The third of five volumes of new scholarship on American movie conventions. The 19 essays explore cinematic representations of such material items as food, weapons, clothing, tools, technology, and art and literature. Not illustrated. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $13.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

One of five volumes devoted to exploring some of the peripheral aspects of American films. Essays describe the depiction of such geographical and conceptual places as Arizona and the Arabic world, such public and ritual spaces as churches and western saloons, and such private arenas and commonplace spaces as the men's room and poolsides. Not illustrated. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $18.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

As one of our country's major social problems, homelessness is often in the news. The media tend to portray the homeless as drunk, stoned, crazy, or sick individuals—a portrayal that is only partly accurate and represents an obstacle to our understanding of the wider social implications of this complex issue. This edited collection examines the various ways—both verbal and visual—in which the homeless have been portrayed by the media from the 1980s to the present day. The contributors apply different frameworks, ranging from phenomenology to culture studies, to analyze the characteristics, implications, and consequences of the stories and images disseminated by the media.

When teenagers began hanging out at the mall in the early 1980s, the movies followed. Multiplex theaters offered teens a wide array of perspectives on the coming-of-age experience, as well as an escape into the alternative worlds of science fiction and horror. Youth films remained a popular and profitable genre through the 1990s, offering teens a place to reflect on their evolving identities from adolescence to adulthood while simultaneously shaping and maintaining those identities. Drawing examples from hundreds of popular and lesser-known youth-themed films, Timothy Shary here offers a comprehensive examination of the representation of teenagers in American cinema in the 1980s and 1990s. He focuses on five subgenres—school, delinquency, horror, science, and romance/sexuality—to explore how they represent teens and their concerns, how these representations change over time, and how youth movies both mirror and shape societal expectations and fears about teen identities and roles. He concludes that while some teen films continue to exploit various notions of youth sexuality and violence, most teen films of the past generation have shown an increasing diversity of adolescent experiences and have been sympathetic to the particular challenges that teens face.

American culture changed radically over the course of the 1960s, and the culture of Hollywood was no exception. The film industry began the decade confidently churning out epic spectacles and lavish musicals, but became flummoxed as new aesthetics and modes of production emerged, and low-budget youth pictures like Easy Rider became commercial hits. New Constellations: Movie Stars of the 1960s tells the story of the final glory days of the studio system and changing conceptions of stardom, considering such Hollywood icons as Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman alongside such hallmarks of youth culture as Mia Farrow and Dustin Hoffman. Others, like Sidney Poitier and Peter Sellers, took advantage of the developing independent and international film markets to craft truly groundbreaking screen personae. And some were simply “famous for being famous,” with celebrities like Zsa Zsa Gabor and Edie Sedgwick paving the way for today’s reality stars.

"Explores how American movies have portrayed poor and homeless people from the silent era to today"--Front jacket flap.

Woody Allen has accomplished that which no American filmmaker in the modern era has or perhaps ever will: directing to date 49 films (47 full-length theatrical releases, 1 short film in an anthology, and 1 television film), writing 42 of those films (and co-writing the remaining 7) and acting in 29 of them. Collectively, these films have earned Allen 4 Oscars (1 for Best Director; 3 for Best Screenplay), as well as another 6 Academy Award nominations for Best Director, 13 for Best Screenplay and 1 for Best Actor. Actors, members of his film staff, and his producers have received 7 Oscars and another 20 nominations. All told, his films have garnered 132 awards and another 209 nominations from American and international bodies. Historical Dictionary of Woody Allen contains a chronology, an introduction, a filmography, an appendix, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 600 cross-referenced entries on the actors, actresses, cinematographers, editors, designers, and producers he’s worked with as well as his films and awards. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Woody Allen.

Gift Giving brings together 21 scholars from a variety of disciplines - including consumer behavior, communications, and sociology - who are dedicated to the understanding of what motivates gift selection, presentation, and incorporation of a gift into a person's life. The text explores the role of values in gift exchange; the influence of ethnic, generational, and subcultural differences in gift exchange; how gifts to the self are manifested; and new directions and topics in gift giving. In these essays, gift giving occasions are probed for the meanings that can be illuminated with respect to this pervasive, yet not always positive, phenomenon. For anyone interested in gift giving behavior, this volume should prove both enlightening and provocative.

The word “shantytown” conjures images of crowded slums in developing nations. Though their history is largely forgotten, shantytowns were a prominent feature of one developing nation in particular: the United States. Lisa Goff restores shantytowns to the central place they once occupied in America’s urban landscape, showing how the basic but resourcefully constructed dwellings of America’s working poor were not merely the byproducts of economic hardship but potent assertions of self-reliance. In the nineteenth century, poor workers built shantytowns across America’s frontiers and its booming industrial cities. Settlements covered large swaths of urban property, including a twenty-block stretch of Manhattan, much of Brooklyn’s waterfront, and present-day Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. Names like Tinkersville and Hayti evoked the occupations and ethnicities of shantytown residents, who were most often European immigrants and African Americans. These inhabitants defended their civil rights and went to court to protect their property and resist eviction, claiming the benefits of middle-class citizenship without its bourgeois trappings. Over time, middle-class contempt for shantytowns increased. When veterans erected an encampment near the U.S. Capitol in the 1930s President Hoover ordered the army to destroy it, thus inspiring the Depression-era slang “Hoovervilles.” Twentieth-century reforms in urban zoning and public housing, introduced as progressive efforts to provide better dwellings, curtailed the growth of shantytowns. Yet their legacy is still felt in sites of political activism, from shanties on college campuses protesting South African apartheid to the tent cities of Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.