A concise and amply illustrated introduction to Kentucky folk structures--log cabins, houses, cribs, and barns--that should be treasured as irreplaceable expressions of the cultural values of the Commonwealth's past.

The calculated use of media by those in power is a phenomenon dating back at least to the seventeenth century, as Harold Weber demonstrates in this illuminating study of the relation of print culture to kingship under England's Charles II. Seventeenth-century London witnessed an enormous expansion of the print trade, and with this expansion came a revolutionary change in the relation between political authority -- especially the monarchy -- and the printed word.Weber argues that Charles' reign was characterized by a particularly fluid relationship between print and power. The press helped bring about both the deconsecration of divine monarchy and the formation of a new public sphere, but these processes did not result in the progressive decay of royal authority. Charles fashioned his own semiotics of power out of the political transformations that had turned his world upside down.By linking diverse and unusual topics -- the escape of Charles from Worcester, the royal ability to heal scrofula, the sexual escapades of the "merry monarch," and the trial and execution of Stephen College -- Weber reveals the means by which Charles took advantage of a print industry instrumental to the creation of a new dispensation of power, one in which the state dominates the individual through the supplementary relationship between signs and violence.Weber's study brings into sharp relief the conflicts involving public authority and printed discourse, social hierarchy and print culture, and authorial identity and responsibility -- conflicts that helped shape the modern state.

A visual survey of the public myths and collective symbols used in the making of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the subsequent war with Iraq. The book traces a remarkable period of history in which the power of words and images successfully challenged the military might of an established state, setting forth an avalanche of public sentiment that led to revolution.

The Kentucky Irish American began life in 1898 as one of many ethnic newspapers in America, but by its final years it attracted an avid national audience of many ethnicities. From 1925, the KIA was owned and edited by the Barry family of Louisville: by John J. Barry to 1950, and by his son Michael to its demise in 1968. This anthology focuses on the Mike Barry years -- a time of Cold War and Vietnam, of Kennedy, Nixon, McCarthy, Goldwater, and Happy Chandler. Under Mike's brilliant editorship, the KIA offered its readers a richly textured, pungent voice that combined humor with a constant push for social improvement in Kentucky and in the nation.Always the KIA was strong in its support of all things Irish, Catholic, and American. It was also an acerbic commentator on the absurdities of Kentucky politics. But the KIA was notable -- and noticed -- for its strong positions on national and international issues.Red Smith once described the KIA as "all the excuse any man needs for learning to read." Today's readers can now discover the pleasures of a livelier era in journalism.

As television screens across America showed Chinese students blocking government tanks in Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and missiles searching their targets in Baghdad, the connection between media and revolution seemed more significant than ever. In this book, thirteen prominent scholars examine the role of the communication media in revolutionary crises -- from the Puritan Revolution of the 1640s to the upheaval in the former Czechoslovakia.Their central question: Do the media in fact have a real influence on the unfolding of revolutionary crises? On this question, the contributors diverge, some arguing that the press does not bring about revolution but is part of the revolutionary process, others downplaying the role of the media.Essays focus on areas as diverse as pamphlet literature, newspapers, political cartoons, and the modern electronic media. The authors' wide-ranging views form a balanced and perceptive examination of the impact of the media on the making of history.

Visitors to Lima today may wonder what has happened to the native music of Peru. While the music of Brazil and Chile have spread across to other countries, Peru has been left behind. A notable exception to this statement is the immense popularity of the lambada . Today, Peru's record industry and radio are concerned almost exclusively with salsa and rock both of which have acquired uniquely Peruvian forms.

Hubbard was a gifted writer, but during his lifetime he was better known as an artist. He painted in both oil and watercolor, but over the years he also cut and printed approximately 170 woodcuts. It was in this medium that his potential as an artist was most full realized.

" The product of original research in newspapers, manuscripts, and secondary sources, Carden's history of music in early Lexington describes an unexplored aspect of the city's cultural heritage."

"We can no longer see, much less teach, transhistorical truths, timeless works of art, and unchanging critical criteria without a highly developed sense of irony about the grand narratives of the past," declare the editors, who also coedited Visual Theory: Painting and Interpretation (1990). The field of art history is not unique in finding itself challenged and enlarged by cultural debates over issues of class, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, and gender. Visual Culture assembles some of the foremost scholars of cultural studies and art history to explore new critical approaches to a history of representation seen as something different from a history of art. CONTRIBUTORS: Andres Ross, Michael Ann Holly, Mieke Bal, David Summers, Constance Penley, Kaja Silverman, Ernst Van Alphen, Norman Bryson, Wolfgang Kemp, Whitney Davis, Thomas Crow, Keith Moxey, John Tagg, Lisa Tickner.

