In 1893 Friedrich Engels branded history “the cruelest goddess of all.” This sorrowful vision of the past is deeply rooted in the Western imagination, and history is thus presented as a joyless playground of inevitability rather than a droll world of possibilities. There are few places this is more evident than in historical cinema which tends to portray the past in a somber manner.
Historical Comedy on Screen examines this tendency paying particular attention to the themes most difficult to laugh at and exploring the place where comical and historical storytelling intersect. The book emphasizes the many oft-overlooked comical renderings of history and asks what they have to tell us if we begin to take them seriously.
Grigorii Aleksandrov’s musical comedy films, created with composer Isaak Dunaevskii, were the most popular Russian cinema of the 1930s and ’40s. Drawing on studio documents, press materials, and interviews with surviving film crew members, The Musical Comedy Films of Grigorii Aleksandrov presents the untold production history of the films. Salys explores how Aleksandrov’s cinema preserved the paradigms of the American musical, including its comedic tradition, using both to inscribe the foundation myths of the Stalin era in the national consciousness. As the first major study to situate these films in the cultural context of the era, this book will be essential to courses on Russian cinema and Soviet culture.
The essays in Europe in Black and White offer new critical perspectives on race, immigration, and identity on the Old Continent. In reconsidering the various forms of encounters with difference, such as multiculturalism and hybridity, the contributors address a number of issues, including the cartography of postcolonial Europe, its relation to the production of "difference" and "race," and national and identity politics and their dependence on linguistic practices inherited from imperial times. Featuring scholars from a wide variety of nationalities and disciplinary areas, this collection will speak to an equally wide readership.
Franklin Furnace is a renowned New York–based artsorganization whose mission is to preserve, document, and present works of avant-garde art by emerging artists—particularly those whose works may be vulnerable due to institutional neglect or politically unpopular content. Over more than thirty years, Franklin Furnace has exhibited works by hundreds of avant-garde artists, some of whom—Laurie Anderson, Vito Acconci, Karen Finley, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Jenny Holzer, and the Blue Man Group, to name a few—are now established names in contemporary art.
Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive history of this remarkable organization from its conception to the present. Organized around the major art genres that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century, this book intersperses first-person narratives with readings by artists and scholars on issues critical to the organization's success as well as Franklin Furnace's many contributions to avant-garde art.
An extraordinary collaboration between contemporary art and critical discourse, Narrating the Catastrophe guides readers through unfamiliar textual landscapes where “being” is defined as an act rather than a form. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s notion of intersubjective narrative identity as well as the catastrophe theory of Gilles Deleuze, Jac Saorsa establishes an alternative perspective from which to interpret and engage with the world around us. A highly original—and visually appealing—take on a high-profile issue in contemporary critical debate, this book will appeal to all those interested in visual arts and philosophy.
The first collection of essays on Argentine metal music.
This is an interdisciplinary study of Argentina’s heavy metal subculture between 1983 and 2002, a period in which metal music withstood the onslaught of military dictatorship and survived the neoliberal policies of bourgeois democracy.
Edited by leading researchers in the field, this collection addresses the music’s rituals, circulations, cultural products, lyrics, and intertexts, allowing readers to rethink the genre’s place within Argentinean politics and economics. Exclusively written by members of the Group for Interdisciplinary Research on Argentinian Heavy Metal (GIIHMA) in a communal approach to scholarship, the book echoes the working-class voices that marked early post-dictatorship metal music in Argentina, exploring heavy metal music as a catalyst for social change and a site for engaging political reflection. This is a fascinating work of scholarship and a groundbreaking contribution to the emerging field of global metal studies.
This book examines some of the challenges associated with ageing in multicultural societies. Worldwide, ageing presents a profound potential shift in design for society. The impact of the change in population balance challenges designers, planners, and health care professionals to develop solutions to better meet the needs of older citizens. Different disciplinary and cultural perspectives allow for new approaches to issues of housing, community interaction and cooperation, health and well-being, and the integration of new technologies.
Drawing from case studies, interviews with key practitioners in design and health, and practical pedagogical experience, the authors provide a framework for engaging designers, planners, and health professionals in the process of creating new design solutions for the growing global ageing population.
