Contemporary African American dramatists such as Amiri Baraka, James Baldwin, August Wilson, and Suzan-Lori Parks as well as Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, and Pearl Cleage find their creative inspiration in historical events from slavery to the civil rights movement. From the Emmett Till-inspired character in Baldwin s Blues for Mister Charlie to Parks s recreation of Lincoln and Booth, these playwrights show that history is the mirror that shapes the identities of African American writers and characters."

Makilam s research on the history of women and Berber culture, one of North Africa s most ancient civilizations, demonstrates that the Kabyle women s magic practices, graphic symbols, and rites of passage permit a new interpretation of their cultural identity from those that have traditionally been attributed to them by Western observers. This completely new vision of the symbolic grammar of the -decorations, - notably expressed in pottery, weaving, tattoos, and wall-paintings, leads us to reconsider the meaning of the Kabyle arts and contributes to our knowledge of Maghreb cultures and the...

This book is an insider s guide to how the comic book industry works. You ll learn how comic book superheroes are created and the deeper meanings they represent. You ll follow the development of sequential art storytelling from caveman wall paintings to modern manga and cinematic techniques. Here you will explore comics in all forms: those flimsy pamphlets we call comic books; thick graphic novels; Japanese manga; and blockbuster movies featuring epic battles between good and evil. But behind it all, you ll discover how comics are an intellectual property business, the real money found in...

Personal Being: Polanyi, Ontology, and Christian Theology contributes to Michael Polanyi studies, to the conversation between philosophy and theology, and to the contemporary renaissance in trinitarian theology. The author begins by elaborating the ontology implied by Polanyi s theory of personal knowledge and argues that personhood is a fundamental category for understanding reality. He then explores the reception of Polanyi s philosophy in theological studies and outlines a method responsive to interdisciplinary dialogue. Finally, he employs a Polanyian model of personhood to examine...

This interdisciplinary volume centers on the interrelations of storytelling and various manifestations of cultural identity, from written to oral and from autobiographical to regional and national. Indigenous storytelling, as well as storytelling for and by children and the elderly, are the main focus of these essays. Together, these fifteen texts make a significant contribution toward a deeper understanding of various aspects of textual and oral narrative: they broaden the lines of inquiry into multidisciplinary and multicultural interests, particularly those centering on the construction,...

Kabyle women from Algeria were believed to have been relegated to a role, subjugated by dominant males, in which they were confined to reproduction, nature, and their sensibilities. The weaknesses created by this inequality were thought to be compensated for by their living inconspicuous lives practicing magic, especially in love. Makilam rejects these preconceived ideas and demonstrates that women s magic was expressed in every domain of their daily lives: pottery making, food provision/preparation, and weaving. In fact, the traditional Kabyle society was incapable of functioning without...

We the users turned creators and distributors of content are TIME s Person of the Year 2006, and AdAge s Advertising Agency of the Year 2007. We form a new Generation C. We have MySpace, YouTube, and OurMedia; we run social software, and drive the development of Web 2.0. But beyond the hype, what s really going on?
In this groundbreaking exploration of our developing participatory online culture, Axel Bruns establishes the core principles which drive the rise of collaborative content creation in environments, from open source through blogs and Wikipedia to Second Life. This book shows...

Women in the Shadows discusses the biographies of five brilliant and talented women born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire: Mileva Einstein-Maric, Margarete Jeanne Trakl, Lise Meitner, Milena Jesenska, and Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky. Charles S. Chiu creates a narrative against forgetting, as a small step out of darkness by writing about these women's accomplishments, which were overshadowed by those of the famous men in their lives. Edith Borchardt's translation brings this narrative to a wider audience.
Women in the Shadows will interest scientists and scholars in the...

The Songs Became the Stories: The Music in African-American Fiction, 1970 2005 is a sequel to The Music in African-American Fiction, which traced the representation of music in fiction from its mid-nineteenth-century roots in slave narratives through the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. The Songs Became the Stories continues the historical, critical and musicological analyses of the first book through an examination of many of the major figures in African-American fiction over the past thirty-five years, including Ishmael Reed, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Nathaniel...