Books about Spheres from Amazon.com

This is Jurgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies..
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One great omnibus of three of Crichton's most popular adventures, with his trademark blend of breathtaking suspense and cutting-edge technology .
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The Female Complaint is part of Lauren Berlant's groundbreaking "national sentimentality" project charting the emergence of the U.S. political sphere as an affective space of attachment and identification. In this book, Berlant chronicles the origins and conventions of the first mass-cultural "intimate public" in the United States, a "women's culture" distinguished by a view that women inevitably have something in common and are in need of a conversation that feels intimate and revelatory. As Berlant explains, "women's" books, films, and television shows enact a fantasy that a woman's life is not just her own, but an experience understood by other women, no matter how dissimilar they are. The commodified genres of intimacy, such as "chick lit," circulate among strangers, enabling insider self-help talk to flourish in an intimate public. Sentimentality and complaint are central to this commercial convention of critique; their relation to the political realm is ambivalent, as politics seems both to threaten sentimental values and to provide certain opportunities for their extension.

Pairing literary criticism and historical analysis, Berlant explores the territory of this intimate public sphere through close readings of U.S. women's literary works and their stage and film adaptations. Her interpretation of Uncle Tom's Cabin and its literary descendants reaches from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Toni Morrison's Beloved, touching on Shirley Temple, James Baldwin, and The Bridges of Madison County along the way. Berlant illuminates different permutations of the women's intimate public through her readings of Edna Ferber's Show Boat; Fannie Hurst's Imitation of Life; Olive Higgins Prouty's feminist melodrama Now, Voyager; Dorothy Parker's poetry, prose, and Academy Award-winning screenplay for A Star Is Born; the Fay Weldon novel and Roseanne Barr film The Life and Loves of a She-Devil; and the queer, avant-garde film Showboat 1988-The Remake. The Female Complaint is a major contribution from a leading Americanist..
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Cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres Sounds sophisticated? Only until you look at Tana Hoban's incomparable photographs and realize that those shapes are the stuff of everyday life. They are all around us all the time. In our houses, on our streets, in our hands. In yet another breathtaking book, Tana Hoban wakes us up to our world and makes us see it..
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Hip-hop culture began in the early 1970s as the creative and activist expressions -- graffiti writing, dee-jaying, break dancing, and rap music -- of black and Latino youth in the depressed South Bronx, and the movement has since grown into a worldwide cultural phenomenon that permeates almost every aspect of society, from speech to dress. But although hip-hop has been assimilated and exploited in the mainstream, young black women who came of age during the hip-hop era are still fighting for equality.

In this provocative study, Gwendolyn D. Pough explores the complex relationship between black women, hip-hop, and feminism. Examining a wide range of genres, including rap music, novels, spoken word poetry, hip-hop cinema, and hip-hop soul music, she traces the rhetoric of black women "bringing wreck." Pough demonstrates how influential women rappers such as Queen Latifah, Missy Elliot, and Lil' Kim are building on the legacy of earlier generations of women -- from Sojourner Truth to sisters of the black power and civil rights movements -- to disrupt and break into the dominant patriarchal public sphere. She discusses the ways in which today's young black women struggle against the stereotypical language of the past ("castrating black mother," "mammy," "sapphire") and the present ("bitch," "ho," "chickenhead"), and shows how rap provides an avenue to tell their own life stories, to construct their identities, and to dismantle historical and contemporary negative representations of black womanhood. Pough also looks at the ongoing public dialogue between male and female rappers about love and relationships, explaining how the denigrating rhetoric used by men has been appropriated by black women rappers as a means to empowerment in their own lyrics. The author concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications of rap music as well as of third wave and black feminism.

This fresh and thought-provoking perspective on the complexities of hip-hop urges young black women to harness the energy, vitality, and activist roots of hip-hop culture and rap music to claim a public voice for themselves and to "bring wreck" on sexism and misogyny in mainstream society..
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Drawing on his own experience teaching diverse grades and subjects, Kevin Kumashiro examines aspects of teaching and learning toward social justice, and suggests concrete implications for K-12 teachers and teacher educators..
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"This all combines into an intensive introduction to an important aspect of communication—written by a man who has played an active part in the field about which he writes."

—COMMUNICATION BOOKNOTES QUARTERLY

Environmental Communication and the Public Sphere is the first book to offer a comprehensive introduction to the growing field of environmental communication. This groundbreaking book focuses on the role of communication in influencing the ways in which we perceive the environment as well as what actions we and others take in our relations to the natural world.  

Key Features:

• Provides comprehensive coverage:  Thorough treatment is given of the complexity and range of issues, sites, and practices in the field. All of the basic areas of environmental communication are surveyed, including citizen involvement, media, conflict resolution, “green marketing,” and much more. Many of the practices of media, corporations, and advocacy groups that are not readily available in public sources are examined.
• Blends scholarship and hands-on experience: Current scholarship is combined with the use of examples and case studies to describe the different forums and the diversity of voices speaking about the environment (such as journalists, environmental groups, public officials, scientists, ordinary citizens, and corporate lobbyists).  Author Robbie Cox draws on his personal experiences as two-time president of the largest U.S. environmental group—The Sierra Club—to offer insights into the workings of citizens’ efforts, the media, advocacy campaigns, and other “real world” cases of environmental communication.
• Encourages citizen participation: Students are given insight into the practical ways to participate publicly in influencing the decisions of governmental agencies that affect the environment. In addition, “Act Locally” exercises provide opportunities for students to apply their knowledge of the principles of environmental communication on their campus and in their community.  

Intended Audience:
Ideal for undergraduate students in the fields of Communication and Environmental Studies studying Environmental Communication, Environmental Rhetoric, Media and the Environment, or Introduction to Environmental Studies. The text is also appropriate for courses studying environmental movements in Sociology and Cultural Anthropology.  

(20061205).
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