Cultural Studies

Shiny Things combines an interest in visual art with a broad attention to popular culture – the wideness of its range is striking. It is more than just an expansion of subject matter, which many of today’s innovative books also have – it considers how a specific physical property manifests itself in both art and culture at large, and contributes to an analysis of and polemics about the world. It is accessibly written but with a careful application of contemporary theory.

Interesting, informative, and entertaining, this will appeal to progressive thinkers looking for new ways of presenting ideas. This is scholarship that challenges stale thought and interacts with philosophical ideas in real time, with a versatility that can often be lacking in traditional academic scholarship.

Using art, especially contemporary art, as its recurrent point of reference, the authors argue that shininess has moved from a time when rarity gave shiny things a direct meaning of power and transcendence. Shininess today is pervasive; its attraction is a foundation of consumer culture with its attendant effects on our architecture, our conceptions of the body, and our production of spectacle. Power and the sacred as readings of the shiny have given way to readings of superficiality, irony and anxiety, while somehow shininess has maintained its qualities of fascination, newness and cleanliness.

Examines the meanings and functions of shininess in art and in culture more generally: its contradictions of both preciousness and superficiality, and its complexities of representation; the way shininess itself is physically and metaphorically present in the construction of major conceptual categories such as hygiene, utopias, the sublime and camp; and the way the affects of shininess, rooted in its inherent disorienting excess, produce irony, anxiety, pleasure, kitsch, and fetishism. All of these large ideas are embodied in the instantly noticeable, sometimes precious and sometimes cheap physical presence of shiny things, those things that catch our eye and divert our attention. Shininess, then, is a compelling subject that instantly attracts and fascinates people.

The book engages primarily with visual art, although it makes frequent use of material culture, as well as advertising, film, literature, and other areas of popular and political culture. The art world, however, is a place where many of the affects of shininess come into clearest focus, where the polemical semiotics of shine are most evident and consciously explored. 

Artists as diverse as Anish Kapoor (whose popular Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago is a repeating example in the book), Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons, Carolee Schneemann, Audrey Flack, Fra Angelico and Gerard ter Borch centre the book in an art discourse that opens up to automobiles, Richard Nixon and Liberace.

Will be relevant to academics, scholars and students with an interest in contemporary theory and material and popular cultures. Potential interest across the humanities: philosophy, gender studies, perhaps public relations, advertising and marketing.

It will also appeal to more general readers with an interest in popular and material cultures, art and aesthetics.  It is written in a genuinely accessible style, and its ideas and theory are embodied through examples and narratives.  Will be of interest to readers of Oliver Sacks, James Gleick, George Lakoff, James Elkins or Rebecca Solnit. 

Spanish Cinema of the New Millennium provides a new approach to the study of contemporary Spanish cinema between 2000 and 2015, by analysing films that represent both ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture side by side. The two film cultures are represented by Goya-winning films and the biggest box-office successes. By analysing the chronological trajectory of the country’s most important films over this period, Spanish Cinema of the New Millennium examines contemporary Spain’s national identity, culture and film industry.

The Campaign Choirs Network is a loose affiliation of like-minded choirs across the UK sharing a belief in a better world for all and dedicated to taking action by singing about it; the Campaign Choirs Writing Collective is a part of that network.

The book intends to inspire the reader to engage with this world: to find out more, to join a choir in their community, to enlist their local street choir to support campaigns for social change and, more generally, to mobilize artistic creativity in progressive social movements.

It is an introduction to street choirs and their history, exploring origins in and connections with other social movements, for example the Workers Education Association, the Clarion movement, Big Flame and the Social Forum movement. The book identifies the political nodes where choir histories intersect, notably Greenham Common, the Miners’ Strike, anti-apartheid and Palestinian struggles. The title of the book is taken from a song by the respected American musician and activist Holly Near, and is popular in the repertoire of many street choirs. Exploring the role of street choirs in political culture, Singing For Our Lives introduces this neglected world to a wider public, including activists and academics.

