Powaqqatsi - Life in Transformation

Hailed by audiences and critics around the world as mesmerizing (The Detroit News), this second installment of writer/director Godfrey Reggio's apocalyptic qatsi trilogy is quite simply one of the most magnificent visual and aural spectacles ever made (L.A. Daily News)! Combining stunning cinematography with the exquisite music of award-winning composer Philip Glass, Powaqqatsi is a breathtaking experience working on many levels'emotional, spiritual, intellectual andaesthetic (The Hollywood Reporter)! Bold, haunting and epic in scale, this extraordinary film calls into question everything we think we know about contemporary society. By juxtaposing images of ancient cultures with those of modern life, Powaqqatsi masterfully portrays the human cost of progress. It is a film that engages the soul as well as the mind; it is truly an absorbing experience (Movies on TV and Videocassette).

DVD version available in the Media Center. PN1995.9.E96 P59

Hate and the "Jewish Science": Anti-Semitism, Nazism, and Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis has always grappled with its Jewish origins, sometimes celebrating them and sometimes trying to escape or deny them. Through exploration of Freud's Jewish identity, the fate of psychoanalysis in Germany under the Nazis, and psychoanalytic theories of anti-Semitism, this book examines the significance of the Jewish connection with psychoanalysis and what that can tell us about political and psychological resistance, anti-Semitism and racism.

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African Roots/ American Cultures

This multidisciplinary volume highlights the African presence throughout the Americas, and African and African Diasporan contributions to the material and cultural life of all of the Americas, and of all Americans. It includes articles from leading scholars and from cultural leaders from both well-known and little-known African Diasporan communities. Privileging African Diasporan voices, it offers new perspectives, data, and interpretations that challenge prevailing understandings of the Americas.

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Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison

In the first expose of unjust medical experimentation since David Rothman's Willowbrook's Wars, Allen M. Hornblum releases devastating stories from within the walls of Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison. For more than two decades, from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s, inmates were used, in exchange for a few dollars, as guinea pigs in a host of medical experiments.

An array of doctors, in conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania and prison officials, established Holmesburg as a laboratory testing ground. Hundreds of prisoners were used to test products from facial creams to far more hazardous, even potentially lethal, substances such chemical warfare agents.

Based on in-depth interviews with dozens of prisoners as well as the doctors and prison officials who performed or enforced these experimental tests, Hornblum paints a disturbing portrait of abuse, moral indifference, and greed. Central to this account are the millions of dollars many of America's leading drug and consumer goods companies made available for the all too eager doctors seeking fame and fortune through their medical experiments.

Acres of Skin is rigorously researched and shocking in its depiction of men treated as laboratory animals.

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Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution

The first and only successful slave revolution in the Americas began in 1791 when thousands of brutally exploited slaves rose up against their masters on Saint-Domingue, the most profitable colony in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. Within a few years, the slave insurgents forced the French administrators of the colony to emancipate them, a decision ratified by revolutionary Paris in 1794. This victory was a stunning challenge to the order of master/slave relations throughout the Americas, including the southern United States, reinforcing the most fervent hopes of slaves and the worst fears of masters.

But, peace eluded Saint-Domingue as British and Spanish forces attacked the colony. A charismatic ex-slave named Toussaint Louverture came to France's aid, raising armies of others like himself and defeating the invaders. Ultimately Napoleon, fearing the enormous political power of Toussaint, sent a massive mission to crush him and subjugate the ex-slaves. After many battles, a decisive victory over the French secured the birth of Haiti and the permanent abolition of slavery from the land. The independence of Haiti reshaped the Atlantic world by leading to the French sale of Louisiana to the United States and the expansion of the Cuban sugar economy.

Laurent Dubois weaves the stories of slaves, free people of African descent, wealthy whites, and French administrators into an unforgettable tale of insurrection, war, heroism, and victory. He establishes the Haitian Revolution as a foundational moment in the history of democracy and human rights. (Description provided by publisher)

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Conversations With Sonia Sanchez

Conversations with Sonia Sanchez is a diverse collection of engagements with poet, teacher, and activist Sonia Sanchez. While it is common to associate Sanchez with the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s, these interviews reveal that Sanchez is a poet whose craft and subjects have evolved over three decades. The interviews from 1979 to 2005 include a previously unpublished interview conducted by the editor specifically for this book. Taken together, the pieces illuminate Sanchez's conscious and consistent work at honing her craft, her skill at raising the highly political to the level of art, and her engagement with black studies and women's studies.

In these interviews, we see how her travels, her career as a teacher, and her work as a mother, as a political activist, and as a cultural critic have changed her writing. Her experiences in women's studies and her friendships with other artists--such as Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, Margaret Walker, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Amiri Baraka--have all influenced her poetry. (Description provided by publisher)

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African Diasporas in the New and Old Worlds: Consciousness and Imagination

In the humanities, the term 'diaspora' recently emerged as a promising and powerful heuristic concept. It challenged traditional ways of thinking and invited reconsiderations of theoretical assumptions about the unfolding of cross-cultural and multi-ethnic societies, about power relations, frontiers and boundaries, about cultural transmission, communication and translation. The present collection of essays by renowned writers and scholars addresses these issues and helps to ground the ongoing debate about the African diaspora in a more solid theoretical framework. Part I is dedicated to a general discussion of the concept of African diaspora, its origins and historical development. Part II examines the complex cultural dimensions of African diasporas in relation to significant sites and figures, including the modes and modalities of creative expression from the perspective of both artists/writers and their audiences; finally, Part III focusses on the resources (collections and archives) and iconographies that are available today. As most authors argue, the African diaspora should not be seen merely as a historical phenomenon, but also as an idea or ideology and an object of representation. By exploring this new ground, the essays assembled here provide important new insights for scholars in American and African-American Studies, Cultural Studies, Ethnic Studies, and African Studies. The collection is rounded off by an annotated listing of black autobiographies.

DT16.5.A33

The State of the Universe: A Primer in Modern Cosmology

The State of the Universe: A Primer in Modern Cosmology - The universe is a mess. Or rather, our understanding of it is. That’s the message of this lively introduction to the conundrums shaking up the field of cosmology. Pedro G. Ferreira, a noted lecturer in astrophysics at Oxford, explains how a universe once ruled by Einstein’s simple equations has given way to a more complex and confusing one, where mysterious “dark matter” outweighs visible matter a hundred to one, and “dark energy” seems to be hurling the galaxies apart. Ferreira takes readers on a fascinating journey through the history of astronomy to show how we arrived here, clarifying today’s many contending theories. (Description provided by publisher)

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