Dr. Julie E. Ferris

Made for You and Me: Going West, Going Broke and Finding Home

andrea — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

I’m sharing this book with everyone I know. Caitlin Shetterly’s Made for You and Me: Going West, Going Broke and Finding Home is a strong memoir about a young couple going broke in the recession and it gives readers the satisfying feeling of walking around someone else’s shoes for 250 pages. We’re all connected by some basic humanity and a good memoir reinforces this connection as we don the cloak of another with ease.

Caitlin Shetterly’s Made for You and Me doesn’t simply resonate for us at the level of humanity. It is us. Within the first few pages I learned we are the same age and as she discussed her career moves, life plans and even the love of her pets, I felt we were kindred spirits. Though this may be true, I must attribute this to Shetterly’s writing style more so than the potential that we are long lost siblings. One key element she mentions after a few lengthy tales of her family pets is that writers often neglect the importance of pets in a tale, or even in a life. She refuses to subscribe to this and keeps her promise throughout the tale by consistently accounting for the pets’ needs and whereabouts at every step of their journey.

The pets aren’t the whole story, however. Caitlin Shetterly and her husband Dan Davis struggle through mid-thirties job searches, the want for something more, and the need for some basic success amid an economic recession that brings it all to a screeching halt. The pair is an example of the hidden layers beneath the CNN-drafted economic tag lines and phrases pundits regurgitate at us daily. They are the living, breathing case that represents us.

What’s so endearing about this book is that not only do you recognize the story and eagerly peel back its layers, but you also come to feel the very real emotional stresses that television news stories are leaving out. Particularly moving in Shetterly’s storytelling is her ability to frame her husband through the nuanced lens of gender expectations. These two critically educated people know that they’re held to ideological gender standards and in many places in their lives seem to balk at the hegemonic practices that secure them. Yet, Shetterly’s descriptions of her husband’s transformation strikes at the very core of how masculinity is a powerful framing force that deeply impacts the psyche of men and women alike.

You feel for both of them, but what’s moving the story is the way her gentle, honest tone captures the nuance we need to see in order to understand this is us, this is how we plan our lives, this is what we want for ourselves.

Shetterly frames the story around my childhood favorite, the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, Little House on the Prairie. Little House’s Manifest Destiny, coupled with the lyrics of “This Land is Your Land,” act as a critique woven throughout the story of their financial struggle, and her tale becomes a memoir with more take-away meaning than most. The mirror she holds up to us reminds us that the American Dream is complex, and that the drive within you has as much potential as a Horatio Alger success story as well as the potential to break you with exhaustion, crisis, trepidation and economics. It is this paradox that is particularly comforting and engaging about Shetterly’s story. Her recession tale sheds light on more than just a tough economy. We often argue that the ideology of capitalism and the American Dream have been disrupted, and we do not live in the world, economic or otherwise, that our parents or grandparents did. Shetterly’s work shows us that the resulting reality is complex and dynamic and many of us are struggling within it.

Basic ideas about family, support, goals, ambitions, and working hard are surely themes across the surface of Caitlin Shetterly’s Made for You and Me: Going West, Going Broke and Finding Home. But Shetterly also takes those themes and moves them from trite assumptions about how we are to live and packs them full of the struggle they cause us, inside and out, when we’re simply fighting for survival.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, March 8th 2011

Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen

alicia — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 12:00:00 +0000

By Anna Whitelock

Random House

Pay cable offers us a whole new realm of addictions and one of the most recent was Showtime's production of The Tudors. The program, now ended with the inevitable death of King Henry (no spoilers in history), portrayed the complicated realm of the Tudor Dynasty, which included two notable queens—sisters Mary and Elizabeth. This historic era, because of Queen Elizabeth, offers us a space to enter and critique how women were used for political gain, often not their own.

Anna Whitelock offers a similar proposition when she explores the life of Mary Tudor—a life often derided in British history. Daughter of Katherine of Aragon and King Henry, Mary later becomes known as Bloody Mary and as an overzealous threat to her own country.

Though historians have depicted the facts of the dynasty and the royal successions, Whitelock's argument is that historical texts have typically overlooked the fact that the value and vision of Mary and her contributions to history are greater than simply a slaughter of the non-Catholic community.

