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"Sociologist Chelsea Mary Elise Johnson uses interviews, media analysis, and participant observation in beauty shops, online blogs, and natural hair meet-ups around the world to trace how Black women use natural hair culture to reimagine their bodies, the beauty industry, and racial politics"--
How Black women celebrate their natural hair and uproot racialized beauty standards Hair is not simply a biological feature; it’s a canvas for expression. Hair can be cut, colored, dyed, covered, gelled, waxed, plucked, lasered, dreadlocked, braided, and relaxed. Yet, its significance extends beyond mere aesthetics. Hair can carry profound moral, spiritual, and cultural connotations, serving as a reflection of one’s beliefs, heritage, and even political stance. In Natural, Chelsea Mary Elise Johnson delves into the complex world surrounding Black women’s hair, and offers a firsthand look into the kitchens, beauty shops, conventions, and blogs that make up the twenty-first century natur...
Sports Plays is a volume about sports in the theatre and what it means to stage sports. The chapters in this volume examine sports plays through a range of critical and theoretical approaches that highlight central concerns and questions both for sports and for theatre. The plays cut across boundaries and genres, from Broadway-style musicals to dramas to experimental and developmental work. The chapters examine and trouble the conventions of staging sports as they open possibilities for considering larger social and cultural issues and debates. This broad range of perspectives make the volume a compelling resource for students and scholars of sport, theatre, and performance studies whose interests span feminism, sexuality, politics, and race.
Performance in Popular Culture reveals the intricate relationship between performance and popular culture by exploring how theatrical conventions and dramaturgical tropes have informed the way the social is constructed for popular consumption. Staged as a series of case studies, this book considers the diverse ways the social is imagined and produced in live and mediated performances, in images and texts, in interactive experiences and in cultural institutions. By looking at performance in popular culture, the world we live in becomes more visible, open to investigation and (perhaps) to change. Performance in Popular Culture engages a wide range of disciplines and theoretical frameworks: performance, theatre and cultural studies; comparative literature and media studies; gender and sexuality, critical race and post-colonial theories. Designed for accessibility at an undergraduate level, the case studies make use of visual materials, moving images and texts that are readily available to lecturers and students, to scholars and to the general public.
A handy book about intersectionality that depicts the nuances of identity and embraces difference as a source of community.
Sexuality, religion and faith often have complex and conflicting interactions, on both personal and societal levels. Numerous studies have been conducted on queer subjects, but they have predominantly focused on ‘Western’ expressions of faith and queer identities. This book contributes to the wider scholarship on queer subjects by drawing on actual lived experiences of self-identifying gay and bisexual men in Malaysia. It discusses what we can learn from the realities of their lives that intersect with their religious, spiritual, theological or humanistic values in an Asian context. Analysed within the critical frameworks of queer theory and queer sexual theology, this study divulges the...
In Out of Bounds, feminist Helen Lenskyj presents an insightful examination of the links between women's participation in sports and the control of their reproductive capacity and sexuality. She identifies the female frailty myth, the illusion of male athletic superiority and the concept of compulsory heterosexuality as powerful determinants of "masculinity" and "femininity" in the realm of sport. Looking at developments from the 1880's to the 1980's, Lenskyj discusses medical views of women's health and physical potential and examines the social attitudes and practices that keep girls and women from participating in the full range of sports and physical activities. Topics include contact sports, self-defence, fitness, bodybuilding and women-only sport. Photographs, memorabilia and eye-opening information covering 100 years reveals the missing links between women, sport and sexuality.