American Art set the standard for American art survey courses for the last decade by providing a thorough and engaging chronology of American art,... including painting, sculpture, architecture, decorative arts, photography, folk art, and graphic arts. Wayne Craven presents art and artists within the context of their times, including insights into the intellectual, spiritual, and political environment. Along the way, Craven charts the growth of a distinctly American art culture. The resulting book is as much a history of American culture as of American art.

When defining culture, one must indeed take into account even the minutest of details. What of a lighter, for example, or a telephone? The essays in... this new collection examine just that. The contributors pose not only a historical, pragmatic use for the items, but also delve into more imaginative aspects of what defines us as Americans. Both the lighter and the telephone are investigated, as well as how the lava lamp represents sixties counterculture and containment. The late nineteenth- century corset is discussed as an embodiment of womanhood, and an Amish quilt is used as an illustration of cultural continuity. These are just a few of the artifacts discussed. Scholars will be intrigued by the historical interpretations that contributors proposed concerning a teapot, card table, and locket; students will not only find merit in the expositions, but also by learning from the models how such interpretation can be carried out. This collection helps us understand that very thing that makes us who we are. Viewing these objects from both our past and our present, we can begin to define what it is to be American. 

Bracelets, buckles, buttons, and beads. Clasps, combs, and chains. Items of personal adornment fill museum collections and are regularly uncovered in... historical period archaeological excavations. But until the publication of this comprehensive volume, there has been no basic guide to help curators, registrars, historians, archaeologists, or collectors identify this class of objects from colonial and early republican America. Carolyn L. White helps the reader understand and interpret these artifacts, discussing their source, manufacture, materials, function, and value in early American life. She uses them as a window on personal identity, showing how gender, age, ethnicity, and class were often displayed through the objects worn. White draws not only on the items themselves, but uses their portrayal in art, contemporary writings, advertisements, and business records to assess their meaning to their owners. A reference volume for the shelf of anyone interested in early American material culture. Over 100 illustrations and tables.

Grab your paintbrush and discover all the fundamentals of successful painting.A comprehensive overview, The American Artist Guide to Painting Techniques... shows you all the techniques you need to know to paint in watercolor, oil, acrylic and pastel. From clear instruction to new painting ideas, this a four-in-one foundation book for every artist interested in improving fundamental painting skills.First, you’ll learn 45 painting techniques step-by-step through photographs and valuable tips. Each technique includes specific details for use in oil, acrylic, watercolor, and pastels. Next, you’ll discover how to apply the techniques to subjects of particular difficulty, including landscapes, animals, portraits, still lifes, and more. Beginning painters will love the specifics on the unique properties of each painting skill, while intermediate painters will rely on the tips and reference materials to produce outstanding results.An easy-to-navigate resource manual, The American Artist Guide to Painting Techniques provides clear instruction, new painting ideas, and inspiration in encyclopedic detail for any artist picking up a brush.

In the tradition of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, this screenwriter's guide covers writing specific to the film and television industry as... well as general writing advice - truly an "Essential Guide" for the screenwriting process.

No other introductory book presents the diversity and complexity of postwar American art from Abstract Expressionism to the present as clearly and... succinctly as this groundbreaking survey.David Joselit traces and analyzes the contradictory formal, ideological, and political conditions during this period that made American art predominant throughout the world. Social and cultural transformations rooted in mass media technologies—photography, television, video, and the Internet—elevated consumer commodities to the status of legitimate art subjects, as in pop and installation art, and also brought about a mechanization of the creative act. Canonical movements and figures are discussed at length—Pollock, Rothko, Krasner, Oldenburg, Johns, Warhol, Paik, Ruscha, Sherman, Schnabel, Koons, Barney, and others—in juxtaposition with lesser known contemporary artists and practices. 183 illustrations, 80 in color

From the simple assertion that "words matter" in the study of visual art, this comprehensive but eminently readable volume gathers an extraordinary... selection of words--painters and sculptors writing in their diaries, critics responding to a sensational exhibition, groups of artists issuing stylistic manifestos, and poets reflecting on particular works of art. Along with a broad array of canonical texts, Sarah Burns and John Davis have assembled an astonishing variety of unknown, little known, or undervalued documents to convey the story of American art through the many voices of its contemporary practitioners, consumers, and commentators. American Art to 1900 highlights such critically important themes as women artists, African American representation and expression, regional and itinerant artists, Native Americans and the frontier, popular culture and vernacular imagery, institutional history, and more. With its hundreds of explanatory headnotes providing essential context and guidance to readers, this book reveals the documentary riches of American art and its many intersecting histories in unprecedented breadth, depth, and detail.

