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Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume brings together contributions by distinguished experts from different disciplinary fields for a multidimensional view on immersion in the visual arts and media. In the current media debate, immersion has frequently been linked to the advent of digital technology and its capacity to provide vivid sensations of being placed in or surrounded by an artificial space. The idea of ‘liquidity’ contained in this promise to plunge into another world informs wide areas of contemporary cultural imagination, referring to a myriad of phenomena that relate to experiences of uncertainty and instability, of complexity and change. Considering the fact, how...
The Star, the Cross, and the Crescent analyzes fiction, films, comics, autobiographical narratives, and essays by Francophone Arab writers whose Christian (Accad, Antaki, Chédid, Maalouf), Jewish (Albou, Cixous, El Maleh, Memmi), Muslim (Bachi, Benaïssa, Benguigui, Ben Jelloun, Boudjedra, Boudjellal, Meddeb, Mimouni), and secular (Sebbar) backgrounds are emblematic of the diversity of the Francophone Arab world. It examines how these writers represent the intertwining of religion and politics against the backdrop of the current international political context and the resurgence of religion. Focusing on a series of disputes commonly framed in religious terms (with Islam as the common denominator for all: the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Lebanese and the Algerian civil wars, the affair of the Muslim headscarf in France, and 9/11), this book questions the effectiveness of the Francophone studies model in providing insights into the complexity of the Islamic Revival. The study concludes by unpacking the influence of politics on the translation of these works in the U.S. It brings heightened awareness to the modalities according to which a creative work can serve as a cultural mediator.
Sex addiction is on the increase - in the media as well as in the therapy room. But while more and more people seek help for their compulsive sexual behaviours, there is still confusion and debate about whether the condition even exists. Understanding and Treating Sex Addiction explains why an increasing number of people are inadvertently finding their lives devastated by their sexual behaviours. It explores the latest scientific understandings and research into why pornography, cyber sex, visiting sex workers, fetishes and multiple affairs can come to control some people's lives to the point that they can't stop. It explains how sex addiction is not a moral issue, as some assume, but a heal...
This collection of eleven essays details more than 75 films, from Edwin Porter's 1904 Parsifal to the animated Quest for Camelot in 1998. A variety of critical perspectives are provided. The medieval and modern worlds collide in The Fisher King and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; issues of femininity and depictions of Morgan Le Fay are analyzed in the 1931 Connecticut Yankee and in Excalibur; concerns of masculinity are examined in First Knight and Dragonheart. A comprehensive filmography, selective bibliography and over 40 film stills complete this critical appreciation of the rich and varied cinematic tradition of Arthur.
Sigmund Freud infamously referred to women's sexuality as a “dark continent” for psychoanalysis, drawing on colonial explorer Henry Morton Stanley’s use of the same phrase to refer to Africa. While the problematic universalism of psychoanalysis led theorists to reject its relevance for postcolonial critique, Ranjana Khanna boldly shows how bringing psychoanalysis, colonialism, and women together can become the starting point of a postcolonial feminist theory. Psychoanalysis brings to light, Khanna argues, how nation-statehood for the former colonies of Europe institutes the violence of European imperialist history. Far from rejecting psychoanalysis, Dark Continents reveals its importan...
Moral Laboratories is an engaging ethnography and a groundbreaking foray into the anthropology of morality. It takes us on a journey into the lives of African American families caring for children with serious chronic medical conditions, and it foregrounds the uncertainty that affects their struggles for a good life. Challenging depictions of moral transformation as possible only in moments of breakdown or in radical breaches from the ordinary, it offers a compelling portrait of the transformative powers embedded in day-to-day existence. From soccer fields to dinner tables, the everyday emerges as a moral laboratory for reshaping moral life. Cheryl Mattingly offers vivid and heart-wrenching stories to elaborate a first-person ethical framework, forcefully showing the limits of third-person renderings of morality.
Bettina L. Knapp explores the universal and eternal nature of fourteen French fairy tales, including the medieval Romance of Mélusine, Charles Perrault's seventeenth-century versions of Sleeping Beauty and Bluebeard, and Jean Cocteau's film version of Beauty and the Beast. She demonstrates the relevance of these fairy tales for modern readers, both for the psychological problems they address and for the positive resolutions they offer. Through her careful examination of these tales, Knapp shows that people in past eras suffered from such supposedly "modern" problems as alienation and identity crises and went through harrowing ordeals before experiencing some sort of fulfillment. By imparting the age-old wisdom embedded in these works, French Fairy Tales triggers new insights into psychological problems and offers helpful ways of dealing with them.
Writing successful screenplays that capture the public imagination and richly reward the screenwriter requires more than simply following the formulas prescribed by the dozens of screenwriting manuals currently in print. Learning the "how-tos" is important, but understanding the dramatic elements that make up a good screenplay is equally crucial for writing a memorable movie. In A Poetics for Screenwriters, veteran writer and teacher Lance Lee offers aspiring and professional screenwriters a thorough overview of all the dramatic elements of screenplays, unbiased toward any particular screenwriting method. Lee explores each aspect of screenwriting in detail. He covers primary plot elements, d...
Although its early films featured racial caricatures and exclusively Caucasian heroines, Disney has, in recent years, become more multicultural in its filmic fare and its image. From Aladdin and Pocahontas to the Asian American boy Russell in Up, from the first African American princess in The Princess and the Frog to "Spanish-mode" Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story 3, Disney films have come to both mirror and influence our increasingly diverse society. This essay collection gathers recent scholarship on representations of diversity in Disney and Disney/Pixar films, not only exploring race and gender, but also drawing on perspectives from newer areas of study, particularly sexuality/queer studies, critical whiteness studies, masculinity studies and disability studies. Covering a wide array of films, from Disney's early days and "Golden Age" to the Eisner era and current fare, these essays highlight the social impact and cultural significance of the entertainment giant. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Stunned by the news of Sputnik in 1957, the American public were to be treated over the next dozen years to the spectacle of an all-out national crusade: the race to beat the Russians to the moon. What few understood at the time - and what has largely been obscured in popular representations of this episode in movies and bestsellers - was the key economic and technical role played by manned space exploration in post-war US capitalist expansion. From Potsdam to Cape Canaveral, the yellow brick road twisted and turned, but its ultimate goal remained clear: the Oz of global American economic and political domination. Taking off from that masterpiece of American fiction, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity...