New Constellations
Movie Stars of the 1960s
New Constellations: Movie Stars of the 1960s tells the story of the final glory days of the studio system and changing conceptions of stardom, considering such Hollywood icons as Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman alongside such hallmarks of youth culture as Mia Farrow and Dustin Hoffman. Others, like Sidney Poitier and Peter Sellers, took advantage of the developing independent and international film markets to craft truly groundbreaking screen personae. And some were simply “famous for being famous,” with celebrities like Zsa Zsa Gabor and Edie Sedgwick paving the way for today’s reality stars.
Dorothy West's Paradise
A Biography of Class and Color
Dorothy West’s Paradise captures the scope of the author’s long life and career, reading it alongside the unique cultural geography of Oak Bluffs and its history as an elite African American enclave—a place that West envisioned both as a separatist refuge and as a space for interracial contact. An essential book for both fans of West’s fiction and students of race, class, and American women’s lives, Dorothy West’s Paradise offers an intimate biography of an important author and a privileged glimpse into the society that shaped her work.
Digital Visual Effects in Cinema
The Seduction of Reality
Stephen Prince argues for an understanding of digital technologies as an expanded toolbox, available to enhance both realist films and cinematic fantasies. He offers a detailed exploration of each of these tools, from lighting technologies to image capture to stereoscopic 3D. Integrating aesthetic, historical, and theoretical analyses of digital visual effects, Digital Visual Effects in Cinema is an essential guide for understanding movie-making today.
The Highlands
Critical Resources, Treasured Landscapes
The Highlands is the first book to examine the natural and cultural landscape of this four-state (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut) region, showing how it’s distinctive and why its conservation is vital. Each chapter is written by a different leading researcher and specialist in that field, and introduces readers to an aspect of the Highlands: its geological foundations, its aquifers and watersheds, its forest ecology, and its past iron industry. The Highlands makes a compelling case for land use planning and resource management strategies that could help ensure a sustainable future for the region, strategies that could in turn be applied to other landscapes threatened by urbanization across the country.
Troublemakers
Power, Representation, and the Fiction of the Mass Worker
William Scott’s Troublemakers explores how a major change in the nature and forms of working-class power affected novels about U.S. industrial workers in the first half of the twentieth century. Analyzing portrayals of workers in such novels as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, Ruth McKenney’s Industrial Valley, and Jack London’s The Iron Heel, William Scott moves beyond narrow depictions of these laborers to show their ability to resist exploitation through their direct actions—sit-down strikes, sabotage, and other spontaneous acts of rank-and-file “troublemaking” on the job—often carried out independently of union leadership.
Washed in Blood
Male Sacrifice, Trauma, and the Cinema
Claire Sisco King offers an in-depth study of three prominent cycles of Hollywood films that follow the sacrificial narrative: the early–to–mid 1970s, the mid–to–late 1990s, and the mid–to–late 2000s. From Vietnam-era disaster movies to post-9/11 apocalyptic thrillers, she examines how each film represents traumatized American masculinity and national identity. What she uncovers is a cinematic tendency to position straight white men as America’s most valuable citizens—and its noblest victims.
Manic Minds
Mania's Mad History and Its Neuro-Future
Spanning several centuries, Manic Minds traces the multiple ways in which the word “mania” has been used by popular, medical, and academic writers. It reveals why the rhetorical history of the word is key to appreciating descriptions and meanings of the “manic episode.” Lisa M. Hermsen examines the way medical professionals analyzed the manic condition during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and offers the first in-depth analysis of contemporary manic autobiographies: bipolar figures who have written from within the illness itself.
Manic Minds
Mania's Mad History and Its Neuro-Future
Spanning several centuries, Manic Minds traces the multiple ways in which the word “mania” has been used by popular, medical, and academic writers. It reveals why the rhetorical history of the word is key to appreciating descriptions and meanings of the “manic episode.” Lisa M. Hermsen examines the way medical professionals analyzed the manic condition during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and offers the first in-depth analysis of contemporary manic autobiographies: bipolar figures who have written from within the illness itself.
Beyond Globalization
Making New Worlds in Media, Art, and Social Practices
Beyond Globalization highlights how mediated practices have become integral to global culture; how social practices have emerged out of computer-related industries; how contemporary apocalyptic narratives reflect the anxieties of a U.S. culture facing global challenges; and how design, play, and technology help us understand the histories and ideals behind the digital architectures that mediate our everyday actions. This provocative volume brings together the best new work of scholars within such diverse fields as history, sociology, anthropology, film, media studies, and art.
