Finalist for Foreword’s 2011 Book of the Year Award in Autobiography/Memoir"Ultimately, Renee E. D'Aoust's, Body of a Dancer is a strong collection,... offering new readings as the reader's eye recognizes the complexity of the movement between noun and verb, text and subject, body and mind."—Karen Babine, University of Nebraska, Mid-American Review"A remarkably clear-eyed descent into New York's surreal world of modern dance peopled by the obsessed, dispossessed, sexy, suicidal, brutal, broke, and absurd."—Lance Olsen, author of Nietzsche's KissesThe award-winning writer Renée E. D'Aoust draws from her experiences as a modern dancer in New York during the nineties. Her luminous prose spotlights this passionate, often brutal world. Trained at the prestigious Martha Graham Center, D'Aoust intertwines accounts of her own and other dancers' lives with essays on modern dance history. A dancer's body, scarred, strained, and tough, bears witness to the discipline demanded by the art form. Body of a Dancer provides a powerful, acidly comic record of what it is to love, and eventually leave, a life centered on dance."D'Aoust eloquently describes the spectrum of feelings that a dancer experiences during the serious examination of Graham technique. She takes the reader through it all; from inherent contradiction to deep love to mystical force." —Ballet Dance Magazine"D'Aoust describes in great candor and plainspoken wit all the idiosyncrasies of dancers and their necessary sacrifices: ""Leave home, leave country, forget secondary education, forget any guarantee of a stable income, destroy naïve innocence about the body""—Shelf Awareness"With exquisite description, absolute honesty, and a clear compelling voice, Body of a Dancer offers an unforgettable account of one artist’s bittersweet journey."—Dinty W. MooreRenée E. D'Aoust's essays have been featured as notable essays in Best American Essays in 2006, 2007, and 2009. Her nonfiction work has been included in the anthology Reading Dance, edited by Robert Gottlieb and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. D'Aoust is the recipient of an NEA Dance Criticism

In this sophisticated study of power and resistance, Jean Comaroff analyzes the changing predicament of the Barolong boo Ratshidi, a people on the... margins of the South African state. Like others on the fringes of the modern world system, the Tshidi struggle to construct a viable order of signs and practices through which they act upon the forces that engulf them. Their dissenting Churches of Zion have provided an effective medium for reconstructing a sense of history and identity, one that protests the terms of colonial and post-colonial society and culture.

The National Security Agency is the world’s most powerful, most far-reaching espionage. Now with a new afterword describing the security lapses that... preceded the attacks of September 11, 2001, Body of Secrets takes us to the inner sanctum of America’s spy world. In the follow-up to his bestselling Puzzle Palace, James Banford reveals the NSA’s hidden role in the most volatile world events of the past, and its desperate scramble to meet the frightening challenges of today and tomorrow.Here is a scrupulously documented account–much of which is based on unprecedented access to previously undisclosed documents–of the agency’s tireless hunt for intelligence on enemies and allies alike. Body of secrets is a riveting analysis of this most clandestine of agencies, a major work of history and investigative journalism.

A no-holds-barred examination of the National Security Agency packed with startling secrets about its past, newsbreaking revelations about its... present-day activities, and chilling predictions about its future powers and reach. The NSA is the largest, most secretive, and most powerful intelligence agency in the world. With a staff of thirty-eight thousand people, it dwarfs the CIA in budget, manpower, and influence. Recent headlines have linked it to the economic espionage throughout Europe and to the ongoing hunt for the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. James Bamford first penetrated the wall of silence surrounding the NSA in 1982, with the much-talked-about bestseller The Puzzle Palace. In Body of Secrets, he offers shocking new details about the inner workings of the agency, gathered through unique access to thousands of internal documents and interviews with current and former officials. Unveiling extremely sensitive information for the first time, Bamford exposes the role the NSA played in numerous Soviet bloc Cold War conflicts and discusses its undercover involvement in the Vietnam War. His investigation into the NSA's technological advances during the last fifteen years brings to light a network of global surveillance ranging from on-line listening posts to sophisticated intelligence-gathering satellites. In a hard-hitting conclusion, he warns that the NSA is a two-edged sword. While its worldwide eavesdropping activities offer the potential for tracking down terrorists and uncovering nuclear weapons deals, it also has the capability to listen on global personal communications. Like the breakout bestsellers on Cold War espionage The Sword and the Shield and Blind Man's Buff, Body of Secrets is must-reading for people fascinated by the intrigues of a shadowy underworld. As one of the most important works of investigative journalism to come out of Washington in years, it should be read by everyone concerned about the inevitability of Orwell's Big Brother.

A ?gleaming, humane? (The New York Times Book Review) memoir of the relationship between a cadaver named Eve and a first-year medical student Medical... student Christine Montross felt nervous standing outside the anatomy lab on her first day of class. Entering a room with stainless-steel tables topped by corpses in body bags was initially unnerving. But once Montross met her cadaver, she found herself intrigued by the person the woman once was and fascinated by the strange, unsettling beauty of the human form. They called her Eve. The story of Montross and Eve is a tender and surprising examination of the mysteries of the human body, and a remarkable look at our relationship with both the living and the dead.

