Soft Weapons

Author: Gillian Whitlock
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226895270
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran,Marjane Satrapi’s comics, and “Baghdad Blogger” Salam Pax’s Internet diary are just a few examples of the new face of autobiography in an age of migration, globalization, and terror. But while autobiography and other genres of life writing can help us attend to people whose experiences are frequently unseen and unheard, life narratives can also be easily co-opted into propaganda. In Soft Weapons, Gillian Whitlock explores the dynamism and ubiquity of contemporary life writing about the Middle East and shows how these works have been packaged, promoted, and enlisted in Western controversies. Considering recent autoethnographies of Afghan women, refugee testimony from Middle Eastern war zones, Jean Sasson’s bestsellers about the lives of Arab women, Norma Khouri’s fraudulent memoir Honor Lost, personal accounts by journalists reporting the war in Iraq, Satrapi’s Persepolis, Nafisi’s book, and Pax’s blog, Whitlock explores the contradictions and ambiguities in the rapid commodification of life memoirs. Drawing from the fields of literary and cultural studies, Soft Weapons will be essential reading for scholars of life writing and those interested in the exchange of literary culture between Islam and the West.

Soft Weapons

Author: Keqin Li
Publisher:
ISBN: 9787119018836
Category : Kung fu
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Book Description

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Author: Matthew Fraser
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 146686544X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
In its march to becoming the world's first hyper-power, the United States has been as dependent on its soft power - the allure of American lifestyles and culture - as it has been on the hard power of military might. In Weapons of Mass Distraction, Matthew Fraser examines the role of American pop cultural industries in international affairs. Fraser focuses on the major areas of soft power - movies, television, pop music, and fast food - and traces the origins, history and current influence of these on U.S. foreign policy. He describes how the American film, television, and music industries enjoy a ubiquitous global presence that has made them indispensable to the U.S. government, which has often gone so far as to fund them directly, including the White House-sponsored radio station in the Middle East launched with the hopes of winning over Muslim youths with American pop songs. A Coca-Cola lobbyist once famously declared that "The best barometer of the relationship of the U.S. and any other country is the way Coca-Cola is treated." Fraser proves this claim isn't to be taken lightly. He charts the global spread of the fast food industry, the role of Coca-Cola and McDonald's in American foreign policy and the recent rise of their opponents: the anti-globalization movement. Do things really go better with Coca-Cola? Fraser's answer is a resounding yes. While American soft power remains a contentious issue, he believes it promotes values and beliefs that are ultimately good for the rest of the world. Still, what are the future implications of American soft power? Will national identities decline as the world order is transformed into a state of "electronic feudalism" where there is no central power? Weapons of Mass Distraction provides an engaging, enlightening, and provocative look at the future of American foreign policy and popular culture in the 21st century.

The Windownesian

Author: The Sapient Sabre
Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
ISBN: 154377265X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 113

Book Description
The Windownesian series features the adventures of the university student Jonathan Wills with his friends Meander, Athena, Zedekiah, as well as his roommates Alex the AI and Bobby the Alien. Each chapter centres around one topic, recording our characters experiencing it, and discussing it. Cyborg combines both AI and humans. In 2027, Dr Albert Epoch created the Living AI, which interlaces a computer brain with an existing human body. In the commencing chapter of The Windownesian, Jonathan meets his first roommate, discovers what’s so special about him, and helps him to be human. Do you have weird roommates? We all do. But do yours place strong-smelling vegetables everywhere, turn on the radio 24/7, and worst of all, insist to keep the windows shut? Have you ever wondered, what if their foreign behaviours are due to them belonging to another world? That is the roommate Jonathan going to meet in Chapter 2. It is extraterrestrial. It gives whatever it receives. Give it a hug, it grows arms to hug you back. Shoot it, it returns bullets. It’s the Chug-a-lug, the centre of Chapter 3 which descends onto Victoria Harbour. And behold, it has something to do with our alien roommate.

