Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged cultural studies

Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire

Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire explores the intersections of queer studies and environmental studies and aims to trouble dominant discourses of nature and sexuality. The authors in this collection argue that we should adopt a queer ecological perspective, a “transgressive and historically relevant critique of dominant pairings of nature and environment with heteronormativity and homophobia.” Drawing on science studies, environmental history, queer geography, ecocriticism, critical race theory, cultural studies, landscape ecology, and LGBTQ theory, this interdisciplinary anthology presents the various possibilities for “queering ecology and greening queer politics.”

The Cinematic Life of the Gene

The Cinematic Life of the Gene is a challenging and complex collection of essays that uses cinematic representations of genetics and cloning to consider the cultural impact of genetic breakthroughs. Jackie Stacey draws on some of the most well known theoretical works regarding cinema, art, and the body to consider the fascinating link between cinema and genomics.

Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson's Life and Language

The popular image of Emily Dickinson is that of an almost ghostly woman in white, secluding herself in an upstairs bedroom alone, but Maid as Muse's innovative approach shows her frequently in the kitchen. There, she is found stirring puddings, baking her famous gingerbread, and living on familiar terms with the household help.

Homophobias: Lust and Loathing Across Time and Space

Homosexuality seems to always be a topic of interest for researchers, at least in this day and age. Perhaps it is most interesting because sexuality is one of the most private aspects of a person’s life, and nothing seems to generate interest in quite the way that something so mysterious and private can. Homophobia, like homosexuality, varies in degrees of presence, and is often intertwined with the complexities of the cultural, economic, and political workings of the environment it finds itself situated.

Sapphistries: A Global History of Love Between Women

Sapphistries is an epic journey through real and fictional love between women. It is so epic that the author, Leila J. Rupp, had to coin a new term to describe this type of book. It is not just a history; it is an interweaving of prehistoric musings, fictional accounts that draw on suppositions of what it must have been like in times when no evidence was left of when and where these kinds of love was forbidden, right up to the modern day.

Conversate Is Not A Word: Getting Away From Ghetto

I admit it: I bristle when my students talk about conversating. At the same time, I try to catch myself, remembering that decades back no one spoke of googling or used the word text as a verb either. Language, like social mores, constantly changes. African American author, provocateur, blogger, and lawyer Jam Donaldson understands this, and her message is simple: Everyone, but especially people of color, needs to know the difference between slang and proper grammar, and everyone needs to take responsibility for the things they can control.

The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy

What do Phil Donohue, a New Zealand ethnologist, three anthropologist husbands, and a small handful of Samoan girls all have in common? The answer is: Margaret Mead and their roles in a debate that has rocked cultural anthropology since 1983. The Trashing of Margaret Mead is a fine, funny, discriminating, and at times quite disturbing book.

The Gospel of Hip Hop: The First Instrument

Just as jazz is a uniquely American phenomenon whose sentiment and message resonate with people the world round, so is hip-hop. Hip-hop began as a means by which to illustrate the experiences of people living their daily lives in the ‘hoods of New York. Although the originators of hip-hop, such as the Sugar Hill Gang were instrumental in shedding light on teen pregnancy, drug addiction, and violence it wasn’t until the era of KRS-One that hip-hop evolved to the status of Cultural Revolution. KRS-One, best known as Teacha, brought hip-hop to the mainstream.

Sexualities Special issue: "Researching and Teaching the Sexually Explicit: Ethics, Methodology and Pedagogy"

I am just about to begin teaching a new course in Human Sexuality, so I was excited to review this special issue of Sexualities, the UK-published journal that features new and different voices from sexology, gender studies, and cultural studies. Each of the eight original essays provides teachers, activists and researchers with much-needed breathing space.

Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African Middle Class

In Beyond the Black Lady, Lisa B. Thompson analyzes representations of black middle class female sexuality in literature, theater, film, and popular culture. Her discussions highlight the need to go beyond the “overly determined racial and sexual script” to which middle class black women are expected to conform, which includes a sense of propriety and restraint as a counter to stereotypes of promiscuity that proliferate in the media.

Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics

Anyone can tell you that family is important to Mexican and Chicano culture, and we can all venture guesses as to why. However, where exactly this family unit seems to be headed and how it has evolved in U.S. popular culture over the past 25-30 years is what Richard Rodríguez chooses to scrutinize in his study—and he does so with unexpected wit. Rodríguez's Next of Kin is structured into four chapters framed by an introduction and an afterword.

Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility

It is hard to deny the creeping, theatrical aspect that seems to permeate every mode of information and method of exposure we are subjected to daily. While once relegated to advertisements, television, and movies, the careful craft of showcasing and presenting certain bodies is now seen in governments, military, and the health industry. Why some bodies are overexposed while others are seemingly non-existent is useful in determining the underpinnings of American society and agenda.

Side Dishes: Latina American Women, Sex, and Cultural Production

Side Dishes, at times more tasty, original, and irresistible than “the main dishes,” is a delightful, playful, and innovative work about Latina, Brazilian, and Spanish American women writers, filmmakers, cartoonists, and science fiction producers.

Talking with Television: Women, Talk Shows, and Modern Self-Reflexivity

Some researchers, theorists, and laypeople deride women’s tendency to get together and talk. Whether you call it gossip, chatter, whine, confession, or conversation, among gendered stereotypes, it remains assumed that putting several women within close proximity will likely yield interpersonal communication.

Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal

Rochona Majumdar's firmest statement in Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal is that the Western conception of arranged marriage is dated. The portrayal of arranged marriage as immoral suited the Western sense of superiority over the “Hindoos,” despite the fact that Western courtship was riddled with its own problems. Arranged marriage is obviously the creation of a certain cultural condition and sought to fulfill certain perceived needs.

Forgiveness from a Feminist Perspective

Forgiveness is everywhere. Oprah is extolling its necessity when not engaged directly in seeking it for herself. Female celebrities seem to be forever forgiving (or not) someone, though among the most talked about are unresolved differences between mothers and daughters (a la Jennifer Aniston and Tori Spelling).

Wannabes, Goths, and Christians: The Boundaries of Sex, Style, and Status

Labels—freak, geek, wigger, poser, prep, to name just a few—are plentiful and ever-expanding, flourishing in the fertile social grounds of high school and college. Often, labels are used against individuals, assigned and branded as tools of marginalization and preservation of social hierarchies. Amy C.

I Am Not Afraid of Winter

I Am Not Afraid of Winter is blog writing at its best: excellently written, thoughtful and thought provoking. I was captivated by this window into Carrot Quinn’s world enough to log in every day, to see what Quinn was up to or thinking about. Quinn writes about everything from traveling hobo-style by freight train and critical cultural analysis, to having scabies and the compulsion to write, to memories of formative experience and intimate moments of sickness or sex.

Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley

Desi Land, Shalini Shankar’s ethnographic exploration of Desi teenagers in Silicon Valley during the late 1990s, is a fascinating look at South Asian American youth culture at a pivotal moment in modern American history.  The setting of the book makes it particularly compelling: California during the dot-com boom, when a confluence of "model minorities" are populating an increasingly profitable and technologically advanced work force.

New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory

New Cultural Studies is an exciting call to action from writers concerned about the future of the field of cultural studies. Since cultural studies is ever living and should be evolving along with other subjects, we must never stop developing new theories and using cultural studies as a framework about contemporary issues in politics, economics, the media, etc. This text looks beyond the distinguished Birmingham School’s theoretical work toward today’s greatest minds, such as Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze.
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