Browse Books
Islamic and Islamicate Architecture in the Americas
Transregional Dialogues and Manifestations
Architectural expressions resonant with Islamic traditions appear in diverse modes across the Americas, from Andalusian-inspired colonial patios in Peru to the modern and contemporary patronage of immigrant communities in the United States and Canada. This volume examines the multiple manifestations of Islamic architecture that permeate the region’s built environment to invite an expanded framing of this architectural legacy via a hemispheric consideration of aesthetics, narrative, and patronage.
Chapters consider a broad range of topics from the migration of aesthetic traditions and construction techniques tied to the architectural forms of the Islamic world in the colonial “New World,” to the direct contributions of modern and contemporary migrants in shaping a collective identity and the built environment.
By placing in productive dialogue sites that represent Islamic and Islamicate architecture across North and South America – two areas outside of the traditional conceptions of the Islamic world– this volume bridges transregional and transcultural gaps in the current literature.
Music Making and Civic Imagination
A Holistic Philosophy
In a world facing multiple existential crises, music might be seen as little more than a distraction. However, in this synthesis of ideas developed over a decade, a timely re-appraisal of the potential of musicing for human flourishing is presented, emphasising its role in the history of human evolution alongside its potential as a resource for sustainable development.
A holistic philosophy of music is outlined which recognises the complex web of meaning which spreads across complementary musical dimensions of performance and participation, whilst emphasising the ‘paramusical’ benefits which arise from both. Highlighting the notion that the social bonds which arise from musicing share much of the neurobiological underpinnings of attachment and love, musicing is presented as a resource with the potential for facilitating ethical human connection.
The humanistic values which are thereby materialised during musicing – love, reciprocity and justice – form the experiential grounds for inhabiting alternative social realities. The book addresses how such a holistic philosophy of music might be implemented in practice, drawing on the author’s professional praxis as a performer, educator, community musician, composer and researcher, in particular their experience of musician education at Sage Gateshead, Royal College of Music and Trinity-Laban Conservatoire in the UK.
The Being of Relation
How does whiteness sediment worlds? How does it format individuality in the name of a neurotypicality that polices how one bodies, and how one comes to know? And how does a poetics of relation shift the very logic of this sedimentation?
Edouard Glissant’s poetics of relation are bold in their call to “consent not to be a single being.” This transindividual consent, born in the process of worlds crafting themselves in what he would call an “aesthetics of the earth,” are felt in Fernand Deligny’s errant lines. These errant lines, traced to move with the complex gestures of autistics over a period of several years in Monoblet, France (1965-1970), offer an alternative to pathology, and individual psychological assessment.
The Being of Relation brings these two projects into encounter, exploring what else blackness can be at this non-pathological juncture where what is foregrounded is the very being of relation. On the way, trails of whiteness are excavated and interrogated. The aim: to move toward parapedagogies of resistance, in a logic of a poetics of relation, a logic of neurodiversity, minor sociality and the kind of difference without separability that refuses the binary that holds neurotypicality – as whiteness – in place.
Beijing Film Academy 2022
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.
Without Empathy
Irony and the Satirical Impulse in Eight Major Filmmakers
Irony and the satirical impulse in cinema have gradually lost favor, mockery increasingly more selective in its choice of targets. As Linda Hutcheon notes, irony is becoming a problematic mode of expression in the 21st century.
The book examines the work of eight film auteurs: Luis Bunuel, RW Fassbinder, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Paul Verhoeven, Aki Kaurismaki, Aleksei Balabanov and David Lynch, much of whose work is not always regarded thus and the films examined are often more ironic than satirical. From apparent melodrama and eroticism to fantasy and horror, these eight directors redefine satire’s limits, providing evidence that irony in cinema often goes unrecognised.
The introduction examines the various categories of satire, and the chapters then study the filmmakers individually through selected works, offering interpretations of films and identifying a consistent approach. Since the work is often ambiguous the book speculates on each film’s purport, engaging in textual interpretation of individual works to understand concerns underneath the most obvious. The Afterword tries to find common targets and strategies on the filmmakers’ part.