6th International Technical Conference on Advances in Computing, Control and Industrial Engineering (CCIE 2021)

Author: Yuriy S. Shmaliy
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811939276
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 946

Book Description
This proceedings focus on selected aspects of recent advances and experiences, emerging technology trends that have positively impacted our world from operators, authorities and associations from around the world to help address the world’s computing, control and industrial engineering. Meanwhile, although the group that studies Computing, Control and Industrial Engineering is very large, the topics included into this proceedings have the extremely high research value. The program chair, speakers, and editors of this conference are well-known person in the industry, and CCIE2021 will also strictly select articles when calling for papers.

Anatomy of a Cosplayer

Author: James Hannon
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1546247114
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 411

Book Description
COSPLAY - Its a word that invokes a multitude of reactions and explanations. From comic conventions, to charity events, to movie premieres and parades, there are people donning the costumes and personas of every character from comics, video games, pop culture, and even internet memes. And behind the masks and tights of this costumed community are everyday people - doctors, lawyers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers, and a lot of computer professionals of all ages, genders and races. Author James Hannon introduces you to a cross-section of costumers, and takes you behind-the-scenes of cosplay life over the last decade. From the small niche of early Star Trek and Star Wars costumers to the modern cosplayer community, meet the people who have been there along the way. ANATOMY OF A COSPLAYER has everything you ever wanted to know about cosplaying, but didnt know (or were too afraid) to ask. Learn about the costumers - the how and why they got into this hobby. Read about some of the larger costumed organizations, and their impact on the community and fandoms worldwide. Join others on their individual cosplay adventures and learn how they deal with the changing environment, costuming skill development, and what it really takes to survive a convention. Hear from over 70 cosplayers as they honestly tell of their experiences, good and bad, within this silly, yet rewarding thing we call COSPLAY

365 Guns You Must Shoot

Author: T J Mullin
Publisher: Zenith Press
ISBN: 0760347573
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
The closest you can come to 365 of the most iconic guns in the world without actually shooting them! This fully illustrated collection of the 365 most iconic guns in world history that collectors, enthusiasts, and serious-minded hobbyists would love to shoot if given the chance is unique, complete, and spellbinding. T. J. Mullin, a prolific and well-regarded gun writer and expert on all types of guns, profiles top handguns and rifles, some common and some unique, and contextualizes them with period and modern photographs, situates them in proper historical context, and then provides unique specifications for each one. Don't miss this entertaining presentation of a the world's most unique guns!

The Cambridge History of Australian Literature

Author: Peter Pierce
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 052188165X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 623

Book Description
Draws on scholarship from leading figures in the field and spans Australian literary history from colonial origins, indigenous and migrant literatures, as well as representations of Asia and the Pacific and the role of literary culture in modern Australian society.

Falk's Dictionary of Chinese Martial Arts, Deluxe Soft Cover

Author: Andrea Falk
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0987902857
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Book Description
A more than complete dictionary of Chinese martial arts, from Chinese to English. Years and years in the making, this dictionary has more than all the techniques you need. It contains all the words beyond the basics of the language, to enable you to read martial arts books, whether practical, theoretical, historical, or whatever.

The Art of Peace

Author: Juliana Geran Pilon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351485717
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Book Description
Sun Tzu, author of 'The Art of War', believed that the acme of leadership consists in figuring out how to subdue the enemy with the least amount of fighting a fact that America's Founders also understood, and practiced with astonishing success. For it to work, however, a people must possess both the ability and the willingness to use all available instruments of power in peace as much as in war. US foreign policy has increasingly neglected the instruments of civilian power and become overly dependent on lethal solutions to conflict. The steep rise in unconventional conflict has increased the need for diplomatic and other non-hard power tools of statecraft. The United States can no longer afford to sit on the proverbial three-legged national security stool ("military, diplomacy, development"), where one leg is a lot longer than either of the other two, almost forgetting altogether the fourth leg information, especially strategic communication and public diplomacy. The United States isn't so much becoming militarized as DE civilianized. According to Sun Tzu, self-knowledge is as important as knowledge of one's enemy: "if you know neither yourself nor the enemy, you will succumb in every battle." Alarmingly, the United States is deficient on both counts. And though we can stand to lose a few battles, the stakes of losing the war itself in this age of nuclear proliferation are too high to contemplate.