Fragments of Culture explores the evolving modern daily life of Turkey. Through analyses of language, folklore, film, satirical humor, the symbolism of Islamic political mobilization, and the shifting identities of diasporic communities in Turkey and Europe, this book provides a fresh and corrective perspective to the often-skewed perceptions of Turkish culture engendered by conventional western critiques. In this volume, some of the most innovative scholars of post 1980s Turkey address the complex ways that suburbanization and the growth of a globalized middle class have altered gender and class relations, and how Turkish society is being shaped and redefined through consumption. They also explore the increasingly polarized cultural politics between secularists and Islamists, and the ways that previously repressed Islamic elements have reemerged to complicate the idea of an "authentic" Turkish identity. Contributors examine a range of issues from the adjustments to religious identity as the Islamic veil becomes marketed as a fashion item, to the media's increased attention in Turkish transsexual lifestyle, to the role of folk dance as a ritualized part of public life. Fragments of Culture shows how attention to the minutiae of daily life can successfully unravel the complexities of a shifting society. This book makes a significant contribution to both modern Turkish studies and the scholarship on cross-cultural perspectives in Middle Eastern studies.

The majority of medieval and sixteenth-century Iberian manuscripts, whether in Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, or Aljamiado (Spanish written in Arabic script), contain fragments or are fragments. The term fragment is used to describe not only isolated bits of manuscript material with a damaged appearance, but also any piece of a larger text that was intended to be a fragment. Investigating the vital role these fragments played in medieval and early modern Iberian manuscript culture, Heather Bamford’s Cultures of the Fragment is focused on fragments from five major Iberian literary traditions, including Hispano-Arabic and Hispano-Hebrew poetry, Latin and Castilian epics, chivalric romances, and the literature of early modern crypto-Muslims. The author argues that while some manuscript fragments came about by accident, many were actually created on purpose and used in a number of ways, from binding materials, to anthology excerpts, and some fragments were even incorporated into sacred objects as messages of good luck. Examining four main motifs of fragmentation, including intention, physical appearance, metonymy, and performance, this work reveals the centrality of the fragment to manuscript studies, highlighting the significance of the fragment to Iberia’s multicultural and multilingual manuscript culture.

Works of art such as paintings with words on them or poems shaped as images communicate to the viewer by means of more than one medium. Here is presented a particular group of hybrid art works from the early twentieth century, to discover in what way words and images can function together to create meaning. The four central artists considered in this study investigate word/image forms in their work. F.T. Marinetti invented parole in libertà, among other ideas, to free language from syntactic connections. Umberto Boccioni experimented with newspaper clippings on the canvas from 1912-1915, and these collages constitute an important exploration into word/image forms. André Breton's collection of poems Clair de terre (1923) contains several typographical variations for iconographic effect. René Magritte explored the relationship between words and images, juxtaposing signifiers to contradictory signifieds on the canvas. A final chapter introduces media other than poetry and painting on which words and images appear. Posters, the theater, and the relatively new medium of cinema foreground words and images constantly. This volume will be of interest to scholars of twentieth-century French or Italian literature or painting, and to scholars of word and image studies.

Works of art such as paintings with words on them or poems shaped as images communicate to the viewer by means of more than one medium. Here is presented a particular group of hybrid art works from the early twentieth century, to discover in what way words and images can function together to create meaning. The four central artists considered in this study investigate word/image forms in their work. F.T. Marinetti invented parole in libertà, among other ideas, to free language from syntactic connections. Umberto Boccioni experimented with newspaper clippings on the canvas from 1912-1915, and these collages constitute an important exploration into word/image forms. André Breton's collection of poems Clair de terre (1923) contains several typographical variations for iconographic effect. René Magritte explored the relationship between words and images, juxtaposing signifiers to contradictory signifieds on the canvas. A final chapter introduces media other than poetry and painting on which words and images appear. Posters, the theater, and the relatively new medium of cinema foreground words and images constantly. This volume will be of interest to scholars of twentieth-century French or Italian literature or painting, and to scholars of word and image studies.

DIVThe first cultural history of post-1940s Mexico to relate issues of representation and meaning to questions of power; it includes essays on popular music, unions, TV, tourism, cinema, wrestling, and illustrated magazines./div

Memoir of a small boy who was separated from his family at the age of three or four-years-old after his father was killed during a round-up of Jews in Latvia, and was sent to the Majdanek death camp where he was discovered by Allied soldiers in 1945.

Picture your 21st birthday. Did you have a party? If so, do you remember who was there? How clear are these memories? Should we trust them? Such questions have fascinated scientists for hundreds of years, and, as Alison Winter shows in this book, the answers have changed dramatically in just the past century.