Disjointed Perspectives On Motherhood

Disjointed Perspectives on Motherhood seeks to reevaluate the concept of unconditional maternal love and the global emancipation of motherhood as recorded from 17th century onward and as analyzed in various genres: cinema, poetry, novel, drama, and mystery fiction series. By using unprecedented comparative critical approaches such as phenomenological, medical, feminist, and re-enchantment theories, and by analyzing works from literature, cinema, and visual arts, this collection attempts to reestablish and redefine a canonical concept with the intention to revitalize an otherwise taken-for-granted image and role.

Traveling Bodies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Traveling as an Embodied Practice explores the central role the body has in and for traveling and thus complements and expands upon existing research in travel studies with new perspectives on and insights in the entanglement of bodies and traveling. The case studies assembled in this volume discuss a variety of traveling practices, experiences, and media with chapters featuring Asian, American, and European historical and contemporary perspectives. Truly interdisciplinary in its approach, the volume identifies and examines diverse literary, historical and cultural texts, contexts, and modes in which traveling and the body intersect, including ‘classic’ travelogues, (new) media (e.g., film, digital travel apps), surf culture, and travel-inspired tattoos. The contributions offer various avenues for further research, not only for scholars working with body theory and travel (writing), but also for anyone interested in the intersections of literature, culture, media, and embodied practices of traveling.

Writing Migration through the Body builds a study of the body as a mutable site for negotiating and articulating the transnational experience of mobility. At its core stands a selection of recent migration stories in Italian, which are brought into dialogue with related material from cultural studies and the visual arts. Occupying no single disciplinary space, and drawing upon an elaborate theoretical framework ranging from phenomenology to anthropology, human geography and memory studies, this volume explores the ways in which the skin itself operates as a border, and brings to the surface the processes by which a sense of place and self are described and communicated through the migrant body. Through investigating key concepts and practices of transnational embodied experience, the book develops the interpretative principle that the individual bodies which move in contemporary migration flows are the primary agents through which the transcultural passages of images, emotions, ideas, memories – and also histories and possible futures – are enacted.

This critical anthology sets out to explore the boom that horror cinema and TV productions have experienced in Spain in the past two decades. It uses a range of critical and theoretical perspectives to examine a broad variety of films and filmmakers, such as works by Alejandro Amenábar, Álex de la Iglesia, Pedro Almodóvar, Guillermo del Toro, Juan Antonio Bayona, and Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The volume revolves around a set of fundamental questions: What are the causes for this new Spanish horror-mania? What cultural anxieties and desires, ideological motives and practical interests may be behind such boom? Is there anything specifically "Spanish" about the Spanish horror film and TV productions, any distinctive traits different from Hollywood and other European models that may be associated to the particular political, social, economic or cultural circumstances of contemporary Spain?

The last two decades have been transformational, often discordant ones for German feminism, as a new cohort of activists has come of age and challenged many of the movement’s strategic and philosophical orthodoxies. Mad Mädchen offers an incisive analysis of these trans-generational debates, identifying the mother-daughter themes and other tropes that have defined their representation in German literature, film, and media. Author Margaret McCarthy investigates female subjectivity as it processes political discourse to define itself through both differences and affinities among women. Ultimately, such a model suggests new ways of re-imagining feminist solidarity across generational, ethnic, and racial lines.

Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change is the first collection to gather together prominent scholars on yoga and the body. Using an intersectional lens, the essays examine yoga in the United States as a complex cultural phenomenon that reveals racial, economic, gendered, and sexual politics of the body. From discussions of the stereotypical yoga body to analyses of pivotal court cases, Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change examines the sociopolitical tensions of contemporary yoga. Because so many yogic spaces reflect the oppressive nature of many other public spheres, the essays in this collection also examine what needs to change in order for yoga to truly live up to its liberatory potential, from the blogosphere around Black women’s health to the creation of queer and trans yoga classes to the healing potential of yoga for people living with chronic illness or trauma. While many of these conversations are emerging in the broader public sphere, few have made their way into academic scholarship. This book changes all that. The essays in this anthology interrogate yoga as it is portrayed in the media, yoga spaces, and yoga as it is integrated in education, the law, and concepts of health to examine who is included and who is excluded from yoga in the West. The result is a thoughtful analysis of the possibilities and the limitations of yoga for feminist social transformation.

Like Rolling River Free highlights three central characters: Swami Saradananda, Sara Bull, and Sarah Farmer, who played a critical role in the growth of American spirituality. The author examines Swami Saradananda’s life in detail, weaving together strands from America’s religious and cultural history. In the process, she reveals the importance of two women: Sara Bull, the daughter of a senator and the wife of a famous musician who became one of Swami Vivekananda’s most significant supporters and trusted disciples; and Sarah Farmer, the creator of the Greenacre Conferences. The book details the captivating family history of both Bull and Farmer, providing readers a detailed view of nineteenth-century America. But most striking is the book’s portrayal of Saradananda, who was Sri Ramakrishna’s one of the most influential disciple. His contributions to the Ramakrishna Order provided it with essential guidance and they continue to reverberate today. Join the author as she explores how Saradananda spread a message of religious harmony as you learn about Vedanta, one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy.

This book explores the ways which people navigated the emotions provoked by the mad in Britain across the long eighteenth century. Building upon recent advances in the historical study of emotions, it plots the evolution of attitudes towards insanity, and considers how shifting emotional norms influenced the development of a ‘humanitarian’ temperament, which drove the earliest movements for psychiatric reform in England and Scotland. Reacting to a ‘culture of sensibility’, which encouraged tears at the sight of tender suffering, early asylum reformers chose instead to express their humanity through unflinching resolve, charging into madhouses to contemplate scenes of misery usually hidden from public view, and confronting the authorities that enabled neglect to flourish. This intervention required careful emotional management, which is documented comprehensively here for the first time. Drawing upon a wide array of medical and literary sources, this book provides invaluable insights into pre-modern attitudes towards insanity.