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Cultures Of Ambivalence And Contempt
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Book Synopsis On the Pleasure Principle in Culture by : Robert Pfaller
Download or read book On the Pleasure Principle in Culture written by Robert Pfaller and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating work of cultural theory and philosophy, Robert Pfaller explores the hidden cost of our contemporary approach to pleasure, belief and illusion. Sports, design, eroticism, social intercourse and games-indeed, all those aspects of our culture commonly deemed "pleasurable"-seem to require beliefs that many regard as illusory. But in considering themselves above the self-deceptions of the crowd, those same sceptics are prone to dismissing a majority of the population as naive or misguided. In doing so, they create a false opposition between the 'simple' masses and their more enlightened rulers. And this dichotomy then functions as an ideological support for neoliberal government: citizens become irrational victims, to be ruled over by a protective security state. What initially appears to be a universal pleasure principle-the role of "anonymous illusions" in mass culture-in this way becomes a rationale for dismantling democracy.
Book Synopsis The Jews in Medieval Britain by : Patricia Skinner
Download or read book The Jews in Medieval Britain written by Patricia Skinner and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain's medieval Jewish community arrived with the Normans in 1066 and was expelled from the country in 1290. This is the first time in forty years that its life has been comprehensively examined for a student and general readership. Beginning with an introduction setting the medieval British experience into its European context, the book continues with three chapters outlining the history of the Jews' presence and a discussion of where they settled. Further chapters then explore themes such as their relationship with the Christian church, Jewish women's lives, the major types of evidence used by historians, the latest evidence emerging from archaeological exploration, and new approaches from literary studies. The book closes with a reappraisal of one of the best-known communities, that at York. Drawing together the work of experts in the field, and supported by an extensive bibliographical guide, this is a valuable and revealing account of medieval Jewish history in Britain. Patricia Skinner is a Wellcome Research Fellow in the College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University. Contributors: ANTHONY BALE, SUZANNE BARTLETT, PAUL BRAND, BARRIE DOBSON, JOHN EDWARDS, JOSEPH HILLABY, D.A. HINTON, ROBIN MUNDILL, ROBERT C. STACEY.
Book Synopsis Cultural Hybridity and Fixity by : Nyongesa, Andrew
Download or read book Cultural Hybridity and Fixity written by Nyongesa, Andrew and published by Mwanaka Media and Publishing Pvt Ltd. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Immigrants who travel and settle in foreign countries face challenges due to cultural differences or even deliberate segregation by dominant groups. In their attempt to negotiate their existence, some decide to stick to the culture of their mother nations and some stand in the middle, and blend some aspects of their mother culture and the new culture. Although immigrants who remain closer to their own cultures are easily spotted and relegated, they are assigned a place on the identity continuum, whereas immigrants who choose to stand in the middle run the danger of being neither this nor that, neither here nor there, and can undergo severe internal fragmentation. In this book, Cultural Hybridity and Fixity: Strategies of Resistance in Migration Literatures, Andrew Nyongesa delves into these two strategies of resistance and analyzes the merits and demerits of each with reference to Safi Abdi’s fiction.
Book Synopsis Chinese History and Culture by : Ying-shih Yü
Download or read book Chinese History and Culture written by Ying-shih Yü and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recipient of the Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities and the Tang Prize for "revolutionary research" in Sinology, Ying-shih Yü is a premier scholar of Chinese studies. Chinese History and Culture volumes 1 and 2 bring his extraordinary oeuvre to English-speaking readers. Spanning two thousand years of social, intellectual, and political change, the essays in these volumes investigate two central questions through all aspects of Chinese life: what core values sustained this ancient civilization through centuries of upheaval, and in what ways did these values survive in modern times? From Ying-shih Yü's perspective, the Dao, or the Way, constitutes the inner core of Chinese civilization. His work explores the unique dynamics between Chinese intellectuals' discourse on the Dao, or moral principles for a symbolized ideal world order, and their criticism of contemporary reality throughout Chinese history. Volume 2 of Chinese History and Culture completes Ying-shih Yü's systematic reconstruction and exploration of Chinese thought over two millennia and its impact on Chinese identity. Essays address the rise of Qing Confucianism, the development of the Dai Zhen and Zhu Xi traditions, and the response of the historian Zhang Xuecheng to the Dai Zhen approach. They take stock of the thematic importance of Cao Xueqin's eighteenth-century masterpiece Honglou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) and the influence of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, as well as the radicalization of China in the twentieth century and the fundamental upheavals of modernization and revolution. Ying-shih Yü also discusses the decline of elite culture in modern China, the relationships among democracy, human rights, and Confucianism, and changing conceptions of national history. He reflects on the Chinese approach to history in general and the larger political and cultural function of chronological biographies. By situating China's modern encounter with the West in a wider historical frame, this second volume of Chinese History and Culture clarifies its more curious turns and contemplates the importance of a renewed interest in the traditional Chinese values recognizing common humanity and human dignity.
