Download or read book The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time written by Rebecca Fine Romanow and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time examines the ways in which the notion of the postcolonial correlates to Judith Halberstam’s idea of queer space and time, the non-normative path of Western lifestyles and hegemonies. Emphasizing authors from Africa and Southeast Asia in the diaspora in London from the mid-1960s through 1990, the reading of both postcolonial lands and subjects as “queer counterproductive” space reveals a depiction of bodies in these texts as located in and performing queer space and time, redefining and relocating the understanding of the postcolonial. The first wave of postcolonial literature produced by diasporics presents the body as the site where the non-normative is performed, revealing the beginnings of a corporeal resistance to the re-colonization of the diasporic individual residing in England from the Wilson through the Thatcher regimes. This study emphasizes the ways in which early postcolonial literature embodies and encounters the topics of race, gender and sexuality, proving that a rejection of subjectifying processes through the representation of the body has always been present in diasporic postcolonial literature. Reading through postcolonial theory as well as the works of Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt and Negri, Homi Bhabha, and Giorgio Agamben, as well as Halberstam and queer theory, The Postcolonial Body in Queer Space and Time discusses the poetry and journals of Arthur Nortje, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and his film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, tracing a geographic arc from homeland to London to the return to the homeland, traveling through the queer space and time of the postcolonial.

Download or read book Re Inventing the Postcolonial in the Metropolis written by Cecile Sandten and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-09-27 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of the postcolonial metropolis has gained prominence in the last two decades both within and beyond postcolonial studies. Disciplines such as sociology and urban studies, however, have tended to focus on the economic inequalities, class disparities, and other structural and formative aspects of the postcolonial metropolises that are specific to Western conceptions of the city at large. It is only recently that the depiction of postcolonial metropolises has been addressed in the writings of Suketu Mehta, Chris Abani, Amit Chaudhuri, Salman Rushdie, Aravind Adiga, Helon Habila, Sefi Atta, and Zakes Mda, among others. Most of these works probe the urban specifics and physical and cultural topographies of postcolonial cities while highlighting their agential capacity to defy, appropriate, and abrogate the superimposition of theories of Western modernity and urbanism. These ASNEL Papers are all concerned with the idea of the postcolonial (in the) metropolis from various disciplinary viewpoints, as drawn from a great range of cityscapes (spread out over five continents). The essays explore, on the one hand, ideas of spatial subdivision and inequality, political repression, social discrimination, economic exploitation, and cultural alienation, and, on the other, the possibility of transforming, reinventing and reconfigurating the ‘postcolonial condition’ in and through literary texts and visual narratives. In this context, the volume covers a broad spectrum of theoretical and thematic approaches to postcolonial and metropolitan topographies and their depictions in writings from Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, South Asia, and greater Asia, as well as the UK, addressing issues such as modernity and market economies but also caste, class, and social and linguistic aspects. At the same time, they reflect on the postcolonial metropolis and postcolonialism in the metropolis by concentrating on an urban imaginary which turns on notions of spatial subdivision and inequality, political repression, social discrimination, economic exploitation, and cultural alienation – as the continuing ‘postcolonial’ condition.

Download or read book In a Queer Time and Place written by Judith Halberstam and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-length study of transgender representations in art, fiction, film, video, and music In her first book since the critically acclaimed Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam examines the significance of the transgender body in a provocative collection of essays on queer time and space. She presents a series of case studies focused on the meanings of masculinity in its dominant and alternative forms’ especially female and trans-masculinities as they exist within subcultures, and are appropriated within mainstream culture. In a Queer Time and Place opens with a probing analysis of the life and death of Brandon Teena, a young transgender man who was brutally murdered in small-town Nebraska. After looking at mainstream representations of the transgender body as exhibited in the media frenzy surrounding this highly visible case and the Oscar-winning film based on Brandon's story, Boys Don’t Cry, Halberstam turns her attention to the cultural and artistic production of queers themselves. She examines the “transgender gaze,” as rendered in small art-house films like By Hook or By Crook, as well as figurations of ambiguous embodiment in the art of Del LaGrace Volcano, Jenny Saville, Eva Hesse, Shirin Neshat, and others. She then exposes the influence of lesbian drag king cultures upon hetero-male comic films, such as Austin Powers and The Full Monty, and, finally, points to dyke subcultures as one site for the development of queer counterpublics and queer temporalities. Considering the sudden visibility of the transgender body in the early twenty-first century against the backdrop of changing conceptions of space and time, In a Queer Time and Place is the first full-length study of transgender representations in art, fiction, film, video, and music. This pioneering book offers both a jumping off point for future analysis of transgenderism and an important new way to understand cultural constructions of time and place.

