The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture

The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture PDF Author: Heike Schaefer
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030225453
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
This essay collection explores the cultural functions the printed book performs in the digital age. It examines how the use of and attitude toward the book form have changed in light of the digital transformation of American media culture. Situated at the crossroads of American studies, literary studies, book studies, and media studies, these essays show that a sustained focus on the medial and material formats of literary communication significantly expands our accustomed ways of doing cultural studies. Addressing the changing roles of authors, publishers, and readers while covering multiple bookish formats such as artists’ books, bestselling novels, experimental fiction, and zines, this interdisciplinary volume introduces readers to current transatlantic conversations on the history and future of the printed book.

The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture

The Printed Book in Contemporary American Culture PDF Author: Heike Schaefer
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030225453
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
This essay collection explores the cultural functions the printed book performs in the digital age. It examines how the use of and attitude toward the book form have changed in light of the digital transformation of American media culture. Situated at the crossroads of American studies, literary studies, book studies, and media studies, these essays show that a sustained focus on the medial and material formats of literary communication significantly expands our accustomed ways of doing cultural studies. Addressing the changing roles of authors, publishers, and readers while covering multiple bookish formats such as artists’ books, bestselling novels, experimental fiction, and zines, this interdisciplinary volume introduces readers to current transatlantic conversations on the history and future of the printed book.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture

Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture PDF Author: Robert Gregg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134719299
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 881

Get Book Here

Book Description
As a meeting point for world cultures, the USA is characterized by its breadth and diversity. Acknowledging that diversity is the fundamental feature of American culture, this volume is organized around a keen awareness of race, gender, class and space and with over 1,200 alphabetically-arranged entries - spanning 'the American century' from the end of World War II to the present day - the Encyclopedia provides a one-stop source for insightful and stimulating coverage of all aspects of that culture. Entries range from short definitions to longer overview essays and with full cross-referencing, extensive indexing, and a thematic contents list, this volume provides an essential cultural context for both teachers and students of American studies, as well as providing fascinating insights into American culture for the general reader. The suggestions for further reading, which follows most entries, are also invaluable guides to more specialized sources.

American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century

American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century PDF Author: Martin Halliwell
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748631321
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
Will the twenty-first century be the next American Century? Will American power and ideas dominate the globe in the coming years? Or is the prestige of the United States likely to crumble beneath the pressure of new international challenges? This ground-breaking book explores the changing patterns of American thought and culture at the dawn of the new millennium, when the world's richest nation has never been more powerful or more controversial. It brings together some of the most eminent North American and European thinkers to investigate the crucial issues and challenges facing the United States during the early years of our new century.From the subterranean political shifts beneath the electoral landscape to the latest biomedical advances, from the literary response to 9/11 to the rise of reality television, this book explores the political, social and cultural contours of contemporary American life - but it also places the United States within a global narrative of commerce, cultural exchange, i

Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture

Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture PDF Author: Patricia R. Schroeder
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252029158
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 220

Get Book Here

Book Description
Suddenly Robert Johnson is everywhere. Though the Mississippi bluesman died young and recorded only twenty-nine songs, the legacy, legend, and lore surrounding him continue to grow. Focusing on these developments, Patricia R. Schroeder's Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture breaks new ground in Johnson scholarship, going beyond simple or speculative biography to explore him in his larger role as a contemporary cultural icon. Part literary analysis, part cultural criticism, and part biographical study, Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture shows the Robert Johnson of today to be less a two-dimensional character fixed by the few known facts of his life than a dynamic and contested set of ideas. Represented in novels, in plays, and even on a postage stamp, he provides inspiration for "highbrow" cultural artifacts--such as poems--as well as Hollywood movies and T-shirts. Schroeder's detailed and scholarly analysis directly engages key images and stories about Johnson (such as the Faustian crossroads exchange of his soul for guitar virtuosity), navigating the many competing interpretations that swirl around him to reveal the cultural purposes these stories and their tellers serve. Unprecedented in both range and depth, Schroeder's work is a fascinating examination of the relationships among Johnson's life, its subsequent portrayals, and the cultural forces that drove these representations. With penetrating insights into both Johnson and the society that perpetuates him, Robert Johnson, Mythmaking, and Contemporary American Culture is essential reading for cultural critics and blues fans alike.

Introduction to Contemporary Print Culture

Introduction to Contemporary Print Culture PDF Author: Simone Murray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000178293
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Get Book Here

Book Description
Introduction to Contemporary Print Culture examines the role of the book in the modern world. It considers the book’s deeply intertwined relationships with other media through ownership structures, copyright and adaptation, the constantly shifting roles of authors, publishers and readers in the digital ecosystem and the merging of print and digital technologies in contemporary understandings of the book object. Divided into three parts, the book first introduces students to various theories and methods for understanding print culture, demonstrating how the study of the book has grown out of longstanding academic disciplines. The second part surveys key sectors of the contemporary book world – from independent and alternative publishers to editors, booksellers, readers and libraries – focusing on topical debates. In the final part, digital technologies take centre stage as eBook regimes and mass-digitisation projects are examined for what they reveal about information power and access in the twenty-first century. This book provides a fascinating and informative introduction for students of all levels in publishing studies, book history, literature and English, media, communication and cultural studies, cultural sociology, librarianship and archival studies and digital humanities.

