Bringing a lively and accessible style to a complex subject, Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls explores the idea of the "posthuman" and the ways in which it is represented in popular culture. Toffoletti explores images of the posthuman body from goth-rocker Marilyn Manson's digitally manipulated self-portraits to the famous TDK "baby" adverts, and from the work of artist Patricia Piccinini to the curiously "plastic" form of the ubiquitous Barbie doll, controversially rescued here from her negative image. Drawing on the work of thinkers including Baudrillard, Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti, Cyborgs and Barbie Dolls explores the nature of the human - and its ambiguous gender - in an age of biotechnologies and digital worlds.

The quintessential international genre, detective fiction often works under the guise of popular entertainment to expose its extensive readership to complex moral questions and timely ethical dilemmas. The first book-length study of Japan’s detective fiction, Murder Most Modern considers the important role of detective fiction in defining the country’s emergence as a modern nation-state.
Kawana explores the interactions between the popular genre and broader discourses of modernity, nation, and ethics that circulated at this pivotal moment in Japanese history.

The function of print resources as instructional guides and descriptors of popular music pedagogy are addressed in this concise volume. Increasingly, public school teachers and college-level faculty members are introducing and utilizing music-related educational approaches in their classrooms. This book lists reports dealing with popular music resources as classroom teaching materials, and will stimulate further thought among students and teachers. It focuses on the growing spectrum of published scholarship that is available to instructors in specific teaching fields (art, geography, social studies, urban studies, and so on) as well as on the multitude of general resources (including biographical directories and encyclopedias of artist profiles).

Popular Culture Russia! is designed to offer an introduction to some of the developments in popular culture in the New Russia. This book attempts to chart the development of popular culture in Soviet Russia in broad terms, in order to set the backdrop for a detailed exploration of popular culture under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin.

 

Эта книга - введение в массовую культуру Новой России. Попытка обрисовать развитие поп-культуры в Советской России для дальнейшего детального исследования этого явления при Горбачеве, Ельцине и Путине.

The Book of Mirdad: The Strange Story of a Monastery Which was Once Called The Ark. This much loved classic of spiritual literature which has touched the hearts of so many readers, continues to show new generations how it is possible to expand one's consciousness, to uncover God in man by dissolving man's sense of duality...New books are being published every day, and millions of books are available worldwide. Still, many old books continue to remain popular because people just love reading them. The thirst for knowledge and wisdom, fiction and fun is insatiable. Once in a while we come across a book that transforms us and changes the course of our life... Osho