Poetry, Design, and the Cybernetic Imaginary in Brazil
A study of concrete art and poetry, its implications, and influence in Brazil. Concrete art and poetry burst onto Brazil's cultural stage in the 1950s, while the country was embarking on a dizzying period of modernization. Bringing together key poets and visual artists alongside less recognized figures, Nathaniel Wolfson shows that concretism ......
The secret life of a Palestinian Communist activist during the rise of World War II. In the public eye, Najati Sidqi was known as a journalist and writer, a translator of Russian classics, and an outspoken opponent of Nazism. However, Sidqi concealed a critical component of his life from the world and his family. He was an underground activist ......
Theater, Identity, and Political Culture in Cairo, 1869-1930
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during the "protectorate" period of British occupation in Egypt - theaters and other performance sites were vital for imagining, mirroring, debating, and shaping competing conceptions of modern Egyptian identity. Central figures in this diverse spectrum were the effendis, an emerging class of ......
During World War I, the British Empire enlisted half a million young men, predominantly from the countryside of Egypt, in the Egyptian Labor Corps (ELC) and put them to work handling military logistics in Europe and the Middle East. British authorities reneged on their promise not to draw Egyptians into the war, and, as Kyle Anderson shows, the ......
Travel Narratives in the Cinema of Alexander Payne
The first in-depth analysis of the films of Alexander Payne through the lenses of authorship, tourism, and leisure. With the films Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, Nebraska, and The Holdovers, Alexander Payne has carved out an unusual role in American cinema as a bankable auteur. There is something about Payne's neurotics and searchers, his ......
An analysis of how post-9/11 war movies changed from following soldiers on specific missions to chronicling war as a day-to-day occupation. In 2003, the United States began a war in Iraq without a mission. Instead of fighting to restore peace-the traditional objective of warfare-servicemembers faced the grim reality that there was no goal. ......
How West Texas business and culture molded the rise of conservatism in the United States. Much of what we understand as modern American political conservatism was born in West Texas, where today it predominates. How did the people of such a vast region-larger than New England and encompassing big cities like Lubbock and Amarillo, as well as tiny ......
Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan
Focuses on contemporary art and media to examine the role of visuals in environmental violence and war in Northern Kurdistan. Extractivism-exploiting the earth for resources-has long driven racial capitalism and colonialism. And yet, how does extractivism operate in a world where ecological and humanitarian sensibilities are unprecedentedly ......
