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A stimulating overview of the intellectual arguments and critical debates involved in the study of British and Irish cinemas British and Irish film studies have expanded in scope and depth in recent years, prompting a growing number of critical debates on how these cinemas are analysed, contextualized, and understood. A Companion to British and Irish Cinema addresses arguments surrounding film historiography, methods of textual analysis, critical judgments, and the social and economic contexts that are central to the study of these cinemas. Twenty-nine essays from many of the most prominent writers in the field examine how British and Irish cinema have been discussed, the concepts and method...
This book investigates how desires to transform our bodies can bring utopia to the present, and how utopian practices often lead to distinctly dystopian or anti-utopian outcomes. It is the first comprehensive study to address the paradoxical relationship between bodies and utopianism. Franziska Bork Petersen discusses doping, bodybuilding and cosmetic surgery alongside practices such as retouching the ‘body as image’ on social media, and looks at how fashion modelling and performance ‘estrange’ the body. Techniques and technologies to transform our bodies are increasingly accessible and suggest an excessive identification of the body as lacking. To ‘be a body’ in a culturally meaningful way, we incessantly improve our bodily appearance and capacity. The book therefore addresses the utopianism inherent in a cultural understanding of bodies as increasingly controllable.
Feminist Figure Girl chronicles the transformation of art history professor Lianne McTavish, from a university professor into an extraordinarily tanned and crystal-encrusted bikini-wearing "figure girl."Figure competitions seek a softer appearance than traditional forms of bodybuilding but still require rigorous weightlifting, an extreme protein diet, and many hours of posing in high heels. While training for a figure show, McTavish combined autoethnographic methods, participant observation, and feminist theory to find new ways of thinking about physique culture and the female body. The author, who specializes in critical visual culture and the history of the body, explores such contemporary...
This lively and engaging text introduces students to the key contemporary issues in the study of gender and the media. Integrating cultural theory with text-based criticism, Gender in the Media analyses recent debates in feminist cultural theory, masculinity studies and queer theory, before applying these cultural paradigms to critical readings in relevant media contexts. Richardson and Wearing address a wide range of new media texts and topics, covering television dramas, make-over shows, life-style magazines, internet dating and more. Critical, current and far-reaching, this book is invaluable for all students of media and gender studies, as well as for anyone interested in gender representation in different media forms.
A thrilling tale of revenge and desire set in 1815. Here, Amber Kaye transports readers from the highlands of Scotland to the glittering ballrooms of London, and tells of a flame-haired beauty who finds passion in the arms of a darkly handsome stranger who has kiddnapped her.
This new collection of essays on American stage and film melodrama assesses the multifarious and contradictory uses to which melodrama has been put in American culture from the late 18th century to the present. It focuses on the various ways in which the genre has periodically intervened in debates over race, class, gender and sexuality and, in this manner, has also persistently contributed to the formation and transformation of American nationhood: from the debates over who constitutes the newborn nation in the Early Republic, to the subsequent conflict over abolition and the discussion of gender roles at the turn of the 19th century, to the fervent class struggles of the 1930s and the critiques of domestic containment in the 1950s, as well as to ongoing debates of gender, race, and sexuality today. Addressing these issues from a variety of different angles, including historical, aesthetic, cultural, phenomenological, and psychological approaches, these essays present a complex picture of the cultural work and passionate politics accomplished by melodrama over the course of the past two centuries, particularly at times of profound social change.
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"Against the claims of the increasing sexualization of culture, one truism is constantly rehearsed - that women have little taste for pornography. One for the Girls! offers a new basis for understanding women's pleasures in sexually explicit materials, focusing on the production and consumption of For Women magazine. This thought-provoking book argues that theories of harm and women's subordination have deflected attention away from the lived experiences and practices of pornography. By focusing on an individual publication, this book illuminates the ways in which pornography is a social product and subject to a range of institutional practices which influence its styles and presentations. The investigation is complemented by a study of For Women readers, offering a multi-dimensional understanding of their relationships with this soft-core magazine"--P. [4] of cover.
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