Download or read book Professing Selves written by Afsaneh Najmabadi and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-14 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the mid-1980s, the Islamic Republic of Iran has permitted, and partially subsidized, sex reassignment surgery. In Professing Selves, Afsaneh Najmabadi explores the meaning of transsexuality in contemporary Iran. Combining historical and ethnographic research, she describes how, in the postrevolutionary era, the domains of law, psychology and psychiatry, Islamic jurisprudence, and biomedicine became invested in distinguishing between the acceptable "true" transsexual and other categories of identification, notably the "true" homosexual, an unacceptable category of existence in Iran. Najmabadi argues that this collaboration among medical authorities, specialized clerics, and state officials—which made transsexuality a legally tolerated, if not exactly celebrated, category of being—grew out of Iran's particular experience of Islamicized modernity. Paradoxically, state regulation has produced new spaces for non-normative living in Iran, since determining who is genuinely "trans" depends largely on the stories that people choose to tell, on the selves that they profess.
Download or read book Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards written by Afsaneh Najmabadi and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-04-25 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is groundbreaking, at once highly original, courageous, and moving. It is sure to have a tremendous impact in Iranian studies, modern Middle East history, and the history of gender and sexuality."—Beth Baron, author of Egypt as a Woman "This is an extraordinary book. It rereads the story of Iranian modernity through the lens of gender and sexuality in ways that no other scholars have done."—Joan W. Scott, author of Gender and the Politics of History
Download or read book Missing Out written by Adam Phillips and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-01-22 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the leading psychoanalyst Adam Phillips comes Missing Out, a transformative book about the lives we wish we had and what they can teach us about who we are All of us lead two parallel lives: the one we are actively living, and the one we feel we should have had or might yet have. As hard as we try to exist in the moment, the unlived life is an inescapable presence, a shadow at our heels. And this itself can become the story of our lives: an elegy to unmet needs and sacrificed desires. We become haunted by the myth of our own potential, of what we have in ourselves to be or to do. And this can make of our lives a perpetual falling-short. But what happens if we remove the idea of failure from the equation? With his flair for graceful paradox, the acclaimed psychoanalyst Adam Phillips suggests that if we accept frustration as a way of outlining what we really want, satisfaction suddenly becomes possible. To crave a life without frustration is to crave a life without the potential to identify and accomplish our desires. In this elegant, compassionate, and absorbing book, Phillips draws deeply on his own clinical experience as well as on the works of Shakespeare and Freud, of D. W. Winnicott and William James, to suggest that frustration, not getting it, and and getting away with it are all chapters in our unlived lives—and may be essential to the one fully lived.
Download or read book The Ironic Spectator written by Lilie Chouliaraki and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-08-26 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER of the 2015 ICA Outstanding Book Award This path-breaking book explores how solidarity towards vulnerable others is performed in our media environment. It argues that stories where famine is described through our own experience of dieting or or where solidarity with Africa translates into wearing a cool armband tell us about much more than the cause that they attempt to communicate. They tell us something about the ways in which we imagine the world outside ourselves. By showing historical change in Amnesty International and Oxfam appeals, in the Live Aid and Live 8 concerts, in the advocacy of Audrey Hepburn and Angelina Jolie as well as in earthquake news on the BBC, this far-reaching book shows how solidarity has today come to be not about conviction but choice, not vision but lifestyle, not others but ourselves – turning us into the ironic spectators of other people’s suffering.
