Elz bieta H. Oleksy Livres

This book investigates the concepts of gender and representation in an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective from the viewpoint of a variety of European and North American cultural and intellectual traditions. It contextualizes recent debates about the relationship between gender, spectatorship, and social and historical formations. The issue of gender and representation is problematized by the inclusion of discussion on men and masculinities – the area of study that today boasts a rich and growing body of work. The volume further offers a new approach to various topics, for instance, positive feminist readings of mainstream Hollywood productions. It analyzes visualizations of women as the embodiments of national collective narratives and deals with critiques of the representations of men in print media. It also provides discussion of ideologies of gender and representation in the countries of the «New Europe». The book is an important source for undergraduates and researchers who want to learn more about the ideologies of gender and representation across cultures.

This collection presents essays by leading European and American scholars addressing new research approaches to US Studies and their transatlantic reverberations. Beginning with philosophical discussions of the serious challenges facing civilization from the perspective of philosophical pragmatism, through a critique of the pervasive and enduring media discourse of terrorism, to reflections on the position of scholarship focusing on the United States in difficult times – our times – this volume considers in depth what is called or miscalled «American Studies». The collection’s specific topics range from a fresh look at philosophical pragmatism, through various representations of danger and fear in visual culture, to texts recording new attitudes to the study of the United States. An essay on children confronting the New World, papers on transnational or postnational American studies, and on presidential leadership as therapy signal that the time has come to revise the canon of the study of the United States.

The articles in this book share a dedication to broadening and stretching the scholarly field of feminist citizenship studies and invite the reader to reflect on the many different ways citizenship is formed in contemporary Europe. They do so by stretching the concept of citizenship itself, going beyond legalistic definitions, and by asking new questions about the ways in which citizenship is constructed, the entitlements to benefits, and to social and political participation, how cultures of knowledge allow participation and how inclusion and exclusion can be represented. In all cases «gender» is one of the categories that allow a deeper insight and a better perception of the way the ideals of citizenship have helped people to overcome exclusion. As the articles show, access to citizenship differs from context to context. Citizenship is never only a legal status: it has to do with cultural diversity, with recognition of difference, with access to professions and hierarchies on the labour market, not least in universities with traditions in political as well as visual representation. The collection is an introduction to new research in the field of European gender studies.

Authored by an international team of academics, Gender in Film and the Media responds to continuing debates about representation and gender in cinema and other media, with a particular concentration on the ways in which they may relate to the Central European context since 1989. The emphasis of these essays, on the intersections between social and cultural formations and practices of gender, represents an attempt to move beyond the abstractions of the founding texts in this field, and to ground theoretical reflection in close textual and contextual analysis. This book thus also represents the expansion of cultural exchange between East and West since 1989, which has created new and challenging opportunities to rethink the imaging of gender in national and international frameworks.

In this ground-breaking comparative study of the major works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walker Percy, Elzbieta Oleksy explores the intrinsic affinities between the two writers that transcend regional and historical barriers. Fully researched, the book investigates the development of the writers' visions. Both Hawthorne and Percy gradually came to view the subjectivity of an individual as a form of self-realization inferior to the intersubjective communion between persons. Focusing on the personal encounters between Hawthorne's and Percy's female and male characters, the study re-examines gender roles in the two writers' fiction.