is inevitable that the Obama presidency would spark an increase in films that comment, either subtly or overtly, on the current cultural climate. By looking at the issue these films address, Movies in the Age of Obama will be of value to film scholars, of course, but also to those interested in other disciplines, including history, politics, and cultural studies.

The historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States had a significant impact on both America and the world at large. By voting an African American into the highest office, those who elected Obama did not necessarily look past race, but rather didn't let race prevent them for casting their ballots in his favor. In addition to reflecting the changing political climate, Obama's presidency also spurred a cultural shift, notably in music, television, and film. In Movies in the Age of Obama: The Era of Post-Racial and Neo-Racist Cinema, David Garrett Izzo presents a varied collection of essays that examine films produced since the 2008 election. The contributors to these essays comment on a number of films in which race and "otherness" are pivotal elements. In addition to discussing such films as Beasts of the Southern Wild, Black Dynamite, The Blind Side, The Butler, Django Unchained, The Help, and Invictus, this collection also includes essays that probe racial elements in The Great Gatsby, The Hunger Games, and The Mist. The volume concludes with several essays that examine the 2013 Academy Award winner for best picture, 12 Years a Slave. Though Obama's election may have been the main impetus for a resurgence of black films, this development is a bit more complicated. Moviemakers have long responded to the changing times, so it is inevitable that the Obama presidency would spark an increase in films that comment, either subtly or overtly, on the current cultural climate. By looking at the issue these films address, Movies in the Age of Obama will be of value to film scholars, of course, but also to those interested in other disciplines, including history, politics, and cultural studies.

This volume discusses the relationships between the philosophy of Mysticism, which traces its lineage back into prehistory, with that of the world of more traditional philosophy and literature. The author argues for the centrality of mysticism's role in the philosophical and artistic development of western culture. The connections between these worlds are underscored as the author examines the works of Heraclitus, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Iris Murdoch, Yeats, AE (George Russell), T.S. Eliot, Joyce, Woolf, Auden, Huxley, Lessing, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Tony Kushner, among others.

One of the best known and most widely read of early African American writers, Charles W. Chesnutt published more than fifty short stories, six novels, two plays, a biography of Frederick Douglass, and countless essays, poems, letters, journals, and speeches. Though he had light skin and was of mixed race, Chesnutt self-identified as a black man, and his writing was often boldly political, openly addressing problems of racial identity and injustice in the late 19th century.

This collection of critical essays reevaluates the Chesnutt legacy, introducing new scholarship reflective of the many facets of his fiction, especially his sophisticated narrative strategies.

When Stephen Vincent Bent died in 1943 at the age of 44, all of America mourned the loss. Bent was one of the countrys most well known poets of the first half of the twentieth century and as a fiction writer, he had an even larger audience. This book is a collection of essays celebrating Bent and his writing. The first group of essays contains pieces about Bents life, times, and personal relationships. Thomas Carr Bent reminisces about his father in the first essay, and others consider Bents marriage to his wife Rosemary; Archibald MacLeish, Thornton Wilder and Bent as friends, liberal humanists and public activists; and his friendships with Philip Barry, Jed Harris, and Thornton Wilder. The second group contains essays about Bents poetry, fiction, and drama. They discuss Bents role in the development of historical poetry in America, John Browns Body and the Civil War, Hawthorne, Bent and historical fiction, Bents Faustian America, the adaptation of "The Devil and Daniel Webster" to drama and then to film, Bents use of fantasy and science fiction, and Bent as a dramatist for stage, screen and radio.

For 40 years Bruce Springsteen has been making music on his way to becoming an icon, the conscience of rock 'n roll, and one of the greatest live performers of his generation. This critical work examines the man, his music, the cultural importance of his narrative songs and the singular experience of his live performances. Particular attention is paid to his political consciousness, including his alignment with the working poor, the unemployed, those down on their luck, and those suffering from social and political issues that permeate the American social landscape. It also explores his role in politics in America, especially his endorsement of various politicians. A wide-ranging exploration of everything germane to the outstanding career of this American musician.]

Writer Henry James (1843-1916) was born in America but preferred to live in Europe; he finally become a British subject near the end of his life. He was criticized for leaving his home country, but this status as a permanent outsider is probably responsible for the recurring themes in his writing dealing with European sophistication (decadence) compared to American lack of sophistication (or innocence). He is respected in modern times for his psychological insight, for being able to reveal his characters' deepest motivations. These 11 essays, along with an introduction and an afterword, examine James's work through a prism of original creation in the founding basis of art. James's writing can be divided into three phases, and these essays probe the author's late style, the third phase best known for its weighty and ponderous sentence structure. Topics the contributing authors address include the Henry James revival of the 1930s, three of James's male aesthetes, women in his works, literary forgery, and parallels with the career and views of Margaret Oliphant. Three essays delve into issues of representation in art and fiction, then three more explore decadence, identity and homosexuality.

Aldous Huxley was one of the most prophetic intellectuals of the twentieth century, and his best-known work was a novel of ideas that warned of a terrible future then 600 years away. Though ""Brave New World"", was published less than a century ago in 1932, many elements of the novel's dystopic future now seem an eerily familiar part of life in the 21st century.These essays reiterate the influence of ""Brave New World"" as a literary and philosophical document and describe how Huxley forecast the problems of late capitalism. The topics include the anti-utopian ideals represented by ""Brave New World's"" rigid caste system, the novel's influence on the philosophy of 'culture industry' philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, the Nietzschean birth of tragedy in the novel's penultimate scene, and the relationship of the novel to other dystopian works including Ralph Ellison's ""Invisible Man"" and George Orwell's ""Nineteen Eighty-Four"".