Download or read book After Eunuchs written by Howard Chiang and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For much of Chinese history, the eunuch stood out as an exceptional figure at the margins of gender categories. Amid the disintegration of the Qing Empire, men and women in China began to understand their differences in the language of modern science. In After Eunuchs, Howard Chiang traces the genealogy of sexual knowledge from the demise of eunuchism to the emergence of transsexuality, showing the centrality of new epistemic structures to the formation of Chinese modernity. From anticastration discourses in the late Qing era to sex-reassignment surgeries in Taiwan in the 1950s and queer movements in the 1980s and 1990s, After Eunuchs explores the ways the introduction of Western biomedical sciences transformed normative meanings of gender, sexuality, and the body in China. Chiang investigates how competing definitions of sex circulated in science, medicine, vernacular culture, and the periodical press, bringing to light a rich and vibrant discourse of sex change in the first half of the twentieth century. He focuses on the stories of gender and sexual minorities as well as a large supporting cast of doctors, scientists, philosophers, educators, reformers, journalists, and tabloid writers, as they debated the questions of political sovereignty, national belonging, cultural authenticity, scientific modernity, human difference, and the power and authority of truths about sex. Theoretically sophisticated and far-reaching, After Eunuchs is an innovative contribution to the history and philosophy of science and queer and Sinophone studies.
Download or read book The Selves written by Sonja Ahlers and published by Drawn and Quarterly. This book was released on 2010-06-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A HAUNTING, BEAUTIFUL STUDY OF ART, POP, FEMININITY, AND FEMINISM Before blogs, there were zines. Before zines, there were scrapbooks. Sometimes overlooked in the quest to produce high culture, these most direct and intimate means of communication and recording memory are the tools favored by Sonja Ahlers in the making of her art. A self-taught artist and writer, Ahlers wears her pop-culture obsessions on her sleeve, professing her love for such visual icons as Princess Di, Holly Hobbie, and Stevie Nicks. Focusing on found objects such as stickers, greeting cards, andmagazine photos collected in collage framework, complete with song lyrics hand-lettered in cursive script and heartbreaking, melancholic watercolors, Ahlers explores and exposes the social construction of roles, feminine and otherwise. Beginning with incipient childhood self-awareness and traversing high school status jockeying to adult social climbing, the cultural imagery that supports and informs personal identity is given uneasy new meanings and importance in Ahlers's visual remixes.
Download or read book Shakespeare and Faulkner written by Karl F. Zender and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2021-06-02 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare and Faulkner explores the moral and ethical dilemmas that characters face inside themselves and in their interactions with others in the works of these two famed authors. Karl F. Zender’s characterological study offers insightful, critically rigorous, and at times quite personal analyses of the complicated figures who inhabit several major Shakespeare plays and Faulkner novels. The two parts of this book—the first of which focuses on the English playwright, the second on the Mississippi novelist—share a common methodology in that they originate in Zender’s history as a teacher of and writer on the two authors, who until now he generally approached separately. He emphasizes the evolving insights gleaned from reading these authors over several decades, situating their texts in relation to shifting trends in criticism and highlighting the contemporary relevance of their works. The final chapter, an extended discussion of Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust, attempts something unusual in Zender’s critical practice: It relies less on the close textual analysis that characterizes his previous work and instead explores the intersections between events depicted in the novel and his own life, both as a child and as an adult. Shakespeare and Faulkner speaks to the power of literature as a form of pleasure and of solace. With this work of engaged and thoughtful scholarly criticism, Zender reveals the centrality of storytelling to human beings’ efforts to make sense both of their journey through life and of the circumstances in which they live.
Download or read book Islamicate Sexualities written by Kathryn Babayan and published by Harvard CMES. This book was released on 2008 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology explores different genealogies of sexuality and questions some of the theoretical emphases and epistemic assumptions affecting current histories of sexuality.
Download or read book Jesus in Our Wombs written by Rebecca J. Lester and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Jesus in Our Wombs, Rebecca J. Lester takes us behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in central Mexico to explore the lives, training, and experiences of a group of postulants--young women in the first stage of religious training as nuns. Lester, who conducted eighteen months of fieldwork in the convent, provides a rich ethnography of these young women's journeys as they wrestle with doubts, fears, ambitions, and setbacks in their struggle to follow what they believe to be the will of God. Gracefully written, finely textured, and theoretically rigorous, this book considers how these aspiring nuns learn to experience God by cultivating an altered experience of their own female bodies, a transformation they view as a political stance against modernity. Lester explains that the Postulants work toward what they see as an "authentic" femininity--one that has been eclipsed by the values of modern society. The outcome of this process has political as well as personal consequences. The Sisters learn to understand their very intimate experiences of "the Call"--and their choices in answering it--as politically relevant declarations of self. Readers become intimately acquainted with the personalities, family backgrounds, friendships, and aspirations of the Postulants as Lester relates the practices and experiences of their daily lives. Combining compassionate, engaged ethnography with an incisive and provocative theoretical analysis of embodied selves, Jesus in Our Wombs delivers a profound analysis of what Lester calls the convent's "technology of embodiment" on multiple levels--from the phenomenological to the political.