Pick up a magazine, turn on the TV, and you'll find few women who haven't been fried, dyed, plucked, or tucked. In short, you'll see no body outlaws.... The writers in this groundbreaking anthology reveal a world where bodies come in all their many-splendored shapes, sizes, colors, and textures. In doing so, they expand the national dialogue on body image to include race, ethnicity, sexuality, and power—issues that, while often overlooked, are intimately linked to how women feel about their bodies. Body Outlaws offers stories by those who have chosen to ignore, subvert, or redefine the dominant beauty standard in order to feel at home in their bodies. In a culture where plastic surgery has become nearly as routine as a root canal, this expanded and updated edition of fresh and incisive commentary challenges the media’s standard notions of beauty with honesty and humor. Included are several new essays outlining the latest trends in the beauty industry such as botox, plastic surgery, and exercise bulimia, as well as a fascinating analysis of how men are affected by these same rigors, a thorough resource section, and a curriculum guide.

Are you ripped? Do you need to work on your abs? Do you know your ideal body weight? Your body fat index? Increasingly, Americans are being sold on a... fitness ideal — not just thin but toned, not just muscular but cut — that is harder and harder to reach. In Body Panic, Shari L. Dworkin and Faye Linda Wachs ask why. How did these particular body types come to be "fit"? And how is it that having an unfit, or "bad," body gets conflated with being an unfit, or "bad," citizen?Dworkin and Wachs head to the newsstand for this study, examining ten years worth of men's and women's health and fitness magazines to determine the ways in which bodies are "made" in today's culture. They dissect the images, the workouts, and the ideology being sold, as well as the contemporary links among health, morality, citizenship, and identity that can be read on these pages. While women and body image are often studied together, Body Panic considers both women's and men's bodies side-by-side and over time in order to offer a more in-depth understanding of this pervasive cultural trend.

Tami Spry provides a methodological introduction to the budding field of performative autoethnography. She intertwines three necessary elements... comprising the process. First one must understand the body – navigating concepts of self, culture, language, class, race, gender, and physicality. The second task is to put that body on the page, assigning words for that body’s sociocultural experiences. Finally, this merger of body and paper is lifted up to the stage, crafting a persona as a method of personal inquiry. These three stages are simultaneous and interdependent, and only in cultivating all three does performance autoethnography begin to take shape. Replete with examples and exercises, this is an important introductory work for autoethnographers and performance artists alike.

Binding and loosing, baptism, eucharist, multiplicity of gifts, and open meeting; these five New Testament practices were central in the life of the... early Christian community. Some of them are still echoed in the practice of the church today. But the full social, ethical, and communal meaning of the original practices has often been covered by centuries of ritual and interpretation.John Howard Yoder, in his inimitably direct and discerning style, uncovers the original meaning of the five practices and shows why the recovery of these practices is so important for the social, economic, and political witness of the church today.

This book explores how activists around the world have organized to fight for their economic and social rights and well-being, to end violence against... women and militarism, to promote sexual and reproductive rights, and to protect bodily integrity in the face of the new biotechnologies.  Seeing the body as a fluid site of power and political contestation where specific cultural, social and economic realities and struggles are played out, Harcourt looks at body politics from the intimate and personal within self, family and community to the public at national and global levels and discourses.Using narrative, interview, analysis and theory to bring out the importance of different facets of body politics, this accessible book translates feminist and development discourse into vitally relevant material for all those interested in human rights and social justice. 

Named one of the twenty-five best books of the year by the Seattle Times, 2004In Body Politic, David Shields looks at contemporary America and its... mythology through the lens of professional and college sports. The result is an unusually insightful and provocative book about an empire in denial. Shields relentlessly examines the way we tell our sports stories (both fictional and nonfictional), considers the kinds of athletes we choose as heroes, and delineates the lessons and values we glean from sports. He explores the intricate and telling relationships between players and coaches, black and white players, immigrant and native players, male and female players, players and broadcasters, players and fans, and players and advertisers. In the process, he shows us the stories we Americans tell ourselves about the kind of people we believe ourselves to be.(20080620)

This book addresses the relationship between the body and society in a fast-food society. Agger focuses on issues of food, exercise, work, dieting and... eating disorders, fashion, bariatric and cosmetic surgery, and health. He addresses the dilemma that we have ample access to abundant calories but lead lifestyles and have jobs that for the most part do not enable us to expend those calories. He proposes solutions, both individual and structural, that involve re-orienting ourselves to exercise as play. The book can be used in introductory sociology, social problems, work, sociology of sport, gender, health and illness. The goal of this new, unique Series is to offer readable, teachable "thinking frames" on today’s social problems and social issues by leading scholars, all in short 60 page or shorter formats, and available for view on http://routledge.customgateway.com/routledge-social-issues.html For instructors teaching a wide range of courses in the social sciences, the Routledge Social Issues Collection now offers the best of both worlds: originally written short texts that provide "overviews" to important social issues as well as teachable excerpts from larger works previously published by Routledge and other presses.

In this poetic, introspective memoir, Kenny Fries illustrates his intersecting identities as gay, Jewish, and disabled. While learning about the history... of his body through medical records and his physical scars, Fries discovers just how deeply the memories and psychic scars run. As he reflects on his relationships with his family, his compassionate doctor, the brother who resented his disability, and the men who taught him to love, he confronts the challenges of his life. Body, Remember is a story about connection, a redemptive and passionate testimony to one man’s search for the sources of identity and difference.

Anne E. Becker examines the cultural context of the embodied self through her ethnography of bodily aesthetics, food exchange, care, and social... relationships in Fiji. She contrasts the cultivation of the body/self in Fijian and American society, arguing that the motivation of Americans to work on their bodies' shapes as a personal endeavor is permitted by their notion that the self is individuated and autonomous. On the other hand, because Fijians concern themselves with the cultivation of social relationships largely expressed through nurturing and food exchange, there is a vested interest in cultivating others' bodies rather than one's own.