This study conceives the literary and cinematic category of 'noir' as a way of understanding the defining conflict between authenticity and consumer culture in post-World War II America. It analyses works of fiction and film in order to argue that both contribute to a 'noir tradition' that is initiated around the end of World War II and continues to develop and evolve in the present.
Over the past three decades, our daily lives have changed slowly but dramatically. Boundaries between leisure and work, public space and private space, and home and office have blurred and become permeable. In Elsewhere, U.S.A., acclaimed sociologist Dalton Conley connects our day-to-day experiences with occasionally overlooked sociological changes, from women’s increasing participation in the labor force to rising economic inequality among successful professionals. In doing so, he provides us with an X-ray view of our new social reality.
Americans think of their country as a welcoming place where everyone has equal opportunity. Yet historical baggage and anxious times can restrain these possibilities. Newcomers often find that civic belonging comes with strings attached––riddled with limitations or legally punitive rites of passage. For those already here, new challenges to civic belonging emerge on the basis of belief, behavior, or heritage. This book uses the term "elsewhere" in describing conditions that exile so many citizens to "some other place" through prejudice, competition, or discordant belief. Yet, in another way, "elsewhere" evokes an undefined "not yet" ripe with potential. In the face of America’s daunting challenges, can "elsewhere" point to optimism, hope, and common purpose? Through 12 detailed chapters, the book applies critical theory in the humanities and social sciences to examine recurring crises of social inclusion in the U.S. After two centuries of incremental "progress" in securing human dignity, today the U.S. finds itself torn by new conflicts over reproductive rights, immigration, health care, religious extremism, sexual orientation, mental illness, and fear of terrorists. Is there a way of explaining this recurring tendency of Americans to turn against each other? Elsewhere in America engages these questions, charting the ever-changing faces of difference (manifest in contested landscapes of sex and race to such areas as disability and mental health), their spectral and intersectional character (recent discourses on performativity, normativity, and queer theory), and the grounds on which categories are manifest in ideation and movement politics (metapolitics, cosmopolitanism, dismodernism).
Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. When ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico, she learns that the people of Wink are very, very different...
Scott Mandelker interviewed twenty-five Americans who claim extraterrestrial (E.T.) identity, a he made some astounding discoveries. Focusing on personal stories, Mandelker describes how childhood experiences, emotional traumas, and paranormal events led each subject from a life of confusion to one of clarity and self-validation. It is not easy to believe that you are an E.T., but once Mandeker's subjects were sure, all embraced their new identity with renewed sense of purpose Whether or not you accept it ad truth, "From Elsewhere" presents a compelling and credible examination of an unforgettable group of individuals who are firm in their beliefs and ardent in their desire to affect our lives for the better.
As important cultural icons of the early nineteenth-century United States, adventurers energized the mythologies of the West and contributed to the justifications of territorial conquest. They told stories of exhilarating perils, boundless landscapes, and erotic encounters that elevated their chauvinism, avarice, and violence into forms of nobility. As self-proclaimed avatars of American exceptionalism, Jimmy L. Bryan Jr. suggests in The American Elsewhere, adventurers transformed westward expansion into a project of romantic nationalism. A study of US expansionism from 1815–1848, The American Elsewhere delves into the “adventurelogues” of the era to reveal the emotional world of men who sought escape from the anonymity of the urban East and pressures of the Market Revolution. As volunteers, trappers, traders, or curiosity seekers, they stepped into “elsewheres,” distant and dangerous. With their words and art, they entered these unfamiliar realms that had fostered caution and apprehension, and they reimagined them as regions that awakened romantic and reckless optimism. In doing so, Bryan shows, adventurers created the figure of the remarkable American male that generated a wide appeal and encouraged a personal investment in nationhood among their audiences. Bryan provides a thorough reading of a wide variety of sources—including correspondence, travel accounts, fiction, poetry, artwork, and material culture—and finds that adventurers told stories and shaped images that beguiled a generation of Americans into believing in their own exceptionality and in their destiny to conquer the continent.
Veillée par une lune rose, Wink, au Nouveau-Mexique, est une petite ville idéale. À un détail près : elle ne figure sur aucune carte. Après deux ans d'errance, Mona Bright, ex-flic, vient d'y hériter de la maison de sa mère, qui s'est suicidée trente ans plus tôt. Très vite, Mona s'attache au calme des rues, aux jolis petits pavillons, aux habitants qui semblent encore vivre dans l'utopique douceur des années cinquante. Pourtant, au fil de ses rencontres et de son enquête sur le passé de sa mère et les circonstances de sa mort (fuyez le naturel...), Mona doit se rendre à l'évidence : une menace plane sur Wink et ses étranges habitants. Sera-t-elle vraiment de taille à affronter les forces occultes à l'oeuvre dans ce lieu hors d'Amérique ? « Un merveilleux cadeau pour les fans de Stephen King et Neil Gaiman. » Library Journal
