Book picks similar to
Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre by Alison PeirseKatarzyna Paszkiewicz
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Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity
Stephen Toulmin - 1990
While fueling extraordinary advances in all fields of human endeavor, this vision perpetuated a hidden yet persistent agenda: the delusion that human nature and society could be fitted into precise and manageable rational categories. Stephen Toulmin confronts that agenda—its illusions and its consequences for our present and future world."By showing how different the last three centuries would have been if Montaigne, rather than Descartes, had been taken as a starting point, Toulmin helps destroy the illusion that the Cartesian quest for certainty is intrinsic to the nature of science or philosophy."—Richard M. Rorty, University of Virginia"[Toulmin] has now tackled perhaps his most ambitious theme of all. . . . His aim is nothing less than to lay before us an account of both the origins and the prospects of our distinctively modern world. By charting the evolution of modernity, he hopes to show us what intellectual posture we ought to adopt as we confront the coming millennium."—Quentin Skinner, New York Review of Books
Firewater: How Alcohol Is Killing My People (and Yours)
Harold R. Johnson - 2016
Drawing on his years of experience as a Crown Prosecutor in Treaty 6 territory, Harold Johnson challenges readers to change the story we tell ourselves about the drink that goes by many names─booze, hooch, spirits, sauce, and the evocative firewater. Confronting the harmful stereotype of the lazy, drunken Indian, and rejecting medical, social and psychological explanations of the roots of alcoholism, Johnson cries out for solutions, not diagnoses, and shows how alcoholism continues to kill so many. Provocative, irreverent, and keenly aware of the power of stories, Firewater calls for people to make decisions about their communities and their lives on their own terms.
Vietnam Perkasie: A Combat Marine Memoir
W.D. Ehrhart - 1983
Ehrhart: "As a poet and editor, Bill Ehrhart is clearly one of the major figures in Vietnam War literature." This autobiographical account of the war, the author's first extended prose work, demonstrates Ehrhart's abilities as a writer of prose as well. Vietnam-Perkasie is grim, comical, disturbing, and accurate. The presentation is novelistic—truly, a "page-turner"—but the events are all real, the atmosphere intensely evocative.
Why Have Children?: The Ethical Debate
Christine Overall - 2012
In this book, Christine Overall maintains that the burden of proof should be reversed: that the choice to have children calls for more careful justification and reasoning than the choice not to. Arguing that the choice to have children is not just a prudential or pragmatic decision but one with ethical repercussions, Overall offers a wide-ranging exploration of how we might think systematically and deeply about this fundamental aspect of human life. Writing from a feminist perspective, she also acknowledges the inevitably gendered nature of the decision; although both men and women must ponder the issue, the choice has different meanings, implications, and risks for women than it has for men. Overall considers a series of ethical perspectives on procreation, examining approaches that rely on reproductive rights; on fundamental religious, family, or political values; and on the anticipated consequences of the decision for both individuals and society. She examines some of the broader issues relevant to the decision, including population growth, resource depletion, and social policies governing reproduction. Finding the usual approaches to the question inadequate or incomplete, she offers instead a novel argument. Exploring the nature of the biological parent-child relationship--which is not only genetic but also psychological, physical, intellectual, and moral--she argues that the formation of that relationship is the best possible reason for choosing to have a child.
Human Anatomy: A Visual History from the Renaissance to the Digital Age
Benjamin A. Rifkin - 2006
Before the invention of photography, artists played an essential role in medical science, recording human anatomy in startlingly direct and often moving images. Over 400 years, beginning with Vesalius, they charted the main systems of the body, made precise studies of living organs, documented embryonic development, and described pathologies. Human Anatomy includes portfolios of the work of 19 great anatomical artists, with concise biographies, and culminates with the Visible Human Project, which uses digital tools to visualize the human body.Praise for Human Anatomy:"From Leonardo da Vinci's exquisite pen-and-ink drawings of the human skeleton to the digital Visible Human Project in its three-dimensional glory, this fascinating book . . . documents more than 500 years of anatomical illustration in living color." -Scientific American
The Notion of Authority
Alexandre Kojève - 2004
With his profound interpretation of Hegel he became a key reference for such varied thinkers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Andr Breton, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Leo Strauss. He returned to prominence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the surprise inspiration for Francis Fukuyama's notorious thesis in The End of History.In The Notion of Authority, written in the 1940s in Nazi-occupied France, he uncovers the conceptual premises of four primary models of authority and examines the practical application of their derivative variations from the Enlightenment to Vichy France. This foundational text, here translated into English for the first time, is the missing piece in any discussion of sovereignty and political authority, ready to take its place alongside the work of Weber, Arendt, Schmitt, Agamben or Dum zil. The Notion of Authority is a short and sophisticated introduction to Koj ve's philosophy of right, while in the context of his biography its significance resides in the fact it captures his puzzling intellectual interests at a time when he retired from the profession of philosophy and was about to become one of the pioneers of the Common Market and the idea of the European Union.
Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic
Richard A. McKay - 2017
Yet the term itself did not exist before the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. How did this idea so swiftly come to exert such a strong grip on the scientific, media, and popular consciousness? In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay interprets a wealth of archival sources and interviews to demonstrate how this seemingly new concept drew upon centuries-old ideas—and fears—about contagion and social disorder. McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaétan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed—and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak. McKay shows how investigators from the US Centers for Disease Control inadvertently created the term amid their early research into the emerging health crisis; how an ambitious journalist dramatically amplified the idea in his determination to reframe national debates about AIDS; and how many individuals grappled with the notion of patient zero—adopting, challenging and redirecting its powerful meanings—as they tried to make sense of and respond to the first fifteen years of an unfolding epidemic. With important insights for our interconnected age, Patient Zero untangles the complex process by which individuals and groups create meaning and allocate blame when faced with new disease threats. What McKay gives us here is myth-smashing revisionist history at its best.