Download or read book Gospel Jesuses and Other Nonhumans written by Stephen D. Moore and published by SBL Press. This book was released on 2017-08-04 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essential reading for biblical studies students and scholars interested in cutting-edge critical theory The current global ecological crisis has prompted a turn to the nonhuman in critical theory. This book breaks new ground in biblical studies as the first to bring nonhuman theory to bear on the gospels and Acts. Nonhuman theory, a confluence of several of the main theoretical streams that have issued forth since the heyday of high poststructuralism, includes affect theory, posthuman animality studies, critical plant studies, object-oriented new materialisms, and assemblage theory. Nonhuman theory dismantles and reassembles the Western concept of “the human” that coalesced during the Enlightenment and testifies to other conceptions of the human and of the nonhuman, not least those found in the canonical gospels and Acts. Stephen D. Moore’s exegetical explorations and defamiliarizations of these overly familiar texts and excavations of their incessantly erased strangeness are the central feature of this provocative book. Features New paths in biblical ecotheology and ecocriticism A significant contribution to the analysis of emotions in biblical texts Class resource for courses in methods for biblical studies, the gospels, and the Bible and ecology

Download or read book The Body Desire and Storytelling in Novels by J M Coetzee written by Olfa Belgacem and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asserting that Coetzee’s representation of the body as subject to dismemberment counters the colonial representation of the other’s body as exotic and erotically-charged, this study inspects the ambivalence pertaining to Coetzee’s embodied representation of the other and reveals the risks that come with such contrapuntal reiteration. Through the study of the narrative identity of the colonial other and her/his body’s representation, the book also unveils the author’s own authorial identity exposed through the repetitive narrative patterns and characterization choices.

Download or read book Hanif Kureishi written by Susan Alice Fischer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-08-13 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since his astonishing Academy Award-nominated film, My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Hanif Kureishi has been recognized as a major writer who has both documented and profoundly influenced contemporary British culture. His first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), remains a key work in redefining our sense of what it means to be English in the postcolonial era. Hanif Kureishi: Contemporary Critical Perspectives brings together leading scholars of contemporary British fiction and culture to reassess the full range of the author's writings, from novels such as The Black Album, My Son the Fanatic and Something to Tell You to films such as Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, My Son the Fanatic and Venus. As well as exploring Kureishi's handling of such themes as Thatcherism, terrorism, race, class and sexuality, the book move moves beyond sociological and psychoanalytical approaches, examining the stylistic features of his most recent novel, The Last Word. The volume includes interviews with Stephen Frears, the director of My Beautiful Launderette, and with Hanif Kureishi himself, as well as a foreword by Roger Michell, who has directed several of the author's screenplays, most recently Le Week-End.

Download or read book Queer Cinema in the World written by Karl Schoonover and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-17 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proposing a radical vision of cinema's queer globalism, Karl Schoonover and Rosalind Galt explore how queer filmmaking intersects with international sexual cultures, geopolitics, and aesthetics to disrupt dominant modes of world making. Whether in its exploration of queer cinematic temporality, the paradox of the queer popular, or the deviant ecologies of the queer pastoral, Schoonover and Galt reimagine the scope of queer film studies. The authors move beyond the gay art cinema canon to consider a broad range of films from Chinese lesbian drama and Swedish genderqueer documentary to Bangladeshi melodrama and Bolivian activist video. Schoonover and Galt make a case for the centrality of queerness in cinema and trace how queer cinema circulates around the globe–institutionally via film festivals, online consumption, and human rights campaigns, but also affectively in the production of a queer sensorium. In this account, cinema creates a uniquely potent mode of queer worldliness, one that disrupts normative ways of being in the world and forges revised modes of belonging.

