Blood, Ink, and Culture


Book Description

DIVIn this collection Bartra offers commentary on connections between popular culture, national ideology, and the state, assessing sociocultural events and processes in Mexico and analyzing Mexico’s cultural and political relationship to the U.S./div




Brutality Garden


Book Description

In the late 1960s, Brazilian artists forged a watershed cultural movement known as Tropicalia. Music inspired by that movement is today enjoying considerable attention at home and abroad. Few new listeners, however, make the connection between this music and the circumstances surrounding its creation, the most violent and repressive days of the military regime that governed Brazil from 1964 to 1985. With key manifestations in theater, cinema, visual arts, literature, and especially popular music, Tropicalia dynamically articulated the conflicts and aspirations of a generation of young, urban Brazilians. Focusing on a group of musicians from Bahia, an impoverished state in northeastern Brazil noted for its vibrant Afro-Brazilian culture, Christopher Dunn reveals how artists including Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Tom Ze created this movement together with the musical and poetic vanguards of Sao Paulo, Brazil's most modern and industrialized city. He shows how the tropicalists selectively appropriated and parodied cultural practices from Brazil and abroad in order to expose the fissure between their nation's idealized image as a peaceful tropical "garden" and the daily brutality visited upon its citizens.




The Changing Meaning of Kitsch


Book Description

This book inaugurates a new phase in kitsch studies. Kitsch, an aesthetic slur of the 19th and the 20th century, is increasingly considered a positive term and at the heart of today’s society. Eleven distinguished authors from philosophy, cultural studies and the arts discuss a wide range of topics including beauty, fashion, kitsch in the context of mourning, bio-art, visual arts, architecture and political kitsch. In addition, the editors provide a concise theoretical introduction to the volume and the subject. The role of kitsch in contemporary culture and society is innovatively explored and the volume aims not to condemn but to accept and understand why kitsch has become acceptable today.




Let's Go Hawaii 5th Edition


Book Description

Packed with travel information, including more listings, deals, and insider tips: CANDID LISTINGS of hundreds of places to eat, sleep, and surf like a local RELIABLE MAPS and directions to help you navigate the islands Rewarding VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES in ecological and cultural conservation STUDY ABROAD to learn about volcanology, indigenous languages, and exotic species INSIDER TIPS on saving money and finding aloha EXTENSIVE BEACH COVERAGE, from the sickest surf spots to the most breathtaking sunsets HIDDEN TREASURES, from roadside shave ice stands to deserted beaches




Let's Go Hawaii 4th Edition


Book Description

Hawaii has been billed as the American tropical paradise since the 1950s. The beauty of the trails, verdant wilderness, and cliffs of Kauai, the oldest and arguably most majestic island is unrivalled. Compiled by students, this guide provides insider tips and information for the socially conscious traveller.




Spectacles of Waste


Book Description

The modern bathroom is an ingenious compilation of locked doors, smooth porcelain, 4-ply tissue and antibacterial hand soap, but despite this miracle of indoor plumbing, we still can’t bear the thought that anyone else should know that our bodies produce waste. Why must we live by the rules of this intense scatological embarrassment? In Spectacles of Waste, leading historian of medicine Warwick Anderson reveals how human excrement has always complicated humanity’s attempts to become modern. From wastewater epidemiology and sewage snooping to fecal transplants and excremental art, he argues that our insistence on separating ourselves from our bodily waste has fundamentally shaped our philosophies, social theories, literature and art—even the emergence of high-tech science as we understand it today. Written with verve and aplomb, Anderson’s expert analysis reveals how in recent years, humanity has doubled down on abstracting and datafying our most abject waste, and unconsciously underlined its biopolitical signature across our lives.




