Celebrity culture today teems with stars who challenge long-held ideas about a “normal” body. Plus-size and older actresses are rebelling against the cultural obsession with slender bodies and youth. Physically disabled actors and actresses are moving beyond the stock roles and stereotypes that once constrained their opportunities. Stars of various races and ethnicities are crafting new narratives about cultural belonging, while transgender performers are challenging our culture’s assumptions about gender and identity. But do these new players in contemporary entertainment media truly signal a new acceptance of body diversity in popular culture? Focusing on six key examples—Melissa McCarthy, Gabourey Sidibe, Peter Dinklage, Danny Trejo, Betty White, and Laverne Cox—Rebellious Bodies examines the new body politics of stardom, situating each star against a prominent cultural anxiety about bodies and inclusion, evoking issues ranging from the obesity epidemic and the rise of postracial rhetoric to disability rights, Latino/a immigration, an aging population, and transgender activism. Using a wide variety of sources featuring these celebrities—films, TV shows, entertainment journalism, and more—to analyze each one’s media persona, Russell Meeuf demonstrates that while these stars are promoted as examples of a supposedly more inclusive industry, the reality is far more complex. Revealing how their bodies have become sites for negotiating the still-contested boundaries of cultural citizenship, he uncovers the stark limitations of inclusion in a deeply unequal world.

At least 3 to 5 million Americans suffer from environmental illness (EI) or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), two illnesses cast into a skeptical light by the medical community and the general public. Those with EI and CFS suffer not only with their illnesses, but also from feelings of isolation and the uncertainty of whether or not they will ever be 'normal' again. The Rebellious Body is not only a guide for alleviating symptoms, but also is an invaluable tool that makes sense out of the confusing quirks of these illnesses, and offers choices as to what to do about them in order to maintain a balance of body, mind, and spirit. Ideal reading for individuals suffering from EI and CFS, and also for health practitioners, families and friends of sufferers, and for all who struggle with fatigue and immune-related health problems. The Rebellious Body is an extraordinary resource that offers tangible relief from EI and CFS. If you want to make sense out of the broad spectrum of disparate information, this practical, self-help book engages you in your own recovery, and assists you in customizing healing options. You will hear the unique stories of those who have struggled with these illnesses and thereby recover a sense of hope. Ms. Strubbe Wittenberg, a registered nurse and health educator, herself afflicted since 1982 with both illnesses, combines personal experience and scientific research to help you:

Celebrity culture today teems with stars who challenge long-held ideas about a "normal" body. Plus-size and older actresses are rebelling against the cultural obsession with slender bodies and youth. Physically disabled actors and actresses are moving beyond the stock roles and stereotypes that once constrained their opportunities. Stars of various races and ethnicities are crafting new narratives about cultural belonging, while transgender performers are challenging our culture's assumptions about gender and identity. But do these new players in contemporary entertainment media truly signal a new acceptance of body diversity in popular culture? Focusing on six key examples—Melissa McCarthy, Gabourey Sidibe, Peter Dinklage, Danny Trejo, Betty White, and Laverne Cox—Rebellious Bodies examines the new body politics of stardom, situating each star against a prominent cultural anxiety about bodies and inclusion, evoking issues ranging from the obesity epidemic and the rise of postracial rhetoric to disability rights, Latino/a immigration, an aging population, and transgender activism. Using a wide variety of sources featuring these celebrities—films, TV shows, entertainment journalism, and more—to analyze each one's media persona, Russell Meeuf demonstrates that while these stars are promoted as examples of a supposedly more inclusive industry, the reality is far more complex. Revealing how their bodies have become sites for negotiating the still-contested boundaries of cultural citizenship, he uncovers the stark limitations of inclusion in a deeply unequal world.

Bringing together an extraordinary range of international scholars and practitioners that include contemporary visual artists, poets, choreographers, activists, film-makers, theatre-makers, magicians, and circus artists, the contributors situate their rebellious practices of knowledge production and upheaval in the academy and in society.

"A must-read for young people.”—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy Now adapted for readers ages 12 and up, the award-winning biography that examines Rosa Parks’s life and 60 years of radical activism and brings the civil rights movement in the North and South to life The basis for the documentary of the same name executive produced by award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien, now streaming on Peacock. The documentary is the recepient of the 2022 Television Academy Honors Award. A Chicago Public Library’s “Best of the Best Books of 2021” Selection · A Kirkus Reviews “Best YA Biography and Memoir of 2021” Selection Rosa Parks is one of the most well-known Americans today, but much of what is known and taught about her is incomplete, distorted, and just plain wrong. Adapted for young people from the NAACP Image Award–winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert shatter the myths that Parks was meek, accidental, tired, or middle class. They reveal a lifelong freedom fighter whose activism began two decades before her historic stand that sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and continued for 40 years after. Readers will understand what it was like to be Parks, from standing up to white supremacist bullies as a young person to meeting her husband, Raymond, who showed her the possibility of collective activism, to her years of frustrated struggle before the boycott, to the decade of suffering that followed for her family after her bus arrest. The book follows Parks to Detroit, after her family was forced to leave Montgomery, Alabama, where she spent the second half of her life and reveals her activism alongside a growing Black Power movement and beyond. Because Rosa Parks was active for 60 years, in the North as well as the South, her story provides a broader and more accurate view of the Black freedom struggle across the twentieth century. Theoharis and Colbert show young people how the national fable of Parks and the civil rights movement—celebrated in schools during Black History Month—has warped what we know about Parks and stripped away the power and substance of the movement. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks illustrates how the movement radically sought to expose and eradicate racism in jobs, housing, schools, and public services, as well as police brutality and the over-incarceration of Black people—and how Rosa Parks was a key player throughout. Rosa Parks placed her greatest hope in young people—in their vision, resolve, and boldness to take the struggle forward. As a young adult, she discovered Black history, and it sustained her across her life. The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks will help do that for a new generation.

Thirteen women at the forefront of philosophy locate new feminist points of view within the discipline by rigorously engaging works of contemporary French philosophy. In so doing, they both transform the standard practices of the field and carve out new territory. These writers amplify the work of feminist philosophers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray, and Sarah Kofman in ways that are both stylistically and substantively creative. They also appropriate for radical feminist use the works of male philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre.The essays illustrate the manner in which feminist philosophers bypass traditional methodology in favor of a disciplinary freedom characterized by fluid methodologies--best exemplified in Beauvoir's work--and by the employment of imaginative forms, including the autobiographical and the poetic. The modes of inquiry used here range variously from psychoanalysis and existentialism to deconstruction, post-structuralism, and newly resurgent phenomenology. This volume also contains a comprehensive bibliography of feminist thinkers who are enacting French philosophy in English, German, and French.