Browse Books
Animals and Artists
Animals and Artists discusses a selection of modern and contemporary artworks that challenge traditional representations of nonhuman animals and that expose human viewers to animal otherness.
It argues that the individuated and discrete human self in possession of consciousness rationality empathy a voice and a face is open to challenge by nonhuman capacities such as distributed cognition gender ambiguity metamorphosis mimicry and avian speech. In traditional philosophy animals represent all that is lacking in humankind. However Animals and Artists argues that just because humans frame ‘the animal’ as a negative term their binary opposite and everything that they are not does not mean that animals have no meaning in themselves. Rather animals in their very unknowability mark the limits of human thinking.
By combining art analysis with poststructuralist post humanist and animal studies theories as well as scientific research Elizabeth decentres the human and establishes a new position where differences are embraced. In our current moment of ecological crisis Animals and Artists brings readers into solidarity with other animal species among them spiders silkworms bees parrots and octopuses. The book raises empathy for other live forms drawing attention to the shared vulnerabilities of human and nonhuman animals and in so doing underlines the power of art to bring about social change.
Readers will include animal studies scholars artists art historians Jean Painlevé scholars Surrealist enthusiasts non-academics who are concerned about the human-animal relationship the environment or larger identity politics issues.
Aleksei Balabanov: 'Brother'
KinoSputniks closely analyse some key films from the history of Russian and Soviet cinema. Written by international experts in the field they are intended for film enthusiasts and students combining scholarship with an accessible style of writing.
Ira Österberg's KinoSputnik on Aleksei Balabanov's cult film Brother (1997) examines the production history context and reception of the film and offers a detailed reading of its key themes.
Balabanov’s Brother made a mark on the new Russia’s film history as its hero Danila Bagrov quickly gained cult status and the nostalgic rock soundtrack hit the nerve of the young post-Soviet generation. This study unravels the film’s effective and ingenious mixture of genre elements art narration and almost documentary-style realism which would become trademarks for Balabanov’s oeuvre.
Primary readership will be among film studies students and film enthusiasts but will also be of interest to anyone researching or studying film soundtracking.
A list of all books in the series is here on the Intellect website on the series page KinoSputnik
Andrei Tarkovsky: 'Ivan's Childhood'
KinoSputniks closely analyse some key films from the history of Russian and Soviet cinema. Written by international experts in the field they are intended for film enthusiasts and students combining scholarship with an accessible style of writing. This KinoSputnik on Andrei Tarkovsky's debut feature Ivan's Childhood examines the production context and reception of the film whilst offering a detailed reading of its key themes.
Through a close examination of its intricate narrative structure unique stylistic approach and deep philosophical underpinnings this KinoSputnik provides a thorough analysis of a truly remarkable debut film from an artist now considered a towering figure of Russian culture.
Primary readership will be among film studies students and film enthusiasts.
A list of all books in the series is here on the Intellect website on the series page KinoSputnik
Fedor Bondarchuk: 'Stalingrad'
KinoSputniks closely analyse some key films from the history of Russian and Soviet cinema. Written by international experts in the field they are intended for film enthusiasts and students combining scholarship with an accessible style of writing.
This KinoSputnik about Fedor Bondarchuk's megahit Stalingrad (2013) examines the production context and reception of the film whilst offering a detailed reading of its key themes.
Fedor Bondarchuk’s 2013 blockbuster film Stalingrad shattered box-office records and dazzled viewers with its use of special effects enhanced by its 3D IMAX format. The film transported viewers back to 1942 and the bloody battle that would turn the tide of the Second World War.
This new study situates the film within the context of ongoing debates about the meanings of the Second World War in Russia and previous films about the Battle of Stalingrad.
Primary readership will be among film studies students and film enthusiasts but will also be of interest to anyone researching or studying the Battle of Stalingrad and the course of the Second World War.
A list of all books in the series is here on the Intellect website on the series page KinoSputnik
Beijing Film Academy 2019
The annual Beijing Film Academy Yearbook highlights the best academic debates discussions and research from the previous year as previously published in the highly prestigious Journal of Beijing Film Academy. This volume brings together specially selected articles appearing for the first time in English to bridge the gap in cross-cultural research in cinema and media studies.
