Radical Vision

Radical Vision
Author: Soyica Diggs Colbert
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2021-04-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 030024570X

A captivating portrait of Lorraine Hansberry's life, art, and political activism--one of O Magazine's best books of April 2021 "Hits the mark as a fresh and timely portrait of an influential playwright."--Publishers Weekly In this biography of Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965), the author of A Raisin in the Sun, Soyica Diggs Colbert considers the playwright's life at the intersection of art and politics, with the theater operating as a "rehearsal room for [her] political and intellectual work." Colbert argues that the success of Raisin overshadows Hansberry's other contributions, including the writer's innovative journalism and lesser known plays touching on controversial issues such as slavery, interracial communities, and black freedom movements. Colbert also details Hansberry's unique involvement in the black freedom struggles during the Cold War and the early civil rights movement, in order to paint a full portrait of her life and impact. Drawing from Hansberry's papers, speeches, and interviews, this book presents its subject as both a playwright and a political activist. It also reveals a new perspective on the roles of black women in mid-twentieth-century political movements.

this bridge we call home

this bridge we call home
Author: Gloria Anzaldúa
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 628
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135351597

More than twenty years after the ground-breaking anthology This Bridge Called My Back called upon feminists to envision new forms of communities and practices, Gloria E. Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating have painstakingly assembled a new collection of over eighty original writings that offers a bold new vision of women-of-color consciousness for the twenty-first century. Written by women and men--both "of color" and "white"--this bridge we call home will challenge readers to rethink existing categories and invent new individual and collective identities.

Radical Visions and American Dreams

Radical Visions and American Dreams
Author: Richard H. Pells
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 452
Release: 1973
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780252067433

The Great Depression of the 1930s was more than an economic catastrophe to many American writers and artists. Attracted to Marxist ideals, they interpreted the crisis as a symptom of a deeper spiritual malaise that reflected the dehumanizing effects of capitalism, and they advocated more sweeping social changes than those enacted under the New Deal. In Radical Visions and American Dreams, Richard Pells discusses the work of Lewis Mumford, John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr, Edmund Wilson, and Orson Welles, among others. He analyzes developments in liberal reform, radical social criticism, literature, the theater, and mass culture, and especially the impact of Hollywood on depression-era America. By placing cultural developments against the background of the New Deal, the influence of the American Communist Party, and the coming of World War II, Pells explains how these artists and intellectuals wanted to transform American society, yet why they wound up defending the American Dream. A new preface enhances this classic work of American cultural history.

Radical Visions

Radical Visions
Author: Glenn Man
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1994-10-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Radical Visions discusses an important period in American film history: Films such as Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Midnight Cowboy, Nashville, and Taxi Driver challenged the narrative structure and style of the classical Hollywood paradigm, transformed its conventional genres, exploded traditional American myths, and foregrounded a consciousness of the cinematic process. Film students, scholars, and aficionados will gain insight into generic conventions and narrative style presented within the cultural attitudes of the time. The book features a chronological movement through the period, not by auteur but by film, from Bonnie and Clyde to Taxi Driver. It includes in-depth analyses of 16 films, but discusses other films when relevant. It traces the thematic development of the films as the period progresses from an optimistic radicalism at the beginning, to doubt and shattered dreams, to paranoia and pessimism at the end. It summarizes contemporary reviews and reactions to the films as they came out and gauges the films' interactions with audiences and the society of the time. It also discusses European filmmakers' influences on the films of the period. The book supports and solidifies the view of a Hollywood renaissance during this period, and it more sharply defines and delineates the parameters and characteristics of the period than previous studies.

Unbuilt

Unbuilt
Author: Christopher Beanland
Publisher: Batsford Books
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2021-09-02
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1849947457

Unbuilt tells the stories of the plans, drawings and proposals that emerged during the 20th century in an unparalleled era of optimism in architecture. Many of these grand projects stayed on the drawing board, some were flights of fancy that couldn't be built, and in other cases test structures or parts of buildings did emerge in the real world. The book features the work of Buckminster Fuller, Geoffrey Bawa, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright and Archigram, as well as contemporary architects such as Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Will Alsop and Rem Koolhaas. Richly illustrated with photographs, drawings, maps, collages and models from all over the world, it covers everything from Buckminster Fuller's plan for a 'Domed city' in Manhattan to Le Corbusier's utopian dream of skyscraper living in central Paris, from a proposed network of motorways ploughing through central London to a crazy-looking scheme for 'rolling pavements' in post-war Berlin. This is an important book, not just for the rich stories of what might have been in our built world, but also to give understanding to the motivations and dreams of architects, sometimes to build a better world, but sometimes to pander to egos. It includes plans that pushed the boundaries – from plug-in cities, moving cities, space cities, domes and floating cities to Maglev, teleportation and rockets. Many ideas were just ahead of their time, and some, thankfully, we were always better without.

