front cover of Racing Romance
Racing Romance
Love, Power, and Desire among Asian American/White Couples
Nemoto, Kumiko
Rutgers University Press, 2009
Despite being far from the norm, interracial relationships are more popular than ever. Racing Romance sheds special light on the bonds between whites and Asian Americans, an important topic that has not garnered well-deserved attention until now. Incorporating life-history narratives and interviews with those currently or previously involved with an interracial partner, Kumiko Nemoto addresses the contradictions and tensionsùa result of race, class, and genderùthat Asian Americans and whites experience.

Similar to black/white relationships, stereotypes have long played crucial roles in Asian American/white encounters. Partners grapple with media representations of Asian women as submissive or hypersexual and Asian men are often portrayed as weak laborers or powerful martial artists. Racing Romance reveals how allegedly progressive interracial relationships remain firmly shaped by the logic of patriarchy and gender inherent to the ideal of marriage, family, and nation in America, even as this ideal is juxtaposed with discourses of multiculturalism and color blindness.

[more]

front cover of The Republic of Love
The Republic of Love
Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music
Martin Stokes
University of Chicago Press, 2010

At the heart of The Republic of Love are the voices of three musicians—queer nightclub star Zeki Müren, arabesk originator Orhan Gencebay, and pop diva Sezen Aksu—who collectively have dominated mass media in Turkey since the early 1950s. Their fame and ubiquity have made them national icons—but, Martin Stokes here contends, they do not represent the official version of Turkish identity propagated by anthems or flags; instead they evoke a much more intimate and ambivalent conception of Turkishness.

Using these three singers as a lens, Stokes examines Turkey’s repressive politics and civil violence as well as its uncommonly vibrant public life in which music, art, literature, sports, and journalism have flourished. However, Stokes’s primary concern is how Müren, Gencebay, and Aksu’s music and careers can be understood in light of theories of cultural intimacy. In particular, he considers their contributions to the development of a Turkish concept of love, analyzing the ways these singers explore the private matters of intimacy, affection, and sentiment on the public stage.

[more]

front cover of Research On Altruism & Love
Research On Altruism & Love
Stephen Post
Templeton Press, 2003

Research on Altruism and Love is a compendium of annotated bibliographies reviewing literature and research studies on the nature of love. An essay introduces each of the annotated bibliographies.

A variety of literature either directly related to science-and-love issues or supporting literature for those issues is covered in the Religious Love Interfaces with Science section. This annotated bibliography is unique in that it approaches the field from a decidedly religious perspective. It includes classical expositions of love that continue to influence contemporary scholars, including Platos' work on eros, the work and words of Jesus, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, Kierkegaard, and Ghandi, among others. The contemporary discussion includes Anders Nygren's theological arguments in his classic, Agape and Eros; Pitirim Sorokin; and others. An issue that often emerges in this literature is the question of the nature and definition of love.

A second annotated bibliography features current empirical research in the field of Personality and Altruism, with a focus on social psychology. Among the topics covered are the altruistic personality, altruistic behavior, empathy, helping behavior, social responsibility, and volunteerism. Methodologies are diverse, and studies include experiments, local and national surveys, naturalistic observation, and combinations of these.

The Evolutionary Biology annotated bibliography covers the most significant works on altruism and love in the field of biology and evolutionary psychology.

The fourth and final annotated bibliography in this volume is entitled Sociology of Faith-Based Volunteerism. Here the focus is on literature on the interface of helping behavior and religious organizations, as well as major pieces on voluntary associations.

[more]

front cover of Robert Lowell in Love
Robert Lowell in Love
Jeffrey Meyers
University of Massachusetts Press, 2015
Robert Lowell was known not only as a great poet but also as a writer whose devotion to his art came at a tremendous personal cost. In this book, his third on Robert Lowell, Jeffrey Meyers examines the poet's impassioned, troubled relationships with the key women in his life: his mother, Charlotte Winslow Lowell; his three wives—Jean Stafford, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Caroline Blackwood; nine of his many lovers; his close women friends—Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, and Adrienne Rich; and his most talented students, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath.

Lowell's charismatic personality, compelling poetry, and literary fame attracted lovers and friends who were both frightened and excited by his aura of brilliance and danger. He loved the idea of falling in love, and in his recurring manic episodes he needed women at the center of his emotional and artistic life. Each affair became an intense dramatic episode. Though he idealized his loves and encouraged their talents, his frenetic affairs and tortured marriages were always conducted on his own terms. Robert Lowell in Love tells the story of the poet in the grip of love and gives voice to the women who loved him, inspired his poetry, and suffered along with him.
[more]

logo for American Library Association
Romance Reader's Advisory
The Librarian's Guide to Love in the Stacks
American Library Association
American Library Association, 2000

front cover of Royko in Love
Royko in Love
Mike's Letters to Carol
Mike Royko
University of Chicago Press, 2010

Street-smart, wickedly funny, piercingly perceptive, and eloquent enough to win a Pulitzer Prize, Mike Royko continues to have legions of devoted fans who still wonder “what Royko would have said” about some outrageous piece of news. One thing he hardly ever wrote or talked about, though, was his private life, especially the time he shared with his first wife, Carol. She was the love of his life, and her premature death at the age of forty-four shook him to his soul. Mike’s unforgettable public tribute to Carol was a heart-wrenching column written on what would have been her forty-fifth birthday, “November Farewell.” His most famous and requested piece, it was the end of an untold story.

Royko in Love offers that story’s moving and utterly beguiling beginning in letters that “Mick” Royko, then a young airman, wrote to his childhood sweetheart, Carol Duckman. He had been in love with her since they were kids on Chicago’s northwest side, but she was a beauty and he was, well, anything but. Before leaving for Korea, he was crushed to hear she was getting married, but after returning to Blaine Air Force Base in Washington, he learned she was getting a divorce. Mick soon began to woo Carol in a stream of letters that are as fervent as they are funny. Collected here for the first time, Royko’s letters to Carol are a mixture of sweet seduction, sarcastic observations on military life, a Chicago kid’s wry view of rural folk, the pain of self-doubt, and the fear of losing what is finally so close, but literally so far. His only weapons against Carol’s many suitors were his pen, his ardor, and his brilliance. And they won her heart.

[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter