The Doll Factory

The Doll Factory

Author: Elizabeth Macneal

Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books

Published: 2020-07-07

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1982106778

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The #1 international bestseller and The New York Times Editor’s Choice “As lush as the novels of Kate Morton and Diane Setterfield, as exciting as The Alienist and Iain Pears’ An Instance of the Fingerpost, this exquisite literary thriller will intrigue book clubs and rivet fans of historical fiction.” —A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window “A lush, evocative Gothic.” —The New York Times Book Review “This terrifically exciting novel will jolt, thrill, and bewitch readers.” —Booklist, starred review Obsession is an art. In this “sharp, scary, gorgeously evocative tale of love, art, and obsession” (Paula Hawkins, bestselling author of The Girl on the Train), a beautiful young woman aspires to be an artist, while a man’s dark obsession may destroy her world forever. Obsession is an art. In 1850s London, the Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and, among the crowd watching the dazzling spectacle, two people meet by happenstance. For Iris, an arrestingly attractive aspiring artist, it is a brief and forgettable moment. But for Silas, a curiosity collector enchanted by all things strange and beautiful, the meeting marks a new beginning. When Iris is asked to model for Pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. Suddenly, her world begins to expand beyond her wildest dreams—but she has no idea that evil is waiting in the shadows. Silas has only thought of one thing since that chance meeting, and his obsession is darkening by the day. “A lush, evocative Gothic” (The New York Times Book Review) that is “a perfect blend of froth and substance” (The Washington Post), The Doll Factory will haunt you long after you finish it and is perfect for fans of The Alienist, Drood, and Fingersmith.


Sex, Culture, and Justice

Sex, Culture, and Justice

Author: Clare Chambers

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2010-11

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0271045949

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Autonomy is fundamental to liberalism. But autonomous individuals often choose to do things that harm themselves or undermine their equality. In particular, women often choose to participate in practices of sexual inequality&—cosmetic surgery, gendered patterns of work and childcare, makeup, restrictive clothing, or the sexual subordination required by membership in certain religious groups. In this book, Clare Chambers argues that this predicament poses a fundamental challenge to many existing liberal and multicultural theories that dominate contemporary political philosophy. Chambers argues that a theory of justice cannot ignore the influence of culture and the role it plays in shaping choices. If cultures shape choices, it is problematic to use those choices as the measure of the justice of the culture. Drawing upon feminist critiques of gender inequality and poststructuralist theories of social construction, she argues that we should accept some of the multicultural claims about the importance of culture in shaping our actions and identities, but that we should reach the opposite normative conclusion to that of multiculturalists and many liberals. Rather than using the idea of social construction to justify cultural respect or protection, we should use it to ground a critical stance toward cultural norms. The book presents radical proposals for state action to promote sexual and cultural justice.


Laura Mulvey 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' 1975

Laura Mulvey 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' 1975

Author: Laura Mulvey

Publisher: Koenig Books

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 64

ISBN-13: 9783863359652

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Since it first appeared in Screen in 1975, Laura Mulvey's essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" has been an enduring point of reference for artists, filmmakers, writers and theorists. Mulvey's compelling polemical analysis of visual pleasure has provoked and encouraged others to take positions, challenge preconceived ideas and produce new works that owe their possibility to the generative qualities of this key essay. In this book, the celebrated New York-based video artist Rachel Rose (born 1986) has produced an innovative work that extends and adds to the essay's frame of reference. Drawing on 18th- and 19th-century fairy tales, and observing how their flat narratives matched the flatness of their depictions, Rose created collages that connect these pre-cinematic illustrations to what Mulvey describes in her essay--cinema flattening sexuality into visuality.


Reading the Male Gaze in Literature and Culture

Reading the Male Gaze in Literature and Culture

Author: James D. Bloom

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-10-06

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 3319599453

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This book examines the phenomenon of 'the male gaze', a concept which has spread beyond academia and become a staple of cultural conversations across disciplinary boundaries. Male gazing has typically been disparaged and even stigmatized as a reflection of misogyny and an instrument of objectification, often justifiably so. But as this book argues and illustrates, male gazing can also be understood as an illuminating, intellectually engaging, aesthetically compelling, and even politically progressive practice. This study recounts how the author’s own coming-of-an-age as a gazer became the basis for his long career teaching and writing about American fiction and poetry and poetry, canonical and contemporary, as well as about film, painting, TV, and rock-and-roll. It includes closely-reasoned analyses of work by James Baldwin, Rembrandt, Willa Cather, Philip Roth, Henry James, Charles Chesnutt, Bob Dylan, Robert Stone,Tim O’Brien, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, Frank O’Hara, Italo Calvino, John Schlesinger as well such cultural phenomena as the British Invasion of the 1960s, the Judgment of Paris in Greek mythology, the technology of seeing (kaleidoscopes, microscopes, telescopes) and the concept of 'objectification' itself.


