The Sheikh's Batmobile
The Sheikh's Batmobile

Author: Richard Poplak

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2010-08-17

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1593762925

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What happens to our pop culture when it meets another culture head-on—especially one that, according to some, is completely at odds with our own? In The Sheikh’s Batmobile, pop culture commentator Richard Poplak sets out on an unusual two-year odyssey. His mission is to see what becomes of his and America’s obsessions—pop songs and sitcoms, Hollywood movies and shoot-'em-up video games, muscle cars and punk music—when they make their way into the Muslim world. Over the course of his journey, Poplak gets body-slammed by WWE fans in Afghanistan, hangs out with hip-hop artists in Palestine, headbangs to heavy metal in Cairo, discovers a world of extreme makeovers in Beirut, bowls with the chief of police in small-town Kazakhstan, and encounters a mysterious Texan who builds rocket-propelled Batmobiles for a clientele of sheikhs. With uproarious humor and keen cultural insight, Poplak asks some vital questions: How is American pop culture consumed and reinterpreted in the Islamic world? What does that say about how we are viewed by young Muslims? And can Homer Simpson bridge the divisions that are tearing our world apart?

The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing
The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing

Author: Carl Thompson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-12-22

Total Pages: 506

ISBN-13: 1134105142

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As many places around the world confront issues of globalization, migration and postcoloniality, travel writing has become a serious genre of study, reflecting some of the greatest concerns of our time. Encompassing forms as diverse as field journals, investigative reports, guidebooks, memoirs, comic sketches and lyrical reveries; travel writing is now a crucial focus for discussion across many subjects within the humanities and social sciences. An ideal starting point for beginners, but also offering new perspectives for those familiar with the field, The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing examines: Key debates within the field, including postcolonial studies, gender, sexuality and visual culture Historical and cultural contexts, tracing the evolution of travel writing across time and over cultures Different styles, modes and themes of travel writing, from pilgrimage to tourism Imagined geographies, and the relationship between travel writing and the social, ideological and occasionally fictional constructs through which we view the different regions of the world. Covering all of the major topics and debates, this is an essential overview of the field, which will also encourage new and exciting directions for study. Contributors: Simon Bainbridge, Anthony Bale, Shobhana Bhattacharji, Dúnlaith Bird, Elizabeth A. Bohls, Wendy Bracewell, Kylie Cardell, Daniel Carey, Janice Cavell, Simon Cooke, Matthew Day, Kate Douglas, Justin D. Edwards, David Farley, Charles Forsdick, Corinne Fowler, Laura E. Franey, Rune Graulund, Justine Greenwood, James M. Hargett, Jennifer Hayward, Eva Johanna Holmberg, Graham Huggan, William Hutton, Robin Jarvis, Tabish Khair, Zoë Kinsley, Barbara Korte, Julia Kuehn, Scott Laderman, Claire Lindsay, Churnjeet Mahn, Nabil Matar, Steve Mentz, Laura Nenzi, Aedín Ní Loingsigh, Manfred Pfister, Susan L. Roberson, Paul Smethurst, Carl Thompson, C.W. Thompson, Margaret Topping, Richard White, Gregory Woods.

Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa
Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa

Author: Walid El Hamamsy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-04

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1136228071

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This book explores the body and the production process of popular culture in, and on, the Middle East and North Africa, Turkey, and Iran in the first decade of the 21st century, and up to the current historical moment. Essays consider gender, racial, political, and cultural issues in film, cartoons, music, dance, photo-tattoos, graphic novels, fiction, and advertisements. Contributors to the volume span an array of specializations ranging across literary, postcolonial, gender, media, and Middle Eastern studies and contextualize their views within a larger historical and political moment, analyzing the emergence of a popular expression in the Middle East and North Africa region in recent years, and drawing conclusions pertaining to the direction of popular culture within a geopolitical context. The importance of this book lies in presenting a fresh perspective on popular culture, combining media that are not often combined and offering a topical examination of recent popular production, aiming to counter stereotypical representations of Islamophobia and otherness by bringing together the perspectives of scholars from different cultural backgrounds and disciplines. The collection shows that popular culture can effect changes and alter perceptions and stereotypes, constituting an area where people of different ethnicities, genders, and orientations can find common grounds for expression and connection.

The Rise and Decline and Rise of China
The Rise and Decline and Rise of China

Author: MISTRA MISTRA

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2015-05-10

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0639995675

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The Rise and Decline and Rise of China: Searching for an Organising Philosophy represents a new and promising approach to Africa/China relations. What is most impressive is that it is an encounter between African and Chinese thought, but this encounter is not just a set of stale comparisons of philosophical beliefs. This study places the concepts and attitudes in both China and Africa in their socio-political contexts, in an attempt to provide a sophisticated, sensitive, and usable history. This attempt yields dividends, especially for the primary audience of Africans, as it gives a way of learning from the vast history of Chinese experience without reducing African experience to insignificance or irrelevance (as has happened so often in dialogues between Africa and the West). This book will be of interest to anyone from within Africa interested in engaging with China as a complex and nuanced place, a place of challenge, creativity, and opportunity.