Back Seat Collection


Book Description

THREE STANDALONE CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES What Comes After Dessert Twelve years ago, Ben’s childhood sweetheart ran out on him, and his broken heart hasn’t held another woman since. During his annual visit to his hometown, he finds something sweeter than cookies behind the counter at the bakery—Tally’s back in town, and his response to her makes it clear the only flaw in his heart is that it’s still full of her. To heal both their hearts, Ben must convince her this is only the beginning of their second chance. Ten Thousand Hours Weddings are Ivy’s business, but when an ex proposes out of the blue, she flees to a tropical paradise rather than walk down the aisle. There, she discovers the passion missing from her sensible existence in the arms of a handsome stranger. She returns home, where no one suspects sweet, practical Ivy possesses a secret wild side—no one except the one-night stand standing in her parents’ dining room. Griff's offer of a fling in which she plays all the parts too untamed for her everyday life is too enticing to resist—and too good to last. When reality demands full-time responsibility, Ivy can’t neglect family duty for a selfish fantasy. To keep his place in the life of the woman he loves, Griff must prove they can have forever… one hour at a time. Silent Song Lex had it all. Fame. Fortune. A once-in-ten-lifetimes love with a brilliant, beautiful, battle-scarred goddess. And an addiction that was done sharing his attention. He survived. His fall from grace never stopped fans from throwing money and panties at him. All he lost for his weakness was the heart Gin—the woman, not the booze—took with her when she left. The old walls between them crumble as their relentless attraction pulls them back together. But Lex isn’t the only man from Gin’s past who wants a second shot at her, and that unfinished business could destroy them both…




The Animation Studies Reader


Book Description

The Animation Studies Reader brings together both key writings within animation studies and new material in emerging areas of the field. The collection provides readers with seminal texts that ground animation studies within the contexts of theory and aesthetics, form and genre, and issues of representation. The first section collates key readings on animation theory, on how we might conceptualise animation, and on some of the fundamental qualities of animation. New material is also introduced in this section specifically addressing questions raised by the nature, style and materiality of animation. The second section outlines some of the main forms that animation takes, which includes discussions of genre. Although this section cannot be exhaustive, the material chosen is particularly useful as it provides samples of analysis that can illuminate some of the issues the first section of the book raises. The third section focuses on issues of representation and how the medium of animation might have an impact on how bodies, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity are represented. These representations can only be read through an understanding of the questions that the first two sections of the book raise; we can only decode these representations if we take into account form and genre, and theoretical conceptualisations such as visual pleasure, spectacle, the uncanny, realism etc.




The Rough Guide to South America On a Budget


Book Description

The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget is now available in a new ePub format. It is the definitive guide to making the most of this exotic region without breaking the bank. Backpackers, career-breakers, gap year travellers and those who want more bang for their buck, will find in-depth budget information for all twelve South American countries and every aspect of travel. From hotels, hostels and restaurants to special events, festivals and adrenalin-pumping outdoor activities, this guide is packed with the best budget information. You'll find “Treat Yourself” boxes that feature great places and things worth splashing out on and also a full-introduction with highlights for every country. There are reviews and recommendations for night-life, shopping, markets and entertainment, as well as useful words and phrases in every language and detailed maps for hundreds of locations. Make the most of your time with The Rough Guide to Central America on a Budget.




Birth of an Industry


Book Description

In Birth of an Industry, Nicholas Sammond describes how popular early American cartoon characters were derived from blackface minstrelsy. He charts the industrialization of animation in the early twentieth century, its representation in the cartoons themselves, and how important blackface minstrels were to that performance, standing in for the frustrations of animation workers. Cherished cartoon characters, such as Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat, were conceived and developed using blackface minstrelsy's visual and performative conventions: these characters are not like minstrels; they are minstrels. They play out the social, cultural, political, and racial anxieties and desires that link race to the laboring body, just as live minstrel show performers did. Carefully examining how early animation helped to naturalize virulent racial formations, Sammond explores how cartoons used laughter and sentimentality to make those stereotypes seem not only less cruel, but actually pleasurable. Although the visible links between cartoon characters and the minstrel stage faded long ago, Sammond shows how important those links are to thinking about animation then and now, and about how cartoons continue to help to illuminate the central place of race in American cultural and social life.