Book Synopsis Comparative Literature: Sharing Knowledges for Preserving Cultural Diversity - Volume I by : Lisa Block de Behar,Paola Mildonian,Jean-Michel Djian,Djelal Kadir,Alfons Knauth,Dolores Romero Lopez and Marcio Seligmann Silva
Download or read book Comparative Literature: Sharing Knowledges for Preserving Cultural Diversity - Volume I written by Lisa Block de Behar,Paola Mildonian,Jean-Michel Djian,Djelal Kadir,Alfons Knauth,Dolores Romero Lopez and Marcio Seligmann Silva and published by EOLSS Publications. This book was released on 2009-10-29 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparative Literature: Sharing Knowledges for Preserving Cultural Diversity theme is a component of Encyclopedia of Social Sciences and Humanities in the global Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), which is an integrated compendium of twenty one Encyclopedias. The Theme on Comparative Literature: Sharing Knowledge's for Preserving Cultural Diversity provides six different topics: 1. Language, literature and human sustainability; 2. Relationships among literature and other artistic activities and discourses ; 3. Comparative literature and other fields of knowledge; 4. Comparative literature, criticism and media ; 5. Comparative literature in the age of global change; 6. Translatio studii and cross-cultural movements or Weltverkehr. These three volumes are aimed at a wide spectrum of audiences: University and College Students, Educators and Research Personnel.
Book Synopsis Rogues and Early Modern English Culture by : Craig Dionne
Download or read book Rogues and Early Modern English Culture written by Craig Dionne and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Those at the periphery of society often figure obsessively for those at its center, and never more so than with the rogues of early modern England. Whether as social fact or literary fiction-or both, simultaneously-the marginal rogue became ideologically central and has remained so for historians, cultural critics, and literary critics alike. In this collection, early modern rogues represent the range, diversity, and tensions within early modern scholarship, making this quite simply the best overview of their significance then and now." -Jonathan Dollimore, York University "Rogues and Early Modern English Culture is an up-to-date and suggestive collection on a subject that all scholars of the early modern period have encountered but few have studied in the range and depth represented here." -Lawrence Manley, Yale University "A model of cross-disciplinary exchange, Rogues and Early Modern English Culture foregrounds the figure of the rogue in a nexus of early modern cultural inscriptions that reveals the provocation a seemingly marginal figure offers to authorities and various forms of authoritative understanding, then and now. The new and recent work gathered here is an exciting contribution to early modern studies, for both scholars and students." -Alexandra W. Halasz, Dartmouth College Rogues and Early Modern English Culture is a definitive collection of critical essays on the literary and cultural impact of the early modern rogue. Under various names-rogues, vagrants, molls, doxies, vagabonds, cony-catchers, masterless men, caterpillars of the commonwealth-this group of marginal figures, poor men and women with no clear social place or identity, exploded onto the scene in sixteenth-century English history and culture. Early modern representations of the rogue or moll in pamphlets, plays, poems, ballads, historical records, and the infamous Tudor Poor Laws treated these characters as harbingers of emerging social, economic, and cultural changes. Images of the early modern rogue reflected historical developments but also created cultural icons for mobility, change, and social adaptation. The underclass rogue in many ways inverts the familiar image of the self-fashioned gentleman, traditionally seen as the literary focus and exemplar of the age, but the two characters have more in common than courtiers or humanists would have admitted. Both relied on linguistic prowess and social dexterity to manage their careers, whether exploiting the politics of privilege at court or surviving by their wits on urban streets. Deftly edited by Craig Dionne and Steve Mentz, this anthology features essays from prominent and emerging critics in the field of Renaissance studies and promises to attract considerable attention from a broad range of readers and scholars in literary studies and social history.
