The glamorous world of big-city geisha is familiar to many readers, but little has been written of the life of hardship and pain led by the hot-springs-resort geisha. Indentured to geisha houses by families in desperate poverty, deprived of freedom and identity, these young women lived in a world of sex for sale, unadorned by the trappings of wealth and celebrity. Sayo Masuda has written the first full-length autobiography of a former hot-springs-resort geisha. Masuda was sent to work as a nursemaid at the age of six and then was sold to a geisha house at the age of twelve. In keeping with...
The glamorous world of big-city geisha is familiar to many readers, but little has been written of the life of hardship and pain led by the hot-spring...
What if Shakespeare found himself living in modern-day Manhattan? The Sonnets follows Will Marlowe, a Columbia University English professor, who, while teaching a class on Shakespeare, realizes that his life is beginning to parallel the Bard's sonnets. Although married to a woman named Anne, Will falls for a handsome young man who inspires him, and becomes involved with a dark, mysterious, feminist graduate student. Nudging into the fray is the university poet, a rival of Will's, who tries to steal the young man away. Will is now forced to face the funny and disastrous consequences of these...
What if Shakespeare found himself living in modern-day Manhattan? The Sonnets follows Will Marlowe, a Columbia University English professor, who, whil...
"Nowadays, most readers take the intersection between fiction and fact for granted. We've developed a faculty for pretending that even the most bizarre literary inventions are, for the nonce, real. . . . The value of Davis's book is that it explores the h
"Nowadays, most readers take the intersection between fiction and fact for granted. We've developed a faculty for pretending that even the most bizarr...
With the advent of the human genome, cloning, stem-cell research and many other developments in the way we think of the body, disability studies provides an entirely new way of thinking about the body in its relation to politics, the environment, the legal system, and global economies.
Bending Over Backwards reexamines issues concerning the relationship between disability and normality in the light of postmodern theory and political activism. Davis takes up homosexuality, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the legal system, the history of science and medicine, eugenics, and...
With the advent of the human genome, cloning, stem-cell research and many other developments in the way we think of the body, disability studies pr...
With the advent of the human genome, cloning, stem-cell research and many other developments in the way we think of the body, disability studies provides an entirely new way of thinking about the body in its relation to politics, the environment, the legal system, and global economies.
Bending Over Backwards reexamines issues concerning the relationship between disability and normality in the light of postmodern theory and political activism. Davis takes up homosexuality, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the legal system, the history of science and medicine, eugenics,...
With the advent of the human genome, cloning, stem-cell research and many other developments in the way we think of the body, disability studies pr...
In this highly original study of the cultural assumptions governing our conception of people with disabilities, Lennard J. Davis argues forcefully against "ableist" discourse and for a complete recasting of the category of disability itself. Enforcing Normalcy surveys the emergence of a cluster of concepts around the term "normal" as these matured in western Europe and the United States over the past 250 years. Linking such notions to the concurrent emergence of discourses about the nation, Davis shows how the modern nation-state constructed its identity on the backs not only of...
In this highly original study of the cultural assumptions governing our conception of people with disabilities, Lennard J. Davis argues forcefully aga...
Lennard J. Davis grew up as the hearing child of deaf parents. In this candid, affecting, and often funny memoir, he recalls the joys and confusions of this special world, especially his complex and sometimes difficult relationships with his working-class Jewish immigrant parents. Gracefully slipping through memory, regret, longing, and redemption, My Sense of Silence is an eloquent remembrance of human ties and human failings.
Lennard J. Davis grew up as the hearing child of deaf parents. In this candid, affecting, and often funny memoir, he recalls the joys and confusions o...
We live in an age of obsession. Not only are we hopelessly devoted to our work, strangely addicted to our favorite television shows, and desperately impassioned about our cars, we admire obsession in others: we demand that lovers be infatuated with one another in films, we respond to the passion of single-minded musicians, we cheer on driven athletes. To be obsessive is to be American; to be obsessive is to be modern.
But obsession is not only a phenomenon of modern existence: it is a medical category-both a pathology and a goal. Behind this paradox lies a fascinating history, which...
We live in an age of obsession. Not only are we hopelessly devoted to our work, strangely addicted to our favorite television shows, and desperatel...
By providing a meditative overview of the past twenty years in the political study and teaching of literature, Where We're Bound assesses the concrete contributions of the sixties and the kind of changes that needed to come about to institutionalize the activism of this period. Twenty years ago, Louis Kampf and Paul Lauter published their groundbreaking anthology, Politics of Literature. It was the first book, born out of the sixties, to integrate the political insights of the New Left into the practice of literary criticism. Keenly aware of the politics and criticism since the sixties, Davis...
By providing a meditative overview of the past twenty years in the political study and teaching of literature, Where We're Bound assesses the concrete...
We live in an age of obsession. Not only are we hopelessly devoted to our work, strangely addicted to our favorite television shows, and desperately impassioned about our cars, we admire obsession in others: we demand that lovers be infatuated with one another in films, we respond to the passion of single-minded musicians, we cheer on driven athletes. To be obsessive is to be American; to be obsessive is to be modern.
But obsession is not only a phenomenon of modern existence: it is a medical category both a pathology and a goal. Behind this paradox lies a fascinating history, which...
We live in an age of obsession. Not only are we hopelessly devoted to our work, strangely addicted to our favorite television shows, and desperatel...