The Intellect Handbook of Dance Education Research
A review of dance education research methodologies with examples and exemplars from the field and an important resource for dance students, professionals, and advocates.
The editors recognized the need for a book of this type – one that would not only provide examples of a variety of dance education research projects, but also present a broad look at methodologies. In addition, the book would not only focus on Dance Education research in the U.S, but more broadly with examples of dance research from several different countries. The curated book includes the voices of both seasoned professionals and newer scholars in the field, with examples of dance research from a number of different countries. The contributions represent several countries including Korea, South Africa, United States of America, Jamaica, India, United Kingdom, Brazil, and Slovenia, underscore the global relevance and significance of research in dance education.
This book is divided into 5 parts. The first part focuses on dance education research and methodologies and is divided into three sections. With an introduction by Jill Green, the chapters that follow provide an overview of research types including the more traditional, qualitative, quantitative and mixed, and other methods such as portraiture and a/r/tography.
Part II, introduced by Lynnette Young Overby, includes examples of dance education research that incorporate qualitative, quantitative, and/or mixed methods. Three sections covering dance education research applications in the areas of history and culture, dance teaching and choreography, and community based research follow.
Part III of the Handbook of Dance Education Research provides insight into dance education that takes place in several countries. This part is introduced by Peter Cook, Associate Deputy Chancellor, Southern Cross University, Australia. The collection of chapters within this part of the Handbook of Dance Education Research provides snapshots of research practices from contrasting international areas, and with a variety of approaches and paradigms.
The final Part IV includes chapters focused on Social Justice dance education practice and research. This part is introduced by Alfdaniel Mivule Basibye Mabingo, Makerere University, Uganda. These chapters push the boundaries of dance education research to promote meaning and social change. They provide substantive examples of the impact dance education research can have in response to social and cultural issues.
This book will be a key resource for university students, professors, practitioners and policy makers in organizations and in school systems. It will inspire future dance education researchers to conduct research that is collaborative, impactful, inclusive and diverse– research that will solidify the place of dance as an integral part of each person’s education.
Well-Being and Creative Careers
What Makes You Happy Can Also Make You Sick
The media and creative industries thrive on passion, but that passion often comes at a cost. Behind the glamour of journalism, filmmaking, games, music, advertising, and online content creation lies a growing crisis-one of burnout, anxiety, substance abuse, and exhaustion. Why do so many creative professionals report feeling both deeply fulfilled and profoundly unwell?
Mark Deuze investigates the systemic issues that make creative work both exhilarating and unsustainable. Drawing on extensive research and in-depth interviews with media professionals, he notes the hidden downsides of doing what you love and offers a candid analysis of how workplace structures, high workloads, and perceived injustices contribute to mental and physical distress.
But this book is not just about what's broken; it's about what can be done. Deuze provides a roadmap for rethinking the culture of creative industries and offers strategies for balancing passion with sustainability. A practical resource for media scholars and those navigating the highs and lows of a creative career, this work challenges us to imagine a healthier future for our labour of love.
Schechner Plays
A collection of performance texts ranging from orthodox plays to group-devised texts. The book traces from most recent to earliest Schechner's work as a "writer" and a "wrighter" -- the author of plays and the conceptualizer and leader of teams of artists. The book includes several never before published early texts as well as updated versions of well-known productions such as "Dionysus in 69," "YokastaS," "Makbeth," and "Imagining O." The earliest texts are from the 1950s the most recent from 2014.
