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A Locker Room of Her Own: Celebrity, Sexuality, and Female Athletes
by Jack LuleFemale athletes are too often perceived as interlopers in the historically male-dominated world of sports. Obstacles specific to women are of particular focus in A Locker Room of Her Own. Race, sexual orientation, and the similar qualities ancillary to gender bear special exploration in how they impact an athlete's story. Central to this volume is the contention that women in their role as inherent outsiders are placed in a unique position even more complicated than the usual experiences of inequality and discord associated with race and sports. The contributors explore and critique the notion that in order to be considered among the pantheon of athletic heroes one cannot deviate from the traditional demographic profile, that of the white male. These essays look specifically and critically at the nature of gender and sexuality within the contested nexus of race, reputation, and sport. The collection explores the reputations of iconic and pioneering sports figures and the cultural and social forces that helped to forge their unique and often problematic legacies. Women athletes discussed in this volume include Babe Didrikson Zaharias, the women of the AAGPBL, Billie Jean King, Venus and Serena Williams, Marion Jones, Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, Sheryl Swoopes, Florence Griffith Joyner, Roberta Gibb and Kathrine Switzer, and Danica Patrick.
Ed Brubaker: Conversations (Conversations with Comic Artists Series)
by Terrence R. WandtkeEd Brubaker (b. 1966) has emerged as one of the most popular, significant figures in art comics since the 1990s. Most famous as the man who killed Captain America in 2007, Brubaker's work on company-owned properties such as Batman and Captain America and creator-owned series like Criminal and Fatale live up to the usual expectations for the superhero and crime genres. And yet, Brubaker layers his stories with a keen self-awareness, applying his expansive knowledge of American comic book history to invigorate his work and challenge the dividing line between popular entertainment and high art. This collection of interviews explores the sophisticated artist's work, drawing upon the entire length of the award-winning Brubaker's career. With his stints writing Catwoman, Gotham Central, and Daredevil, Brubaker advanced the work of crime comic book writers through superhero stories informed by hard-boiled detective fiction and film noir. During his time on Captain America and his series Sleeper and Incognito, Brubaker revisited the conventions of the espionage thriller. With double agents who lose themselves in their jobs, the stories expose the arbitrary superhero standards of good and evil. In his series Criminal, Brubaker offered complex crime stories and, with a clear sense of the complicated lost world before the Comics Code, rejected crusading critic Fredric Wertham's myth of the innocence of early comics. Overall, Brubaker demonstrates his self-conscious methodology in these often little-known and hard-to-find interviews, worthwhile conversations in their own right as well as objects of study for both scholars and researchers.
The Starday Story: The House That Country Music Built (American Made Music Series)
by Nathan D. GibsonAssociation of Recorded Sound Collections Awards for ExcellenceBest Research in Record Labels–Certificate of Merit (2012)The Starday Story: The House That Country Music Built is the first book entirely dedicated to one of the most influential music labels of the twentieth century. In addition to creating the largest bluegrass catalogue throughout the 1950s and '60s, Starday was also known for its legendary rockabilly catalogue, an extensive Texas honky-tonk outpouring, classic gospel and sacred recordings, and as a Nashville independent powerhouse studio and label.Written with label president and co-founder Don Pierce, this book traces the label's origins in 1953 through the 1968 Starday-King merger. Interviews with artists and their families, employees, and Pierce contribute to the stories behind famous hit songs, including "Y'all Come," "A Satisfied Mind," "Why Baby Why," "Giddy-up Go," "Alabam," and many others. Gibson's research and interviews also shed new light on the musical careers of George Jones, Arlie Duff, Willie Nelson, Roger Miller, the Stanley Brothers, Cowboy Copas, Red Sovine, and countless other Starday artists. Conversations with the children of Pappy Daily and Jack Starns provide a unique perspective on the early days of Starday, and extensive interviews with Pierce offer an insider glance at the country music industry during its golden era.Weathering through the storm of rock and roll and, later, the Nashville Sound, Starday was a home to traditional country musicians and became one of the most successful independent labels in American history. Ultimately, The Starday Story is the definitive record of a country music label that played an integral role in preserving our nation's musical heritage.
