Cultural and media studies Books
Liverpool University Press France in Flux: Space, Territory and Contemporary
Book SynopsisThe look and feel of metropolitan France has been a notable preoccupation of French literary and visual culture since the 1980s. Numerous writers, filmmakers and photographers have been drawn to articulate France’s contrasting spatial qualities, from infrastructural installations such as roads, rail lines and ports, to peri-urban residential developments and isolated rural enclaves. In doing so, they explore how the country’s acute sense of national identity has been both asserted and challenged in topographic terms. This wide-ranging collection of essays explores how the contemporary concern with space in France has taken shape across a range of media, from recent cinema, documentary filmmaking and photographic projects through to television drama and contemporary fiction, and examines what it reveals about the state of the nation in a post-colonial and post-industrial age. The impact of global flows of capital, trade and migration can be mapped through attention to the specificities of place and topography. Investigation of liminal locations, from seaboard cities and abandoned industrial sites to refugee camps and peasant smallholdings, interrogates the assertion of a national territory (and, by extension, a national identity) through the figure of the hexagon, and highlights the fluidities, instabilities and lines of flight which render it increasingly unsettled.Trade Review'An invaluable contribution to French cultural studies [...] France in Flux provides an enlightening multi-faceted vision of issues affecting our understanding of contemporary French space and identity.' Carrie Tarr, Kingston University'With the increasing pace of globalization and the rising specter of climate change, this timely volume addresses a viewpoint that, in my opinion, will greatly benefit courses on contemporary France, literature, or cinema. [...] By examining how the French react to the rapid social, demographic, and changes via photography, film, literature, readers can better understand this France in flux.'Kory Olson, H-France'One realizes that opening our eyes to the importance of these apparently trivial, depressing, or monotonous spaces is precisely the point of this creatively-focused and thoughtfully-organized collection of essays. [...] I found in this apparently impoverished terrain a greatly enriched view of contemporary France. [...] The book as a whole delivers, richly, on the same vision. [...] This book is an essential read for anyone with a foundation in French studies. It will also be valuable to geographers, historians of photography and film, and scholars of literature and environment.'Suzanne Black, Studies in 20th & 21st Century LiteratureTable of ContentsIntroductionAri J. Blatt and Edward WelchChapter 1: Angels of History: Looking Back at Spatial Planning in the Mission photographique de la DATAREdward Welch, University of AberdeenChapter 2: Disuse and Affect: Post-Industrial Landscapes of France’s Labour LostDerek Schilling, Johns Hopkins UniversityChapter 3: Depth of Field: Farmland and Farm Life in Contemporary French DocumentaryAlison J. Murray Levine, University of VirginiaChapter 4: Sylvain George’s Minor Mode, or Cinema at the Margins of its Fragile CommunityAnna-Louise Milne, University of London Institute in ParisChapter 5: Girlhood Luminosities and Topographical Politics: 17 Filles (Delphine and Muriel Coulin, 2011) and Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma, 2014)Fiona Handyside, University of ExeterChapter 6: Les Revenants, Tignes, and the Return of Postwar ModernizationCatherine E. Clark, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brian R. Jacobson, University of TorontoChapter 7: French Edgeland Poetics: Topography and Ecology in Jean Rolin’s Les ÉvénementsJoshua Armstrong, University of Wisconsin - MadisonChapter 8: Picturing a Nation of Local Places in the Observatoire photographique du paysage and France(s) territoire liquideAri J. Blatt, University of Virginia
£31.86
Liverpool University Press Humour in Contemporary France: Controversy,
Book SynopsisThis timely study sheds new light on debates about humour and identity in France, and is the first book about humour and identity in France to be published in either English or French that analyses both debates about Charlie Hebdo and standup comedy. It examines humour, freedom of expression, and social cohesion in France during a crucial time in France’s recent history punctuated by the Charlie Hebdo attacks of January 2015. It evaluates the state of French society and attitudes to humour in France in the aftermath of the events of January 2015. This book argues that debates surrounding Charlie Hebdo, although significant, only provide part of the picture when it comes to understanding humour and multiculturalism in France. This monograph fills significant gaps in French and international media coverage and academic writing, which has generally failed to adequately examine the broader picture that emerges when one examines career trajectories of notable contemporary French comedians. By addressing this failing, this book provides a more complete picture of humour, identity, and Republican values in France. By focusing primarily on contemporary comedians in France, this book explores competing uses of French Republican discourse in debates about humour, offensiveness, and freedom of expression. Ultimately, it argues that studying humour and identity in France often reveals a sense of national unease within the Republic at a time of considerable turmoil.Trade ReviewReviews'This is a well-researched, accessible and timely book. It deals with very important issues in an informed and illuminating way.'John Marks, University of Nottingham‘Ervine’s monograph is one of the most fascinating and thought-provoking monographs I have recently read… making us think and reconsider our own assumptions as humour analysts and problematizing concepts and arguments we take for granted concerning, among many other things, the “innocuous”, “inconsequential”, “playful”, or “subversive” character of humour and its “primarily” entertaining function in the public sphere.’ Villy Tsakona, European Journal of Humour ResearchTable of ContentsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Humour: a serious issue in contemporary FranceChapter One: Charlie Hebdo: from controversy to consensus?Chapter Two: Dieudonné: from anti-racist activism to allegations of anti-SemitismChapter Three: Jamel Comedy Club: stand-up comedy à la française?Chapter Four: Islam and humour: more than just a debate about cartoonsConclusionsBibiliographyIndex
