Author: Cynthia Conides File Type: pdf The ancient city of Teotihuacan, North Americas first metropolis, flourished for nearly eight centuries in central Mexico until its demise in 650 C.E. Known primarily for its massive architecture and monumental wall paintings, the cityand its dazzling artworkinspired awe in its time, and continues to do so today. Made to Order, the first systematic study of more than 150 painted portable artworks produced in Teotihuacan, offers a unique, deeply informed perspective on the cultural practices and artistic techniques of the largest urban community in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. The painted vessels Cynthia Conides considersfeatured here in finely reproduced full-color photographsconstitute nearly the entire body of material now available for analysis. With attention to their origins and provenance, wherever possible, the author views these objects from a range of vantage points, using ceramic chronologies to measure the changing characteristics and cultural significance of pictorial paintings on portable media. Her approachranging from stylistic analysis and narrative theory to theoretical perspectives on artistic exchange among artisans living and working in a thriving urban settingreveals the importance of such objects to a city where social status, and the acquisition and display of its symbols, were paramount. This perspective is in turn grounded in new interpretations of the religious, social, and ritual contexts in which the objects functioned. The most complete analysis of both ceramics from excavations at Teotihuacan and those held in museum collections worldwide, Made to Order will become a standard source for specialists and students of pre-Columbian visual culture and archaeology, and a vital resource for those interested in cross-cultural ceramic studies. **

Author: Scott Huler File Type: epub From Publishers WeeklyAs this literary travelogue opens, NPR contributor and author Huler (Defining the Wind) sounds like hes going to renege on his 2001 pledge never to read James Joyces Ulysses. He joins a Ulysses reading group, but finds himself more fascinated by the story behind it Homers The Odyssey, which hed also never read. A plan is born to retrace Odysseus twenty-year travels. Hulers first challenge is that nobody really knows where any of the locations actually are-finding them, he says, is like hunting for the Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz. Although Huler initially tries too hard to relate his slapdash wanderings to the text (a ride on a Homer-themed cruise has him saying, I found myself among these magical seafarers, exactly like Odysseus), he eventually gives in to the randomness of his travels, and the book is all the better for it. While fighting his way onto crowded ferries or showing up in tiny hamlets with no hotel reservations, he has some realizations about the man hes following and about journeying as its own reward. Hulers book is not without flaws, but in essence, as he himself concludes about The Odysseys continuing appeal, the story has good bones. br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From BooklistStarred Review In 2001 the author, an NPR contributor, learned that you really shouldnt say certain things on the airlike, for instance, that you will never read James Joyces Ulysses. Because devotees of the book might challenge you to give it a fair try, and you might wind up rereading the epic poem that inspired Joyce, Homers Odyssey. And then you might find yourself in the Mediterranean, retracing Odysseus voyage from Troy to Ithaca. Well, thats what happened to Huler, anyway, and its a good thing, too not only did he develop a new appreciation of a classic piece of literature but he also found a new side of his own character not only a husband and a father but also a lone traveler on an epic journey. It sounds a little artsy-fartsy, but Huler tells the story in a breezy, entertaining style, deftly mixing historical and literary backstory with what happens on the road, making us laugh whileintroducing us to places weve never seen and people weve never met (but with whom wesomehow feel connected). Recommend this one highly to fans of adventure memoirists like Bill Bryson and Tim Cahill. --David Pitt

Author: Nancy L. Canepa File Type: pdf Teaching Fairy Tales edited by Nancy L. Canepa brings together scholars who have contributed to the field of fairy-tale studies since its origins. This collection offers information on materials, critical approaches and ideas, and pedagogical resources for the teaching of fairy tales in one comprehensive source that will further help bring fairy-tale studies into the academic mainstream.The volume begins by posing some of the big questions that stand at the forefront of fairy-tale studies How should we define the fairy tale? What is the classic fairy tale? Does it make sense to talk about a fairy-tale canon? The first chapter includes close readings of tales and their variants, in order to show how fairy tales arent simple, moralizing, andor static narratives. The second chapter focuses on essential moments and documents in fairy-tale history, investigating how we gain unique perspectives on cultural history through reading fairy tales. Contributors to chapter 3 argue that encouraging students to approach fairy tales critically, either through well-established lenses or newer ways of thinking, enables them to engage actively with material that can otherwise seem over-familiar. Chapter 4 makes a case for using fairy tales to help students learn a foreign language. Teaching Fairy Tales also includes authors experiences of successful hands-on classroom activities with fairy tales, syllabi samples from a range of courses, and testimonies from storytellers that inspire students to reflect on the construction and transmission of narrative by becoming tale-tellers themselves.Teaching Fairy Tales crosses disciplinary, historical, and national boundaries to consider the fairy-tale corpus integrally and from a variety of perspectives. Scholars from many different academic areas will use this volume to explore and implement new aspects of the field of fairy-tale studies in their teaching and research. **

