Cultural studies Books
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida An Environmental History of Northeast Florida
Book SynopsisThis text describes how natural features transformed and how cultural traditions of native people, as well as Spanish, English, and American colonists, developed in response to opportunities and constraints of the environment, using the example of northeast Florida.
£44.96
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida The Harlem and Irish Renaissances Language Identity and Representation
The Harlem and Irish Renaissances Language | BookCurl
£44.96
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida The Colonial Caribbean in Transition
Book SynopsisThis text is an examination of the social evolution of the colonial Caribbean, from the formal end of slavery to the middle of the 20th century. It focuses on social and ethnic groups, classes, gender interrelations, and the development of cultural and intellectual traditions.
£999.99
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida Cuba the Elusive Nation Interpretations of
Book SynopsisExiled Cuban scholars write on the question of defining who the Cubans are, what constitutes their national identity, and how they might define themselves as Cubans with respect to their distant island culture. The perspectives include the fields of history, political science, art and music.
£44.96
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida Making Caribbean Dance
Book Synopsis
£26.06
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida Comparative Perspectives on AfroLatin America
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£24.26
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida Cultural Heritage Management A Global
Book Synopsis
£22.46
MP-FLO Uni Press of Florida After Slavery
Book Synopsis
£18.86
The Catholic University of America Press The Intellectual Life
Book SynopsisThis text is about intellectual life, its spirit, conditions and methods.Trade ReviewFr. Sertillanges's teachings are as timeless as any truths which describe the genuine nature of things. . . . This book is highly recommended not only for intellectuals, but also for students and those discerning their vocation in life."—New Oxford Review"[This] is above all a practical book. It discusses with a wealth of illustration and insight such subjects as the organization of the intellectual worker's time, materials, and his life; the integration of knowledge and the relation of one's specialty to general knowledge; the choice and use of reading; the discipline of memory; the taking of notes, their classification and use; and the preparation and organization of the final production."—The Sign
£20.66
MP-CUA Catholic Uni of Amer Progress and Religion An Historical Inquiry
Book SynopsisIn this volume Christopher Dawson outlines his main thesis for the history of culture, which was his life's work. He contends that religion is the soul of a culture and that a society or culture which has lost its spiritual roots is a dying culture. The work challenges the doctrine of progress.Trade ReviewProgress and Religion is undoubtedly a brilliant book. Its argument is closely reasoned, admirably presented, lucidly expressed. Its standpoint is original and suggestive, profound and illuminating. Without exaggeration, it may be regarded as one of the books of our generation. - The Manchester Guardian, 1929 ""A book of vast learning...a theme which invites the consideration of a stately procession of the greatest names in the history of the world's thought."" - The Scotsman, 1929
£18.86
The Catholic University of America Press Enquiries into Religion and Culture
Book SynopsisReflects on the relations of faith and culture. This book explores the contact between the spiritual life of the individual and the social and economic organization of modern culture. It focuses on the passing of industrialism, Catholic understanding of the human person, Islamic mysticism, and a Christian account of sexuality.
£23.96
The Catholic University of America Press Goal A Cultural and Social History of Modern
Book SynopsisCovers the history of the beautiful game from its origins in English public schools in the early 19th century to its current role as a crucial element of a globalized entertainment industry. The authors explain how football transformed from a sport at elite boarding schools in England to become a pastime popular with the working classes.Trade ReviewThis fascinating history of football in its social and cultural context offers many fresh insights. Grounded in sound scholarship, but written in an engaging and accessible style, it will be of considerable interest to football fans as well as being a core text for courses in sports history.""- Wyn Grant, University of Warwick and coeditor of The Transformation of European Football, blogs at Addicks Championship Diary and The Political Economy of Football.
£23.96
Rutgers University Press Eskimo Essays Yup Ik Lives and How We See Them
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£28.80
Rutgers University Press Bodymakers A Cultural Anatomy of Womens Body
Book SynopsisExamining the sport and image of female body building as a metaphor for how women fare in the current political and cultural climate, this text draws on contemporary feminist and cultural theory. It reveals how female bodybuilders find themselves both trapped and empowered by their sport.Trade Review"A highly unique and refreshing contribution. Heywood not only theorizes the relationships among feminism, activism, and bodybuilding but also provides what so many works on built female bodies lack-a feminine historical context....Heywood concludes with a call for women to 'feel our muscles, our power, our terrible, wonderful, monstrous strengths' by leaving behind aerobics, replacing light weights with heavy ones, and claiming our right to take up space....Like all influential and groundbreaking works, this book raises new and important questions that should provide grist for much feminist debate and scholarship in coming years." * Signs *"Bodymakers is most ambitious in terms of its engagement with feminist cultural criticism and its unconventional scope. Heywood comments on film, novels, magazine pictures, popular criticisms of feminism, the J. Crew catalog, [and] the concept of power feminism." * Gender and Society *"In this brilliantly insightful and immensely readable book, Leslie Heywood makes us think about women's body building in an entirely new way. She argues persuasively that, far from being an individualistic, apolitical act, it is a powerful form of resistance, empowering women to overcome their victim status and heal past abuse." -- Myra Dinnerstein * University of Arizona *"Bodymakers has a power and an honesty that is unusual in a book with its theoretical sophistication." -- Susan Bordo * author of Unbearable Weight and Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J *"With clarity, force, and passionate investment grounded in both theory and her own experience, Heywood understands that women can strengthen body, mind, and spirit through everyday practice. Her argument that body building is this kind of activist practice is as inspirational as it is poignant." -- Joanna Frueh * author of Erotic Faculties *"Flexing her muscles through autobiographical, theoretical, and spectacular acts, Heywood insists that we read the muscular female body not as an 'extreme oddity' but as a 'form of activism' through which we can understand anew larger cultural issues and trends, including the American romance with individualism and the relationship of second and third wave feminisms. Muscular female bodies will never be read in the same way again." -- Sidonie Smith * University of Michigan *Table of ContentsIntroduction: monsters, feminists, babes Building backlash: doing bodybuilding and feminism in the time of the New Right Zero: raced bodies, masculine voids Hard times: the pornographic and the pathetic in women's bodybuilding photography Loving Mr. Hyde: rethinking monstrosity American girls, raised on promises: why women build; or why I prefer Henry Rollins to Beck
£27.90
Rutgers University Press The Making of the Unborn Patient A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery
Book SynopsisExamines two events in the second half of the 20th century: the emergence of foetal surgery as a medical specialty and the debut of the unborn patient. The author shows how biomedical work has intersected with reproductive politics to generate cultural meanings of foetuses, women and medicine.Trade ReviewIn a multi-site analysis that takes the reader from place to place (from the laboratories, to hospitals, to media discourses, etc.) where the story of fetal surgery unfolds, the book's chapters lay out a well-ordered and well-documented series of arguments....The central argument of the book is that the making of fetal surgery has, simultaneously, built on and contributed to the making of the fetus, as both patient and person. Furthermore, fetal patient-and personhood has been based on the assumption of a conflict of interests between mother and fetus. As Casper convincingly argues, this assumption is a cultural artifact, not a natural fact...The book should be of major interest to activists in the women's health movement. * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *An exemplary study of an astonishing and controversial medical specialty, The Making of the Unborn Patient is, at the same time, a lucid commentary on health-care politics, women's rights, and the very nature of personhood. By skillfully interweaving analyses from sociology, science studies, and feminist studies, Casper shows how women's bodies and choices may be "erased" by medical heroics. From the spectacle of the operating theater to the larger social dramas of our times, this is a captivating narrative grounded in careful ethnographic research, resistant to easy answers, and infused with moral concerns. -- Steven Epstein * author of Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge *Fascinating! Casper's work on fetal surgery is cutting-edge scholarship. The author uses the methods of qualitative, grounded sociology in the service of science studies and women's studies to produce a compelling, well-researched analysis of the history and social practices through which fetal surgery is currently emerging. In doing so, she provides substantial food for political thought. -- Rayna Rapp * professor of anthropology, New School for Social Research and co-editor of Conce *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgments Introduction to fetal matters Breaching the womb, a history of the unborn patient A hybrid practive, traffic between the laboratory and the operating room Working on (and around) the unborn patients negotiating social order in a fetal treatment unit Clinical trials in fetal surgery : making, protecting, and contesting human subjects Heroic moms and materal environments, pregnant women on the final frontier Beyond the operating room Notes Glossary Bibliography Index About the author
£27.90
Rutgers University Press What it Means to be a Man Reflections on Puerto
Book SynopsisAn insightful examination of Puerto Rican culture and the ways in which Puerto Rican masculinity is constructed. The author discusses the attributes and demands of masculinity, and points out the ways in which strength, competition, and sexuality are joined with power and pleasure.