£29.69
Wits University Press Entanglement: Literary and cultural reflections
Book SynopsisThis original book is a much needed and far reaching exploration of post-apartheid South African life worlds. ""Entanglement"" aims to capture the contradictory mixture of innovation and inertia, of loss, violence and xenophobia as well as experimentation and desegregation, which characterises the present. The author explores the concept of entanglement in relation to readings of literature, new media forms and painting. In the process, she moves away from a persistent apartheid optic, drawing on ideas of sameness and difference, and their limits, in order to elicit ways of living and imagining that are just starting to take shape and for which we might not yet have a name. In the background of her investigations lies a preoccupation with a future-oriented politics, one that builds on largely unexplored terrains of mutuality while being attentive to a historical experience of confrontation and injury. This book works with the idea of entanglement - a rubric within which we can begin to meet the challenge of the 'after apartheid'. Entanglement offers a means by which to draw into our analyses those sites in which what was once thought of as separate come together or find points of intersection in unexpected ways. It is an idea which signals largely unexplored terrains of mutuality, wrought from a common, though often coercive and confrontational, experience. It points away from a time of resistance towards a more ambivalent moment, in which the time of potential, both latent and actively surfacing in South Africa, exists in complex tandem with new kinds of closure and opposition.Trade Review"... a finger-on-the-pulse report from the cultural frontline of contemporary South Africa. Elegantly and lucidly written, it offers a penetrating and unique analysis of the complex and paradoxical forms of culture emerging in South Africa now. -Isabel Hofmeyr, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg"
£23.75
Wits University Press African-Language Literatures: Perspectives on
Book SynopsisAfrican-language writing is in crisis. The conditions under which African writing developed in the past (only remotely similar to those of Western models), resulted in an inability of Eurocentric literary models to explore the hermeneutic world of African language poetics inherited from the oral and the modern worlds. Existing modes of criticism in the study of this literary tradition are often unsuited for a nuanced understanding of the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects at play in the composition, production and reading of these literatures.In African-Language Literatures, Innocentia Jabulisile Mhlambi charts new directions in the study of African-language literatures generally, and isiZulu fiction in particular. She proposes that African popular arts and culture models be considered as a solution to the debates and challenges informing discourses about expressive forms in African languages. Mhlambi shows how this approach brings into relationship the oral and written forms, the local and the international, and elitist and popular genres, and she places the resultant emerging, eclectic culture into its socio-historical context. She then uses this theoretical approach to explore – in a wide range of cultural products – what matters or what is of interest to the people, irrespective of social hierarchies and predispositions.It is the author’s contention that, contrary to common perception, the African-language literary tradition displays diversity, complexity and fluidity, and that this should be seen as an invitation to look at systems of meaning which do not hide their connections with the facts of power and material life.
£23.75
Wits University Press Print, Text and Book Cultures in South Africa
Book SynopsisThis book explores the power of print and the politics of the book in South Africa from a range of disciplinary perspectives - historical, bibliographic, literary-critical, sociological, and cultural studies. The essays collected here, by leading international scholars, address a range of topics as varied as: the role of print cultures in contests over the nature of the colonial public sphere in the nineteenth century; orthography; iimbongi, orature and the canon; book-collecting and libraries; print and transnationalism; Indian Ocean cosmopolitanisms; books in war; how the fates of South African texts, locally and globally, have been affected by their material instantiations; photocomics and other ephemera; censorship, during and after apartheid; books about art and books as art; local academic publishing; and the challenge of 'book history' for literary and cultural criticism in contemporary South Africa.Trade ReviewPrint, text and book cultures in South Africa is a field-defining contribution to the country's literary scholarship. Andrew van der Vlies's introductory essay maps the conceptual terrain in a systematic and engaging way, illustrating its relevance to South Africa's literary and cultural history. The essays that follow demonstrate the archival richness and liveliness of the field, while opening doors to future research. Beyond South Africa, the book will be exemplary in showing how book histories develop under postcolonial conditions. - David Attwell, author of J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics of Writing (1993) and Rewriting Modernity: Studies in Black South African Literary History (2005), and co-editor of The Cambridge History of South African Literature (2012)Table of ContentsPrint cultures and colonial public spheres; local/global: south african writing and global imaginaries; three ways of looking at coetzee; questions of the archive and the uses of books; orature, image, text; ideological exigencies and the fates of books; new directions.