Understanding Childhood Obesity
by J. Clinton Smith M.D.Almost fourteen percent of American children over age six and twelve percent of adolescents are obese, more than double the rate of thirty years ago. Although there are countless diet and weight loss books on the market, few of them explain in jargon-free terms the basic factors, the body processes that can lead to childhood obesity, and the research currently underway to combat this growing health risk. In Understanding Childhood Obesity, Dr. J. Clinton Smith has created a comprehensive guide covering nearly every field of obesity research. He explores causes and methods of control, the body's physical and chemical make-up, prevention strategies, new treatments and behavior modifications, and future research possibilities. Smith closely examines the genetic and environmental factors that can lead to childhood obesity. For parents, he answers the all-important question of whether an obese child needs help, and he outlines traditional diet and exercise treatments as well as aggressive medical and surgical techniques. He also introduces readers to the “continuous care and problem-solving model” that has proved valuable in pediatric treatment clinics. Featured are: An explanation of how obesity is identified by using a child's height and weight. A frank discussion of the health consequences of obesity. A review of how the body breaks down food for energy and how and why the body stores energy. An examination of the powerful environmental factors affecting childhood weight gain. A thorough gathering of the treatments and research, and a view of exciting new discoveries in genetics and body chemistry.
The Culture and Politics of Contemporary Street Gang Memoirs
by Josephine MetcalfThe publication of Sanyika Shakur's Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member in 1993 generated a huge amount of excitement in literary circles—New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani deemed it a “shocking and galvanic book”—and set off a new publishing trend of gang memoirs in the 1990s. The memoirs showcased tales of violent confrontation and territorial belonging but also offered many of the first journalistic and autobiographical accounts of the much-mythologized gang subculture. In The Culture and Politics of Contemporary Street Gang Memoirs, Josephine Metcalf focuses on three of these memoirs—Shakur’s Monster; Luis J. Rodriguez’s Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.; and Stanley “Tookie” Williams’s Blue Rage, Black Redemption—as key representatives of the gang autobiography. Metcalf examines the conflict among violence, thrilling sensationalism, and the authorial desire to instruct and warn competing within these works. The narrative arcs of the memoirs themselves rest on the process of conversion from brutal, young gang bangers to nonviolent, enlightened citizens. Metcalf analyzes the emergence, production, marketing, and reception of gang memoirs. Through interviews with Rodriguez, Shakur, and Barbara Cottman Becnel (Williams’s editor), Metcalf reveals both the writing and publishing processes. This book analyzes key narrative conventions, specifically how diction, dialogue, and narrative arcs shape the works. The book also explores how these memoirs are consumed. This interdisciplinary study—fusing literary criticism, sociology, ethnography, reader-response study, and editorial theory—brings scholarly attention to a popular, much-discussed, but understudied modern expression.
Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century
by John C. Tibbetts James M. WelshDouglas Fairbanks and the American Century brings to life the most popular movie star of his day, the personification of the Golden Age of Hollywood. At his peak, in the teens and twenties, the swashbuckling adventurer embodied the new American Century of speed, opportunity, and aggressive optimism. The essays and interviews in this volume bring fresh perspectives to his life and work, including analyses of films never before examined. Also published here for the first time in English is a first-hand production account of the making of Fairbanks's last silent film, The Iron Mask,/i>. Fairbanks (1883-1939) was the most vivid and strenuous exponent of the American Century, whose dominant mode after 1900 was the mass marketing of a burgeoning democratic optimism, at home and abroad. During those first decades of the twentieth century, his satiric comedy adventures shadow-boxed with the illusions of class and custom. His characters managed to combine the American Easterner's experience and pretension and the Westerner's promise and expansion. As the masculine personification of the Old World aristocrat and the New World self-made man--tied to tradition yet emancipated from history--he constructed a uniquely American aristocrat striding into a new age and sensibility. This is the most complete account yet written of the film career of Douglas Fairbanks, one of the first great stars of the silent American cinema and one of the original United Artists (comprising Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith). John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh's text is especially rich in its coverage of the early years of the star's career from 1915 to 1920 and covers in detail several films previously considered lost.