What makes Whitelock's book powerful is both its impeccable timing (the Tudors are the new pink) and its nuanced look at how women were political tools and machines simultaneously. The complicated graces involved in diplomacy, governed by the social mores of the time, lent to women having more space to enact persuasive maneuvers and machinations. This look at power in an era where even royal women seemed quite powerless (and were publicly thought of as weaker and merely vessels) is refreshing.

The truth of the matter, is, however, that Mary's story is also a sad one. Tossed about from prince to prince even as young as two and a half as a political token, a seal of trust and betrothal between men's nations, Mary's life is much more than the violent persecution of non-Catholics under her reign.  Whitelock frames the well-known history with a lens that offers just what she promises—a new look at Mary with perhaps the sympathy or value she's often been denied. Further, the story becomes timeless as Whitelock profiles just how close Mary and her indomitable mother, Catherine of Aragon, were. The strength of relationships between women is perhaps even more valuable in an era where there was little power to be held elsewhere.

The book is a generous read, even for those not familiar with Tudor history. As you read, you will recognize the political trumps and trollops that are not unfamiliar to us today. Described with the flourish they deserve, yet written clearly and in such a manner that all characters and dates can be digested, Whitelock's biography is an excellent lesson in the lives of powerful women, fortune and politics.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, December 9th 2010

Ether: Seven Stories and a Novella

admin — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Evgenia Citkowitz

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

While opening Evgenia Citkowitz’ collection of short stories, the spine creaked in an eerie way far too appropriate for the haunting words among the pages between. In Ether, a collection of seven stories and a novella, Citkowitz captures our attention with seemingly stark characters whose depth is revealed in the strange ways they relate to the world.

Tables, nannies, and even pet hamsters become the vehicles through which characters experience stark realizations about their lives and their positions within them. Citkowitz’ efforts to draw out nuances are visible, but often the nuances struggle to have impact. Entering into a short story with little ground available to paint such rich snapshots of a life often leaves the reader feeling rushed, or worse, at the end of the tale, empty.

The subjects her characters examine—an overwhelming loneliness and sense of questioning—are ones that we may easily identify with as readers, but the stories leave answers either unreachable, or sadly negative. Leaving a family, resolving to accept unwanted circumstances, or worse, having a realization that things are unhappy and unsatisfied, but having nowhere to turn is what the author makes her characters face. The circumstances are realistic—many of us, just like her characters, finally find the answer to our questions. But in this volume, often the answer is most unsatisfactory, and these outcomes leave the reader wounded.

The writing in Citkowitz’ debut book is layered and complex. Readers enter each story seemingly mid scene and are left with a feeling of catching up. Multiple characters and voices layer into the work immediately and though the action may not be fast paced, the reader must stutter step to get on board with the character and identify the lead immediately. This unique exercise does draw a reader in quickly and makes our feelings for them more elaborate; you read shoulder-to-shoulder with the character’s past and present and with their quests for identity or direction; this is a powerful strategy on the author’s part.

Ether isn’t light reading, but is an exercise in elaborate storytelling over a theme. At times, it works too hard and it can often be uninspiring, but the stories’ unique haunting qualities do set them apart.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, August 1st 2010

Living Ghosts

admin — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Absinthe Junk

Slotted Spoon Records

Attention all ye steampunk aficionados, Absinthe Junk accomplishes what their name implies—they’re a fitting band for your gears, gadgets, corsets, and metal-worked jewelry! Their press album, Living Ghosts presents an adequate sampling of their haunting metal sound.

A time-tested combination of steely guitars and an ethereal lead female voice place the band solidly within a genre recognized by metal, rockers, and goth fans alike. The difference, however, is that Blair, the lead singer, dabbles in more than a soft-to-screaming vocal. She has a well-supported range and doesn’t mimic an Evanescence sound. Listeners should appreciate this unique take on the genre and this original entry into the field.

Though the band claims many exotic textures layered within their sound, it is worth noting that the primary layer is metal guitar. Keyboard echoes are the next most recognizable supporting sound, but few tunes deviate as readily from a more traditional metal sound as the band purports. To their credit, the band has a few riffs and turns of musical phrase that remind a listener of Abney Park—a more recognized sound in the steampunk/goth genre. Building on the successful sound of this band isn’t mimicry as much as a gesture that places Absinthe Junk solidly in this genre.