£33.25
Wits University Press Fight for Democracy: The ANC and the media in
Book SynopsisFight for Democracy is a penetrating and critical scrutiny of the ANC’s treatment of the print media since the inception of democracy in 1994. In this book, Glenda Daniels does not hide behind a veil of detachment, but instead makes a passionate argument for the view that newspapers and journalists play a significant role in the deepening of democratic principles.Daniels’ study goes to the heart of current debates and asks why the ANC, given its stated commitment to the democratic objectives of the Constitution, is so ambivalent about the freedom of the media. What would be the consequences of a revised media policy on democracy in South Africa, and at what cost to freedom of expression?Daniels examines the pattern of paranoia that has crept into public discourse about the media and the ANC, and the conflictual relationship between the two. She argues that the ANC’s understanding of democracy, transformation and development entails (amongst other things) the rallying of the nation behind its leadership as the premier liberation movement and democratically elected representative of the majority while morally coercing black journalists and professionals into loyalty. Daniels challenges the dominant ANC view that journalists are against transformation and that they take instruction from the owners of the media houses; in short that they are ‘enemies of the people’.Fight for Democracy is a timely publication in the context of the impending clampdown on media freedom and the twin threats of the Protection of State Information Bill (Secrecy Bill) and the Media Appeals Tribunal, both of which signify closures in South Africa’s democracy.Written in a polemical style, this is a work of activism that will be essential reading for the informed public as well as those working in Journalism and Media Studies. It should interest all democrats, members of political organisations as well as academics and Right2Know activists, locally and internationally.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The ANC and the media post-apartheid; The relationship between the media and democracy; Media's challenges: legislation and commercial imperatives; Race, identity and 'The Media'; Freedom of expression: the case of Zapiro; Social fantasy: the ANC's gaze and the media appeals tribunal; The Sunday Times: Mondli versus the former Minister of Health, Manto; What is 'Developmental Journalism'?; Concluding reflections: Where is democracy headed?
£23.75
Taylor & Francis Ltd ReConstructing the Global Network Economy
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£118.75
Taylor & Francis Ltd ReConstructing the Global Network Economy
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£43.69
Taylor & Francis South and North
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£39.99
Taylor & Francis Documentary Film in India
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£41.99
Taylor & Francis South and North
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£128.25
Amber Books Ltd Afghanistan
Book Synopsis“The United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy. We will rally the world. We will be patient. We’ll be focused, and we will be steadfast in our determination.” – President George W. Bush, September 12, 2001 On September 11, 2001, Islamic terrorists hijacked four airliners, crashing them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon and near the White House, killing nearly 3,000 people. Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network quickly claimed responsibility for the outrage. The aftermath still reverberates around the world today, with President Bush declaring a “War on Terror” against al-Qaeda and its allies. By October, the US military was carrying out air strikes against al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, and US ground forces were deployed against bin Laden’s protectors, the incumbent Taliban regime. By June 2002 the Taliban had been ousted and a US-friendly government established in the capital, Kabul. But the campaign didn’t end there, as American and allied NATO forces became bogged down for the next two decades. Afghanistan provides a photographic exploration of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, from the first deployment of US special forces in October 2001 to the final withdrawal of US forces in August 2021. In between, the book offers a compact overview of the operations fought by the US and NATO forces against the Taliban/al- Qaeda insurgency, including the bombing of the Tora Bora cave complex, Operation Anaconda, President Obama’s deployment surge, the Navy SEAL’s assassination of Osama bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan, the development of a local Afghan army, police force and government, the eventual withdrawal of US forces and the collapse of the Afghan administration amidst renewed Taliban pressure. Afghanistan offers a concise pictorial history of the war that came to define US policy in Central Asia and the Middle East in the 21st century.Table of ContentsContents:Prologue: Afghanistan longer history – British invasions, Soviet invasion 1980s.Introduction: 9/11 Terror Attack Al-Qaeda operatives hijack four commercial airliners, crashing them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. A fourth plane