Browse Books
Ulrike Ottinger
The first English language scholarly collection of articles on the leading Berlin based German artist and film-maker Ulrike Ottinger. The articles engage with the full range of the works from the early Berlin feature films of the 1970s and .'80s to the ethnographic documentaries also including the art exhibitions photography shows installations and artist books. The book brings together feminist film theorists with art historians and cultural theorists each with a distinctive and detailed perspective on the queer fabulist genres of Ottinger now in her 80s.
The Urban Refugee
The presence of the refugee in the contemporary metropolis is marked by precarity a quality that has become a characteristic feature of the neoliberal urban milieu. Bringing together essays from diverse disciplines from architectural history to cultural anthropology and urban planning this collection sheds light on both the specificities of the contemporary urban condition that affects the refugees and the multi-dimensional impact that the refugees have on the city. The authors propose investigating this connection through three interlinked themes: identity (informality imagination and belonging); place (transnational homemaking practices); and site (the navigation of urban space).
In recent years there has been a significant growth in scholarship on forced migration particularly on the relationship between displacement and the built environment. Scholars have focused on spatial practices and forms that arise under conditions of displacement with much attention given to refugee camps and the social and political aspects of temporariness. While these issues are important the essays in this volume aim to contribute to a less explored aspect of displacement namely the interaction between refugees and the cities they inhabit. In this respect the volume underlines the specificity of the urban refugee as well as their spatial agency and investigates the irreversible effect they have on the contemporary urban condition.
The authors argue that viewing urban refugees solely as dislocated individuals outside the camp-like spaces of containment fails to understand the agency of the urban refugee and the blurred boundaries of identity that result. The term "refugee crisis" objectifies and denies active agency to refugees homogenizing dislocated individuals and groups. The neoliberalization of the past four decades has led to the precarization of labour and the displacement of refugees who frequently blend into the urban environment as hidden populations. Refugees are subjected to constant surveillance and the state's attempts to control them. However these attempts are not uncontested and the involvement of activist interventions further politicizes the urban refugee.
Urban Exile
Explores cities of exile from different perspectives and presents different methods and sources for exile and urban studies. The essays are written by internationally recognized scholars and contain a wide range of themes including mapping oral history queerness photography. This book will make a significant contribution to the theory and methodology of research on historical exile cities and modernities as well as present multidisciplinary exile research from an urban perspective.
With a blend of case studies and theoretical approaches it interweaves histories of modernism and exile in different urban environments and focuses on historical dislocations in the first half of the twentieth century when artistic and urban movements constituted themselves in global exchange. Although this book takes a historical perspective it is written with an awareness of current flight movements and will make a significant contribution to the theory and methodology of research on exile.
The knowledge of previous historical exile experiences is important for the understanding of contemporary flight movements: after all these are not singular phenomena. For migration movements in the first half of the 20th century and for those of today it is equally possible to speak of urban centres of attraction for refugees: Today Berlin is a European metropolis of exile; in the 1930s and 1940s Paris Prague London New York Istanbul and Shanghai were destinations for refugees.
With contributions from Maddalena Alvi Ekaterina Aygün Claudia Cendales Paredes Julia Eichenberg Margit Franz Nils Grosch Mareike Hetschold Louis Kaplan Laura Karp Lugo Katya Knyazeva Merve Köksal Rachel Lee Chris McConville Anna Messner Alexis Nuselovici Robert Pascoe Valentina Pino Reyes Helene Roth Valeria Sánchez Michel Marine Schütz Seza Sinanlar Uslu Felicitas Söhner Mareike Schwarz Marina Sorokina Xin Tong Diana Wechsler Jessica Williams Stark and Federico Vitelli.
Under the Counter
Prior to 2000 it was a criminal offence to sell hardcore pornography in Britain. Despite this there was a thriving alternative economy producing and distributing such material “under the counter” of Soho’s bookshops and via mail-order. British entrepreneurs circumvented obscenity laws to satisfy the demand for uncensored adult films and profit from their enterprise with the corrupt Obscene Publications Squad permitting them to trade.