£26.99
Rutgers University Press Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge The Creation
Book SynopsisThe Mao badge was a political icon in the form of a pin that was widely distributed to create, sustain and inflate the Mao personality cult during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This study shows how the badges have taken on new meanings, far surpassing the intentions of their creators.Trade ReviewThis interesting book belongs on the shelf of those of us interested in the material culture of the Cultural Revolution. * China Journal *Strangely moving. . . . While [in China, Schrift] discovered a subculture of people who collected buttons bearing portraits of the Great Helmsman: thousands of varieties had been manufactured from the Cultural Revolution, when they served as one of the few permitted forms of personal adornment or aesthetic display. . . . I found reading the book a surprisingly emotional experience. * Newsday; Newsday Long Island *A wonderfully rich and riveting account, Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge represents an important contribution to our understanding of the Cultural Revolution and its place in Chinese culture. Schrift provides an informative examination of the Mao cultÆs recent transformation into its present form of pop cultural campiness. -- William Jankowiak * author of Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City *An excellent study of symbolism and factionalism in Maoist China. Schrift shows how mundane objects were transformed into sacred icons of revolutionary ideology. This book offers new insights into the dynamics of the Cultural Revolution. -- J. L. Watson * author of Golden Arches East: McDonaldÆs in East Asia *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Mao Consumption and the Chinese Political Imaginary Badges in Context: The Early Years of the Cultural Revolution Manufacturing Mao An Iconography of Mao Badges Bloodlines, Political Capital, and Badges Aluminum Gods: Mao Badges and Chinese Ritual Life The Red Old Days: Heritage, Historical Memory, and the Endurance of Mao References Index
£28.80
Rutgers University Press When Culture and Biology Collide Why We are
Book SynopsisThis volume explores various aspects of behaviour that are endemic to contemporary Western society, and proposes ways of understanding and addressing them. Many of our behaviours are played out in an arena that is far different from that in which they evolved.
£31.50
Rutgers University Press Through the Crosshairs War Visual Culture and
Book SynopsisThrough the Crosshairs traces the genealogy of the weaponized gaze—camera footage framed from the perspective of a military drone, a descending smart bomb, or a sniper’s telescopic sights. Tracking these images across a variety of media, including news reports, action movies, and video games, Roger Stahl explores how they have influenced public perceptions. Trade Review"Stahl displays true dexterity with theory, offering observations both big and small that wonderfully merge abstract concepts with concrete examples of popular culture. His analyses are exceptionally adept, creative, clever, and enlightening." -- Matt Sienkiewicz * author of The Other Air Force: U.S. Efforts to Reshape Middle Eastern Media Since 9/11 *"Roger Stahl’s wild new book shows how military technology wages war on us all—even those of us lucky enough to be on the 'right side' of the border, the scope, or the screen. Engaging, fun, and filled with sharp insights into the militarization of popular culture, Through the Crosshairs is a blast." -- Joshua Reeves * Oregon State University, author of Citizen Spies: The Long Rise of America's Surveillance Society *"Immersing readers in the perilous visualities of smart bombs, snipers, and drones, Through the Crosshairs delivers a riveting analysis of the weaponized gaze and powerfully explicates the political stakes of screen culture's militarization. Packed with insights about the current conjuncture, the book positions Stahl as a leading critic of war and media." -- Lisa Parks * Comparative Media Studies, MIT, author of Rethinking Media Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War *Spotlight on Through the Crosshairs on The War and Media * The War and Media Network *"Chronicle of Higher Education weekly book list," by Nina C. Ayoub * Chronicle of Higher Education *Table of Contents1 A Strike of the Eye 2 Smart Bomb Vision 3 Satellite Vision 4 Drone Vision 5 Sniper Vision 6 Resistant Vision 7 Afterword: Bodies Inhabited and Disavowed Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
£105.40
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany
Book SynopsisDuring the 16th century close to 30 German dukes, landgraves, margraves and counts, plus one Holy Roman emperor, were known as mad - so mentally disordered that steps had to be taken to remove them from office or to obtain medical care for them. This book studies them as a group and in context.
£17.05
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia The Language of Flowers A History
Book SynopsisTraces the phenomenon of ascribing sentimental meaning to floral imagery from its beginnings in Napoleonic France through its later transformations in England and America. At the heart of the book is a depiction of what the three most important flower books from each of the countries divulge about the period and the respective cultures.
£44.96
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia The Vulgarization of Art The Victorians and Aesthetic Democracy
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£44.96
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia Savage Systems Colonialism and Comparative
Book SynopsisExamines the emergence of the concepts of “religion”and “religions” on colonial frontiers. The book offers an analysis of the ways in which European travellers, missionaries, settlers, and government agents, as well as indigenous Africans, engaged in the comparison of alternative religious ways of life as one dimension of intercultural contact.
£22.75
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia Haunted Bodies Gender and Southern Texts
Book SynopsisBrings together some of the most highly regarded historians and literary critics of the American South to consider race, gender and texts through three centuries and from different vantage points.
£33.26
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia Moments of Freedom Anthropology and Popular Culture
Book SynopsisIn this volume, the author reflects on anthropological uses of the concept of popular culture. He retraces how his explorations of popular culture in the Shaba region of Zaire, now the Congo, showed that classical culture theory did not account for large aspects of contemporary African life.
£23.70
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia Taking Responsibility Comparative Perspectives
Book SynopsisResponsibility is the queen of modern virtues, Winston Davis argues, even if there is no consensus as to what responsibility means. These essays, by scholars of philosophy, anthropology, history, religious studies, classics and law, encompass conceptions of responsibility around the globe.
