Sociology Commons^™

On Chris Lehmann's Revolt Of The Masscult, George Ciccariello Maher

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The good folks at Prickly Paradigm are certainly doing their job. Their stated objective is “publishing challenging and sometimes outrageous pamphlets,” and Lehmann's short piece fulfills this claim brilliantly, evoking intellectual mood swings that span from shouting for joy at a particularly lucid formulation to shouting angrily at the deftness with which Lehmann transforms his lucidity into suspiciously wrongheaded and reactionary assessments. The clinical bipolarity of this work, as we will see, is no coincidence: it is precisely the political entanglement of the subject of mass culture (“masscult”) that leads to both respect for one's opponents and suspicion …

On Brian Attebery’S Decoding Gender In Science Fiction, C. Jason Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The premise of Decoding Gender in Science Fiction is, as Brian Attebery states in the first chapter, that “Science fiction is a useful tool for investigating habits of thought, including conceptions of gender. Gender, in turn, offers an interesting glimpse into some of the unacknowledged messages that permeate science fiction” (1). What we have in Decoding Gender in Science Fiction is the most comprehensive analysis of gender tropes in Science Fiction from its origins in Gothic literature to today. Attebery states in his introduction that he was surprised to find there was no historical study of the development …

On Justine Larbalestier’S The Battle Of The Sexes In Science Fiction, Joe Bisz

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Science Fiction, writes author Justine Larbalestier, has always told the tale of the battle between the sexes. The battle can be witnessed from afar, as in the grainy 1930’s letter columns in old sci-fi magazines like Astounding where quarrels over innate sexual differences were published and debated, or from up close in today’s literature. Larbalestier declares that the goal of her book is to illustrate how necessary and important this former, pre-70’s period of science fiction (1926 to 1973) is to contemporary feminist science fiction. The pre-70’s time period has been consistently ignored by critics, who fixate on …

On Lillian Robinson’S Wonder Women: Feminisms And Superheroes, Carlos Hernandez

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Sure, we all know that one of the primary functions of comic books is to titillate the proto-patriarchal penises of 12-year-old boys. But might this all-American art form have more to offer women than wedgie-prone bikini bottoms and cleavage from the Planet of the Fembots? According to Lillian Robinson’s Wonder Women, the answer is “Yes, but ....” The “Yes” part comes primarily, and foundationally, through the original Wonder Woman comics of the 40s, which told a story that to this day remains almost unheard-of in comic books: the story of a fully-realized female protagonist. For Robinson, the …

On Bill V. Mullen's Afro-Orientalism, Graham Barnfield

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

For two decades Edward Said's Orientalism has occupied a significant place in how we think through the cultural relations between what we now call ‘North’ and ‘South’. Conceived in the 1970s, Said’s model mounted a challenge to readers in the west, suggesting they should unlearn what they know of the east. Despite its influence, one weakness of this approach was the underlying suggestion that orientalism was a one-way street, constituting a fixed set of perceptions or timeless discourses. In and without the Orientalist imagination, what is to be done with those in ‘the Occident’ who find themselves treated …

The Ghost In The Law School: How Duncan Kennedy Caught The Hierarchy Zeitgeist But Missed The Point, Steve Sheppard

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

One-Way Street In A Global City: Don Delillo And The Lugubrious Boredom Of The New Economy, Samuel Gerald Collins

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

few of the things we have fought against in cultural studies include the erroneous perceptions that the forces associated with globalization are 1) benefiting the world's peoples and 2) producing a homogeneous global culture. Against this, we have proffered endless texts documenting the sufferings of the world's peoples and critiquing the underlying assumptions regarding U.S. and Western hegemony as well as more hopeful tracts charting a more equitable future as an alternative to crushing regimes of neo-liberalism. In this, we have been joined by countless activists as well as others in women's studies, Latino/a studies, international relations and …

Reading Owen's Between Reason And History: Habermas And The Idea Of Progress , Ali Rizvi

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

From the start Habermas' work has been an attempt at synthesising certain core insights from Kant and Hegel, as it is clearly evident from the beginning chapters of his first major work Knowledge and Human Interest (KHI). In the structure of the book Marx's position is as the mediator of Kant and Hegel and all subsequent authors are considered in order to overcome the shortcomings of this Marxian mediation (KHI: chapter 1-11, Habermas, 1982: 239ff Cf. Kortian, 1980).