Book Synopsis Mark Twain, Culture and Gender by : J. D. Stahl
Download or read book Mark Twain, Culture and Gender written by J. D. Stahl and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Often regarded as the quintessential American author, Mark Twain in fact mined his knowledge and experience of Europe as assiduously as he did his adventures on the Mississippi and in the American West. In this challenging and original study, J. D. Stall looks closely at various Twain works with European settings and traces the manner in which the great writer redefined European notions of class into American concepts of gender, identity, and society. Stahl not only examines such famous writings as The Innocents Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and the "Mysterious Stranger" manuscripts but also treats a number of neglected works, including 1601, "A Memorable Midnight Experience", and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. In these writings, Stahl shows, Twain utilized the terms and symbols of European society and history to express his deepest concerns involving father–son relationships, the legitimation of parentage, female political and sexual power, the victimization of "good" women, and, ultimately, the desire to bridge or even destroy the barriers between the sexes. The "exoticism" of foreign culture—with its kings and queens, priests, and aristocrats—furnished Twain with some especially potent images of power, authority, and tradition. These images, Stahl argues, were "plastic material in Mark Twain's hands", enabling the writer to explore the uncertainties and ambiguities of gender in America: what it meant to be a man in Victorian America; what Twain thought it meant to be a woman; how men and women did, could, and should relate to each other. Stahl's approach yields a wealth of fresh insights into Twain's work. In discussing The Innocents Abroad, for example, he analyzes the emergence of the "Mark Twain" persona as part of a quest for cultural authority that often took the form of sexual role-playing. He also demonstrates that The Prince and the Pauper, even more strikingly than Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, embodies the writer's central myth of orphaned sons searching for surrogate fathers. His reading of A Connecticut Yankee is a tour de force, uncovering the psychological contradictions in Twain's political aspirations toward democratic equality. Stahl's book is an important contribution to literary scholarship, informed by psychology, gender study, cultural theory, and traditional Twain criticism. It confirms Mark Twain's debt to European culture even as it illuminates his re-envisioning of that culture in his own uniquely American way.
Book Synopsis Cultural Studies by : Lawrence Grossberg
Download or read book Cultural Studies written by Lawrence Grossberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-06-28 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Book Synopsis American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834-1853 by : Meredith L. McGill
Download or read book American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834-1853 written by Meredith L. McGill and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The antebellum period has long been identified with the belated emergence of a truly national literature. And yet, as Meredith L. McGill argues, a mass market for books in this period was built and sustained through what we would call rampant literary piracy: a national literature developed not despite but because of the systematic copying of foreign works. Restoring a political dimension to accounts of the economic grounds of antebellum literature, McGill unfolds the legal arguments and political struggles that produced an American "culture of reprinting" and held it in place for two crucial decades. In this culture of reprinting, the circulation of print outstripped authorial and editorial control. McGill examines the workings of literary culture within this market, shifting her gaze from first and authorized editions to reprints and piracies, from the form of the book to the intersection of book and periodical publishing, and from a national literature to an internally divided and transatlantic literary marketplace. Through readings of the work of Dickens, Poe, and Hawthorne, McGill seeks both to analyze how changes in the conditions of publication influenced literary form and to measure what was lost as literary markets became centralized and literary culture became stratified in the early 1850s. American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834-1853 delineates a distinctive literary culture that was regional in articulation and transnational in scope, while questioning the grounds of the startlingly recent but nonetheless powerful equation of the national interest with the extension of authors' rights.
Book Synopsis In Search of Refuge by : Bat-Ami Zucker
Download or read book In Search of Refuge written by Bat-Ami Zucker and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zucker (history, Bar-Ilan U., Israel) examines how the US consuls perceived, interpreted, and administered immigration policy towards Jewish refugees during the Nazi regime, exploring the relationship of consuls with the US State Department, as well as obvious examples of prejudice in obstructing the entry of refugees. She argues that the US held a restrictive policy in terms of both interpretation and administration of the law which was due in large part to consular anti-Semitism. Distributed by ISBS. c. Book News Inc.