The book is the latest in the Intellect China Library series to produce work by Chinese scholars that have not previously been available to English language academia. Covering the subjects of film studies visual arts performing arts media and cultural studies the series aims to foster intellectual debate and to promote closer cross-cultural intellectual exchanges by introducing important works of Chinese scholarship to readers.
African Modernism and Its Afterlives
This new book is an edited volume of essays that examine the legacy of architecture in a number of African countries soon after independence. It has its origins in an exhibition and symposium that focused on architecture as an element in Nordic countries’ aid packages to newly independent states but the expanded breadth of the essays includes work on other countries and architects. Drawing on ethnography archival research and careful observations of buildings remains and people the case studies seek to connect the colonial and postcolonial origins of modernist architecture the historical processes they underwent and present use and habitation.
It results from the 2015 seminar and exhibition Forms of Freedom at the National Museum of Art Architecture and Design in Oslo Norway. The exhibition showed how modern Scandinavian architecture became an essential component of foreign aid to East Africa in the period 1960–80 and how the ideals of the Nordic welfare system found expression in a number of construction projects. The seminar which built upon the exhibition as well as on a previous collaboration on the legacies of modernism in Africa between the Department of Anthropology of the University of Oslo and the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning from Ghent University broadened the geographic scope of the discussion beyond the Scandinavian context and set the ground for bringing together the disciplines of architectural history and social anthropology.
Primary readership will be among architects and architectural historians and graduate level architecture and urban studies students for whom it will be valuable course material as well as those in fields such as African studies and anthropology. It may also be of interest to those working or researching in public policy and political history.
The Many Meanings of Mina
Mina (Anna Maria Mazzini born Lombardy 1940) is an Italian popular music icon who throughout her sixty-year-long career has come to represent a range of diverse meanings. She is one of the best-loved popular music stars in Italy and abroad with a large fan base across Europe Asia and South America. Her career began in the late 1950s and reached its peak in the 1960s and 1970s.
Despite having retired from public appearances at the end of the 1970s Mina remains popular and successful today and continues to release new albums that consistently debut in the number one spot of the Italian charts. As an Italian popular music star she is exemplary of the way in which stardom is constructed by different media and has come to represent different local and global identities values ideologies and ways of behaving. This is because whilst Mina is first and foremost a popular music star she has also been a film star and a television personality during different phases of her career. She has advertised successful Italian brands on television and she has been a magazine writer and agony aunt. Her star persona is the product of her work in many different areas as well as of the promotional materials and commentaries that are produced in response to her work.
This book explores these different ‘mediums’ that Mina has been involved in and which have shaped her career and significance. It traces the process by which she has come to embody a diverse range of meanings that reveal something of the values and ideals at work within contemporary Italian society.
Rachel Haworth is a researcher of Italian popular music and culture of the twentieth century and Senior Lecturer in Italian at the University of Hull UK.
The primary market for this book is students and academics in the following subject areas: Italian Studies; Popular Music Studies; Stardom and Celebrity Studies; Media Studies; Cultural History. Also scholars and researchers working on music divas.
The book is suitable for use on courses and modules at all undergraduate and postgraduate levels which deal with Italian cultural studies Italy’s post-war history and the role of women in Italy as well as the wider study of popular music and the construction of stardom and celebrity.
The secondary audience for this book will be fans of Mina around the world accessibly written this will appeal to fans in Italy who are able to read in English.
Painting in the 1980s
This book is the first to explore in depth major painters of the period and the factors that shaped their art. Accessible to both art novice and specialist it is written in jargon-free readable language blending vignettes about the soaring art market of the eighties with illuminating interpretations of paintings by leading artists from around the world. Painting in the 1980s details where and how painting embodied the zeitgeist of the 1980s in original fusions of style and content.
Erpf knows each artist’s work well and her discussions of the individual paintings are vivid and insightful. They bring the vitality of the art world in this understudied period to the fore. The individual descriptions and discussions of paintings are lively engaging and provocative. They infuse each chapter with the author’s passion for the subject and carry the reader along. The thematics – painting as puzzle German history Italian place – hold each chapter together and set the foundation for the author’s original thinking and point of view.
This book explores painting by a broad swathe of artists who were at the heart of that painting resurgence. The many books that examine twentieth-century art tend to emphasize painting as part of European Modernism American Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art with late twentieth-century painting often given short shrift. Excellent monographs and exhibition catalogues on individual artists exist but Erpf’s intention is to counter the paucity of literature devoted to a larger group of painters. This is not a comprehensive look at all the artists who contributed to 1980s paintings revival.
Gallerists curators and art historians assigned labels such as New Image Painting Neo-Expressionism Italian Transavanguardia Neo-Geo and the blanket designation Postmodernism to categorize painting in this era. Yet these classifications denote a false sense of homogeneity which will be made clear in this book. This book’s narrative aims to excavate and analyse the art and ideas that shaped each artist’s style and their diverse and often ambiguous content.
Works by the following artists are included: Nicolas Africano Georg Baselitz Jean-Michel Basquiat Joseph Beuys Francesco Clemente Sandro Chia George Condo Enzo Cucchi Marlene Dumas Eric Fischl Denise Green Philip Guston Peter Halley Mary Heilmann Neil Jenney Donald Judd Anselm Kiefer Gordon Matta-Clark Robert Moskowitz Mimmo Paladino A.R.Penck Lari Pittman Sigmar Polke Gerhard Richter Susan Rothenberg David Salle Julian Schnabel Joel Shapiro Frank Stella and David True.
The artists discussed are all well known but the surprises are in the innovative ways the artists insisted on returning to painting in a decade when it had been pronounced dead. Their courage and creativity comes through in the text.
This will appeal to artists art and cultural historians more broadly and is suitable as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in twentieth-century and contemporary art history.
Novice art historians art enthusiasts and collectors will also find much to enjoy here – it has appeal well beyond simply those professionally involved in the art world.
Living Histories
Living Histories is a collection of new scholarship that explores histories of art education through a series of international contexts. The first truly international text highlighting histories of art education with contributions from over 30 scholars based in 18 countries.
Art education holds an important role in promoting historical awareness of the multiple relations that connect pedagogic inquiry with culture heritage place and identity locally and globally. To keep pace with the movements of art and society Garnet and Sinner consider that art education requires more inclusive and holistic versions of history from transnational perspectives that break down barriers and cross borders in the pursuit of more informed and diverse understandings of the field. The broad focus of this edited collection is to provide both new perspectives of art education from around the world and to introduce transnationalism into the field as a way to conceptualize the entanglements of historical research in our globalized age. Transnational histories of art education focus on the linkages and flows that shift focus away from the nation-state to other transnational actors such as individuals communities institutions and/or organizations.
Contributions from scholars and educators based and working in Australia Austria Brazil Canada Colombia Croatia Czech Republic Finland India Iran Japan Malta South Africa Spain Trinidad and Tobago UK USA and Zimbabwe.
Includes chapters that adapt an approach of ‘artwork histories’ to explore the legacies of art education as an anticipatory mode of historical thinking and practice across the visual arts and sites of art education. The book offers an opportunity for authentic engagement and intellectual risk which includes the rejection of ‘correct’ interpretations of historical problems. As active agents art education historians are not passive collectors of the past but engaged in new ways of doing history predicated on cultivating stories that move beyond representation to attend to aesthetic dimensions that bridge historiography material culture oral history art history and teacher education. Living Histories provides an interpretation of historical thinking and consciousness through the interrelations of time and space to provoke critical and creative practices in education.
This is the latest book in the Artwork Scholarship series which aims to invite debate on and provide an essential resource for transnational scholars engaged in creative research involving visual literary and performative arts.
With contributors from 18 countries this book will have a substantial international readership among art educators and those interested in the history of art education primarily in universities and colleges. It will also be particularly useful for graduate students.
It will also appeal to scholars in arts education more broadly - music education dance education theatre education scholars cultural and art historians art theorists international educators and curators.
The New Politics of Visibility
Not only does visibility matter to politics but it is increasingly becoming an intrinsic constituent element and a crucial asset to it.
Accordingly the challenge to the social science becomes that of understanding how the new institutional urban and technological settings are reshaping the organisation of visible. This book brings together a team of distinguished scholars and researchers interested in employing exploring and critiquing the analytical category and the practical stakes of visibility.
Ranging from urban public space to the new media and social media platforms a vast terrain of inquiry is addressed here by joining together original theoretical elaboration and careful empirical studies. The result is a thoroughly interdisciplinary endeavour conducted with passion and insight.
The New Politics of Visibility includes nine original chapters specifically commissioned for this collection. Contributions are interdisciplinary and address an array of topical areas in the newly emerging modes of governance and the novel social formations coming into existence. The transformations of urban space and the working of the new media form a core concern recurring through many of the essays but is by no means the sole topic as other essays address the politics of visibility in crucial cultural spheres including gender relations and professional life.
Audience will be academics researchers graduate and postgraduate students
Canadian Critical Luxury Studies
Canadian Critical Luxury Studies: Decentering Luxury is a dynamic new contribution to the study of luxury. The essays in this collection challenge Euro- and US-centric perceptions that bind luxury to either a colonial past or a consumerist present. The book announces a new collective of thinkers who focus on Indigenous and Canadian instances of luxurious production experiences and sites to propose a new definition of luxury that includes a plurality of regional practices highlighting that Canadian luxury centres on community and connection.
Each of the interdisciplinary contributions analyse luxury from different vantage points to understand why luxury has succeeded or failed in the Canadian context. From the history of the fur trade to the latest Indigenous fashion movement from the T. Eaton Co.’s 1920s Made-in-Canada campaign to the on-again-off-again Toronto Fashion Week from Vancouver public art commissions to Montréal’s future-forward fashiontech sector the essays in this volume explain what makes and breaks Canadian luxury.
These original case studies redefine luxury for Canada – a former colonial possession and contemporary second-tier cultural market – and lay the foundation for the critical study of luxury in other historically secondary geographies that produce consume and circulate material and symbolic luxuries. The collection ultimately challenges old myths and the mystique surrounding European luxury to give it a new lustre that shines light on those actors who have been historically excluded from its privilege: Indigenous peoples immigrants the working classes. It sheds light on the reasons that conventional expressions of luxury may fail in secondary markets and offers guidance for fashiontech innovations that invest in the individual without imposing dehumanizing values of efficiency and rational measurement.
Although focused on the Canadian context the book will appeal to an international audience of scholarly and industry readers. Its interventions about broadening the focus of luxury studies beyond traditional sites in Western Europe make it an important text for global audiences. It offers an alternate reading of conventional luxury histories sites and practices; in doing so it models a national approach to luxury that can be applied to alternate national markets.
Jessica P. Clark is a historian of Britain and empire with a focus on gender consumption and labour and an associate professor of history at Brock University Ontario Canada. Nigel Lezama is an associate professor of French studies at Brock University and works at the intersection of fashion luxury literary and cultural studies.
Contributions are drawn from a number of fields including but not limited to Indigenous studies museum studies business management cultural studies fashion studies technology and industry. Contributors include Kathryn Franklin University of Toronto; Rebecca Halliday Toronto Metropolitan University; Riley Kucheran Toronto Metropolitan University; Valérie Lamontagne Concordia University; Marie O'Mahony Ontario College of Art and Design; Julia Polyck-O'Neill York University Ontario.
This is a primarily an academic book. It is of great relevance to scholars within the subfield of critical luxury studies as well as scholars of consumer and commodity cultures more broadly and those working or interested in Canadian studies media studies critical studies and historians.
Researchers and postgraduate students studying luxury as well as those studying the history of the development of Canada its colonial past and the marginalization of Indigenous people and with the development of fashion technologies will also find it useful.
Academics and practitioners concerned with the development of city and nation branding will find the book of value.
The Music of Nobuo Uematsu in the Final Fantasy Series
Nobuo Uematsu is one of the most influential Japanese composers of the current age. One of Japan’s most beloved living composers he has been composing music for the popular franchise since 1987 inspiring a new generation of classical music fans and named by Time Magazine as an ‘innovator’ of the new wave of music.
Sometimes described as the Beethoven of video game music Nobuo Uematsu has built his career and reputation from his soundtracks to the enduring Final Fantasy series of video games which are notable for their remarkable cinematic feel.
Classic FM radio describes Nobuo as ‘part John Williams part Wagnerian leitmotif part new-age soundscaper – and a legend in his own right’. He has so far appeared five times in the top 20 of the annual Classic FM Hall of Fame voted for by listeners.
This is the first book-length study on the music of Uematsu. It takes a variety of different analytical approaches to his music. It offers readers interested in ludomusicology (the study of and research into video game music) a variety of ways in which to understand Uematsu’s compositional process and the role that video game music has in the overall gaming experience.
