Ian Bogost, Washington University in St. Louis, USA and Christopher Schaberg, Loyola University New Orleans, USA
Glitter
Nicole Seymour, California State University, Fullerton, USA Glitter reveals the complexity of an object often dismissed as frivolous. Nicole Seymour describes how glitter’s consumption and status have shifted across centuries—from ancient cosmetic to queer activist tool, environmental pollutant to biodegradable accessory—along with its composition, which has variously included insects, glass, rocks, salt, sugar, plastic, and cellulose. Through a variety of examples, from glitterbombing to glitter beer, Seymour shows how this substance reflects the entanglements of consumerism, emotion, environmentalism, and gender/sexual identity. UK May 2022 • US May 2022 • 160 pages PB 9781501373763 • £9.99 / $14.95 ePub 9781501373770 • £10.73 / $13.45 ePdf 9781501373787 • £10.73 / $13.45 Series: Object Lessons • Bloomsbury Academic
Recipe
Lynn Z. Bloom, University of Connecticut, USA Recipe reveals the surprising lessons that recipes teach, in addition to the obvious instructions on how to prepare a dish or perform a process. These include lessons in hospitality, friendship, community, family and ethnic heritage, tradition, nutrition, precision and order, invention and improvisation, feasting and famine, survival and seduction and love. A recipe is a signature, as individual as the cook’s fingerprint; a passport to travel the world without leaving the kitchen; a lifeline for people in hunger and in want; and always a means to expand one’s worldview, if not waistline. UK May 2022 • US May 2022 • 160 pages PB 9781501367106 • £9.99 / $14.95 ePub 9781501367113 • £10.73 / $13.45 ePdf 9781501367120 • £10.73 / $13.45 Series: Object Lessons • Bloomsbury Academic
OK
Michelle McSweeney, Converseon.AI, USA "OK" as a word accepts proposals, describes the world as satisfactory (but not good), provides conversational momentum, or even agrees (or disagrees). OK as an object, however, tells a story of how technology writes itself into language, permanently altering communication. OK is a young word, less than 200 years old. Today it is spoken and written by nearly everyone in the world. Drawing on linguistics, history, and new media studies, Michelle McSweeney traces OK from its birth in the Penny Presses through telephone lines, grammar books, and television signals into the digital age. UK June 2022 • US June 2022 • 160 pages PB 9781501367182 • £9.99 / $14.95 ePub 9781501367199 • £10.73 / $13.45 ePdf 9781501367205 • £10.73 / $13.45 Series: Object Lessons • Bloomsbury Academic
C U L T U R A L S T U D I E S - Object Lessons
Object Lessons
Skateboard
Jonathan Russell Clark, Freelance Writer, USA How did the skateboard go from a fad like the hula-hoop to an Olympic sport? Writer and skateboarder Jonathan Russell Clark's Skateboard answers this question by going straight to the sources: the skaters and company owners and manufacturers who made such an unlikely rise to worldwide juggernaut possible. As the stuntwood (as it’s often referred to) has never had, like other sports and subjects, dedicated historians, the real history of skating exists in a hodgepodge. From California beaches to Tokyo 2020, the skateboard has outlasted its critics to form a global community of innovation, persistence, and camaraderie. UK July 2022 • US July 2022 • 160 pages • 10 bw illus PB 9781501367489 • £9.99 / $14.95 ePub 9781501367496 • £10.73 / $13.45 ePdf 9781501367502 • £10.73 / $13.45 Series: Object Lessons • Bloomsbury Academic
Trench Coat
Jane Tynan, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands We all know what a trench coat is but where does it comes from? What began as a sports coat was later adapted for officers fighting in the trenches of the First World War, hence the name. Since then trench coats have adorned soldiers, police detectives, Nazis, Hollywood stars, Mafiosi, spies and ‘flashers.’ Ernest Hemingway wore one to draw attention to his military service, but the trench coat also turns up in the work of James Joyce, Nancy Mitford, Graham Greene and Virginia Woolf. Trench Coat explores its role in the modern imagination: a product of science and technology, the trench coat quickly took on a tough and seductive image blending easily into literature, music, film and fashion to become the uniform of some of the most attractive and enigmatic characters of the modern world. UK June 2022 • US June 2022 • 160 pages PB 9781501375163 • £9.99 / $14.95 ePub 9781501375187 • £10.73 / $13.45 ePdf 9781501375156 • £10.73 / $13.45 Series: Object Lessons • Bloomsbury Academic
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