God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right
Daniel K. Williams - 2010
But, as God's Own Party demonstrates, they shouldn't have been. The Christian Right goes back much farther than most journalists, political scientists, and historians realize. Relying onextensive archival and primary source research, Daniel K. Williams presents the first comprehensive history of the Christian Right, uncovering how evangelicals came to see the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could reclaim America as a Christian nation. A fascinating andmuch-needed account of a key force in American politics, God's Own Party is the only full-scale analysis of the electoral shifts, cultural changes, and political activists at the movement's core--showing how the Christian Right redefined politics as we know it.
Lament for a Nation (Carleton Library Series, #205)
George Parkin Grant - 1965
In 1965 George Grant passionately defended Canadian identity by asking fundamental questions about the meaning and future of Canada’s political existence. In Lament for a Nation he argued that Canada – immense and underpopulated, defined in part by the border, history, and culture it shares with the United States, and torn by conflicting loyalties to Britain, Quebec, and America – had ceased to exist as a sovereign state. Lament for a Nation became the seminal work in Canadian political thought and Grant became known as the father of Canadian nationalism. This edition includes a major introduction by Andrew Potter that explores Grant’s arguments in the context of changes in ethnic diversity, free trade, globalization, post-modernism, and 9/11. Potter discusses the shifting uses of the terms “liberal” and “conservative” and closes with a look at the current state of Canadian nationalism.
Past and Present
Thomas Carlyle - 1897
Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.
Bodies out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression
Jana Evans Braziel - 2001
In the United States, fat is seen as repulsive, funny, ugly, unclean, obscene, and above all as something to lose. Bodies Out of Bounds challenges these dominant perceptions by examining social representations of the fat body. The contributors to this collection show that what counts as fat and how it is valued are far from universal; the variety of meanings attributed to body size in other times and places demonstrates that perceptions of corpulence are infused with cultural, historical, political, and economic biases. The exceptionally rich and engaging essays collected in this volume question discursive constructions of fatness while analyzing the politics and power of corpulence and addressing the absence of fat people in media representations of the body.The essays are widely interdisciplinary; they explore their subject with insight, originality, and humor. The contributors examine the intersections of fat with ethnicity, race, queerness, class, and minority cultures, as well as with historical variations in the signification of fat. They also consider ways in which "objective" medical and psychological discourses about fat people and food hide larger agendas. By illustrating how fat is a malleable construct that can be used to serve dominant economic and cultural interests, Bodies Out of Bounds stakes new claims for those whose body size does not adhere to society's confining standards.
White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society
Ghassan Hage - 1998
In this book, he asks whether that desire is indeed limited to racists. Drawing upon the Australian experience, Hage draws conclusions that might also be applicable in France, the United States and Great Britain, each being examples of multicultural environment under the control of white culture. Hage argues that governments have promised white citizens that they would lose nothing under multiculturalism. However, migrant settlement has changed neighbourhoods, challenged white control, created new demands for non-whites, and led to white backlash. This book suggests that white racists and white mulitculturalists may share more assumptions than either group suspects.
Foul Bodies: Cleanliness in Early America
Kathleen M. Brown - 2009
Starting with the shake-up of European practices that coincided with Atlantic expansion, she traces attitudes toward “dirt” through the mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating that cleanliness—and the lack of it—had moral, religious, and often sexual implications. Brown contends that care of the body is not simply a private matter but an expression of cultural ideals that reflect the fundamental values of a society.The book explores early America’s evolving perceptions of cleanliness, along the way analyzing the connections between changing public expectations for appearance and manners, and the backstage work of grooming, laundering, and housecleaning performed by women. Brown provides an intimate view of cleanliness practices and how such forces as urbanization, immigration, market conditions, and concerns about social mobility influenced them. Broad in historical scope and imaginative in its insights, this book expands the topic of cleanliness to encompass much larger issues, including religion, health, gender, class, and race relations.
Illustrations for the Book of Job
William Blake - 1826
Also presented here are 11 additional watercolors, plus 28 black-and-white illustrations, including 21 extraordinary engravings based on the watercolors. All reproduced from a rare, limited facsimile edition published by The Pierpont Morgan Library. New introductory essay. 60 illustrations.
The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler
Ben Urwand - 2013
Ben Urwand reveals this bargain for the first time--a "collaboration" "(Zusammenarbeit)" that drew in a cast of characters ranging from notorious German political leaders such as Goebbels to Hollywood icons such as Louis B. Mayer.At the center of Urwand's story is Hitler himself, who was obsessed with movies and recognized their power to shape public opinion. In December 1930, his Party rioted against the Berlin screening of "All Quiet on the Western Front," which led to a chain of unfortunate events and decisions. Fearful of losing access to the German market, all of the Hollywood studios started making concessions to the German government, and when Hitler came to power in January 1933, the studios--many of which were headed by Jews--began dealing with his representatives directly.Urwand shows that the arrangement remained in place through the 1930s, as Hollywood studios met regularly with the German consul in Los Angeles and changed or canceled movies according to his wishes. Paramount and Fox invested profits made from the German market in German newsreels, while MGM financed the production of German armaments. Painstakingly marshaling previously unexamined archival evidence, "The Collaboration" raises the curtain on a hidden episode in Hollywood--and American--history.