Rereading the Machine in the Garden

Rereading the Machine in the Garden PDF Author: Eric Erbacher
Publisher: Campus Verlag
ISBN: 3593501910
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
The volume reexamines the trope of the intrusive machine and the regenerative pastoral garden, laid out fifty years ago by Leo Marx in "The Machine in the Garden," one of the founding texts of American Studies. Contributions explore the lasting influence of the trope in American culture and the arts, rereading it as a dialectics where nature is as much technologized as technology is naturalized. They trace this dialectic trope in filmic and literary representations of industrial, bureaucratic, and digital gardens; they explore its function in the aftermath of the civil war, the rural electrification during the New Deal, in landscape art, and in ethnic literatures; and they discuss the historical premises and lasting influence of Leo Marx's seminal study.

Rereading the Machine in the Garden

Rereading the Machine in the Garden PDF Author: Eric Erbacher
Publisher: Campus Verlag
ISBN: 3593501910
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book Here

Book Description
The volume reexamines the trope of the intrusive machine and the regenerative pastoral garden, laid out fifty years ago by Leo Marx in "The Machine in the Garden," one of the founding texts of American Studies. Contributions explore the lasting influence of the trope in American culture and the arts, rereading it as a dialectics where nature is as much technologized as technology is naturalized. They trace this dialectic trope in filmic and literary representations of industrial, bureaucratic, and digital gardens; they explore its function in the aftermath of the civil war, the rural electrification during the New Deal, in landscape art, and in ethnic literatures; and they discuss the historical premises and lasting influence of Leo Marx's seminal study.

Rereading the Machine in the Garden

Rereading the Machine in the Garden PDF Author: Eric Erbacher
Publisher: Campus Verlag
ISBN: 3593425033
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
»The Machine in the Garden« gilt als Gründungstext der Amerikastudien als wissenschaftliche Disziplin. Die Beiträger des Sammelbands unterziehen das dort proklamierte Spannungsverhältnis zwischen Natur und Technik einer Relektüre. Sie untersuchen industrielle, bürokratische und digitale »Gärten« in Film und Literatur und beleuchten deren Funktion vor verschiedenen kulturhistorischen Hintergründen.

Nothing Remains the Same

Nothing Remains the Same PDF Author: Wendy Lesser
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547346891
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book and a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year: A look at the pleasures and surprises of rereading. Compared with reading, the act of rereading is far more personal—it involves a complex interaction of our past selves, our present selves, and literature. With candor and humor, this “inspired intellectual romp, part memoir, part criticism” takes us on a guided tour of the author’s own return to books she once knew—from the plays of Shakespeare to twentieth-century novels by Kingsley Amis and Ian McEwan, from the childhood favorite I Capture the Castle to classic novels such as Anna Karenina and Huckleberry Finn, from nonfiction by Henry Adams to poetry by Wordsworth—as she reflects on how the passage of time and the experience of aging has affected her perceptions of them (Lawrence Weschler). A cultural critic and the acclaimed author of Why I Read, Wendy Lesser conveys an infectious love of reading and inspires us all to take another look at the books we’ve read to find the unexpected treasures they might offer. “Delightful.” —Diane Johnson, author of Le Divorce “Anyone who has ever approached a once favorite book later in life . . . will find in this memoir moments of bittersweet recognition.” —The New York Times Book Review “Reflect[s] deeply and candidly on how a reader’s life experiences alter her perceptions of literature . . . [Lesser] has truly fascinating and original things to say about a compelling assortment of writers, including George Orwell, George Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Dostoyevsky, and Shakespeare.” —Booklist

Tell the Machine Goodnight

Tell the Machine Goodnight PDF Author: Katie Williams
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525533133
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
FINALIST FOR 2018 KIRKUS PRIZE NAMED ONE OF THE "BEST LITERARY FICTION OF 2018' BY KIRKUS REVIEWS "Sci-fi in its most perfect expression…Reading it is like having a lucid dream of six years from next week, filled with people you don't know, but will." —NPR "[Williams’s] wit is sharp, but her touch is light, and her novel is a winner." – San Francisco Chronicle "Between seasons of Black Mirror, look to Katie Williams' debut novel." —Refinery29 Smart and inventive, a page-turner that considers the elusive definition of happiness. Pearl's job is to make people happy. As a technician for the Apricity Corporation, with its patented happiness machine, she provides customers with personalized recommendations for greater contentment. She's good at her job, her office manager tells her, successful. But how does one measure an emotion? Meanwhile, there's Pearl's teenage son, Rhett. A sensitive kid who has forged an unconventional path through adolescence, Rhett seems to find greater satisfaction in being unhappy. The very rejection of joy is his own kind of "pursuit of happiness." As his mother, Pearl wants nothing more than to help Rhett--but is it for his sake or for hers? Certainly it would make Pearl happier. Regardless, her son is one person whose emotional life does not fall under the parameters of her job--not as happiness technician, and not as mother, either. Told from an alternating cast of endearing characters from within Pearl and Rhett's world, Tell the Machine Goodnight delivers a smartly moving and entertaining story about the advance of technology and the ways that it can most surprise and define us. Along the way, Katie Williams playfully illuminates our national obsession with positive psychology, our reliance on quick fixes. What happens when these obsessions begin to overlap? With warmth, humor, and a clever touch, Williams taps into our collective unease about the modern world and allows us see it a little more clearly.

