Best of
Class

1993

American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass


Douglas S. Massey - 1993
    It goes on to show that, despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968, segregation is perpetuated today through an interlocking set of individual actions, institutional practices, and governmental policies. In some urban areas the degree of black segregation is so intense and occurs in so many dimensions simultaneously that it amounts to "hypersegregation."The authors demonstrate that this systematic segregation of African Americans leads inexorably to the creation of underclass communities during periods of economic downturn. Under conditions of extreme segregation, any increase in the overall rate of black poverty yields a marked increase in the geographic concentration of indigence and the deterioration of social and economic conditions in black communities.As ghetto residents adapt to this increasingly harsh environment under a climate of racial isolation, they evolve attitudes, behaviors, and practices that further marginalize their neighborhoods and undermine their chances of success in mainstream American society. This book is a sober challenge to those who argue that race is of declining significance in the United States today.

Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class


Eric Lott - 1993
    Born of extreme racial and class conflicts, the blackface minstrel show sometimes usefully intensified them. Based on the appropriation of black dialect, music, and dance, minstrelsy at once applauded and lampooned black culture, ironically contributing to a "blackening of America." Drawing on recent research in cultural studies and social history, Eric Lott examines the role of the blackface minstrel show in the political struggles of the years leading up to the Civil War. Reading minstrel music, lyrics, jokes, burlesque skits, and illustrations in tandem with working-class racial ideologies and the sex/gender system, Love and Theft argues that blackface minstrelsy both embodied and disrupted the racial tendencies of its largely white, male, working-class audiences. Underwritten by envy as well as repulsion, sympathetic identification as well as fear--a dialectic of "love and theft"--the minstrel show continually transgressed the color line even as it enabled the formation of a self-consciously white working class. Lott exposes minstrelsy as a signifier for multiple breaches: the rift between high and low cultures, the commodification of the dispossessed by the empowered, the attraction mixed with guilt of whites caught in the act of cultural thievery.

Old Shirts & New Skins


Sherman Alexie - 1993
    Native American Studies. Amongst the poems and prose of OLD SHIRTS & NEW SKINS appear illustrations by Elizabeth Woody, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon. In the best tradition of confronting American reality and exacting vision and meaning from it, Sherman Alexie chooses to use poetic power. His vision is an amazing celebration of endurance, intimacy, love, and creative insight; finally, it is a victory that can be known only by a people who refuse to submit to the thieves, liars, and killers that have made them suffer tremendous loss and pain. "Like the woman who pours her life into a stew of survival, Sherman Alexie has created a meal, not for a reader to consume but for a reader to be changed by. Survival is being documented, changes measured"--Linda Hogan.

Unmarked: The Politics of Performance


Peggy Phelan - 1993
    Written from and for the Left, Unmarked rethinks the claims of visibility politics through a feminist psychoanalytic examination of specific performance texts - including photography, painting, film, theatre and anti-abortion demonstrations.

A Troubling in My Soul: Womanist Perspectives on Evil and Suffering


Emilie M. Townes - 1993
    Committed to an integrated analysis of race, gender, and class, they also address the shortcomings of traditional, feminist, and Black theologies in dealing with evil. Taking Alice Walker's definition of "womanist" as a framework, in Part I, "Responsible, in Charge, " Clarice J. Martin explores "If God exists, why is there evil?"; Frances E. Wood shows how Christianity's idealization of suffering has harmed African-American women; and Jamie T. Phelps recounts the historic exclusion of African-American women - and men - in the Roman Catholic church. Part II, "It Wouldn't Be the First Time, " includes Marcia Y. Riggs on the 19th century Black club women's response to moral evil; Emilie M. Townes on a womanist ethic based on the example of Ida B. Wells-Barrett; and Rosita deAnn Mathews on the role of chaplain-clergyperson as priest, prophet, and employee. Part III, "Love's the Spirit, " includes M. Shawn Copeland on the narratives of enslaved and/or emancipated women of African descent; Delores S. Williams on sin and suffering in Black Christian theology; Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan on the spirituals as an Afrocentric Christian response to evil; and Karen Baker-Fletcher on the life of Dr. Anna Julia Cooper and the vitality of voice in womanist experience. In Part IV, "As Purple Is to Lavender, " Patricia L. Hunter exposes the cosmetics industry's impact on Black women's self-understanding as creations of God. There is also Jacquelyn Grant on how a theology of servanthood degenerates into an apologetics for exploitation; Katie Geneva Cannon on the African-America folk sermon as genre; and, finally, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes on how Alice Walker's observations that one "loves food, " "loves roundness, " and "loves oneself" stand in opposition to the dominant culture's dictum that one can never be too rich or too thin. Vigorous and forthright, A T

Social Theory: The Multicultural And Classic Readings


Charles Lemert - 1993
    It brings texts together in unexpected and exciting ways: those of Parsons and Dorothy Smith, Merton and Lacan, Wallerstein and Frantz Fanon, James Coleman and Molefi Asante. Extensive introductory essays by the editor situate the writings in their times, identifying the currents of social change that shaped fundamental questions of modern and postmodern life. The second edition includes new readings, a new section covering the postmodern controversies of recent years, and a postscript that addresses the changes and directions in social theory.

The Music of John Cage


James Pritchett - 1993
    Providing a historical account of Cage's musical concerns and changing style, James Pritchett describes just what it was Cage did and why and how he did it. The book is centred around extensive descriptions of the most important works and compositional techniques, including in-depth explanations of the role of chance and indeterminacy in Cage's music. Dr Pritchett also considers the relationship of Cage's musical thought to his interests in such diverse subjects as Eastern philosophy and religion, Marshall McLuhan, and anarchism (among many others). This book thus makes the essential introduction to Cage's musical world.

Ramlin Rose: The Boatwoman's Story


Sheila Stewart - 1993
    Carrying a wide variety of cargoes to such destinations as the Potteries, the textile mills of Lancashire, the papermills of London, the colleges of Oxford, they struggled on against increasing competition from rail and road traffic to maintain their place in the country's economy. Yet, little has been recorded about the lives of the canal families, and in particular, the women.

Cracks in the Sidewalk


Crystal Bowman - 1993
    A delightful collection of poems that capture the trials and adventures in a child's life.

The Amnesty of Grace: Justification by Faith from a Latin American Perspective


Elsa Tamez - 1993
    In this theology, the poor, 'oppressed and believing, ' constitute the privileged locus of theology. That is to say, theology is done from their reality of oppression-liberation and their experience of God. Every great theological theme, every biblical reading, must be reexamined from that angle of vision. (from the Introduction, by Elsa Tamez

Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art


Jack Ben-Levi - 1993
    

The Argonautica of Apollonius: Literary Studies


Richard L. Hunter - 1993
    The present book seeks to offer some of that analysis and to place the Argonautica within its social and intellectual context. A series of studies deal with notions of heroism; with eros and the suffering of Medea; the role of the divine; poetic voice and literary self-consciousness; and the Ptolemaic context of the poem. A pervasive theme of the book is Apollonius' creative engagement with Homer, and a final chapter sketches out an approach to Virgil's use of Apollonius in the Aeneid. The Argonautica emerges as a brilliant and original experiment. This book is the only advanced study of the Argonautica currently available. All Greek is translated.

Meaning and Reference


A.W. Moore - 1993
    Contributors include Bertrand Russell, P.F. Strawson, W.V. Quine, Donald Davidson, John McDowell, Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke, David Wiggins, and Gareth Evans. The aim of this series is to bring together important recent writings in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a wide variety of sources, mostly periodicals, which may not be conveniently available to the university student or the general reader.