You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Nicknamed both “Mobtown” and “Charm City” and located on the border of the North and South, Baltimore is a city of contradictions. From media depictions in The Wire to the real-life trial of police officers for the murder of Freddie Gray, Baltimore has become a quintessential example of a struggling American city. Yet the truth about Baltimore is far more complicated—and more fascinating. To help untangle these apparent paradoxes, the editors of Baltimore Revisited have assembled a collection of over thirty experts from inside and outside academia. Together, they reveal that Baltimore has been ground zero for a slew of neoliberal policies, a place where inequality has increased as ...
Recreation without Humiliation is the first comprehensive study of Black amusement venues established by Black Americans for Black Americans. Mary Stanton’s extensive research on African American amusement parks in America explores not only segregation, class, and social barriers but also the notion of the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as an inalienable right for all races and classes of people. Inspired by summers spent on Coney Island, where Stanton became curious about the existence of African American amusement parks in America, Stanton’s research uncovered more than fifty such venues, most of which operated during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These were parks, the...
Political Problems and Personalities in Contemporary Maryland provides a comprehensive rhetorical analysis of contemporary politics and political communication in Maryland at both the state and local levels. Theodore F. Sheckels and Carl Hyden approach rhetoric in a broader sense, arguing that actions by political players – including decisions on housing policy, urban redevelopment policy, and transportation policy—are not in a separate category from their messages. In many cases, they argue, actions are messages, often with important material consequences. Rather than focusing solely on previous or upcoming elections, as political communication has traditionally been examined, Sheckels and Hyden give considerable space to non-election topics, responding to current shifts in political communication scholarship and encouraging others to examine political communication at the local and state levels elsewhere in the United States. Scholars of communication, political science, rhetoric, and history will find this book of particular interest.
Baltimore seen through the eyes of John Waters, Anne Tyler, Charles S. Dutton, Barry Levinson, David Simon—and also ordinary citizens. The city of Baltimore features prominently in an extraordinary number of films, television shows, novels, plays, poems, and songs. Whether it's the small-town eccentricity of Charm City (think duckpin bowling and marble-stooped row houses) or the gang violence of "Bodymore, Murdaland," Baltimore has figured prominently in popular culture about cities since the 1950s. In Come and Be Shocked, Mary Rizzo examines the cultural history and racial politics of these contrasting images of the city. From the 1950s, a period of urban crisis and urban renewal, to the ...
The first and fullest account of the suppressed history and continuing presence of Native Americans in Washington, DC Washington, DC, is Indian land, but Indigenous peoples are often left out of the national narrative of the United States and erased in the capital city. To redress this myth of invisibility, Indigenous DC shines a light upon the oft-overlooked contributions of tribal leaders and politicians, artists and activists to the rich history of the District of Columbia, and their imprint—at times memorialized in physical representations, and at other times living on only through oral history—upon this place. Inspired by author Elizabeth Rule’s award-winning public history mobile...
Making Citizenship Work seeks to address questions of how a community reaches a place where it can actually make citizenship work. A second question addressed is "What does citizenship represent to different communities?" Across thirteen chapters a collection of experts traverse multiple disciplines in analyzing citizenship from different points of access. Each chapter revolves around the premise that empowerment of communities, and individuals within the community, comes in different forms and is governed by multiple needs and visions. Authors utilize case studies to demonstrate the different roles that communities from a broad sector of our society adopt to accomplish constructing democrat...
Finalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Awards Finalist for the Washington State Book Awards A daringly observant memoir about intergenerational trauma, fine art, and compartmentalization from a returning Soft Skull author and Lambda Literary Award winner A mixture of memoir, biography, criticism, and social history, Touching the Art is queer icon and activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s interrogation of the possibilities of artistic striving, the limits of the middle-class mindset, the legacy of familial abandonment, and what art can and cannot do. Taking the form of a self-directed research project, Sycamore recounts the legacy of her fraught relationship with her late grandmother, an ...
While all history has the potential to be political, public history is uniquely so: public historians engage in historical inquiry outside the bubble of scholarly discourse, relying on social networks, political goals, practices, and habits of mind that differ from traditional historians. Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism theorizes and defines public history as future-focused, committed to the advancement of social justice, and engaged in creating a more inclusive public record. Edited by Denise D. Meringolo and with contributions from the field’s leading figures, this groundbreaking collection addresses major topics such as museum practices, oral his...
How politics and race shaped Baltimore's distinctive disarray of cultures and subcultures. Charm City or Mobtown? People from Baltimore glory in its eccentric charm, small-town character, and North-cum-South culture. But for much of the nineteenth century, violence and disorder plagued the city. More recently, the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody has prompted Baltimoreans—and the entire nation—to focus critically on the rich and tangled narrative of black–white relations in Baltimore, where slavery once existed alongside the largest community of free blacks in the United States. Matthew A. Crenson, a distinguished political scientist and Baltimore native, examines the role ...
This book maps the most active and vibrant period in the history of British women's writing. Examining changes and continuities in fiction, poetry, drama, and journalism, as well as women's engagement with a range of literary and popular genres, the essays in this volume highlight the range and diversity of women's writing since 1970.