Arts, Architecture & Design Books

Robin Nelson's State of play up-dates and develops the arguments of his influential TV Drama In Transition (1997). It is equally distinctive in setting analusis of the aesethetics and compositional principles of texts within a broad conceptual framework...

Drawing on feminist cultural materialist theories and historiographies, 'Treading the bawds' analyses the collaboration between actresses Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle and women playwrights such as Aphra Behn and Mary Pix, and traces a line of...

Peter Jackson's epic trilogy, the biggest film event of the 21st century, turned the best-selling book of the 20th century into a popular, critical and financial success all over again. This comprehensive collection draws together twenty-five essays on...

This book explores the changing representation of the couple, focusing on themes of marriage, equality and desire. Kathrina Glitre moves beyond the usual screwball territory to consider cycles of production from 1934-65. The central concern with the...

Trevor Griffiths has been a critical force in British television writing for over three decades. His successes have included the series Bill Brand (1976), his adaptations of Sons and Lovers and The Cherry Orchard (1981) and his television plays, The...

This original and innovative book examines a period in which the development of London was perhaps at its most intense, for in the opening decades of the nineteenth century a concerted attempt was made to transform the metropolis into a modern European...

Alan Bennett is one of the UK's most well-known and successful writers. His oeuvre is one where populist art forms and intellectually complex arguments co-exist seamlessly, allowing the work to appeal to a wide audience. Bennett's familiar voice combines...

This is the first full-length study of the screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, whose work for film and television includes Z Cars, The Italian Job, Kelly's Heroes, The Sweeney, Reilly - Ace of Spies and Edge of Darkness. With a career spanning six decades...

Presents the 1925 Paris Exhibition as a key moment in attempts to update the image of Paris as "capital of the 19th century". At the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris itself, as much as the commodity, was put on...

Lynda La Plante is Britain's most successful and well known screenwriter and the first woman to win the prestigious Dennis Potter writer's award. Attracting millions of viewers, the popular and critical success of La Plante's work is central to...

Brazil has one of the most significant and productive film industries in Latin America. This ground-breaking study provides an entertaining insight into the Brazilian films that have most captured the imagination of domestic audiences over the years.The...

Beginning Shakespeare introduces students to the study of Shakespeare, and grounds their understanding of his work in theoretical discourses. After an introductory survey of the dominant approaches of the past, seven chapters examine the major current...

"Memory and Popular Film" uses memory as a specific framework for the cultural study of film. Taking Hollywood as its focus, the text provides a sustained, interdisciplinary perspective on memory and film, from early cinema to the present. Considering...

Discussing well-known films and forgotten ones which deserve reassessment, this text uses a sociological model to examine how working class people are portrayed in British feature films from the decade after World War II. It introduces media and film...

Public issue television is a major contribution to understanding the relationship between television, politics and society. Based on full access to the archives, it offers a fascinating historical account of how one television series, Granada's World in...

Cinema has long been recognized as the privileged bridge between Soviet ideologues and their mass public. Recent feminist-oriented work has drawn out the symbolic role of women in Soviet culture, but, not surprisingly, men too were expected to play their...

Through a study of ten modern stage and screen productions of 'King Lear', this book examines the way performance and interpretation are bound together, and shows how different performances have illuminated the contradictions in this play. The updated...

Playing for time explores connections between theatre time, the historical moment and fictional time. Geraldine Cousin persuasively argues that a crucial characteristic of contemporary British theatre is its preoccupation with instability and danger, and...

Published on the 50th anniversary of his directorial debut, this is an examination of the work of a man once hailed as the finest film-maker to emerge from the British studio system after World War II. J. Lee Thompson first came to notice as a talented...

The first book in English to deal exclusively with Duras' cinema, including such films as India Song, Le Camion, and Nathalie Granger. Provides a lucid and stimulating introduction to her films, which is accessible to a wide readerhip, both specialist...

This study traces the evolution of the various categories of "factual entertainment" programmes which have come to dominate our screens over the last decade. The book focuses on issues such as the changes in the braodcasting environment which have given...

This study is an analysis of Claude Chabrol and brings into focus a prolific French director. Chabrol has made more than 50 films in a career spanning 40 years. This account traces the development of his film style from the experimental period of the...

Carrie Tarr's analysis of the cinema of Diane Kurys is a full-length study of this director, whose delightfully unsentimental reconstructions of the lives of girls and women in post-war France have established her as a distinctive presence in...

After making a strong impact with his first film "Les 400 Coups", a semi-autobiographical narrative shot in the neo-realist style of the emerging "Nouvelle Vague", the French film director Francois Truffaut went on to make 23 films in 26 years. This...