The most commercial song on the album is “Dragonflies in Hurricanes” and it’s also the most off-genre. Displaying a haunting country sound, the Nashville-based band weaves a tale of the end of life, a love, a relationship—or all of it—with a more complete sound than the other songs. Blair’s lead vocals are eerily reminiscent of Natalie Merchant and the band’s support rounds out the song in a very recognizable way. Notably, the song feels very different than the rest of the album—which is quite good in its own right—but it is quite powerful.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, July 31st 2010

Going Down: The Official Guide to Cunnilingus

admin — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Directed by Carol Queen

Good Releasing

Dr. Carol Queen may be a noted sex educator and renowned for her ability to openly address the subject and raise awareness of healthy, pleasurable sexual relations for us all, but she’s a little over-the-top in this video. Displaying slightly better production quality than a basement porn or self-made flick, Queen explains in appropriate detail the elements of desire and orgasm through cunnilingus. Once that mission is accomplished, it’s arguable that this video’s audience is those viewers with some sexual inhibitions, or who are just delving into a comfortable space to talk about new sexual experiences with their partner. More experienced connoisseurs of sexual practices might have a giggle at again seeing the labia pillow, for example.

To the video’s credit, a variety of relationships are portrayed, though each scene is of someone performing oral sex on a woman. Different ethnicities and sexual relationships are presented, making the video lesbian-friendly and less heterocentric. Also to its credit, many scenes of cunnilingus last quite some time—a good example to demonstrate to a partner who is new to oral sex to help them recognize that this stimulation can take different amounts of time in women to result in orgasm or pleasure.

It is disappointing, however, that the variety in body types is simply a range of hair color, tattoos, and piercings rather than significant differences in sizes or even shaved or unshaved vaginas. Though the video purports to use “regular people” as actors, research reveals that a few of the characters performing as a couple learning about their sexuality are actually erotic film stars of note.

The video does weave instructional and frank conversation with long segments of images and action; for those interested in simply the erotic viewing of the lesson, there is no voice over on the scenes. This is perhaps a good video for sexual beginners, or for a couple new to one another to break the ice. Groundbreaking in its filmmaking or lessons this video is not, though it is valuable as a safe, healthy expression of sexuality.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, July 29th 2010

Live in Louisville

admin — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Carrie Rodriguez

Luz Music

“Well you have it, you love it, now it’s your turn to shove it…I don’t want to play house anymore,” sings Carrie Rodriguez on her newly released live compilation album, Live in Louisville. Her soulful voice, accompanied by rousing fiddles, makes her point with grace and force. The tunes on the album come from Rodriguez’ various other projects, but the most colorful are those she takes the credit for writing.

“I Don’t Want to Play House Anymore,” “Seven Angles on a Bicycle,” (from the album of the same name), and “Never Gonna Be Your Bride” are among the more upbeat sounds on the album, but that doesn’t mean the rest are purely maudlin. The slower tracks on the album are as much soulful as they are haunting.

The eclectic sounds of her band would put her solidly in an Americana, that amalgam of roots music that revisions country, folk, and blues, but the unique twists and turns of her voice bridge the renewed attention to the genre with more traditional bluegrass and even the more sentimental songwriting of Jewel, Indigo Girls, and Julie Roberts (of country fame).

There is an element of the unexpected in each song, whether it’s a musical bridge or a turn of phrase, and the dusky sound of Rodriguez’s voice seems to make her the perfect candidate for a closing credits track on HBO’s True Blood—a new Grey’s Anatomy of sorts for launching the hottest new music.

Rodriguez can please the country in you while reminding you through her pertinent lyrics that you’re alive, you share in disasters and joys like the rest of us. And just as you’re ready to dismiss one track as too country or too slow, the next places you squarely in New Orleans among an impromptu fiddle fest or back into a dark, dank bar with a lonely mic.

Live in Louisville's variety—in voice and vision—is well worth a listen.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, April 14th 2010

One Amazing Thing

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By Chitra Bnerjee Divakaruni

Voice Books

One Amazing Thing is one amazing set of well-woven characters and stories. One scene, one event, one moment has drawn a complex set of diverse actors together in this novel, and Divakaruni does an excellent job of giving each character the perspective and depth that we need to not only listen to their voice, but to stand outside of them and see them as their companions on this journey do.