SoulStirrers: Black Art and the Neo-Ancestral Impulse
by H. Ike Okafor-NewsumIn SoulStirrers, H. Ike Okafor-Newsum describes the birth and development of an artistic movement in Cincinnati, Ohio, identified with the Neo-Ancestral impulse. The Neo-Ancestral impulse emerges as an extension of the Harlem Renaissance, the Negritude Movement, and the Black Arts Movement, all of which sought to re-represent the "primitive" and "savage" black and African in new terms. Central to the dominant racial framework has always been the conception that the black subject was not only inferior, but indeed incapable of producing art. The Neo-Ancestral impulse posed a challenge to both existing form and content. Like its intellectual antecedents, the movement did not separate art from life and raised a central question, one that the "soul stirrers" of Cincinnati are engaging in their artistic productions. Okafor-Newsum defines collapsing of the sacred and the profane as a central tendency of African aesthetics, transformed and rearticulated here in the Americas.In this volume, the artistic productions ask readers to consider the role of those creating and viewing this art by attempting to shift the way in which we view the ordinary. The works of these artists, therefore, are not only about the survival of African-derived cultural forms, though such remains a central effect of them. These extraordinary pieces, installations, and movements consistently refer to the cultural reality of the Americas and the need for political and intellectual transformation. They constitute important intellectual interventions that serve as indispensable elements in the redefinition and reinterpretation of our society.Featuring numerous color illustrations and profiles of artists, this volume reveals exciting trends in African American art and in the African diaspora more broadly.
Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books
by Jean-Paul GabillietOriginally published in France and long sought in English translation, Jean-Paul Gabilliet's Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books documents the rise and development of the American comic book industry from the 1930s to the present. The book intertwines aesthetic issues and critical biographies with the concerns of production, distribution, and audience reception, making it one of the few interdisciplinary studies of the art form. A thorough introduction by translators and comics scholars Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen brings the book up to date with explorations of the latest innovations, particularly the graphic novel. The book is organized into three sections: a concise history of the evolution of the comic book form in America; an overview of the distribution and consumption of American comic books, detailing specific controversies such as the creation of the Comics Code in the mid-1950s; and the problematic legitimization of the form that has occurred recently within the academy and in popular discourse. Viewing comic books from a variety of theoretical lenses, Gabilliet shows how seemingly disparate issues—creation, production, and reception—are in fact connected in ways that are not necessarily true of other art forms. Analyzing examples from a variety of genres, this book provides a thorough landmark overview of American comic books that sheds new light on this versatile art form.
Southern Splendor: Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South
by Marc R. Matrana Robin S. Lattimore Michael W. KitchensFew things evoke thoughts and memories of the past more than a house from a bygone era, and few places are identified and symbolized more by historic dwellings than the American South. Plantation houses built with columned porticos and wide porches, stout chimneys, large rooms, and sweeping staircases survive as legacies of both a storied and troubled past. These homes are at the heart of a complex web of human relationships that have shaped the social and cultural heritage of the region for generations. Despite their commanding appearance, the region's plantation houses have proven to be fragile relics of history, vulnerable to decay, neglect, and loss. Today, only a small percentage of the South's antebellum treasures survive. In Southern Splendor: Saving Architectural Treasures of the Old South, historians Marc R. Matrana, Robin S. Lattimore, and Michael W. Kitchens explore almost fifty houses built before the Civil War that have been authentically restored or preserved. Methodically examined are restoration efforts that preserve not only homes and other structures, but also the stories of those living in or occupying those homes. The authors discuss the challenges facing specific plantation homes and their preservation. Featuring over 275 stunning photographs, as well as dozens of firsthand accounts and interviews with those involved in the preservation of these historic properties, Southern Splendor describes the leading role the South has played, since the nineteenth century, in the historic preservation movement in this country.
