The 1980s

The 1980s PDF Author: Kimberly R. Moffitt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade, edited by Kimberly R. Moffitt and Duncan A. Campbell, is a holistic analysis of the decade that focuses on major turning points and developments in literature, entertainment, politics, and social experimentation. This analysis ultimately presents the 1980s as a significant phenomenon in the American landscape. The 1980s is a groundbreaking and stand-alone introductory volume that is unapologetically interdisciplinary in nature and encourages students to explore topics of the decade often overlooked or grouped together with other, more memorable decades such as the 1920s or 1960s.

The 1980s

The 1980s PDF Author: Kimberly R. Moffitt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 520

Get Book Here

Book Description
The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade, edited by Kimberly R. Moffitt and Duncan A. Campbell, is a holistic analysis of the decade that focuses on major turning points and developments in literature, entertainment, politics, and social experimentation. This analysis ultimately presents the 1980s as a significant phenomenon in the American landscape. The 1980s is a groundbreaking and stand-alone introductory volume that is unapologetically interdisciplinary in nature and encourages students to explore topics of the decade often overlooked or grouped together with other, more memorable decades such as the 1920s or 1960s.

Unpackaging Art of the 1980s

Unpackaging Art of the 1980s PDF Author: Alison Pearlman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226651453
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
American art of the 1980s is as misunderstood as it is notorious. Critics of the time feared that market hype and self-promotion threatened the integrity of art. They lashed out at contemporary art, questioning the validity of particular media and methods and dividing the art into opposing camps. While controversies have since subsided, critics still view art of the 1980s as a stylistic battlefield. Alison Pearlman rejects this picture, which is truer of the period's criticism than of its art. Pearlman reassesses the works and careers of six artists who became critics' biggest targets. In each of three chapters, she pairs two artists the critics viewed as emblematic of a given trend: Julian Schnabel and David Salle in association with Neo-Expressionism; Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring vis-à-vis Graffiti Art; and Peter Halley and Jeff Koons in relation to Simulationism. Pearlman shows how all these artists shared important but unrecognized influences and approaches: a crucial and overwhelming inheritance of 1960s and 1970s Conceptualism, a Warholian understanding of public identity, and a deliberate and nuanced use of past styles and media. Through in-depth discussions of works, from Haring's body-paintings of Grace Jones to Schnabel's movie Basquiat, Pearlman demonstrates how these artists' interests exemplified a broader, generational shift unrecognized by critics. She sees this shift as starting not in the 1980s but in the mid-1970s, when key developments in artistic style, art-world structures, and consumer culture converged to radically alter the course of American art. Unpackaging Art of the 1980s offers an innovative approach to one of the most significant yet least understood episodes in twentieth-century art.

American Culture in the 1980s

American Culture in the 1980s PDF Author: Graham Thompson
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748628959
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This book looks beyond the common label of 'Ronald Reagan's America' to chart the complex intersection of cultures in the 1980s. In doing so it provides an insightful account of the major cultural forms of 1980s America - literature and drama; film and television; music and performance; art and photography - and influential texts and trends of the decade: from White Noise to Wall Street, from Silicon Valley to MTV, and from Madonna to Cindy Sherman. A focused chapter considers the changing dynamics of American culture in an increasingly globalised marketplace.

My 1980s and Other Essays

My 1980s and Other Essays PDF Author: Wayne Koestenbaum
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374533776
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
"A new book of essays by the cultural critic Wayne Koestenbaum, author of The Queen's Throat and Jackie Under My Skin"--

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces PDF Author: John Kennedy Toole
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807130087
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 636

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Book Description
Released by Louisiana State University Press in 1980, A Confederacy of Dunces is nothing short of a publishing phenomenon. Rejected by countless publishers and submitted by the author's mother years after his suicide, the book won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Today there are almost two million copies in print worldwide in eighteen languages. Now, for the first time, John Kennedy Toole's comic masterpiece is available in a large print edition. Toole's lunatic and sage novel introduces one of the most memorable characters in American literature, Ignatius Reilly, whom Walker Percy dubs "slob extraordinaire, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one." Set in New Orleans, A Confederacy of Dunces outswifts Swift, one of whose essays gives the book its title. As its characters burst into life, they leave the region and literature forever changed by their presence -- Ignatius and his mother; Miss Trixie, the octogenarian assistant accountant at Levi Pants; inept, wan Patrolman Mancuso; Darlene, the Bourbon Street stripper with a penchant for poultry; Jones the jivecat in spaceage dark glasses. Included here is the introduction that writer and New Orleans resident Andrei Codrescu composed for the book's twentieth anniversary. Set in oversized type for ease in reading, the large print edition will gratify both first-timers seeking to discover this modern-day classic and longtime afficionados wishing to reread a favorite novel.

