TOME@UMD Monographs

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    Consuming Landscapes: What We See When We Drive and Why It Matters
    (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022) Zeller, Thomas
    What do we see when we drive? For better or worse, windshields have become a major frame for viewing the nonhuman world. The view from the road is one of the major ways in which Americans and Europeans experience their environments. Rather than accidental, however, these prospects are the results of historical forces. Humans shaped them as they sought to be transformed by them. Automotive vistas speak to visions of society and nations, the role of consumerism, and ideas about reshaping the environment in the twentieth century. This book breaks new ground by systematically understanding the driving experience and the history of landscaped roads in the United States and Germany, two major automotive countries in the 20th century. Driving, a quotidian, if sometimes dangerous, activity by the late 20th century, emerged from its status as an anti-railroad, escapist moment in the early 20th century to a supposedly restorative, yet regimented, act by the 1920s and 1930s. Immersing oneself in the landscape while driving reflected the desire to reconnect technology with nature. Or so the designers of these roads claimed. Increasing numbers of consumers, however, preferred predictable over prescriptive roads.
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    Italian Political Cinema: Figures of the Long ’68
    (University of Minnesota Press, 2023-01) Resmini, Mauro
    Traditionally, the definition of political cinema assumes a relationship between cinema and politics. In contrast to this view, author Mauro Resmini sees this relationship as an impasse. To illustrate this theory, Resmini turns to Italian cinema to explore how films have reinvented the link between popular art and radical politics in Italy from 1968 to the early 1980s, a period of intense political and cultural struggles also known as the long ’68. Italian Political Cinema conjures a multifaceted, complex portrayal of Italian society. Centered on emblematic figures in Italian cinema, it maps the currents of antagonism and repression that defined this period in the country’s history. Resmini explores how film imagined the possibilities, obstacles, and pitfalls that characterized the Italian long ’68 as a moment of crisis and transition. From workerism to autonomist Marxism to feminism, this book further expands the debate on political cinema with a critical interpretation of influential texts, some of which are currently only available in Italian. A comprehensive and novel redefinition of political film, Italian Political Cinema introduces its audience to lesser-known directors alongside greats such as Pasolini, Bertolucci, Antonioni, and Bellocchio. Resmini offers access to untranslated work in Italian philosophy, political theory, and film theory, and forcefully advocates for the continued artistic and political relevance of these films in our time.
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    Landscapes of Care: Immigration and Health in Rural America
    (The University of North Carolina Press, 2023) Sangaramoorthy, Thurka
    This insightful work on rural health in the United States examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean, navigate the health care system in the United States. Since 1990, immigration to the United States has risen sharply, and rural areas have seen the highest increases. Thurka Sangaramoorthy reveals that that the corporatization of health care delivery and immigration policies are deeply connected in rural America. Drawing from fieldwork that centers on Maryland's sparsely populated Eastern Shore, Sangaramoorthy shows how longstanding issues of precarity among rural health systems along with the exclusionary logics of immigration have mutually fashioned a "landscape of care" in which shared conditions of physical suffering and emotional anxiety among immigrants and rural residents generate powerful forms of regional vitality and social inclusion. Sangaramoorthy connects the Eastern Shore and its immigrant populations to many other places around the world that are struggling with the challenges of global migration, rural precarity, and health governance. Her extensive ethnographic and policy research shows the personal stories behind health inequity data and helps to give readers a human entry point into the enormous challenges of immigration and rural health.