This stunning contribution to the field of theatre history is the first in-depth look at avant-garde theatre in the United States from the early 1950s... to the 1990s. American Avant-Garde Theatre offers a definition of the avant-garde, and looks at its origins and theoretical foundations by examining: *Gertrude Stein *John Cage *The Beat writers *Avant-garde cinema *Abstract Expressionism *Minimalism There are fascinating discussions and illustrations of the productions of the Living Theatre, the Wooster Group, Open Theatre, Ontological-Hysteric Theatre and Performance Group. among many others. Aronson also examines why avant-garde theatre declined and virtually disappeared at the end of the twentieth century.

Since September 11, 2001, the extensive literature on the United States’s image abroad, by popular pundits and academics alike, leaves the reader with... a false impression that foreigners’ views of America are normally negative and impervious to change. In fact they are complex, emotional, frequently internally contradictory, and often change quickly.Barry A. Sanders corrects this misimpression with a rigorous and insightful textual analysis of the roots of people’s views of the United States and what can be done to alter them. According to Sanders, the attitudes a person expresses about the United States consist of two separate components: the person’s memory bank of images (informed by American geography, people, philosophy, history, and foreign policy) and a predisposition or bias that influences which images are called forth from memory.Opinion surveys, such as the Pew Global Attitude Survey, only record the spoken result of this twostep process in their tabulation of “favorable” or “unfavorable” comments. They necessarily fail to see the underlying complexity.Examining the biases or predispositions that guide people in selecting among the myriad stored images to express an opinion on a given day, Sanders analyzes both anti-American and pro-American biases but focuses on the former, explaining which criticisms should be heeded when crafting foreign policy and communicating national objectives to friends and foes alike.

As the birthplace of the Black Panthers and a nationwide tax revolt, California embodied a crucial motif of the postwar United States: the rise of... suburbs and the decline of cities, a process in which black and white histories inextricably joined. American Babylon tells this story through Oakland and its nearby suburbs, tracing both the history of civil rights and black power politics as well as the history of suburbanization and home-owner politics. Robert Self shows that racial inequities in both New Deal and Great Society liberalism precipitated local struggles over land, jobs, taxes, and race within postwar metropolitan development. Black power and the tax revolt evolved together, in tension.American Babylon demonstrates that the history of civil rights and black liberation politics in California did not follow a southern model, but represented a long-term struggle for economic rights that began during the World War II years and continued through the rise of the Black Panthers in the late 1960s. This struggle yielded a wide-ranging and profound critique of postwar metropolitan development and its foundation of class and racial segregation. Self traces the roots of the 1978 tax revolt to the 1940s, when home owners, real estate brokers, and the federal government used racial segregation and industrial property taxes to forge a middle-class lifestyle centered on property ownership.Using the East Bay as a starting point, Robert Self gives us a richly detailed, engaging narrative that uniquely integrates the most important racial liberation struggles and class politics of postwar America.

A must-have for every householdThe American Bar Association Complete Home Legal Guide is the go-to legal reference for every home. This completely... revised and updated edition now includes easy-to-digest, comprehensive legal information every household needs. In addition to tips on real estate, healthcare, home ownership, retirement and much more, there are new useful charts and graphs, insightful personal stories, and a new chapter on the growing specialty of ‘disabled’ or ‘special needs’ law that will be helpful to an even larger audience.

From the nation's most authoritative legal organization, American Bar Association guides are invaluable resources for the lay person. Thoroughly... researched, updated, and reviewed by association members, each book features tips, checklists, and key information, presented in well-organized sections.The definitive resource for family-related legal issues. Now thoroughly revised and updated, this guide contains everything heads of households, parents, and divorcees should know about the law and their rights.• Topics include marriage, divorce and separation, adoption, child support, dependent care, bankruptcy, and retirement and estate planning• Also includes information for unmarried couples, unconventional families, and gay and lesbian couples

Regardless of your occupation or title, or whether you an employee or small business owner, it’s essential to know your rights. From the nation's... leading legal authority, this completely revised and updated edition of The American Bar Association Guide to Workplace Law provides helpful insight and information for employers and employees alike.• Topics include hiring, firing, retirement, sexual harassment, maternity leave, workplace safety, and more—all explained in clear, non-technical language • Thoroughly researched and updated by members of the American Bar Association, the nation’s most authoritative legal organization• Features sidebars containing tips, advice, and key information

This authoritative 2010 supplement provides detailed coverage of new developments in employment law. Initial sections provide a framework for... understanding the background and development of employment law. Subsequent chapters examine the hiring process, discrimination, terms and conditions of employment, wages and hours, health insurance and other fringe benefits, conditions of employment, occupational safety and health, disabling injury and illness, termination and discharge, leaving a job, unemployment, and retirement.

Includes such presentations as: Introduction to Adversary System; Other Views of Adversary System; The Trial Judge: The Limits of Neutrality and... Passivity; Place of the Jury in Adversarial Adjudication; and Lawyers: Their Usefulness, Zeal, and Candor.