crashes in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Close to three thousand people die in the attacks.1: The Response: Operation Enduring Freedom President Bush signs into law a joint resolution authorizing the use of force against those responsible for attacking the United States on September 11. The U.S. military, with British support, begins a bombing campaign against Taliban forces, officially launching Operation Enduring Freedom. Taliban regime unravels rapidly after its loss at Mazar-e- Sharif on November 9, 2001, to forces loyal to Abdul Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek military leader. After tracking al-Qaeda leader bin Laden to the well-equipped Tora Bora cave complex southeast of Kabul, Afghan militias engage in a fierce two-week battle (December 3 to 17) with al-Qaeda militants. It results in a few hundred deaths and the eventual escape of bin Laden, who is thought to have left for Pakistan on horseback. March 2002: Operation Anaconda, the first major ground assault and the largest operation since Tora Bora, is launched against an estimated eight hundred al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the Shah-i-Kot Valley south of the city of Gardez (Paktia Province). Battle of Takur Ghar – The battle saw three helicopter landings by the U.S. on the mountain top, each greeted by direct assault from al-Qaeda forces.2: Reconstructing Afghanistan March 2002: Chairman of the Interim Administration of Afghanistan Karzai is picked is picked to head the country’s transitional government. May 2003: During a briefing with reporters in Kabul, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declares an end to “major combat.” August 2003: NATO assumes control of international security forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan, expanding NATO/ISAF’s role across the country. It is NATO’s first operational commitment outside of Europe. 2004: In historic national balloting, President Karzai becomes the first democratically elected head of Afghanistan. 2005.3: Lingering Insurgency 2006: Violence increases across the country during the summer months, with intense fighting erupting in the south in July. The number of suicide attacks quintuples from 27 in 2005 to 139 in 2006, while remotely detonated bombings more than double, to 1,677. With violence against nongovernmental aid workers increasing, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates criticizes NATO countries in late 2007 for not sending more soldiers. 2009: U.S. Marines launch a major offensive in southern Afghanistan, representing a major test for the U.S. military’s new counterinsurgency strategy. President Obama announces a major escalation of the U.S. mission. In a nationally televised speech, the president commits an additional thirty thousand forces to the fight, on top of the sixty- eight thousand in place. 2010.4: Bin Laden Found Al-Qaeda leader bin Laden, responsible for the 9/11 attacks, is killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan. The death of the United States’ primary target for a war that started ten years ago fuels the long-simmering debate about continuing the Afghanistan war. President Obama outlines a plan to withdraw 33,000 troops by the summer of 2012.5: A Bloody Resurgence 2011: Amid a resilient insurgency, U.S. goals in Afghanistan remain uncertain and terrorist safe havens in Pakistan continue to undermine U.S. efforts. 2013: Afghan forces take the lead in security responsibility nationwide as NATO hands over control of the remaining ninety-five districts. The U.S.-led coalition’s focus shifts to military training and special operations-driven counterterrorism. 2017: The United States drops its most powerful non-nuclear bomb on suspected self-proclaimed Islamic State militants at a cave complex in eastern Nangarhar Province. 2018: The Taliban carry out a series of bold terror attacks in Kabul that kill more than 115 people amid a broader upsurge in violence. The attacks come as the Trump administration implements its Afghanistan plan, deploying troops across rural Afghanistan to advise Afghan brigades and launching air strikes against opium labs to try to decimate the Taliban’s finances. 2018.6: Peace Talks and Withdrawal U.S. envoy Khalilzad and the Taliban’s Baradar sign an agreement that paves the way for a significant drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and includes guarantees from the Taliban that the country will not be used for terrorist activities. President Biden announces that the United States will not meet the deadline set under the U.S.-Taliban agreement to withdraw all troops by May 1 and instead releases a plan for a full withdrawal by September 11, 2021. Facing little resistance, Taliban fighters overrun the capital, Kabul, in August 2021, and take over the presidential palace hours after President Ghani leaves the country.
£33.96
Dietrich Reimer Pendant Plus: Praktiken Der Bildkombinatorik
Book Synopsis
£58.90
Universitatsverlag Winter Woman and Us Politics: Historical and
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£49.40
Universitatsverlag Winter American Counter/Publics
Book Synopsis
£79.80
Universitatsverlag Winter Performing America Abroad: Transnational Cultural
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£49.40
Ergon Verlag Heroism in Victorian Periodicals 1850 - 1900:
Book Synopsis
£48.75