£30.35
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia Mapping the Ethical Turn A Reader in Ethics
Book SynopsisDivided into four sections, this collection of essays traces the interpretive, pedagogic and theoretical concerns inherent in the study of literature, ethics and modes of criticism. The book is a cohesive introduction to a reading paradigm that continues to affect the ways we think and feel.
£999.99
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia Paradise and Plantation Tourism and Culture in
Book SynopsisThis work presents links between the myth of Caribbean Paradise and colonial ideologies and economics. It considers the cultural, economic and social effects of tourism's contemporary Caribbean and explores the way post colonial writers have responded to the paradise-plantation dichotomy.
£21.80
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia The Vulgarization of Art The Victorians and
Book SynopsisIn this major reinterpretation of the Victorian Aesthetic Movement, Linda Dowling argues that such classic works of Victorian art writing such as Ruskin's Stones of Venice of Morris's Lectures on Art or Wilde's Critic as Artist become wholly intelligible only within the larger ideological context of the Whig aesthetic tradition.
£28.76
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia Victorian Publishing and Mrs. Gaskells Work
£27.50
MP-VIR Uni of Virginia The Victorian Serial
a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.
£32.36
Wayne State University Press Full of Secrets Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series
Book SynopsisA study of ""Twin Peaks"", the first foray into television for film director David Lynch. It addresses topics which include the series' cult status, its obsession with doubling and its silencing of women. It also analyses the series from feminist, deconstructionist and semiotic perspectives.
£23.16
Wayne State University Press Understanding Humor in Japan
Book SynopsisBringing together scholarly insights and research by both Japanese and non-Japanese experts, Jessica Milner Davis bridges the differences between humor in Japan and the West and examines the spectrum of Japanese humor, from ancient traditions and surviving rituals of laughter to the norms of joke-telling in conversation in Japan and America.
£27.16
New York University Press Electric Dreams
Book SynopsisTurns to the past to trace the cultural history of computers. The author charts the struggles to define the meanings of these machines over more than a century, from the failure of Charles Babbage's difference engine in the 19th century to struggles over file swapping, open source software, and the future of online journalism.Trade ReviewElectric Dreams is at once a synthetic history of the personal computer, a history of representations of the computer, and a treatise on how to think about computing as a cultural phenomenon. Friedmans original analyses and clear style make the book a pleasure to read. -- Jonathan Sterne,author of The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound ReproductionThis engaging but ultimately unsatisfying book examines the utopian sphere — a public forum in which alternative futures can be imagined and debated - that arose in response to computing innovations, ranging from Charles Babbages Difference Engine to web logs -- Kenneth Lipartito,Florida International University[T]he general reader will thank Mr. Friedman. * Studies in American Culture *Electric Dreams is a very solid cultural studies offering, smoothly written and largely steering clear of heavy-duty theory, making it an almost ideal candidate for undergraduate courses and as an introduction for newcomers to the field. * Science Fiction Reader *This book is for anyone who owns or uses a computer. . . . Computers permeate our culture, but we have little idea of where they came from and why we use them the way we do. Electric Dreams offers a mirror to our own hopes, desires, and fears, and empowers us as a community to use technology for our own benefit. * M/C Reviews *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Dialectic of Technological Determinism Part I Mainframe Culture1 Charles Babbage and the Politics of Computer Memory 2 Ideologies of Information Processing: From Analog to Digital3 Filming the "Electronic Brain" Part II The Personal Computer4 The Many Creators of the Personal Computer 5 Apple's 1984 6 The Rise of the Simulation Game Part III The Interpersonal Computer7 Imagining Cyberspace 8 Dot-com Politics 9 Beyond Napster 10 Linux and Utopia Conclusion: Cybertopia Today Notes BibliographyIndex About the Author
£24.99
New York University Press Private Affairs
Book SynopsisIn Private Affairs, Phillip Brian Harper explores the social and cultural significance of the private, proposing that, far from a universal right, privacy is limited by one''s racial-and sexual-minority status. Ranging across cinema, literature, sculpture, and lived encounters-from Rodin''s The Kiss to Jenny Livingston''s Paris is Burning-Private Affairs demonstrates how the very concept of privacy creates personal and sociopolitical hierarchies in contemporary America.Trade ReviewFull of valuable new insights, Private Affairs is a necessary addition to contemporary debates about citizenship and identity. Harper challenges our tendency to see racial identity as public and sexuality as private. Instead he argues that in both cases the public demands of civic duty collide with private knowledges, and that each is necessary to realize the other. -- Cindy Patton,author of Inventing AIDSWhat Phillip Brian Harper makes of his personal encounters-whether with a hustler, a homeless man, a panicky straight guy at the gym, or with the racism of Andrew Sullivan's forecast of the end of AIDS-is of utmost public significance. His Private Affairs teaches us how thoroughly complex is the negotiation of privacy and publicity when we attend to gender and sexuality, race and class. -- Douglas Crimp
