Author: Graham Cassano File Type: pdf As the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close, the world has entered a sustained period of crisis. In order to understand the forces that created our current social world, we need the tools provided by a critical sociology. This volume draws upon the work of contemporary critical sociologists searching for the roots of our present social and economic problems. Both prominent figures and emerging voices in sociology come together to offer insights into our present dilemmas from a critical perspective. The questions they ask and attempt to answer include What is critical sociology? What is the significance of the new Obama administration? What tools do post-structuralism, postmodernism, feminism, and new forms of social theory offer critical discourse?

Author: Yoshiaki Furui File Type: pdf An innovative and timely examination of the concept of solitude in nineteenth-century American literature During the nineteenth century, the United States saw radical developments in media and communication that reshaped concepts of spatiality and temporality. As the telegraph, the postal system, and public transportation became commonplace, the country achieved a level of connectedness that was never possible before. At this level, physical isolation no longer equaled psychological separation from the exterior world, and as communication networks proliferated, being disconnected took on negative cultural connotations. Though solitude, and the lack thereof, is a pressing concern in todays culture of omnipresent digital connectivity, Yoshiaki Furui shows that solitude has been a significant preoccupation since the nineteenth-century. The obsession over solitude is evidenced by many writers of the period, with consequences for many basic notions of creativity, art, and personal and spiritual fulfillment. In Modernizing Solitude The Networked Individual in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Furui examines, among other works, Henry David Thoreaus Walden, Harriet Jacobss Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Herman Melvilles Bartleby, the Scrivener, Emily Dickinsons poetry and letters, and telegraphic literature in the 1870s to identify the virtues and values these writers bestowed upon solitude in a time and place where it was being consistently threatened or devalued. Although each writer has a unique way of addressing the theme, they all aim to reclaim solitude as a positive, productive state of being that is essential to the writing process and personal identity. Employing a cross-disciplinary approach to understand modern solitude and the resulting literature, Furui seeks to historicize solitude by anchoring literary works in this revolutionary yet interim period of American communication history, while also applying theoretical insights into the literary analysis. **Review An engaging discussion of how the developments of the nineteenth-century communications revolution changed the ways in which writers in the United States came to understand the categories of solitude and loneliness in the middle decades of the century. Les Harrison, author of The Temple and the Forum The American Museum and Cultural Authority in Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, and Whitman In its reclamation of solitude as a productive state of being, Modernizing Solitude joins recent writing that argues for a degree of off-the-grid, more meditative existence to curb social media addiction. As such, it would appeal to those who seek models of moderation, or who are at least curious about the ways in which historical figures negotiated their media consumption in order to remain productive individuals. John M. Picker, author of Victorian Soundscapes About the Author Yoshiaki Furui is an associate professor of English at Rikkyo University in Tokyo. He has published scholarship in Journal of American Studies, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, and Leviathan A Journal of Melville Studies.

Author: Suzanne Keene File Type: pdf During the past decade a number of individual museums have found imaginative ways of using their collections and of making them accessible. However, museum collections as a whole are enormous in size and quantity and the question of how can they can be put to best use is ever present. When conventional exhibitions can only ever utilise a tiny proportion of them, what other uses of the collections are possible? Will their exploitation and use now destroy their value for future generations? Should they simply be kept safely and as economically as possible as a resource for the future?Fragments of the World examines these questions, first reviewing the history of collecting and of collections, then discussing the ways in which the collections themselves are being used today. Case studies of leading examples from around the world illustrate the discussion. Bringing together the thinking about museum collections with case studies of the ways in which different types of collection are used, the book provides a roadmap for museums to make better use of this wonderful resource. ullBrings together the diverse aspects of this topical subject in one placellAccessible, readable text in the authors trademark stylellInternational case studies to illustrate the theorylulBook DescriptionExplores why museum collections are kept and how they can be best put to use using case studies from around the globe About the AuthorSuzanne Keene was Head of Collections Management, Science Museum, London until becoming an independent consultant and lecturer.

Author: Deborah Geis File Type: pdf Readers and acolytes of the vital early 1950s-mid 1960s writers known as the Beat Generation tend to be familiar with the prose and poetry by the seminal authors of this period Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima, and many others. Yet all of these authors, as well as other less well-known Beat figures, also wrote plays-and these, together with their countercultural approaches to what could or should happen in the theatre-shaped the dramatic experiments of the playwrights who came after them, from Sam Shepard to Maria Irene Fornes, to the many vanguard performance artists of the seventies. This volume, the first of its kind, gathers essays about the exciting work in drama and performance by and about the Beat Generation, ranging from the well-known Beat figures such as Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, to the Afro-Beats - LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Bob Kaufman, and others. It offers original studies of the women Beats - Di Prima, Bunny Lang - as well as groups like the Living Theater who in this era first challenged the literal and physical boundaries of the performance space itself. **