Cultural Studies

Unlike other books on architecture and film, Architecture Filmmaking investigates how the now-expanded field of architecture utilizes the practice of filmmaking (feature/short film, stop motion animation and documentary) or video/moving image in research, teaching and practice, and what the consequences of this interdisciplinary exchange are. While architecture and filmmaking have clearly distinct disciplinary outputs and filmmaking is a much younger art than architecture, the intersection between them is less defined. This book investigates the ways in which architectural researchers, teachers of architecture, their students and practising architects, filmmakers and artists are using filmmaking uniquely in their practice.

Notoriously difficult to define as a genre, Live Art is commonly positioned as a challenge to received artistic, social and political categories: not theatre, not dance, not visual art... and often wilfully anti-mainstream and anti-establishment. But as it has become an increasingly prevalent category in international festivals, major art galleries, diverse publications and higher education streams, it is time for a reassessment.

This collection of essays, conversations, provocations and archival images takes the twentieth anniversary of the founding of one of the sector’s most committed champions, the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) in London, as an opportunity to consider not only what Live Art has been against, but also what it has been for. Rather than defining the practices in oppositional terms – what they might be seeking to critique, reject or disrupt – this collection reframes these practices in terms of the relations and commitments they might be used to model or advocate.  What kinds of care and recovery do they enable?  What do they connect as well as reject?  What do they make possible as they test the impossible?  What ideas of success do they stand for as they risk failure?  In this way, the central theme of the collection, and to which all contributors were invited to respond, is the idea of agency: the capacity for new kinds of thoughts, actions and energies as enacted by individual artists and groups. It seems appropriate that this question would be considered in relation to the history of one particular ‘agency’: LADA itself.

These questions are explored in a unique conversational format, bringing together a diverse range of emerging and established practitioners, curators and leading figures in the field, each paired with another practitioner for a live conversation that has been sensitively edited for the page. Curated within a structure of five overlapping themes – Bodies, Spaces, Institutions, Communities and Actions – this format produces unexpected insights and accounts of the development of the field. Each theme also contains two provocative essays by leading scholars, thinkers and makers, exploring the conceptual frames in more detail. The result is a collection that is as heterogeneous, ambitious, contradictory and inspiring as the field of Live Art itself.

Contributors: Aaron Williamson, Adrian Heathfield, Alan Read, Alastair MacLennan, Alexandrina Hemsley, Amelia Jones, Andrew Mottershead, Andy Field, Anne Bean, Barby Asante, Bryan Biggs, Cassils, Catherine Wood, David A. Bailey, Dominic Johnson, Gary Anderson, George Chakravarthi, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Hayley Newman, Heike Roms, Helen Paris, James Leadbitter, Jamila Johnson-Small, Jane Trowell, Jen Harvie, Johanna Tuukkanen, John Jordan, John McGrath, Jordan McKenzie, Joshua Sofaer, Katherine Araniello, Kira O'Reilly, Lena Šimić, Leslie Hill, Lois Keidan, Lois Weaver, Manuel Vason, Martin O'Brien, Mary Paterson, Rajni Shah, Rebecca French, Richard Dedomenici, Ron Athey, RoseLee Goldberg, Selina Thompson, Simon Casson and Tim Etchells.

Co-published with Live Art Development Agency. 

Winner of the 2021 TaPRA Edited Collection Prize

Epstein explores why sex, sexuality and gender non-conformity is something that many writers and publishers of children's and young adult lit appear to shy away from. She demonstrates that the information children get from literature matters, and that so called 'difficult' topics can be communicated in entertaining and informative ways.

Uses ideas from queer theory and other research to interrogate the ways LGBTQ characters are portrayed in books for children and young people, and to analyse what messages readers of such books might receive.

Includes detailed analysis of over 60 picture books, middle-grade books and young adult novels by authors such as Nancy Garden, Julie Ann Peters, Alex Sanchez, David Levithan, Lesléa Newman, Marcus Ewart, Cris Beam and many others.

This book brings together literary studies, sociology, queer studies and other academic fields in an accessible manner, where the research supports the detailed analyses of over 50 books for children and young adults. Epstein looks at a range of topics, such as the lack of diversity in many of these works, how same-sex marriage is portrayed, the relative absence of bisexual and transgender characters, the way that many of these books are marketed and intended as 'issue books', and more.

A practical and informative book to inspire writers and publishers to produce better LGBTQ literature for young readers.

As European business ties develop, how are they reflected in the way companies promote themselves? And as our sense of group identity is broken down by global communications technologies, how do adverts continue to target mass audiences? This volume stands alone as the first structured assessment of the impact of advertising, in terms of both culture and business across the national boundaries of Europe. It considers the successes and failures of several strategic marketing plans from across Europe, and describes stylistic and persuasive qualities of specific promotional texts. Advertisers have long been aware of the need to target specific groups of consumers and to appeal to them precisely in terms of their sense of membership to groups. Our post-industrial society is characterized by greatly altered work and leisure patterns as well as a weakening of national and communal frameworks for collective identity. Theories relating to identity not only reflect, but actively make use of such concerns. As a part of our everyday lives, the advertising considered looks at – but is not limited to – explicit inducements to buy products. Rather it considers all promotional texts designed to inform and persuade. With examples from Scandinavia to the Iberian Peninsula, the contributors also explore the different constructions of regional, national, social and sexual identities exploited by advertisers to render their messages effective. As a result, the book will be of relevance not only to those concerned with marketing but to all scholars of media studies, language, cultural and gender studies.