Dancing Women: Female Bodies Onstage is a spectacular and timely contribution to dance history, recasting canonical dance since the early nineteenth... century in terms of a feminist perspective. Setting the creation of specific dances in socio-political and cultural contexts, Sally Banes shows that choreographers have created representations of women that are shaped by - and that in part shape - society's continuing debates about sexuality and female identity. Broad in its scope and compelling in its argument Dancing Women: * provides a series of re-readings of the canon, from Romantic and Russian Imperial ballet to contemporary ballet and modern dance * investigates the gaps between plot and performance that create sexual and gendered meanings * examines how women's agency is created in dance through aspects of choreographic structure and style * analyzes a range of women's images - including brides, mistresses, mothers, sisters, witches, wraiths, enchanted princesses, peasants, revolutionaries, cowgirls, scientists, and athletes - as well as the creation of various women's communities on the dance stage * suggests approaches to issues of gender in postmodern dance Using an interpretive strategy different from that of other feminist dance historians, who have stressed either victimization or celebration of women, Banes finds a much more complex range of cultural representations of gender identities.

A Choice "Outstanding Academic Book for 1996"While drawing on work in feminism, queer theory, and cultural history, Dandies and Desert Saints challenges... scholars to rethink simplistic notions of Victorian manhood. James Eli Adams examines masculine identity in Victorian literature from Thomas Carlyle through Oscar Wilde, analyzing authors who identify the age's ideal of manhood as the power of self-discipline. What distinguishes Adams's book from others in the recent explosion of interest in masculinity is his refusal to approach masculinity primarily in terms of "patriarchy" or "phallogocentrism" or within the binary of homosexualities and heterosexualities.

Ge, formerly translated as "mask" or "masquerade," appears among the Dan people of Côte d'Ivoire as a dancing and musical embodiment of their social... ideals and religious beliefs. In Dan Ge Performance, Daniel B. Reed sets out to discover what resides at the core of Ge. He finds that Ge is defined as part of a religious system, a form of entertainment, an industry, a political tool, an instrument of justice, and a form of resistance—and it can take on multiple roles simultaneously. He sees genu (pl.) dancing the latest dance steps, co-opting popular music, and acting in concert with Ivorian authorities to combat sorcery. Not only are the bounds of traditional performance stretched, but Ge performance becomes a strategy for helping the Dan to establish individual and community identity in a world that is becoming more religiously and ethnically diverse. Readers interested in all aspects of expressive culture in West Africa will find fascinating material in this rich and penetrating book.

An insider view of an urban subculture! While much of the literature on police analyzes critically what they do, few works address issues of how police... officers feel about their chosen profession, their worldview, or their visions. This refreshingly original and unique ethnographic contribution by anthropologist Joan Barker exposes the human element--one rarely seen by non-police--of officers working for the often-controversial L.A.P.D. During her twenty years of fieldwork, Barker gathered valuable information through formal, indepth interviews and firsthand experiences, distilling her findings into an illuminating, coherent account. She discovers that five phases of occupational socialization normatively mold officers' experiences and perceptions. "Fleshing out" her discussion is the compelling narrative of "Fred," a traditional officer whose authentic voice reveals feelings and attitudes that manifest the essence of the human who does the job of policing. An "insider" view of an urban subculture usually known only from its public presentation.

As a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, bioregional activist, Zen Buddhist, and reluctant counterculture guru, Gary Snyder has been a major artistic force in... America for over five decades, extending far beyond the Beat poems that first brought his work into the public eye.Danger on Peaks begins with poems about Snyder’s first ascent of Mount St. Helens in 1945 and his learning that atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the morning of his descent. Containing work in a surprising variety of styles, creating an arc-shaped trail from these earliest climbs to what the poet calls poems “of intimate, immediate life, gossip and insight,” Danger on Peaks is Snyder’s most personal work ever.

Francesca Lia Block's luminous, postmodern fairy tales chronicle the thin line between fear and desire, pain and pleasure, cutting loose and holding on... in a world where everyone is vulnerable to the most beautiful and dangerous angel of all: love.

In this book, Gargi Bhattacharyya examines the way in which western imperial violence associates itself with the rhetoric of rights and democracy--a... project of bombing for freedom that calls into question the validity of western conceptions of democracy, rights and feminism. Such rhetoric has accompanied actions that go beyond simply protecting western interests or securing access to scarce resources. The articulations of racism that appear with the war on terror are animated by fears and sexual fantasies inexplicable by rational interest alone. Understanding this highly sexualized racism reveals the intense contradictions of imperial relations and the attempts to normalize violent expropriation.