Set in a city-less visa office, a group of applicants waits for their turn to handle the bureaucracy required to visit India. They range in age, ethnicity, desire, patience and need, but all are headed to India for powerful reasons. Some are seekers, some are returning home, but each is second guessing one another as they impatiently wait for their own process to begin.

An earthquake seals them in the office together, and Divakaruni wonderfully foreshadows the entire novel through her initial character, Uma, who is reading Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Through a brief discussion of why Uma brought the tome with her to the office (yet never opens the book to read it; it merely marks her status and becomes a symbol to the others in her company), we are alerted to the similar fates of the sojourners in the visa office. Mirroring Chaucer’s work, Divakaruni asks her characters to tell one heart-wrenching story from their lives in order to sustain their livelihood as they wait together for whatever is to come next.

Part of the power of this story is readers themselves do not know what is coming next. Each character, painted and revealed by the others, delivers a tale that is refreshing and unexpected. The author writes her characters’ “one amazing thing” in such a way as to reveal secrets to both the company of characters and the reader at the same time. Divakaruni also holds the secret of the story by continuing to foreshadow the impending disaster woven within a crumbling building and a group in need of rescue and her finale puts the reader to work.

The one shortfall of the novel is in some of the characters’ tales. Though each tells a story that is unique and reveals much about who they are, some stories feel light, shortchanging the reader. It is unclear why some characters are given the space to pontificate the meaning in their tale while others are not and it creates a slight imbalance in the novel. No one character seems to outshine another—each is a hero and a coward within their own lives and within the situation—yet, some aren’t given the pleasure of extending the metaphors and meanings of their “one amazing thing.”

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, January 24th 2010

Imperial

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:01:00 +0000

By William T. Vollmann

powerHouse Books

Imperial is a difficult book. To the average reader, artist, or art connoisseur, it is hard to grasp what Vollmann is doing both in terms of publishing and in the vision within his photographs. This 200-page collection of photos of the California-Mexico borderlands named the Imperial Valley offers quality, if not perfunctory, images of a hard won desert life. The book, however, is as complicated as the people and politics it represents. Part two of a two-book series, the publisher who initially took on Vollmann’s dialog in their version of Imperial left the photo collection to PowerHouse Books. The story, therefore, has been split.

The images in the second Imperial seem flat, but that could be purposeful. Though they clearly seem aged with their sepia tones and the bright lighting of a desert sun, the history of the borderlands is constantly evolving and wrapping itself within other social shifts in agriculture, employment, and politics. To create a set of timeless, seemingly flat images may make a better story.

These basic portraits give each reader the opportunity to fuse the faces with their own knowledge of work, poverty, and border wars. The seemingly simple and obvious photos, therefore, leave the door open for readers to do the work of making Vollmann’s argument. The trouble is, there is too much left to chance with the book split from its captions and descriptions. There are important points Vollmann tries to make with certain images, particularly those that juxtapose labor and the law with the border. Yet, readers only have a classroom-perfect 8 x 10 image with which to make his point.

Even the review copy—delivered only as a PDF document—robs readers of particular necessary context. By simply presenting photographs of the area, Vollmann, better known for his commentary and analysis, becomes only the photographer and the collection isn’t gripping enough nor telling enough to survive as only 200 pages of lovely photographic images. Vollmann counts on the reader for a bit too much and trusts too heavily that his lens is as powerful as his voice.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, January 11th 2010

Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save The World

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:22:00 +0000

By Matthew Bishop, Michael Green

Bloomsbury Press

If the adage about giving a woman a fish only feeding her for a day, but teaching her to fish feeds her for life is true, then Matthew Bishop and Michael Green would argue that the nature of today’s philanthropic giving has taken a similar turn by creating a standard and strategy of giving that doesn’t simply donate—it leverages, it grows, it profits, and it multiplies.

In Philanthrocapitalism, through a series of interviews with notable wealthy donors like Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffet, and even Angelina Jolie, the pair argues that philanthropy has taken on a new shape. Though giving as a trade has been around for sometime (Bishop and Green mark the merchants of Tudor England and Renaissance Europe as among the first philanthropists), they argue today’s new philanthropists were born of an era of highly lucrative capitalism and as a result “are trying to apply the secrets behind that money-making success to their giving,” and earning them the title “Philanthrocapitalists.”

