The Charisma of Criticism

By H. Aram Veeser

This insightful critical biography shows us an Edward Said we did not know. H. Aram Veeser brings forth not the Said of tabloid culture, or Said the remote philosopher, but the actual man, embedded in the politics of the Middle East but soaked in the values of the West and struggling to advance the best European ideas. Veeser shows the organic ties connecting his life, politics, and criticism.

Drawing on what he learned over 35 years as Said's student and skeptical admirer, Veeser uses never-before-published interviews, debate transcripts, and photographs to discover a Said who had few inhibitions and loathed conventional routine. He stood for originality, loved unique ideas, wore marvelous clothes, and fought with molten fury. For twenty years he embraced and rejected, at the same time, not only the West, but also literary theory and the PLO. At last, his disgust with business-as-usual politics and criticism marooned him on the sidelines of both.

The candid tale of Said's rise from elite academic precincts to the world stage transforms not only our understanding of Said—the man and the myth—but also our perception of how intellectuals can make their way in the world.

ISBN: 9780415902649

Published March 09 2010 by Routledge.

Disturbing Differences

Edited by Marianne Liljeström, Susanna Paasonen

Affect has become something of a buzzword in cultural and feminist theory during the past decade. References to affect, emotions and intensities abound, their implications in terms of research practices have often remained less manifest. Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: Disturbing Differences explores the place and function of affect in feminist knowledge production in general and in textual methodology in particular. With an international group of contributors from studies of history, media, philosophy, culture, ethnology, art, literature and religion, the volume investigates affect as the dynamics of reading, as carnal encounters and as possibilities for the production of knowledge. Working with Affect in Feminist Readings asks what exactly are we doing when working with affect, and what kinds of ethical, epistemological and ontological issues this involves. Not limiting itself to descriptive accounts, the volume takes part in establishing new ways of understanding feminist methodology.

ISBN: 9780415481397

Published March 08 2010 by Routledge.

A Practical Guide

By Andy Bull

Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide offers clear advice on working across multiple media platforms and includes guides to creating and using video, audio, text and pictures.

It contains all the essentials of good practice and is supported by an immersive website at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk which demonstrates how to apply the skills covered in the book, gives examples of good and bad practice, and keeps the material up to date and in line with new hardware, software, methods of working and legislation. The book is fully cross-referenced and interlinked with the website, which offers the chance to test your learning and send in questions for industry experts to answer in their masterclasses.

Split into three levels - getting started, building proficiency and professional standards, this book builds on the knowledge attained in each part, and ensures that skills are introduced one step at a time until professional competency is achieved. This three stage structure means it can be used from initial to advanced level to learn the key skill areas of video, audio, text, and pictures and how to combine them to create multimedia packages. Skills covered include:

• Writing news reports, features, email bulletins and blogs
• Building a website using a content management system
• Measuring the success of your website or blog
• Shooting, cropping, editing and captioning pictures
• Recording, editing and publishing audio reports and podcasts
• Shooting, editing and streaming video and creating effective packages
• Creating breaking news tickers and using Twitter
• Using and encouraging user generated content
• Interviewing and conducting advanced online research
• Subediting, proofreading and headlining, including search engine optimisation
• Geo-tagging, geo-coding and geo-broadcasting

ISBN: 9780415478229

Published March 03 2010 by Routledge.

The Social World of Adolescence in the Information Age

By Gustavo Mesch, Ilan Talmud

The debate on the social impact of information and communication technologies is particularly important for the study of adolescent life, because through their close association with friends and peers, adolescents develop life expectations, school aspirations, world views, and behaviors.

This book presents an up-to-date review of the literature on youth sociability, relationship formation, and online communication, examining the way young people use the internet to construct or maintain their inter-personal relationships. Using a social network perspective, the book systematically explores the various effects of internet access and use on adolescents’ involvement in social, leisure and extracurricular activities, evaluating the arguments that suggest the internet is displacing other forms of social ties. The core of the book investigates the motivations for online relationship formation and the use of online communication for relationship maintenance. The final part of the book focuses on the consequences, both positive and negative, of the use of online communication, such as increased social capital and online bullying.

Wired Youth is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students of adolescent psychology, youth studies, media studies and the psychology and sociology of interpersonal relationships.

ISBN: 9780415459938

Published March 03 2010 by Routledge.

The Culture and Politics of 'Hero'

Edited by Gary D. Rawnsley, Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley

The film Hero, directed by Zhang Yimou and released in 2002, is widely regarded as the first globally successful indigenous Chinese blockbuster. A big expensive film with multiple stars, spectacular scenery, and astonishing action sequences, it touched on key questions of Chinese culture, nation and politics, and was both a domestic sensation and an international hit. This book explores the reasons for the film’s popularity with its audiences, discussing the factors which so resonated with those who watched the film. It examines questions such as Chinese national unity, the search for cultural identity and role models from China’s illustrious pre-communist past, and the portrayal of political and aesthetic values, and attitudes to gender, sex, love, and violence which are relatively new to China. The book demonstrates how the film, and China’s growing film industry more generally, have in fact very strong international connections, with Western as well as Chinese financing, stars recruited from the East Asian region more widely, and extensive interactions between Hollywood and Asian artists and technicians. Overall, the book provides fascinating insights into recent developments in Chinese society, popular culture and cultural production.

