Description
Book SynopsisCool is a word of American English that has been integrated into the vocabulary of numerous languages around the globe. Today it is a term most often used in advertising trendy commodities, or, more generally, in promoting urban lifestyles in our postmodern age. But what is the history of the term cool? When has coolness come to be associated with certain modes of contemporary self-fashioning? On what grounds do certain nations claim a privilege to be recognized as cool? These are some of the questions that served as a starting-point for a comparative cultural inquiry which brought together specialists from American Studies and Japanese Studies, but also from Classics, Philosophy and Sociology. The conceptual grid of the volume can be described as follows:(1) Coolness is a metaphorical term for affect-control. It is tied in with cultural discourses on the emotions and the norms of their public display, and with gendered cultural practices of subjectivity. (2) In the course of the cul
Trade ReviewBrought together by an outstanding group of editors, The Cultural Career of Coolness: Discourses and Practices of Affect Control in European Antiquity, the United States, and Japan presents a multi-faceted and in-depth look at 'coolness.' Not only does the volume deepen and complicate our common understanding of this cultural phenomenon by incorporating essays on philosophy, sociology, literature, music, and film, it also broadens the field of inquiry to include both Euro-American and Japanese contexts, offering a rich transcultural assessment rare in affect studies…. The Cultural Career of Coolness will appeal to a wide swathe of researchers, academics, students, and informed readers with an interest in affect studies, American studies, and Japanese studies as well as in cultural and literary studies generally. With its broad interdisciplinary focus and careful attention to pertinent questions that engage contemporary global culture, this anthology is certain to inspire further research, particularly in those areas that treat the cross-cultural, transcultural, or transnational. * Journal of the American Oriental Society *
Table of ContentsIntroduction, by Ulla Haselstein and Irmela Hijiya-Kischnereit Part I: “Coolness” in Antiquity Chapter 1: Emotionally challenged, wisely detached, or incredibly cool? On Stoic Apathy, by Catherine Newmark Chapter 2: Roman Cool, by Daniel L. Selden Part II: American Cool Chapter 3: The Cultural Career of Coolness, by Ulla Haselstein Chapter 4: Kinds of Cool: Emotions and the Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century American Abolitionism, by Catrin Gersdorf Chapter 5: The Mask of Cool in Postwar Jazz and Film Noir, by Joel Dinerstein Chapter 6: Cool Revenge: Kill Bill and the Female Warrior, by Sophia Frese Part III: Japanese Cool Chapter 7: Is Japan Cool?, by Irmela Hijiya-Kischnereit Chapter 8: “Hot” and “Cold” and “Cool”: Toward a Climatology of Japanese Culture, by Jens Heise Chapter 9: Cold Norms and Warm Hearts: On the Conception of Etiquette Rules in Advice Books from Early Modern and Modern Japan, by Michael Kinski Chapter 10: Iki as a mode of Japanese coolness, by Elena Giannoulis Chapter 11: The Domestication of the Cool Cat, by Paul Roquet Chapter 12: Marketing National and Self Appearances: Cool and Cute in J-Culture, Aviad E. Raz Part IV: Global Cool Chapter 13: Cool Capitalism at Work, by Jim McGuigan About the Authors