£20.89
New York University Press Skateboarding LA Inside Professional Street
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWhile Skateboarding LA is not the first ethnography of the sport, it can rightfully claim to be the most rigorous and in depth of the existing literature … Throughout the book, Snyder critiques previous research that has assumed subcultures like skateboarding are uniformly about youthful resistance to the demands of capital. Instead, he approaches the sport as a production process. -- American Journal of SociologyA personal and descriptive ethnographic ac¬count of how male skaters based in the street and associated industries continue in their various attempts to progress the sport … Snyder’s depiction of spatial usage, capital codes and benefits, as well as communal activism found within today’s neo-liberal skateboarding scene is compelling. -- Canadian Journal of SociologyAn intensive and engaging study, written in vivid detail and supported by copious numbers of photographs. -- Social ForcesA rigorously researched and richly rendered ethnography of skateboarding that takes us beyond the acrobatics, lingo, and lifestyles of its elite practitioners into the economics and subcultural dynamics of the scene, and its forays into political activism and sense of community. The readers perception of skating is flipped like the proverbial board. Far from & skate punks, & pros are elite athletes and their friends and collaborators are engines of new-media creativity. Gregory Snyder has done it again, producing another iconic study of a key subculture and in the process offers nothing less than a meditation on the nature of career, work and life. -- Jonathan Ilan,Author of Understanding Street Culture: Poverty, Crime, Youth, and CoolThe magic by which street skateboarders execute impossible aerial tricks is wrapped in another kind of magic: their ability to transform the most mundane of urban spaces into open-air theaters of collective performance. Snyder is hip to both sorts of magic, and because he is, Skateboarding LA is a thing of beauty: urban sociology on four wheels, cultural criminology on the fly, and ethnography at its best -- Jeff Ferrell,Author of Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, an
£23.74
New York University Press In Your Face
Book SynopsisAt a time when sexy can be an adjective for anything, when sexual awareness is declared to be advancing faster in months than in the past half century, and when pundits warn of sexual overload, the actual representation of sex is still deemed confrontational, aggressive, in your face. While critics accuse the academy of an obsession with sexuality, they also complain that nothing that appears to refer to sex really does. In readings ranging across film, drama, opera, fine art, and critical theory, Mandy Merck considers these phenomena as well as the role of the dog in anti-porn propaganda, the unacknowledged significance of the lesbian hand, and the early retirement of the phallus. Other topics include the relationship of women''s tennis and prostitution, the gendering of the wild and the tame in the age of AIDS, and the sexlessness of postmodern criticism. In Your Face ends with the face and its alleged desecration by fellatio. Germaine Greer''s condemnation of Bill ClTrade ReviewMerck launches into a complex analysis of the displacement of sex[uality] into representations of the face in a range of texts...a dazzling kaleidoscopic display. * Journal of American Studies *In Your Face is an acrobat of a bookagile, supple, daring, showy, and brave. . . . a strikingly imaginative text. . . that rarest of things, an academic text that can be read for pleasure as well as illumination. * New Formations *
£22.79
New York University Press The Explanation For Everything
Book SynopsisThe claim ''I''m straight'' is the psychosexual analogue of ''The check is in the mail'': if you need to say it, your credit or creditability is already in doubt. So begins Paul Morrison''s dazzling polemic, which takes as its point of departure Foucault''s famous remark that sex is the explanation for everything. Combining psychoanalytic, literary, and queer theory, The Explanation for Everything seeks to account for the explanatory power attributed to homosexuality, and its relationship to compulsory heterosexuality. In the process, Morrison presents a scathing indictment of psychoanalysis and its impact on the study of sexuality. In bold but graceful leaps, Morrison applies his critique to a diversity of examples: subjectivity in Oscar Wilde, the cultural construction and reception of AIDS, the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, the practice of bodybuilding, and the contemporary reception of the sexual politics of fascism. Analytical, witty and astute, The Explanation for ETrade ReviewPaul Morrison brings a refreshing and unique style to the practice of queer theory. With his extravagant attitude, epigrammatic wit, and political drive, he unsettles the complacencies of heterosexual certainty and gay self-congratulation alike, while forcing us to confront the breadth and depth of homophobia in our culture. Whether he is exploding liberal pieties or exhorting us not to allow sex to degenerate into love, Morrison startles and instructs. A challenging and necessary book. -- David M. Halperin,University of Michigan, Ann ArborThough the irony of his title refuses the explanatory totalization