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Desert Song
by Laekan Zea KempA family joins the music of the Texas desert night in this tale of tradition and memory from Pura Belpré Honor author Laekan Zea Kemp.It starts with a soft tapping,Uncle Eduardo drumming hishands against his dusty jeans.As the blush of sunset gives way to night in the desert, coyotes, cicadas, and barn owls emerge, each calling out to the moon. Watching from their porch, the family joins the song. One by one, each relative offers their drums, flute, maracas, strings, and voices. They sing with the insects, birds, snakes and toads; and they sing with their ancestors, an audience glittering in the stars overhead. With each strum of passed-down instruments, memories renew, and those gone are alive and near again.Desert Song hums and chimes with all the music a front porch and the desert beyond can hold. Pura Belpré Honor author Laekan Zea Kemp&’s masterfully stirring text dances through Beatriz Gutierrez Hernandez&’s enchanting and dynamic artwork. Readers will be left with the soothing sense that when creativity flourishes, the past is never out of reach, and the bonds that matter never break.Simultaneously published in Spanish as Canción del desierto.
Desi Divas: Political Activism in South Asian American Cultural Performances
by Christine L. GarloughDesi Divas: Political Activism in South Asian American Cultural Performances is the product of five years of field research with progressive activists associated with the School for Indian Languages and Cultures (SILC), South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), the feminist dance collective Post Natyam, and the grassroots feminist political organization South Asian Sisters. Christine L. Garlough explores how traditional cultural forms may be critically appropriated by marginalized groups and used as rhetorical tools to promote deliberation and debate, spur understanding and connection, broaden political engagement, and advance particular social identities. Within this framework she examines how these performance activists advocate a political commitment to both justice and care, to both deliberative discussion and deeper understanding. To consider how this might happen in diasporic performance contexts, Garlough weaves together two lines of thinking. One grows from feminist theory and draws upon a core literature concerning the ethics of care. The other comes from rhetoric, philosophy, and political science literature on recognition and acknowledgment. This dual approach is used to reflect upon South Asian American women's performances that address pressing social problems related to gender inequality, immigration rights, ethnic stereotyping, hate crimes, and religious violence. Case study chapters address the relatively unknown history of South Asian American rhetorical performances from the early 1800s to the present. Avant-garde feminist performances by the Post Natyam dance collective appropriate women's folk practices and Hindu goddess figures make rhetorical claims about hate crimes against South Asian Americans after 9/11. In Yoni ki Bat (a South Asian American version of The Vagina Monologues) a progressive performer transforms aspects of the Mahabharata narrative to address issues of sexual violence, such as incest and rape. Throughout the volume, Garlough argues that these performers rely on calls for acknowledgment that intertwine calls for justice and care. That is, they embed their testimony in traditional cultural forms to invite interest, reflection, and connection.
