Paula Rabinowitz

Bio: Paula Rabinowitz is an academic researcher from University of Minnesota. The author has contributed to research in topics: Modernism (music) & Welfare state. The author has an hindex of 9, co-authored 34 publications receiving 562 citations.

They Must Be Represented: The Politics of Documentary

Abstract: This text examines documentary in print, photography and film from the 1930s to the present day, using the lens of recent feminist film theory as well as scholarship on race, class and gender. Rabinowitz discusses the ways in which the media have shaped the truth over the decades: in the 1930s, about poverty, labour and popular culture during the Depression; in the 1960s, about the Vietnam War, racism, work and the counterculture; and in the 1980s, abut feminist and gay critiques of gender, history, narrative and cinema. A great deal of documentary expression has been influenced by developments in cultural anthropology, as committed artists brought their cameras and typewriters into the field not only to record, but also to change the world. Yet recently, the projects of both anthropology and documentary have come under scrutiny. This book argues that the gendering of vision that occurs when narratives conform to conventional genres profoundly affects the relation of documentation to subject. It goes on to define this gendering of vision in documentary as an ethnographic process. Ultimately, this polemical study challenges the construction of the spectator in psychoanalytic film theory, and articulates a new model for theorizing power relations in culture and history. Paula Rabinowitz is the author of "Labor and Desire: Women's Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America", and co-edited "Writing Red: An Anthology of American Women Writers, 1930-1940".

Labor and Desire: Women's Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America

Abstract: This critical, historical, and theoretical study looks at a little-known group of novels written during the 1930s by women who were literary radicals. Arguing that class consciousness was figured through metaphors of gender, Paula Rabinowitz challenges the conventional wisdom that feminism as a discourse disappeared during the decade. She focuses on the ways in which sexuality and maternity reconstruct the ""classic"" proletarian novel to speak about both the working-class woman and the radical female intellectual. Two well-known novels bracket this study: Agnes Smedley's Daughters of Earth (1929) and Mary McCarthy's The Company She Keeps (1942). In all, Rabinowitz surveys more than forty novels of the period, many largely forgotten. Discussing these novels in the contexts of literary radicalism and of women's literary tradition, she reads them as both cultural history and cultural theory. Through a consideration of the novels as a genre, Rabinowitz is able to theorize about the interrelationship of class and gender in American culture. Rabinowitz shows that these novels, generally dismissed as marginal by scholars of the literary and political cultures of the 1930s, are in fact integral to the study of American fiction produced during the decade. Relying on recent feminist scholarship, she reformulates the history of literary radicalism to demonstrate the significance of these women writers and to provide a deeper understanding of their work for twentieth-century American cultural studies in general.

"Anarchism" and "Communism.": The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States

Abstract: From Anne Bradstreet's The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America in the seventeenth century, to Toni Morrison's Nobel Prize in 1993, women writers have woven a rich tapestry of voices across four centuries of American history. Their writings have embraced a marvellous diversity of visions, including those of Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, Maya Angelou, Edith Wharton, Adrienne Rich, and Willa Cather. The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States provides a comprehensive, authoritative, and highly informative survey of these writers and their work as it illuminates the issues that fired their imaginations. Over eight hundred entries, ranging from brief identifications to extensive essays, offer a goldmine of information about women's writing, women's history, and women's concerns. The contributors - many of whom are well-known writers such as Susan Faludi, Deborah Tannen, Jane Gallop, and Nell Irvin Painter - provide not only biographical entries on poets, novelists, and playwrights, but also offer extensive coverage of the many personal, cultural, and historical issues that have been explored by and have influenced the lives and productivity of women writers. AIDS, race and racism, violence and sexual harassment, the Civil War, and the civil rights movement are just some of the subjects examined. From Betty Friedan to Alice Walker, children's literature to lesbian drama, The Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States paints a fascinating and remarkably diverse portrait of women and women's writing in America.

Ethical issues of global marketing: avoiding bad faith in visual representation

Abstract: This paper examines visual representation in marketing communication from a distinctive, interdisciplinary perspective that draws on ethics, visual studies and critical race theory. An ontological approach is offered as an alternative to phenomenologically based approaches in marketing scholarship that use consumer responses to generate data. Suggests ways to clarify complex issues of representational ethics in marketing by applying a semiotically‐based analysis that places ontological identity at the center of societal marketing concerns. Analyzes representations of the exotic Other in disparate marketing campaigns, including advertising, tourist promotions and music, as examples of bad faith marketing strategy. Music is an important force in marketing communication, yet marketing studies have rarely considered music and its visual representations as data for inquiry. Feels that considering visual representation within marketing from an ontological standpoint contributes additional insight into societal marketing and places global marketing processes within the intersection of ethics, aesthetics and representation.

The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940.

Abstract: In this classic study of the relationship between technology and culture, Miles Orvell demonstrates that the roots of contemporary popular culture reach back to the Victorian era, when mechanical replications of familiar objects reigned supreme and realism dominated artistic representation. Reacting against this genteel culture of imitation, a number of artists and intellectuals at the turn of the century were inspired by the machine to create more authentic works of art that were themselves \"real things.\" The resulting tension between a culture of imitation and a culture of authenticity, argues Orvell, has become a defining category in our culture. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes a new preface by the author, looking back on the late twentieth century and assessing tensions between imitation and authenticity in the context of our digital age. Considering material culture, photography, and literature, the book touches on influential figures such as writers Walt Whitman, Henry James, John Dos Passos, and James Agee; photographers Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, and Margaret Bourke-White; and architect-designers Gustav Stickley and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Technologies of Truth: Cultural Citizenship and the Popular Media

Abstract: In a world ever more complex and media-saturated, what is the value of the truth? Here, Toby Miller provides a pithy and clear-sighted examination of how television, magazines, film, and museums influence the way our society conceptualizes such issues as citizenship, democracy, nationhood, globalization, truth, and fiction. Along the way, he explicates surprising connections between cultural objects and discourses, producing a new meeting ground for cultural, social, and political theory.

Alternative Media: Conceptual Difficulties, Critical Possibilities

Abstract: This article summarizes and analyzes the dilemma of alternative media as it has been theorized in selected statements in the literatures of mass communication. It locates the source of this dilemma in the theoretical assumptions about alternative media and their resulting inability to escape the seeming tradeoff between political effectiveness and organizational/cultural massification. It concludes by suggesting an alternative way of conceptualizing alternative media that instead of leading to efforts to build mirror images of mainstream media organizations with all their limitations, makes possible greater and more meaningful participation in public debates about the nature and direction of American society.