Download or read book Queer Stories of Europe written by Jānis Ozoliņš and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-12-14 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first volume on the studies of queer identities in Europe to adopt a strong focus on the history of the Baltic region among other countries in Central and East Europe. It unites work by researchers of different European countries that deals with various representations of the queer culture over a period of more than one hundred years. A significant part of the book is dedicated to belletristics, with the contributors offering readings of it with knowledge about ideas circulating in public discourse that have been influential for new discoveries in history, art history, culture studies, communication studies, theology, and narratology, among other fields.

Download or read book Soundings in Cultural Criticism written by Francisco Lozada and published by Fortress Press. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A number of disciplines aligned under "cultural criticism" have changed the shape of contemporary biblical studies not only by offering new methods but by questioning old goals and proposing new ones. Soundings in Cultural Criticism offers a collection of succinct essays in these fields by some of the foremost scholars in New Testament studies. Questions of historical reconstruction, textual interpretation, and present cultural deployment are addressed in an ideal second textbook for New Testament courses.

Download or read book Time and Literature written by Thomas M. Allen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time and Literature features twenty essays on topics from aesthetics and narratology to globalisation and queer temporalities, and showcases how time studies, often referred to as 'the temporal turn', cut across and illuminate research in every field of literature, as well as interdisciplinary approaches drawing upon history, philosophy, anthropology, and the natural sciences. Part one, Origins, addresses fundamental issues that can be traced back to the beginnings of literary criticism. Part two, Developments, shows how thinking about Time has been crucial to various interpretive revolutions that have impacted literary theory. Part three, Application, illustrates the centrality of temporal theorising to literary criticism in a variety of contemporary approaches, from ecocriticism and new materialisms to media and archive studies. The first anthology to provide a synthesis of recent scholarship on the temporality of literary language from across different national and historical periods, Time and Literature will appeal to academic researchers and interested laypersons alike.

Download or read book A User s Guide to Postcolonial and Latino Borderland Fiction written by Frederick Luis Aldama and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are so many people attracted to narrative fiction? How do authors in this genre reframe experiences, people, and environments anchored to the real world without duplicating "real life"? In which ways does fiction differ from reality? What might fictional narrative and reality have in common—if anything? By analyzing novels such as Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace, Zadie Smith's White Teeth, and Hari Kunzru's The Impressionist, along with selected Latino comic books and short fiction, this book explores the peculiarities of the production and reception of postcolonial and Latino borderland fiction. Frederick Luis Aldama uses tools from disciplines such as film studies and cognitive science that allow the reader to establish how a fictional narrative is built, how it functions, and how it defines the boundaries of concepts that appear susceptible to limitless interpretations. Aldama emphasizes how postcolonial and Latino borderland narrative fiction authors and artists use narrative devices to create their aesthetic blueprints in ways that loosely guide their readers' imagination and emotion. In A User's Guide to Postcolonial and Latino Borderland Fiction, he argues that the study of ethnic-identified narrative fiction must acknowledge its active engagement with world narrative fictional genres, storytelling modes, and techniques, as well as the way such fictions work to move their audiences.

