Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment

Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment
Author :
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Total Pages : 184
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781438412177
ISBN-13 : 1438412177
Rating : 4/5 (77 Downloads)

Synopsis Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment by : Frances E. Mascia-Lees

Contemporary theory across a wide range of disciplines denaturalizes the body and reveals it to be a social construction. Cultural practices which deform, adorn, mutilate, and obliterate the body illustrate that it is an important site for the inscription of culture. The authors draw on cross currents in feminist theory, literary criticism, anthropology, and history to analyze several such cultural practices as examples of the power of culture to encode its messages on the human form.

Athletic Intruders

Athletic Intruders
Author :
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Total Pages : 305
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780791487563
ISBN-13 : 0791487563
Rating : 4/5 (63 Downloads)

Synopsis Athletic Intruders by : Anne Bolin

Informed by feminism and the fields of anthropology and sociology of sport, this anthology investigates women's place in sport and exercise from a sociocultural perspective, documenting women's struggle into the sports arenas of male hegemony. The nine ethnographic case studies explore issues of identity, embodiment, and meaning in various sports and exercise, including triathlons, aerobics, basketball, bodybuilding, weightlifting, motorcycle riding, softball, casual exercise, and rugby.

Lotman and Cultural Studies

Lotman and Cultural Studies
Author :
Publisher : Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages : 394
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780299220433
ISBN-13 : 0299220435
Rating : 4/5 (33 Downloads)

Synopsis Lotman and Cultural Studies by : Andreas Schonle

One of the most widely read and translated theorists of the former Soviet Union, Yurii Lotman was a daring and imaginative thinker. A cofounder of the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, he analyzed a broad range of cultural phenomena, from the opposition between Russia and the West to the symbolic construction of space, from cinema to card playing, from the impact of theater on painting to the impact of landscape design on poetry. His insights have been particularly important in conceptualizing the creation of meaning and understanding the function of art and literature in society, and they have enriched the work of such diverse figures as Paul Ricoeur, Stephen Greenblatt, Umberto Eco, Wolfgang Iser, Julia Kristeva, and Frederic Jameson. In this volume, edited by Andreas Schönle, contributors extend Lotman's theories to a number of fields. Focusing on his less frequently studied later period, Lotman and Cultural Studies engages with such ideas as the "semiosphere," the fluid, dynamic semiotic environment out of which meaning emerges; "auto-communication," the way in which people create narratives about themselves that in turn shape their self-identity; change, as both gradual evolution and an abrupt, unpredictable "explosion"; power; law and mercy; Russia and the West; center and periphery. As William Mills Todd observes in his afterword, the contributors to this volume test Lotman's legacy in a new context: "Their research agendas-Iranian and American politics, contemporary Russian and Czech politics, sexuality and the body-are distant from Lotman's own, but his concepts and awareness yield invariably illuminating results."

Taking a Stand in a Postfeminist World

Taking a Stand in a Postfeminist World
Author :
Publisher : SUNY Press
Total Pages : 260
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0791447162
ISBN-13 : 9780791447161
Rating : 4/5 (62 Downloads)

Synopsis Taking a Stand in a Postfeminist World by : Frances E. Mascia-Lees

Ranging across contemporary culture from the academy to shopping malls, this book offers engaged cultural criticism in a postfeminist context.

Tattoos, Desire and Violence

Tattoos, Desire and Violence
Author :
Publisher : McFarland
Total Pages : 241
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780786482535
ISBN-13 : 0786482532
Rating : 4/5 (35 Downloads)

Synopsis Tattoos, Desire and Violence by : Karin Beeler

Whether they graphically depict an individual's or a community's beliefs, express the defiance of authority, or brand marginalized groups, tattoos are a means of interpersonal communication that dates back thousands of years. Evidence of the tattoo's place in today's popular culture is all around--in advertisements, on the stereotypical outlaw character in films and television, in supermarket machines that dispense children's wash-away tattoos, and even in the production of a tattooed Barbie doll. This book explores the tattoo's role, primarily as an emblem of resistance and marginality, in recent literature, film, and television. The association of tattoos with victims of the Holocaust, slaves, and colonized peoples; with gangs, inmates, and other marginalized groups; and the connection of the tattoo narrative to desire and violence are discussed at length.