A Privatization Of Politics: Anthony Elliot's Concepts Of The Self (2001), Paula Murphy

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

It would be difficult to find a more appropriate image of selfhood in the modern world than that found in Ezra Pound's poem In a Station of the Metro. It is a selfhood which is at once unique and conglomerative, fleetingly visible then tantalizingly out of focus. It is this slippery, indefinable entity that is the subject of Anthony Elliot's book. The title bears witness to the enormous breadth of its subject matter: Concepts of the Self is an attempt to engage with the various contemporary theoretical frameworks through which selfhood is explicated. Elliot's approach is admirably inter-disciplinary, …

On Dixon's Straight: Constructions Of Heterosexuality In The Cinema, Markus Rheindorf

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Wheeler Winston Dixon's Straight is an odd book. An interesting book, to be sure, but one that falls short of its promise or, rather, its many promises. While its title, especially the definite article in its subtitle, would seem to suggest a rather abstract and general treatment of constructions of heterosexuality in the cinema, a cinema somehow constructed as a totality, the book is both inspiring and frustrating in its unsystematic approach to its object(s). Object(s) because it would be difficult, even without raising any objections to the construction of the cinema as a singular totality, not to …

On Rubin's Self Made Men And Green's Becoming A Visible Man, Kristen Schilt

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In their new books, Jamison Green and Henry Rubin create two very different but complimentary works about female-to-male transsexuals (FTMs) [1]. In Becoming a Visible Man, Green, a long-time transgender activist and public speaker, provides a lyrical and moving account of his own experience as a transman, as well as a comprehensive overview of the some of the issues facing transmen today, ranging from the varied effects of testosterone to the pressures to conform to hegemonic masculine ideals. Self-Made Men, on the other hand, is an interview study conducted by up and coming sociologist Henry Rubin …

Review Of Jennifer Government, By Berry Max, David Banash

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing The Way Work Works, By Ricardo Semler (Book Review), Peter A. Maresco

WCBT Faculty Publications

According to Semler: We have to find a better way for work to work.

On Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Andrew Miles Jacobsen

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

No book since American Psycho has created as much of a scandal. And few books have been as misunderstood. In 1990, months before it was set to be released, certain violent passages were leaked to the press that, taken out of context, made the book seem like a depth-less celebration of sexual violence. Right after Simon & Schuster canceled the book, an employee of the publishing house said, The most unfortunate thing about this whole controversy is that the book is a piece of shit. It's hard when something like this becomes an issue of censorship, because you …

Review Of Free Schools, Free People: Education And Democracy After The 1960s, By Ron Miller, Kathleen Mcconnell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

On Linzer, Schnall, And Chanes' A Portrait Of The American Jewish Community, Rob K. Baum

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

A Portrait of the American Jewish Community seems at first a contemporary, informed attempt to answer the old-and, for Jews, imperative-question, What is a Jew? And in the leading chapter Norman Linzer does project the changing nature of Jewish identity, with what he calls the postmodern decline of dissonance, a euphemism for the experience of Jewish difference. The beginning is suggestive of the philosophical treatise on the collapse of modern Jewish identity formulated in such work as Rabbi Michael Goldberg's Why Should Jews Survive? (NY: Oxford, 1998). But the book's carefully detailed chapters on Jewish American federations, social …

Review Of Tourism: Between Place And Performance, Edited By Simon Coleman And Mike Crang, Alexandra Ganser

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of Time For Revolution, By Antonio Negri, John Conley

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of Subject, Society, Culture, By Roy Boyne, Michael Ian Borer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of Fantasies Of Fetishism: From Decadence To The Post-Human, By Amanda Fernbach, C. Jason Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Three Ecologies, By Felix Guattari, Matthew Wolf-Myer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Butcher's Tale: Murder And Anti-Semitism In A German Town, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Contract Rights And Civil Rights, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of Punktown, By Jeffrey Thomas, Matthew Wolf-Meyer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of Chicano/Latino Homoerotic Identities, By David William Foster, Jeremiah Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of Dirty Pictures: Tom Of Finland, Masculinity, And Homosexuality, By Micha Ramakers, Jeremiah Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of Wendel All Together, By Howard Cruse, Jeremiah Smith

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Make Haste Slowly: Moderates, Conservatives, And School Desegregation In Houston, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of But For Birmingham: The Local And National Movements In The Civil Rights Struggle, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Defending Truth, Cynthia V. Ward, Peter A. Alces

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.