Those interested in Uematsu’s music will gain a greater appreciation and understanding of his compositional processes and his interaction with musical narrative and those interested in ludomusicology in general will be shown various methodologies that can be applied to a single composer. Those interested in composing for video games or movies will also be given insight into how they might compose for a narrative themselves.
Professional musicians will gain deeper insight into the music from selected games in the series as each chapter applies traditional theoretical and musicological methodologies to selected games from the series. It my also be a useful educational resource for use in their own studies by student and amateur musicians.
Foreword by William Gibbons associate professor of musicology at Texas Christian University. Editor Richard Anatone is a professor of music theory at Prince George's Community College in Largo Maryland.
It will be a valuable resource for ludomusicologists as well as academics from a variety of disciplines who work in popular music and culture film and visual media and subjects traditionally marginalized by the Western 'Classical' canon. It will also be of interest to fans of the Final Fantasy series both inside and outside of academia and to composers of video game music.
It will also appeal to readers interested in the business and marketing side of the video game industry and who want to learn from the successes of live video game concerts and how symbolism and thematic interplay aids in drawing gamers’ attention to soundtracks and concerts of video game music.
Game developers will learn how to recognize potential composers and compositional approaches that will aid in storytelling fandom and gamer immersion.
General video game historians who want to learn more about Square’s early years and eventual transition into a powerhouse development company will also find much to interest them.
While there have been several edited collections in the subdiscipline of ludomusicology this is the first book to address a composer’s oeuvre as the main subject. It brings together a variety of methodologies and voices on the subject and has potential to become a model for future composer-focused studies.
Imagining Antiquity in Islamic Societies
In the aftermath of the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage pursued by Islamist groups like ISIS many observers have erroneously come to associate Islamic doctrine and practice with such acts. This book explores the diverse ways Muslims have engaged with the material legacies of ancient and pre-Islamic societies as well as how Islam’s own heritage has been framed and experienced over time.
This is a new collection of articles previously available in issues of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture.
The tragically familiar spectacles of cultural heritage destruction performed by the Islamic State group (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq are frequently presented as barbaric baffling and far outside the bounds of what are imagined to be normative 'civilized' uses of the past. Often superficially explained as an attempt to stamp out idolatry or as a fundamentalist desire to revive and enforce a return to a purified monotheism analysis of these spectacles of heritage violence posits two things: that there is fact an 'Islamic' manner of imagining the past – its architectural manifestations its traces and localities – and that actions carried out at these localities whether constructive or destructive have moral or ethical consequences for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. In this reading the iconoclastic actions of ISIS and similar groups for example the Taliban or the Wahhabi monarchy in Saudi Arabia are represented as one albeit extreme manifestation of an assumedly pervasive and historically on-going Islamic antipathy toward images and pre-contemporary holy localities in particular and more broadly toward the idea of heritage and the uses to which it has been put by modern nationalism.
But long before the emergence of ISIS and other so-called Islamist iconoclasts and perhaps as early as the rise of Islam itself Muslims imagined Islamic and pre-Islamic antiquity and its localities in myriad ways: as sites of memory spaces of healing or places imbued with didactic historical and moral power. Ancient statuary were deployed as talismans paintings were interpreted to foretell and reify the coming of Islam and temples of ancient gods and churches devoted to holy saints were converted into mosques in ways that preserved their original meaning and sometimes even their architectural ornament and fabric. Often such localities were valued simply as places that elicited a sense of awe and wonder or of reflection on the present relevance of history and the greatness of past empires a theme so prevalent it created distinct genres of Arabic and Persian literature (aja’ib fada’il). Sites like Ctesiphon the ancient capital of the Zoroastrian Sasanians or the Temple Mount where the Jewish temple had stood were embraced by early companions of the Prophet Muhammad and incorporated into Islamic notions of the self. Furthermore various Islamic interpretive communities as well as Jews and Christians often shared holy places and had similar haptic sensorial and ritual connections that enabled them to imagine place in similar ways. These engagements were often more dynamic and purposeful than conventional scholarly notions of 'influence' and 'transmission' can account for. And yet Muslims also sometimes destroyed ancient places or powerfully reimagined them to serve their own purposes as for example in the aftermath of the Crusader presence in the Holy Land or in the destruction reuse and rebuilding of ancient Buddhist and Hindu sites in the Eastern Islamic lands and South Asia.
This volume presents thirteen essays by leading scholars that address the issue of Islamic interest in the material past of the ancient and Islamic world with essays examining attitudes about antiquarianism in the Islamic world from medieval times to the present.
Main readership will be among scholars graduate and undergraduate students researchers educators and academic libraries working or studying in the fields of the ancient world antiquities heritage and the Islamic world.
Heavy Metal Armour: A Visual Study of Battle Jackets
The first of its kind – original unique and beautifully illustrated by the author. Engagingly written it will appeal to fans and academics alike.
A lavishly illustrated study of the heavy metal battle jacket in a historical and cultural context with a unique approach to analysis and interrogation of form and style through painting practice and theory.
Since the 1970s customized denim 'battle jackets' have been worn by heavy metal fans to signify their devotion to the music and subcultures of metal. Embellished by the wearers with patches badges and studs these jackets are works of art that communicate the values of metal to the world at large. This book features a series of detailed paintings that visually document examples of jackets alongside photographic portraits of the fans that wear them.
The accompanying chapters describe the significance of battle jackets in metal scenes and trace a lineage of customized clothing starting in the Middle Ages. Connections are made with a wide range of historic and contemporary artworks suggesting a broad context within which to more fully appreciate the significance of the jackets. The methodology spans a range of disciplines from art theory to ethnography and subcultural studies and the discussion is informed by responses from a series of interviews conducted over the years with metal fans.
The book has a highly original focus and the author’s approach to the subject is unique. It reaches across a range of fields: the history and cultural context of heavy metal music style and dress; art history and practice particularly painting; subcultural studies; fashion and dress; music graphics branding and marketing.
Tom Cardwell is an artist and researcher specialising in contemporary painting customized clothing and heavy metal subcultures. He is senior lecturer in painting at Camberwell University of the Arts London.
It will appeal to readers with an interest in metal subcultures; fashion style and dress; music branding and identity; contemporary art theory and practice. The writing style and content is relaxed engaging and will be of interest to a wider casual readership with an interest in popular culture and the arts.
A useful resource for academics and students interested in heavy metal customized clothing/DIY subcultures painting and visual arts. Could appeal to undergraduate as well as postgraduates and scholars in these fields and a broader interest in visual culture.
Men, War and Film
The Calling Blighty series of films produced by the Combined Kinematograph Service produced towards the end of the Second World War were one-reel films in which soldiers gave short spoken messages to the camera as a means of connecting the front line and the home front. These are the first ever films where men speak openly in their regional accents and they have profound meaning for remembrance documentary representation and the ecology of film in wartime.
Of the 400 films (or ‘issues’) made 64 survive. Each of those contained around 25 individual messages. Men – and a very few women - from a particular city town or region were grouped together for the films to make regional screenings back in UK cinemas and town halls possible. Personnel from all three services are featured but the men are predominantly from the army units. Screenings took place at a cinema in the subjects’ local area and were usually organised by the regional Army Welfare Committee. The names and addresses of those to be invited to the screenings were sent to the UK along with the films.
Until now these films have barely been researched and yet are a valuable source of social history as well as representing a different mode from the mainstream of British wartime documentary. This book expands the history of Calling Blighty and places it in a broader context both past and present. New research reveals the origins of the film series and draws comparisons with written and oral contemporary sources.
Steve Hawley is an artist/filmmaker whose work has been screened worldwide and has collaborated closely with the North West Film Archive UK. He is emeritus professor at the Manchester Metropolitan University UK.
Using memoirs and diaries Steve Hawley has researched the roles in the Burma campaign of participants in the surviving films and traced over 160 of the families of the men – and two men still alive – and recreated these wartime screenings.
Hawley’s book is part description of the films part reclamation of a largely unknown genre of wartime filmmaking partly an account of the Burma campaign and partly a discussion of war and memory. Engagingly and warmly written.
It will be of interest to scholars and researchers in the areas of war studies especially those specializing in the social rather than military history of warfare and historians of British wartime cinema and documentary. Also useful for an undergraduate audience in history media/film studies.
Potential for readers with an interest in the Second World War particularly the war in Burma and those with an interest in family history of the period.