With images of Jennifer Lopez’s butt and America Ferrera’s smile saturating national and global culture, Latina bodies have become an ubiquitous... presence. Dangerous Curves traces the visibility of the Latina body in the media and popular culture by analyzing a broad range of popular media including news, media gossip, movies, television news, and online audience discussions.Isabel Molina-Guzmán maps the ways in which the Latina body is gendered, sexualized, and racialized within the United States media using a series of fascinating case studies. The book examines tabloid headlines about Jennifer Lopez’s indomitable sexuality, the contested authenticity of Salma Hayek’s portrayal of Frida Kahlo in the movie Frida, and America Ferrera’s universally appealing yet racially sublimated Ugly Betty character. Dangerous Curves carves out a mediated terrain where these racially ambiguous but ethnically marked feminine bodies sell everything from haute couture to tabloids.Through a careful examination of the cultural tensions embedded in the visibility of Latina bodies in United States media culture, Molina-Guzmán paints a nuanced portrait of the media’s role in shaping public knowledge about Latina identity and Latinidad, and the ways political and social forces shape media representations.

Does the proliferation of nuclear weapons cause ongoing conflicts to diminish or to intensify? The spread of nuclear weapons to South Asia offers an... opportunity to investigate this crucial question. Optimistic scholars argue that by threatening to raise the cost of war astronomically, nuclear weapons make armed conflict in South Asia extremely unlikely. Pessimistic scholars maintain that nuclear weapons make the subcontinent war-prone, because of technological, political, and organizational problems. This book argues that nuclear weapons have destabilized the subcontinent, principally because of their interaction with India and Pakistan’s territorial preferences and relative military capabilities. These findings challenge both optimistic and pessimistic conventional wisdom and have implications beyond South Asia.

Eric Anderson and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., offer a new examination of the impact of northern philanthropy on southern black education, giving special... attention to the "Ogden movement," the General Education Board, the Rosenwald Fund, and the Episcopal American Church Institute for Negroes. Anderson and Moss present significant reinterpretations of key figures in African American education, including Booker T. Washington, William H. Baldwin, Jr., George Foster Peabody, and Thomas Jesse Jones. Dangerous Donations explores both the great influence of the philanthropic foundations and the important limitations on their power. White racial radicals were suspicious that the northern agencies sought to undermine the southern system of race relations, "training negroes in the vain hope of social equality with whites." This criticism forced the philanthropists and their agents to move cautiously, seeking white southern cooperation whenever possible. Despite repeated compromises, northern philanthropists maintained a vision of race relations and black potential significantly different from that held by the South’s white majority. Blacks challenged the foundations, expressing their own educational agendas in a variety of ways, including demands for black teachers, resistance to any distinctive racial curricula, and, in some cases, support for independent black schools. The millions of dollars in self-help philanthropy contributed by African Americans also indicated their refusal to give complete control of their schools to either the white South or distant philanthropists in the North. No other scholars, according to Louis R. Harlan, "have examined the controversial role of philanthropy with the same coolness, analytical skill, and persistent search for the truth as Eric Anderson and Alfred Moss. . . [they] have made an outstanding contribution to the history of education for both races in the segregated South of 1900 to 1930."  

When counterfeit prescription medicine started turning up in the nation's supply and threatening some of the sickest and weakest patients, Katherine... Eban went in search of the story. What she found was an unlikely and irresistible group of heroes-five aging South Florida investigators who dubbed themselves the Horsemen of the Apocalypse and held their meetings at Hooters. Working around the clock on cases no one else wanted to tackle, they followed the trail of stolen and contaminated medicine in a takedown eventually dubbed Operation Stone Cold. This riveting page-turner takes us along with the Horsemen as they wade into "more rank Florida unseemliness than a Carl Hiaasen novel" (Salon) to ultimately uncover $33 million in bad medicine and make more than sixty arrests.Thanks in part to the attention Dangerous Doses received in hardcover, the media, politicians, and drug companies are starting to address the problems it uncovered. This new paperback edition includes a chapter with the latest update on these developments.

In a world where the drug abuse scene is more confusing and dangerous than ever, the 2nd edition of Dangerous Drugs: An Easy to Use Reference for... Parents and Professionals is the answer. Now with color photos of drugs and paraphernalia, Dangerous Drugs is a concise, comprehensive, clear, and handy reference that answers your questions at a glance, with: - Up-to-date information on drugs of abuse- Demographics of users.- Explanations of how a drug is used; where it's found and how it affects the mind and body- The names and forms under which drugs are sold- Their addictive, lethal, and overdose potential- Signs of drug abuse and where/how to seek help, and more. Written in clear language, Dangerous Drugs provides straightforward, authoritative, comprehensive, and up-to-the-minute information. It covers the full range of drugs of abuse, whether illegal (marijuana, heroin, cocaine, LSD, methamphetamine, etc.) or legal (alcohol, prescription, tobacco, or Internet-marketed, herbal remedies). Dangerous Drugs is written for professionals and non-professionals alike, and is a book that no one concerned about drug use can afford to be without.