Contemporary Drift

Contemporary Drift PDF Author: Theodore Martin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231543891
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
What does it mean to call something “contemporary”? More than simply denoting what’s new, it speaks to how we come to know the present we’re living in and how we develop a shared story about it. The story of trying to understand the present is an integral, yet often unnoticed, part of the literature and film of our moment. In Contemporary Drift, Theodore Martin argues that the contemporary is not just a historical period but also a conceptual problem, and he claims that contemporary genre fiction offers a much-needed resource for resolving that problem. Contemporary Drift combines a theoretical focus on the challenge of conceptualizing the present with a historical account of contemporary literature and film. Emphasizing both the difficulty and the necessity of historicizing the contemporary, the book explores how recent works of fiction depict life in an age of global capitalism, postindustrialism, and climate change. Through new histories of the novel of manners, film noir, the Western, detective fiction, and the postapocalyptic novel, Martin shows how the problem of the contemporary preoccupies a wide range of novelists and filmmakers, including Zadie Smith, Colson Whitehead, Vikram Chandra, China Miéville, Kelly Reichardt, and the Coen brothers. Martin argues that genre provides these artists with a formal strategy for understanding both the content and the concept of the contemporary. Genre writing, with its mix of old and new, brings to light the complicated process by which we make sense of our present and determine what belongs to our time.

Contemporary Drift

Contemporary Drift PDF Author: Theodore Martin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231543891
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
What does it mean to call something “contemporary”? More than simply denoting what’s new, it speaks to how we come to know the present we’re living in and how we develop a shared story about it. The story of trying to understand the present is an integral, yet often unnoticed, part of the literature and film of our moment. In Contemporary Drift, Theodore Martin argues that the contemporary is not just a historical period but also a conceptual problem, and he claims that contemporary genre fiction offers a much-needed resource for resolving that problem. Contemporary Drift combines a theoretical focus on the challenge of conceptualizing the present with a historical account of contemporary literature and film. Emphasizing both the difficulty and the necessity of historicizing the contemporary, the book explores how recent works of fiction depict life in an age of global capitalism, postindustrialism, and climate change. Through new histories of the novel of manners, film noir, the Western, detective fiction, and the postapocalyptic novel, Martin shows how the problem of the contemporary preoccupies a wide range of novelists and filmmakers, including Zadie Smith, Colson Whitehead, Vikram Chandra, China Miéville, Kelly Reichardt, and the Coen brothers. Martin argues that genre provides these artists with a formal strategy for understanding both the content and the concept of the contemporary. Genre writing, with its mix of old and new, brings to light the complicated process by which we make sense of our present and determine what belongs to our time.

Continental Drift

Continental Drift PDF Author: Russell Banks
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062123165
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 527

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Book Description
“The most convincing portrait I know of contemporary America . . . a great American novel.” — James Atlas, The Atlantic Monthly From acclaimed author Russell Banks, a masterful novel of hope lost and gained—a gripping, indelible story of fragile lives uprooted and transformed by injustice, disappointment, and the seductions and realities of the American dream. Banks's searing tale of uprootedness, migration, and exploitation in contemporary America brings together two of the dominant realms of his fiction—New England and the Caribbean—skillfully braided into one taut narrative. Continental Drift is the story of a young blue-collar worker and family man who abandons his broken dreams in New Hampshire and the story of a young Haitian woman who, with her nephew and baby, flees the brutal injustice and poverty of her homeland. Continental Drift is a powerful literary classic from one of contemporary fiction's most important writers.

Drift

Drift PDF Author: Jeff Ferrell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520968271
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
“This book was written late in the North American night, with the rumbling thuds and booming train horns of the nearby rail yard echoing through my windows, reminding me of the train hoppers and gutter punks out there rolling through the darkness.” In Drift, Jeff Ferrell shows how dislocation and disorientation can become phenomena in their own right. Examining the history of drifting, he situates contemporary drift within today’s economic, legal, and cultural dynamics. He also highlights a distinctly North American form of drift—that of the train-hopping hobo—by tracing the hobo’s legal and political history and by detailing his own immersion in the world of contemporary train-hoppers. Along the way, Ferrell sheds light on the ephemeral intensity of drifting communities and explores the contested politics of drift: the strategies that legal authorities employ to control drifters in the interest of economic development, the social and spatial dislocations that these strategies ironically exacerbate, and the ways in which drifters create their own slippery forms of resistance. Ferrell concludes that drift constitutes a necessary subject of social inquiry and a way of revitalizing social inquiry itself, offering as it does new models for knowing and engaging with the contemporary world.

Contemporary Revolutions

Contemporary Revolutions PDF Author: Susan Stanford Friedman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350045314
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Returning to revolution's original meaning of 'cycle', Contemporary Revolutions explores how 21st-century writers, artists, and performers re-engage the arts of the past to reimagine a present and future encompassing revolutionary commitments to justice and freedom. Dealing with histories of colonialism, slavery, genocide, civil war, and gender and class inequities, essays examine literature and arts of Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, and the United States. The broad range of contemporary writers and artists considered include fabric artist Ellen Bell; poets Selena Tusitala Marsh and Antje Krog; Syrian artists of the civil war and Sana Yazigi's creative memory web site about the war; street artist Bahia Shehab; theatre installation artist William Kentridge; and the recycles of Virginia Woolf by multi-media artist Kabe Wilson, novelist W. G. Sebald, and the contemporary trans movement.