From its beginnings in hip hop culture, the dense rhythms and aggressive lyrics of rap music have made it a provocative fixture on the American cultural landscape. In Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Tricia Rose, described by the New York Times as a "hip hop theorist," takes a comprehensive look at the lyrics, music, cultures, themes, and styles of this highly rhythmic, rhymed storytelling and grapples with the most salient issues and debates that surround it.Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and History at New York University, Tricia Rose sorts through rap's multiple voices by exploring its underlying urban cultural politics, particularly the influential New York City rap scene, and discusses rap as a unique musical form in which traditional African-based oral traditions fuse with cutting-edge music technologies. Next she takes up rap's racial politics, its sharp criticisms of the police and the government, and the responses of those institutions. Finally, she explores the complex sexual politics of rap, including questions of misogyny, sexual domination, and female rappers' critiques of men.But these debates do not overshadow rappers' own words and thoughts. Rose also closely examines the lyrics and videos for songs by artists such as Public Enemy, KRS-One, Salt N' Pepa, MC Lyte, and L. L. Cool J. and draws on candid interviews with Queen Latifah, music producer Eric "Vietnam" Sadler, dancer Crazy Legs, and others to paint the full range of rap's political and aesthetic spectrum. In the end, Rose observes, rap music remains a vibrant force with its own aesthetic, "a noisy and powerful element of contemporary American popular culture which continues to draw a great deal of attention to itself."

Gustave Dorês unforgettable images of Victorian London portray in stark contrast the affluent world of monumental buildings, horse racing, and scoiety balls against the teeming populace of city streets and the raw poverty of slums, homelessness, and hopelessness. To reinforce Dore's powerful engravings, Coolidge draws skillfully upon the written observations of contemporary European visitors such as Taine, Heine, Gautier and Dostoyevsky.

Music of the bars and clubs of Austin, Texas has long been recognized as defining one of a dozen or more musical "scenes" across the country. In Dissonant Identities, Barry Shank, himself a musician who played and lived in the Texas capital, studies the history of its popular music, its cultural and economic context, and also the broader ramifications of that music as a signifying practice capable of transforming identities.While his focus is primarily on progressive country and rock, Shank also writes about traditional country, blues, rock, disco, ethnic, and folk musics. Using empirical detail and an expansive theoretical framework, he shows how Austin became the site for "a productive contestation between two forces: the fierce desire to remake oneself through musical practice, and the equally powerful struggle to affirm the value of that practice in the complexly structured late-capitalist marketplace."

Drawing of the postmodern perspective and concerns that informed her groundbreaking Terpsichore in Sneakers, Sally Banes's Writing Dancing documents the background and developments of avant-garde and popular dance, analyzing individual artists, performances, and entire dance movements. With a sure grasp of shifting cultural dynamics, Banes shows how postmodern dance is integrally connected to other oppositional, often marginalized strands of dance culture, and considers how certain kinds of dance move from the margins to the mainstream.Banes begins by considering the act of dance criticism itself, exploring its modes, methods, and underlying assumptions, and examining the work of other critics. She traces the development of contemporary dance from the early work of such influential figures as Merce Cunningham and George Balanchine to such contemporary choreographers as Molissa Fenley, Karole Armitage, and Michael Clark. She analyzes the contributions of the Judson Dance Theatre and the Workers' Dance League, the emergence of Latin postmodern dance in New York, and the impact of black jazz in Russia. In addition, Banes explores such untraditional performance modes as breakdancing and the "drunk dancing" of Fred Astaire.

Legendary jazzman Johnny Otis has spent a lifetime at the center of L.A.'s black music scene as a composer, performer, producer, d. j., activist, and preacher. His energetic, anecdotal memoir, Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue, recalls the music, the great performers, and the vibrant culture of the district, as well as the political and social forces -- including virulent white racism -- that have shaped black life in Los Angeles. Resonating with anger, poignancy, joy, and defiance, Upside Your Head! is a unique document of the African-American musical and cultural experience.Upside Your Head! recalls a 50-year career when it seems Otis either encountered, discovered, or performed with every significant figure in the early days of rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll, including Count Basie, Esther Phillips, T-Bone Walker, Big Mama Thornton, and Lester Young. Drawing on dozens of vignettes, personal photographs, and hours of taped interviews from the popular "Johnny Otis Show," Upside Your Head! offers a moving tribute to the black community that gave birth to L.

" William Walker's Southern Harmony, first published in 1835, was the most popular tune book of the nineteenth century, containing 335 sacred songs, dominated by the folk hymns of oral tradition and written in the old four-shape notation that was for generations the foundation of musical teaching in rural America. Born in 1809 in South Carolina, William Walker grew up near Spartanburg and early became devoted to the Welsh Baptist Church of his ancestors and to the musical heritage that church had brought to early America. Walker became a singing master, and Southern Harmony was compiled for his students in hundreds of singing schools all over North and South Carolina and Georgia and in eastern Tennessee. Southern Harmony reached Kentucky in the company of music-loving pioneers, and today an annual singing in Benton, Kentucky, remains the only such occasion on which Southern Harmony is consistently the source of the music. The CD included with the book contains 29 tunes, hymns, psalms, odes, and anthems, including ""New Britain"" (Amazing Grace), ""Happy Land,"" ""O Come, Come Away,"" ""Wondrous Love,"" and many, many more.

Kentucky's contribution to the perennially popular American craft of quiltmaking is a rich and varied one. Mary Clarke examines here the state of the craft in Kentucky and finds it as lively today as it was 150 years ago.Like a fingerprint, every Kentucky quilt differs from all others in some respects, whether it is an original creation or a variation of one of the traditional patterns long popular in the United States. And many Kentucky quilts reveal much about the individual maker -- her disposition, taste, and lifestyle, the familiar objects that bring joy to her daily life, and her response to events beyond the confines of family and home.Taken as a whole, Kentucky quilts and quilt names reflect the history of the Commonwealth, at every turn showing the intermingling of old and new in the grassroots continuity of an ancient craft that responds to fads and fashions by absorbing and refining them.