"Examines the wide-ranging influence of games and play on the development of modern art in the twentieth century"--Provided by publisher.

The Drug Wars in America, 1940–1973 argues that the US government has clung to its militant drug war, despite its obvious failures, because effective control of illicit traffic and consumption were never the critical factors motivating its adoption in the first place. Instead, Kathleen J. Frydl shows that the shift from regulating illicit drugs through taxes and tariffs to criminalizing the drug trade developed from, and was marked by, other dilemmas of governance in an age of vastly expanding state power. Most believe the 'drug war' was inaugurated by President Richard Nixon's declaration of a war on drugs in 1971, but in fact his announcement heralded changes that had taken place in the two decades prior. Frydl examines this critical interval of time between regulation and prohibition, demonstrating that the war on drugs advanced certain state agendas, such as policing inner cities or exercising power abroad.

The authors of the Fifth Edition of Human Relations and Corrections contend that effective relationships are the key component to correctional successes. The inmate, judge, probation officer, correctional officer, counselor, cleric, warden/superintendent, and others interact to form critical relationships that can either enhance or detract from the rehabilitative and correctional potential of incarcerated offenders, as well as those on probation and parole. This thought-provoking collection of case studies enables the reader to assume each of these roles, engages them in ethical analysis of real-life situations, and immerses them in the complex decision-making processes necessary to solve the problems encountered in today's correctional process.

This book looks at the political aspects of comedy and how humor is shaped by unconscious social and psychological factors within a particular cultural and historical context. Updating Freud’s work on jokes, Robert Samuels argues that any universal model of comedy must take into account the role played by distinct genres, which are themselves determined by particular political psychopathologies. In looking at contemporary comedy, we encounter a structure that is often seen throughout the world: in response to what is experienced as a Leftist super-ego censoring thoughts and speech and a Libertarian Right which promotes free speech as the ultimate value. Within this dynamic, comedians seeking to make their audience laugh by poking fun at sensitive and taboo subjects, intentionally and unintentionally, these humorists present an alternative to Left-wing political correctness and identity politics. Contemporary comedians then cannot help but to cater to Right-wing politics since the Right is centered on loudly rejecting the cultural dictations of the Left.

This volume examines the relationship between occultism and Surrealism, specifically exploring the reception and appropriation of occult thought, motifs, tropes and techniques by Surrealist artists and writers in Europe and the Americas, from the 1920s through the 1960s. Its central focus is the specific use of occultism as a site of political and social resistance, ideological contestation, subversion and revolution. Additional focus is placed on the ways occultism was implicated in Surrealist discourses on identity, gender, sexuality, utopianism and radicalism.

Spectacle is usually considered a superficial form of politics, which tries to distract and deceive a passive audience. It is difficult to see how this type of politics could be reconciled with the democratic requirement of active and informed agency. Rethinking the Spectacle re-examines the tension between spectacle and political agency in our hyper-mediated digital society. Devin Penner uses the theories and practices of Guy Debord and the Situationist International as a point of departure, offering both a critical review of Situationist ideas and a way to develop their radical democratic potential in the current political climate. Emphasizing the importance of thinking about the connection between spectacle and broader democratic processes, Rethinking the Spectacle also looks at various models of social and political organization and includes an in-depth assessment of the 2011 Occupy movement. Ultimately, Rethinking the Spectacle concludes that properly conceived spectacle can in fact mobilize the public for egalitarian purposes.

Eros and Oneness / Tamara H. Schenkenberg -- Elective Affinities: Hannah Wilke's Ceramics in Context / Glenn Adamson -- Needed Erase Her? Don't. / Connie Butler -- Daughter/Mother / Catherine Opie -- Ha-Ha-Hannah / Jeanine Oleson -- Cycling Through Gestures to Strike a Pose / Nadia Myre -- Play and Care / Hayv Kahraman -- Cindy Nemser and Hannah Wilke in Conversation, 1975.

Thinking Radical Democracy is an introduction to nine key political thinkers who contributed to the emergence of radical democratic thought in post-war French political theory: Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Pierre Clastres, Claude Lefort, Cornelius Castoriadis, Guy Debord, Jacques Rancière, Étienne Balibar, and Miguel Abensour. The essays in this collection connect these writers through their shared contribution to the idea that division and difference in politics can be perceived as productive, creative, and fundamentally democratic. The questions they raise regarding equality and emancipation in a democratic society will be of interest to those studying social and political thought or democratic activist movements like the Occupy movements and Idle No More.

This provocative study argues that some of the most inventive artwork of the 1890s was strongly influenced by the methods of experimental science and ultimately foreshadowed twentieth-century modernist practices. Looking at avant-garde figures such as Maurice Denis, Édouard Vuillard, August Strindberg, and Edvard Munch, Allison Morehead considers the conjunction of art making and experimentalism to illuminate how artists echoed the spirit of an increasingly explorative scientific culture in their work and processes. She shows how the concept of “nature’s experiments”—the belief that the study of pathologies led to an understanding of scientific truths, above all about the human mind and body—extended from the scientific realm into the world of art, underpinned artists’ solutions to the problem of symbolist form, and provided a ready-made methodology for fin-de-siècle truth seekers. By using experimental methods to transform symbolist theories into visual form, these artists broke from naturalist modes and interrogated concepts such as deformation, automatism, the arabesque, and madness to create modern works that were radically and usefully strange. Focusing on the scientific, psychological, and experimental tactics of symbolism, Nature’s Experiments and the Search for Symbolist Form demystifies the avant-garde value of experimentation and reveals new and important insights into a foundational period for the development of European modernism.