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction

The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction
Author :
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Total Pages : 641
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780199838851
ISBN-13 : 0199838852
Rating : 4/5 (51 Downloads)

Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction by : Rob Latham

The excitement of possible futures found in science fiction has long fired the human imagination, but the genre's acceptance by academe is relatively recent. No longer marginalized and fighting for respectability, science-fictional works are now studied alongside more traditional art forms. Tracing the capacious genre's birth, evolution, and impact across nations, time periods, subgenres, and media, The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction offers an in-depth, comprehensive assessment of this robust area of scholarly inquiry and considers the future directions that will dictate the terms of the scholarly discourse. The Handbook begins with a focus on questions of genre, covering topics such as critical history, keywords, narrative, the fantastic, and fandom. A subsequent section on media engages with film, television, comics, architecture, music, video games, and more. The genre's role in the convergence of art and everyday life animates a third section, which addresses topics such as UFOs,

The Edge of Modernism

The Edge of Modernism
Author :
Publisher : JHU Press
Total Pages : 252
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781421429397
ISBN-13 : 142142939X
Rating : 4/5 (97 Downloads)

Synopsis The Edge of Modernism by : Walter Kalaidjian

In The Edge of Modernism, Walter Kalaidjian explores American poetry on genocide, the Holocaust, and total war as well as on postwar social antagonisms, racial oppression, and domestic violence. By asking what it means for traumatic memory to have agency in the American verse tradition, Kalaidjian creates an original historical account of how American poets became witnesses, often unconsciously, to modern extremity. Combining psychoanalytic theory and cultural studies, this intense, sweeping account of modern poetics analyzes the ways in which literary form gives testimony to the trauma of twentieth-century history. Through close readings of well-known and less familiar poets—among them Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Edwin Rolfe, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Peter Balakian, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Anne Sexton, and Anthony Hecht—Kalaidjian discerns the latent "edge" of modern trauma as it cuts through the literary representations, themes, and formal techniques of twentieth-century American poetics. In this way, The Edge of Modernism advances an innovative and dynamic model of modern periodization.

Between Rites and Rights

Between Rites and Rights
Author :
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Total Pages : 352
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0804768374
ISBN-13 : 9780804768375
Rating : 4/5 (74 Downloads)

Synopsis Between Rites and Rights by :

The study shows, in chronological fashion, how African women writers in the past five decades have introduced a new, autobiographical discourse around their experience of excision, bringing nuance and vitality to the FGM debate.

Identifying Marks

Identifying Marks
Author :
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Total Pages : 208
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780820343440
ISBN-13 : 0820343447
Rating : 4/5 (40 Downloads)

Synopsis Identifying Marks by : Jennifer Putzi

What we know of the marked body in nineteenth-century American literature and culture often begins with The Scarlet Letter's Hester Prynne and ends with Moby Dick's Queequeg. This study looks at the presence of marked men and women in a more challenging array of canonical and lesser-known works, including exploration narratives, romances, and frontier novels. Jennifer Putzi shows how tattoos, scars, and brands can function both as stigma and as emblem of healing and survival, thus blurring the borderline between the biological and social, the corporeal and spiritual. Examining such texts as Typee, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Captivity of the Oatman Girls, The Morgesons, Iola Leroy, and Contending Forces, Putzi relates the representation of the marked body to significant events, beliefs, or cultural shifts, including tattooing and captivity, romantic love, the patriarchal family, and abolition and slavery. Her particular focus is on both men and women of color, as well as white women-in other words, bodies that did not signify personhood in the nineteenth century and thus by their very nature were grotesque. Complicating the discourse on agency, power, and identity, these texts reveal a surprisingly complex array of representations of and responses to the marked body--some that are a product of essentialist thinking about race and gender identities and some that complicate, critique, or even rebel against conventional thought.

Tattooed

Tattooed
Author :
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Total Pages : 330
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0802085687
ISBN-13 : 9780802085689
Rating : 4/5 (87 Downloads)

Synopsis Tattooed by : Michael Atkinson

Cultural sensibilities about tattooing are discussed within historical context and in relation to broader trends in body modification, such as cosmetic surgery, dieting, and piercing.