Design for Living: Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne
by Margot PetersFrom the much-admired biographer of Charlotte Brontë, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, and the Barrymores ("Margot Peters is surely now . . . our foremost historian of stage make-believe"--Leon Edel), a new biography of the most famous English-speaking acting team of the twentieth century. Individually, they were recognized as extraordinary actors, each one a star celebrated, imitated, sought after. Together, they were legend. The Lunts. A name to conjure with. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne worked together so imaginatively, so seamlessly onstage that they seemed to fuse into one person. Offstage, they brawled so famously and raucously over every detail of every performance that they inspired the musical Kiss Me, Kate. At home on Broadway, in London's West End, touring the United States and Great Britain, and even playing "the foxhole circuit" of World War II, the Lunts stunned, moved, and mystified audiences for more than four decades. They were considered to be a rarefied taste, but when they toured Texas in the 1930s, the audience threw cowboy hats onto the stage. Their private life was equally fascinating, as unusual as the one they led in public. Friends like the critic Alexander Woollcott (whom Edna Ferber once described as "the little New Jersey Nero who thinks his pinafore is a toga"), Noël Coward, Laurette Taylor, and Sidney Greenstreet received lifelong loyalty and hospitality. Ten Chimneys, their country home in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin, "is to performers what the Vatican is to Catholics," Carol Channing once said. "The Lunts are where we all spring from. " In this new biography, Margot Peters catches the magic of Lunt and Fontanne--their period, their work, their intimacy and its contradictions--with candor, delicacy, intelligence, and wit. She writes about their personal and creative choices as deftly as she captures their world, from their meeting (backstage, naturally)--when Fontanne was a young actress in the first flush of stardom and Lunt a lanky midwesterner who came in the stage door, bowed to her elaborately, lost his balance, and fell down the stairs--and the early days when an unknown and very hungry Noël Coward lived in a swank hotel in a room the size of a closet and cadged meals at their table to the telegram the famous couple once sent to a movie mogul, turning down a studio contract worth a fortune ("We can be bought, my dear Mr. Laemmle, but we can't be bored"). We follow the Lunts through triumphs in plays such as The Guardsman, The Taming of the Shrew, and Design for Living; through friendships and feuds; through the intricate way they worked with such playwrights and directors as S. N. Behrman, Robert Sherwood, Giraudoux, Dürrenmatt, Peter Brook, and with each other. Margot Peters captures the gallantry of two remarkably gifted people who lived for their art and for each other. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were once described as an "amazing duet of intelligence and gaiety. " Margot Peters re-creates the fun and the fireworks. From the Hardcover edition.
Design for Motion
by Austin ShawPlumb the depths of core motion design fundamentals and harness the essential techniques of this diverse and innovative medium. Combine basic art and design principles with creative storytelling to create compelling style frames, design boards, and motion design projects. Here, in one volume, Austin Shaw covers all the principles any serious motion designer needs to know in order to make their artistic visions a reality and confidently produce compositions for clients, including: Illustration techniques Typography Compositing Cinematography Incorporating 3D elements Matte painting Concept development, and much more Lessons are augmented by illustrious full color imagery and practical exercises, allowing you to put the techniques covered into immediate practical context. Industry leaders and pioneers, including Karin Fong, Bradley G Munkowitz (GMUNK), Will Hyde, Erin Sarofsky, Danny Yount, and many more, contribute their professional perspectives, share personal stories, and provide visual examples of their work. Additionally, a robust companion website (www.focalpress.com/cw/shaw) features project files, video tutorials, bonus PDFs, and rolling updates to keep you informed on the latest developments in the field.
Design is Storytelling
by Ellen LuptonA playbook for creative thinking, created for contemporary students and practitioners working across the fields of graphic design, product design, service design and user experience. Design Is Storytelling explores the psychology of visual perception from a narrative point of view. Presenting dozens of tools and concepts in a lively, visual manner, this book will help any designer amplify the narrative power of their work. Use this book to stir emotions, build empathy, articulate values and convey action; to construct narrative arcs and create paths through space; integrate form and language; evaluate a project’s storytelling power; and to write and deliver strong narratives.
Designing Menus with Encore DVD
by John SkidgelDesigned to complement the Encore DVD software documentation, this full-color book begins with a brief description of the DVD specification, then introduces readers to DVD authoring concepts such as menu creation, timeline construction, navigation, transcoding, and disc mastering. Readers learn how to plan and manage projects, and how to master the workflows between Encore and other Adobe applications such as Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects to create well-structured and engaging menus. The companion DVD contains documents for planning a DVD, tutorial projects, and a library of royalty free, customizable, templates.
Designing Presence: Entering Towards Vivencia
by Jorge Crecis Bridget LappinDesigning Presence offers a unique insight into the training that has helped people around the world to cultivate more presence in both professional and personal settings. It explains the research behind the method of Towards Vivencia, shares stories of how it has been implemented and offers practical exercises to apply it in any context. Presence is something that is often talked about but is difficult to pin down. We have all experienced moments when we felt one with what we are doing and with our environment. However, this feeling is usually fleeting and we don’t know when or how we will experience it again. Towards Vivencia is the first methodology of its kind to train performers to locate and replicate that specific state of consciousness associated with presence and peak performance. Based on over 20 years of experience, combined with research in anthropology, philosophy and the latest advances in neuroscience, Towards Vivencia enables performers to become fully engaged with their experience in order to operate at their highest possible level. This book aims to equip readers with the ability to actively design their experiences and create lasting changes not only in how they approach performance but also how they approach their everyday lives.