ISBN: 9780415453158

Published March 01 2010 by Routledge.

The Views of Producers around the World

By Dafna Lemish

Screening Gender on Children’s Television offers readers insights into the transformations taking place in the presentation of gender portrayals in television productions aimed at younger audiences. It goes far beyond a critical analysis of the existing portrayals of gender and culture by sharing media professionals’ action-oriented recommendations for change that would promote gender equity, social diversity and the wellbeing of children.

Incorporating the author’s interviews with 135 producers of children’s television from 65 countries, this book discusses the role television plays in the lives of young people and, more specifically, in developing gender identity. It examines how gender images presented to children on television are intertwined with important existential and cultural concerns that occupy the social agenda worldwide, including the promotion of education for girls, prevention of HIV/AIDS and domestic violence and caring for ‘neglected’ boys who lack healthy masculine role models, as well as confronting the pressures of the beauty myth.

Screening Gender on Children’s Television also explores how children’s television producers struggle to portray issues such as sex/sexuality and the preservation of local cultures in a profit-driven market which continually strives to reinforce gender segregation. The author documents pro-active attempts by producers to advance social change, illustrating how television can serve to provide positive, empowering images for children around the world.

Screening Gender on Children’s Television is an accessible text which will appeal to a wide audience of media practitioners as well as students and scholars. It will be useful on a range of courses, including popular culture, gender, television and media studies. Researchers will also be interested in the breadth of this cross-cultural study and its interviewing methodology.

ISBN: 9780415482059

Published February 26 2010 by Routledge.

Edited by Yeoh Seng Guan

This book presents a comprehensive, full-length analysis of the uses of media and communication technologies by different social actors in Malaysia. Unlike other studies of the media in Malaysia which concentrate on "political economy" or "freedom of the media" approaches, this book focuses on the ways in which different media forms have constituted cultural practices and power relations amongst particular audiences and publics. It also examines the ways in which technologies of varying scales and range have been appropriated for various subaltern purposes and counter-hegemonic agendas. Drawing upon recent case studies on the deployment of different media – including mainstream and independent films, television programming, black metal music, community rituals, political advertising, the internet, and artistic visual installations – it provides valuable insights into the complex, vibrant ways in which these different media forms have negotiated with the dominant cultural representations of Malaysian society. The book makes an important contribution to the emergent disciplines of media studies and cultural studies in Malaysia.

ISBN: 9780415552462

Published February 24 2010 by Routledge.

Sexuality, Islam and Queer Selves

By Sharyn Graham Davies

Indonesia provides particularly interesting examples of gender diversity. Same-sex relations, transvestism and cross-gender behaviour have long been noted amongst a wide range of Indonesian peoples. This book explores the nature of gender diversity in Indonesia, and with the world’s largest Muslim population, it examines Islam in this context. Based on extensive ethnographic research, it discusses in particular calalai – female-born individuals who identify as neither woman nor man; calabai – male-born individuals who also identify as neither man nor woman; and bissu – an order of shamans who embody female and male elements. The book examines the lives and roles of these variously gendered subjectivities in everyday life, including in low-status and high-status ritual such as wedding ceremonies, fashion parades, cultural festivals, Islamic recitations and shamanistic rituals. The book analyses the place of such subjectivities in relation to theories of gender, gender diversity and sexuality.

ISBN: 9780415375696

Published February 19 2010 by Routledge.

A Contemporary and Historical Perspective

Edited by Soumyen Bandyopadhyay, Jane Lomholt, Nicholas Temple, Renée Tobe

Offering an in-depth consideration of the impact which humanities have had on the processes of architecture and design, this book asks how we can restore the traditional dialogue between intellectual enquiry in the humanities and design creativity.

Written by leading academics in the fields of history, theory and philosophy of design, these essays draw profound meanings from cultural practices and beliefs. These are as diverse as the designs they inspire and include religious, mythic, poetic, political, and philosophical references.

This timely and important book is not a benign reflection on humanities' role in architectural design but a direct response to the increased marginalization of humanities in a technology driven world. The prioritization of technology leaves critical questions unanswered about the relationships between information and knowledge, transcription and translation, and how emerging technologies can usefully contribute to a deeper understanding of our design culture.

ISBN: 9780415551137

Published February 18 2010 by Routledge.

By Joe Moran

Interdisciplinarity covers one of the most important changes in attitude and methodology in the history of the university.

Taking the study of English as its main example, this fully updated second edition examines the ways in which we have organized knowledge into disciplines, and are now reorganizing it into new configurations as existing structures come to seem restrictive. Joe Moran traces the history and use of the term ‘interdisciplinarity’, tackling such vital topics as:

• the rise of the disciplines
• interdisciplinary English
• Literary and Cultural Studies
• 'theory' and the disciplines
• texts and histories
• literature and science, space and nature.

Including an updated further reading section and new concluding chapter, Interdisciplinarity is the ideal entry point into one of today's most heated critical debates.

ISBN: 9780415560061

Published February 12 2010 by Routledge.