This book brings together for the first time Schechner’s original plays and adaptations: Imagining O, YokastaS, Faust/gastronome, The Prometheus Project, Richard's Lear, Commune, Makbeth, Dionysus in 69, The Blessing of the Fleet, Briseis and the Sergeant, "Lot's Daughters," and "The Last Day of FK." The scripts engage with perennial canonical themes, such as Oedipus and Faust, and topical issues of our times. They embody Schechner’s world-famous environmental theatre approach. Marta Minier's general introduction and Schechner's introductions to each play, set the scripts in their intellectual and production context. The book complements Schechner’s other books which include, Performance Studies: An Introduction (now in its 4th ed.), Performance Theory, Between Theater and Anthropology, The Future of Ritual, and Performed Imaginaries.
Removing the Educational Silos
Models of Interdisciplinary and Multi-disciplinary Education
This collection was written by educators who are engaging in multi- and interdisciplinary education and are led by curiosities encompassing the collaborative nature of cognitive and kinesthetic engagement and awareness.
The chapters are designed as sources for inspiration, replication, and adaptation. They are a place to start or continue. Each chapter, in varying modalities, addresses interdisciplinary course development and implementation in institutions of higher education. The common themes that emerge in the collection include navigating administrative systems and solving the challenges encountered when crossing departments or colleges, whether it be regarding listing of courses or the intricacies of course load on each professor.
Many chapters also provide detailed information on the nuts and bolts of the specific course or courses taught, including syllabi, lesson examples, and both formal and informal assessments implemented. Multiple case studies are included in this collection, with many chapters providing specific examples of students’ work.
Contributors candidly offer discussions of failures and successes of their interdisciplinary collaborations, be it in course design, lesson planning or complications brought in by unforeseen pandemics. Most chapters end with a section entitled ‘Lessons learned’, where experiences from the field provide opportunities for growth and continued exploration.
Readers can follow the book from cover to cover or dip in, finding the chapters that serve a particular project or teaching endeavour. The varying writing styles and topics are in direct relationship with the exact nature of the inspiration for this text. The over-arching themes of collaboration (diverse backgrounds, ideas, and skill sets, multidisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity) are the consistent touchstones that create a thematic self-guided journey of exploration through the book.
The chapters offer readers guidance and encouragement to implement some of the approaches described, and inspiration to forge their own paths in the world of multi- and interdisciplinary teaching and research. The depth and breadth of collaborative possibilities are exciting, and the editors’ goal is to spark further experimentation.
An excellent and practical resource for any educator hoping to teach his or her subject matter through an interdisciplinary approach and for all courses revolving around topics of pedagogy. The key audience will be graduate students, and teachers in all stages of education from primary to higher education.
Beijing Film Academy 2021
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 has 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.
At the Movies, Film Reviewing, and Screenwriting
Selective Affinities and Cultural Mediation
This book examines film reviewing and screenwriting as key sites of cultural mediation, providing new insights on the relationship between criticism and reviewing, as well as the way reviewers handle concepts of story, dialogue, and narrative.
Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu on the cultural field, and his theory of taste, the book provides an assessment of the place of film reviewing in contemporary screen culture. The book analyses a case study comprised of ten years of television scripts of the Australian film reviewing programme, At the Movies (2004–2014). Hosted by two of Australia’s most eminent film critics, Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, for over two decades, this study of At the Movies provides a unique window into film reviewing, movie consumption, and wider cultural attitudes in this period of Australian cultural history. It examines the programme’s cultural significance, and the contribution of Margaret and David to screen culture.
This book makes a significant contribution to an under-studied area of media studies (the review), screenwriting research through the analysis of broadcast scripts, and cultural studies through the study of an important television programme.
Ken Gonzales-Day
History’s “Nevermade”
Ken Gonzales-Day’s work confronts the role of the visual in conveying history or in history’s absences, including those bodies and spaces deliberately erased, forgotten, or never acknowledged. As illustrated and discussed in Ken Gonzales-Day: History’s “Nevermade,” his photography, films, drawings, and paintings interrogate race and power, questioning how bodies are seen, rendered, or made invisible. His art moves between presence and absence, compelling viewers to confront their own position in relation to systems of oppression and representation.