Riding Jane Crow

Riding Jane Crow PDF Author: Miriam Thaggert
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252053524
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Miriam Thaggert illuminates the stories of African American women as passengers and as workers on the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century railroad. As Jim Crow laws became more prevalent and forced Black Americans to "ride Jim Crow" on the rails, the train compartment became a contested space of leisure and work. Riding Jane Crow examines four instances of Black female railroad travel: the travel narratives of Black female intellectuals such as Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell; Black middle-class women who sued to ride in first class "ladies’ cars"; Black women railroad food vendors; and Black maids on Pullman trains. Thaggert argues that the railroad represented a technological advancement that was entwined with African American attempts to secure social progress. Black women's experiences on or near the railroad illustrate how American technological progress has often meant their ejection or displacement; thus, it is the Black woman who most fully measures the success of American freedom and privilege, or "progress," through her travel experiences.

Gardens of the Moon

Gardens of the Moon PDF Author: Steven Erikson
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429926589
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
Vast legions of gods, mages, humans, dragons and all manner of creatures play out the fate of the Malazan Empire in this first book in a major epic fantasy series from Steven Erikson. The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, ancient and implacable sorcerers. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen's rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins. For Sergeant Whiskeyjack and his squad of Bridgeburners, and for Tattersail, surviving cadre mage of the Second Legion, the aftermath of the siege of Pale should have been a time to mourn the many dead. But Darujhistan, last of the Free Cities of Genabackis, yet holds out. It is to this ancient citadel that Laseen turns her predatory gaze. However, it would appear that the Empire is not alone in this great game. Sinister, shadowbound forces are gathering as the gods themselves prepare to play their hand... Conceived and written on a panoramic scale, Gardens of the Moon is epic fantasy of the highest order--an enthralling adventure by an outstanding new voice. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Desperate Characters

Desperate Characters PDF Author: Paula Fox
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393318944
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
First published in 1970 to great acclaim, this novel stands as one of the most dazzling and rigorous examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature--a novel that, according to Irving Howe, ranks with "Billy Budd" and "The Great Gatsby".

Marriage, Violence and the Nation in the American Literary West

Marriage, Violence and the Nation in the American Literary West PDF Author: William R. Handley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139440152
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
In Marriage, Violence and the Nation in the American Literary West, William R. Handley examines literary interpretations of the Western American past. Handley argues that although scholarship provides a narrative of western history that counters optimistic story of frontier individualism by focusing on the victims of conquest, twentieth-century American fiction tells a different story of intra-ethnic violence surrounding marriages and families. He examines works of historiography,as well as writing by Zane Grey, Willa Cather, Wallace Stegner and Joan Didion among others, to argue that these works highlight white Americans' anxiety about what happens to American 'character' when domestic enemies such as Indians and Mormon polygamists, against whom the nation had defined itself in the nineteenth century, no longer threaten its homes. Handley explains that once its enemies are gone, imperialism brings violence home in retrospective narratives that allegorise national pasts and futures through intimate relationships.

Futures Worth Preserving

Futures Worth Preserving PDF Author: Andressa Schröder
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839441226
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Cultures as well as individuals continually balance the demands of nostalgia and sustainability as they construct historical narratives of ›futures worth preserving‹. The aim of this volume is to explore those narratives and the underlying assumptions which inform them. Drawing on a range of disciplines from the humanities and social sciences, the chapters investigate cultural assumptions about which aspects of the past deserve to be remembered and which aspects of the present should be sustained for the future. In the process, they reveal how contemporary definitions of sustainability are informed by a nostalgic yearning for the past, and how nostalgia is motivated by a reciprocal longing to sustain the past for the future.

Culture + Technology

Culture + Technology PDF Author: Jennifer Daryl Slack
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820450070
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
"Culture + Technology is an essential guide to the fascinating history of these debates, and offers new perspectives that give readers the tools they need to make informed decisions about the role of technology in our lives. In clear and compelling language, Slack and Wise untangle and expose the cultural assumptions that underlie our thinking about technology, stories so deeply held we often don't recognize their influence. The book considers the perceived inevitability of technological advance and our myths about progress. It also looks at sources of resistance to these stories from the Luddites of the 19th century to the Unabomber in our own time. Slack and Wise help readers sift through the confusions about culture and technology that arise in their own everyday lives."--BOOK JACKET.