Author: Dan Schiller File Type: pdf This book offers the first detailed intellectual history of communication study, from its beginnings in late nineteenth-century critiques of corporate capitalism and the burgeoning American wireline communications industry, to contemporary information theory and poststructuralist accounts of communicative activity. Schiller identifies a problematic split between manual and intellectual labor that outlasts each of the fields major conceptual departures, and from this vital perspective builds a rigorous critical survey of work aiming to understand the nexus of media, ideology, and information in a society. Looking closely at the thought of John Dewey, C. Wright Mills, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Daniel Bell, and others, Schiller carefully maps the transformation of ideas about communication and culture as issues of corporate power, mass persuasion, cultural imperialism, and information expansion succeed one another in prominence. Bringing his analysis of communication theory into the present, Schiller concludes by limning a unitary model of societys culturalinformational production, one that broadens the concept of labor to include all forms of human self-activity. Powerful, challenging, and original, Theorizing Communication A History offers a brilliantly constructed overview of the history of communication study, and will interest scholars working in the field as well as those working in critical theory, cultural studies, and twentieth-century intellectual history.ReviewHis account helps organize and make sense of the seemingly disparate work from which the field of communication study emerged....This is an important contribution, both as a history and as a critique of the fields failure to adequately theorize communication in its social context.--Publishing Research QuarterlyA breathtaking historical tour-de-force and creative synthesis of ideas that frame the key socio-political issues and cultural debates of our time.--George Gerbner, Dean Emeritus, The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of PennsylvaniaEngages a wide range of communications and cultural theory extending from mainstream empirical research to British cultural studies. It provides a comprehensive and critical overview of the field which should be of great interest to those who wish to understand communications theory and the multifaceted roles of communications in the contemporary world.--Douglas Kellner, University of Texas at Austin.About the AuthorDan Schiller is at University of California, San Diego.

Author: Ad Putter File Type: pdf This is an innovative and original exploration of the connections between Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the most well-known works of medieval English literature, and the tradition of French Arthurian romance, best-known through the works of Chretien de Troyes two centuries earlier. The book compares Gawain with a wide range of French Arthurian romances, exploring their recurrent structural patterns and motifs, their ethical orientation and the social context in which they were produced. It presents a wealth of new sources and analogues, which reveal and illuminate the Gawain-poets sophisticated literary and moral understanding of the conventions of Arthurian romance. Throughout, Ad Putter pays close attention to the ways in which the modes of representation in romance are related to social and historical contexts. Focusing on the importance of conscience, courtliness, and self-restraint in Arthurian romance, this book explores the ways in which literati such as Chretien de Troyes and the Gawain-poet adapted chivalric ideals to the changing times.

Author: Giuseppe Verdi File Type: pdf A comprehensive guide to Verdis Aida, featuring a newly translated Libretto (with music examples), Principal Characters, Brief Story Synopsis, Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples, a Discography, a Videography, a Dictionary of Opera and Musical Terms, and insightful Commentary and Analysis of the opera.

Author: András Kovács File Type: pdf The Cinema of Bela Tarr is a critical analysis of the work of Hungarys most prominent and internationally best known film director, written by a scholar who has followed Bela Tarrs career through a close personal and professional relationship for more than twenty-five years. Andras Balint Kovacs traces the development of Tarrs themes, characters, and style, showing that almost all of his major stylistic and narrative innovations were already present in his early films and that through a conscious and meticulous recombination of and experimentation with these elements, Tarr arrived at his unique style. The significance of these films is that, beyond their aesthetic and historical value, they provide the most powerful vision of an entire region and its historical situation. Tarrs films express, in their universalistic language, the shared feelings of millions of Eastern Europeans.**ReviewMuch of the available commentary on the films of Bela Tarr is often confused and confusing. Andras Balint Kovacs cuts through this Gordian Knot with a comprehensive but detailed and precise analysis this is film-writing at its very best. (John Cunningham, author of Hungarian Cinema From Coffee House to Multiplex) About the Author Andras Balint Kovacs is professor of film studies at the ELTE University of Budapest. He has also lectured at La Sorbonne Nouvelle and the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. He has published primarily on modern European art cinema, and his most recent book is Screening Modernism.