Download or read book Contact written by Carl Sagan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-12-20 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize-winning author and astronomer Carl Sagan imagines the greatest adventure of all—the discovery of an advanced civilization in the depths of space. In December of 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who—or what—is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future—and our own.
Download or read book A Little Devil in America written by Hanif Abdurraqib and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A sweeping, genre-bending “masterpiece” (Minneapolis Star Tribune) exploring Black art, music, and culture in all their glory and complexity—from Soul Train, Aretha Franklin, and James Brown to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Whitney Houston, and Beyoncé ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Dallas Morning News, Publishers Weekly “Gorgeous essays that reveal the resilience, heartbreak, and joy within Black performance.”—Brit Bennett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half “I was a devil in other countries, and I was a little devil in America, too.” Inspired by these few words, spoken by Josephine Baker at the 1963 March on Washington, MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow and bestselling author Hanif Abdurraqib has written a profound and lasting reflection on how Black performance is inextricably woven into the fabric of American culture. Each moment in every performance he examines—whether it’s the twenty-seven seconds in “Gimme Shelter” in which Merry Clayton wails the words “rape, murder,” a schoolyard fistfight, a dance marathon, or the instant in a game of spades right after the cards are dealt—has layers of resonance in Black and white cultures, the politics of American empire, and Abdurraqib’s own personal history of love, grief, and performance. Touching on Michael Jackson, Patti LaBelle, Billy Dee Williams, the Wu-Tan Clan, Dave Chappelle, and more, Abdurraqib writes prose brimming with jubilation and pain. With care and generosity, he explains the poignancy of performances big and small, each one feeling intensely familiar and vital, both timeless and desperately urgent. Filled with sharp insight, humor, and heart, A Little Devil in America exalts the Black performance that unfolds in specific moments in time and space—from midcentury Paris to the moon, and back down again to a cramped living room in Columbus, Ohio. WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL AND THE GORDON BURN PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD AND THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, Time, The Boston Globe, NPR, Rolling Stone, Esquire, BuzzFeed, Thrillist, She Reads, BookRiot, BookPage, Electric Lit, The Rumpus, LitHub, Library Journal, Booklist
Download or read book The First Page of the Bible written by Frédéric Bettex and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frédéric Bettex offers a fresh perspective on the first page of the Bible in this insightful and illuminating book. By examining the original Hebrew text and its various translations, Bettex uncovers the layers of meaning underlying this foundational text. He also explores the cultural and religious context in which it was written, shedding new light on its significance for modern readers. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book American Lonesome written by Gavin Cologne-Brookes and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2018-11-14 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Lonesome: The Work of Bruce Springsteen begins with a visit to the Jersey Shore and ends with a meditation on the international legacy of Springsteen’s writing, music, and performances. Gavin Cologne-Brookes’s innovative study of this popular musician and his position in American culture blends scholarship with personal reflection, providing both an academic examination of Springsteen’s work and a moving account of how it offers a way out of emotional solitude and the potential lonesomeness of modern life. Cologne-Brookes proposes that the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism, which assesses the value of ideas and arguments based on their practical applications, provides a lens for understanding the diversity of perspectives and emotions encountered in Springsteen’s songs and performances. Drawing on pragmatist philosophy from William James to Richard Rorty, Cologne-Brookes examines Springsteen’s formative environment and outsider psychology, arguing that the artist’s confessed tendency toward a self-reliant isolation creates a tension in his work between lonesomeness and community. He considers Springsteen’s portrayals of solitude in relation to classic and contemporary American writers, from Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Emily Dickinson to Richard Wright, Flannery O’Connor, and Joyce Carol Oates. As part of this critique, he discusses the difference between escapist and pragmatic romanticism, the notion of multiple selves as played out both in Springsteen’s work and in our perception of him, and the impact of performances both recorded and live. By drawing on his own experiences seeing Springsteen perform—including on tours showcasing the album The River in 1981 and 2016—Cologne-Brookes creates a book about the intimate relationship between art and everyday life. Blending research, cultural knowledge, and creative thinking, American Lonesome dissolves any imagined barriers between the study of a songwriter, literary criticism, and personal testimony.
