Distributed Presses

A recent review of Retro: The Culture of Revival by Elizabeth Guffrey takes a look at Guffrey's argument that the popularly held image of the 1950s was actually invented a decade later through musical groups like Sha Na Na.

Guffrey explains:

On the fourth day of the Woodstock Festival of 1969, just before Jimi Hendrix's celebrated finale, the stage was held by a group of unknown undergraduates from Columbia University. . . .The rock-'n'-roll revivalist group Sha Na Na bombarded the audience with tightly choreographed 1950s classics like 'Teen Angel' and 'At the Hop.' The festival's unlikely scene stealers sported dated looks, including greased ducktails, white socks and cigarettes rolled into T-shirt sleeves. Sha Na Na's impossibly upbeat and exuberant version of the 1950s seemed the opposite of the arty psychedelica and hard rock that characterized Woodstock.

See the full article in Columbia College Today.

Posted by COA at 11:48 AM | Permalink
Posted to Cultural Studies | Reaktion | Reviews

Motorcycle authors Suzanne Ferriss and Steven Alford were recently interviewed by Adrian Blake on BlogTalkRadio's "Ride!". Listen to their interview as they talk about their book and modern motorcycling culture.

Listen to the authors' interview on BlogTalkRadio's "Ride!"

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Posted by at 09:57 AM | Permalink
Posted to Books for the News | Cultural Studies | Reaktion

Danny Postel recently wrote an opinion piece in the Guardian imploring readers to consider more nuanced views of Iran's President Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University and the U.N than have been discussed in the American media.

Rather than support vitriolic nationalism, Postel, following Foucault and Sartre, suggests that Americans should remember "our real Iranian friends"; that is, the various non-governmental leaders who have been struggling for democracy and rights.

Read Postel's Commentary

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Posted to Author Events | Books for the News | Cultural Studies | Philosophy | Politics and Current Events | Prickly Paradigm

Byron Coley and Thurston Moore reviewed New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg in the most recent issue of Arthur Magazine. Nestled in amongst the album reviews of Coley and Moore's "Bull Tongue" section, we find:

. . . New York Calling is a really great anthology. Everybody we talk to who remembers New York before it became a fucking Disney subsidiary moans about the current lack of soul on Gotham's streets. . . .

New York Calling collects essays by a swell bunch of writers—from Jim Knipfel to Richard Meltzer to Tom Robbins to Robert Sietsema—all of whom memorialize things and people and places that seem to have been lost forever. It's a wonderful read. . . .

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Posted to Cultural Studies | History | Press Releases | Reaktion

Gelf Magazine recently interviewed Grant Farred, author of Prickly Paradigm's Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA.

Farred discusses the demise of ESPN's "athletic intelligence" and the importance of intelligent sports talk. As Gelf Magazine explains the interview, "Farred . . . speaks with Gelf about how ESPN has devolved over the last seven years, why some of its content is 'just crap,' and how the landscape of sports media has shifted."

Read the Interview in Gelf Magazine

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Posted to Author Events | Cultural Studies | Prickly Paradigm

Jason Warshof of the Financial Times recently gave a glowing review to New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg edited by Marshall Berman and Brian Berger.

Warshof calls New York Calling ". . . a mind-opening collection of 28 essays," that offers, ". . . a near-unforgettable impression of an era."

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Posted to Cultural Studies | Reaktion | Reviews

Steven Alford and Suzanne Ferriss's Motorcycle receives some attention in the "Book Club" section of the October edition of Cycle World.

The motorcycle is a global icon of untamed freedom, symbolizing a daring and reckless lifestyle of adventure. Yet there are few books that chronicle how and when this legendary vehicle roared down the open road. Motorcycle explores the roots of the rebel's ultimate ride.

Visit the Cycle World Site

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Posted to Cultural Studies | Reaktion | Reviews

On July 25th, 2007, the New York Sun printed an excerpt of Luc Sante's essay "Commerce" from the forthcoming Reaktion title New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg, edited by Marshall Berman and Brian Berger.

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Posted to Author Events | Books for the News | Cultural Studies | History | Reaktion

Publisher's Weekly reviewed Reaktion's forthcoming New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg edited by Marshall Berman and Brian Berger in the July 9th, 2007 issue.

