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2002 – Best Book on Ethnic and Racial Political Ideology and/or Political Theory – Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics of the American Political Science Association

"...awash under a brown tide...the relentless flow of immigrants..like waves on a beach, these human flows are remaking the face of America...." Since 1993, metaphorical language such as this has permeated mainstream media reporting on the United States' growing Latino population. In this groundbreaking book, Otto Santa Ana argues that far from being mere figures of speech, such metaphors produce and sustain negative public perceptions of the Latino community and its place in American society, precluding the view that Latinos are vested with the same rights and privileges as other citizens.

Applying the insights of cognitive metaphor theory to an extensive natural language data set drawn from hundreds of articles in the Los Angeles Times and other media, Santa Ana reveals how metaphorical language portrays Latinos as invaders, outsiders, burdens, parasites, diseases, animals, and weeds. He convincingly demonstrates that three anti-Latino referenda passed in California because of such imagery, particularly the infamous anti-immigrant measure, Proposition 187. Santa Ana illustrates how Proposition 209 organizers broadcast compelling new metaphors about racism to persuade an electorate that had previously supported affirmative action to ban it. He also shows how Proposition 227 supporters used antiquated metaphors for learning, school, and language to blame Latino children's speech—rather than gross structural inequity—for their schools' failure to educate them. Santa Ana concludes by calling for the creation of insurgent metaphors to contest oppressive U.S. public discourse about minority communities.

Drawing on a millennia of calligraphy theory and history, Brushed in Light examines how the brushed word appears in films and in film cultures of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and PRC cinemas. This includes silent era intertitles, subtitles, title frames, letters, graffiti, end titles, and props. Markus Nornes also looks at the role of calligraphy in film culture at large, from gifts to correspondence to advertising. The book begins with a historical dimension, tracking how calligraphy is initially used in early cinema and how it is continually rearticulated by transforming conventions and the integration of new technologies. These chapters ask how calligraphy creates new meaning in cinema and demonstrate how calligraphy, cinematography, and acting work together in a single film. The last part of the book moves to other regions of theory. Nornes explores the cinematization of the handwritten word and explores how calligraphers understand their own work.

Far-ranging and bold, Buy Black reveals what attitudes inform a contemporary Black sensibility based in representation and consumerism. It also traces the parameters of Black symbolic power, mapping the sites where intraracial ideals of blackness, womanhood, beauty, play, and sexuality meet and mix in consumer and popular culture.

A first-of-its-kind collection to transform our understanding of digital media from Indigenous women creators

Indigenous women form a vital force in digital media production now and have over the past several decades—in fact, nearly three quarters of the projects at the 2017 imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival were created by women. By Their Work highlights the prismatic nature of Indigenous women’s digital media, connecting the digital arts with their creative labor and adaptive activism.

Joanna Hearne and Karrmen Crey bring together a collection of essays and interviews to highlight the voices of powerful and important media makers, from Indigenous video game creators to animators to social media influencers and from theorists of early Indigenous digital media to current practitioners, including trans and nonbinary creators often left out of public narratives about the digital. Creating a space to hear critical voices on Indigenous media history, theory, and production, the contributors share stories, genealogies, and practices behind Indigenous women’s power and presence in the digital world.

Focusing on the history of digital media as a whole, this collection presents a compelling case for Indigenous women’s crucial roles across the history of digital forms and platforms. In doing so, By Their Work transforms digital Indigenous studies in the twenty-first century.

Contributors: Nanobah Becker; Reilley Bishop-Stall, McGill U; Meagan Byrne; Tawny Trottier Cale; Dana Claxton; Crystal Harrison Collin; Elizabeth Day; Kristin L. Dowell, Florida State U; Miranda Due; Heid E. Erdrich; Marcella Ernest, U of New Mexico; Marisa Erven; David Gaertner, U of British Columbia; Carol Geddes; Faye Ginsburg, New York U; Patuk N. Glenn; Lisa Jackson; Jacqueline Land, William Jewell College; Jason Edward Lewis, Concordia University, Montreal; Joshua D. Miner, U of Kansas; Salma Monani, Gettysburg College; Jas M. Morgan, Simon Fraser U; Archer Pechawis, York U; Mikhel Proulx, Queen’s U Canada; Ryan Rice; Jolene Rickard, Cornell U; Channette Romero, U of Georgia; Wendi Sierra, Texas Christian U; Skawennati.

From Attali's "cold social silence" to Baudrillard's hallucinatory reality, reproduced music has long been the target of critical attack. In Bytes and Backbeats, however, Steve Savage deploys an innovative combination of designed recording projects, ethnographic studies of contemporary music practice, and critical analysis to challenge many of these traditional attitudes about the creation and reception of music. Savage adopts the notion of "repurposing" as central to understanding how every aspect of musical activity, from creation to reception, has been transformed, arguing that the tension within production between a naturalizing "art" and a self-conscious "artifice" reflects and feeds into our evolving notions of creativity, authenticity, and community.

At the core of the book are three original audio projects, drawing from rock & roll, jazz, and traditional African music, through which Savage is able to target areas of contemporary practice that are particularly significant in the cultural evolution of the musical experience. Each audio project includes a studio study providing context for the social and cultural analysis that follows. This work stems from Savage's experience as a professional recording engineer and record producer.