"Arguing that inexpression is a gesture that acquires distinctive meanings in concert with blackness, Deadpan tracks instances and meanings of deadpan--a vaudeville term meaning 'dead face---across literature, theater, visual and performance art, and the performance of self in everyday life. Tina Post reveals that the performance of purposeful withholding is a critical tool in the work of black culture makers, intervening in the persistent framing...

Jean Nouvel is one of the most innovative and unconventional architects of our time. He owes his fame to projects such as the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Opera House in Lyon, the Cartier Foundation Headquarters, as well as his spectacular design of the Tokyo opera and the boldness of his "Endless Tower". This film casts a fresh, explicit glance at the scope of this architect and his work as Nouvel explains what architecture means to him...

Focusing on ten elements of Japanese design, Graham explores how visual qualities, the cultural parameters, and the Japanese religious traditions of Buddhism and Shinto have impacted the appearance of its arts.

The Shaker movement in America was founded by Ann Lee, a member of a religious sect near Manchester, England, that prophesized the imminent second appearance of Christ on earth. They were referred to as "Shaking Quakers" due to their ecstatic movements during worship. Ann Lee immigrated to America in 1774, and with a small, devoted group of followers preached that the transformation and judgment of the world had begun. In 1787, three years after Ann's...

Glitch Art in Theory and Practice:Critical Failures and Post-Digital Aesthetics explores the concept of "glitch" alongside contemporary digital political economy to develop a general theory of critical media using glitch as a case study and model, focusing specifically on examples of digital art and aesthetics. While prior literature on glitch practice in visual arts has been divided between historical discussions and social-political analyses, this...

"All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory. Exploring how this troubled memory works in Vietnam, the United States, Laos, Cambodia, and South Korea, the book deals specifically with the Vietnam War and also war in general. He reveals how war is a part of our identity, as individuals and as citizens of nations armed to the teeth. Venturing through literature, film, monuments, memorials, museums, and landscapes...

A magisterial history that recasts the Enlightenment as a period not solely consumed with rationale and reason, but rather as a pursuit of practical means to achieve greater human happiness... One of the formative periods of European and world history, the Enlightenment is the fountainhead of modern secular Western values: religious tolerance, freedom of thought, speech and the press, of rationality and evidence-based argument. Yet why, over three...