An introduction to popular film and the way in which it is studied, this book brings together the critical approaches and issues that have sought to define popular film from the 1950s to the present day. It inlcudes discussion of mass culture theory and...

"Analysing Performance" is a wide-ranging collection of essays by contributors of international standing about key aspects of the performing arts. Each essay tackles the theory and practice of contemporary performance work, and enables students and...

Of all Shakespeare's tragedies, "Othello", with its issues of racism, jealousy and sexual stereotyping seems most immediate to contemporary audiences. This work traces Othello's acting tradition as it has affected the roles of Othello, Desdemona and Iago...

For many years Middleton's "A Game at Chess" was more notorious than read, considered rather a phenomenon of theatrical history than a pre-eminent piece of dramatic writing. "A Game at Chess" was a nine days' wonder, an exceptional play of King James'...

The Island of Bali, one of only a handful of places in the world where a rich and ancient culture survives intact into the 21st century, is now caught between two realities its role as a booming international tourism destination and the struggle of the...

This book explores the dynamic interaction between art and the sign language of the deaf in France from the philsopheRs to the introduction of the sound motion picture. Nicholas Mirzoeff shows how the French Revolution transformed the ancienT regime...

A new retrospective of the work of trailblazing artist Barbara Chase-RiboudBarbara Chase-Riboud is a bestselling novelist, an award-winning poet, and a renowned visual artist whose sculpture and drawings are in museum collections around the world. Among...

A vivid historical imagining of life in the early United States.Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, and...

As a pigment, white is often thought to represent an absence colour, but it is without doubt an important colour in its own right, just like red, blue, green, or yellow - and, like them, white has its own intriguing history. In this richly illustrated...

A richly illustrated history of self-taught artists and how they changed American artArtists without formal training, who learned from family, community, and personal journeys, have long been a presence in American art. But it wasn't until the 1980s,...

A revealing collection of quotations from world-renowned artist Damien Hirst.Hirst-isms is a collection of quotations - bold, surprising, often humorous, and always insightful - from celebrated artist Damien Hirst, whose controversial work explores the...

A richly illustrated exploration of Mina Loy's art and writingsMina Loy (18821966) was one of the most iconoclastic figures in modernism. A groundbreaking poet, she also left an indelible mark in painting, drawing, prose, art criticism, and fashion. Mina...

An essential exploration of the engineering aesthetics of celebrated structures from long-span bridges to high-rise buildingsWhat do structures such as the Eiffel Tower, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the concrete roofs of Pier Luigi Nervi have in common?...

How California's counterculture of the 1960s to 1980s profoundly shaped-and was shaped by-West Coast artistsThe 1960s exert a special fascination in modern art. But most accounts miss the defining impact of the period's youth culture, largely incubated...

In this provocative new account, David Joselit shows how art from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries began to function as a commodity, while the qualities of the artist, nation, or period themselves became valuable properties. Joselit explores...

A diverse set of contributions to the expanding field of ecocritical studiesSeeking a broad reexamination of visual culture through the lenses of ecocriticism, environmental justice, and animal studies, Picture Ecology offers a diverse range of art...

A marvellously illustrated A-to-Z compendium of bird names from around the globe.The Bird Name Book is an alphabetical reference book on the origins and meanings of common group bird names, from 'accentor' to...

A powerful photographic survey of the impact of irrigation systems on the landscape of the United StatesIn The One Hundred Circle Farm, renowned photographer Emmet Gowin (b. 1941) presents stunning aerial images of center-pivot irrigation systems in the...

A unique collection of brilliant quotations from the legendary Pop artistOne of the most influential artists of his time and ours, Andy Warhol is nearly as renowned for what he said as for what he did. Indeed, he is so quotable that things he never said...

One of the nation's foremost urban historians traces the history of cooperative housing in New York City from the 1920s through the 1970s.As World War II ended and Americans turned their attention to problems at home, union leaders and other prominent...

For decades, African nations have fought for the return of countless works of art stolen during the colonial era and placed in Western museums. In Africa's Struggle for Its Art, Bndicte Savoy brings to light this largely unknown but deeply important...

The extraordinary life story of the celebrated artist and writer, as told through four decades of intimate letters to her beloved motherBarbara Chase-Riboud has led a remarkable life. After graduating from Yale's School of Design and Architecture, she...

Featuring never-before-seen drawings by the renowned contemporary artist, a beautiful facsimile edition that reveals the working process of an extraordinary creative mindSketchbook reproduces original working drawings and sketches by the contemporary...

A revelatory history of the first artist collective in the United States and its effort to reshape nineteenth-century art, culture, and politicsThe American Pre-Raphaelites founded a uniquely interdisciplinary movement composed of politically radical...