Drift

Drift PDF Author: Caroline Bergvall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781937658205
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A riveting new volume exploring the power and provocation of medieval English and the trope of the seafarer

Drift

Drift PDF Author: Jeff Ferrell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520295552
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
“This book was written late in the North American night, with the rumbling thuds and booming train horns of the nearby rail yard echoing through my windows, reminding me of the train hoppers and gutter punks out there rolling through the darkness.” In Drift, Jeff Ferrell shows how dislocation and disorientation can become phenomena in their own right. Examining the history of drifting, Ferrell situates the contemporary global phenomenon of drift within today’s economic, social, and cultural dynamics. He also highlights a distinctly North American form of drift—that of the train-hopping hobo—by tracing the hobo’s political history and by sharing his own immersion in the world of contemporary train-hoppers. Along the way, Ferrell sheds light on the ephemeral intensity of drifting communities and explores the contested politics of drift—the legal and political strategies designed to control drifters in the interest of economic development, the irony by which these strategies spawn further social and spatial exclusion, and the ways in which drifters and those who embrace drift create their own slippery strategies of resistance. With an eye toward the truth, Ferrell keenly argues that the lessons of drift can provide us with new models for knowing and engaging with the world around us.

Drift

Drift PDF Author: Sharon Carter Rogers
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143917086X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
"I am not angel, nor am I demon. I am not a ghost as some would like to believe. I am a Drifter, something God created in his spare time and then forgot on the fringes of reality." CHARLIE MURPHY, BOSS OF THE CRIME SYNDICATE THE ORGANIZATION, IS DEAD. His sassy, impulsive, bold, daring, and fearless twenty-year-old adopted-by-kidnapping daughter, Baby Doll, stands by his open grave—poised, ready to run. If Maurits, Charlie’s bodyguard and heir to the Justice position, discovers the role she played in Charlie’s death, she will pay the ultimate price. A few yards away, a freezing man huddles in a ball on a freshly filled-in grave. He doesn’t seem to be mourning. He seems to be helpless. Hopeless. Waiting. Foolish. He is a Drifter, waiting for a new tether—a person who will see him when no one else can. And he will stay with that person for an unknown period of time. For unknown reasons. He drifts through life invisible to all but one. Heaven and hell are unattainable for him. There is pain. Sometimes lots of pain. But there is no death, even when he wishes it would come. This time, he becomes tethered to Baby Doll, who is determined to finish what she started and will do anything to accomplish it. In a world where loyalties and betrayals are both rewarded with death, each pawn in this deadly game must stay one step ahead of the rest, or they will find themselves six feet under—next to Charlie Murphy.

New Directions in Criminological Theory

New Directions in Criminological Theory PDF Author: Steve Hall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1843929147
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Steve Hall is Professor of Criminology at the Social Futures Institute, Teesside University, UK. He is the co-author of Violent Night (Berg, 2006), his recent co-authored book Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture (Willan/Routledge, 2008) has been described as ' an important landmark in criminology' and he is also the author of Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective (Sage, 2012).

The Contemporary American Essay

The Contemporary American Essay PDF Author: Phillip Lopate
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0525567321
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 641

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Book Description
A dazzling anthology of essays by some of the best writers of the past quarter century—from Barry Lopez and Margo Jefferson to David Sedaris and Samantha Irby—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate. The first decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a blossoming of creative nonfiction. In this extraordinary collection, Phillip Lopate gathers essays by forty-seven of America’s best contemporary writers, mingling long-established eminences with newer voices and making room for a wide variety of perspectives and styles. The Contemporary American Essay is a monument to a remarkably adaptable form and a treat for anyone who loves fantastic writing. Hilton Als • Nicholson Baker • Thomas Beller • Sven Birkerts • Eula Biss • Mary Cappello • Anne Carson • Terry Castle • Alexander Chee • Teju Cole • Bernard Cooper • Sloane Crosley • Charles D’Ambrosio • Meghan Daum • Brian Doyle • Geoff Dyer • Lina Ferreira • Lynn Freed • Rivka Galchen • Ross Gay • Louise Glück • Emily Fox Gordon • Patricia Hampl • Aleksandar Hemon • Samantha Irby • Leslie Jamison • Margo Jefferson • Laura Kipnis • David Lazar • Yiyun Li • Phillip Lopate • Barry Lopez • Thomas Lynch • John McPhee • Ander Monson • Eileen Myles • Maggie Nelson • Meghan O’Gieblyn • Joyce Carol Oates • Darryl Pinckney • Lia Purpura • Karen Russell • David Sedaris • Shifra Sharlin • David Shields • Floyd Skloot • Rebecca Solnit • Clifford Thompson • Wesley Yang An Anchor Original.

A Marker to Measure Drift

A Marker to Measure Drift PDF Author: Alexander Maksik
Publisher: Bond Street Books
ISBN: 0385679181
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Alexander Maksik's electrifying novel tracks a woman's journey from the horrors of Charles Taylor's Liberia to abject poverty and self-exile on a Greek island, where she must grapple with a haunted past and find a way back into human society. On an island somewhere in the Aegean, Jacqueline, a young Liberian woman, veers between starvation and satiety, between the brutality of her past and the precarious uncertainty of her present in the aftermath of experiences so unspeakable that she prefers homeless numbness to the psychological confrontation she knows is inevitable. Hypnotic, highly sensual, exquisitely written, and extraordinary in its depiction of both pleasure and pain, of excruciating physical and spiritual hungers, A Marker to Measure Drift is a novel about memory, how we live with what we know, and whether and how we go forward, intact and whole, after the ravages of loss. It is beautiful, lacerating, impossible to put down. A breakthrough work from a prodigiously gifted young writer.