Showing 2,231-2,240 of 2,645 items.
Screening Violence
Edited by Stephen Prince
Rutgers University Press
Graphic cinematic violence is a magnet for controversy. From passionate defenses to outraged protests, theories abound concerning this defining feature of modern film: Is it art or exploitation, dangerous or liberating? Screening Violence provides an even-handed examination of the history, merits, and effects of cinematic “ultraviolence.”
Recalling the Wild
Naturalism and the Closing of the American West
By Mary Lawlor
Rutgers University Press
Ever since the first interactions between Europeans and Native Americans, the “West” has served as a site of complex geographical, social and cultural transformation. American literature is defined, in part, by the central symbols derived from these points of contact. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Western frontier was declared “closed,” a demise solidified by Frederick Jackson Turner’s influential essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History (1893). At the same time, “naturalism” was popularized by the writings of Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Jack London, Willa Cather, and the photographs of Edward Curtis. Though very different artists, they were united by their common attraction to the mythic American West.
Pillar of Salt
Gender, Memory, and the Perils of Looking Back
Rutgers University Press
Pillar of Salt introduces the controversy over recollections of childhood sexual abuse as the window onto a much broader field of ideas concerning memory, storytelling, and the psychology of women.
Hunting Tradition in a Changing World
Yup'ik Lives in Alaska Today
Rutgers University Press
The Yupiit in southwestern Alaska are members of the larger family of Inuit cultures. Including more than 20,000 individuals in seventy villages, the Yupiit continue to engage in traditional hunting activities, carefully following the seasonal shifts in the environment they know so well. During the twentieth century, especially after the construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, the Yup'ik people witnessed and experienced explosive cultural changes. Anthropologist Ann Fienup-Riordan explores how these subarctic hunters engage in a "hunt" for history, to make connections within their own communities and between them and the larger world. She turns to the Yupiit themselves, joining her essays with eloquent narratives by individual Yupiit, which illuminate their hunting traditions in their own words.
Exit Here for Fish!
Enjoying and Conserving New Jersey's Recreational Fisheries
Rutgers University Press
Known as the Garden State, New Jersey could also be called the Fishing State. New Jersey boasts more than 6,000 miles of rivers and streams; 24,000 acres of public lakes, reservoirs and ponds; 420 square miles of open bay and estuary waters; and 120 miles of ocean coast — with nearly every gallon of water swimming with a remarkable variety of fish. Using his more than 50 years of personal and academic observations, Glenn R. Piehler has written the perfect guidebook for new and proficient anglers, as well as students of fisheries science.
A History of the Circle
Mathematical Reasoning and the Physical Universe
Rutgers University Press
The circle is an elegant, abstract form that has been transformed by humans into tangible, practical forms to make our lives easier. And yet no one has ever discovered a true mathematical circle. Ernest Zebrowski, Jr., discusses why investigations of the circle have contributed enormously to our current knowledge of the physical universe. Beginning with the ancient mathematicians and culminating in twentieth-century theories of space and time, the mathematics of the circle has pointed many investigators in fruitful directions in their quests to unravel nature’s secrets.
A Citizen's Guide to Grassroots Campaigns
By Jan Barry
Rutgers University Press
Jan Barry provides a pragmatic, common-sense handbook to civic action. Using case studies from his home state of New Jersey, Barry has crafted what he calls a “guidebook for creative improvement on the American dream.” He dissects civic actions such as environmental campaigns, mutual-help groups, neighborhood improvement projects, and a grassroots peace mission to Russia.
Religion as a Chain of Memory
Rutgers University Press
For most of the last twenty years, sociologists have studied the “decline” of religion in the modern world—a decline they saw as a defining feature of modernity, which promotes materialism over spirituality. The revival and political strength of varying religious traditions around the world, however, has forced sociologists to reconsider. This paradox has led Hervieu-Léger to undertake a sociological redefinition and reexamination of religion. For religion to endure in the modern world, she finds, it must have deep roots in traditions and times in which it was not defined as irrelevant. This reasoning leads her to develop the concept of a “chain of memory”—a process by which individual believers become members of a community that links past, present, and future members.
25 Nature Spectacles in New Jersey
By Joanna Burger and Michael Gochfeld
Rutgers University Press
Join Joanna Burger and Michael Gochfeld as they guide readers to New Jersey’s most marvelous natural spectacles! From mating horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay to goldenclub and orchids at Web’s Mill Bog, the authors show us Garden State nature at its best.
While New Jersey boasts far more than 25 nature spectacles, the authors have selected those that are the most dramatic, predictable, and characteristic of the state so readers can easily enjoy them over and over again. Being in the right place at the right time makes all the difference, so the guidebook is organized by season to ensure the best viewing.
While New Jersey boasts far more than 25 nature spectacles, the authors have selected those that are the most dramatic, predictable, and characteristic of the state so readers can easily enjoy them over and over again. Being in the right place at the right time makes all the difference, so the guidebook is organized by season to ensure the best viewing.
The Public Life of the Arts in America
The Public Life of the Arts in America, Revised Edition
Edited by Joni Maya Cherbo and Margaret Jane Wyszomirski
Rutgers University Press
Despite its size, quality, and economic impact, the arts community is not articulate about how they serve public interests, and few citizens have an appreciation of the myriad of public policies that influence American arts and culture. The contributors to this volume argue that U.S. policy can—and should—support the arts and that the arts, in turn serve a broad rather than an elite public. By encouraging policy-makers to systematically start investigating the crucial role and importance of all of the arts in the United States, The Arts and Public Purpose moves the field forward with fresh ideas, new concepts, and important new data.