The giving is notable, of course. The authors begin with Warren Buffet’s incredible public donation of more than $37 billion dollars of his fortune, comparing it to the prior year’s $31 billion dollar donation from Bill and Melinda Gates. At stake, the authors argue, for many of these donors, is their challenge to one another to continue to give and to continue to up the ante. The leveraging of funds—positioning dollars to begin or shore up projects and using corporate business sense to keep the money coming and the project growing—is the newest incarnation of giving. The authors argue, it’s new, it’s innovative, and it’s working.

Philanthrocapitalism is a combination tutorial on philanthropy’s history and good works and contemporary business and investing. The constant parallels to solid business stamina and strategy are necessary to explain how contemporary givers are able to do so and in order to highlight the unique ways they donate. It is also, however, a useful tutorial to anyone investing, $37 billion or simply $3,700. The writing style of the authors allows even the algebra apprehensive to understand leveraging practices and money growth. The coupling of business with the heartwarming and important stories of empathy and need also highlight the unending need for donation.

Key also to Philanthrocapitalism, though published in 2008 and its statistics and information necessarily assembled prior to that, is its timing. The current economic downturn is free marketing for Bishop and Green’s overarching argument that in a capitalist framework, the need for philanthropy is unending, necessarily political and is to be counted on as a source of revenue for any number of social programs.

This analysis is highly informative, if not disturbing, because it showcases a capitalist privileging of wealth that isn’t simply about consumerism. The philanthrocapitalists are choosing charities that not only make a difference, but that can be successful and it begs the question: who decides and how do the new definitions of need get crafted? Is it to be based on quarterly reports and evidence of growth? Or is it to be based on tangible human qualities like fed children, cleaner water and savvier school children? If giving is to be a business, who decides what the bottom line should be?

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, September 10th 2009

Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown

admin — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 09:27:00 +0000

By Jennifer Scanlon

Oxford University Press

I read Cosmopolitan. I have even been known to love it. I am the very working professional who Helen Gurley Brown addressed in her endless array of public statements about and to women. Now these ideas are wrapped in a new, critically written package. I am thankful, through Jennifer Scanlon’s recovery of Brown, that my infatuation of Cosmopolitan doesn’t make me unfeminist.

Where Gloria Steinem and others once tried to take over Brown’s offices at _Cosmopolitan, _declaring her and the magazine anti-feminist, Scanlon is reclaiming Brown and her space in history as an ally of feminism. This space is, according to Scanlon, also a space Helen Gurley Brown crafted in such a way as to make her timeless and ahead of her time.

Bad Girls Go Everywhere takes a unique approach to biography by creating a nexus of Brown’s public history, her published statements, and Scanlon’s own cultural and historical criticisms to weave together an understanding of feminism that is perfectly befitting our historic moment. We live in a time where iconic references to feminism are not as simple as a bra burning or an equal rights protest. Rather, they encompass images of feminist action as varied as a Guerrilla Girls rally to the Coyote Ugly bar in Nashville, and Scanlon’s recovery of Brown as more feminist friend than enemy, and unique in her personal activism, seems more than appropriate.

Bad Girls Go Everywhere approaches Brown and her history as one that “has largely been left out of established histories of postwar feminism’s emergence and ascendance.” Scanlon argues that Brown’s own political voice is one that was “more likely practiced by single women than by housewives, and by working-class secretaries rather than middle-class college students.” Brown’s Sex and The Single Girl is framed as political simply with the gesture of aligning it with the publication of Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique just one year later

It is with this gesture that Brown is reclaimed as a feminist trailblazer. Scanlon recognizes Brown’s life as worthy of examination for many reasons, but perhaps the most important is what an analysis of Brown’s life and work might add to fill in the gaps of understanding between the second and third waves of feminism. Bad Girls Go Everywhere is particularly useful and timely both as an incredibly captivating understanding of an extremely influential life, but also because of the conflagration of feminist ideas that collide in mass media under the moniker of third wave (and even fourth wave) feminism. Scanlon’s work is outstanding in that it doesn’t simply position Brown’s life as a history that helps to tell the story, but critically aligns Brown with notable feminist moments and fixtures in order to shine a light on a woman who once was so troubling to feminism.

