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“Garth’s in-depth and intimate ethnography portrays the shortcomings in Cuba’s welfare system, and the profound consequences for the way people eat.” —Megan A. Carney, author of The Unending Hunger Food in Cuba follows Cuban families as they struggle to maintain a decent quality of life in Cuba’s faltering, post-Soviet welfare state by looking at the social and emotional dimensions of food access. Based on extensive fieldwork with families in Santiago de Cuba, Hanna Garth examines Cuban families’ attempts to acquire and assemble “a decent meal,” unraveling the household dynamics, community interactions, and individual reflections on everyday life in today’s Cuba. With the...
Images That Move is concerned with how images take place in wider worlds: how they move around, via processes of transmission and uptake, but, equally importantly, how they move their audiences affectively. Images play a significant part in projects of "poetic world-making" and political transformation. They participate in the production of commensuration or of incommensurability, enact moments of prophecy or exposure, and attract or repel spectators' attention. Images move, then, but not just as they wish, and any examination of images in motion must also recognise the blockages and breakdowns that prevent their movement as well as the enframings or "stickinesses" that trap them in particul...
In Swim Pretty, Jennifer A. Kokai reveals the influential role of aquatic spectacles in shaping cultural perceptions of aquatic ecosystems in the United States over the past century.
Examines acts of showing--from dog shows to striptease--to understand and theorize instances of heightened performance in everyday life as well as on the stage
The world responded with horror to ISIS's campaign of destruction of cultural heritage across the Middle East, including with calls for an international response to prevent such damage. At the same time, newspapers and screens were filled with images of human destruction, devastated cities, and thousands of refugees fleeing the conflict. This juxtaposition caused a backlash against those voicing their concerns about the destruction of ancient ruins, popularly framed as dispute about 'stone versus lives'. In the face of so much human suffering, it can seem inappropriate to worry about anything but the urgent, basic needs of people. Heritage and War addresses this issue within the context of a...
In an era of warming relations between the US and Cuba, this book updates the conversation about Cuban America by revealing how this community has changed over the past 25 years. Albert Sergio Laguna investigates the generational shifts and tensions in a Cuban America where the majority is now made up of those who have arrived since the 1990s and those born in the US. To probe these changes, Laguna examines the aesthetic and social logics of a wide range of popular culture forms originating in Miami and Cuba from the 1970s through the 2010s. They include the stand-up comedy of performers like Alvarez Guedes, festivals, a media distribution network in Cuba called el paquete, morning radio sho...
This collection examines Cuban cultural production during the Special Period of the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Contributors address the cultural forms; and the associated ethics and practices of labour, leisure, and bureaucratic organization that arose in the transformation of the socialist cultural infrastructure.
Shows how the earliest representations of Jewish characters on American stages mirrored treatment of Jewish Americans outside the playhouse
The twenty-first century is already riddled with protests demanding social justice, and in every instance, young people are leading the charge. But in addition to protesters who take to the streets with handmade placards are young adults who engage in less obvious change-making tactics. In Speaking Truths, sociologist Valerie Chepp goes behind-the-scenes to uncover how spoken word poetry—and young people’s participation in it—contributes to a broader understanding of contemporary social justice activism, including this generation’s attention to the political importance of identity, well-being, and love. Drawing upon detailed observations and in-depth interviews, Chepp tells the story...