Specter of the Monolith

Specter of the Monolith
Author: Barry Vacker
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2017-07-11
Genre:
ISBN: 9780979840470

Specter of the Monolith offers a radically original critique of how humans have confronted the majesty of the universe-via art, media, science, pop culture, space exploration, and the greatest space films. In honor of the 50th anniversary of 2001, Specter of the Monolith offers a hopeful and inspiring alternative vision of human destiny in spa

Studying Language in Interaction

Studying Language in Interaction
Author: Betsy Rymes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2022-10-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000636364

Studying Language in Interaction is a holistic practical guide with a hybrid purpose: To emphasize a particular approach to language in the world—a theory of language that has room for communicative repertoire and sociolinguistic diversity—and to provide a practical guide for new researchers of language in interaction. Each chapter focuses on one way of communicating, providing a set of strategies to observe, note, and reflect on context-specific ways of using multiple languages, of sounding, naming, using social media, telling stories, being ironic, and engaging in everyday routines. This approach provides a practical guide without stripping out all the wonder and nuance of language in interaction that originally draws the novice researcher to critical inquiry and makes language relevant to the humans who use it every day. Studying Language in Interaction is not only a practical research guide; it is also a workbook for being in the world in ways that matter, illustrating that any research on language in interaction involves both tricks of the trade and a sustained engagement with humanity. With extensive pedagogical resources, this is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, linguistic anthropology, and education who are embarking on fieldwork projects.

Communicating Beyond Language

Communicating Beyond Language
Author: Betsy Rymes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2014-01-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1136473335

This new book offers a timely and lively appraisal of the concept of communicative repertoires, resources we use to express who we are when in dialogue with others. Each chapter describes and illustrates the communicative resources humans deploy daily, but rarely think about – not only the multiple languages we use, but how we dress or gesture, how we greet each other or tell stories, the nicknames we coin, and the mass media references we make – and how these resources combine in infinitely varied performances of identity. Rymes also discusses how our repertoires shift and grow over the course of a lifetime, as well how a repertoire perspective can lead to a rethinking of cultural diversity and human interaction, from categorizing people’s differences to understanding how our repertoires can expand and overlap with other, thereby helping us to find common ground and communicate in increasingly multicultural schools, workplaces, markets, and social spheres. Rymes affirms the importance of the communicative repertoires concept with highly engaging discussions and contemporary examples from mass media, popular culture, and everyday life. The result is a fresh and exciting work that will resonate with students and scholars in sociolinguistics, intercultural communication, applied linguistics, and education.

Richard Wagner and the Jews

Richard Wagner and the Jews
Author: Milton E. Brener
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2015-01-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0786491388

It is well known that Richard Wagner, the renowned and controversial 19th century composer, exhibited intense anti-Semitism. The evidence is everywhere in his writings as well as in conversations his second wife recorded in her diaries. In his infamous essay "Judaism in Music," Wagner forever cemented his unpleasant reputation with his assertion that Jews were incapable of either creating or appreciating great art. Wagner's close ties with many talented Jews, then, are surprising. Most writers have dismissed these connections as cynical manipulations and rank hypocrisy. Examination of the original sources, however, reveals something different: unmistakeable, undeniable empathy and friendship between Wagner and the Jews in his life. Indeed, the composer had warm relationships with numerous individual Jews. Two of them resided frequently over extended periods in his home. One of these, the rabbi's son Hermann Levi, conducted Wagner's final opera--Parsifal, based on Christian legend--at Wagner's request; no one, Wagner declared, understood his work so well. Even in death his Jewish friends were by his side; two were among his twelve pallbearers. The contradictions between Wagner's antipathy toward the amorphous entity "The Jews" and his genuine friendships with individual Jews are the subject of this book. Drawing on extensive sources in both German and English, including Wagner's autobiography and diary and the diaries of his second wife, this comprehensive treatment of Wagner's anti-Semitism is the first to place it in perspective with his life and work. Included in the text are portions of unpublished letters exchanged between Wagner and Hermann Levi. Altogether, the book reveals astonishing complexities in a man long known as much for his prejudice as for his epic contributions to opera.

