Cultural Studies
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10 results
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How Belfast Got the Blues
More LessThis is not just an important music book; it is an important history book. It captures the moment before Belfast and Northern Ireland became synonymous with the Troubles. It places one of the best-known figures in global popular music, Van Morrison, in his historical and sociocultural context. It also reinstates Ottilie Patterson into her rightful role as a central figure in Ireland’s music. It addresses a significant gap in Ireland’s popular music studies by appraising the contribution of a politically and musically significant female figure.
It makes a major original contribution to the understanding of popular music culture in Northern Ireland, and to the broader popular music culture in Britain in the 1960s. It will remain for many years the definitive study of the subject and a point of reference for further research and controversy.
In light of the re-emergence of Northern Ireland in contemporary British political debate, this book presents a nicely timed intervention, placing Northern Ireland at the forefront of a key moment in British and Irish cultural history, and presenting highly innovative readings of key popular cultural figures. Integrating its account of the popular music culture and local ‘scene’ in Northern Ireland with the broader and highly complex context of the sociopolitical milieu, it offers original and insightful readings of key 1960s figures, including film director Peter Whitehead, The Rolling Stones, Them, Ottilie Patterson and Van Morrison. It includes much new material, obtained in interviews and through meticulous archival research, to challenge the mainstream narrative of the mid-1960s music scene in Belfast.
It is extremely well researched, making use of newspaper and film archives and existing publications, but also an impressive set of personal interviews with veteran musicians and others from that time. The authors challenge much of the received wisdom about the period – for instance, about the decline of the showband – and present their arguments carefully and thoughtfully. While meticulously researched and thoroughly analytic, the writing is uniquely accessible and engaging.
The chapter on the neglected Belfast blue singer Ottilie Patterson represents a paradigm shift in Irish popular music studies, and sets her story and considerable achievements centre stage. This alone makes the book very noteworthy. The chapters on Van Morrison and his band Them place his early career in the context of the local and global music industry. The story of The Rolling Stones film, made by Peter Whitehead, is discussed in the context of the international fervour of the times. The knitting of the music scene with the distinctive social, cultural, political and religious factors is deftly done.
Primary readership will be academic – scholars, researchers and students across a range of areas. Fields of interest include popular music studies, Irish studies, political history, cultural studies, film studies, jazz/blues history, women’s studies, civil rights.
It will also appeal more broadly to fans, writers, journalists and musicians interested in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the Blues, rock and roll, jazz and the 1960s, as well as to fans of the individual musicians.
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Heavy Metal Music in Argentina
More LessAn in-depth regional discussion of heavy metal music, Heavy Metal Music in Argentina explores metal music as a catalyst for social change and site for engaging political reflection. Originally published in Spanish and sold locally in Argentina, this is the first time the work has been available in English.
Edited by leading researchers, this collection addresses the music’s rituals, circulations, cultural products, lyrics and allows readers to rethink the place of heavy metal within Argentinean politics and economics. Exclusively written by members of the Group for Interdisciplinary Research on Argentinian Heavy Metal (GIIHMA) in a communal approach to scholarship, the book echoes the working-class voices that marked early post-dictatorship metal music in Argentina.
This is the first collection of essays on Argentine metal music. It has opened up research channels between different universities in the country while also engaging a non-academic audience, and widening the potential market for the book.
The book makes an interdisciplinary examination of a complex and fascinating object: it allows for the examination, discussion and analysis of its nationalist postulates, relationship with the Creole culture (for example, with nineteenth-century ‘gauchesca’ literature), indigenism, and with the political processes of contemporary Argentina.
Metal Music Studies, as an academic area of inquiry, has focused mostly on the music’s cultural components in Europe and the United States. The few books that have addressed metal music as a global phenomenon, have severely neglected the inclusion of Latin American countries. Argentina, with the largest and oldest metal scene in the region, has also been neglected in the existing literature. There is a growing interest in this area, as demonstrated by the emergence of documentary film on metal music in Latin America.
The book has potential use as a resource on courses in several disciplines including sociology, cultural studies, musicology, ethnomusicology, sociology and Latin American studies. It will also be of interest to the more general readers with an interest in the musical genre.
