This comprehensive encyclopedia covers the reciprocal effects that the politics, foreign policy, and culture of Spain, Portugal, and the American nations have had on one another since the time of Columbus. From the discovery of Newfoundland and Labrador by Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte Real in 1501 to the phenomenal Hollywood careers of Spanish movie stars such as Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz, Iberia and the Americas traces 500 years of Iberian influence on the Americas and vice versa. Featuring six introductory essays and a chronology of key events, this three-volume encyclopedia examines more than five centuries of transatlantic encounters. Students of a wide range of disciplines, as well as the lay reader, will appreciate this exhaustive survey, which traces Spanish and Portuguese influence throughout the Americas and highlights how Iberian cultures have in turn been enriched by the diverse cultures of the Americas.

Superheroes have been the major genre to emerge from comics and graphic novels, saturating popular culture with images of muscular men and sexy women. A major aspect of this genre is identity in the roles played by individuals, the development of identities through extended stories and in the ways the characters inspire audiences. This collection analyses stories from popular comics franchises such as Batman, Captain America, Ms Marvel and X-Men, alongside less well known comics such as Kabuki and Flex Mentallo. It explores what superhero narratives can reveal about our attitudes towards femininity, race, maternity, masculinity and queer culture. Using this approach, the volume asks questions such as why there are no black supervillains in mainstream comics, how second wave feminism and feminist film theory may help us to understand female comic book characters, the ways in which Flex Mentallo transcends the boundaries of straightness and gayness and how both fans and industry appropriate the sexual identity of superheroes. The book was originally published in a special issue of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics.

Utilizing Lacan's psychoanalytic theory and Žižek's philosophical adaption of it, this book brings into dialogue a series of modernist and postmodernist literary works, films, and critical theory that are concerned with defining America. Ahmed Elbeshlawy demonstrates that how America is perceived in certain texts reveals not only the idealization or condemnation of it, but an imago, or constructed image of the perceiver as well. In turn, texts which particularly focus on demonstrating how other texts about America communicate an untrustworthy message themselves communicate an unreliable message, inventing and reinventing a series of imagos of America. These imagos refer to both idealized and deformed images of America constructed by the perceivers of America. The first part of this book is concerned with modernist perceptions of America, and includes discussion of Adorno, Benjamin, Kafka, D. H. Lawrence, as well as Emerson and Seymour Martin Lipset. The second part is dedicated to postmodernist representations of America, focusing on texts by Edward Said, Ihab Hassan, Susan Sontag, David Shambaugh and Charles W. Brooks, and films including Lars von Trier's Dogville and D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation.

Manifesting the Primal Imagination explores a little known, but important, aspect of Black American Christianity—the primal spirituality of the Black Pentecostal and spiritual church. Set against the backdrop of a Christianity believed by many to be synonymous with White Western culture, Manifesting the Primal Imagination demonstrates how this image of Christianity came to be, and how it is false, through a historical and scriptural examination of Christianity itself. At a time in which the nature of Christian faith is hotly contested, with many rejecting Christianity on the basis of its historical association with White supremacist claims, Settles advocates for a rereading of the history of Black American faith in a way that recognizes the importance of the primal imagination to Christianity itself.

Presents a global view of today's most pressing issues through an analysis of the twelve major regions of the world. Economic and political restructuring, agriculture, industry, catastrophe, human conflict are just some of the issues covered

Firsthand accounts and contextual narrative chronicling the U.S. war effort before D-Day. Sidebars on patrols, service troops, the replacement system, Rangers, and more. Based on interviews with more than 200 veterans.

No detailed description available for "Soviet Foreign Policy in a Changing World".

Sociology of Death and the American Indian examines dying, death, disposal, and bereavement practices and applies those concepts to selectAmerican Indian tribes historically and currently, supplemented with oral histories. The focus is that learning about other cultures can enhance the understanding of one’s own culture by comparing traditional and modern societies. Gerry R. Cox addresses the centuries of injustices committed against American Indians that led to a neglect of learning about American Indian cultures and attempts to fill the gaps in knowledge of American Indian practices.