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What happens when an individual becomes the subject of many and divergent portraits? “Biography,” says Stephanie Kirkwood Walker, “is a deceptive genre. Positioned between fact and fiction and elusive in its purposes, biography displays an individual life, an existence patterned by conventions that have also shaped the reader’s experience.” In This Woman in Particular, Walker explores versions of Emily Carr’s life that have appeared over the last half-century. Walker contends that the biographical image of Emily Carr that emerges from an accumulation of biographies, films, plays and poetry as well as her own autobiographical writing establishes an elaborated cultural artefact — an “image” that is bound by its very nature to remain forever incomplete and always elusive. She demonstrates how changes in Carr’s biographical image parallel the maturing of Canadian biographical writing, reflecting attitudes toward women artists and the shifting balance between religion, secular attitudes and contemporary spirituality. And she concludes that biography plays a crucial role in all our lives in initiating and sustaining debate on vital personal and collective concerns.
A comprehensive biography of film's first star traces her rise to fame with the growth of the medium, her influence as a partner in United Artists, her relationship with Douglas Fairbanks, and her struggles later in life. UP.
Surviving Reproductive Loss: Stories of Creativity and Positive Transformation in Women’s Lives tells the fascinating stories of the lives and creative accomplishments of nearly fifty women who experienced infertility, pregnancy loss or stillbirth. Robert J. Dinkin, PhD, historian, and Roxane Head Dinkin, PhD, clinical psychologist, have teamed up again to write a follow-up to their previous volume, Infertility and the Creative Spirit, published by iUniverse in 2010. The Dinkins tell the stories of women innovators in writing, entertaining, sports, politics, and social reform. When Julia Child was living in Paris with her husband Paul and unable to become pregnant, she turned to learning the art of French cooking, ultimately producing her famous cookbooks and TV shows. When she showed up with a hot plate and an omelet pan on an educational television program, the first cooking show was born. Read about her and the many other women who made major contributions in their own fields and who also changed the larger society by contributing to the well-being of women and children.
From one of America's most renowned film scholars: a revelatory, perceptive, and highly readable look at the greatest silent film stars -- not those few who are fully appreciated and understood, like Chaplin, Keaton, Gish, and Garbo, but those who have been misperceived, unfairly dismissed, or forgotten. Here is Valentino, "the Sheik," who was hardly the effeminate lounge lizard he's been branded as; Mary Pickford, who couldn't have been further from the adorable little creature with golden ringlets that was her film persona; Marion Davies, unfairly pilloried in Citizen Kane; the original "Phantom" and "Hunchback," Lon Chaney; the beautiful Talmadge sisters, Norma and Constance. Here are the...
Poor Gal: The Cultural History of Little Liza Jane chronicles the origins and evolution of a folk tune beloved by millions worldwide. Dan Gutstein delves into the trajectory of the “Liza Jane” family of songs, including the most popular variant “Li’l Liza Jane.” Likely originating among enslaved people on southern plantations, the songs are still performed and recorded centuries later. Evidence for these tunes as part of the repertoire of enslaved people comes from the Works Progress Administration ex-slave narratives that detail a range of lyrics and performance rituals related to “Liza Jane.” Civil War soldiers and minstrel troupes eventually adopted certain variants, includi...
At the turn of the past century, the main function of a newspaper was to offer ÒmenusÓ by which readers could make sense of modern life and imagine how to order their daily lives. Among those menus in the mid-1910s were several that mediated the interests of movie manufacturers, distributors, exhibitors, and the rapidly expanding audience of fans. This writing about the movies arguably played a crucial role in the emergence of American popular film culture, negotiating among national, regional, and local interests to shape fansÕ ephemeral experience of moviegoing, their repeated encounters with the fantasy worlds of Òmovieland,Ó and their attractions to certain stories and stars. Moreover, many of these weekend pages, daily columns, and film reviews were written and consumed by women, including one teenage girl who compiled a rare surviving set of scrapbooks. Based on extensive original research, Menus for Movieland substantially revises what moviegoing meant in the transition to what we now think of as Hollywood.
Movie is considered to be an important art form; films entertain, educate, enlighten and inspire audiences. Film is a term that encompasses motion pictures as individual projects, as well as — in metonymy — the field in general. The origin of the name comes from the fact that photographic film (also called filmstock) has historically been the primary medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist — motion pictures (or just pictures or "picture"), the silver screen, photoplays, the cinema, picture shows, flicks — and commonly movies.
In this lively book, Betty Steele argues that feminism has had its day – that men and women once again are drawing towards one another, seeking new understanding and reconciliation. She writes that men and women today are admitting that they are looking for love and sex that spring from friendship a slow growth of trust, and an affinity of the spirit – which together can lead to a lifetime commitment. Meanwhile, mothers are realizing that motherhood-on-the-run is a shabby excuse for the real thing, that one hour or so a day of "quality time" with their children is not enough and is shortchanging the next generation. Beyond its incisive analysis and documentation, Together Again offers hope that bridges can be built between the sexes towards a happier, healthier society in the 1990s.
With the Girls Who Rocked the World series, we want to show that you don't have to wait until you grow up. The girls in this book didn't wait until they were twenty-one to start rocking the world. The Bront sisters wrote novels as teenagers, Margaret Knight thought up her first invention at twelve, and Oprah Winfrey broke into show biz at seventeen. If you have a dream, carpe diem: seize the day! Make it happen! ---- Author
In 1926 Silent Film Icon, Rudolph Valentino, died unexpectedly at the age of 31. That same year, he had finalized a bitter divorce from his wife of four years, Natacha Rambova. Valentino had been madly in love with the gorgeous and very talented designer, yet they had been unable to make their marriage work. Since their first marriage in 1922, the public had been critical of Rambova, blaming her for any mistakes in Valentino's career or life. As Valentino laid on his deathbed in New York, Rambova was in Paris. The two exchanged telegrams to the very end, with both sides believing they would soon reunite and a reconciliation had taken place. Upon hearing the news of his death, Rambova was so ...