This volume, accompanying the exhibition of the same name, offers the first comprehensive study of Gonzales-Day’s practice. Organized around his major series, sections of the book—including Rethinking History, Collecting Race, Forging Community, and Redrawing Boundaries— explore how his work engages with archives, bodies, museums, and public space to challenge institutional narratives. Through critical analysis and illustrated throughout, Ken Gonzales-Day: History’s “Nevermade” illuminates the profound political and theoretical stakes of his art.
Essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners in art history, photography, museum studies, American history, and decolonial and queer studies, this book is a testament to the power of art to reckon with the past and imagine new futures.
Entrepreneurial Arts and Cultural Leadership
Traits of Success in Nonprofit Theatre
A tactical guide for nonprofit arts leaders, revealing the entrepreneurial traits that turn creative passion into sustainable success.
Entrepreneurial Arts and Cultural Leadership focuses on real-world strategies to developing the entrepreneurial mindset necessary for leading and sustaining nonprofit arts organizations. Bonnie Fogel and Brett Ashley Crawford examine the leadership traits that drive innovation, adaptability, and long-term viability in the ever-evolving arts sector.
Through the case study of Imagination Stage, one of the top theatre companies for young people, they highlight how successful nonprofit theater leaders can navigate financial instability, advocate for equity and inclusion, and implement sustainable business models in a landscape forever impacted by national and global events. With practical insights, tools, and a resource-rich appendix, this book offers arts managers, educators, and nonprofit leaders a roadmap for resilience and growth. Whether you are an advanced student, a researcher, or an arts executive seeking inspiration, this book provides an essential framework for building the future of nonprofit theatre.
Imagination Stage was founded as BAPA (Bethesda Academy of Performing Arts) in 1979 in response to the urgent need for arts education for young people. The company was renamed Imagination Stage in 2001 in anticipation of its move to its downtown Bethesda theatre arts centre in 2003. Imagination Stage has grown from a handful of children in a single classroom to a full-spectrum theatre arts organization, with theatre productions by professional actors and artists. Unlike most children’s theatre companies, Imagination Stage commissions new works for children every year. These productions have been recognized with awards and productions by other companies around the world.
Bonnie Fogel is the founder and longtime leader of Imagination Stage, one of the top theatres for young audiences in the United States. Brett Ashley Crawford is a teaching professor and faculty chair of the arts & entertainment management programs at Carnegie Mellon University, USA.
The Intellect Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies
The Intellect Handbook of Popular Music Methodologies provides a comprehensive overview of methodological approaches within the field of popular music studies. Alongside contributions from key thinkers already established in popular music studies, the strength of the collection lies in its inclusion of many new and emerging writers in the field. Therefore, the collection incorporates a wide range of practitioners, pedagogues and academics from an extensive range of disciplines, and thus drawing from a diversity of methodological approaches. These include those that are perhaps more established, such as semiotics, ethnography and psychology, alongside exciting new approaches within popular music, including eco-musicology, religion, intersectionality and archeology. Although previous books have provided an overall of concepts studied within popular music studies, this will be the first comprehensive Handbook of popular music methodologies.
Music, Research, and Activism
Prospects and Projects in Northern Europe
This book introduces the concept of activist music research, emphasising action and social responsibility and suggests that music research can be used to promote social and ecological justice. This is discussed in a series of position papers by music researchers who engage in public debate in their various roles - educator, critic, journalist, DJ, producer, promoter - and work with other actors in civil society and culture.
The book suggests that we are experiencing an activist turn in music research, evidenced by the growing number of projects and publications discussing inequalities in musical practices and the impact music research can have on these inequalities. This idea is explored in a series of position papers and contemplative texts, where music researchers, music educators, and artistic researchers reflect on how their work and the position they occupy as professionals in society serves eco-social justice and equity. What is the point of studying and teaching music in an age of ecocide, neo(liberal)-colonialism, rampant racial inequities, persistent gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination? What does social and ecological responsibility and sustainability mean in music research?
