'Unfinished Gestures' presents the social and cultural history of courtesans in South India, focusing on their encounters with colonial modernity in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The book presents a discussion about the process of artistic creation in the diversity of its manifestations: visual arts, literature, theater, cinema, etc. The proposed reflections are supported by research dedicated to the study of these creative paths, from the documents left by the artists, such as diaries, notes, sketches, drafts, mock-ups, projects, scripts and contacts. Dialogues were established between the observation of recurrent aspects in a great diversity of processes and the thought of Charles S. Peirce, generating a possible theory of creation. First, the Unfinished Gesture discusses the aesthetics of the creative movement from a semiotic perspective. In this theoretical context creation is described as a fallible process with tendencies, supported by the logic of uncertainty, encompassing the intervention of chance and opening space for the introduction of new ideas. A continuous course in which you can not determine either a starting point or an end point.. These uncertain and indeterminate tendencies direct the artist in his search for the construction of works that satisfy his great poetic project, which is also strongly influenced by communicative issues. The search of the artist finds its possible concreteness, in complex processes of constructions of works. In a second moment, the creative path is focused from five points of view, as: transforming action, translation movement, knowledge process, construction of artistic truths and experimentation course. In the Epilogue are presented the concepts of Peircean semiotics, which base the reflections on the artistic creation developed throughout the book. The Unfinished Gesture aims to offer a critical approach to the arts, from the point of view of its production processes.

This concise, precise, and inclusive dictionary contributes to a growing, transforming, and living research culture within both humanities scholarship and professional practices within the creative sectors. Its format of succinct starting definitions, demonstrations of possible routes of further development, and references to new and revisited concepts as “conceptual invitations” allows readers to quickly uptake and orient themselves within this exciting methodological field for didactic, scholarly and creative use, and as a starting point for further investigation for future contributions to the new canon of critical concepts. Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities is the first book to outline and define the specific and evolving field of the creative humanities and provides the field’s nascent bibliography.

An investigation of sexual themes in electronic music since the 1950s, with detailed case studies of “electrosexual music” by a wide range of creators. In Sex Sounds, Danielle Shlomit Sofer investigates the repeated focus on sexual themes in electronic music since the 1950s. Debunking electronic music’s origin myth—that it emerged in France and Germany, invented by Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen, respectively—Sofer defines electronic music more inclusively to mean any music with an electronic component, drawing connections between academic institutions, radio studios, experimental music practice, hip-hop production, and histories of independent and commercial popular music. Through a broad array of detailed case studies—examining music that ranges from Schaeffer’s musique concrète to a video workshop by Annie Sprinkle—Sofer offers a groundbreaking look at the social and cultural impact sex has had on audible creative practices. Sofer argues that “electrosexual music” has two central characteristics: the feminized voice and the “climax mechanism.” Sofer traces the historical fascination with electrified sex sounds, showing that works representing women’s presumed sexual experience operate according to masculinist heterosexual tropes, and presenting examples that typify the electroacoustic sexual canon. Noting electronic music history’s exclusion of works created by women, people of color, women of color, and, in particular Black artists, Sofer then analyzes musical examples that depart from and disrupt the electroacoustic norms, showing how even those that resist the norms sometimes reinforce them. These examples are drawn from categories of music that developed in parallel with conventional electroacoustic music, separated—segregated—from it. Sofer demonstrates that electrosexual music is far more representative than the typically presented electroacoustic canon.

A novel of the emotional intricacies of trauma and exile, from the author of international bestselling Ru Finalist of the New Academy Prize in Literature Finalist Scotiabank Giller Prize Winner du Prix du Gran Public au salon du livre de Montreal Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction Winner of the Grand Prix RTL-Lire Emma-Jade and Louis are born into the havoc of the Vietnam War. Orphaned, saved and cared for by adults coping with the chaos of Saigon in free-fall, they become children of the Vietnamese diaspora. Em is not a romance in any usual sense of the word, but it is a word whose homonym--aimer, to love--resonates on every page, a book powered by love in the larger sense. A portrait of Vietnamese identity emerges that is wholly remarkable, honed in wartime violence that borders on genocide, and then by the ingenuity, sheer grit and intelligence of Vietnamese-Americans, Vietnamese-Canadians and other Vietnamese former refugees who go on to build some of the most powerful small business empires in the world. Em is a poetic story steeped in history, about those most impacted by the violence and their later accomplishments. In many ways, Em is perhaps Kim Thúy's most personal book, the one in which she trusts her readers enough to share with them not only the pervasive love she feels but also the rage and the horror at what she and so many other children of the Vietnam War had to live through. Written in Kim Thúy's trademark style, near to prose poetry, Em reveals her fascination with connection. Through the linked destinies of characters connected by birth and destiny, the novel zigzags between the rubber plantations of Indochina; daily life in Saigon during the war as people find ways to survive and help each other; Operation Babylift, which evacuated thousands of biracial orphans from Saigon in April 1975 at the end of the Vietnam War; and today's global nail polish and nail salon industry, largely driven by former Vietnamese refugees--and everything in between. Here are human lives shaped both by unspeakable trauma and also the beautiful sacrifices of those who made sure at least some of these children survived.

After losing his job, Lee Kravitz, a workaholic in his midfifties, took stock of his life and realized just how disconnected he had become from the people who mattered most to him. He committed an entire year to reconnecting with them and making amends. Kravitz takes readers on ten transformational journeys, among them repaying a thirty-year-old debt, making a long-overdue condolence call, finding an abandoned relative, and fulfilling a forgotten promise. Along the way, we meet a cast of wonderful characters and travel the globe-to a refugee camp in Kenya, a monastery in California, the desert of southern Iran, a Little League game in upstate New York, and a bar in Kravitz's native Cleveland. In each instance, the act of reaching out opens new paths for both personal and spiritual growth. All of us have unfinished business-the things we should have done but just let slip. Kravitz's story reveals that the things we've avoided are exactly those that have the power to transform, enrich, enlarge, and even complete us. The lesson of the book is one applicable to us all: Be mindful of what is most important, and act on it. The rewards will be immediate and lasting.

Form as function in Asian American literature.