A Companion to Literary Evaluation (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture)
by Richard Bradford Madelena Gonzalez Kevin De OrnellasThe first critical survey of its kind devoted solely to literary evaluation Companion to Literary Evaluation bridges the gap between the non-academic literary world, where evaluation is deeply ingrained, and the world of academia, where evaluation is rarely considered. Encouraging readers to formulate and articulate arguments that balance instinctive judgment and reasoned assessment, this unique volume addresses key issues regarding literary values from the perspective of analytical aesthetics and the philosophy of literature. Bringing together a diverse panel of contributors, the Companion explores competing theories of literary evaluation, the reasons for evaluating theater and lyric poetry in performance, the question of value in literary theory, debates over Modernism's negative impact on literature, the possibility of evaluating aesthetic beauty through scientific and formalist methods, the nature and status of literary evaluation as a branch of criticism, aesthetics in applied and community theater, evaluation outside academia, the perils of extreme relativism and subjectivism in literary evaluation, evaluation in schools and much more. Contributors question and reassess the reputations of authors across the canon, from Shakespeare and James Shirley to T S Eliot, Kathleen Raine, Virginia Woolf, Joyce and Beckett amongst others. The Companion: Illustrates how seemingly divergent perspectives on the artistic qualities and value of literature can sometimes overlap Covers the standard range of literary genres, while including others such as unfinished novels, freelance journalism, and lyric poetry in performance Offers methodologies that demonstrate why literature can be treated as something different from other forms of language and therefore assessed as art Explores the importance of maintaining clarity and specificity in the evaluation of literary works Companion to Literary Evaluation is a must-read for undergraduates, research students, lecturers, and academics in search of fresh perspectives on standard literary critical issues.
Science and Engineering of Polyphenols: Fundamentals and Industrial Scale Applications
by Chandrabhan VermaSCIENCE AND ENGINEERING OF POLYPHENOLS A groundbreaking synthesis of rich and varied polyphenol research Polyphenols are a class of compounds, found naturally in fruits and vegetables, whose flexibility and ubiquity give them a vast range of applications in pharmaceutical, environmental, and biological research and development. They play a role in diagnosing and preventing diseases from diabetes to Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s and have been integral in food preservation. The field of polyphenols research has the potential to touch virtually every area of organic production. Science and Engineering of Polyphenols provides a current and comprehensive overview of this field of research and its latest developments. Long overdue as a ‘state of the field’ synthesis for an area of study that has seen rapid development in recent years, this book promises to be a milestone. Science and Engineering of Polyphenols readers will also find: Treatment of both natural and synthetic polyphenols Detailed discussion of topics including synthesis and characterization of polyphenols, electronic and molecular structure of polyphenols, and many more Supplementary material including websites of interest and updates on the latest research and development Science and Engineering of Polyphenols is ideal for scholars, industrialists, and policymakers in any of the myriad areas of academia and industry touched by polyphenol research.
Stahlbau-Kalender 2024: Schwerpunkte: Eurocode 3 - neue Anwendungsnormen (Stahlbau-Kalender-eBundle (Ernst & Sohn))
by Herausgegeben Von Ulrike KuhlmannDer Stahlbau-Kalender 2024 dokumentiert wiederum verlässlich und aus erster Hand den aktuellen Stand der Stahlbau-Regelwerke. In diesem Sinne werden, neben der Aktualisierung des Kommentars zu Eurocode 3 Teil 1-1 "Allgemeine Bemessungsregeln", vor dem Hintergrund der Entwicklung der zweiten Eurocode-Generation die wesentlichen strukturellen und technischen Änderungen vorgestellt und erläutert. Die neuen Entwürfe zu den Eurocode 3 Teilen 1-11 und 1-14 sowie Teil 2 und Teil 5 werden auszugsweise in deutscher Übersetzung wiedergegeben und die Änderungen gegenüber den derzeit gültigen Fassungen dokumentiert. Die zugrunde liegenden aktuellen Forschungsergebnisse werden erläutert. Zahlreiche Anwendungs- und Berechnungsbeispiele fördern das Verständnis der neuen Regelungen. Darüber hinaus werden Hinweise und Beispiele zur Berechnung typischer Stahlkonstruktionen, wie z. B. Windenergieanlagen oder Strukturen aus Winkelprofilen mit geschraubten Anschlüssen, gegeben. In bewährter Weise bewegen sich alle Kapitel nahe an der Ingenieurpraxis und enthalten zahlreiche Beispiele. Das Buch ist ein Wegweiser für die richtige Berechnung und Konstruktion im gesamten Stahlbau mit neuen Themen in jeder Ausgabe. Herausragende Autoren aus der Industrie, aus Ingenieurbüros und aus der Forschung vermitteln Grundlagen und geben aktuelle praxisbezogene Einführungen.