An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Performance Art
This original and unique new book takes an integrated approach to interrogating the experience and location of the self/s within the context of performance art practice. In its framing and execution of practical exercises and focused snapshots of internationally recognized performance practice Bacon situates their argument within the boundaries of specialism in the critical curation of performance art praxis as well as contemporary phenomenological scholarship.
Introducing the study and application of performance art through phenomenology for radical artists educators and practitioner-researchers; this exciting new book invites readers to take part explore contemporary performance art and activate their own practices.
Applying a queer phenomenology to unpack the importance of a multiplicity of Self/s the book guides readers to be academically rigorous when capturing embodied experiences featuring exercises to activate their practices and clear introductory definitions to key phenomenological terms. Includes interviews and insights from some of the best examples of transgressive performance art practice of this century help to help unpack the application of phenomenology as Bacon calls for a queer reimagining of Heidegger’s ‘The Origin of the Work of Art.’
This is an important contribution to the field and will be welcomed by performance artists and academics interested in performance. It may also appeal to those teaching concepts of phenomenology.
It will be relevant to students of performance as well as to artists audiences and museum goers. The approachable layout and clear authorial voice will add to the appeal for students early career researchers and mean that it has strong potential for inclusion in undergraduate and postgraduate syllabi within the field.
6+1 Proposals for Journalism
In 2003 Bowman and Willis wrote that “journalism is in the process of redefining itself adjusting to the disruptive forces surrounding it”. Almost two decades later the discussion about journalism and its future has not shifted as much as one would have expected. Between then and now there have been massive changes in the media landscape and great technological developments – financial crises and the emergence of social media platforms to name a few examples. It could be argued that we still share the same concerns.
This book is essentially a dialogue – each chapter contributes to this dialogue by highlighting the crisis elements and by pointing to direct proposals. The idea for the present volume emerged through a respective conference – the proposals presented in this book are the direct result of the Advanced Media Institute’s Conference in Thessaloniki Greece entitled “Media Polis Agora: Journalism & Communication in the Digital Era” (AMIRetreat2018) held in September 2018. The outcome of the intensive and fruitful collaboration between academics and media professionals was the identification of seven key areas that pose obstacles to journalism’s progression but also indicate the steps we need to take to safeguard and enhance journalism. These areas vary from the current employment conditions and the dominance of “web giants” over crowdfunding the closer collaboration of professionals and academia the need to advance our media literacy efforts and of course elements of media regulation (as for example the institution of “Media Ombudsman”).
The starting point for the book is the Greek context. However the book goes beyond Greece alone. In this context Greece is regarded as part of an international journalistic context that resides within to the crisis narrative the new opportunities and the proposed solutions. Greece offers an interesting point of departure not only because the financial crisis was/is evidently interlinked to the journalistic one but also because the manifestations of this crisis were/are substantial and widespread across various societal layers. Therefore it arguably serves as an example that indicates tendencies in other countries.
The book is structured into 7 proposals and each proposal includes two parts: one that discusses the topic through the “Greek prism” and one that provides a perspective of the topic as exemplified by another European country. Each proposal also puts forward two perspectives: an academic perspective and a professional perspective. In this way the proposals bring two country contexts into dialogue through authors that approach each topic from different angles.
Crafting Luxury
The idea of luxury has secured a place in contemporary western culture and the term is now part of common parlance in both established and emerging economies. This book explores the many issues and debates surrounding the idea of luxury.
This new research addresses contentious issues surrounding perceptions of luxury its relationship to contemporary branding as created by the marketers and the impact this has on the consumer and their purchasing habits.
Crafting Luxury considers work within the field of luxury and luxury brands encompassing established companies with a long heritage: from conglomerates and small independents to 'new' luxury and emerging models with innovative practices. It examines the industry structures with respect to production as well as the hierarchies that exist and the impact these have on both internal and external perceptions of luxury from the makers to the sellers and consumers alike. Attention is also given to the working structures of the ateliers production facilities origin of materials manufacture and the impact of technology on consumption the retail environment and sales all providing a true insider’s view of this complex world.
The authors – a designer of product and jewellery a brand strategist and a fashion designer an architect and a sociologist and specialist in business management – are practitioners and academics. Their approach to dissecting the complex world of luxury brings distinct viewpoints to the debate offering different perspectives thoughts and interpretations of luxury.