By the late 1960s Britain had developed an international reputation for producing ‘rollers’ short films distributed on 8mm which were smuggled out of Britain for sale in Western Europe. Following an exposé by Britain’s tabloid press a crackdown on police corruption and several high-profile obscenity trials the trade was all but decimated with pornography smuggled in from Europe dominating the market.
Under the Counter is the first book of its kind to investigate Britain’s trade in illicit pornographic 8mm film. Drawing on extensive archival research including the use of legal records police files media reportage and interviews with those who were involved in the business Under the Counter tells the story of Britain’s trade in 8mm hardcore pornographic films and its regulation incorporating ideas from cultural studies political economy history and criminology.
Under the Counter is a scholarly monograph that will be of interest to researchers across a wide range of disciplines and will be of use to students at undergraduate Masters level and PhD.
The book will be of particular relevance to students and researchers interested in the study of pornography sexual cultures illicit media enterprise and entrepreneurship but also those with an interest in film production and distribution particularly within a British context. The theoretical frameworks that underpin the book mean that researchers with an interest in the creative industries will be able to make use of it and the book makes a contribution to media and cultural history.
It is suitable for use on university courses relating to these specific areas specifically media and communication film studies creative industries and potentially on criminology or socio-legal studies given the books attention to obscenity law and regulation of illicit practices.
Understanding Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
Scholars have been studying the films of Stanley Kubrick for decades. This book however breaks new ground by bringing together recent empirical approaches to Kubrick with earlier formalist approaches to arrive at a broader understanding of the ways in which Kubrick’s methods were developed to create the unique aesthetic creation that is 2001: A Space Odyssey. More than 50 years after its release contributors explore the film’s still striking design vision and philosophical structure offering new insights and analyses that will give even dedicated Kubrick fans new ways of thinking about the director and his masterpiece.
Using Art as Research in Learning and Teaching
Using Art as Research in Learning and Teaching explores various multidisciplinary visual and performing art forms including creative writing as ways to provide a rich contribution and understanding to research learning and teaching. Key figures in the field share their art-based research arts practice and philosophy bringing the arts to life within their taught and learnt contexts across a variety of art forms and levels of post-compulsory education. In what is an invaluable collection this book is directly beneficial to arts researchers and educators addressing the key challenges and possibilities in a rapidly changing higher education environment.
Internationally renowned proponent of arts-based research Professor Shaun McNiff provides the Foreword of this ground-breaking book.
Understanding Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey
Scholars have been studying the films of Stanley Kubrick for decades. This book however breaks new ground by bringing together recent empirical approaches to Kubrick with earlier formalist approaches to arrive at a broader understanding of the ways in which Kubrick’s methods were developed to create the unique aesthetic creation that is 2001: A Space Odyssey. More than 50 years after its release contributors explore the film’s still striking design vision and philosophical structure offering new insights and analyses that will give even dedicated Kubrick fans new ways of thinking about the director and his masterpiece.
Using Media for Social Innovation
This book offers a critical road map for understanding and researching 'social innovation media' – initiatives that look for new solutions to seemingly intractable social problems by combining creativity media technologies and engaged collectives in their design and implementation. Presenting a number of case studies including campaigns dealing with young people Indigenous peoples human rights and environmental issues the book takes a close look at the guiding principles assumptions goals practices and outcomes of these experiments revealing the challenges they face the components of their innovation and the cultural economy within which they operate.
Unbecoming Cinema
Unbecoming Cinema explores the notion of cinema as a living active agent capable of unsettling and reconfiguring a person’s thoughts senses and ethics. Film according to David H. Fleming is a dynamic force arming audiences with the ability to see and make a difference in the world. Drawing heavily on Deleuze’s philosophical insights as well as those of Guattari and Badiou the book critically examines unsettling and taboo footage from suicide documentaries to art therapy films from portrayals of mental health and autism to torture porn. In investigating the effect of film on the mind and body Fleming’s shrewd analysis unites transgressive cinema with metaphysical concepts of the body and mind.