Signifying without Specifying
Racial Discourse in the Age of Obama
Stephanie Li argues that American politicians and writers are using a new kind of language to speak about race. Challenging the notion that we have moved into a “post-racial” era, she suggests that we are in an uneasy moment where American public discourse demands that race be seen, but not heard. Analyzing contemporary political speech with nuanced readings of works by such authors as Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Colson Whitehead, Li investigates how Americans of color have negotiated these tensions, inventing new ways to signal racial affiliations without violating taboos against open discussions of race.
Literary Sisters
Dorothy West and Her Circle, A Biography of the Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West led a charmed life in many respects. Literary Sisters reveals a different side of West’s personal and professional lives—her struggles for recognition outside of the traditional literary establishment, and her collaborations with talented African American women writers, artists, and performers who faced these same problems. Integrating rare photos, letters, and archival materials from West’s life, Literary Sisters is not only a groundbreaking biography of an increasingly important author but also a vivid portrait of a pivotal moment for African American women in the arts.
Writing the Ghetto
Class, Authorship, and the Asian American Ethnic Enclave
In the United States, perhaps no minority group is considered as “model” or successful as the Asian American community, which is often described as residing in positive-sounding "ethnic enclaves." Yoonmee Chang's Writing the Ghetto helps clarify the hidden or unspoken class inequalities faced by Asian Americans, while insightfully analyzing the effect such notions have had on their literary voices.
Signifying Without Specifying
Racial Discourse in the Age of Obama
Stephanie Li argues that American politicians and writers are using a new kind of language to speak about race. Challenging the notion that we have moved into a “post-racial” era, she suggests that we are in an uneasy moment where American public discourse demands that race be seen, but not heard. Analyzing contemporary political speech with nuanced readings of works by such authors as Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Colson Whitehead, Li investigates how Americans of color have negotiated these tensions, inventing new ways to signal racial affiliations without violating taboos against open discussions of race.
The Cinematic Footprint
Lights, Camera, Natural Resources
Nadia Bozak’s innovative fusion of film studies and environmental studies leads her to make provocative connections between the disappearance of material resources and the emergence of digital media—with examples ranging from early cinema to Dziga Vertov’s prescient eye, from Chris Marker’s analog experiments to the digital work of Agnès Varda, James Benning, and Zacharias Kunuk.
Regional Planning for a Sustainable America
How Creative Programs Are Promoting Prosperity and Saving the Environment
Regional Planning for a Sustainable America is the first book to represent the great variety of today’s effective regional planning programs that combat America's poorly designed, sprawling development. The book analyzes dozens of regional initiatives across North America by bringing together the expertise of forty-two practitioners and academics. Regional Planning for a Sustainable America provides a practical guide to the key strategies that regional planners are using to achieve truly sustainable growth.
Shining in Shadows
Movie Stars of the 2000s
Shining in Shadows examines a wide range of Hollywood icons from a turbulent decade for the film industry and for America itself. Perhaps reflecting our own cultural fragmentation and uncertainty, Hollywood’s star personas sent mixed messages about Americans’ identities and ideals. With a multigenerational, international cast of stars, this collection presents a fascinating composite portrait of Hollywood stardom today.
Literary Sisters
Dorothy West and Her Circle, A Biography of the Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West led a charmed life in many respects. Literary Sisters reveals a different side of West’s personal and professional lives—her struggles for recognition outside of the traditional literary establishment, and her collaborations with talented African American women writers, artists, and performers who faced these same problems. Integrating rare photos, letters, and archival materials from West’s life, Literary Sisters is not only a groundbreaking biography of an increasingly important author but also a vivid portrait of a pivotal moment for African American women in the arts.
Facing the Khmer Rouge
A Cambodian Journey
As a child growing up in Cambodia, Ronnie Yimsut played among the ruins of the Angkor Wat temples, surrounded by a close-knit community. As the Khmer Rouge gained power and began its genocidal reign of terror, his life became a nightmare. In this stunning memoir, Yimsut describes how, in the wake of death and destruction, he decides to live. Facing the Khmer Rouge shows Ronnie Yimsut’s personal quest to rehabilitate himself, make a new life in America, and then return to Cambodia to help rebuild the land of his birth.
Corporate Dreams
Big Business in American Democracy from the Great Depression to the Great Recession
In Corporate Dreams, James Hoopes combines a historian’s careful eye with an insider’s perspective on the business world. This provocative volume tracks changes in government economic policy, changes in public attitudes toward big business, and changes in how corporate executives view themselves. Whether examining the rise of Leadership Development programs or recounting JFK’s Pyrrhic victory over U.S. Steel, Hoopes tells a compelling story of how America lost its way, ceding authority to the policies and values of corporate culture.
