A Good Book, In Theory

A Good Book, In Theory PDF

Author: Alan Sears

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2015-03-19

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1442600977

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This highly original and compelling book offers an introduction to the art and science of social inquiry, including the theoretical and methodological frameworks that support that inquiry. The new edition offers coverage of post-modernism and Indigenous ways of knowing, as well as a discussion of the research process and how to communicate arguments effectively. The result is a book that blends the best of earlier editions with updates that provide a strong foundation in critical thinking, rooted in the social sciences but relevant across disciplines.

Love, in Theory

Love, in Theory PDF

Author: Ellen J. Levy

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2015-03-15

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0820348279

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In this funny, brainy, thoroughly engaging debut collection, an award-winning writer looks at romance through the lens of scholarly theories to illuminate love in the information age. In ten captivating and tender stories, E. J. Levy takes readers through the surprisingly erotic terrain of the intellect, offering a smart and modern take on the age-old theme of love--whether between a man and woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or a mother and a child--drawing readers into tales of passion, adultery, and heartbreak. A disheartened English professor's life changes when she goes rock climbing and falls for an outdoorsman. A gay oncologist attending his sister's second wedding ponders dark matter in the universe and the ties that bind us. Three psychiatric patients, each convinced that he is Christ, give rise to a love affair in a small Minnesota town. A Brooklyn woman is thrown out of an ashram for choosing earthly love over enlightenment. A lesbian student of film learns theories of dramatic action the hard way--by falling for a married male professor. Incorporating theories from physics to film to philosophy, from Rational Choice to Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class, these stories movingly explore the heart and mind--shooting cupid's arrow toward a target that may never be reached.

In Theory

In Theory PDF

Author: Aijaz Ahmad

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 1789603633

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After the Second World War, nationalism emerged as the principle expression of resistance to Western imperialism in a variety of regions from the Indian subcontinent to Africa, to parts of Latin America and the Pacific Rim. With the Bandung Conference and the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement, many of Europe's former colonies banded together to form a common bloc, aligned with neither the advanced capitalist "First World" nor with the socialist "Second World." In this historical context, the category of "Third World literature" emerged, a category that has itself spawned a whole industry of scholarly and critical studies, particularly in the metropolitan West, but increasingly in the homelands of the Third World itself. Setting himself against the growing tendency to homogenize "Third World" literature and cultures, Aijaz Ahmad has produced a spirited critique of the major theoretical statements on "colonial discourse" and "post-colonialism," dismantling many of the commonplaces and conceits that dominate contemporary cultural criticism. With lengthy considerations of, among others, Fredric Jameson, Edward Said, and the Subaltern Studies group, In Theory also contains brilliant analyses of the concept of Indian literature, of the genealogy of the term "Third World," and of the conditions under which so-called "colonial discourse theory" emerged in metropolitan intellectual circles. Erudite and lucid, Ahmad's remapping of the terrain of cultural theory is certain to provoke passionate response.

Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964-2016

Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964-2016 PDF

Author: Elleni Centime Zeleke

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-10-14

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 9004414770

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Between the years 1964 and 1974, Ethiopian post-secondary students studying at home, in Europe, and in North America produced a number of journals. In these they explored the relationship between social theory and social change within the project of building a socialist Ethiopia. Ethiopia in Theory examines the literature of this student movement, together with the movement’s afterlife in Ethiopian politics and society, in order to ask: what does it mean to write today about the appropriation and indigenisation of Marxist and mainstream social science ideas in an Ethiopian and African context; and, importantly, what does the archive of revolutionary thought in Africa teach us about the practice of critical theory more generally?

Popular Music in Theory

Popular Music in Theory PDF

Author: Keith Negus

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 1997-02-28

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780819563101

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A lively contribution to the debates that are central to popular music studies.

The Body in Theory

The Body in Theory PDF

Author: Becky R. McLaughlin

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2021-08-23

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1476678553

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The body has always had the potential to unsettle us with its strange exigencies and suppurations, its demands and desires, and thus throughout the ages, it has continued to be a subject of interest and obsession. This collection of twelve peer-reviewed essays on Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault interrogates the body in all of its beauty...and with all of its blights and blemishes. Written by a diverse body of scholars--art historians, cultural theorists, English professors, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and sociologists from North America and Europe--these essays bring into conversation two intellectual giants frequently seen as antagonists, and thus rarely seen together. Topics covered include: the intersections of Foucault and Lacan and how they bring to light new thoughts on the senses, the self-destructive body, ableism and disability in Guillermo del Toro's film The Shape of Water, body image and the ego, selfie-culture, and metamorphosis in Ottessa Moshfegh's novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation, among others.