The Cinema Makers investigates how cinema spectators in southeastern and central European cities became cinema makers through such practices as squatting in existing cinema spaces, organizing cinema "events," writing about film, and making films themselves. Drawing on a corpus of interviews with cinema activists in Germany, Austria, and the former Yugoslavia, Anna Schober compares the activities and artistic productions they staged in cities such as Vienna, Cologne, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Subotica, Zagreb, and Sarajevo. The resulting study illuminates the differences and similarities in the development of political culture—and cinema’s role in that development—in European countries with pluralist-democratic, one-party socialist, and post-socialist traditions.
Coined by artist and media researcher Bill Seaman, “neosentience” describes a new branch of scientific inquiry related to artificial intelligence. This volume explores the groundbreaking work of Seaman and theoretical physicist Otto E. Rossler in exploring the potential of an intelligent robotic entity possessed of a form of sentience that ever more closely resembles that of a human being. Individual chapters approach the concept from a range of disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and the arts. Neosentience is a burgeoning area of interest, and this book encourages readers to reflect on how we experience and interpret the world, how memory works, and what it is to be human.
This volume focuses on the matrix offered by the media-democracy paradox in Ghana, Africa, and the Global South. As the first black African country south of the Sahara to attain political independence from Great Britain, Ghana is widely acknowledged by the international community as a model of democracy. This book examines the praxis of this democracy and its media, delving into Ghana’s evolvement, media practices, leadership aspirations, pressure group politics, and ideological cleavages.
A rich data source for students, scholars, researchers, and political actors on both the African continent and the diaspora, The Media-Democracy Paradox in Ghana challenges the dominant Western theories of media and democracy, examines the growing influence of social media in political discourse, and provides insightful analysis of debates surrounding political communication and its implications for strengthening democratic culture.
With contributions from a diverse group of media and communications scholars from around the globe, Bangladesh’s Changing Mediascape presents a pioneering study of the trends, patterns, and prospects shaping the contemporary Bangladeshi media. Among the many topics discussed here are the difference among specific media formats, including television, newspapers, radio, film, and photography; policy issues; and the challenge that new media poses to governance in a developing nation faced with innumerable economic, social, and political problems. Eschewing the currently dominant development communication model, the editors argue that market forces rather than planned state interventions will contribute to a more equitable communication environment.
Theatre in Passing explores spaces of performance in contemporary Moscow. Inspired by French philosopher Michel de Certeau’s model of a "second, poetic geography" in which the walker—the everyday practitioner—invents the space observed by the voyeur, this book takes the reader on a tour of spaces of performance in contemporary Moscow. Through text and photography, the city’s "theatrical geography" is uncovered, from the Bolshoi Theater in Theater Square to hidden gems like the recently restored Kuskovo estate. With additional sections on street theater and other public gatherings, Theatre in Passing is a must-read book for anyone curious about the theatrical architecture and geography of Russia’s capital.
In this innovative work of cultural history, Simon Sigley tells the story of film culture in New Zealand from the establishment of the Auckland Film Society in the 1920s to the present day.
Rather than focusing on the work of individual filmmakers, Sigley approaches cinema as a form of social practice. He examines the reception of international film theories and discourses and shows how these ideas helped to shape distinct cultural practices, including new forms of reviewing; new methods of teaching; and new institutions such as film societies, art house cinemas, and film festivals. He goes on to trace the emergence in New Zealand of the full range of activities and institutions associated with a sophisticated film culture—including independent distribution and exhibition networks, film archives, university courses, a local feature film industry, and liberalized film censorship. In doing so, Sigley makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the myriad ways film can shape our thinking, our icons, our institutions, and our conversations. A fascinating case history of how a culture can develop, Transnational Film Culture in New Zealand will be a welcome addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in film culture and cultural history.
In films from Houseboat to The Millionairess to Two Women, Sophia Loren established herself as an actress whose stardom spanned Italy, Europe, and finally Hollywood. Hers was a highly original rise to fame for a European film actress, and in Sophia Loren, Pauline Small highlights a unique career which transcended Italian film culture.
Sophia Loren is the first book to explore in detail the transfer of Loren’s stardom from Italy to Hollywood and the reasons for her American success, particularly during the 1960s. Looking individually at Loren’s major films and drawing on rare archival materials in Italy, Small provides a thorough exploration of the commercial and cultural forces that combined to ensure Loren’s enduring star status.
Perfect for scholars and aficionados of 1960s Italian and American film, Sophia Loren is a fascinating look at one of the major personalities of modern cinema.
