Focusing on 19th-and 20th-century European, American and Israeli artists, the contributors explore the ways in which Jewish artists have responded to their Jewishness and to the societies in which they lived (or live), and how these factors have influenced their art, their choice of subject matter, and presentation of their work.

Clear and well-defined identities are hard to sustain in a rapidly shifting world. Peoples, goods, and cultures are on the move. The internet and other technologies increase the amount, the speed, and the intensity of cultural exchanges. Individuals, organizations, and nations develop complex identities out of many traditions, different ideals, various ways of life, and many models of organization. Religious traditions both collide and interact, with spiritual journeys crossing religious boundaries. In this book, more than 20 contributors from different backgrounds and academic disciplines offer an array of practical theological perspectives to help understand these complex identities and negotiate this shifting world. (Series: International Practical Theology - Vol. 17) [Subject: Religious Studies, Cultural Studies]

"This exciting, accessible and wide-ranging text offers new perspectives on how we think about ourselves. Essential reading for all those interested in identities, it provides a unique introduction to social theory." Professor Mary Maynard, head of Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York In the 170s and 1980s, identities seemed to be `fixed' or `socially constructed' sexualities and religion. These days we have begun to recognise the diversity, fragmentation and fluidity of identities, but how do we create and shape our own? Embodying identities shapes a new language of social theory that allows people to embody their differences with a sense of dignifty and self-worth. The book draws on diverse traditions from Marx, Weber and Durkheim, as self-worth. The book draws on diverse traditions from Marx, Weber and Durkheim, as well as more recent traditions of critical theory and poststructuralism, to illuminate transitions from the modern to the postmodern. Using contemporary examples, Embodying identities will be of interest to students of sociology, politics, social work, philosophy and cultural studies. It we form and live our complex and embodied identities.

The teaching and research of the Classics in South Africa are deeply rooted in the racial, political and educational inequalities which have characterised its turbulent history. In this original study, Michael Lambert opens three windows on to this history, using the creation of identities as his theoretical lens. The foundation of the Classical Association of South Africa in 1956 and the cultural reinforcement of Afrikaner nationalist identity; the deployment of British colonial identity in public discourses about the role of the Classics in apartheid South Africa at an English-speaking university; and the exploration of black African identities in response to the teaching of the Classics at missionary institutions, where 'vocational training' was locked in combat with a classical education, regarded by an educated black elite as the means for upward social mobility in a highly-stratified colonial society. The book will be of interest to students of many subjects, including Classics, Cultural Studies, African Studies and History of Education.

Offers accounts of the diversity of living transgender. This book is suitable for scholars and students in sociology and gender and sexuality studies.

Provides insights into the process of knowledge construction in EFL/ESL writing - from classrooms to research sites, from the dilemmas and risks NNEST student writers experience in the pursuit of true agency to the confusions and conflicts academics experience in their own writing practices.

In an age when "we are all multiculturalists now," as Nathan Glazer has said, the politics of identity has come to pose new challenges to our liberal polity and the presuppositions on which it is founded. Just what identity means, and what its role in the public sphere is, are questions that are being hotly debated. In this book Susan Hekman aims to bring greater theoretical clarity to the debate by exposing some basic misconceptions--about the constitution of the self that defines personal identity, about the way liberalism conceals the importance of identity under the veil of the "abstract citizen," and about the difference and interrelationship between personal and public identity. Hekman's use of object relations theory allows her to argue, against the postmodernist resort to a "fictive" subject, for a core self that is socially constructed in the early years of childhood but nevertheless provides a secure base for the adult subject. Such a self is social, particular, embedded, and connected--a stark contrast to the neutral and disembodied subject posited in liberal theory. This way of construing the self also opens up the possibility for distinguishing how personal identity functions in relation to public identity. Against those advocates of identity politics who seek reform through the institutionalization of group participation, Hekman espouses a vision of the politics of difference that eschews assigning individuals to fixed groups and emphasizes instead the fluidity of choice arising from the complex interaction between the individual's private identity and the multiple opportunities for associating with different groups and the public identities they define. Inspired by Foucault's argument that "power is everywhere," Hekman maps out a dual strategy of both political and social/cultural resistance for this new politics of identity, which recognizes that with significant advances already won in the political/legal arena, attitudinal change in civil society presents the greatest challenge for achieving more progress today in the struggle against racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression.