These readings are organized into four sections. The first explores the wellsprings of the debates in the relationship between the postmodern and the enterprise it both continues and contravenes: modernism. Here philosophers, social and political commentators, as well as cultural and literary analysts present controversial background essays on the complex history of postmodernism. The readings in the second section debate the possibility--or desirability--of trying to define the postmodern, given its cultural agenda of decentering, challenging, even undermining the guiding "master" narratives of Western culture. The readings in the third section explore postmodernism's complicated complicity with these very narratives, while the fourth section moves from theory to practice in order to investigate, in a variety of fields, the common denominators of the postmodern condition in action.

An anthology which presents the synthesizing trend of post-modernism in all its diversity: a convergence in architecture and literature, film and cultural theory, sociology and politics after the fall of communism, feminism and theology, and science and economics.

Elmer Dyck and Regent College faculty members combine insights and expertise to offer a multidisciplinary approach for studying and applying the Bible. Contributors: Gordon Fee, J. I. Packer, Craig Gay, Loren Wilkinson, James Houston and Eugene Peterson.

Drawing on a rich diversity of theoretical approaches and analytical strategies, urban geographers have been at the forefront of understanding the global and local processes shaping cities, and of making sense of the urban experiences of a wide variety of social groups. Through their links with those working in the fields of urban policy design, urban geographers have also played an important role in the analysis of the economic and social problems confronting cities. Capturing the diversity of scholarship in the field of urban geography, this reader presents a stimulating selection of articles and excerpts by leading figures. Organized around seven themes, it addresses the changing economic, social, cultural, and technological conditions of contemporary urbanization and the range of personal and public responses. It reflects the academic importance of urban geography in terms of both its theoretical and empirical analysis as well as its applied policy relevance, and features extensive editorial input in the form of general, section and individual extract introductions. Bringing together in one volume 'classic' and contemporary pieces of urban geography, studies undertaken in the developed and developing worlds, and examples of theoretical and applied research, it provides in a convenient, student-friendly format, an unparalleled resource for those studying the complex geographies of urban areas.

The Carol J. Adams Reader gathers together Adams's foundational and recent articles in the fields of critical studies, animal studies, media studies, vegan studies, ecofeminism and feminism, as well as relevant interviews and conversations in which Adams identifies key concepts and new developments in her decades-long work. This volume, a companion to The Sexual Politics of Meat (Bloomsbury Revelations), offers insight into a variety of urgent issues for our contemporary world: Why do batterers harm animals? What is the relationship between genocide and attitudes toward other animals? How do activism and theory feed each other? How do race, gender, and species categories interact in strengthening oppressive attitudes? In clear language, Adams identifies the often hidden aspects of cultural presumptions. The essays and conversations found here capture the decades-long energy and vision that continue to shape new ways of thinking about and responding to oppression.

The difficulty of interpreting the Bible is felt all over today. Is the Bible still authoritative for the faith and practice of the church? If so, in what way? What practices of reading offer the most appropriate approach to understanding Scripture? The church's lack of clarity about these issues has hindered its witness and mission, causing it to speak with an uncertain voice to the challenges of our time. This important book is for a twenty-first-century church that seems to have lost the art of reading the Bible attentively and imaginatively. The Art of Reading Scripture is written by a group of eminent scholars and teachers seeking to recover the church's rich heritage of biblical interpretation in a dramatically changed cultural environment. Asking how best to read the Bible in a postmodern context, the contributors together affirm up front "Nine Theses" that provide substantial guidance for the church. The essays and sermons that follow both amplify and model the approach to Scripture outlined in the Nine Theses. Lucidly conceived, carefully written, and shimmering with fresh insights, The Art of Reading Scripture proposes a far-reaching revolution in how the Bible is taught in theological seminaries and calls pastors and teachers in the church to rethink their practices of using the Bible. Contributors: Gary A. Anderson Richard Bauckham Brian E. Daley Ellen F. Davis Richard B. Hays James C. Howell Robert W. Jenson William Stacy Johnson L. Gregory Jones Christine McSpadden R. W. L. Moberly David C. Steinmetz Marianne Meye Thompson

The language, themes and imagery of the Bible have been rewritten into texts across time. In the Revelation of John, the Hebrew Bible echoes and is reinvented, just as in James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) many explicit and implicit readings and interpretations of the Bible are offered. In Texts Reading Texts, these readings of the Bible, and the ways in which Revelation and Hogg's Confessions have themselves been read, are considered from the two postmodern perspectives of marginalization and deconstruction. By reading the two seemingly unrelated texts side by side from these perspectives, traditional readings of them both are disturbed and challenged.

The first comprehensive interpretation of the work of a major figure in Chicano literature, Klaus Zilles's study of the fourteen novels in Rolando Hinojosa's Klail City Death Trip series will appeal equally to the specialist, to the student, and to the interested reader of Hinojosa's intriguing and innovative "Tejano" novels. The series is dedicated to revealing the suppressed oral history of Mexican Texas and to making the reader a companion on a quest for this elusive history. Published between 1973 and 1998, the Klail City series ranges in historical time from the mid-1700s to the end of the twentieth century, attesting to 250 years of Spanish-Mexican presence in the Lower Río Grande Valley of Texas. The main body of Hinojosa's series, however, is set in fictitious Belken County, located on the U.S./Mexico border, and charts the lives of Hinojosa's two protagonists, Rafe Buenrostro and his cousin, Jehú Malacara, two men raised in the rigidly segregated world of a South Texas farming community. The Klail City series constitutes a truly "novel" approach to the novel: each installment in the cycle differs from the one before it in genre (the adult Buenrostro becomes a police detective and appears in several mystery novels), in narrative style (one novel is written entirely in verse, while another takes epistolary form), or in language (Hinojosa writes in Spanish, in English, in Chicano idiom, and in mixtures of all three). Zilles accomplishment is to provide a critical guide to the complicated fictional world that Hinojosa creates. By showing the profusion of forms and styles Hinojosa deploys, Zilles reveals the true dimensions of Hinojosa's design. "What makes Zilles so refreshing is his style. . . . He writes in a language accessible to the average reader. His work is solid, informative, thoughtful, and useful. I recommend it highly."--Juan Bruce-Novoa, Harvard University

Deconstruction, it seems, is dead. Its death, according to Jeffrey T. Nealon, is commonly attributed either to suicide—a direct result of its own decline into a formalism it was supposed to remedy—or to murder at the hands of the New Historicists. Looking beyond its presumed demise, Nealon sees its insights as continuing to figure importantly in postmodernist critical debates.

The Reader's Guide to Music is designed to provide a useful single-volume guide to the ever-increasing number of English language book-length studies in music. Each entry consists of a bibliography of some 3-20 titles and an essay in which these titles are evaluated, by an expert in the field, in light of the history of writing and scholarship on the given topic. The more than 500 entries include not just writings on major composers in music history but also the genres in which they worked (from early chant to rock and roll) and topics important to the various disciplines of music scholarship (from aesthetics to gay/lesbian musicology).