Crafting Luxury will appeal to academics and educators industry specialists and anyone interested in luxury as a concept. It will appeal to those in a variety of academic and industry disciplines: art history history social sciences and humanities with an interest in luxury fashion studies design business cultural studies and textiles. It will also be valuable to students and researchers in social sciences humanities business design branding consumption retail architecture cultural studies fashion studies and textiles.
May also appeal to industry practitioners in retail design technology marketing the supply chain and manufacture as well as design professions including architecture fashion and interior design.
Fashion Knowledge
This new edited collection assembles academic essays and intellectual activism equally next to visual essays and artistic interventions and proposes a different concept for fashion research that eschews the traditional logic of academic fashion studies. It features acclaimed designers artists curators and theorists whose work investigates the multi-faceted debates on the rise of practice-based research in fashion.
The book sets out to explore current issues in fashion research with a particular focus on both methodology and expansion of the field to encompass overlooked voices and narratives. It has a particular concern with the relationships between theory and practice and with how knowledge is created and disseminated in fashion studies. It is an excellent and really valuable contribution to the field at a point both when fashion studies is expanding and when the fashion industry is at a crucial point of change.
Some of the contributions were originally presented at a symposium hosted by the Austrian Center for Fashion Research ‘TALKSHOW: The politics of practice-based fashion research’ at Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts curated by Wally Salner. The symposium brought together a group of fashion scholars designers educators and practitioners to explore critical contemporary fashion (research) practices and to investigate critical fashion knowledge between theory and practice beyond assumed disciplinary and epistemological boundaries. Many contributions in this volume were initially presented at that symposium while others are testimonies of international debates that were part of the research activities of the Austrian Center for Fashion Research a research project funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science Research and Economy led by Elke Gaugele.
The book is structured into three sections: Fashion Knowledge Practice-Based Fashion Research and Sites of Fashion and Politics. Contributions look at new forms of fashion knowledge that are forming with and along shifting fashion practices practice-based fashion research and sheds light on different sites and entanglements of fashion and politics in distinctive contemporary and historical moments of de/colonization anti/racism and anti/globalization.
Elke Gaugele is cultural anthropologist and professor of fashion styles and contextual design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna Austria. Monica Titton is a sociologist fashion theorist and senior scientist at the fashion design department of the University of Applied Arts Vienna Austria. Other contributions are from Elke Bippus Astrid Engl Jojo Gronostay Ruby Hoette Bianca Koczan Priska Morger NCCFN Wally Salner Andreas Spiegl José Teunissen Lara Torres Carol Tulloch and Maria Ziegelböck
Readers will be academics practitioners designers artists curators museums theoretical scholars lecturers practice-based researchers students and practitioners at all levels in the fields of fashion textile art and design.
This new book with its original focus on practice-based research will be useful for a general and academic readership alike and to all those working within the field of fashion studies including those with a theoretical focus fashion practitioners and those working within innovative pockets of the fashion industry.
House of Cards
Although by all appearances House of Cards is a television series about politics it in fact explores some of the most subversive questions raised by Machiavelli’s writings: what if the Prince were a ferocious animal? What would happen if our political world were overtaken by vampires? Would they be capable of mastering their bloodthirsty instincts or would they remain true to their fundamental nature?
In their relentless quest for power Frank Underwood his wife Claire and his chief of staff Doug Stamper are so ruthlessly ambitious that they demolish all boundaries between good and evil. According to a Machiavellian logic taken to its extreme the specific necessity of a given situation always wins out over common morality. In the struggle for survival these people are the predators determined to come out on top whatever the cost.
This book examines how the producers of the series take monstrous characters – who would not be out of place in a crime series or a horror film – and set them in the world of politics which offers little resistance to violence and turns into a laboratory for systematic destruction. In this variation on the conflict between brutalization and civilization at the heart of power the political sphere therefore becomes the scene of crime par excellence.
Although the book contains concepts and theories in political science it is accessibly written. It is also didactic: many examples are taken from the series and from the novels so the reader always understands what is at stake in the analysis. It will find both an academic and a more general audience.
Primary academic readership will be scholars and students in law political science film studies media studies and cultural studies. The wider readership will include fans of the show and of course people interested in politics political thrillers political philosophy corruption and democracy as well as the nature of political leadership.