Download or read book Haunted English written by Laura O'Connor and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2006-11-27 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of how English’s colonial history inflects the literary vernaculars of Anglo-Celtic modernists W. B. Yeats, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Marianne Moore. Haunted English explores the role of language in colonization and decolonization by examining how Anglo-Celtic modernists W. B. Yeats, Hugh MacDiarmid, and Marianne Moore “de-Anglicize” their literary vernaculars. Laura O’Connor demonstrates how the poets’ struggles with and through the colonial tongue are discernible in their signature styles, using aspects of those styles to theorize the dynamics of linguistic imperialism—as both a distinct process and an integral part of cultural imperialism. O’Connor argues that the advance of the English Pale and the accompanying translation of the receding Gaelic culture into a romanticized Celtic Fringe represents multilingual British culture as if it were exclusively English-speaking and yet registers, on a subliminal level, some of the cultural losses entailed by English-only Anglicization. Taking the fin-de-siècle movements of the Gaelic revival and the Irish Literary Renaissance as her point of departure, O’Connor examines the effort to undo cultural cringe through language and literary activism. “This is a promising contribution to an expanding discipline.” —Paul Shanks, Comparative Literature Studies “Laura O’Connor has written a distinguished and groundbreaking study.” —Murray Pittock, Clio “Smart, engaging, and intellectually provocative.” —Rob Doggett, Victorian Studies “An often brilliant account of how three modernist poetries contributed to the global decline of Anglocentrism . . . Essential for anyone looking for fresh interpretations of Yeats, MacDiarmid, or Moore, it will also interest readers concerned with the promises and challenges of writing transnational literary criticism.” —Matthew Hart, Modernism/Modernity “Insightful, scintillating, attentive to every nuance . . . O’Connor’s study will reward greatly anyone interested in the critical revivalism that is both her subject and her inheritance.” —Gregory Castle, Irish Literary Supplement “Valuable and original work that participates in some of the most exciting and forward-looking trends in current Irish and literary studies.” —Marjorie Howes, Boston College, author of Yeats’s Nations: Gender, Class, and Irishness
Book Synopsis On Images, Visual Culture, Memory and the Play without a Script by : Matthias Smalbrugge
Download or read book On Images, Visual Culture, Memory and the Play without a Script written by Matthias Smalbrugge and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Matthias Smalbrugge compares modern images to plays without a script: while they appear to refer to a deeper identity or reality, it is ultimately the image itself that truly matters. He argues that our modern society of images is the product of a destructive tendency in the Christian notion of the image in general, and Augustine of Hippo's in particular. This insight enables him to decode our current 'scripts' of image. As we live in an increasingly visual culture, we are constantly confronted with images that seem to exist without a deeper identity or reality – but did this referential character really get lost over time? Smalbrugge first explores the roots of the modern image by analysing imagery, what it represents, and its moral state within the framework of Platonic philosophy. He then moves to the Augustinian heritage, in particular the Soliloquies, the Confessions and the Trinity, where he finds valuable insights into images and memory. He explores within the trinitarian framework the crossroads of a theology of grace and a theology based on Neoplatonic views. Smalbrugge ultimately answers two questions: what happened to the referential character of the image, and can it be recovered?
Book Synopsis Contours of White Ethnicity by : Yiorgos Anagnostou
Download or read book Contours of White Ethnicity written by Yiorgos Anagnostou and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2009-11-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Contours of White Ethnicity, Yiorgos Anagnostou explores the construction of ethnic history and reveals how and why white ethnics selectively retain, rework, or reject their pasts. Challenging the tendency to portray Americans of European background as a uniform cultural category, the author demonstrates how a generalized view of American white ethnics misses the specific identity issues of particular groups as well as their internal differences. Interdisciplinary in scope, Contours of White Ethnicity uses the example of Greek America to illustrate how the immigrant past can be used to combat racism and be used to bring about solidarity between white ethnics and racial minorities. Illuminating the importance of the past in the construction of ethnic identities today, Anagnostou presents the politics of evoking the past to create community, affirm identity, and nourish reconnection with ancestral roots, then identifies the struggles to neutralize oppressive pasts. Although it draws from the scholarship on a specific ethnic group, Contours of White Ethnicity exhibits a sophisticated, interdisciplinary methodology, which makes it of particular interest to scholars researching ethnicity and race in the United States and for those charting the directions of future research for white ethnicities.