Download or read book Pretoria Student Law Review 2020 14 2 written by Simon Motshweni and published by Pretoria University Law Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About the publication Honoured to present to you, the reader, the 2020 edition of the Pretoria Student Law Review (PSLR), an annual publication which is the pride of the best law faculty in Africa (according to the Times Higher Education World University Rankings). The University of Pretoria’s Law Faculty ranks in the top 100 law faculties in the world, a feat unequalled in Africa. The PSLR is a student driven law review that creates an interactive forum for students, academics and legal professionals to discuss topical legal matters that challenge the status quo. At the beginning of this year, lay the fantasy of newness — presenting an opportunity to do great things. But as I reflect on the journey leading to this publication, I understand that the 2020 edition of the PSLR had an engine that ran on hope; faith; dedication; perseverance; commitment and hard work. Our predecessors had a vision to create a boldly outlined legacy for the PSLR, they spearheaded the setting up of a system that would last the lifespan of the PSLR. Today, some 13 years after the first edition of the PSLR, South Africa, the continent and the world at large are on the cusp of a new era — socially, economically and politically. When my journey as Editor-in-Chief commenced, I imagined the PSLR as a ship, whose captain was myself. Customarily, it is easy to be a captain of a ship in calm seas, but unlike most of my predecessors, I have had to be the captain of a ship through the heftiest of storms. The world was not truly prepared to face challenges presented by the Covid-19, let alone the PSLR. In the wake of the 4IR and this new age of technology, sailing this ship to success was still a heavy task to complete. It is therefore with great honour to have been able to successfully complete the task for which we, the 14th cohort of the Editorial Board, were called for. We have upheld the esteemed reputations that have been left by our predecessors. Fittingly, I wish to applaud my team for their inspiring commitment, outstanding contribution and service in maintaining the elevated standard of the PSLR. For indeed it is a publication, par excellence. Amidst the storms, we have spearheaded the establishment of a ‘free-floating’ PSLR Collection in the OR Tambo Law Library. This collection is dedicated to house all published PSLR editions, dating since the inception of the PSLR in 2007. We have established and strengthened relations with other Law Faculties in the country, and even beyond. We published the very first special edition of the PSLR, a focused edition that covers a critical issue brought before the South African Law Deans Association — the Decolonisation of Legal Education. We have established a system by which all authors who publish with us, ought to have an ORCID iD. We have adopted internal regulations that outline the principles that govern the Editorial Board. We have spearheaded the adoption and implementation of a policy that forces us to comply with DHET Standards in order to be a DHET Accredited Journal so as to encourage and foster a student culture of critical research & writing in legal academia. I am truly proud of the work that the authors have put into their articles and I would like to thank them for their submissions and tireless efforts to produce quality articles. More-so, I am proud of the Editorial Board for being able to work under immense pressure. This edition would have not been possible without the dedication and hard work of this dream team. I remain indebted to you all: Adelaide Chagopa, Kayla Thomas, Marcia van der Merwe, Nicholas Herd and Phenyo Sekati. It has been a great pleasure and a privilege to have worked with you on this annual edition. A note of thanks to Dr Gustav Muller in his capacity as the Guardian of the PSLR. To the reviewers, your adjudication lays the foundation for each edition, year-in-yearout. Your support and contribution to the PSLR remains invaluable. To Lizette