Senegal has played a central role in contemporary dance due to its rich performing traditions, as well as strong state patronage of the arts, first under French colonialism and later in the postcolonial era. In the 1980s, when the Senegalese economy was in decline and state fundingwithdrawn, European agencies used the performing arts as a tool in diplomacy. This had a profound impact on choreographic production and arts markets throughout Africa. In Senegal, choreographic performers have taken to contemporary dance, while continuing to engage with neo-traditional performance, regional genres like the sabar, and the popular dances they grew up with. A historically informed ethnography of creativity, agency, and the fashioning of selves through the different life stages in urban Senegal, this book explores the significance of this multiple engagement with dance in a context of economic uncertainty and rising concerns over morality in the public space.

A ground-breaking collection of essays that bring dance into the cultural studies mainstream, exploring the many ways we use our bodies as substantial, vital constituents of cultural reality.

The stunning conclusion to the Paradox War: Desi, Garner and Teucoi battle to survive in a universe that is coming apart at the seams. Desi quickly learns that she has not won the war. Norridi and Garner escaped her trap and are still continuing the war against her and her friends. Meanwhile Teucoi learns about the city in the centre of the Lea and the Dæmons that besiege it. Each side of the War races back in time trying to secure the timeline for themselves in a conclusion that redefines the very nature of reality. Before the end of the book, each character has faced the same choice, with death being at least one of the options.

From the bestselling social commentator and cultural historian comes Barbara Ehrenreich's fascinating exploration of one of humanity's oldest traditions: the celebration of communal joy In the acclaimed Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich delved into the origins of our species' attraction to war. Here, she explores the opposite impulse, one that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. Ehrenreich uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although sixteenth-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and "savage," Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks' worship of Dionysus to the medieval practice of Christianity as a "danced religion." Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, the prelude to widespread reformation: Protestants criminalized carnival, Wahhabist Muslims battled ecstatic Sufism, European colonizers wiped out native dance rites. The elites' fear that such gatherings would undermine social hierarchies was justified: the festive tradition inspired French revolutionary crowds and uprisings from the Caribbean to the American plains. Yet outbreaks of group revelry persist, as Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent "carnivalization" of sports. Original, exhilarating, and deeply optimistic, Dancing in the Streets concludes that we are innately social beings, impelled to share our joy and therefore able to envision, even create, a more peaceable future. "Fascinating . . . An admirably lucid, level-headed history of outbreaks of joy from Dionysus to the Grateful Dead."—Terry Eagleton, The Nation

There is no question that a relationship between a grandmother and grandchild is like no other. In Letters to Ellie, Grandma Bea Goode captures her granddaughters humorous and loving world and brings it to life through her eyes, ultimately sharing a poignant glimpse into their special bond. Goode, who began journaling her experiences with her granddaughter when little Ellie Cat was just nine months old, shares details from her three-year journey as a loving observer while her granddaughter grew from a precious baby into a lively toddler. With the special attention of a grandmother, Goode narrates all Ellies firsts, including pulling herself up, rolling the ball, and even mistakenly drinking from the cats water dish. As Ellie grows and begins to explore the world around her, Goode describes what it is like to be a grandmother who revels in every shared moment with her granddaughter, no matter how big or small. Letters to Ellie is a compilation of favorite memories penned by a grandmother to her granddaughter highlighting the treasured and often overlooked moments in life.

A clear, lively, and deeply informed survey of life in Renaissance Italy for students and general readers, this book presents a thoughtful cultural and social anthropology of practices, values, and negotiations. Lively and reader-friendly, this second edition of Daily Life in Renaissance Italy provides a colorful and accurate sense of how it felt to inhabit the Renaissance Italian world (1400–1600). In clearly written chapters, the book moves from Renaissance Italy's geography to its society, and then to family. It also looks at hierarchies, moralities, devices for keeping social order, media and communications and the arts, space, time, the life cycle, material culture, health, and illness, and finishes with work and play. This new edition is especially alert to the rich connections between Italy and the rest of Europe, and with Africa and Asia. The book synthesizes a great deal of recent scholarship on social and material history, paying additional attention to the arts and religion. Readers are given an inside view of people from every social class, elite and ordinary, men and women. Written for students of all levels, from secondary school up, it is also an accessible introduction for travelers to Italy.

Author Bonna Haberman expresses her concerns about religion and society in Israel. Engaging feminist interpretation of Jewish sources, this book questions the interplay between civil and religious authority and contributes toward liberating religious culture from its gender oppressions, and rendering religion a liberating force in society.