Author: Michael A. McCarthy File Type: pdf Why has old-age security become less solidaristic and increasingly tied to risky capitalist markets? Drawing on rich archival data that covers more than fifty years of American history, Michael A. McCarthy argues that the critical driver was policymakers reactions to capitalist crises and their political imperative to promote capitalist growth. Pension development has followed three paths of marketization in America since the New Deal, each distinct but converging occupational pension plans were adopted as an alternative to real increases in Social Security benefits after World War II, private pension assets were then financialized and invested into the stock market, and, since the 1970s, traditional pension plans have come to be replaced with riskier 401(k) retirement plans. Comparing each episode of change, Dismantling Solidarity mounts a forceful challenge to common understandings of Americas private pension system and offers an alternative political economy of the welfare state. McCarthy weaves together a theoretical framework that helps to explain pension marketization with structural mechanisms that push policymakers to intervene to promote capitalist growth and avoid capitalist crises and contingent historical factors that both drive them to intervene in the particular ways they do and shape how their interventions bear on welfare change. By emphasizing the capitalist context in which policymaking occurs, McCarthy turns our attention to the structural factors that drive policy change. Dismantling Solidarity is both theoretically and historically detailed and superbly argued, urging the reader to reconsider how capitalism itself constrains policymaking. It will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, historians, and those curious about the relationship between capitalism and democracy. 0 **Review Over the past half century, Americans retirement pensions have become more subject to market risks. Michael A. McCarthy offers an innovative and rigorously constructed explanation for this change, linking it to politicians efforts to manage crises while the balance of class forces shifted. This book advances our knowledge of recent political history and offers a model of how to understand the interaction of legislative and class politics.Richard Lachmann, University at Albany, State University of New York, author of Capitalists in Spite of Themselves Liberalization and privatization have many faces and come in a wide variety of ways. Michael A. McCarthy shows how Social Security, originally a public, nonmarket institution, is gradually penetrated by market forces and turned market-compatible in a capitalist context. The book makes an important contribution to the political economy of the welfare state and its transformation under the impact of liberalization.Wolfgang Streeck, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, coeditor of The End of Diversity? When a fresh voice is open to surprise reports on original research about a subject of fundamental importance, intellectual and political illumination can follow, as it does in this challenging and compelling book. This is policy history of the first rank.Ira Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University, author of Fear Itself In Dismantling Solidarity, Michael A. McCarthy argues that policymakers drove the gradual privatization of retirement security. They did so, however, within two key constraints, namely, the structure of capitalism itself and the balance of class forces. McCarthy walks us through three periods in the transformation of American pensions the initial drive to privatization after World War II the initial financialization of pensions with Taft-Hartley and ERISA and finally, the enormous shift from defined benefit plans to defined contribution or 401K plans. McCarthy offers a highly sophisticated, historically sensitive alternative hypothesis that turns on the interaction of multiple sets of actors. More sociologists should do work like this.Cedric de Leon, Providence College, author of The Origins of Right to Work Michael A. McCarthy marshals original historical research to get deep into the institutional details of pension financing and to trace the shifting alignments made possible by those institutional arrangements. The resulting work is a valuable contribution to the literature on the development of the publicprivate welfare state that should be consulted by any serious student of American political economy.Greta R. Krippner, author of Capitalizing on Crisis In Dismantling Solidarity, Michael A. McCarthy develops a powerful framework to explain the rise and fall of solidaristic pensions in the United States since World War II. He breathes new life into old debates about employers, the state, and the development of social policies.Fred Block, coauthor of The Power of Market Fundamentalism About the Author Michael A. McCarthy is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Marquette University.