The idea for the book was conceived within the context of Suoni, a non-profit independent research association in Finland founded as a self-organizing and independent network for scholars interested in exploring methods, pedagogics, practices and action for eco-social equity in relation to music and music research.
Understanding Video Activism on Social Media
What political power do videos on social media have? In what ways do they exert influence, shape publics and change political life? And how can committed civil society actors in this field assert themselves against hegemonic discourses, commercial interests, anti-democratic agitation, and authoritarian propaganda? These questions are being debated intensely as social media increasingly dominate global information flows, and videos increasingly dominate social media.
Understanding video activism seems particularly relevant at a time when the internet is undergoing fundamental disruptions. The forms, practices, and opportunities of activism depend on its media environment, which now is changing rapidly and profoundly in terms of its technological basis, ownership, legal regulations, and governmental control.
Shock Factory
The Visual Culture of Industrial Music
Industrial music appeared in the mid-1970s, and far from being a simple sound experimentation phenomenon, it quickly spawned a coherent visual culture operating at the intersection of a multitude of media (collage, mail art, installation, film, performance, sound, video) and initiated a close inspection of the legacy of modernity and the growing, pervasive influence of technology.
Originally British, the movement soon outgrew Europe, extending into the United States and Japan during the 1980s. The sound experiments conducted by industrial bands – designing synthesizers, manipulating and transforming recorded sounds from audio tapes, either recycled or laid down by the artists – were backed up by a rich array of radical visual productions, deriving their sources from the modernist utopias of the first part of the 20th century. Such saturated sounds were translated into abrasive images, manipulated through the détournement of reprographic techniques (Xerox art), that investigated polemical themes: mind control, criminality, occultism, pornography, psychiatry and totalitarianism, among others.
This book introduces the visual and aesthetic elements of 1970s and 1980s industrial culture to a general history of contemporary art by analysing the different approaches taken and topics addressed by the primary protagonists of the movement, who perceptively anticipated the current discourse concerning the media and their collective coercive power.
Men, War and Film
The Calling Blighty Films of World War II
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.
Hip-Hop Archives
The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production
This book focuses on the culture and politics involved in building hip-hop archives. It addresses practical aspects, including methods of accumulation, curation, preservation, and digitization and critically analyzes institutional power, community engagement, urban economics, public access, and the ideological implications associated with hip-hop culture’s enduring tensions with dominant social values.
The collection of essays are divided into four sections; Doing the Knowledge, Challenging Archival Forms, Beyond the Nation and Institutional Alignments: Interviews and Reflections. The book covers a range of official, unofficial, DIY and community archives and collections and features chapters by scholar practitioners, educators and curators.
A wide swath of hip-hop culture is featured in the book, including a focus on dance, graffiti, clothing, and battle rap. The range of authors and their topics span countries in Asia, Europe, the Caribbean and North America.
Make the Dream Real
World-Building Performance by El Vez, The Mexican Elvis
El Vez performances present a powerful message of social justice and inclusion in changing US and social contexts. Make the Dream Real interrogates how this message is activated through world-building: the use of a variety of theoretical, theatrical, and musical tactics that bring into being a progressive social space that refutes the current economic, political, social, and cultural configurations of the United States.
World-building in an El Vez show “makes the dream real” by imagining a society in which equal rights are guaranteed, inclusivity is fostered, difference is valued, and the violence of economic inequality is mitigated. But, world-building through performance is not content to reside exclusively in the individual imagination or the social imaginary; it temporarily creates this new social space in actual time and space for the audience to experience. Using a dramaturgical methodology, which marries theoretical inquiry to theatrical practice based on dramaturgical thinking, critical proximity, and intellectual flexibility, the book delves into the theoretical foundations that inform artist Robert Lopez’s work, and each chapter analyzes a different performative component he uses.
Make the Dream Real interrogates how El Vez’s playful engagements hold the United States to its egalitarian promises, voicing and enacting - however fleetingly - a just and richly inclusive social space through performance.