The New Deal introduced sweeping social, political, and cultural change across the United States, which Hollywood embraced enthusiastically. Then, when the heady idealism of the 1930s was replaced by the paranoia of the postwar years, Hollywood became an easy target for the anticommunists. A Divided World examines some of the important programs of the New Deal and the subsequent response of the film community—especially in relation to social welfare, women’s rights, and international affairs. The book also provides an analysis of the major works of three European directors—Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, and Fritz Lang—compared and contrasted with the products of mainstream Hollywood. This is a new interpretation of an influential period in American film history and it is sure to generate further debate and scholarship.
As sustainability and eco-responsibility become a part of our everyday cultural conversation, we’re finally being forced to acknowledge that what we consume matters. What we fail to realize is that we unconsciously, continually, and at times violently consume much more than just food—including celebrities. The Exile of Britney Spears takes the ubiquitous pop star of its title as its primary example, explaining that we have consumed, digested, and eliminated Britney Spears in a process uniquely characteristic of American popular culture. In Christopher Smit’s provocative account of the sociological, aesthetic, and political outcomes of this new mediated cannibalism, he offers the idea of exile as a new metaphor for the outcome of popular consumption. By investigating the psychological, personal, and social matrix of Britney’s rise and fall, he outlines the process of her inevitable exile from global taste and favor.
We usually think of women as the victims of pornography rather than its consumers. Whether appearing in films, peering provocatively from the pages of magazines, or posing on explicit Web-sites, women are considered the dehumanized objects of unseen lascivious male viewers. But in her controversial new book One for the Girls!, Clarissa Smith debunks this myth and challenges women to read, watch, and enjoy pornography on their own terms. Focusing on the British magazine For Women, Smith looks at its readers’ responses to male pinups and erotica and explores the intricacies of women’s unique reactions to pornography.
There have been many books published on acting, actor training, and practical theories for preparing for a role, but none of these books have ever looked philosophically at the language and the concepts that we use when we talk about acting. The Philosophical Actor is the first attempt to grapple with the fundamental questions of truth, art, and human nature unexamined in past treatments, from the first great essay by Diderot to the exhaustive system described by Stanislavski. With wide appeal to actors, directors, acting students, acting teachers and trainers, Donna Soto-Morettini draws from twenty-five years of experience as an acting teacher and director to introduce innovative ways of thinking about acting.
This compelling new study considers contemporary painting’s relationship with time and with events, ideas, and paintings from the past. Following French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard’s determination of painting as entailing a series of temporal sites, Painting, History and Meaning examines works that tendentiously engage with aspects and events derived from the past. Craig Staff explores art that has encompassed strategies of excavation, anachronism, and memorialization, examining key works by artists including Dana Schutz, Tomma Abts, Gerhard Richter, Marlene Dumas, Johannes Phokela, and Taus Makhacheva. A scholarly examination of contemporary painting through an innovative interdisciplinary research methodology, this fascinating study illuminates the complex relationship between art and history.
Dancing Bahia is an edited collection that draws together the work of leading scholars, artists, and dance activists from Brazil, Canada, and the United States to examine the particular ways in which dance has responded to socio-political notions of race and community, resisting stereotypes, and redefining African Diaspora and Afro-Brazilian traditions.
Using the Brazilian city of Salvador da Bahia as its focal point, this volume brings to the fore questions of citizenship, human rights, and community building. The essays within are informed by both theory and practice, as well as black activism that inspires and grounds the research, teaching, and creative output of dance professionals from, or deeply connected to, Bahia.
MEDIA: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry explores evolving definitions of media and interrogates how media technologies are transforming media theory and practice. The collection addresses the emerging roles of media across a wide range of disciplines, featuring contributions from an array of internationally known scholars and practitioners.
The definition of media itself is in a constant state of flux, expanding to include an ever-widening range of concepts, products, services, and institutions. Here, the authors reconceptualize media, drawing not only on media and communication studies, but also philosophy, sociology, political science, biology, art, computer science, and information studies, among other disciplines. The collection challenges traditional notions of media, explores emerging media, and reexamines concepts including technology, environment, and ecology; multimedia, mediation, and labor; and participation, repair, and curation. These timely and original discussions by established scholars in the field provide a valuable contribution to the fusion of media across disciplines.
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