that would follow from taking it straight, Paul Morrison's dazzlingly ferocious new book explains beyond all doubt why those of us familiar with his wide-ranging work recognize him as the most profoundly and provocatively Wildean critic of his generation. -- Lee Edelman,Tufts UniversityWhy is it that our culture's explanation for everything is homosexuality? In this judiciously argued and brilliantly conceived study, Morrison offers a compelling explanation of his own. The specter of "the homosexual" provides the perfect political scapegoat for acts of injustice that are, in truth, systemic and social in nature. If there is a culprit in contemporary scientific and cultural explanations of modern villainy, it is the predilection of critics themselves to find latent homosexuality here, there, and everywhere. A shrewd, quick-witted, and penetrating book. -- Diana Fuss,Princeton University
£20.89
New York University Press Boricua Pop
Book SynopsisBoricua Pop is the first book solely devoted to Puerto Rican visibility, cultural impact, and identity formation in the U.S. and at home. Frances Negrón-Muntaner explores everything from the beloved American musical West Side Story to the phenomenon of singer/actress/ fashion designer Jennifer Lopez, from the faux historical chronicle Seva to the creation of Puerto Rican Barbie, from novelist Rosario Ferré to performer Holly Woodlawn, and from painter provocateur Andy Warhol to the seemingly overnight success story of Ricky Martin. Negrón-Muntaner traces some of the many possible itineraries of exchange between American and Puerto Rican cultures, including the commodification of Puerto Rican cultural practices such as voguing, graffiti, and the Latinization of pop music. Drawing from literature, film, painting, and popular culture, and including both the normative and the odd, the canonized authors and the misfits, the island and its diaspora, Boricua Pop is a fascinatingTrade ReviewProvocative and broad-ranging . . . This eclectic, always interesting work will be certain to elicit discussion among faculty and students of ethnic studies, US popular culture, and Puerto Rican and Latino studies. * Choice *A brilliant intervention in the culture and politics of Latinos in the United States. Important, timely, and innovative, Boricua Pop is a stellar addition to a body of work that grows in importance over time. Negron-Muntaner's book is eagerly anticipated. -- Jose Quiroga,author of Tropics of DesireFrances Negron-Muntaner is a challenging and provocative scholar whose multi-focal positionings turn the Puerto Rican process of colonization and migration into a fascinating transcultural hologram. Boricua Pop is a foundational text in American, Latino/a, Queer, Performance, and Cultural Studies. -- Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez,Mount Holyoke CollegeImportant, timely, and innovative, Boricua Pop is a stellar addition to a body of work that grows in importance over time. Negron-Muntaner's book is eagerly anticipated. -- Jose Quiroga,author of Tropics of DesireA perspicacious new book and one of the most intellectually exciting works of recent years, Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the latinization of American Culture gives new meaning to the idea of the pleasure of the text * QBR *Mixing the down and dirty with high culture to come up with good look at the transculture effects of it all. * San Juan Star *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface Part I Founding Spectacles1 Weighing In Theory: Puerto Ricans and American Culture2 1898: The Trauma of Literature, the Shame of Identity 3 Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and U.S. Puerto Rican Identity Part II Boricuasin the Middle4 From Puerto Rico with Trash: Holly Woodlawn's A Low Life in High Heels5 The Writing on the Wall: The Life and Passion of Jean-Michel Basquiat 6 Flagging Madonna: Performing a Puerto Rican-American Erotics Part III Boricua Anatomies7 Rosario's Tongue: Rosario Ferre and the Commodi?cation of Island Literature 8 Barbie's Hair: Selling Out Puerto Rican Identity in the Global Market 9 Jennifer's Butt: Valorizing the Puerto Rican Racialized Female Body 10 Ricky's Hips: The Queerness of Puerto Rican "White" Culture Postscript: Words from the Grave Notes Index About the Author
£23.74
New York University Press More Beautiful and More Terrible
Book SynopsisAsserts that the U.S. is in a new and distinct phase of racism that is "post-intentional," neither based on intentional discrimination nor drawing upon biological concepts of raceTrade Review"[Perry] offers provocative essays exploring various aspects of the societal contradictions between continuing racial inequalities and public professions of equality...Perry provides probing and original analyses of racial narratives such as the 'acting white' narrative that numerous prominent Americans, white and black, have periodically emphasized." * Contemporary Sociology *"Perry offers an insightful 'third way' analysis...the book...is a good fit for cutting-edge graduate and faculty research." -- M. Christian * Choice *"Imani Perry has done it again. With an uncanny ability to merge art, law, social science, and cultural studies, she weaves a powerful analysis of race in contemporary America." -- Patricia Hill Collins,author of Another Kind of Public EducationTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Preface Introduction 1 "It Wasn't Me!" Post-Intent and Correlational Racism 2 It's All of Us The Practice of Inequality 3 Telling Tales Out of School The Work of Racial Narratives 4 The House That Jack Built Inequality via Category 5 "I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watchin' Me" The Racing of Privacy, Voyeurism, and Surveillance 6 Exceptionally Yours Racial Escape Hatches in the Contemporary United States 7 Black Taxes and White Wages The Social Economy of Race Conclusion Remediation, or from Proof to Possibility Notes Index About the Author