Your AI Survival Guide: Scraped Knees, Bruised Elbows, and Lessons Learned from Real-World AI Deployments
by Sol RashidiPractical and proven AI deployment strategies for non-technical business leaders In Your AI Survival Guide: Scraped Knees, Bruised Elbows, and Lessons Learned from Real-World AI Deployments, business executive and technologist Sol Rashidi delivers an insightful and practical discussion of how to deploy artificial intelligence in your company. Having helped IBM launch Watson in 2011, Sol has first-hand knowledge of the ups, downs, and change management intricacies that can help you with a successful deployment beyond all the AI hype. She walks you through various frameworks for how to establish your AI strategy, pick your use cases, prepare your non-technology teams, and overcome the most common obstacles standing in the way of successfully implementing AI in your business, based on her many years of deploying AI projects in businesses, which few can claim. Sol demystifies the topic of artificial intelligence in a way that business leaders and business owners—and those who want to be more business minded—can easily understand. The book also offers: Real-world use cases from ten different industries, including retail, healthcare, energy, insurance, agriculture, and more; ten different functions, including supply chain, manufacturing, procurement, legal, and more; and personal stories, anecdotes, and insights gained from implementations Techniques for facilitating executive-level buy-in for your most ambitious and promising AI strategies Jargon-free and accessible language that simplifies a seemingly complicated topic And practical advice that’s not based on AI hype Perfect for executives, managers, directors, founders, entrepreneurs, practitioners and other non-technical business leaders, Your AI Survival Guide is the ideal guide to help you deploy artificial intelligence in your business and increase your chances of success whether your business goal is top-line growth, increased productivity, or efficiency gains without having to add headcount as the go-to answer.
Digital Signal Processing: Theory and Practice
by Maurice BellangerDIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING Understand the future of signal processing with the latest edition of this groundbreaking text Signal processing is a key aspect of virtually all engineering fields. Digital techniques enormously expand the possible applications of signal processing, forming a part of not only conventional engineering projects but also data analysis and artificial intelligence. There are considerable challenges raised by these techniques, however, as the gulf between theory and practice can be wide; the successful integration of digital signal processing techniques requires engineers capable of bridging this gulf. For years, Digital Signal Processing has met this need with a comprehensive guide that consistently connects abstract theory with practical applications. Now fully updated to reflect the most recent developments in this crucial field, the tenth* edition of this seminal text promises to foster a broader understanding of signal processing among a new generation of engineers and researchers. Readers of the new edition of Digital Signal Processing will also find: Exercises at the end of each chapter to reinforce key conceptsA new chapter covering digital signal processing for neural networksHandy structure beginning with undergraduate-level material before moving to more advanced concepts in the second half Digital Signal Processing is a must-own for students, researchers, and industry professionals in any of the hundreds of fields and subfields that make use of signal processing algorithms. *This is the English language translation of the French original Traitement Numérique du Signal 10th edition by Maurice Bellanger © Dunod 2022 and is the 4th edition in English.
Phlebotomy Essentials with Navigate Premier Access
by Ruth E. McCallPhlebotomy Essentials, Eighth Edition provides accurate, up-to-date, and practical information and instruction in phlebotomy procedures and techniques, along with a comprehensive background in phlebotomy theory and principles. It is appropriate for use as an instructional text or as a reference for those who wish to update skills or study for national certification. Enhanced with new images, a more efficient design, and new contributions from leading subject matter experts, this updated edition details how today's phlebotomists work in an approach optimized for how today's students learn. Combined with an optional Workbook, Exam Review book, and updated digital courseware, the latest edition of Phlebotomy Essentials represents a cornerstone of preparation for a successful career in phlebotomy.
Managing Complex Cases in Gastroenterology: A Curbside Guide
by W. Harley Sobin Kia Saeian Patrick SanvansonThis book was designed to help gastroenterologists take care of their patients with challenging problems. Every day in practice we face patients with issues that are not simple to master. Oftentimes we search out some guidance from “the experts,” and, if they are available, we will curbside them, either by phone or in person. This text is written from the standpoint of a community gastroenterologist curbsiding his academic cohorts with his challenging cases. We present a patient with a difficult GI problem and ask the academic expert how he, or she, would manage the case. We have provided over a hundred examples of problem cases and asked the experts at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) for help in their management. These cases run the gamut, including general GI, motility disorders, inflammatory bowel disease, advanced therapeutics, hepatology and functional GI disorders. The main objective of this book is to compile the most clinically useful questions, present them to experts who frequently deal with these problems, and then wrap up their knowledge within one clinically useful text. If a community gastroenterologist had endless access to an academic panel of GI experts, these are the questions they might ask. There are hundreds of useful clinical pearls between the pages of this book which should help anyone taking care of patients with GI problems. While the text may be targeted particularly toward practicing community gastroenterologists, it certainly can be of benefit to GI fellows in training, academic gastroenterologists, and general internists and surgeons with a strong interest in gastroenterology as well as APPs.
