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Essay on Exoticism
DIVA series of notes on alterity written by Victor Segalen between 1904 and 1918, and here translated into English for the first time, anticipates the post-colonial critique of colonial theory./div
Popular Bohemia
A radical reconceptualization of modernism, this book traces the appearance of the modern artist to the Paris of the 1830s and links the emergence of an enduring modernist aesthetic to the fleeting forms of popular culture. Contrary to conventional views of a private self retreating from history and modernity, Popular Bohemia shows us the modernist as a public persona parodying the stereotypes of commercial mass culture. Here we see how the modern artist—alternately assuming the roles of the melodramatic hero, the urban flâneur, the female hysteric, the tribal primitive—created his own version of an expressive, public modernity in opposition to an increasingly repressive and conformist ...
Postliberalization Indian Novels in English
“Postliberalization Indian Novels in English: Politics of Global Reception and Awards” is a critical handbook that focuses on trends in contemporary Indian novels and discusses the global reception of these works. The volume provides a systematic approach to the study of Indian novelists that have not been (with certain exceptions) extensively examined.
The Havana Habit
Cuba, an island 750 miles long, with a population of about 11 million, lies less than 100 miles off the U.S. coast. Yet the island’s influences on America’s cultural imagination are extensive and deeply ingrained. In the engaging and wide-ranging Havana Habit, writer and scholar Gustavo Pérez Firmat probes the importance of Havana, and of greater Cuba, in the cultural history of the United States. Through books, advertisements, travel guides, films, and music, he demonstrates the influence of the island on almost two centuries of American life. From John Quincy Adams’s comparison of Cuba to an apple ready to drop into America’s lap, to the latest episodes in the lives of the “comic comandantes and exotic exiles,” and to such notable Cuban exports as the rumba and the mambo, cigars and mojitos, the Cuba that emerges from these pages is a locale that Cubans and Americans have jointly imagined and inhabited. The Havana Habit deftly illustrates what makes Cuba, as Pérez Firmat writes, “so near and yet so foreign.”
The Invention of the Visible
We live in a mediatized society, a society one could call a society of images. Working at the intersection of aesthetics and politics, Patrick Vauday challenges the dominant assumptions of this society and its disposition towards images. This challenge does not advocate repudiating images altogether, but rather entreats us to see them in a different light. This new way of thinking of images affords a glimpse into what images do and produce, rather than viewing them as copies or mere representations. Images are dynamic agents that are active in our world rather than simply empty reflections of it. Rethinking the concept of the image in this fashion opens up new ways of interpreting and engaging with works of art. This reconsideration of the role of images in society is the starting point for a new politics that considers the multiple and complex efficacies by which images act, circulate and are created.
In the Footsteps of Flora Tristan
In the Footsteps of Flora Tristan is the first ever study devoted to Jules Puech (1879–1957), and is a double biography that examines his life’s work on Flora Tristan (1803–1844), feminist and socialist. It begins by examining newly found press reports of Flora Tristan during her lifetime and subsequently, then positions Puech’s discovery of her, as a postgraduate student in Paris in the 1900s. It continues with an account of how he embarked on the first in-depth biography published in 1925. Puech was unmatched in his expertise as a writer on Flora Tristan having discovered her papers through his numerous political connections and having become a historian of Proudhon’s legacy on t...
The Art of Stereography
Three-dimensional stereoviews were wildly popular in the mid-19th century. Yet public infatuation fueled highbrow scorn, and even when they fell from favor, critics retained their disdain. Thus a dazzling body of photographic work has unjustly been buried. This book explores how compelling images were made by carefully combining subject matter, composition, lighting, tonality, blocking and depth. It draws upon the fine arts, the mass media, humanities, history, and even geology. Throughout, overlooked photographers are celebrated, such as the one who found extraordinary visual parallels within nature, anticipating Cezanne and Seurat--or the one who refused to play favorites during a bitter war and found humanity on both sides--or the one who took a favorite American glen and found menace all about. Stereographers were actually more like film directors or television producers than large format photographers: the best ones fused artistry with commercial appeal.
Experiencing Stravinsky
Hear the name “Igor Stravinsky” and the first thing that comes to mind is a composer of ponderous, “serious” music. But did you know that Stravinsky lived much of his life in Hollywood? That he collaborated on musical projects with Pablo Picasso and George Balanchine? That his work subtly espoused deeply held political views and reflected key literary influences? That he was not only interested in the modern communication technologies of his time—sound recording, radio, television, even early computers—but wrote music that echoed their impact? In Experiencing Stravinsky, music historian Robin Maconie takes a fresh approach to understanding this great composer’s works, explainin...
Narrating the Slave Trade, Theorizing Community
In Narrating the Slave Trade, Theorizing Community, Raphaël Lambert explores the notion of community in conjunction with literary works concerned with the transatlantic slave trade. The recent surge of interest in both slave trade and community studies concurs with the return of free-market ideology, which once justified and facilitated the exponential growth of the slave trade. The motif of unbridled capitalism recurs in all the works discussed herein; however, community, whether racial, political, utopian, or conceptual, emerges as a fitting frame of reference to reveal unsuspected facets of the relationships between all involved parties, and expose the ramifications of the trade across time and space. Ultimately, this book calls for a complete reevaluation of what it means to live together.