£22.79
New York University Press Skateboarding LA Inside Professional Street
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewWhile Skateboarding LA is not the first ethnography of the sport, it can rightfully claim to be the most rigorous and in depth of the existing literature … Throughout the book, Snyder critiques previous research that has assumed subcultures like skateboarding are uniformly about youthful resistance to the demands of capital. Instead, he approaches the sport as a production process. -- American Journal of SociologyA personal and descriptive ethnographic ac¬count of how male skaters based in the street and associated industries continue in their various attempts to progress the sport … Snyder’s depiction of spatial usage, capital codes and benefits, as well as communal activism found within today’s neo-liberal skateboarding scene is compelling. -- Canadian Journal of SociologyAn intensive and engaging study, written in vivid detail and supported by copious numbers of photographs. -- Social ForcesA rigorously researched and richly rendered ethnography of skateboarding that takes us beyond the acrobatics, lingo, and lifestyles of its elite practitioners into the economics and subcultural dynamics of the scene, and its forays into political activism and sense of community. The readers perception of skating is flipped like the proverbial board. Far from & skate punks, & pros are elite athletes and their friends and collaborators are engines of new-media creativity. Gregory Snyder has done it again, producing another iconic study of a key subculture and in the process offers nothing less than a meditation on the nature of career, work and life. -- Jonathan Ilan,Author of Understanding Street Culture: Poverty, Crime, Youth, and CoolThe magic by which street skateboarders execute impossible aerial tricks is wrapped in another kind of magic: their ability to transform the most mundane of urban spaces into open-air theaters of collective performance. Snyder is hip to both sorts of magic, and because he is, Skateboarding LA is a thing of beauty: urban sociology on four wheels, cultural criminology on the fly, and ethnography at its best -- Jeff Ferrell,Author of Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking, an
£66.60
New York University Press Single
Book SynopsisA radical defense of a solitary lifeWhat single person hasn''t suffered? Everyone, it seems, must be (or must want to be) in a couple. To exist outside of the couple is to assume an antisocial position that is ruthlessly discouraged because being in a couple is the way most people bind themselves to the social. Singles might just be the single most reviled sexual minorities today.Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled offers a polemic account of this supremacy of thecouple form, and how that supremacy blocks our understanding of the single. Michael Cobb reads the figurative language surrounding singleness as it traverses an eclectic set of literary, cultural, philosophical, psychoanalytical, and popular culture objects from Plato, Freud, Ralph Ellison, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, Barack Obama, Emily Dickinson, Morrissey, Georgia O''Keeffe, and Hannah Arendt to the Bible, Sex and the City, Bridget Jones'' Diary, Beyoncé''s Single LadiesTrade ReviewUsing the rhythms of banter, suggestion, and willful claims, even hyperbolic, assertive pronouncements, Cobb creates a unique vantage point from which to assess a remarkable topic, one he nearly makes his own. Loneliness has been much discussed of late, but singleness has not, not in this way. The result is an unforgettable mix of witty analysis of pop culture and a targeted dropping of deep, decisive anchors in a few canonical but unexpected texts. Most impressive, therefore, is Cobbs deployment of deft transitions that make his switches back and forth between and among discursive registers workand matter. With these artfully crafted links, Cobb guides the reader to each new perch. And if there is a unifying style that paradoxically lubricates and glues together his dynamics, I would call it conversational lyric: a personal tone and direct engagement of the reader that slightly slips that bond to slant past where you thought that Cobb was holding you. * Queer Theory *The author offers a smart and stunning look at the 'moribund desperation' of coupledom. * Advocate.com *Although the book is deliberately provocative, with its evocations of the couples 'steely, enduring logic' and 'toxic emotional restraints,' its most helpful to see Cobbs radical critique not as an ode to unattached monasticism but as suggestions for how the single perspectives solitude, privacy, and freedom can open up vistaseven in the lives of the happily coupled. * Publishers Weekly *Singleis impressive because its focus is original and discreet and so is his arguments which center heavily on details, at times even the use of single words or on an interpretation. * Metapsychology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Bitter Table for One 11 The Inevitable Fatality of the Couple 412 The Probated Couple, or Our Polygamous Pioneers 693 The Shelter of Singles 1054 Welcome to the Desert of Me 157Notes 203Index 217About the Author 227
£52.70
New York University Press Single