Designing Sound: Audiovisual Aesthetics in 1970s American Cinema
by Jay BeckThe late 1960s and 1970s are widely recognized as a golden age for American film, as directors like Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Martin Scorsese expanded the Hollywood model with aesthetically innovative works. As this groundbreaking new study reveals, those filmmakers were blessed with more than just visionary eyes; Designing Sound focuses on how those filmmakers also had keen ears that enabled them to perceive new possibilities for cinematic sound design. Offering detailed case studies of key films and filmmakers, Jay Beck explores how sound design was central to the era's experimentation with new modes of cinematic storytelling. He demonstrates how sound was key to many directors' signature aesthetics, from the overlapping dialogue that contributes to Robert Altman's naturalism to the wordless interludes at the heart of Terrence Malick's lyricism. Yet the book also examines sound design as a collaborative process, one where certain key directors ceded authority to sound technicians who offered significant creative input. Designing Sound provides readers with a fresh take on a much-studied era in American film, giving a new appreciation of how artistry emerged from a period of rapid industrial and technological change. Filled with rich behind-the-scenes details, the book vividly conveys how sound practices developed by 1970s filmmakers changed the course of American cinema.
Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction
by Cathy Whitlock The Art Directors GuildWho can forget the over-the-top, white-on-white, high-gloss interiors through which Fred Astaire danced in Top Hat? The modernist high-rise architecture, inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, in the adaptation of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead? The lavish, opulent drawing rooms of Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence? Through the use of film design—called both art direction and production design in the film industry—movies can transport us to new worlds of luxury, highlight the ornament of the everyday, offer a vision of the future, or evoke the realities of a distant era. In Designs on Film, journalist and interior designer Cathy Whitlock illuminates the often undercelebrated role of the production designer in the creation of the most memorable moments in film history. Through a lush collection of rare archival photographs, Whitlock narrates the evolving story of art direction over the course of a century—from the massive Roman architecture of Ben-Hur to the infamous Dakota apartment in Rosemary's Baby to the digital CGI wonders of Avatar's Pandora.Drawing on insights from the most prominent Hollywood production designers and the historical knowledge of the venerable Art Directors Guild, Whitlock delves into the detailed process of how sets are imagined, drawn, built, and decorated. Designs on Film is the must-have look book for film lovers, movie buffs, and anyone looking to draw interior design inspiration from the constructions and confections of Hollywood. Whitlock lifts the curtain on movie magic and celebrates the many ways in which art direction and set design allow us to lose ourselves in the diverse worlds showcased on the big screen.
Desire After Dark: Contemporary Queer Cultures and Occultly Marvelous Media
by Andrew J. OwensSince the 1960s, the occult in film and television has responded to and reflected society's crises surrounding gender and sexuality.In Desire After Dark, Andrew J. Owens explores media where figures such as vampires and witches make use of their supernatural knowledge in order to queer what otherwise appears to be a normative world. Beginning with the global sexual revolutions of the '60s and moving decade by decade through "Euro-sleaze" cinema and theatrical hardcore pornography, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the popularity of New Age religions and witchcraft, and finally the increasingly explicit sexualization of American cable television, Owens contends that occult media has risen to prominence during the past 60 years as a way of exposing and working through cultural crises about queerness. Through the use of historiography and textual analyses of media from Bewitched to The Hunger, Owens reveals that the various players in occult media have always been well aware that non-normative sexuality constitutes the heart of horror's enduring appeal. By investigating vampirism, witchcraft, and other manifestations of the supernatural in media, Desire After Dark confirms how the queer has been integral to the evolution of the horror genre and its persistent popularity as both a subcultural and mainstream media form.
