For seven seasons, AMC's Mad Men captivated audiences with the story of Don Draper, an advertising executive whose personal and professional successes and failures took viewers on a roller coaster ride through America's tumultuous 1960s. More than just a television show about one of advertising's "bad boys," the series investigates the principles of the American regime, exploring whether or not the American Dream is a sustainable vision of human flourishing and happiness. This collection of essays investigates the show's engagement with the philosophic and political foundations of American...
For seven seasons, AMC's Mad Men captivated audiences with the story of Don Draper, an advertising executive whose personal and professional successes...
As political units grow it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a shared sense of humanity and to recognize people as individuals rather than anonymous beings. To overcome our most pressing political issues we need to develop a moral imagination so that we may renew our sense of connectedness and responsibility to one another. Bringing together politics and art is one way this can be accomplished. This book draws upon political sources as well as works in literature, film and theater to show the limits of politics and the need for a moral imagination.
As political units grow it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a shared sense of humanity and to recognize people as individuals rather than an...
The Politics of Perfection: Technology and Creation in Literature and Film provides an exploration of the relationship between modern technological progress and classical liberalism. Each chapter provides a detailed analysis of a film or novel, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Ridley Scott's Prometheus, Michael Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. These works of fiction are examined through the lens of political thinkers ranging from Plato to Hannah Arendt. The compatibility of classical liberalism and...
The Politics of Perfection: Technology and Creation in Literature and Film provides an exploration of the relationship between modern technological pr...
Shakespeare between Machiavelli and Hobbes explores Shakespeare's political outlook by comparing some of the playwright's best-known works to the works of Italian political theorist Niccolo Machiavelli and English social contract theorist Thomas Hobbes. By situating Shakespeare 'between' these two thinkers, the distinctly modern trajectory of the playwright's work becomes visible. Throughout his career, Shakespeare interrogates the divine right of kings, absolute monarchy, and the metaphor of the body politic. Simultaneously he helps to lay the groundwork for modern politics through his...
Shakespeare between Machiavelli and Hobbes explores Shakespeare's political outlook by comparing some of the playwright's best-known works to the work...
This book seeks to fill a double lacuna in Borges scholarship. For one, this scholarship has been largely developed through the lens of literary and cultural studies, and not by political theorists who bring a distinct disciplinary perspective into the reading of literary works. Secondly, mainstream interpreters have overlooked or have not analyzed enough Borges s political sympathies. This book does not evaluate if these sympathies are truthful to political and historical facts or philosophical theories; rather, she shows in which aspects and around which topics Borges finds inspiration and...
This book seeks to fill a double lacuna in Borges scholarship. For one, this scholarship has been largely developed through the lens of literary and c...
Romanticism and Civilization examines romantic alternatives to modern life in Rousseau's foundational novel Julie. It argues that Julie is a response to the ills of modern civilization, and that Rousseau saw that the Enlightenment's combination of science and of democracy degraded human life by making it bourgeois. The bourgeois is man uprooted by science and attached to nothing but himself. He lives a commercial life and his materialism and calculations penetrate all aspects of his existence. He is neither citizen, nor family man, nor lover in any serious sense: his life is meaningless....
Romanticism and Civilization examines romantic alternatives to modern life in Rousseau's foundational novel Julie. It argues that Julie is a response ...
Milton's Socratic Rationalism focuses on the influence of Milton's years of private study of classical authors, chiefly Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle, on Paradise Lost. It examines the conversations of Adam and Eve as a mode of discourse closely aligned to practices of Socrates in the dialogues of Plato and eponymous discourses of Xenophon.
Milton's Socratic Rationalism focuses on the influence of Milton's years of private study of classical authors, chiefly Plato, Xenophon and Aristotle,...
Walker Percy is one of America's great novelists, and he ought to be known as a political thinker as well. In Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer, Brian A. Smith makes the case that we should understand Percy's novels and essays together as a guide to living in a complex world. Percy cultivated a philosophical and literary approach that revealed the fault lines in the modern mind. He portrayed man as a wayfarer: peristantly unsatisfied and wandering in search of a perfectly complete solution to life's dilemmas. His writing captures the restlessness of the human heart and allows us...
Walker Percy is one of America's great novelists, and he ought to be known as a political thinker as well. In Walker Percy and the Politics of the Way...
Cowboy Politics uses key works of literature, film, and television to explore how westerns address political challenges of Western civilization. This book tracks how westerns supplement liberal politics with republican, populist, perfectionist, and environmentalist politics.
Cowboy Politics uses key works of literature, film, and television to explore how westerns address political challenges of Western civilization. This ...
This book analyzes major films about the American political process since the 1930s. It considers the films' major themes about politics, ideology, and representation of race and gender over the past several decades.
This book analyzes major films about the American political process since the 1930s. It considers the films' major themes about politics, ideology, an...