Signing for Our Lives also elaborates the personal stories and experiences of people who participate in street choirs, and the unique social practices created within them. The book tells the important, if often overlooked, story of how making music can contribute to non-violent, just and sustainable social transitions.

www.singing4ourlives.net/about.html 

Asserting that written language is on the verge of its greatest change since the advent of the printing press, visual artist Craig McDaniel and art historian Jean Robertson bring us Spellbound – a collection of heavily illustrated essays that interrogate assumptions about language and typography. Rethinking the alphabet, they argue, means rethinking human communication. Looking beyond traditional typography, the authors conceive of new languages in which encoded pictorial images offer an unparalleled fusion of art and language. In a world of constant technological innovation offered by e-books, tablets, cell phones and the Internet, McDaniel and Robertson demonstrate provocatively what it would mean to move beyond the alphabet we know to a wholly new system of written communication.

It was a scene that had many names: some original members referred to themselves as punks, others, new romantics, new wavers, the bats or the morbids. 'Goth' did not gain lexical currency until the late 1980s. But no matter what term was used, 'postpunk' encompasses all the incarnations of the 1980s alternative movement. Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace is a visual and oral history of the first decade of the scene. Featuring interviews with both the performers and the audience to capture the community on and off stage, the book places personal snapshots alongside professional photography to reveal a unique range of fashions, bands and scenes.



A book about the music, the individual and the creativity of a worldwide community rather than theoretical definitions of a subculture, Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace considers a subject not often covered by academic books. Whether you were part of the scene or are just fascinated by different modes of expression, this book will transport you to another time and place.

Shanghai Street Style marks the inaugural volume in an exciting new street style series from Intellect. With an array of up-and-coming young designers like Coko Wan, Nio and Helen Lee, Shanghai is swiftly cementing its status as a global fashion destination – its first fashion week was in 2011 – and this book brings together more than one hundred full-colour photographs showcasing the remarkable diversity of styles seen on its streets. Alongside the photographs are short pieces of critical commentary by Vicki Karaminas and Toni Johnson-Woods, shedding light on the city's changing culture and how this is expressed through the clothing choices of ordinary city-dwellers going about their daily routines. The result is a stunning street-level look at the trends shaping Shanghai's fascinating fashion scene, with interesting echoes of East meets West and old meets new.

An interdisciplinary collection of essays on the medical and social articulation of death, this anthology considers to what extent a subject as elusive as death can be examined. Though it touches us all, we can perceive it only in life – with the predictable result that we treat it either as a clinical or social problem to be managed or as a phenomenon to be studied quantitatively. This volume goes beyond these models to question self-reflexively how the management of death is organized and motivated and the ways that death is at once feared and embraced. Drawing on the very latest in the medical humanities, Spectacular Death gives us an enlightening new perspective on death from the classical world to the twenty-first century.

A collection of essays on the medical and social articulation of death, this anthologyconsiders to what extent a subject as elusive as death can be examined. Though it touches us all, we can perceive it only in life – with the predictable result that we treat it either as a clinical or social problem to be managed or as a phenomenon to be studied quantitatively.

This volume goes beyond these models to self-reflexively question how the management of death is organized and motivated and the ways that death is at once feared and embraced. Drawing on the very latest in the medical humanities, Spectacular Death gives us an enlightening new perspective on death from the classical world to the twenty-first century.

Drawing on contributions from practicing artists, writers, curators, and academics, Searching for Art’s New Publics explores the ways in which artists seek to involve, create and engage with new and diverse audiences—from passers-by encountering and participating in the work unexpectedly, to professionals from other disciplines and members of particular communities who bring their own agendas to the work. Bridging the gap between practice and theory, this exciting book touches on issues of relational aesthetics, but also offers an illustrated artist-based approach. Searching for Art’s New Publics will appeal to students studying fine art (especially those with an interest in cross-disciplinary work and public art) and those studying curating.

In the post-war period, theatre provided an important critique of the way in which British society engaged with issues of the politics of gender and sexuality. Sex on Stage examines how British playwrights brought gender politics including women’s sexuality and gay and lesbian issues to the cutting edge of drama after World War II. Through a close reading of playwrights such as John Osborne, Harold Pinter and Terence Rattigan, alongside accounts of their socio-political context and public reception, Andrew Wyllie reveals that this more progressive age was also one in which masculine anxieties and a consequent reaction were discernible.With its full treatment of this important aspect of British theatrical history and the intense relationship between theatre, gender politics and society, Sex on Stage will appeal to academics and students of drama, gender studies and cultural studies.