Desire Unlimited
by Paul Julian SmithIn the last decade, Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar has grown from critical darling of the film circuit scene to mainstream success. Frequently comic, often deadly serious, always visually glorious, his recent films range from the Academy Award-winning drama Talk to Her to the 2011 horror film The Skin I Live In. Though they are ambitious and varied in style, each is a distinctive innovation on the themes that have defined his work. Desire Unlimited is the classic film-by-film assessment of Almodóvar's oeuvre, now updated to include his most recent work. Still the only study of its kind in English, it vigorously confirms its original argument that beneath Almodóvar's genius for comedy and visual pleasure lies a filmmaker whose work deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness.From the Hardcover edition.
Desires for Reality: Radicalism and Revolution in Western European Film
by Benjamin HalliganAs with many aspects of European cultural life, film was galvanized and transformed by the revolutionary fervor of 1968. This groundbreaking study provides a full account of the era's cinematic crises, innovations, and provocations, as well as the social and aesthetic contexts in which they appeared. The author mounts a genuinely fresh analysis of a contested period in which everything from the avant-garde experiments of Godard, Pasolini, Schroeter, and Fassbinder to the "low" cinematic genres of horror, pornography, and the Western reflected the cultural upheaval of youth in revolt-a cinema for the barricades.
Desnudo
by Jomari GoysoJomari Goyso, el renombrado artista de televisión, estilista de las estrellas y una de las personalidades más influyentes de Univision, narra su historia por primera vez, sin filtros, pero con un tono de honestidad y transparencia. El conocido estilista, experto en imagen y comentarías de belleza y moda, y presentador de TV, Jomari Goyso, abre su alma en el libro Desnudo, a través del cual cuenta su historia, desde sus orígenes en una sencilla granja de La Rioja, España, hasta su ascenso como una de las más influyentes voces de la moda en la televisión hispana, y todo lo que hubo en el medio. Reconocido por sus firmes opiniones respecto de la moda de las estrellas, así como por su estrecha relación con la comunidad hispana, Jomari ha capturado la atención del público, realizando trabajado con artistas como Penélope Cruz, Salma Hayek, Kim Kardashian, las hermanas Kendall y Kylie Jenner, Morgan Freeman, Naomi Campbell, Kristen Bell, Kate del Castillo y una larga lista de otros rostros famosos. Su libro autobiográfico es una exploración de los miedos y complejos que han acompañado su vida y cómo ha aprendido a vencerlos. Con candidez y transparencia, Jomari habla de su vida en la granja, de su amada abuela Rosalía, de las fuertes expectativas de su padre con respecto al futuro de su hijo, así como de sus problemas de sobrepeso y su alma herida por el bullying, sus fuertes problema de autoestima y sus fallidos intentos de suicidio. Igualmente revela sus primeros días en Madrid y muchos otros capítulos de su vida que le permitieron ir reconociendo su talento y marcaron su camino, dirigiéndolo así a la carrera que lo convertiría a la larga en una reconocida personalidad entre la comunidad latina de los Estados Unidos. Jomari habla de Dios y de fe; de despedidas duras y de encuentros providenciales; de la contradicción de ser estilista de grandes estrellas y tener que dormir en un tejado. Si algo desnuda Jomari es la cruda realidad de un estilo de vida basado en las apariencias, del cual él también fue víctima, pero de forma más importante, desnuda también el anhelo del alma de ser apreciado y amado, y revela uno de sus mayores descubrimientos al codearse con los famosos de Hollywood por un lado, y la gente de todos los días en los callejones de Los Ángeles: el secreto de la verdadera belleza. Este libro invita a los lectores a encontrar el significado de la belleza a través de frases y reflexiones en la que Jomari expresa que la belleza interior supera a la belleza exterior. XX
Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls
by Susan SeidelmanThe funny and insightful first-person story of the trailblazing movie director of the 80s and 90s whose fearless punk drama, “Smithereens” became the first American indie film to compete at Cannes, and smash hit "Desperately Seeking Susan" led to a four-decade career in film. Starting out in the mid-70s, a time when few women were directing movies, Susan was determined to become a filmmaker. She longed to tell stories about the unrepresented characters she wanted to see on screen: unconventional women in unusual circumstances, needing to express themselves and maintain their autonomy. Her genre-blending films reflect a passion for classic Hollywood storytelling, mixed with a playful New Wave spirit, informed by her years living in downtown NYC. Seidelman continued to shape American pop culture well into the nineties, directing the pilot of the iconic TV series “Sex And The City,” focusing her sharp lens on the changing place of women in American society and helping to fundamentally reshape our self-image in ways that are still felt today.BOOK DETAILS:Raised in the safe cocoon of 1960s suburbia, Susan Seidelman wasn’t a misfit, an oddball, or an outlier. She was a “good-girl” with a little bit of “bad” hidden inside. A restless teenager, she dreamed of escape and reinvention, a theme that would play out in her films as well as in her own life. Because she loved stories, a high school guidance counselor suggested she become a librarian, but she had her sights set further afield. In 1973, she left the Philly suburbs, enrolled at NYU’s burgeoning graduate film school and moved to NYC’s Lower East Side. There, she found herself in the right place at the right time. New York City was falling apart, but out of that chaos came a burst of creative energy whose effects are still felt in American pop culture today. Downtown became a vibrant playground where film, music, performance and graffiti art cross-pollinated and where Seidelman chronicled the lives of the colorful misfits, oddballs, dreamers and schemers she met there.It’s all in DESPERATELY SEEKING SOMETHING. Seidelman not only has a keen perspective on the times she’s lived through -- from her Twiggy-obsessed girlhood, through the Women’s Lib movement of the early 70s, the punk scene of the late 70s, Madonna-mania of the 80s, to the dot-com “greed is good” 90s, and beyond--she tells great stories.
Destabilising Masculinism: Men’s Friendships and Social Change
by Brittany RalphThis book explores how two generations of relatively privileged Australian men have navigated the complex terrain of same-gender friendship across their lives, to offer both empirically unique and theoretically significant insights into the mechanics of social change in masculinities. Applying a feminist poststructuralist lens to data from in-depth interviews with 14 pairs of fathers and sons, it details how masculinist discourses of emotion and intimacy have governed the participants’ friendship practices at three chronological timepoints: fathers’ early lives and later lives, and sons’ early lives. A clear but complicated shift emerges, such that the commitment to stoicism and self-reliance dominant in the fathers’ early lives has given way to a growing embrace of intimacy and emotional expression within their and their son's contemporary same-gender friendships. Engaging with key debates in the field of critical studies on men and masculinities (CSMM), this book offers an alternative to the conceptualisation of this positive change as either representative of a holistic disintegration of hegemonic structures, or a superficial behavioural shift that is largely inconsequential to the gender order. Rather, it illustrates that the increasing influence of feminist, queer-inclusion and therapeutic discourse has destabilised masculinism in the context of men’s friendships, offering men an alternative subject position that allows care, expressiveness and intimacy. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Masculinity Studies.
Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical
by Kelly KesslerA critical survey of Hollywood film musicals from the 1960s to the present. This book examines how, in the post-studio system era, cultural, industrial and stylistic circumstances transformed this once happy-go-lucky genre into one both fluid and cynical enough to embrace the likes of Rocky Horror and pave the way for Cannibal! and Moulin Rouge!.