This fresh look at Brown honors her work in a theoretical way that brings not only an excellent example of how to “do” contemporary feminist writing to the table, it also brings forth a new version of an old feminist.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, September 6th 2009

Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming

admin — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:36:00 +0000

By Yasmin B. Kafai, Carrie Heeter, Jill Denner, Jennifer Y. Sun

MIT Press

As I opened this collection, I had just finished shaking my head at a picture a man I know well posted of himself grinning vividly, arms around a young woman clad in a chain mail bikini top at a gaming conference. This “booth babe” photo rests comfortably within the confines of his MySpace page. I cracked the spine of this volume considering how I felt about the girl, the picture, the medium, and my own experiences as feminist scholar who is also an avid gamer. This book, I realized, is a timely addition to a conversation that ended too abruptly, and continuing from the first watershed edition of this conversation is very relevant at this particular moment in gaming culture.

I often felt guilty that I took on a “typical” female character in World of Warcraft. I do not play a warrior; I play a hybrid character that engages combat from afar and heals others. Although I love my character, I constantly feel un-feminist when gaming from such a culturally feminine position. These are the sorts of questions and conversations we are ready to have rather than simply an analysis of the demographics in gaming, and Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat moves us in this direction.

The editors rightly explain that the impetus for the collection is to go beyond the gaming analysis that evolved in the early ‘90s and the simple attention to both how many women were playing and how many women characters were bikini clad within the games. The moment of clucking a tongue at the buxom Lara Croft has passed us and gaming; gaming culture and its impact has reached a far more complicated moment in need of analysis, and this volume attempts that discussion.

In their introduction, the editors argue that a more complete discussion of the multi-billion dollar industry as a whole is an important element to a full analysis of the phenomena and impact of this cultural entity. This includes not only how many women play games, but what sorts of games and how the industry has responded to them—not just as players, but as designers or those who provide input into the industry.

One important element the book covers is that with the rise of more complex gaming is the rise of gaming communities, opening a clear avenue for a more enlightened and nuanced discussion of gender in gaming. (A conversation my online gaming community has frequently addressed in our private forums.)

This book would make an excellent text in a multi-media classroom as it deftly handles the past research, includes contemporary scholars who are the top of the field, and carefully paints a comprehensive picture of not simply game design, game players, and plot lines, but also of the industry as a economic whole, one that employs a wide range of labor. The book takes on hearty conversations of where gender plays into that labor and as a result, reinforces the gaming industry as a cultural staple and microcosm of larger social theoretical space.

The book also does well to not rely solely on quantitative research for its evidence or argument, and a collection of interviews with references to authors from the past research the book seeks to add to helps to paint a more qualitative conversation of the industry that is often solely measured in profits, percentages, purchases, or players.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, April 16th 2009

Bodies

admin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:29:00 +0000

By Susie Orbach

Picador

In Bodies, Susie Orbach, best known for her continuous thread of psychoanalytic discussion of the body particularly as rooted in eating disorders and feminism, offers up a broader discussion of bodies in our time. For Orbach, that time is the age of late capitalism where bodies no longer perform work or produce, but are the element of production themselves: “The body is turning from being the means of production to the production itself.”

Addressing not only the psychologists’ terrain of investigating eating disorders and bodily control, but also the wave of body modification standards in contemporary culture that range from surgeries and tattoos to the mediated (re)production of such bodies (she disturbingly references a children’s portrait studio that remakes and retouches even small babies’ photographs, taking the “airbrushed model” to a whole new level), Orbach delves into territory Elizabeth Grosz, Kathleen LeBesco, and even Laura Kipnis have tread.

Orbach offers, however, a turn to question Freud and moves to incorporate this newly produced (rather than producing) body as the entre to a discussion of development theory. Although her insights are thoughtful and do carefully characterize the turn to reconsider the body as not merely a canvas, but also as an active player in the construction of culture, they are not entirely new.

Orbach has long been an originating voice in the theoretical discussion of the body, and she adeptly uses her expertise to stretch the conversation to more contemporary questions of the body. She dips carefully into surgery, her own field of eating disorders, and even the contemporary attention to avatars and bodies that aren’t bodies at all, yet function in cyberspace (touching boundaries with Donna Haraway). Orbach’s conclusions also revive a conversation on the body and sex that Kipnis tried to enliven just a few years ago.