Contemporary American Print Makers

Contemporary American Print Makers PDF Author: E. Ashley Rooney
Publisher: Schiffer Pub Limited
ISBN: 9780764346910
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Printmakers today are sustained both by their traditions and by their willingness to embrace new technologies, new mediums, and innovative processes. Over 500 beautiful colour images display the innovative work of 75 talented printmakers and 30 print shops. Traditional printing techniques featured include lithography, intaglio, screen print, and relief, while newer techniques include installation, digital, and fibre, among other forms of new print media. The artists speak for themselves, revealing why they create their art. Consequently, the readers will gain a deeper understanding of their world. These assembled prints reflect the talent of this time and in this place. The artists' mediums, patterns, images, and environments also capture our culture and attempt to foretell our future. This book will be a treasured resource for anyone who appreciates the printmaker's art.

Contemporary American Literature and Excremental Culture

Contemporary American Literature and Excremental Culture PDF Author: Mary C. Foltz
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030465306
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book Here

Book Description
Contemporary American Literature and Excremental Culture: American Sh*t analyzes post-1960 scatological novels that utilize representations of human waste to address pressing issues, including pollution of waterways, environmental racism, and militarism. Primarily examining postmodern parody, the book shows the value of aesthetic renderings of sanitary engineering for composting ideologies that fuel a ruinous impact on the world. Drawing on late twentieth-century psychoanalytic thinkers Norman O. Brown, Frantz Fanon, and Leo Bersani, American Sh*t shows the continued relevance of psychoanalytic interpretations of contemporary fiction for understanding post-45 authors’ engagement with waste. Ultimately, the monograph reveals how novelists Ishmael Reed, Jonathan Franzen, Gloria Naylor, Don DeLillo, and Samuel R. Delany critique subjects who abnegate their status as waste-producing beings and bring readers back to embrace Winner of the 2019 Northeast Modern Language Association Book Award for Literary Criticism of English Language Literature

Taking It Like a Man

Taking It Like a Man PDF Author: David Savran
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400822467
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the Beat poets' incarnation of the "white Negro" through Iron John and the Men's Movement to the paranoid masculinity of Timothy McVeigh, white men in this country have increasingly imagined themselves as victims. In Taking It Like a Man, David Savran explores the social and sexual tensions that have helped to produce this phenomenon. Beginning with the 1940s, when many white, middle-class men moved into a rule-bound, corporate culture, Savran sifts through literary, cinematic, and journalistic examples that construct the white man as victimized, feminized, internally divided, and self-destructive. Savran considers how this widely perceived loss of male power has played itself out on both psychoanalytical and political levels as he draws upon various concepts of masochism--the most counterintuitive of the so-called perversions and the one most insistently associated with femininity. Savran begins with the writings and self-mythologization of Beat writers William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac. Although their independent, law-defying lifestyles seemed distinctively and ruggedly masculine, their literary art and personal relations with other men in fact allowed them to take up social and psychic positions associated with women and racial minorities. Arguing that this dissident masculinity has become increasingly central to U.S. culture, Savran analyzes the success of Sam Shepard as both writer and star, as well as the emergence of a new kind of action hero in movies like Rambo and Twister. He contends that with the limited success of the civil rights and women's movements, white masculinity has been reconfigured to reflect the fantasy that the white male has become the victim of the scant progress made by African Americans and women. Taking It Like a Man provocatively applies psychoanalysis to history. The willingness to inflict pain upon the self, for example, serves as a measure of men's attempts to take control of their situations and their ambiguous relationship to women. Discussing S/M and sexual liberation in their historical contexts enables Savran to consider not only the psychological function of masochism but also the broader issues of political and social power as experienced by both men and women.

Race and Urban Space in Contemporary American Culture

Race and Urban Space in Contemporary American Culture PDF Author: Liam Kennedy
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474469760
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 191

Get Book Here

Book Description
This innovative book looks at representations of ethnic and racial identities in relation to the development of urban culture in postindustrialised American cities. The concept of 'urban space' organises the detailed illustration of a series of themes which structure chapters on white paranoia and urban decline; memories of urban passage; the racialised underclass; urban crime and justice; and globalisation and citizenship.The book focuses on a range of literary and visual forms including novels, journalism, films (narrative and documentary) and photography to examine the relationship between race and representation in the production of urban space. Texts analysed include writings by Tom Wolfe (The Bonfire of the Vanities), Toni Morrison (Jazz), John Edgar Wildeman (Philadelphia Fire) and Walter Mosley (Devil in a Blue Dress). Films covered include Falling Down, Strange Days, Hoop Dreams and Clockers.Provocative and absorbing, this interdisciplinary treatment of urban representations engages contemporary theoretical and sociological debates about race and the city. Issues of space and spatiality in representations of the city are explored and the author shows how expressive forms of literary and visual representation interact with broader productions of urban space.

Veil and Vow

Veil and Vow PDF Author: Aneeka Ayanna Henderson
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469651777
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
In Veil and Vow, Aneeka Ayanna Henderson places familiar, often politicized questions about the crisis of African American marriage in conversation with a rich cultural archive that includes fiction by Terry McMillan and Sister Souljah, music by Anita Baker, and films such as The Best Man. Seeking to move beyond simple assessments of marriage as “good” or “bad” for African Americans, Henderson critically examines popular and influential late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century texts alongside legislation such as the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and the Welfare Reform Act, which masked true sources of inequality with crisis-laden myths about African American family formation. Using an interdisciplinary approach to highlight the influence of law, politics, and culture on marriage representations and practices, Henderson reveals how their kinship veils and unveils the fiction in political policy as well as the complicated political stakes of fictional and cultural texts. Providing a new opportunity to grapple with old questions, including who can be a citizen, a “wife,” and “marriageable,” Veil and Vow makes clear just how deeply marriage still matters in African American culture.