Book SynopsisA radical defense of a solitary lifeWhat single person hasn''t suffered? Everyone, it seems, must be (or must want to be) in a couple. To exist outside of the couple is to assume an antisocial position that is ruthlessly discouraged because being in a couple is the way most people bind themselves to the social. Singles might just be the single most reviled sexual minorities today.Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled offers a polemic account of this supremacy of thecouple form, and how that supremacy blocks our understanding of the single. Michael Cobb reads the figurative language surrounding singleness as it traverses an eclectic set of literary, cultural, philosophical, psychoanalytical, and popular culture objects from Plato, Freud, Ralph Ellison, Herman Melville, Virginia Woolf, Barack Obama, Emily Dickinson, Morrissey, Georgia O''Keeffe, and Hannah Arendt to the Bible, Sex and the City, Bridget Jones'' Diary, Beyoncé''s Single LadiesTrade ReviewUsing the rhythms of banter, suggestion, and willful claims, even hyperbolic, assertive pronouncements, Cobb creates a unique vantage point from which to assess a remarkable topic, one he nearly makes his own. Loneliness has been much discussed of late, but singleness has not, not in this way. The result is an unforgettable mix of witty analysis of pop culture and a targeted dropping of deep, decisive anchors in a few canonical but unexpected texts. Most impressive, therefore, is Cobbs deployment of deft transitions that make his switches back and forth between and among discursive registers workand matter. With these artfully crafted links, Cobb guides the reader to each new perch. And if there is a unifying style that paradoxically lubricates and glues together his dynamics, I would call it conversational lyric: a personal tone and direct engagement of the reader that slightly slips that bond to slant past where you thought that Cobb was holding you. * Queer Theory *The author offers a smart and stunning look at the 'moribund desperation' of coupledom. * Advocate.com *Although the book is deliberately provocative, with its evocations of the couples 'steely, enduring logic' and 'toxic emotional restraints,' its most helpful to see Cobbs radical critique not as an ode to unattached monasticism but as suggestions for how the single perspectives solitude, privacy, and freedom can open up vistaseven in the lives of the happily coupled. * Publishers Weekly *Singleis impressive because its focus is original and discreet and so is his arguments which center heavily on details, at times even the use of single words or on an interpretation. * Metapsychology *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction: Bitter Table for One 11 The Inevitable Fatality of the Couple 412 The Probated Couple, or Our Polygamous Pioneers 693 The Shelter of Singles 1054 Welcome to the Desert of Me 157Notes 203Index 217About the Author 227
£20.89
New York University Press Fat History
Book SynopsisExplores the changing images and implications of fat in contemporary Western society.Trade Review"Provides an innovative explanation of the modern preoccupation with dieting that fundamentally revises our understanding of the timing, intensity, and significance of the modern American culture of weight loss." * Journal of American History *"Offers new, reliable information and insights." * The Nation *
£70.30
New York University Press Sports Matters
Book SynopsisSports Matters brings critical attention to the centrality of race within the politics and pleasures of the massive sports culture that developed in the U.S. during the past century and a half.Trade Review"Most of the contributions strongly project the authors' perceptions of the role of race on their subjects, and essays should elicit lively discussions in the classroom." --CHOICETable of ContentsI Sports in the Era of Segregation 1 Duke Kahanamoku's Body 2 Jump for Joy 3 Baseball along the Columbia 4 Mexican American Baseball II Sports in the Era of the Civil Rights Movement 5 Jazzing the Basepaths 6 The Unbearable Whiteness of Skiing 7 "We Want a Pennant, Not a White Team" 8 Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars? 9 Documenting Myth III Sports and Race in the Post-Cold War Era 10 The Silence of the Rams 11 Warriors and Thieves 12 Running with Her Head Down 13 Saving Face, Place, and Race 14 Race in Soccer as a Global Sport 15 Tiger Woods at the Center of History
£23.74
MP-SYR Syracuse University P Pleasure Zones Bodies Cities Spaces
Book SynopsisThe essays collected in this volume apply queer theory in a consideration of the human body as a vehicle for understanding relationships between people and place. The book examines the body as an entity constructed by gender, sexuality, race, class, nationality and disability.Table of Contents- "Upstairs/Downstairs - Place Matters, Bodies Matter," Jon Binnie, Robin Peace, and Robyn Longhurst; - "Trim, Taught, Terrific, and Pregnant," Robyn Longhurst; - "Producing Lesbians: Canonical Properties," Robin Peace; - "(Dis)Comforting Identities," Ruth Holliday; - "Fragments for a Queer City," David Bell; - "The Erotic Possibilities of the City," Jon Binnie
£15.26
MP-SYR Syracuse University P We Are Iraqis Aesthetics and Politics in a Time
Book SynopsisShowcases written and visual contributions by Iraqi artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, photographers, and activists. Contributors explore the way Iraqis retain, subvert, and produce art and activism as ways of coping with despair and resisting chaos and destruction.
£26.96
John Wiley & Sons Critiquing the Sitcom
Book SynopsisAn anthology of writings that examine the TV sitcom in terms of its treatment of gender, family, class, race and ethnic issues. The selections range from early shows such as ""I Remember Mama"" to the more recent ""Roseanne"".
£18.86
