Society and culture: general Books

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...

Turkey's involvement in the Gulf War in 1991 paved the way for the country's acceptance into the European Union. This book, newly available in paperback, traces that process and in the first part looks at Turkey's foreign policy in the 1990s, considering...

This book offers a nuanced and progressive model for future scholarship in the field. It should be of value to all with an interest in the subject of memory and its relationship with the cataclysms of the past.

Nicola McDonald's collection and the romances it investigates are crucial to our understanding of the aesthetics of medieval narrative and to the ideologies of gender and sexuality, race, religion, political formations, social class, ethics, morality and...

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...

This introduction to and analysis of women's writing in contemporary France includes both new writers of the 1990s and their more established counterparts. It situates these authors and their texts at the centre of the trends and issues concerning modern...

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...

Newly available in paperback, this book offers an authoritative overview of the broad and complex terrain of feminist theorising concerning the relationship between literature and theology as it has developed over the past several decades. It provides...

From the bawdy audience of a Victorian Penny Gaff to the excitable crowd of an early twentieth century football match, working-class male leisure proved to be a contentious issue for contemporary observers. For middle-class social reformers from across...

The first in a new annual series, Women, Theatre and Performance that will consist of themed volumes on diverse aspects of women's engagement with theatre and performance. Ranging across three hundred years the essays in this volume address key questions...

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 discusses Angela Carter's fiction in chronological order, and notes that although her themes are fairly consistent throughout her work, consistency of theme is not the same as repetition. The angles and emphases that develop are partly from...

A presentation of over one hundred documents, selected and coordinated from the urban civilization of Middle Ages Italy. By connecting documents in translation to recent scholarship and debates, this book serves to introduce topics, to illustrate themes...

An overview of the literature on poverty, and of the welfare policies of the state, as well as the alternative welfare strategies of the poor for the period 1700 to 1850. Drawing on well-known contributions to the welfare debate, Steven King offers his...

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...

This anthology of Italian texts is part of the "Manchester Foreign Language Texts" series. How has it happened that from being politely ignored or marginalized just half a century ago, women writers in Italy are now at the centre of literary activity? To...

Interpreting the monuments of Athens in light of literature, R. E. Wycherley brings before us the city the ancients knew. Philosophers, statesmen, travelers, dramatists, poets, private citizens--the words of all these suggest how the city looked at...

Fascinating profiles of modern writers and artists who tapped the political potential of fairy talesJack Zipes has spent decades as a "scholarly scavenger," discovering forgotten fairy tales in libraries, flea markets, used bookstores, and internet...

An essential history of Wahhbism from its founding to the Islamic StateIn the mid-eighteenth century, a controversial Islamic movement arose in the central Arabian region of Najd that forever changed the political landscape of the Arabian Peninsula and...

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...

A comprehensive and richly illustrated introduction to the world of viruses.As parasites that are often hundreds of times smaller than bacteria, viruses exist in and on everything, everywhere. Rapidly evolving, they are highly opportunistic and...

An in-depth look at why non-Jewish Poles are trying to bring Jewish culture back to life in Poland today.Since the early 2000s, Poland has experienced a remarkable Jewish revival, largely driven by non-Jewish Poles with a passionate new interest in all...

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...

How a nineteenth-century lawsuit over the estate of a wealthy Tunisian Jew shines new light on the history of belongingIn the winter of 1873, Nissim Shamama, a wealthy Jew from Tunisia, died suddenly in his palazzo in Livorno, Italy. His passing...

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...

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...

Tracing the rise of evangelicalism and the decline of mainline Protestantism in American religious and cultural lifeHow did American Christianity become synonymous with conservative white evangelicalism? This sweeping work by a leading historian of...

In a society marked by extreme inequality of income and opportunity, why should economists care about how people feel? The truth is that feelings of well-being are critical metrics that predict future life outcomes. In this timely and innovative account,...

Why populations brutalized in war elect their tormentorsOne of the great puzzles of electoral politics is how parties that commit mass atrocities in war often win the support of victimized populations to establish the postwar political order. Violent...

Translating Myself and Others is a collection of candid and disarmingly personal essays by Pulitzer Prizewinning author Jhumpa Lahiri, who reflects on her emerging identity as a translator as well as a writer in two languages.With subtlety and emotional...

Celebrated artist Keith Haring (19581990) has been embraced by popular culture for his signature bold graphic line drawings of figures and forms. Like other graffiti artists in the 1980s, Haring found an empty canvas in the advertising panels scattered...

An up-close account of how Nigerians' self-reliance in the absence of reliable government services enables official dysfunction to strengthen state power.When Nigerians say that every household is its own local government, what they mean is that the...

An incisive and sympathetic examination of the case for ending the practice of imprisonmentDespite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane,...

Most of us understand that a person's place in society can close doors to opportunity, but anything is possible when we dream about what might be, or so we think. Dreams of a Lifetime reveals that what and how we dream-and whether we believe our dreams...

A sweeping history of Latin American republicanism in the nineteenth centuryBy the 1820s, after three centuries under imperial rule, the former Spanish territories of Latin America had shaken off their colonial bonds and founded independent republics. In...

Sicily and the strategies of empire in the poetic imagination of classical and medieval EuropeIn the first century BC, Cicero praised Sicily as Rome's first overseas province and confirmed it as the mythic location for the abduction of Proserpina, known...

How institutions shape the American presidency. This incisive undergraduate textbook emphasises the institutional sources of presidential power and executive governance, enabling students to think more clearly and systematically about the American...

A necessary reckoning with America's troubled history of injustice to Indigenous people.After One Hundred Winters confronts the harsh truth that the United States was founded on the violent dispossession of Indigenous people and asks what reconciliation...

'A book as urgent as the moment that produced it.' - Jelani Cobb, Columbia Journalism SchoolLong before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes...

*One of Times Higher Education's Best Books of 2015**Winner of the 2016 Gregory Bateson Prize, The Society for Cultural Anthropology**One of Flavorwire's 10 Best Books by Academic Publishers in 2015**Winner of the 2016 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic...

One of the most groundbreaking artists to emerge in American art in the 1960s, Hannah Wilke consistently challenged the prevailing narratives of women's bodies and their representation throughout her career, until her untimely death in 1993. Wilke...

A spellbinding look at the philosophical and moral implications of animal dreaming.Are humans the only dreamers on Earth? What goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? When Animals Dream brings together behavioural and neuroscientific research on...

How tech giants are reshaping spirituality to serve their religion of peak productivity.Silicon Valley is known for its lavish perks, intense work culture, and spiritual gurus. Work Pray Code explores how tech companies are bringing religion into the...

How the politicization of the pandemic endangers our lives-and our democracyCOVID-19 has killed more people than any war or public health crisis in American history, but the scale and grim human toll of the pandemic were not inevitable. Pandemic Politics...

From the Nobel Prizewinning writer, a new collection of literary and personal essaysOld Truths and New Clichs collects nineteen essays-most of them previously unpublished in English-by Isaac Bashevis Singer on topics that were central to his artistic...

A groundbreaking history of how the Black Death unleashed revolutionary change across the medieval world and ushered in the modern age.In 1346, a catastrophic plague beset Europe and its neighbours. The Black Death was a human tragedy that abruptly...