by Robert Phillip Kolker (2009)
"The Altering Eye covers a "golden age" of international cinema from the end of WWII through to the New German Cinema of the 1970s. Combining historical, political, and textual analysis, Kolker develops a pattern of cinematic invention and experimentation from neorealism through the modernist interventions of Jean-Luc Godard and Rainer Maria Fassbinder, focusing along the way on such major figures as Luis Buñuel, Joseph Losey, the Brazilian director Glauber Rocha, and the work of major Cuban filmmakers. Kolker's book has become a much quoted classic in the field of film studies providing essential reading for anybody interested in understanding the history of European and international cinema. This new and revised edition includes a substantive new preface by the author and an updated bibliography."--Publisher's website.
Douglas E. Cowan
"Why do religious elements so often lurk at the heart of horror films? And why do they scare us so? In this book, Douglas Cowan argues that horror films are opportune vehicles for externalizing the fears that lie inside our religious selves: fear of evil; of the flesh; of sacred places; of death, dying badly, or not remaining dead; and of the power - and powerlessness - of religion."--BOOK JACKET.
Kevin M. Schultz
President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it bluntly, if privately, in 1942-the United States was 'a Protestant country,' he said, 'and the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance.' In Tri-Faith America, Kevin Schultz explains how the United States left behind this idea that it was 'a Protestant nation' and replaced it with a new national image, one premised on the notion that the country was composed of three separate, equally American faiths-Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Tracing the origins of the tri-faith idea to the early twentieth century, when Catholic and Jewish immigration forced Protestant Social Gospelers to combine forces with Catholic and Jewish relief agencies, Tri-Faith America shows how the tri-faith idea gathered momentum after World War I, promoted by public relations campaigns, interfaith organizations, and the government, to the point where, by the end of World War II and into the early years of the Cold War, the idea was becoming widely accepted, particularly in the armed forces, fraternities, neighborhoods, social organizations, and schools. Challenging the image of the conformist 1950s, Schultz describes how Americans were vigorously debating the merits of recognizing pluralism, paving the way for the civil rights movement and leaving an enduring mark on American culture.
Mark Hulsether
"Founded in 1941 by Reinhold Niebuhr and others, the magazine Christianity and Crisis (C&C) achieved a level of influence far exceeding its small circulation. A forum for important writers ranging from Paul Tillich to Rosemary Ruether, from George Kennan to Noam Chomsky, from Margaret Mead to Cornel West, from Lewis Mumford to Daniel Berrigan, C&C for half a century commanded great respect in left-liberal circles, both religious and secular.". "In Building a Protestant Left, Mark Hulsether uses the history of C&C as a case study to explore changing ideas about religion and society in the latter half of the twentieth century. He follows the twists and turns of this story from Niebuhr's Christian realist positions of the 1940s, through Protestant participation in the complex social movements of the 1950s and 1960s, to the emergence of various liberation theologies - African American, feminist, Latin American, and others - that used C&C as a central arena of debate in the 1970s and 1980s. Throughout, Hulsether places these changes in the context of postwar cultural and social history, relating C&C's theological and ethical positions to the broader social and political issues that the journal addressed."--BOOK JACKET.
Patrick H. Samway
When he won the National Book Award in 1962 for his first novel, The Moviegoer, Walker Percy quickly established a wide and devoted following. Trained as a physician (who never practiced medicine after suffering from tuberculosis in the 1940s), Dr. Percy became a careful diagnostician of modern society in five subsequent novels and three non-fiction books. This biography, written with Percy's approval and assistance, allows his life to unfold as he lived it, with its unexpected twists and complexities. The tragic deaths of his father and mother, different in manner but close in time, were traumatic events for their teenage son. His subsequent adoption by "Uncle Will - William Alexander Percy, the noted writer and patrician - extended his cultural horizons. After his studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Columbia University's School of Medicine, he married Mary Bernice Townsend. Patrick Samway's meticulous biography tracks their conversion to Roman Catholicism and Percy's dogged determination to continue his career as a novelist and semiotician in Covington, Louisiana.