Functional Analysis: An Introduction to Metric Spaces, Hilbert Spaces, and Banach Algebras
by Joseph MuscatThis textbook provides an introduction to functional analysis suitable for lecture courses to final year undergraduates or beginning graduates.Starting from the very basics of metric spaces, the book adopts a self-contained approach to Banach spaces and operator theory that covers the main topics, including the spectral theorem, the Gelfand transform, and Banach algebras. Various applications, such as least squares approximation, inverse problems, and Tikhonov regularization, illustrate the theory. Over 1000 worked examples and exercises of varying difficulty present the reader with ample material for reflection.This new edition of Functional Analysis has been completely revised and corrected, with many passages rewritten for clarity, numerous arguments simplified, and a good amount of new material added, including new examples and exercises. The prerequisites, however, remain the same with only knowledge of linear algebra and real analysis of a singlevariable assumed of the reader.
Africa in the American Imagination: Popular Culture, Racialized Identities, and African Visual Culture
by Carol MageeIn the American world, the presence of African culture is sometimes fully embodied and sometimes leaves only a trace. Africa in the American Imagination: Popular Culture, Racialized Identities, and African Visual Culture explores this presence, examining Mattel's world of Barbie, the 1996 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and Disney World, each of which repackages African visual culture for consumers. Because these cultural icons permeate American life, they represent the broader U.S. culture and its relationship to African culture. This study integrates approaches from art history and visual culture studies with those from culture, race, and popular culture studies to analyze this interchange. Two major threads weave throughout. One analyzes how the presentation of African visual culture in these popular culture forms conceptualizes Africa for the American public. The other investigates the way the uses of African visual culture focuses America's own self-awareness, particularly around black and white racialized identities. In exploring the multiple meanings that “Africa” has in American popular culture, Africa in the American Imagination argues that these cultural products embody multiple perspectives and speak to various sociopolitical contexts: the Cold War, civil rights, and contemporary eras of the United States; the apartheid and post-apartheid eras of South Africa; the colonial and postcolonial eras of Ghana; and the European era of African colonization.
Beyond Bombshells: The New Action Heroine in Popular Culture
by Jeffrey A. BrownBeyond Bombshells analyzes the cultural importance of strong women in a variety of current media forms. Action heroines are now more popular in movies, comic books, television, and literature than they have ever been. Their spectacular presence represents shifting ideas about female agency, power, and sexuality. Beyond Bombshells explores how action heroines reveal and reconfigure perceptions about how and why women are capable of physically dominating roles in modern fiction, indicating the various strategies used to contain and/or exploit female violence. Focusing on a range of successful and controversial recent heroines in the mass media, including Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games books and movies, Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo novels and films, and Hit-Girl from the Kick-Ass movies and comic books, Jeffrey A. Brown argues that the role of action heroine reveals evolving beliefs about femininity. While women in action roles are still heavily sexualized and objectified, they also challenge preconceived myths about normal or culturally appropriate gender behavior. The ascribed sexuality of modern heroines remains Brown's consistent theme, particularly how objectification intersects with issues of racial stereotyping, romantic fantasies, images of violent adolescent and preadolescent girls, and neoliberal feminist revolutionary parables. Individual chapters study the gendered dynamics of torture in action films, the role of women in partnerships with male colleagues, young women as well as revolutionary leaders in dystopic societies, adolescent sexuality and romance in action narratives, the historical import of nonwhite heroines, and how modern African American, Asian, and Latina heroines both challenge and are restricted by longstanding racial stereotypes.