Radical Visions

Radical Visions
Author: Vicente F. Gotera
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 1994
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780820315102

Although poets have written about warfare since at least the time of Homer, the Vietnam war has struck many observers as being immune to the interpretations of poetry and myth. "Lyric poetry of a traditional kind," writes one critic, "has proved inappropriate to communicate the character of the Vietnam war, its remoteness, its jargonized recapitulations, its seeming imperviousness to aesthetics." Nonetheless, the past two decades have seen an unprecedented outpouring of poetry that seeks to describe and come to terms with that bitterly divisive conflict. In Radical Visions Vince Gotera argues that poetry written by Vietnam veterans underlines the failure of traditional American myths to help Americans understand the war and its aftermath. The book blends sociohistorical commentary with close readings of individual works by such poets as Michael Casey, Walter McDonald, and W. D. Ehrhart. In the book's first section, "The 'Nam," Gotera examines several key mythic structures--the Wild West (a violent extension of the mythic virgin land), the machine in the garden, the city on the hill, regeneration through violence--all of which helped delude Americans about Vietnam and the war being fought there. In the second part, "The World," Gotera shows how another myth, the American Adam as an exemplar of ahistorical innocence, proved unusable for returning veterans attempting to readjust to American life. In addition to exposing these failed myths, Gotera argues, the poetry by Vietnam veterans reflects an effort to construct new myths--most notably that of the "warrior against war," an oxymoronic structure arising from the difficulties faced by returning veterans. In the book's final chapters, Gotera examines the work of Bruce Weigl and Yusef Komunyakaa, two poets whom the author considers most successful at portraying the moral absurdity of the Vietnam war without sacrificing lyrical aesthetics. The first comprehensive study devoted exclusively to poetry by Vietnam veterans, Radical Visions argues that this body of writing registers an important advance in the aesthetics and poetics of war literature and offers a cogent antiwar statement rooted in personal experience.

Radical Children's Literature

Radical Children's Literature
Author: K. Reynolds
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2007-04-12
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0230206204

This book reappraises the place of children's literature, showing it to be a creative space where writers and illustrators try out new ideas about books, society, and narratives in an age of instant communication and multi-media. It looks at the stories about the world and young people; the interaction with changing childhoods and new technologies.

Radical Visions

Radical Visions
Author: Charles Nelson
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2001-09-30
Genre: Education
ISBN:

Find a college teacher prepared to risk his career because he is convinced that undergraduate elective curricula must be abandoned and ready to lay out a detailed remedy. Add a partner in full agreement, to share the risk. That is the improbable story of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan and their 1937 creation, at St. John's College of an all-required four-year curriculum based on the great books. Then add their shared convictions in attacking the Cold War, standing together for civil liberties and against McCarthyism. This story of personal courage is based on Nelson's knowledge and access to unpublished manuscripts and hundreds of letters. Nelson tells the story of a remarkable life-long friendship and collaboration. He describes the 1937 transformation of St. John's College in Annapolis, in which an all-required, four-year program of study built around the great books of the Western tradition, the study of languages, mathematics, and science replaced the conventional elective curriculum. The influences on other institutions, from Oxford's Balliol College to the University of Chicago are traced and related. Nelson examines the effort of the U.S. Navy, in the closing days of World War II, to acquire the campus of St. John's. This is followed by the unsuccessful efforts of Barr and Buchanan, after leaving St. John's, to start another college. Barr is persuaded to head the Foundation for World Government, in the course of which he and Buchanan redefine the nature of the problem of world law and world peace. The Cold War intervenes, and a new set of complications arises, subjecting Barr to attack from the McCarthyites, and the Foundation to attack from the Internal Revenue Serice. Nelson also reviews Barr's first hand encounter with India and its charismatic leaders.He recounts Buchanan's five month visit to the kibbutzim of Israel. The remainder of the text reviews their extensive writings and their years as Fellows of Robert Hutchins' Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. Based on Charles A. Nelson's knowledge of both men and access to extensive unpublished manuscripts and hundreds of revealing letters, the book will be of interest to scholars, students, and researchers involved with American higher education, the world government movement, and post-World War II civil liberty issues.

Visions of History

Visions of History
Author: Edward Palmer Thompson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 1983
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780719010675

Radical Visions 1968-2008

Radical Visions 1968-2008
Author: Denise Varney
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2011
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 940120053X

Preliminary Material -- List of Figures -- Series Editor's Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- The International Generation of 1968: Theatre and Culture -- The Australian Performing Group and Its Legacy, 1968-2008 -- Williamson in the Howard Years -- John Romeril - The Asian Australian Journey -- A Parallel Forty-Year Female Narrative with Alma De Groen -- Richard Murphet and the Wounded Subject -- Jenny Kemp - On the Edge -- Stephen Sewell and the State of the Nation -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.