Defense Organization

Defense Organization
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services
Publisher:
Total Pages: 694
Release: 1985
Genre: United States
ISBN:

Confronting America

Confronting America
Author: Alessandro Brogi
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 549
Release: 2011-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0807877743

Throughout the Cold War, the United States encountered unexpected challenges from Italy and France, two countries with the strongest, and determinedly most anti-American, Communist Parties in Western Europe. Based primarily on new evidence from communist archives in France and Italy, as well as research archives in the United States, Alessandro Brogi's original study reveals how the United States was forced by political opposition within these two core Western countries to reassess its own anticommunist strategies, its image, and the general meaning of American liberal capitalist culture and ideology. Brogi shows that the resistance to Americanization was a critical test for the French and Italian communists' own legitimacy and existence. Their anti-Americanism was mostly dogmatic and driven by the Soviet Union, but it was also, at crucial times, subtle and ambivalent, nurturing fascination with the American culture of dissent. The staunchly anticommunist United States, Brogi argues, found a successful balance to fighting the communist threat in France and Italy by employing diplomacy and fostering instances of mild dissent in both countries. Ultimately, both the French and Italian communists failed to adapt to the forces of modernization that stemmed both from indigenous factors and from American influence. Confronting America illuminates the political, diplomatic, economic, and cultural conflicts behind the U.S.-communist confrontation.

Media Environments

Media Environments
Author: Barry Vacker
Publisher:
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2014-09-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9781631890024

""Media Environments" is based on a simple concept: combine movies with texts to critique media and society in the 21st century. Using film as a gateway to critical readings, students learn to think creatively and critically about media, society, technology, and popular culture. Rather than examine the media as separate industries or technologies, "Media Environments" explores the media in their totality and provides models and theories for interrogating many universal themes that span media and global culture. Using films such as "The Hunger Games," "Fight Club" and "WALL-E" as lead-ins, students are introduced to the works of well-known thinkers and writers such as Jean Baudrillard, Naomi Wolf, Neil Postman, Rebecca MacKinnon, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Julian Assange, Kalle Lasn, Stephen Hawking, and many others. Chapter topics include: memes networks spectacle hyperreality news science ecology capitalism counterculture social media celebrity system total surveillance Internet freedom apocalypse culture media futures The wide range of films, topics, and readings permits professors to tailor the models and theories to fit with their personal interests and expertise in teaching Media and Society or other media-related courses. With its intellectual rigor and thematic diversity, "Media Environments" is ideal for departments thinking about adopting a single text for their media studies courses. This anthology makes media criticism exciting, engaging, and enlightening. Barry Vacker teaches media and cultural studies at Temple University (Philadelphia), where he is an associate professor in the School of Media and Communication. Vacker has taught media studies courses for 20 years and authored many articles and books on art, media, culture, and technology. His most recent articles explore the meanings of Facebook, the Hubble Space Telescope, "Fight Club," and "The Walking Dead." His most recent book, "The End of the World Again," critiques apocalyptic movies, science, and culture. He is the Founder of the Center for Media and Destiny, a 501c3 non-profit dedicated to exploring ""the big futures"" involving media and human destiny. He also directed the documentary film, "Space Times Square," which received the international award for ""Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology"" from the Media Ecology Association in 2010. Vacker earned his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin. For Barry s full bio, go to: http: //mediaanddestiny.org/barry-vacker/ ""

Democracy Incorporated

Democracy Incorporated
Author: Sheldon S. Wolin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2017-08-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0691178488

Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliché. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level. Democracy Incorporated is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come. Now with a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges, Democracy Incorporated remains an essential work for understanding the state of democracy in America.

Computer Networks

Computer Networks
Author: Randall Rustin
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1972
Genre: Computers
ISBN:

Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory

Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory
Author: Angela M. Cirucci
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2018-10-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1498573541

Black Mirror is The Twilight Zone of the twenty-first century. Already a philosophical classic, the series echoes the angst of an era, a civilization and consciousness fully engulfed in the 24/7 media spectacle spanning the planet. With clever plots and existential themes, Black Mirror presents near-futures where humans collide with technology and each other—tomorrows that might arrive in five years or five minutes. Featuring scholars from three continents and ten nations, Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory is an international collection of critical media theory applied to one of the most intellectually provocative TV shows of our time and the all-too-real conditions that inspire it. Drawing from thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord, Marshall McLuhan, and Paul Virilio, the authors reverse-engineer Black Mirror by probing the ideas, meanings, and conditions embedded in the episodes. This book is organized around six key topics reflected and explored in Black Mirror—human identity, surveillance culture, spectacle and hyperreality, aesthetics, technology and existence, and dystopian futures.