The Near East has played an important part in the construction of the western cultural tradition from the classical period to the present. Current scholarship on cultural constructs is caught in more challenging implications of critical theory and is, therefore, becoming more and more irregular, interdisciplinary, and multicultural. Although the chapters in this book treat specific historical situations involving the Near East and the Western world, together they constitute a unifying thread that brings together a series of unique frames of a complex picture.

This book presents a clear, concise and critical introduction to contemporary media and cultural studies. The book will be of interest to all students about to embark on courses in which knowledge of the mass media, cultural identities, popular culture, film, or television, forms a part of their programme. But the book is also aimed at those who are interested in how media and cultural identities can be studied in relation to audiences and industries in the context of local and global media.

This volume is dedicated to questions arising in linguistic, sociological and anthropological analyses of intercultural encounters, a subject that is becoming increasingly relevant in the light of recent interest in multicultural societies.The collection focuses on the methodological possibilities of explanatory analyses of intercultural communication and explores the relationship between language and culture.

A single day in the heat of armed conflict can shape the future of the world.

Yet while some battles rise up as the cornerstones of history, others fade in our cultural memory, forgotten as minor skirmishes. Why is this so? What makes a battle "important"?

Building on her groundbreaking work in "Writing Superheroes, Anne Dyson traces the influence of a wide-ranging set of "textual toys" from children's lives--church and hip-hop songs, rap music, movies, TV, traditional jump-rope rhymes, the words of professional sports announcers and radio deejays--upon school learning and writing. Wonderfully rich portraits of five African American first-graders demonstrate how children's imaginative use of wider cultural symbols enriches their school learning."