Hermann, Elzet Hurter and Mornay Hassen, thank you for your continued and immeasurable support throughout this journey. To Primrose E.R Kurasha, thank you for believing in me and for guiding me. I am forever indebted to you my friend. To my family: Elizabeth Mtshweni; Jostina Mtshweni; Clayton Mtshweni; Lucas Berto Mateus; Stephine Mashilo and Lerato Mashilo, words cannot begin to express my gratitude for all the support you have given me throughout this journey. Thank you for keeping me sane through one of the toughest times of my ‘publishing’ career. Thank you for the endless amount of support and the unconditional love you give me always. You are the power & oil that kept this engine running, all by the sufficient grace of God. I hereby pass the baton and entrust the next Editor-in-Chief with the difficult task of running faster and running a better marathon than myself and my predecessors. To you future author, I implore you to start writing, for the water does not flow until the faucet is turned on. To you the reader, Jurgen Zwecker was right: enjoy the read — without fear to question what is in front of you, for that is the only way we, as scholars, grow. Simon Motshweni Editor-in-Chief 2020 Table of Contents Editors’ note by Simon Motshweni Statutory utility rights to realise access to services as a characteristic of adequate housing by Gustav Muller The experiences of women and barriers for career advancement in tertiary institutions in a South African context by Bernardete Mendes ‘I’ve changed’ says South African law: Has the judiciary opened up to black women lawyers? by Cebolenkosi Makhaye Sexual orientation and gender identities (SOGI) law and social change by Chanelle van der Linde Game of Thrones: The battle of the Mphephus by Gudani Tshikota Critical race theory and feminist legal theory: Perspectives on transformation of the judiciary by Hayley C. Warring International law rules relating to migration arising from rising sea-levels by Keketso G. Kgomosotho The constitutionality of warrantless search and seizure operations by Khalipha Shange The constitutionality of warrantless search and seizure operations by Lehlohonolo January A comparative analysis of the proposed mandatory nature of employment legislation and its interaction with the choice of law of an international contract by Marcia van der Merwe Property rights and the basic structure of the Constitution: The case of the Draft Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill by Martin van Staden Speak no law without justice: Evaluating the retrospective force of declarations of unconstitutionality with specific reference to Qwelane v SAHRC & Others (686/2018) [2019] ZASCA 167 194 by MP Fourie & Marno Swart A critique of the determination of a composite supply for VAT purposes in South Africa: Lessons from selected countries by Mzwandile Ngidi Workers of the world, un-united: A discussion through a gendered lens on why stronger protection of workers in the informal economy will better equip South Africa to cope with labour market changes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution by Shaniaé Maharaj Dismantling the status quo: Prohibiting unfair discrimination on the grounds of poverty under capitalism by Sohela Surajpal Neoliberalism and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa by Thabiso Mfete When life gives you law, make lemonade: Exploring the ‘legalised’ oppression of black women in the United States of America and South Africa and their musical response thereto by Thandeka N. Khoza The Fourth Industrial Revolution: A case for educational transformation by Thembekile M. Mtsweni The Gabriel Fernandez case: A comparative analysis of a ‘mandated reporter’ in light of the Children’s Act by Thiavna Subroyen Transformative adjudication and the place of administrative law in South African jurisprudence: ABSA Bank Limited v Public Protector by Tshepo Twala & Mpho Mogadime The pas de deux between education and recreation: Facilitating the realisation of Articles 11 and 12 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child in Schools by Thandeka N. Khoza & Cebolenkosi Zuma

