For most of the twentieth century, West Virginia was a college basketball hotbed. Its major programs were a success, but perhaps even more successful... was the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, composed of fifteen schools that rarely earned headlines but set many records and became an identifiable part of small town culture and a source of state pride. This ethos exists today in small town Kentucky and Indiana but struggles to survive in West Virginia. Part of the reason is the state's population decline since the 1950s. That, author Bob Kuska argues, along with the rise of cable and satellite TV and the major college basketball empire, stole the thunder--and the crowds--from these small town communities. And yet, these teams play on in obscurity and still find success. Against the backdrop of West Virginia's great small college history, Kuska chronicles the day-to-day struggles and triumphs of one modern school, Alderson-Broaddus College in Philippi, West Virginia. What happened to that team during a rags-to-riches yearlong stretch would've been remarkable at any level, let alone at a school with very low athletic department budgets and low visibility that makes recruiting talented players almost impossible. As he alternates between coaches and players, past and present, Kuska contrasts the fan enthusiasm of the conference's early years with the apathy that plagues the teams of the twenty-first century. If sports fans can get past the media and the madness that has made college basketball increasingly similar to professional basketball in its self-indulgence and sensationalism, they are left with leagues like the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference--scrappy, intelligent, and spirited--and still finding ways to succeed and thrive.

The fabulous gown, the multitiered cake, abundant flowers, attendants and guests in their finery. The white wedding does more than mark a life passage.... It marries two of the most sacred tenets of American culture--romantic love and excessive consumption. For anyone who has ever wondered about the meanings behind a white dress, a diamond ring, rice, and traditions such as cake cutting, bouquet tossing, and honeymooning, this book offers an entertaining and enlightening look at the historical, social, and psychological strains that come together to make the lavish wedding the most important cultural ritual in contemporary consumer culture.With an emphasis on North American society, Cele C. Otnes and Elizabeth H. Pleck show how the elaborate wedding means far more than a mere triumph for the bridal industry. Through interviews, media accounts, and wide-ranging research and analysis, they expose the wedding's reflection--or reproduction--of fundamental aspects of popular consumer culture: its link with romantic love, its promise of magical transformation, its engendering of memories, and its legitimization of consumption as an expression of perfection. As meaningful as any prospective bride might wish, the lavish wedding emerges here as a lens that at once reveals, magnifies, and reveres some of the dearest wishes and darkest impulses at the heart of our culture.

Contemporary / American English Jim Braddock is a successful boxer in New York. But in October 1929 the American economy fails, and at the same time Jim... starts to lose in the boxing ring. Does the true story of Jim Braddock -- the Cinderella Man -- have a happy ending?

Cinderella's Big Score celebrates the contributions of punk's oft-overlooked female artists, explores the latent—and not so latent—sexism of indie... rock (so often thought of as hallowed ground of progressive movements), and tells the story of how these women created spaces for themselves in a sometimes limited or exclusionary environment. The indie music world is littered with women who have not only withstood the racket of punk's intolerance, but have twisted our societal notions of femininity in knots. Raha focuses on the United States and England in the 70s and 80s, and illuminates how the seminal women of this time shaped the female rockers of the 90s and today. Groups profiled range from The Runaways, The Slits, and The Plasmatics to L7, Sleater-Kinney, and Le Tigre. The book includes women not often featured in "women in rock" titles, such as Exene Cervenka of X, Eve Libertine and Joy de Vivre of Crass, and Poison Ivy Rorschach of the Cramps. Rare interviews and more than forty black-and-white photographs are included in this tribute to the transgressive women of the underground music scene.

Meet Cinderella Skeleton, as sweetly foul as only a ghoul can be. Poor Cinderella has no one to help her hang the cobwebs and arrange dead... flowers--certainly not her evil stepsisters. But the Halloween Ball is just around the corner. . . . Will Cinderella find happiness at last?

The history of footbinding is full of contradictions and unexpected turns. The practice originated in the dance culture of China's medieval court and... spread to gentry families, brothels, maid's quarters, and peasant households. Conventional views of footbinding as patriarchal oppression often neglect its complex history and the incentives of the women involved. This revisionist history, elegantly written and meticulously researched, presents a fascinating new picture of the practice from its beginnings in the tenth century to its demise in the twentieth century. Neither condemning nor defending foot-binding, Dorothy Ko debunks many myths and misconceptions about its origins, development, and eventual end, exploring in the process the entanglements of male power and female desires during the practice's thousand-year history.Cinderella's Sisters argues that rather than stemming from sexual perversion, men's desire for bound feet was connected to larger concerns such as cultural nostalgia, regional rivalries, and claims of male privilege. Nor were women hapless victims, the author contends. Ko describes how women--those who could afford it--bound their own and their daughters' feet to signal their high status and self-respect. Femininity, like the binding of feet, was associated with bodily labor and domestic work, and properly bound feet and beautifully made shoes both required exquisite skills and technical knowledge passed from generation to generation. Throughout her narrative, Ko deftly wields methods of social history, literary criticism, material culture studies, and the history of the body and fashion to illustrate how a practice that began as embodied lyricism--as a way to live as the poets imagined--ended up being an exercise in excess and folly.

An old favorite--with a new twist. G. Brian Karas' dynamic multimedia illustrations are the perfect complement to this rhyming urban fairy tale.... Full-color illustrations.

The ideal L.A. fairy tale for fans of Once Upon a Time and L.A. Candy, from the author of Geek Charming. Prom fever has infected LA—especially... Cindy’s two annoying stepsisters, and her overly Botoxed stepmother. Cindy seems to be the only one immune to it all. But her anti-prom letter in the school newspaper does more to turn Cindy into Queen of the Freaks than close the gap between the popular kids and the rest of the students. Everyone thinks she’s committed social suicide, except for her two best friends, the yoga goddess India and John Hughes–worshipping Malcolm, and shockingly, the most popular senior at Castle Heights High and Cindy’s crush, Adam Silver. Suddenly Cindy starts to think that maybe her social life could have a happily ever after. But there’s still the rest of the school to deal with. With a little bit of help from an unexpected source and a fabulous pair of heels, Cindy realizes that she still has a chance at a happily ever after.

Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills, a series of 69 black-and-white photographs created between 1977 and 1980, is widely seen as one of the most... original and influential achievements in recent art. Witty, provocative and searching, this lively catalogue of female roles inspired by the movies crystallizes widespread concerns in our culture, examining the ways we shape our personal identities and the role of the mass media in our lives. Sherman began making these pictures in 1977 when she was 23 years old. The first six were an experiment: fan-magazine glimpses into the life (or roles) of an imaginary blond actress, played by Sherman herself. The photographs look like movie stills--or perhaps publicity pix--purporting to catch the blond bombshell in unguarded moments at home. The protagonist is shown preening in the kitchen and lounging in the bedroom. Onto something big, Sherman tried other characters in other roles: the chic starlet at her seaside hideaway, the luscious librarian, the domesticated sex kitten, the hot-blooded woman of the people, the ice-cold sophisticate and a can-can line of other stereotypes. She eventually completed the series in 1980. She stopped, she has explained, when she ran out of clichas. Other artists had drawn upon popular culture but Sherman's strategy was new. For her the pop-culture image was not a subject (as it had been for Walker Evans) or raw material (as it had been for Andy Warhol) but a whole artistic vocabulary, ready-made. Her film stills look and function just like the real ones--those 8 x 10 glossies designed to lure us into a drama we find all the more compelling because we know it isn't real. In the Untitled Film Stills there are no Cleopatras, no ladies on trains, no women of a certain age. There are, of course, no men. The 69 solitary heroines map a particular constellation of fictional femininity that took hold in postwar America--the period of Sherman's youth and the starting point for our contemporary mythology. In finding a form for her own sensibility, Sherman touched a sensitive nerve in the culture at large. Although most of the characters are invented, we sense right away that we already know them. That twinge of instant recognition is what makes the series tick and it arises from Cindy Sherman's uncanny poise. There is no wink at the viewer, no open irony, no camp. In 1995, The Museum of Modern Art purchased the series from the artist, preserving the work in its entirety. This book marks the first time that the complete series will be published as a unified work, with Sherman herself arranging the pictures in sequence.

One of the most influential figures in documentary and ethnographic filmmaking, Jean Rouch has made more than one hundred films in West Africa and... France. In such acclaimed works as Jaguar, The Lion Hunters, and Cocorico, Monsieur Poulet, Rouch has explored racism, colonialism, African modernity, religious ritual, and music. He pioneered numerous film techniques and technologies, and in the process inspired generations of filmmakers, from New Wave directors, who emulated his cinema verité style, to today's documentarians. Ciné-Ethnography is a long-overdue English-language resource that collects Rouch's key writings, interviews, and other materials that distill his thinking on filmmaking, ethnography, and his own career. Editor Steven Feld opens with a concise overview of Rouch's career, highlighting the themes found throughout his work. In the four essays that follow, Rouch discusses the ethnographic film as a genre, the history of African cinema, his experiences of filmmaking among the Songhay, and the intertwined histories of French colonialism, anthropology, and cinema. And in four interviews, Rouch thoughtfully reflects on each of his films, as well as his artistic, intellectual, and political concerns. Ciné-Ethnography also contains an annotated transcript of Chronicle of a Summer-one of Rouch's most important works-along with commentary by the filmmakers, and concludes with a complete, annotated filmography and a bibliography. The most thorough resource on Rouch available in any language, Ciné-Ethnography makes clear this remarkable and still vital filmmaker's major role in the history of documentary cinema. Jean Rouch was born in Paris in 1917. He studied civil engineering before turning to film and anthropology in response to his experiences in West Africa during World War II. Rouch is the recipient of numerous awards, including the International Critics Award at Cannes for the film Chronicle of a Summer in 1961. Steven Feld is professor of music and anthropology at Columbia University.

Make the creative leap to 3D. Realize your artistic vision with this treasure chest of instructional projects. Get the essential concepts and techniques... without drowning in the technical complexities. This new edition is an artist's sourcebook for the visionary in you that wants to master 3D-- and have fun doing it. It serves as a complete guide for the creative use of Cinema 4D RXX and all of its modules. Short, playful projects show you how to put this powerful toolset to work. You will master RXX's improved workflow, scene management, enhanced animation timeline and searchable object manager, as well as its: * BULLETED LIST TO BE UPDATED BASED ON NEXT RELEASE * BULLETED LIST TO BE UPDATED BASED ON NEXT RELEASE * BULLETED LIST TO BE UPDATED BASED ON NEXT RELEASE * BULLETED LIST TO BE UPDATED BASED ON NEXT RELEASE You also get inventive quick starts for other modules including Hair, Sketch and Toon, Advanced Render, Dynamics and Thinking Particles. The companion DVD is bursting to the brim with project source files, extra projects, tutorial movies, guest artist tutorials, inspirational galleries and unique C4D Teacher Files (C4D scenes with embedded step-by-step instructions). * Lavishly illustrated in 4 colors throughout, this book is your key to making the creative leap to 3D, providing essential concepts and techniques that will help you realize your artistic vision * Engaging and whimsical style of presentation provides both entertainment as you read as well as creative inspiration for your own projects * Companion DVD with tutorial media, bonus tutorials, instructional movies and 3D C4D environment teacher files.