Urban Monstrosities

Urban Monstrosities
Author: Joseph Lamperez
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2018-07-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1527515575

Sign of sublime excess and transgression, guardian of the threshold and uncanny creature par excellence, the monster of late has also become a mainstay of urban narratives – even while its presence in these texts remains untheorized. The authors in this collection show how artists and writers across the past two hundred years, from William Wordsworth to China Miéville, figure the monster as a barometer of changing urban patterns. Here, monstrosity becomes the herald of embryonic social forms and marginalized populations in portrayals of cities across media – from video games, film and avant-garde sonic experiments to written tales of urban fantasy and gothic ruin. This volume suggests that poetic and municipal structures evolve in tandem. Within its chapters, unearthly buildings and beings signal a host of new urban dispensations.

The Field Guide to North American Monsters

The Field Guide to North American Monsters
Author: W. Haden Blackman
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 1998
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

This unique field guide draws on modern sightings, folklore, urban legends, and mythology to give novices all they need to begin a fearless foray into the world of monsterology. 75 photos.

Urban Spaces in Contemporary Latin American Literature

Urban Spaces in Contemporary Latin American Literature
Author: José Eduardo González
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2018-06-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319924389

This collection of essays studies the depiction of contemporary urban space in twenty-first century Latin American fiction. The contributors to this volume seek to understand the characteristics that make the representation of the postmodern city in a Latin American context unique. The chapters focus on cities from a wide variety of countries in the region, highlighting the cultural and political effects of neoliberalism and globalization in the contemporary urban scene. Twenty-first century authors share an interest for images of ruins and dystopian landscapes and their view of the damaging effects of the global market in Latin America tends to be pessimistic. As the book demonstrates, however, utopian elements or “spaces of hope” can also be found in these narrations, which suggest the possibility of transforming a capitalist-dominated living space.

Monstrous manifestations: Realities and the Imaginings of the Monster

Monstrous manifestations: Realities and the Imaginings of the Monster
Author: Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bienkowska
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2019-01-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1848882025

An enlightening collection of inter-disciplinary research on the multifarious incarnations of the monster, 'Monstrous Manifestations' invites the reader to venture into the deepest anxieties of the human psyche.

Scarcity and Growth

Scarcity and Growth
Author: Harold J. Barnett
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1135989176

In this classic study, the authors assess the importance of technological change and resource substitution in support of their conclusion that resource scarcity did not increase in the Unites States during the period 1870 to 1957. Originally published in 1963

Engaging Anthropological Theory

Engaging Anthropological Theory
Author: Mark Moberg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2013
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0415699991

This text offers a fresh look at the history of anthropological theory. Anthropological ideas about human diversity have always been rooted in the socio-political conditions in which they arose, and exploring them in context helps students understand how and why they evolved, and how theory relates to life and society.

Victorian Automata

Victorian Automata
Author: Suzy Anger
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2024-03-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 100911848X

Speaking to today's fascinations and anxieties surrounding artificial intelligence, this multidisciplinary collection is the first to examine the widespread Victorian interest in human and mechanical automata. This title is part of the Flip it Open programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Architecture and Film

Architecture and Film
Author: Mark Lamster
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2013-07-02
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1568988370

Architecture and Film looks at the ways architecture and architects are treated on screen and, conversely, how these depictions filter and shape the ways we understand the built environment. It also examines the significant effect that the film industry has had on the American public's perception of urban, suburban, and rural spaces. Contributors to this collection of essays come from a wide range of disciplines. Nancy Levinson from Harvard Design Magazine writes on how films from The Fountainhead to Jungle Fever have depicted architects. Eric Rosenberg from Tufts University looks at how architecture and spatial relations shape the Beatles films A Hard Day's Night, Help!, and Let It Be. Joseph Rosa, curator at the National Building Museum, discusses why modern domestic architecture in recent Hollywood films such as The Ice Storm, L. A. Confidential, and The Big Lebowski has become synonymous with unstable inhabitants. I.D. Magazine writer Peter Hall discusses the history of film titling, focusing on the groundbreaking work of Saul Bass and Maurice Binder. Edited by Mark Lamster examines the anti-urbanism of the Star Wars trilogy. The collection also includes the voices of those from within the film industry, who are uniquely able to provide a "behind the scenes" perspective: film Edited by Bob Eisenhardt comments on the making of Concert of Wills, a documentary on the construction of the Getty Museum; and Robert Kraft focuses on his work as a location director for Diane Keaton's upcoming film about Los Angeles. Also included are interviews with David Rockwell, architect of numerous Planet Hollywood restaurants worldwide and designer of a new hall to host the Academy Awards ceremony; Kyle Kooper, who created title sequences for Seven and Mission Impossible; and motion picture art director Jan Roelfs, whose credits include Gattaca, Orlando, and Little Women.

The Wonder of Water

The Wonder of Water
Author: Ingrid Leman Stefanovic
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2019-11-20
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1487532989

Facing droughts, floods, and water security challenges, society is increasingly forced to develop new policies and practices to cope with the impacts of climate change. From taken-for-granted values and perceptions to embodied, existential modes of engaging our world, human perspectives impact decision-making and behaviour. The Wonder of Water explores how human experience – including our cultural paradigms, value systems, and personal biases – impacts decisions around water. In many ways, the volume expands on the growing field of water ethics to include questions around environmental aesthetics, psychology, and ontology. And yet this book is not simply for philosophers. On the contrary, a specific aim is to explore how more informed philosophical dialogue will lead to more insightful public policies and practices. Case studies describe specific architectural and planning decisions, fisheries policies, urban ecological restorations, and more. The overarching phenomenological perspective, however, means that these discussions emerge within a sensibility that recognizes the foundational significance of human embodiment, culture, language, worldviews, and, ultimately, moral attunement to place.

Odd Tribes

Odd Tribes
Author: John Hartigan Jr.
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2005-11-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822387204

Odd Tribes challenges theories of whiteness and critical race studies by examining the tangles of privilege, debasement, power, and stigma that constitute white identity. Considering the relation of phantasmatic cultural forms such as the racial stereotype “white trash” to the actual social conditions of poor whites, John Hartigan Jr. generates new insights into the ways that race, class, and gender are fundamentally interconnected. By tracing the historical interplay of stereotypes, popular cultural representations, and the social sciences’ objectifications of poverty, Hartigan demonstrates how constructions of whiteness continually depend on the vigilant maintenance of class and gender decorums. Odd Tribes engages debates in history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies over how race matters. Hartigan tracks the spread of “white trash” from an epithet used only in the South prior to the Civil War to one invoked throughout the country by the early twentieth century. He also recounts how the cultural figure of “white trash” influenced academic and popular writings on the urban poor from the 1880s through the 1990s. Hartigan’s critical reading of the historical uses of degrading images of poor whites to ratify lines of color in this country culminates in an analysis of how contemporary performers such as Eminem and Roseanne Barr challenge stereotypical representations of “white trash” by claiming the identity as their own. Odd Tribes presents a compelling vision of what cultural studies can be when diverse research methodologies and conceptual frameworks are brought to bear on pressing social issues.