The Declaration of Independents
The Declaration of Independents

Author: Nick Gillespie

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2012-06-26

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1610392000

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Everywhere in America, the forces of digitization, innovation, and personalization are expanding our options and bettering the way we live. Everywhere, that is, except in our politics. There we are held hostage to an eighteenth century system, dominated by two political parties whose ever-more-polarized rhetorical positions mask a mutual interest in maintaining a stranglehold on power. The Declaration of Independents is a compelling and extremely entertaining manifesto on behalf of a system better suited to the future--one structured by the essential libertarian principles of free minds and free markets. Gillespie and Welch profile libertarian innovators, identify the villains propping up the ancien regime, and take aim at do-something government policies that hurt most of those they claim to protect. Their vision will resonate with a wide swath of frustrated citizens and young voters, born after the Cold War's end, to whom old tribal allegiances, prejudices, and hang-ups about everything from hearing a foreign language on the street to gay marriage to drug use simply do not make sense.

Finding the Words
Finding the Words

Author: Jared Bland

Publisher: Emblem Editions

Published: 2011-02-15

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 0771013698

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Celebrated writers reveal surprising truths about the joys, challenges, and importance of finding the words, in this special fundraising anthology for PEN Canada. In Finding the Words, thirty-one well-known writers share deeply personal discoveries and stories that will surprise, delight, and stir the mind and heart. By turns inspiring, provocative, witty, and compelling, these diverse and original pieces explore home, exile, and the search for a place to belong; community, creativity, celebrity, and the many forms power can take. Among the pieces in the anthology: Diana Athill and Alice Munro discuss the consequences of writing about other people; Gord Downie meditates on what it means to be a songwriter by considering one of his own songwriting heroes; Guy Gavriel Kay reflects on how his relationship with his own readers continues to change; Elizabeth Hay searches for inspiration in the fallow period between books; Rawi Hage meditates on writing rooted in the universal experience of exile; Pasha Malla and Moez Surani present a funny and confounding list of “rules for writers” solicited from non-writers; Heather O’Neill tells the story of an illiterate and underage wannabe gangster in mid-century Montreal; Michael Winter pieces together court transcripts, newspaper accounts, and other primary sources to take us into the dark heart of a real-life Newfoundland crime story. Proceeds from this volume will go to PEN Canada in support of its vital work in defence of freedom of expression and on behalf of writers around the world who have been silenced. Finding the Words Contributors List: Diana Athill Tash Aw David Bezmozgis Joseph Boyden David Chariandy Denise Chong Karen Connelly Alain de Botton Emma Donoghue Gord Downie Marina Endicott Stacey May Fowles Rawi Hage Elizabeth Hay Steven Heighton Lee Henderson Guy Gavriel Kay Mark Kingwell Martha Kuwee Kumsa Annabel Lyon Linden MacIntyre Pasha Malla Lisa Moore Alice Munro Stephanie Nolen Heather O’Neill Richard Poplak Moez Surani Miguel Syjuco Madeleine Thien Michael Winter With cover design and illustration by Seth www.pencanada.ca

Rise and Decline and Rise of China
Rise and Decline and Rise of China

Author: Ross Anthony

Publisher: Real African Publishers Pty Ltd.

Published: 2015-09-14

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 192065593X

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Running like a red thread through this book are the manifestations of Sino-African relations dating back many centuries. In this way, The Rise and Decline and Rise of China: Searching for an Organising Philosophy takes forward the work MISTRA conducted on the Mapungubwe society, one of the advanced states that existed in southern Africa some 800 years ago. What makes this research report unique, though, is that the treatment of these issues has been undertaken primarily from an African perspective.

Popular Culture
Popular Culture

Author: Noah Berlatsky

Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC

Published: 2010-11-11

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0737751193

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This edition delivers contemporary perspectives on popular culture, with the majority of the material reflecting stances of countries other than the United States. Readers are offered a truly panoramic view. Essays are arranged in a thoughtful sequence that guides readers through several sides to each topic covered. Does television create obesity? Should manga depicting child pornography illegal? Could China benefit from stronger intellectual property laws? Essays answer these and other questions about pop culture. Helpful features include an annotated table of contents, a world map and country index, a bibliography, and subject index.

Jesus of Arabia
Jesus of Arabia

Author: Andrew Thompson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-01-26

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 153810945X

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In Jesus of Arabia, the Reverend Canon Andrew Thompson introduces an unfamiliar Jesus—Jesus in the context of his home in the Middle East. Whether readers believe Jesus to be a prophet or the messiah, Thompson enhances our understanding of his work and character by looking at his social context as a man and Middle Easterner. Jesus’s teachings take on new meaning as Thompson explores themes including family in Arabia, gender roles in the region, food culture, and more. Jesus of Arabia looks at the bridges between Islam and Christianity through the figure of Jesus and how the two communities may reflect each other despite their differences. Thompson draws on his experience as a priest in the Anglican Church and his many years living in the Middle East to analyze the often conflicting roles and loyalties concerning family, culture, and God. A timely and incisive work, Jesus of Arabia invites us to consider contemporary views of the Middle East and how a figure like Jesus might be received today.