Download or read book The Book of R written by Tilman M. Davies and published by No Starch Press. This book was released on 2016-07-16 with total page 833 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Book of R is a comprehensive, beginner-friendly guide to R, the world’s most popular programming language for statistical analysis. Even if you have no programming experience and little more than a grounding in the basics of mathematics, you’ll find everything you need to begin using R effectively for statistical analysis. You’ll start with the basics, like how to handle data and write simple programs, before moving on to more advanced topics, like producing statistical summaries of your data and performing statistical tests and modeling. You’ll even learn how to create impressive data visualizations with R’s basic graphics tools and contributed packages, like ggplot2 and ggvis, as well as interactive 3D visualizations using the rgl package. Dozens of hands-on exercises (with downloadable solutions) take you from theory to practice, as you learn: –The fundamentals of programming in R, including how to write data frames, create functions, and use variables, statements, and loops –Statistical concepts like exploratory data analysis, probabilities, hypothesis tests, and regression modeling, and how to execute them in R –How to access R’s thousands of functions, libraries, and data sets –How to draw valid and useful conclusions from your data –How to create publication-quality graphics of your results Combining detailed explanations with real-world examples and exercises, this book will provide you with a solid understanding of both statistics and the depth of R’s functionality. Make The Book of R your doorway into the growing world of data analysis.
Download or read book Transgressive Devotion written by Natalie Wigg-Stevenson and published by SCM Press. This book was released on 2021-02-26 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Academic theology is in need of a new genre. In "Transgressive Devotion" Natalie Wigg-Stevenson articulates a theological vision of that genre as performance art. She argues that theology done as performance art stops trying to describe who God is, and starts trying to make God appear. Recognising that the act of studying theology or practicing ministry is always a performance, where the boundaries between what we see, feel, experience and learn are not just blurred but potentially invisible, Wigg-Stevenson brings together ethnographic theological fieldwork, historical and contemporary Christian theological traditions, and performance artworks themselves. A daring vision of theology which will energise anybody feeling ‘boxed in’ by the discipline, Transgressive Devotion blurs borders between orthodoxy, heterodoxy and heresy to reveal how the very act of doing theology makes God and humanity vulnerable to each other. This is theology which is a liturgy of Divine incantation. In other words: this is theology which is also prayer.
Download or read book The Two Selves written by Stanley B. Klein and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our experience of a unified sense of the self is underwritten by a multiplicity of self-aspects having very different metaphysical commitments. Our experience of unity is provided by a process-which, under certain clinical conditions, is rendered inoperative-that enables a person to experience mental states as personally owned.
Download or read book Integrity and the Virtues of Reason written by Greg Scherkoske and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many people have claimed that integrity requires sticking to one's convictions come what may. Greg Scherkoske challenges this claim, arguing that it creates problems in distinguishing integrity from fanaticism, close-mindedness or mere inertia. Rather, integrity requires sticking to one's convictions to the extent that they are justifiable and likely to be correct. In contrast to traditional views of integrity, Scherkoske contends that it is an epistemic virtue intimately connected to what we know and have reason to believe, rather than an essentially moral virtue connected to our values. He situates integrity in the context of shared cognitive and practical agency and shows that the relationship between integrity and impartial morality is not as antagonistic as many have thought - which has important implications for the 'integrity objection' to impartial moral theories. This original and provocative study will be of great interest to advanced students and scholars of ethics.
