Product Description: Negation, Critical Theory, and Postmodern Textuality features 14 new essays by leading specialists in critical theory, comparative literature, philosophy, and English literature. The essays, which present wide-ranging historical considerations of negation in light of recent developments in poststructuralism and postmodernism, range over many of the siginificant texts in which negation figures prominently...read more

Product Description: In this collection of essays, literary and cultural critics, musicologists and queer theorists explore the way opera shapes national character through its representations of gender, sexuality and class. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Shakespeare's plays have been adapted or rewritten in various, often surprising, ways since the seventeenth century. This groundbreaking anthology brings together twelve theatrical adaptations of Shakespeares work from around the world and across the centuries...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

The second edition of Vis-à-vis continues the excitement of the innovative first edition with a fully integrated and revised multimedia package and an exciting Correspondance feature (chapter opening letter, postcard or e-mail, which is answered in the mid-lesson Correspondance cultural spread) presented throughout the text. The overall goal of the revision, which was shaped by the extensive user feedback, remains the same as that of the first edition: to promote a balanced four-skills approach to learning French through a wide variety of listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities, while introducing students to the richness and diversity of the Francophone world. (view table of contents)

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Product Description: A breakthrough book in the emergent fields of improvisation and cultural theory, The Other Side of Nowhere conveys the spirit and energy of an experimental celebration. The volume is divided into four sections: writings of musicians about improvising; examinations of inter- and cross-cultural dialogue; discussions of social practice and identity; and essays about collaborative dissonance...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

The Fierce Urgency of Now links musical improvisation to struggles for social change, focusing on the connections between the improvisation associated with jazz and the dynamics of human rights struggles and discourses. The authors acknowledge that at first glance improvisation and rights seem to belong to incommensurable areas of human endeavor. Improvisation connotes practices that are spontaneous, personal, local, immediate, expressive, ephemeral, and even accidental, while rights refer to formal standards of acceptable human conduct, rules that are permanent, impersonal, universal, abstract, and inflexible. Yet the authors not only suggest that improvisation and rights can be connected; they insist that they must be connected.Improvisation is the creation and development of new, unexpected, and productive cocreative relations among people. It cultivates the capacity to discern elements of possibility, potential, hope, and promise where none are readily apparent. Improvisers work with the tools they have in the arenas that are open to them. Proceeding without a written score or script, they collaborate to envision and enact something new, to enrich their experience in the world by acting on it and changing it. By analyzing the dynamics of particular artistic improvisations, mostly by contemporary American jazz musicians, the authors reveal improvisation as a viable and urgently needed model for social change. In the process, they rethink politics, music, and the connections between them.

Product Description: Canadians have enjoyed a long history of encounters with Shakespeare, from the visual arts to creative new adaptations, from traditional and nontraditional interpretations to distinguished critical scholarship. We have in over two centuries remade Shakespeare in ways that are distinctly Canadian...read more

Product Description: Canadians have enjoyed a long history of encounters with Shakespeare, from the visual arts to creative new adaptations, from traditional and nontraditional interpretations to distinguished critical scholarship. We have in over two centuries remade Shakespeare in ways that are distinctly Canadian...read more

Product Description: The Tragedy of Romeo and JulietBy William ShakespeareThe play Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families...read more