Destination Disneyland Resort with Disabilities: Guidebook and Planner
by Sue Buchholz Edna Wooldridge&“While the focus is how to maneuver Disneyland, the larger message is about maneuvering life—and not leaving anyone behind. This is one beautiful book.&” —Judith Sherven, PhD and Jim Sniechowski, PhD, bestselling authors of Living Your Love Every Day Destination Disneyland Resort with Disabilities is a guidebook that will assist people with disabilities to enjoy their experience to the fullest at Disneyland Resort. Families of children who have disabilities, adults who have disabilities, caregivers, travel agents, and tour guides will all benefit from the information in this guidebook. This is the only Disneyland Resort book written on this topic. This book includes planning your trip ahead of time, detailed packing lists with special needs in mind, traveling to California, places to stay, transportation around the Anaheim area, Disney amenities, special needs accommodations for every attraction, and a special section for families with children who have autism or sensory processing disorders. &“Thanks for writing such a great book. You have done an excellent job! The details are amazing. Congratulations on a great resource! I learned many things I did not know.&” —Sandy Silveria, proprietor, We&’re Outta Here Travel
Destination London: German-Speaking Emigrés and British Cinema, 1925-1950 (Film Europa #6)
by Tim Bergfelder Christian CargnelliThe legacy of emigrés in the British film industry, from the silent film era until after the Second World War, has been largely neglected in the scholarly literature. Destination London is the first book to redress this imbalance. Focusing on areas such as exile, genre, technological transfer, professional training and education, cross-cultural exchange and representation, it begins by mapping the reasons for this neglect before examining the contributions made to British cinema by emigré directors, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, set designers, and composers. It goes on to assess the cultural and economic contexts of transnational industry collaborations in the 1920s, artistic cosmopolitanism in the 1930s, and anti-Nazi propaganda in the 1940s.
Destined for Greatness: Passions, Dreams, and Aspirations in a College Music Town
by Michael RamirezPursuing the dream of a musical vocation—particularly in rock music—is typically regarded as an adolescent pipedream. Music is marked as an appropriate leisure activity, but one that should be discarded upon entering adulthood. How then do many men and women aspire to forge careers in music upon entering adulthood? In Destined for Greatness, sociologist Michael Ramirez examines the lives of forty-eight independent rock musicians who seek out such non-normative choices in a college town renowned for its music scene. He explores the rich life course trajectories of women and men to explore the extent to which pathways are structured to allow some, but not all, individuals to fashion careers in music worlds. Ramirez suggests a more nuanced understanding of factors that enable the pursuit of musical livelihoods well into adulthood.
Destino: Londres (Serie Yes, we dance #Volumen 2)
by Esther Sanz¡Acompaña a Martina, Sofía, Liu y Violeta en esta nueva aventura en el corazón de Londres! Martina y sus amigas viajan hasta la capital inglesa para participar en el maratón de baile que va a celebrarse en el Hyde Park. El grupo que salga ganador de esta competición será el que aparecerá en el nuevo videoclip del grupo del momento, los BB Brothers. No será nada fácil, pero las chicas lo tienen claro... ¡Están dispuestas a darlo todo!
Destructive Sublime: World War II in American Film and Media (War Culture)
by Tanine AllisonThe American popular imagination has long portrayed World War II as the “good war,” fought by the “greatest generation” for the sake of freedom and democracy. Yet, combat films and other war media complicate this conventional view by indulging in explosive displays of spectacular violence. Combat sequences, Tanine Allison argues, construct a counter-narrative of World War II by reminding viewers of the war’s harsh brutality.Destructive Sublime traces a new aesthetic history of the World War II combat genre by looking back at it through the lens of contemporary video games like Call of Duty. Allison locates some of video games’ glorification of violence, disruptive audiovisual style, and bodily sensation in even the most canonical and seemingly conservative films of the genre. In a series of case studies spanning more than seventy years—from wartime documentaries like The Battle of San Pietro to fictional reenactments like The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan to combat video games like Medal of Honor—this book reveals how the genre’s aesthetic forms reflect (and influence) how American culture conceives of war, nation, and representation itself.
