Examining the sport and image of female body building as a metaphor for how women fare in the current political and cultural climate, this text draws on contemporary feminist and cultural theory. It reveals how female bodybuilders find themselves both trapped and empowered by their sport.

Brings together several essays by seventeen scholars to explore the complexity of the essential connection between film and modernity. This volume shows us the significant ways that film has both grown in the context of the modern world and played a central role in reflecting and shaping our interactions with it.

How do the circumstances in which we write affect what we write? In a series of traditional and experimental writings, the author records an intellectual journey, creating new ways of reading and writing. The sociological imagination is applied to the act of writing, as life is connected to work.

Drawing on "Jules and Jim" and other films by Francois Truffaut, the author provides an in-depth examination of the multifaceted relationship between Truffaut and Henri-Pierre Roche, the French writer and art collector. The book also moves beyond Truffaut's films to explore the intertwined lives and works of other famous artists and intellectuals.

The contributors to this volume attempt to fill the gap in critical consideration of women writers of the Beat Generation and evaluate their lives and literary output, helping the reader appreciate their unique, diverse voices during a dynamic moment of profound cultural change.

Analysing over one hundred representations of lynching, Dora Apel shows how the visual documentation of such crimes can be a central vehicle for the construction and reinforcement of racial hierarchies. Lynching was often orchestrated explicitly for the camera, and photographs were used to construct ideologies of "whiteness" and "blackness.

The prevalence of insanity, which was once considerably less than one case per 1,000 total population, has risen beyond five cases in 1,000. Why has insanity reached epidemic proportions? What are the causes of severe mental illness? This book examines the records on insanity in England, Ireland, Canada, and United States over a 250-year period.

Moves beyond the stereotypes that conflate arranged marriages with forced marriages. Using in-depth interviews and participant observations, this book assembles a rich and diverse array of everyday marriage narratives and trajectories and highlights how considerations of romantic love are woven into traditional arranged marriage practices.