A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform Unbecoming Cinema. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License and is part of Knowledge Unlatched.
Utopia
Uncommon Goods
Understanding Virtual Universities
All those involved in Higher Education are under pressure to familiarise themselves with the newest developments in Information Technology and to understand the ways in which they can make use of these resources. The purpose of this book is to help academics from all disciplines to take full advantage of IT. Anticipating a future in which distance learning and virtual reality tutoring systems play a central role in university teaching Roy Rada provides guidelines for making use of such technological opportunities. The chapters cover:
• distance learning for individual students
• groups in classrooms - focusing on interactive technology
• the university as a whole
• emerging market forces in Higher Education and training for industry
Unlike competing books that focus on specific aspects of the subject Understanding Virtual Universities combines managerial social and technical issues to provide a comprehensive approach to Information Technology for Higher Education.
Understanding Virtual Universities
All those involved in Higher Education are under pressure to familiarise themselves with the newest developments in Information Technology and to understand the ways in which they can make use of these resources. The purpose of this book is to help academics from all disciplines to take full advantage of IT. Anticipating a future in which distance learning and virtual reality tutoring systems play a central role in university teaching Roy Rada provides guidelines for making use of such technological opportunities. The chapters cover:
• distance learning for individual students
• groups in classrooms - focusing on interactive technology
• the university as a whole
• emerging market forces in Higher Education and training for industry
Unlike competing books that focus on specific aspects of the subject Understanding Virtual Universities combines managerial social and technical issues to provide a comprehensive approach to Information Technology for Higher Education.
Un-American Psycho
Brian De Palma is perhaps best known as the director behind the gangster classic Scarface. Yet as ingrained as Scarface is in American popular culture it is but one of a sizeable number of controversial films—many of which are consistently misread or ignored—directed by De Palma over his more than four-decade career.
In Un-American Psycho Chris Dumas places De Palma’s body of work in dialogue with the works of other provocative filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard and Francis Ford Coppola with the aim of providing a broader understanding of the narrative stylistic and political gestures that characterize De Palma’s filmmaking. De Palma’s films engage with a wide range of issues surrounding American political and social culture and this volume offers a rethinking of the received wisdom on his work.
Urban Cinematics
Urban Cinematics surveys the mechanisms by which cinema contributes to our understanding of cities to address two key issues: How do filmmakers make use of urban spaces and how do urban spaces make use of cinema? Merging the disciplines of architecture landscape design and urban planning with film studies this book explores the potential of cinema as a tool to investigate the communal narratives of cities. A series of dialogues with filmmakers rounds out this insightful and methodologically innovative volume.
Unmapping the City
Unmapping the City the first title in the new Intellect series Critical Photography features photographs shot between 2004 and 2008 in different cities around the world. The images are linked by their shared attempts to define a two-dimensional approach to a three-dimensional built reality and to address spatial representation ritual and urbanity through art. In representing the cityscape through a flat texture of lines and bold colors the reader is drawn into a conversation about the interplay between reality and its representation. This volume significantly challenges and expands the critical discourse on photography and text and will be of interest to artists curators photographers architects and critical theorists.
Understanding the Global TV Format
But what exactly is a format? After all programs have been copied and imitated since the beginnings of broadcasting. In this the first book in the English language to systematically deal with the subject Albert Moran and Justin Malbon provide a valuable guide to the institutional cultural and legal dimensions of the format. Now widely referred to although equally often misunderstood the TV format is a commodity of production finance distribution broadcasting and marketing knowledges that is facilitating the international reconfiguration of program making.
Understanding the Global TV Format thus addresses the different stages and issues of the business. It tracks the steps whereby formats are devised developed and distributed. Major companies are profiled as are the international markets and festivals at which trade occurs. However there is also a great deal of piracy taking place so that the book is concerned with the control and regulation of format remaking. Legal protection is often both the first and last recourse of parties and the authors examine the relevance of laws relating to such matters as copyright and contract.