The Making of Chicana/o Studies
In the Trenches of Academe
Popular Trauma Culture
Selling the Pain of Others in the Mass Media
In Popular Trauma Culture, Anne Rothe argues that American Holocaust discourse has a particular plot structure—characterized by a melodramatic conflict between good and evil and embodied in the core characters of victim/survivor and perpetrator—and that it provides the paradigm for representing personal experiences of pain and suffering in the mass media. The book begins with an analysis of Holocaust clichés, and then explores the embodiment of popular trauma culture in two core mass media genres: daytime TV talk shows and misery memoirs.
The Muse in Bronzeville
African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932-1950
The Muse in Bronzeville, a dynamic reappraisal of a neglected period in African American cultural history, is the first comprehensive critical study of the creative awakening that occurred on Chicago's South Side from the early 1930s to the cold war. Coming of age during the hard Depression years and in the wake of the Great Migration, this generation of Black creative artists produced works of literature, music, and visual art fully comparable in distinction and scope to the achievements of the Harlem Renaissance.
The Morning After
A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States
The Morning After tells the story of emergency contraception in America from the 1960s to the present day and, more importantly, it tells the story of the women who have used it. Side-stepping simplistic readings of these women as either radical feminist trailblazers or guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industry, medical historian Heather Munro Prescott offers a portrait of how ordinary women participated in the development and popularization of emergency contraception, bringing a groundbreaking technology into the mainstream with the potential to alter radically reproductive health practices.
Jersey Justice
The Story of the Trenton Six
Historian Cathy D. Knepper brings to light a shameful moment in our nation’s history as she tells the story of a personal battle for social justice that changed America. Jersey Justice begins in 1948 with the murder of a Trenton junk dealer and the subsequent arrest of six African American men, known as the Trenton Six, and their blatantly unlawful detention and interrogation by the police. The trial, which attracted international notice, moved all the way up to the New Jersey Supreme Court and garnered the attention and involvement of such prominent activists, politicians, and artists as Paul Robeson, Thurgood Marshall, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pete Seeger, Arthur Miller, and Albert Einstein.
The Morning After
A History of Emergency Contraception in the United States
The Morning After tells the story of emergency contraception in America from the 1960s to the present day and, more importantly, it tells the story of the women who have used it. Side-stepping simplistic readings of these women as either radical feminist trailblazers or guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industry, medical historian Heather Munro Prescott offers a portrait of how ordinary women participated in the development and popularization of emergency contraception, bringing a groundbreaking technology into the mainstream with the potential to alter radically reproductive health practices.
21st-Century Hollywood
Movies in the Era of Transformation
21st-Century Hollywood introduces readers to the global transformations of today's movies and describes the decisive roles that Hollywood is playing in determining the digital future for world cinema. It offers clear, concise explanations of a major paradigm shift that continues to reshape our relationship to the moving image. Filled with numerous detailed examples, the book will both educate and entertain film students and movie fans alike.
Public Health
The Development of a Discipline, Twentieth-Century Challenges
Popular Trauma Culture
Selling the Pain of Others in the Mass Media
In Popular Trauma Culture, Anne Rothe argues that American Holocaust discourse has a particular plot structure—characterized by a melodramatic conflict between good and evil and embodied in the core characters of victim/survivor and perpetrator—and that it provides the paradigm for representing personal experiences of pain and suffering in the mass media. The book begins with an analysis of Holocaust clichés, and then explores the embodiment of popular trauma culture in two core mass media genres: daytime TV talk shows and misery memoirs.
Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers
Mexican Women, Public Prenatal Care, and the Birth Weight Paradox
According to the Latina health paradox, Mexican immigrant women have less complicated pregnancies and more favorable birth outcomes than many other groups, in spite of socioeconomic disadvantage. In Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers, Alyshia Gálvez takes us from inside the halls of a busy metropolitan hospital’s public prenatal clinic to the Oaxaca and Puebla states in Mexico to look at the ways Mexican women manage their pregnancies. The book is both a migration story and a look at the ways that immigrants are received by our medical institutions and by our society.
Opportunity Denied
Limiting Black Women to Devalued Work
Opportunity Denied is the first comprehensive look at changes in race, gender, and women’s work across time, comparing the labor force experiences of Black women to White women, Black men and White men. From free Black women in 1860 to Black women in 2008, the experience of discrimination in seeking and keeping a job has been determinedly constant. Branch focuses on occupational segregation before 1970 and situates the findings of contemporary studies in a broad historical context, illustrating how inequality can grow and become entrenched over time through the institution of work.