Book Synopsis Dancing Mestizo Modernisms by : Jose Luis Reynoso
Download or read book Dancing Mestizo Modernisms written by Jose Luis Reynoso and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-21 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes how national and international dancers contributed to developing Mexico's cultural politics and notions of the nation at different historical moments. It emphasizes how dancers and other moving bodies resisted and reproduced racial and social hierarchies stemming from colonial Mexico (1521-1821). Relying on extensive archival research, choreography as an analytical methodology, and theories of race, dance, and performance studies, author Jose Reynoso examines how dance and other forms of embodiment participated in Mexico's formation after the Mexican War of Independence (1821-1876), the Porfirian dictatorship (1876-1911), and postrevolutionary Mexico (1919-1940). In so doing, the book analyzes how underlying colonial logics continued to influence relationships amongst dancers, other artists, government officials, critics, and audiences of different backgrounds as they refashioned their racial, social, cultural, and national identities. The book proposes and develops two main concepts that explore these mutually formative interactions among such diverse people: embodied mestizo modernisms and transnational nationalisms. 'Embodied mestizo modernisms' refers to combinations of indigenous, folkloric, ballet, and modern dance practices in works choreographed by national and international dancers with different racial and social backgrounds. The book contends that these mestizo modernist dance practices challenged assumptions about racial neutrality with which whiteness historically established its ostensible supremacy in constructing Mexico's 'transnational nationalisms'. This argument holds that notions of the nation-state and national identities are not produced exclusively by a nation's natives but also by historical transnational forces and (dancing) bodies whose influences shape local politics, economic interests, and artistic practices.
Book Synopsis The Culture of the Stalin Period by : Hans Gunther
Download or read book The Culture of the Stalin Period written by Hans Gunther and published by Springer. This book was released on 1990-04-09 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Up to now the culture of the Stalin period has been studied mainly from a political or ideological point of view. In this book renowned specialists from many countries approach the problem rather 'from inside'. The authors deal with numerous aspects of Stalinist culture such as art, literature, architecture, film and popular culture. Yet the volume is more than a mere collection of studies on special issues. It is an inquiry into the very nature of a certain type of culture, its symbols, rites and myths. The book will be useful not only for students of Soviet culture but also for a wider audience.
Book Synopsis Art in the Cinematic Imagination by : Susan Felleman
Download or read book Art in the Cinematic Imagination written by Susan Felleman and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing an art historical perspective to the realm of American and European film, Art in the Cinematic Imagination examines the ways in which films have used works of art and artists themselves as cinematic and narrative motifs. From the use of portraits in Vertigo to the cinematic depiction of women artists in Artemisia and Camille Claudel, Susan Felleman incorporates feminist and psychoanalytic criticism to reveal individual and collective perspectives on sex, gender, identity, commerce, and class. Probing more than twenty films from the postwar era through contemporary times, Art in the Cinematic Imagination considers a range of structurally significant art objects, artist characters, and art-world settings to explore how the medium of film can amplify, reinvent, or recontextualize the other visual arts. Fluently speaking across disciplines, Felleman's study brings a broad array of methodologies to bear on questions such as the evolution of the "Hollywood Love Goddess" and the pairing of the feminine with death on screen. A persuasive approach to an engaging body of films, Art in the Cinematic Imagination illuminates a compelling and significant facet of the cinematic experience.
Book Synopsis A Critical Study of Thailand's Higher Education Reforms by : Rattana Lao
Download or read book A Critical Study of Thailand's Higher Education Reforms written by Rattana Lao and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-15 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a critical examination of contemporary higher education reforms in Thailand situated in the broader historical, socio-economic and political changes. Through a qualitative case study with three methods of inquiry, this book explores why different 'global education policies' such quasi-privatisation, internationalization, as quality assessment (QA) have resonated in Thailand higher education sector. Grounded in policy borrowing and lending, this book uses the politics, economics and culture of borrowing to analyse major reforms in Thailand for the past one hundred years. It is argued that historical legacy, policy contexts and belief systems of policy elites play pivotal roles in facilitating policy changes or the lack thereof. While historical analysis elucidates that the Thai state has always been an active borrower of western ideas, the perseverance of the 'Thai-ness' discourse has often been used to suggest its so-called independence and idiosyncrasy. This in-depth analysis of the Thai case aims to contribute to the critical studies in Asian education, comparative higher education, policy borrowing and lending and Thai studies. The Culture of Borrowing intensively studies the policy appropriation in the Thai education system by analysing: • Selective Borrowing and the Historical Development of Thai Higher Education • The Asian Economic Crisis as Window of Opportunity: Autonomous University • Internationalization of Teaching: Quantitative and Qualitative Challenges • The Emergence of Quality Policies and their Rationales • The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Quality Policies This book will appeal to researchers in Education, particularly to scholars studying educational policies within the context of tertiary education. It will also interest scholars specialising in Asian and South-east Asian Studies.