Unbearable Weight

Unbearable Weight

Author: Susan Bordo

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-11-10

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0520930711

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"Unbearable Weight is brilliant. From an immensely knowledgeable feminist perspective, in engaging, jargonless (!) prose, Bordo analyzes a whole range of issues connected to the body—weight and weight loss, exercise, media images, movies, advertising, anorexia and bulimia, and much more—in a way that makes sense of our current social landscape—finally! This is a great book for anyone who wonders why women's magazines are always describing delicious food as 'sinful' and why there is a cake called Death by Chocolate. Loved it!"—Katha Pollitt, Nation columnist and author of Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture (2001)


Media and Violence

Media and Violence

Author: Karen Boyle

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2005-01-01

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 9781412903790

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Media and Violence pays equal attention to the production, content and reception involved in any representation of violence. This book offers a framework for understanding how violence is represented and consumed. It examines the relationship of media, gender, and real-world violence; representations of violence in screen entertainment; the effects of violent media on consumers; the ethics and gender politics of the production processes of screen violence; and the discussions are illustrated with topical and well-known examples, enabling the reader to critically engage with the debates.


Meaning in Motion

Meaning in Motion

Author: Jane Desmond

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9780822319429

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On dance and culture


Pornography

Pornography

Author: Andrea Dworkin

Publisher: Picador USA

Published: 2025-02-25

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1250359252

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Andrea Dworkin’s 1981 critique of pornography is an important and urgent document about how the culture consumes and manipulates images of women. Essential and discomfiting reading in a social media era, where women’s bodies are being commodified and displayed more than ever. Andrea Dworkin’s seminal 1981 work on the issue of pornography argues that the industry serves only to harm and oppress women. Her discussion of pornography as an outgrowth of the power that men exert over women—the power of owning, the power of money, and the power of sex, among others—still blazes with its clarity and immediacy, and illustrates how these inequities, while displayed in raw form in pornography, are endemic in all media. With a lively and deeply compelling voice, Andrea Dworkin succinctly outlines her anti-pornography stance. Though the media environment may have changed, this passionately and powerfully argued classic remains a relevant and crucial contribution to the area of feminist studies.


The Robber Bride

The Robber Bride

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2011-06-08

Total Pages: 550

ISBN-13: 030779797X

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From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments—one of Margaret Atwood’s most unforgettable characters lurks at the center of this intricate novel like a spider in a web. The glamorous, irresistible, unscrupulous Zenia is nothing less than a fairy-tale villain in the memories of her former friends. Roz, Charis, and Tony—university classmates decades ago—were reunited at Zenia’s funeral and have met monthly for lunch ever since, obsessively retracing the destructive swath she once cut through their lives. A brilliantly inventive fabulist, Zenia had a talent for exploiting her friends’ weaknesses, wielding intimacy as a weapon and cheating them of money, time, sympathy, and men. But one day, five years after her funeral, they are shocked to catch sight of Zenia: even her death appears to have been yet another fiction. As the three women plot to confront their larger-than-life nemesis, Atwood proves herself a gleefully acute observer of the treacherous shoals of friendship, trust, desire, and power.


Salaam, Love

Salaam, Love

Author: Ayesha Mattu

Publisher: Beacon Press

Published: 2014-02-04

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0807079766

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From the editors of the groundbreaking anthology Love, InshAllah comes a provocative new exploration of the most intimate parts of Muslim men’s lives Muslim men are stereotyped as either oversexed Casanovas willing to die for seventy-two virgins in heaven or controlling, big-bearded husbands ready to rampage at the hint of dishonor. The truth is, there are millions of Muslim men trying to figure out the complicated terrain of love, sex, and relationships just like any other American man. In Salaam, Love, Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi provide a space for American Muslim men to speak openly about their romantic lives, offering frank, funny, and insightful glimpses into their hearts—and bedrooms. The twenty-two writers come from a broad spectrum of ethnic, racial, and religious perspectives—including orthodox, cultural, and secular Muslims—reflecting the strength and diversity of their faith community and of America. By raising their voices to share stories of love and heartbreak, loyalty and betrayal, intimacy and insecurity, these Muslim men are leading the way for all men to recognize that being open and honest about their feelings is not only okay—it’s intimately connected to their lives and critical to their happiness and well-being.