My Life in Theory

My Life in Theory PDF

Author: Leo Rangell

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2004-03-17

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1590511131

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This is a rare autobiographical history written from the center of the inner circle of psychoanalysis. Today, only a few psychoanalysts remain who have Dr. Rangell's unique, insider's view of the last half century of psychoanalytic history. His close associations with the major contributors to theory during this time permit him to chronicle the constant marriage of people and ideas that has been the hallmark of the psychoanalytic community over the previous decades. His insights are enhanced by his leadership role across the spectrum of psychoanalytic organizations (local, national, and international) that has allowed him to witness and participate in the great debates of our time. Written as Dr. Rangell approached the age of 90, this chronicle possesses the same clarity and incisiveness that has always characterized Rangell's writing. He is still the tough-minded thinker ready to challenge the fuzzy thinking that threatens to split psychoanalysis into factions. In this work, Dr. Rangell gives us his valuable perspective on the significant individuals in psychoanalysis and their ideas: from the early dissension of the 20s and 30s to the war years, to the "golden years" of the 50s and early 60s where complications in the field manifested in the splitting of Institutes. He goes on to cover the turmoil surrounding the theoretical debates of the 70s, followed by his look at the attempt at pluralism in the 80s, the eclecticism of the 90s, and finishing with a discussion of the discipline as it is now. Then, using his own prodigious contributions to the great debates of our time, Dr. Rangell fuses divisive views into a unitary theory of psychoanalysis. This composite theory offers an amalgamated view that provides coherence in place of the fragmentation, personal warring, and disarray that constitutes the present state of psychoanalysis.

Magic in Theory

Magic in Theory PDF

Author: Peter Lamont

Publisher: Univ of Hertfordshire Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 165

ISBN-13: 1902806506

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A useful manual for any magician or curious spectator who wonders why the tricks seem so real, this guide examines the psychological aspects of a magician’s work. Exploring the ways in which human psychology plays into the methods of conjuring rather than focusing on the individual tricks alone, this explanation of the general principles of magic includes chapters on the use of misdirection, sleight of hand, and reconstruction, provides a better understanding of this ancient art, and offers a section on psychics that warns of their deceptive magic skills.

Europe (in Theory)

Europe (in Theory) PDF

Author: Roberto M. Dainotto

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2007-01-09

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0822389622

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Europe (in Theory) is an innovative analysis of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ideas about Europe that continue to inform thinking about culture, politics, and identity today. Drawing on insights from subaltern and postcolonial studies, Roberto M. Dainotto deconstructs imperialism not from the so-called periphery but from within Europe itself. He proposes a genealogy of Eurocentrism that accounts for the way modern theories of Europe have marginalized the continent’s own southern region, portraying countries including Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal as irrational, corrupt, and clan-based in comparison to the rational, civic-minded nations of northern Europe. Dainotto argues that beginning with Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws (1748), Europe not only defined itself against an “Oriental” other but also against elements within its own borders: its South. He locates the roots of Eurocentrism in this disavowal; internalizing the other made it possible to understand and explain Europe without reference to anything beyond its boundaries. Dainotto synthesizes a vast array of literary, philosophical, and historical works by authors from different parts of Europe. He scrutinizes theories that came to dominate thinking about the continent, including Montesquieu’s invention of Europe’s north-south divide, Hegel’s “two Europes,” and Madame de Staël’s idea of opposing European literatures: a modern one from the North, and a pre-modern one from the South. At the same time, Dainotto brings to light counter-narratives written from Europe’s margins, such as the Spanish Jesuit Juan Andrés’s suggestion that the origins of modern European culture were eastern rather than northern and the Italian Orientalist Michele Amari’s assertion that the South was the cradle of a social democracy brought to Europe via Islam.

Eating in Theory

Eating in Theory PDF

Author: Annemarie Mol

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2021-03-01

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1478012927

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As we taste, chew, swallow, digest, and excrete, our foods transform us, while our eating, in its turn, affects the wider earthly environment. In Eating in Theory Annemarie Mol takes inspiration from these transformative entanglements to rethink what it is to be human. Drawing on fieldwork at food conferences, research labs, health care facilities, restaurants, and her own kitchen table, Mol reassesses the work of authors such as Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans Jonas, and Emmanuel Levinas. They celebrated the allegedly unique capability of humans to rise above their immediate bodily needs. Mol, by contrast, appreciates that as humans we share our fleshy substance with other living beings, whom we cultivate, cut into pieces, transport, prepare, and incorporate—and to whom we leave our excesses. This has far-reaching philosophical consequences. Taking human eating seriously suggests a reappraisal of being as transformative, knowing as entangling, doing as dispersed, and relating as a matter of inescapable dependence.