“The definitive work on Chinese television . . . A pioneering picture of CCTV and its crucial role in the contemporary Chinese political economy” (Robert W. McChesney, author of Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy). As China navigates the murky waters of a “third way” with liberal economic policies under a strict political regime, the surprising battleground for China’s future emerges in the country’s highest rated television network—China Central Television, or CCTV. With 16 internationally broadcast channels and over 1.2 billion viewers, CCTV is a powerhouse in conveying Chinese news and entertainment. The hybrid nature of the network has also transformed it into an unexpected site of discourse in a country that has little official space for negotiation. While CCTV programming is state sponsored—and censored—the popularity and profit of the station are determined by the people. And as the Chinese Communist Party seeks to exert its own voice on domestic and international affairs, the prospect of finding an amenable audience becomes increasingly paramount. Through a series of interviews with a fascinating cast of power players including a director of a special topic program that incited the 1989 student movement, current and past presidents of CCTV, and producers at the frontline of the network’s rapidly evolving role in Chinese culture, celebrated media analyst Ying Zhu unlocks a doorway to political power that has long been shrouded in mystery. “An indispensable guide to the Chinese media landscape.” —The New Inquiry “Up until Two Billion Eyes, the view of Chinese media has often been limited . . . Ying Zhu expands the periphery of our vision.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

As China navigates the murky waters of a 'third way' with liberal economic policies under a strict political regime, the surprising battleground for China's future emerges in the country's highest rated television network - China Central Television, or CCTV. With 16 internationally broadcast channels and over 1.2 billion viewers, CCTV is a powerhouse in conveying Chinese news and entertainment. The hybrid nature of the network has also transformed it into an unexpected site of discourse in a country that has little official space for negotiation.

The Architecture of Neoliberalism pursues an uncompromising critique of the neoliberal turn in contemporary architecture. This book reveals how a self-styled parametric and post-critical architecture serves mechanisms of control and compliance while promoting itself, at the same time, as progressive. Spencer's incisive analysis of the architecture and writings of figures such as Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schumacher, Rem Koolhaas, and Greg Lynn shows them to be in thrall to the same notions of liberty as are propounded in neoliberal thought. Analysing architectural projects in the fields of education, consumption and labour, The Architecture of Neoliberalism examines the part played by contemporary architecture in refashioning human subjects into the compliant figures - student-entrepreneurs, citizen-consumers and team-workers - requisite to the universal implementation of a form of existence devoted to market imperatives.

Drawing on comparisons with historical shake-ups in the film industry, Screen Distribution Post-Hollywood offers a timely account of the changes brought about in global online distribution of film and television by major new players such as Google/YouTube, Apple, Amazon, Yahoo!, Facebook, Netflix and Hulu.

"Aden B. Meinel and wife Marjorie P. Meinel stood at the confluence of several overarching technological developments of the 20th century: postwar aerial surveillance by spy planes and satellites, solar energy, the evolution of telescope design, interdisciplinary optics, and photonics. In 1945 he was a Navy Ensign ordered to find the secret tunnels in Nazi Germany where the V-2 rockets menacing Great Britain and Belgium were being manufactured. After receiving both his B.A. degree and Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California at Berkeley within three years, Aden was invited to join the scientific staff at Yerkes Observatory/University of Chicago. While there he was selected by the National Science Foundation to manage the development of a new national observatory on Kitt Peak, Arizona, and served as its first Director. In the early 1960s he founded the Optical Sciences Center at the University of Arizona, which later metamorphosed into the College of Optical Sciences with the doctoral program in interdisciplinary optics. It was here that he also designed the first Multiple Mirror Telescope and with wife Marjorie pioneered the feasibility of solar energy power on a commercial scale. Aden's knowledge and expertise in optics made him invaluable in research on cameras for spy satellites and spy planes overflying the Soviet Union and Southeast Asia. After retirement the Meinels worked for NASA/JPL on the precursor of the James Webb Space Telescope and on the exoplanet program. They also served on the team that corrected spherical aberration in the Hubble Space Telescope"--

Making It Like a Man: Canadian Masculinities in Practice is a collection of essays on the practice of masculinities in Canadian arts and cultures, where to “make it like a man” is to participate in the cultural, sociological, and historical fluidity of ways of being a man in Canada, from the country’s origins in nineteenth-century Victorian values to its immersion in the contemporary post-modern landscape. The book focuses on the ways Canadian masculinities have been performed and represented through five broad themes: colonialism, nationalism, and transnationalism; emotion and affect; ethnic and minority identities; capitalist and domestic politics; and the question of men’s relationships with themselves and others. Chapters include studies of well-known and more obscure figures in the Canadian arts and culture scenes, such as visual artist Attila Richard Lukacs; writers Douglas Coupland, Barbara Gowdy, Simon Chaput, Thomas King, and James De Mille; filmmakers Clement Virgo, Norma Bailey, John N. Smith, and Frank Cole; as well as familiar and not-so-familiar tokens of Canadian masculinity such as the hockey hero, the gangsta rapper, the immigrant farmer, and the drag king. Making It Like a Man is the first book of its kind to explore and critique historical and contemporary masculinities in Canada with a special focus on artistic and cultural production and representation. It is concerned with mapping some of the uniquely Canadian places and spaces in the international field of masculinity studies, and will be of interest to academic and culturally informed audiences.

A collection of blistering, darkly humorous stories that upend the idyllic image of the Greek holiday island. Seeking to escape the paralyzing effects of the Greek economic crisis, a group of Athenian friends move to an Aegean island in the hopes of starting over. Viewed with suspicion and disdain by the locals, they soon find themselves enmeshed in the same vicious cycle of money, power, and violence they thought they had left behind.

Time and Transformation in Architecture, edited by Tuuli Lähdesmäki, approaches architecture and the built environment from an interdisciplinary point of view by emphasizing in its theoretical discussions and empirical analysis the dimensions of time, temporality, and transformation—and their relation to human experiences, behavior, and practices. The volume consists of seven chapters that explore the following questions: How do architectural ideas, ideals, and meanings emerge, develop, and transform? How is architecture manifested in relation to time, time-space, and the social dimensions it entails and produces? The volume provides both multifaceted theoretical discussions on time and temporality in architecture and empirical case studies around the globe in which these theories and conceptualizations are tested and explored. Contributors are Eiman Ahmed Elwidaa, André van Graan, June Jordaan, Joongsub Kim, Tuuli Lähdesmäki, Assumpta Nnaggenda-Musana, Sanja Rodeš and Smaranda Spânu.