Download or read book Globalized Queerness written by Helton Levy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-10-19 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Has a global queer popular culture emerged at the expense of local queer artists? In this book, Helton Levy argues that global queer culture is indebted to specific, local references that artists carry from their early experiences in life, which then become homogenized by contemporary media markets. The assumption that queer publics live and consume only through a global set of references, including gay parades and rainbow flags, for example, erases many personal complexities. Levy revisits media characters that have caught the attention of the broader public – such as Calamity Jane (1953), the Daffyd Thomas character from the BBC comedy Little Britain (2003-2007), Brazilian drag queen Pabblo Vittar, French singer Christine and the Queens, and the Italian-Egyptian rapper Mahmood – and argues that they have gradually blended in the public's perception. This has often obscured the individual struggles faced by these characters, such as immigration, homophobia, poverty and societal exclusion. Levy also questions what happens when global media flows take queer culture to regions wherein the notion of LGBTQ+ rights are not entirely acceptable. Utilizing insights from media reports published across the world's ten biggest media markets, Levy argues that there are a series of conditions which artists and cultural actors negotiate once they achieve any kind of success in mainstream media, while local queer references remain unseen in the wider media world. For that reason, he argues for stronger incentives for communities to accept and acknowledge the work of queer people before and after commoditization.

Download or read book Indiscretions written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-06-29 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the West, once apparently progressive causes such as sexual equality and lesbian and gay emancipation are increasingly redeployed in order to discipline and ostracize immigrant underclass subjects, primarily Muslims. Gender and sexuality on the one hand and race, culture, and/or ethnicity on the other are more and more forced into separate, mutually exclusive realms. That development cannot but bear on the establishment of queer and postcolonial studies as separate academic specializations, among whom relations usually are as cordial as they are indifferent. This volume inquires into the possibilities and limitations of a parceling out of objects alternative to the common scheme, crude but often apposite, in which Western sexual subjectivity is analyzed and criticized by queer theory, while postcolonial studies takes care of non-Western racial subjectivity. Sex, race: always already distinguished, yet never quite apart. Roderick A. Ferguson has described liberal pluralism as an ideology of discreteness in that it disavows race, gender and sexuality's mutually formative role in political, social, and economic relations. It is in that spirit that this volume advocates the discreet, hence judicious and circumspect, reconsideration of the (in)discrete realities of race and sex. Contributors: Jeffrey Geiger, Merill Cole, Jonathan Mitchell and Michael O'Rourke, Jaap Kooijman, Beth Kramer, Maaike Bleeker, Rebecca Fine Romanow, Anikó Imre, Lindsey Green-Simms, Nishant Shahani, Ryan D. Fong, and Murat Aydemir

Download or read book The Ghostly and the Ghosted in Literature and Film written by Lisa B. Kröger and published by University of Delaware. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ghostly and the Ghosted in Literature and Film: Spectral Identities is a collection of essays expanding the concepts of “ghost” and “haunting” beyond literary tools used to add supernatural flavor to include questions of identity, visibility, memory and trauma, and history. Using a wide scope of texts from varying time periods and cultures, including fiction and film, this collection explores the phenomenon of social ghosts. What does it mean, for example, to be invisible, to be a ghost, particularly when that ghost is representative of a person or group living on the margins of society? Why do specific types of ghosts tend to haunt certain cultures and/or places? What is it about a people’s history that invites these types of hauntings? The essays in this book, like pieces of a puzzle, approach the larger questions from diverse individual perspectives, but, taken together, they offer a richly detailed composite discussion of what it means to be haunted.

Download or read book Willful Monstrosity written by Natalie Wilson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-01-17 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking in a wide range of film, television, and literature, this volume explores 21st century horror and its monsters from an intersectional perspective with a marked emphasis on gender and race. The analysis, which covers over 70 narratives, is organized around four primary monstrous figures--zombies, vampires, witches and monstrous women. Arguing that the current horror renaissance is populated with willful monsters that subvert prevailing cultural norms and systems of power, the discussion reads horror in relation to topics of particular import in the contemporary moment--rampant sexual violence, unbridled capitalist greed, brutality against people of color, militarism, and the patriarchy's refusal to die. Examining ground-breaking films and television shows such as Get Out, Us, The Babadook, A Quiet Place, Stranger Things, Penny Dreadful, and The Passage, as well as works by key authors like Justin Cronin, Carmen Maria Machado, Helen Oyeyemi, Margo Lanagan, and Jeanette Winterson, this monograph offers a thorough account of the horror landscape and what it says about the 21st century world.

Download or read book The Ironic Filmmaking of Stephen Frears written by Lesley Brill and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stephen Frears has a career approaching over half-a-century, directing films of astonishing variety, beauty, and daring, and yet many often have trouble remembering his name. The Ironic Filmmaking of Stephen Frears celebrates this great filmmaker, beginning with a short biography of Frears, general observations on unifying themes and styles in his oeuvre, and the characterization of his manner of directing. By focusing on 10 key films, Lesley Brill finds coherence in Frears' characteristic irony and in his concentration on many kinds of love. In movies such as My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen, Philomena, and many others, Frears portrays widely varied situations and characters with a combination of insight, skepticism, and sympathy. He has the passionate, unjudgmental focus of an artist who stands simultaneously at a distance from his subjects and within their worlds. Through Frears' work is widely admired, Brill argues that he has attracted little scholarly writing because of a combination of the diffidence of his self-presentation and the difficulty of explicating the complex ideas and characters of his films. The Ironic Filmmaking of Stephen Frears is meant to inspire others to further examine his films individually and his career as a whole.