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Havana Street Style
More LessWhen it comes to fashion, few metropolitan areas are more synonymous with style than New York, London, Paris and Milan. But the couture capitals of tomorrow may be located in less likely locales. Addressing the interplay between the development of fashion centres across the world and their relationship to consumption and street style in both local and global contexts, the books in the Street Style series aim to record emerging fashion capitals and their relationship to the physical landscapes of the street. By examining how particular ecologies of fashion are connected to the formation of gender, class and generational identities, this series establishes a new methodology for recording and understanding identity and its connection to style.
Havana Street Style is the first book that explores and reveals the relationship between culture, city and street fashion in Cuba’s capital. Matching visual ethnography with critical analysis, the book documents a unique street style few in the United States have yet experienced.
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Habitus of the Hood
More LessSince the 1990s, popular culture the world over has frequently looked to the ’hood for inspiration, whether in music, film, or television. Habitus of the Hood explores the myriad ways in which the hood has been conceived—both within the lived experiences of its residents and in the many mediated representations found in popular culture. Using a variety of methodologies including autoethnography, textual studies, and critical discourse analysis, contributors analyze and connect these various conceptions.
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Howard Barker Interviews 1980–2010
More LessBritish playwright Howard Barker coined the term 'theatre of catastrophe' to describe his unique brand of complex, ambiguous, and often unsettling drama. Revered in continental Europe, North America, and Australia as one of the greatest living dramatists working in the English language, Barker is also a celebrated poet, theatre theorist and painter. The first collection of interviews conducted with Barker, Howard Barker Interviews 1980–2010 covers his entire career and gives a strong sense of the life and work of this innovative dramatist.
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Harm and Offence in Media Content
More LessChildren and teenagers are often the first to adopt new media technologies, and parents and policy makers continue to be concerned about the widespread use of diverse media and its potential effects on young people. Harm and Offence in Media Content presents a significant and comprehensive analysis of the benefits and dangers posed by both established and emergent technologies. Newly updated, this balanced, critical account examines all media, including interactive games, social networking and mobile phones. Many examples specifically focus on the United States, noting the ways in which young people are using new technologies and the partnerships this has given rise to between state governments, media regulators and Internet service providers. This informative guide to a controversial field of study will be a useful resource for scholars in media, communication, psychology, sociology and education.
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Hong Kong New Wave Cinema (1978–2000)
More LessThe increasingly popular films of the Hong Kong New Wave grapple with such issues as East-West cultural conflicts, colonial politics, the divide between rich and poor, the plight of women in a modernizing Asian city, and the identity crises provoked by Hong Kong’s estranged motherland. Comprehensive and penetrating, Hong Kong New Wave Cinema analyzes the specific films that grew out of this dynamic era and investigates the historical and social conditions that allowed the New Wave to flourish.
Drawing on the auteur and genre theories, Pak Tong Cheuk here examines the cinematic style and aesthetics of New Wave directors, most of whom were educated at British and U.S. film schools. In addition to investigating the narrative content, structure, and mise-en-scène of individual films, this volume traces the overall development of the film and television industries in Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s. Cheuk’s intriguing study of the rise and fall of Hong Kong’s golden age of film establishes the New Wave as an era of great historical significance for scholars of cinema, popular culture, and the arts. “An interesting and detailed look at one of the most vital movements in the film industry during the latter part of the twentieth century. Pak’s work not only gives an informative overview of the origins of the movement, but goes into detail about the works of some of the most notable New Wave directors, including Tsui Hark, Ann Hui, and Patrick Tam, and the effects their pictures had on film-makers from all over the world.”—Neil Koch, HKfilm.net
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Handwriting of the Twentieth Century
More Less[The history of formal calligraphy has been thoroughly documented, and the demise of what people see as beautiful handwriting is frequently deplored, but the details of the teaching of this skill during this century have gone almost unrecorded. Everyday handwriting is ephemeral and school books soon disappear. The main purpose of this book is to create a historical record, however, techniques are illustrated that may be useful for teachers today, while the ever-changing views of the stylists provide examples, as well as a warning, to those who plan for the future. An individual sample of handwriting reflects the writer's training, character and environment. Collectively, the handwriting of a population of any period is a reflection of educational thinking, but overall it is influenced and ultimately moulded by economic need, social habits and contemporary taste. Within the short space of the period covered by this present study, the changing educational policies, economic forces and inevitable technological advance radically altered the priorities and form of handwriting. These changes show in the models and examples throughout this book as an inexorable (though not entirely smooth) journey towards speed and efficiency. The downgrading of skill training and the freeing of children’s creative talent have done the rest. You might say that at the end of the century we have the handwriting we deserve. That statement can be read several ways. It would be a pity to think that our students do not deserve to be taught strategies that enable them to write fast without pain. It might, however, mean that we are edging towards the flexible, efficient, personal handwriting needed to deal with the rapidly changing situation that is likely to face us in the next century., As letter-writing has fallen by the wayside, the art of lavish yet legible handwriting is no longer being taught to schoolchildren or employed in daily life—much to the dismay of those who receive hastily scrawled love notes or try to decipher a doctor’s prescription. In an age when script manuals for students are disappearing at a rapid rate and writing samples are ephemeral, Rosemary Sassoon’s Handwriting of the Twentieth Century provides the first historical record of teaching the skill of writing in the last 100 years.