Bodies is useful and careful in its framing of these issues on the body. The book serves as a summary of much of the work that already exists on the subject and neatly brings many threads together under a broader conversation of the power the body has—moving away from a far more simplistic “mind-body” analysis. It is a useful survey, but not necessarily a set of innovative theorizing.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, April 15th 2009

Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (Deluxe Edition)

admin — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:04:00 +0000

By Lucinda Williams

Island Records

Lucinda Williams may be notoriously slow in releasing albums, but such laborious love for her craft is evident in her choice to reissue Car Wheels on a Gravel Road as part of a new deluxe edition set. The set, which combines a remastered version of the original album and live cuts from her performance at Penn’s Landing during the WXPN Singer Songwriter Festival, is a collector’s dream.

Outtakes and new versions of favorite tunes done live make the investment worthwhile. As always, however, Williams own gravelly, soulful tone combined with realistic lyrics (“conversation with you was like a drug…/cause there’s something about what happens when we talk”) easily remind us of our faults, our successes and why we love her in the first place. She could be us, singing about the troubles in life without bemoaning them or harping too long on the choices that brought them. Her musical gestures resonate similarly—perfect chords, never a note too long or inappropriately placed. Beautiful tone combined with the hearty ability of this songstress lulls you into retrospective bliss. This double CD set can bring you up, remind you why you’re down and can easily please a crowd of diverse fans.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, June 28th 2007

by ebb and by flow

admin — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:32:00 +0000

By Alice Di Micele

Summer has arrived, and if you can’t feel the warm sun on your face, the grit and grime of sand in your feet and the splash of water as you float down the river, then you need to put the new album by Alice Di Micele into your CD player. Her first studio album in nine years, by ebb and by flow, conjures the passionate tones of Ani DiFranco and the rhythmic guitar skill of the Indigo Girls.

The album, conceived after years of river rafting and life on the water in Oregon, reflects scenes of water, sun and sky from the romping “Made Out of Water” to the haunting “Take Me Out on the Water.” Di Micele’s voice ranges from crystalline purity to gritty, dangerous tones, and her lyrics are often filled with knowing metaphor. Though some tunes can drag on and the theme can become redundant, overall the album provides outstanding background music to a tumultuous, event-filled summer season.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, May 23rd 2007

Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State

admin — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:28:00 +0000

Edited by Irina Reyn

Touchstone Books

Infused with identity politics and a love and loyalty that become proprietary to New Jersey natives, Irina Reyn’s edited collection Living on the Edge of the World offers readers a fractured and contemplative tour of the state. The concept for the book is superb—that locals know their relationship with this often unpopular state better than anyone—and Reyn follows through on her promise of a variety of perspectives that all cling to similar iconic references. There is a universal melancholy throughout these tales, but don’t feel sorry for these who hail from New Jersey; they wear their troubled and complicated relationships with their roots very well.

The unfailing references to the “Garden State” jokes we may have all heard (particularly from Gracie Hart, the haphazard FBI agent in Miss Congeniality, who notes that “Oil and Petrochemical Refinery State” won’t fit on a license plate) come together in this volume to remind outsiders that New Jersey is complex, and, lest we forget, Reyn’s writers deliver a multitude of memories, identities and histories as evidence.

From tales of the Jersey shore and youthful bliss, to family histories playing out in one large farm, to lawsuits and millions of dollars, this collection of essays offers readers not only a better understanding of the offerings of one of our least regarded states, but also deeper insights relevant to us all.

Grodstein’s “Notes on Camden” shines as an adventure through an aquarium and a disregarded crime capital all at once and Lissner’s retelling of a teen’s summer of poverty and ingratiating work at Great Adventure amusement park reminds us all of being an underdog from an underdog place. Each author places him or herself in relationship with the state while simultaneously placing themselves in a unique symbiosis with the strange combination of tourism, farming, suburbia and industrial production New Jersey offers. Some essays reflect on a life many years removed and admit it continues to haunt and intrigue them, while many of the authors hail from local colleges and universities and their entrance into such hallowed halls is cause for contemplating their dual identities within the single state.

This collection serves as a lesson in identity construction, and - whether you hail from Jersey or not - the tales of life, love and loyalty can touch us all.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, April 25th 2007