Dancer from the Dance

Dancer from the Dance PDF Author: Andrew Holleran
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063299496
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
“An astonishingly beautiful book. The best gay novel written by anyone of our generation.”—Harper’s “Through the sweat and haze of longing come piercing insights – about the closeness of gay male friendship, about the vanity and imperfections of men. The more one reads the novel, we realise that what Holleran has given us is our very own queer (queerer?) Great Gatsby: its decadence, its fear, its violence, its ecstasy, its transience.”—The Guardian Andrew Holleran’s landmark novel of a young man's search for love and companionship in New York’s emerging gay world in the 1970s, with a new introduction by Garth Greenwell. Young, astonishingly beautiful, and tired of living a lie, Anthony Malone trades life as a seemingly straight small-town lawyer for the decadence of New York’s emerging gay scene—an odyssey that takes him from Manhattan’s Everard baths and after hour discos, to lavish orgies on Fire Island and parks after dark. Rescuing Malone from a possessive lover and shepherding him through his immersion in this life of fierce joys and cheap truths is the flamboyant Sutherland, a high-camp quintessential queen. But for Malone, the endless city nights and Fire Island days are close to burning out, and despite Sutherland’s abundant attentiveness and glittering world-weary wisdom, Malone soon realizes what he is truly looking for may not be found in these beautiful places, where life is crowded, and people are forever outrunning their own desires and death.

Back to the Future

Back to the Future PDF Author: Dvir Abramovich
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 9781443833387
Category : Israeli literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This compelling and incisive study opens a fascinating window into the key genres of writing that emerged in Israeli writing during the 1980s and 1990s, and provides new understandings about how contemporary Israeli literature evolved to be what it is today. It examines the social and political background of the dramatic and broad transformations that took place in Israeli society during this period of transitionâ "the Yom Kippur War, the election of the Likkud Party, the Lebanon War, the rise of postmodernism, the impact of feminism, and the collapse of national consensusâ "and links those developments to the literary changes that seeped into the fabric of Israeli writing of that time. The book deals with three pivotal areas that emerged and flowered in the 1980s and 1990sâ "namely, Second Generation Holocaust literature, the Mizrachi novel, and detective fictionâ "and meticulously and comprehensively analyses the worksâ (TM) subject-matters, ideas and aesthetic strategies. Extensively discussed and evaluated here are the groundbreaking themes found in the stories of the authors David Grossman, Sami Michael, Ronit Matalon, Batya Gur, Eli Amir, Shulamit Lapid, Itamar Levy, Gila Almagor, Nava Semel, Dorit Rabinyan, Yitzhak Gormezano Goren, and Lily Peri Amitai. From best-sellers to cult-classics, from the mainstream to the marginal, Back to the Future is an important book that celebrates the creative energy of Israeli arts, and is a must-read for anyone interested in Israeli culture and fiction.

A Study of Literary Trends in China Since the 1980s

A Study of Literary Trends in China Since the 1980s PDF Author: Teresa Chi-Ching Sun
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0761871098
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 87

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Book Description
This book intends to trace the revival of traditional literary works since the 1980s in China as it is revealed on the revitalized College Entrance Examination (CEE). In order to show how these changes reflect China’s altering ideology after the fall of Communism, selections from the CEE’s literary portion will be examined. Taking advantage of the resurrection of the powerful CEE, test creators have composed the literary portion as an education tool to shape public opinion in the post-Communist era. Literature in China have never been an independent art but had shared the responsibility for transmitting China’s intellectual and ethical traditions. The introduction of Communism to China silenced these traditions and made literature the servant of political ideology. This book traces the chronological process of restoring modern vernacular literature from the pre-Communist era and the ways in which traditional literature is being used for modern purposes. For many Chinese intellectuals, the gradual withdrawal of literature for serving political causes and the reinstatement of classical literature and early vernacular works to on the CEE bring to light the recovery of the aesthetic literary tradition and a return to normalcy. When students take the CEE, they not only mentally scrutinize literature that they first read during their secondary education, but also experience an assertive presentation of current Chinese cultural values and outlooks on life. This study argues that in the post-1980s CEE literary selections, students experience a variety of texts that summon up China’s pre-Communist literary tradition in order to serve as an intellectual guiding light for future social development. For those interested in comparative higher education, a particular area of interest may be the book’s singular consideration of the science and technology passages in connection with the restructuring of higher education in China as a remedy of China’s cultural tradition.

Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian PDF Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307762521
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
25th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road: an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, Blood Meridian traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into the nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

Exploring America in the 1980s

Exploring America in the 1980s PDF Author: Molly Sandling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000492850
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Exploring America in the 1980s: Living in the Material World is an interdisciplinary humanities unit that looks at literature, art, and music of the 1980s to provide an understanding of how those living through the decade experienced and felt about the many social changes taking place around them. Through the lens of "identity," it explores why these changes occurred and lends an ear to the voices of the groups that clamored for them. Cultural icons like Madonna and Bill Cosby are examined alongside larger issues such as the end of the Cold War and a changing economic and political identity. The unit uses field-tested instructional strategies for language arts and social studies from The College of William and Mary, as well as new strategies, and it includes graphic organizers and other learning tools. It can be used to complement a social studies or language arts curriculum or as standalone material in a gifted program. Grades 6-8