Publisher's Weekly highlights the "bonding of firsthand recollection to broader historical issues," and suggests that "this multivoiced collection establishes itself as a unique document of the city's last three decades."

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Posted to Cultural Studies | History | Literature | Reviews

Those of us in the States tend to think that to be cool is quintessentially American. But, youth in other countries understandably think that they, too, exhibit qualities associated with being cool.

Dick Pountain, author of Cool Rules, recently wrote an article discussing the apparent link between the rise in violence in the UK and the rise of the "Cool (with a capital C)" ethic.

Pountain distinguishes between "cool" as a mere term of approval and "Cool," which he describes as:

. . . a complete ethic that encompasses those other senses [of the word], an extreme form of individualism that can be summarized as a conviction that society's mores apply to everyone except yourself, and possibly your mates.

Read Pountain's Essay in the Guardian

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Posted by at 09:39 AM | Permalink
Posted to Author Events | Cultural Studies | Reaktion

Mikita Brottman, author of High Theory/Low Culture, reviewed Catherine Spooner's Contemporary Gothic in the June 15, 2007 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Similar to an earlier Bookforum review by Andrea Walker, Brottman also reviews Goth: Undead Subculture edited by Lauren M. E. Goodlad and Michael Bibby.

Brottman sees the two volumes as complementary, highlighting the fact that Spooner's Contemporary Gothic takes a broad focus and ". . . considers the cultural and historical influence of the arts, media, and commerce on the goth aesthetic," whereas the contributors to Goodlad and Bibby's volume "restrict their analyses to contemporary manifestations of the subculture."

Brottman also notes, "Both books are refreshingly free of the kind of heavy theoretical jargon that would make even the palest goth blanch in dismay."

Read the Review in the Chronicle

Read an earlier post regarding Contemporary Gothic

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Posted to Cultural Studies | Reaktion

Bran Nicol, author of Stalking, recently wrote an article entitled "Mad About You: Modern day stalking, and old fashion passion" for American Sexuality Magazine, a publication of the National Sexuality Resource Center.

Nicol argues that "Stalking . . . is one of the signature crimes of our age," and that it is mostly a recent phenomenon. "The term itself, referring to systematic harassment, only enters the language in the 1960s and 1970s. . . ."

However, Nicol goes on to point out, ". . . [W]hile stalking is in one sense 'new,' a symptomatic crime of the late-twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries, it reveals that we are still in the grip of some very 'old' and unshakable attitudes about men and women and sexual desire."

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Posted to Author Events | Cultural Studies | Literature | Reaktion

Nina C. Ayoub recently reviewed Karaoke: The Global Phenomenon in the "Note Bene" section of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Ayoub discusses the spread of karaoke and its origins. She also credits Zhou Xun and Francesca Tarocco for providing a theoretical context for the discussion:

The two academics give a nod to theory at the beginning of their tour. Karaoke, they say, challenges easy equations of globalization with Americanization. "'Global traffic' goes in all directions." In this case, an Eastern creation has spread, incorporating local traditions in every new place.

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Posted to Cultural Studies | History | Music | Reaktion | Reviews

Andrea Walker reviewed Catherine Spooner's Contemporary Gothic in the April/May issue of Bookforum. She credits Spooner for her "attempts . . . to examine the subculture in all its multiplicity." Walker goes on to note, ". . . [I]t is somehow affirming to know that someone is keeping tabs on the goth population in places like Australia, where parasols are reportedly employed to keep complexions pale."

Walker does criticize Spooner's reliance on critical theory, suggesting that her study reflects ". . . the ideas she brings to the discussion rather than allow[ing] new insights to emerge." However, we wonder whether it is possible to properly assess the disparate themes and tendencies of a multifarious subculture without the aid of some theory. How exactly did a band of "working class stiffs" who disliked the "gothic" label end up inspiring later generations of "neo-romantic wraiths"? What holds them together, and why?

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Posted by at 10:24 AM | Permalink
Posted to Cultural Studies | Literature | Reaktion | Reviews