Conversations with Edmund White (Literary Conversations Series)
by Will Brantley and Nancy McGuire RocheConversations with Edmund White brings together twenty-one interviews with an author known for chronicling gay culture. Ranging from a 1982 discussion of his early works to a new and unpublished interview conducted in 2016, these interviews highlight White's predilections, his major achievements, and the pivotal moments of his long, varied career. Since the 1973 publication of his first novel, Forgetting Elena, Edmund White (b. 1940) has become a major figure in literature and gay culture. White is, however, more than just a celebrated gay writer. He is an international man of letters, and his work crosses several genres. White's fiction includes an autobiographical trilogy—A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room Is Empty, and The Farewell Symphony—along with more recent novels such as Jack Holmes and His Friend and Our Young Man. White's love of French literature and culture is evident in biographies of Jean Genet, Marcel Proust, and Arthur Rimbaud, and his antipathy to American Puritanism suffuses his collected essays and memoirs and is on full display in two early nonfiction works that helped define the era of gay liberation: The Joy of Gay Sex, coauthored with Charles Silverstein, and States of Desire: Travels in Gay America. A professor of creative writing at Princeton University, White has earned many distinctions, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Lambda Literary Foundation's Pioneer Award. White has been a generous interviewer, sharing his time and insights not only with major publications such as The Paris Review, but also with smaller online publications for more limited audiences. A lively commentator, White has never been afraid to speak his mind, even when the result has been public feuds with literary peers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Triumph of Good Will: How Terry Sanford Beat a Champion of Segregation and Reshaped the South
by John DrescherIn the spring of 1960 two talented, capable men, each with great passion and conviction, opposed each other in a pivotal governor's race that was to shake North Carolina and change southern politics forever. Both Terry Sanford and I. Beverly Lake were Democrats in the one-party South of that era. Yet they were different in almost every other way. Lake, a middle-aged law professor, was committed to segregation. Sanford, an ambitious young politician and lawyer, believed in expanding opportunities for all citizens. In their run-off Lake wanted the contest to be a referendum on preserving segregation. Sanford's platform rested on the improvement of public schools. It was a heated struggle that would bind them together for the rest of their lives. With unparalleled access to both sides and an objective correspondent's hindsight view, John Drescher has written the biography of a campaign that set the winning strategy for many who followed, and of a winning candidate, a governor rated as one of the finest of the twentieth century. Sanford, the moderate, won, and his victory is an oddity, for in the civil rights period from 1957 to 1973 only twice in the South did racial moderates defeat strong segregationists in a governor's race. In a gamble that almost cost Sanford the election, he became the first major politician in the Bible Belt to endorse the Catholic John F. Kennedy for president. In the November vote he defeated his Republican opponent in what was then the closest North Carolina governor's race of the century. His win validated his belief in the triumph of good will among North Carolina's people. Sanford became a bold, aggressive governor of unusual energy and creativity. His school program added teachers and dramatically raised teacher pay. He helped establish a statewide system of community colleges and started an anti-poverty fund later emulated by LBJ as a model for the War on Poverty. He was the first southern governor to call for employment without regard to race or creed. Sanford became the model for other southern governors who stressed education and a moderate stand on race relations. He influenced other gubernatorial candidates across Dixie -- Jim Hunt in his own state, William Winter in Mississippi, Dick Riley in South Carolina, Bill Clinton in Arkansas. The effects of that 1960 race continue to be felt in North Carolina, in the South, and across the nation.
Embroidered Stories: Interpreting Women's Domestic Needlework from the Italian Diaspora
by Edvige Giunta and Joseph SciorraFor Italian immigrants and their descendants, needlework represents a marker of identity, a cultural touchstone as powerful as pasta and Neapolitan music. Out of the artifacts of their memory and imagination, Italian immigrants and their descendants used embroidering, sewing, knitting, and crocheting to help define who they were and who they have become. This book is an interdisciplinary collection of creative work by authors of Italian origin and academic essays. The creative works from thirty-seven contributors include memoir, poetry, and visual arts while the collection as a whole explores a multitude of experiences about and approaches to needlework and immigration from a transnational perspective, spanning the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. At the center of the book, over thirty illustrations represent Italian immigrant women's needlework. The text reveals the many processes by which a simple object, or even the memory of that object, becomes something else through literary, visual, performance, ethnographic, or critical reimagining. While primarily concerned with interpretations of needlework rather than the needlework itself, the editors and contributors to Embroidered Stories remain mindful of its history and its associated cultural values, which Italian immigrants brought with them to the United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina and passed on to their descendants.