Detecting the South in Fiction, Film, and Television (Southern Literary Studies)
by Scott Romine Megan Abbott Jacob Agner Ace Atkins R. Bruce Brasell Phoebe Bronstein Gina Caison Claire Cothren James A. Crank Dominiqua Dickey Leigh Anne Duck Greg Herren Bob Hodges Suzanne Leonard Sarah Leventer Kristopher Mecholsky Yajaira M. Padilla Jacqueline Pinkowitz Harriet Pollack Riche Richardson Zackary Vernon Randall WilhelmDetecting the South in Fiction, Film, & Television, edited by Deborah E. Barker and Theresa Starkey, examines the often-overlooked and undervalued impact of the U.S. South on the origins and development of the detective genre and film noir. This wide-ranging collection engages with ongoing discussions about genre, gender, social justice, critical race theory, popular culture, cinema, and mass media. Focusing on the South, these essays uncover three frequently interrelated themes: the acknowledgment of race as it relates to slavery, segregation, and discrimination; the role of land as a source of income, an ecologically threatened space, or a place of seclusion; and the continued presence of the southern gothic in recurring elements such as dilapidated plantation houses, swamps, family secrets, and the occult. Twenty-two critical essays probe how southern detective narratives intersect with popular genre forms such as neo-noir, hard-boiled fiction, the dark thriller, suburban noir, amateur sleuths, journalist detectives, and television police procedurals. Alongside essays by scholars, Detecting the South in Fiction, Film, and Television presents pieces by authors of detective and crime fiction, including Megan Abbott and Ace Atkins, who address the extent to which the South and its artistic traditions influenced their own works. By considering the diversity of authors and characters associated with the genre, this accessible collection provides an overdue examination of the historical, political, and aesthetic contexts out of which the southern detective narrative emerged and continues to evolve.
Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film
by Philippa GatesFinalist for the 2012 Edgar Award in the Best Critical/Biographical Category presented by the Mystery Writers of AmericaIn this extensive and authoritative study of over 300 films, Philippa Gates explores the "woman detective" figure from her pre-cinematic origins in nineteenth century detective fiction through her many incarnations throughout the history of Hollywood cinema. Through the lens of theories of gender, genre, and stardom and engaging with the critical concepts of performativity, masquerade, and feminism, Detecting Women analyzes constructions of the female investigator in the detective genre and focuses on the evolution of her representation from 1929 to today. While a popular assumption is that images of women have become increasingly positive over this period, Gates argues that the most progressive and feminist models of the female detective exist in mainstream film's more peripheral products such as 1930's B-picture and 1970's Blaxploitation films. Offering revisions and new insights into peripheral forms of mainstream film, Gates explores this space that allows a fantasy of resolution of social anxieties about crime and, more interestingly, gender, in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The author's innovative, engaging, and capacious approach to this important figure within feminist film history breaks new ground in the field of gender and film studies.
The Detective's Companion in Crime Fiction: A Study in Sidekicks (Crime Files)
by Lucy Andrew Samuel SaundersThis book aims to establish the position of the sidekick character in the crime and detective fiction literary genres. It re-evaluates the traditional view that the sidekick character in these genres is often overlooked as having a small, generic or singular role—either to act as the foil to the detective in order to accentuate their own abilities at solving crimes, or else to simply tell the story to the reader. Instead, essays in the collection explore the representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction. By incorporating forms such as children’s detective fiction, comics and graphic novels and film and television alongside the more traditional fare of novels and short stories, this book aims to break down the boundaries that sometimes exist between these forms, using the sidekick as a defining thread to link them together into a wider conceptual argument that covers a broad range of crime narratives.
Detoxing Masculinity in Anglophone Literature and Culture: In Search of Good Men
by Sara Martín M. Isabel SantaulàriaThis edited volume rethinks Masculinity Studies by breaking away from the notion of the perpetual crisis of masculinity. It argues that not enough has been done to distinguish patriarchy from masculinity and proposes to detox masculinity by offering a collection of positive representations of men in fictional and non-fictional texts. The editors show how ideas of hegemonic and toxic masculinity have been too fixed on the exploration of dominance and subservience, and too little on the men (and the male characters in fiction) who behave following other ethical, personal and socially accepted patterns. Bringing together research from different periods and genres, this collection provides broad, multidisciplinary insights into alternative representations of masculinity.