Recent publications
Felicia Chan, co-edited with Angelina Karpovich and Xin Zhang
Genre in Asian Film and Television: New Approaches (Palgrave Macmillan 2011)
This book interrogates the notions of 'Asia' and 'genre' through various case studies of cross-national and cross-cultural production, representation and reception. Areas of study include national film and television cultures, the politics of national representation and the cross-cultural reception of fiction and non-fiction film, as well as the reconsideration of mainstream film and television genres. The collection aims to shed new light on trans- and intra-Asian discourses on self, neighbour, and nationhood, beyond the old East-West dialectic, discourses whose complexity and richness are mirrored by equally acute and compelling approaches to cinematic and televisual genres.
Nina Glick Schiller, co-edited with Ayse Caglar
Locating Migration: Rescaling Cities and Migrants (Cornell 2011)
In Locating Migration Nina Glick Schiller, Ayse Çaglar, and contributing authors examine the relationship between migrants and cities in a time of massive urban restructuring. They find that locality matters in migration research and migrants matter in the reconfiguration of contemporary cities. This book provides a new approach to the study of migrant settlement and transnational connection in which cities rather than nation-states, ethnic groups, or transnational communities serve as the starting point for comparative analysis.
Nina Glick Schiller, co-edited with Thomas Faist
Migration, Development and Transnationalization (Berghahn Books 2010)
The relationship between migration and development is becoming an important field of study, yet the fundamentals – analytical tools, conceptual framework, political stance – are not being called into question.. To those who seek to address the morass of development failure, vitriolic attacks on immigrants, or sanguine views about migrant agency, this volume challenges them to put aside their methodological nationalism and pursue alternative pathways out of the quagmire of poverty, violence, and fear that is enveloping the globe.
Galin Tihanov, co-edited with Alistair Renfrew
Critical Theory in Russia and the West (Routledge 2010)
The traditional view that the rise of Western theoretical thought in the 1960s and 1970s could be traced back to the Soviet 1920s, once accepted in Russia and the West alike because it directly associated the academic prestige of contemporary Western theory with the intellectual climate of post-revolutionary Russia, is increasingly challenged today. This book, with contributions from some of the most visible specialists in the field, re-examines the significant transfers, cross-fertilisations and synergies of cultural and literary theory between Russia and the West, from the 1920s through to the present day.
Jackie Stacey
The Cinematic Life of the Gene, (Duke University Press, 2010)
The book argues that as a cultural technology of imitation, cinema is uniquely situated to help us theorize “the genetic imaginary,” the constellation of fantasies that genetic engineering provokes. The Cinematic Life of the Gene demonstrates how the cinema animates the tropes and enacts the fears at the heart of our genetic imaginary. It engages with film theory; queer theories of desire, embodiment, and kinship; psychoanalytic theories of subject formation; and debates about the reproducibility of the image and the shift from analog to digital technologies.
Adi Kuntsman
Figurations of Violence and Belonging: Queerness, Migranthood and Nationalism in Cyberspace and Beyond (Peter Lang, 2009)
This book offers a nuanced and critical analysis of the complex relationship between violence and belonging, by exploring the ways sexual, ethnic or national belonging can work through, rather than against, violence. Based on an ethnographic study of Russian-speaking, queer immigrants in Israel/Palestine and in cyberspace, the book raises daring questions about the responsibilities of national homemaking, the complicity of queerness within violent regimes of colonialism and war, and the ambivalence of immigrant belonging at the intersection of marginality and privilege.
Gillian Evans
Educational Failure and the Working Class White Children in Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
What does it mean to be working class in Britain at the beginning of the 21st century? Why, despite over 50 years of compulsory education in Britain, are many working class children still likely to end up in the same kind of low-paid, routine occupations as their parents? Either schools are failing working class children or working class life presents alternative means for gaining social status that conflict with what it means to do well at school. Or perhaps both factors are relevant. Taking the reader on a journey of self-discovery in Bermondsey, Southeast London and making the process of learning how to become a certain kind of British person its central focus, this book provides a window onto another world. This is a world where middle class values are challenged and the complex cultural politics of white working class pride is revealed.
Atreyee Sen
Shiv Sena Women: Violence and Communalism in a Bombay Slum (Hurst and Co, 2007)
Based on Atreyee Sen's immersion into the low-income, working-class slums of Bombay, this book tells the story of the women and children of the Shiv Sena, one of the most radical and violent of the Hindu nationalist parties that dominated Indian politics throughout the 90s and into the present. The Sena women's front has been instrumental in creating and sustaining communal violence, directed primarily against their Muslim neighbors. The author presents the Sena women's own rationale for organizing themselves along paramilitary lines, as poor women and children have used violence and "gang-ism" to create a distinctive social identity, networks of material support, and protection from male violence in the explosive environment of the slums. Sen's moving account foregrounds the ethical dilemmas that surrounded her "covert" research and writing of the book, and she considers wider questions involving women, violence, and religious fundamentalism.
Jackie Stacey and Sarah Street
Queer Screen (Routledge 2007)
Queer Screen: A Screen Reader brings together a selection of key articles on queer cinema published over the past two decades in the internationally renowned journal, Screen, with new introductory editorial material from Jackie Stacey and Sarah Street. Queer Screen features scholarship which has contributed to the emergence of queer theory in the field of screen studies during the last fifteen years, demonstrating how writers in Screen have contributed to developments in queer theory as it relates to a wide range of popular and experimental films and videos. The book considers a wide range of case studies including popular films such as Boys Don't Cry, Alien Resurrection, Brief Encounter, Bound, and Rope, as well as experimental films and videos by artists such as Richard Fung, Ulrike Ottinger, Sheila McLaughlin and Derek Jarman.
Exploring Cosmopolitanism - a list of publications and working papers by RICC members exploring the topic of cosmopolitanism.
Full list of recent publications by RICC members.