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This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2016. Telling the story of illness emerges from a landscape of pain, grief and loss, but its therapeutic value is indubitable. This volume grapples with the potentials and limitations of such narratives as diverse cultural perceptions and realities are granted the voice to probe into those stories from literary and textual material, as well as empirical, ethnographic, historical, and personal bases. Some of the chapters draw upon the capacity of storytelling to heal bodies and souls, whereas others provide an important corrective to this overwhelmingly optimistic portrayal by focusing on the limits of storytelling and narrative to address physical and psychic trauma. Despite the different approaches, what ties these chapters together is a more focused textual and contextual analysis of the intersection between forms of storytelling and sharing the experience of illness as studied and witnessed and sometimes even lived by the authors of the volume.
This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2014. This volume is a collection of research papers which deem gender identities to be dynamic and multiple categories, refusing resolutely to reduce their complexity to fit neat extant binaries. It attempts to grapple with the dialectic which emerges from the fact that while there is a certain resistance to being labeled in contemporary discourses on sexuality, gender identities actively influence how we interpret the world and how we function within it: we exist amongst patterns, models, and behaviours, as well as among people who virtually demand to be labeled, because to them, this forms the basis of a stable identity. Various cultural perspectives and realities are here given voice, bringing to bear upon the reader the need to identify privileges they might take for granted, but which are unobtainable elsewhere. As the curtain of one’s own cultural context is lifted, this volume hopes that these privileges are – even if for a moment – no longer invisible.
Music is used to sell everything from cars to political candidates. How can words and melody so successfully manipulate us? This volume provides answers by examining the ways in which music of various genres, including folk, popular music, rock, and rap, is used to protest and to promote structures of political, commercial, and religious authority. Students, teachers, musicians, historians, policy makers, and fans of music and popular culture will find answers to questions such as: How does music help to build national identity, foster a sense of patriotism, and reflect changes in society? What role did music play in building socialism in Czechoslovakia and in Belarus’ 2020 democratic movement? What are the most important features of Ukrainian songs of resistance? The book highlights the role of music in the feminist movement by analysing the Riot Grrrl movement and the history of Olivia Records, as well as the use of music as propaganda in the education system and as “purity propaganda” in religion. Two chapters focus on famous American protest singers, Woody Gurthie and Phil Ochs, and one highlights an ex-socialist society’s response to David Bowie’s music.
This encyclopaedia will be an indispensable resource and recourse for all who are thinking about cities and the urban, and the relation of cities to literature, and to ways of writing about cities. Covering a vast terrain, this work will include entries on theorists, individual writers, individual cities, countries, cities in relation to the arts, film and music, urban space, pre/early and modern cities, concepts and movements and definitions amongst others. Written by an international team of contributors, this will be the first resource of its kind to pull together such a comprehensive overview of the field.
This book collects the efforts of a team of scholars working at the University of Torino under the auspices of the Project WWS (World-Wide Style). Focusing on diverse areas of inquiry into the transformations of the American city, the essays in this volume provide perspectives for understanding the complexity of urban cultures in the United States in the late 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries. Organized thematically, this book includes contributions in three main areas. The first area covers studies in U.S. history and history of ideas at the turn of the 20th century, in light of its migration/immigration processes as well as in its representations of national greatness and cultural hegemony as reflected in World's Fairs. The second area covers analyses of American literature in the double perspective of the recent emergence of a new form of «global novel», as well as the developments of new subgenres of urban fiction. A third area on inquiry focuses on new practices of organized religion in North America arising from the regionalization of the American metropolis in recent decades.
Fresh perspectives and eye-opening discussions of contemporary American fiction In The Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction: 1980-2020, a team of distinguished scholars delivers a focused and in-depth collection of essays on some of the most significant and influential authors and literary subjects of the last four decades. Cutting-edge entries from established and new voices discuss subjects as varied as multiculturalism, contemporary regionalisms, realism after poststructuralism, indigenous narratives, globalism, and big data in the context of American fiction from the last 40 years. The Encyclopedia provides an overview of American fiction at the turn of the millennium as well as...
This volume highlights the importance of diverse voices and perspectives in understanding the history and heritage of psychiatry. Exploring the complex interrelations between psychiatry, heritage and power, Narrating the Heritage of Psychiatry complicates the pervasive biomedical narrative of progress in which the history of psychiatry is usually framed. By examining multiple perspectives, including those of users/survivors of mental health services, the collection sheds light on neglected narratives and aims to broaden our understanding of psychiatric history and current practices. In doing so, it also considers the role of art, activism, and community narratives in reimagining and recontextualizing psychiatric heritage. This volume brings into conversation perspectives from practitioners, patients/users and scholars from the humanities and social sciences.
This book is a scholarly collection of interdisciplinary perspectives and practices that examine the positive potential of attending to the voices and stories of those who live and work with illness in real world settings. Its international contributors offer case studies and research projects illustrating how illness can disrupt, highlight and transform themes in personal narratives, forcing the creation of new biographies. As exercises in narrative development and autonomy, the evolving content and expression of illness stories are crucial to our understanding of the lived experience of those confronting life changes. The international contributors to this volume demonstrate the importance of hearing, understanding and effectively liberating voices impacted by illness and change. Contributors include Tineke Abma, Peter Bray, Verusca Calabria, Agnes Elling, Deborah Freedman, Alexandra Fidyk, Justyna Jajszczok, Naomi Krüger, Annie McGregor, Pam Morrison, Miranda Quinney, Yomna Saber, Elena Sharratt, Victorria Simpson-Gervin, Hans T. Sternudd, Mirjam Stuij, Anja Tramper, Alison Ward and Jane Youell.
Into the twenty-first century, millions of disabled people and people experiencing mental distress were segregated from the rest of society and confined to residential institutions. Deinstitutionalization – the closure of these sites and integration of former residents into the community – has become increasingly commonplace. But this project is unfinished. Sites of Conscience explores use of the concept of sites of conscience, which involves place-based memory activities such as walking tours, survivor-authored social histories, and performances and artistic works in or generated from sites of systemic suffering and injustice. These activities offer new ways to move forward from the unfinished deinstitutionalization project and its failures. Covering diverse national contexts, this volume proposes that acknowledging the memories and lived experiences of former residents – and keeping histories and social heritage of institutions alive rather than simply closing sites – holds the greatest potential for recognition, accountability, and action.
"Drawing on a body of literature published between 1945 and 2016, Contested Terrain proposes a more expansive treatment of suburban fiction as a discourse that operates within national and transnational geographies. Wilhite argues that the suburbs and suburban narratives reflect the latest, perhaps final outpost in the tradition of U.S. regionalism. Although he may be accused of simply substituting one outmoded methodology for another, such a critique depends on misreading regionalism as either a sub-literary genre or, as Roberto Dainotto suggests, a pernicious political ideology that opposes modernity and suppresses difference in the naive pursuit of "grounded, rooted, natural, authentic values shared by a true community." In opposition to such withering appraisals, Contested Terrain demonstrates that, as both a literary discourse and a mode of geopolitical analysis, regionalism clarifies the fraught relationship between isolationism and imperialism that has shaped U.S. residential geography and, in turn, helps us rethink the role literary texts play in the postwar project of suburban nation building"--