Flight Risk: Memoirs of a New Orleans Bad Boy (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)
by James Nolan"James Nolan looks back unsparingly on a time few writers have faced with such clarity and compassion. There's suspense and beauty on every page . . ."--Andrei CodrescuFlight Risk takes off as a page-turning narrative with deep roots and a wide wingspan. James Nolan, a fifth-generation New Orleans native, offers up an intimate portrait both of his insular hometown and his generation's counterculture. Flight runs as a theme throughout the book, which begins with Nolan's escape from the gothic mental hospital to which his parents committed the teenaged poet during the tumult of 1968. This breakout is followed by the self-styled revolutionary's hair-raising flight from a Guatemalan jail, and years later, by the author's bolt from China, where he ditched his teaching position and collectivist ideals. These Houdini-like feats foreshadow a more recent one, how he dodged biblical floods in a stolen school bus three days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.Nolan traces these flight patterns to those of his French ancestors who fled to New Orleans in the mid-nineteenth century, established a tobacco business in the French Quarter, and kept the old country alive in their Creole demimonde. The writer describes the eccentric Seventh Ward menagerie of the extended family in which he grew up, his early flirtation with extremist politics, and a strong bond with his freewheeling grandfather, a gentleman from the Gilded Age. Nolan's quest for his own freedom takes him to the flower-powered, gender-bending San Francisco of the sixties and seventies, as well as to an expatriate life in Spain during the heady years of that nation's transition to democracy. Like the prodigal son, he eventually returns home to live in the French Quarter, around the corner from where his grandmother grew up, only to struggle through the aftermath of Katrina and the city's resurrection.Many of these stories are entwined with the commentaries of a wry flaneur, addressing such subjects as the nuances of race in New Orleans, the Disneyfication of the French Quarter, the numbing anomie of digital technology and globalization, the challenges of caring for aging parents, Creole funeral traditions, how to make a soul-searing gumbo, and what it really means to belong.
Mississippi Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s (American Made Music Series)
by Harry Bolick Stephen T. AustinWhile in the Mississippi State Archives tracking down Abbott Ferriss's beautiful photographic portraits of musicians from 1939, author Harry Bolick discovered, to his amazement, a treasure trove of earlier fiddle tunes in manuscript form. Since then he has worked to understand how this collection came to exist and be set aside. With Stephen T. Austin, Bolick has transcribed the subsequent 1939 audio recordings. Mississippi Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s presents the history of the collecting work, with over three hundred of the tunes and songs and a beautiful selection of period photographs. In the summer of 1936, over one hundred fiddle tunes, many of them unique, along with thousands of songs, were collected and notated throughout a large part of Mississippi. Roughly 130 novice field workers captured beautiful tunes and tantalizing fragments. As a body of work, it is an unparalleled and fascinating snapshot of vernacular music as heard in Mississippi in the early part of the recorded era. However, this music was unpublished and forgotten. In 1939, building on the contacts made three years earlier, Herbert Halpert led one of the last and best executed of the WPA folklore projects which recorded audio performances in Mississippi. Some, but not all, of those distinctive fiddle tune recordings have been published. Additionally, through cassette tape copies passed hand to hand, some of these distinctive tunes have regained currency and popularity among contemporary fiddlers. In Mississippi Fiddle Tunes and Songs from the 1930s, this great music is at last widely available. Selected tunes in this book are available from Document Records. Get Harry Bolick's CD with 22 tunes from the book, more information, a video, and free downloads of the sound files at www.mississippifiddle.com.
The Rock Cried Out (Banner Books)
by Ellen DouglasThis story of the modern South, of love denied and love fulfilled, is a powerful account of the potential for violence that underlies this country's passionate history. Ellen Douglas, a native of Mississippi and a prize-winning novelist of rare distinction, reveals the turbulent changes that rocked the South in the sixties and continue to this day. No event is predictable in this powerful novel. A young man who has spent several years in the North returns to his native Mississippi seeking rural peace. But solitude is not to be his, for soon he is caught up again in a traumatic event that happened seven years before in 1964—the death in an auto accident of the beautiful young cousin whom he loved. As the story unfolds, the people who were involved in that senseless tragedy reveal their part in it, and as they do, the reader becomes intensely involved not only in their lives but in what it means to be Black or white in the modern South.