In addition to illustrating the techniques used by handwriting instructors and documenting the ever-changing views of script stylists, this volume probes the development and manufacture of writing equipment as well as useful examples for today’s teachers of writing. Handwriting of the Twentieth Century is a delightful, comprehensive account of our constant quest for fluent and clear handwritten script. “...excellent and comprehensive illustrated book—which takes us through not only what happened in the United Kingdom, but brings in information about other English speaking countries such as America and Australia as well as European scripts, providing samples and explanations that are valuable as a reference. . . . The book's well-written Epilogue merits a section being printed—It couldn't be put better by a graphologist!”—Elaine Quigley, Graphologist ]
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Histories of Art and Design Education
More Less[This Collection of fourteen essays by eleven different authors demonstrates the increasing breadth of enquiry that has taken place in art and design education history over the past two decades, and the expanding range of research models applied to the subject. The essays are grouped into six sections that propose the emergence of genres of research in the field - Drawing from examples, Motives and rationales for public art and design education in Britain, Features of institutional art and design education, Towards art and design education as a profession, Pivotal figures in the history of art and design education, and British/European influence in art and design education abroad. The rich diversity of subject matter covered by the essays is contained broadly within the period 1800 to the middle decades of the twentieth century. The book sets out to fill a gap in the current international literature on the subject by bringing together recent research on predominantly British art and design education and its influence abroad. It will be of specific interest to all those involved in art, design, and art and design education, but will equally find an audience in the wider field of social history.,This Collection of fourteen essays by eleven different authors demonstrates the increasing breadth of enquiry that has taken place in art and design education history over the past two decades, and the expanding range of research models applied to the subject. The essays are grouped into six sections that propose the emergence of genres of research in the field - Drawing from examples, Motives and rationales for public art and design education in Britain, Features of institutional art and design education, Towards art and design education as a profession, Pivotal figures in the history of art and design education, and British/European influence in art and design education abroad. The rich diversity of subject matter covered by the essays is contained broadly within the period 1800 to the middle decades of the twentieth century.
The book sets out to fill a gap in the current international literature on the subject by bringing together recent research on predominantly British art and design education and its influence abroad.]
It will be of specific interest to all those involved in art, design, and art and design education, but will equally find an audience in the wider field of social history.
Contents include:
• Drawing from examples
• Motives and rationales for public art and design education in Britain
• Features of institutional art and design education
• Towards art education as a profession
• Pivotal figures in the history of art and design education
• British/European influence in art and design education abroad
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Henry IV of France and the Politics of Religion 1572 - 1596, Volume 1 & 2
More LessHenry IV's conversion to catholicism in 1593 and Papal absolution in 1595 were traversed by multiple problems and difficulties. These religious events were inseparable from concurrent political, diplomatic and military issues. The subject is therefore examined both within its civil war background and the wider, European context. This treatment is original, not least in its comprehensive coverage of the Papal dimension. Until now, the role of the Papacy has been consistently misinterpreted, while the manner in which the absolution was ultimately achieved has been known only through sketchy and misleading summaries. Volume I covers the period 1572-1589, ending with the murder of Henry III. This act of regicide precipitated the accession of Henry IV during a period of civil war. Volume II covers the remaining years 1589-1596, from Henry's accession to his abjuration and coronation, the end of the war with the Catholic League, the declaration of war with Spain in 1595 and, finally, the negotiation in Rome of his absolution. This fresh account of certain aspects of the life and career of Henry of Navarre makes a substantial contribution to the knowledge and understanding of the history of western Europe in the later sixteenth century, and of France in particular. It will be useful to scholars, research students and teachers, and may also be enjoyed by informed general readers.
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