The Lives of Dwarfs: Their Journey from Public Curiosity Toward Social Liberation

The Lives of Dwarfs: Their Journey from Public Curiosity Toward Social Liberation
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Absorbing and completely necessary

The Lives of Dwarfs: Their Journey from Public Curiosity Toward Social Liberation
Betty M. Adelson
Manufacturer: Rutgers University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

"The Lives of Dwarfs is extraordinary in its range and vision. Beautifully written. Totally absorbing."—Ursula Hegi, author of Stones from the River

"As a little person, husband, and father of a little person, I dream of the day when dwarfs attain full acceptance in society. The Lives of Dwarfs provides a giant step in that direction."—Rick Spiegel, former president of Little People of America

"This important book makes it possible for both average- and short-statured people to challenge our collective understanding of dwarfism as a synonym for diminishment or as an array of cute and evil fairy-tale figures. The libratory work of this book is to invite us all to reimagine dwarfism as a livable experience and tenable way of being in the world."—Rosemarie Garland Thomson, author of Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature

"A work of compassionate scholarship. A unique contribution to the literature of physical deformity and social isolation and a gift to the individuals whose personal struggle this is."—Linda Hunt, actor

Historically, they have borne the labels "freaks" and "oddities"; they have been collected as pets, displayed as spectacles, and treated as comic relief. Now, for the first time, in this elegant and comprehensive volume, the lives of dwarfs are explored in all their fullness and humanity.

Spanning the centuries from ancient Egypt to the present, this unique social history chronicles the various ways this population has been exploited, describes their strategies for coping, and notes the persistent influence of mythology upon perceptions of them by others. The narrative also highlights the lives of eminent individuals and contains a thought-provoking account of the representation and participation of dwarfs in the arts, enhanced by outstanding color photographs. Betty M. Adelson, the mother of a daughter with dwarfism, brings special insight and sensitivity to the research. She traces the widespread mistreatment of dwarfs over the centuries, engendered by their being viewed as curiosities rather than as human beings capable of the same accomplishments as people of average height, and deserving of the same pleasures. For much of their history, dwarfs have resorted to exhibiting themselves: because of social stigma no other employment was available.

Only in recent years have short-statured individuals begun to challenge their position in society. Medical advances, new economic opportunities, and disability legislation have led to progress, mainly in Western nations. Advocacy groups have also formed in countries as diverse as Chile, South Korea, and Nigeria. Adelson compares what she refers to as the "small revolution" to similar social and cultural awakenings that women, African Americans, gays and lesbians, and persons with disabilities experienced when they identified themselves as a community with shared goals and obstacles.

Written with passion, grace, and the dignity that the subject deserves, The Lives of Dwarfs will not only revolutionize current perceptions about the historically misrepresented dwarf population, but also offer pause for thought on issues of disability, medical treatment, height, beauty, and identity.

Customer Reviews:

Absorbing and completely necessary.......2005-06-22

Many people in the dwarfism community, as well as those in the disability, human rights, and social sciences communities have been eagerly awaiting publication of this book. The finished product is well worth the wait: Adelson's thoroughness, expertise, and committment are clear. This volume includes a social history of dwarfs, as well as contemporary portraits, medical information, dwarfs in the arts, etc., making the book comprehensive, absorbing, and readable for those interested in social history or cultural studies. Meanwhile, when I read it I found myself asking, "Why in the world has no one done this before?" Kudos to the author and publisher of this important text.

Book Description

The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber is the first contemporary biography of a notorious actor/dancer/poet/playwright who scandalized sex-obsessed Weimar Berlin during the 1920s.

In an era where everything was permitted, Anita Berber's celebrations of "Depravity, Horror and Ecstasy" were condemned and censored. She often haunted Weimar Berlin's hotel lobbies, nightclubs and casinos, radiantly naked except for an elegant sable wrap, a pet monkey hanging from her neck, and a silver brooch packed with cocaine. Multi-talented Anita saw no boundaries between her personal life and her taboo-shattering performances. As such, she was Europe's first postmodern woman.

Among those Anita Berber claimed as members of her vast sexual harem were Marlene Dietrich, Magnus Hirschfeld (the founder of modern sexology and gay liberation), Klaus Mann, Conrad Veidt, Lawrence Durrell, and the King of Yugoslavia. Berber acted in Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler and starred in the silent epic, Lucifer. Even Leni Riefenstahl credits Berber for inspiring her controversial career. After sated Berliners finally tired of Anita Berber's libidinous antics, she became a "carrion soul that even the hyenas ignored," dying in 1928 at the age of 29.

The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber chronicles a remarkable career, including over 150 photographs and drawings that recreate Anita's enduring "Repertoire of the Damned."

Customer Reviews:

The career story of actor, dancer, poet, and sex culture icon Anita Berber.......2006-09-12

The Seven Addictions And Five Professions Of Anita Berber: Weimar Berlin's Priestess Of Depravity is the career story of actor, dancer, poet, and sex culture icon Anita Berber, who scandalized Weimar Berlin by appearing naked in nightclubs and casinos save for a sable wrap. Her performance in Expressionist films, her disregard of all taboos and her drug habits all contributed to a life devoted to casting off restraints. Dozens of black-and-white photographs and drawings recreating Anita's "Repertoire of the Damned" illustrate this one-of-a-kind tell-all of Europe's first postmodern woman.

"She was the most remarkable spirit that I ever met in the weird underworld of human sexuality.".......2006-09-10

Author Mel Gordon details a glittering, decadent Weimar Berlin in the book, "The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber: Weimer Berlin's Priestess of Depravity." Post WWI Berlin "became the world showcase of nude dance and the erotic revue-sketch", and with the catastrophic devaluation of the German Mark, "moral degeneration" reigned in a city that rapidly became a metropolis of exotic, erotic cabaret performances. During her brief, explosive career Anita Berber was Weimar Berlin's "most widely discussed female personality." She performed to packed theatres, outraging her audiences, sharply dividing critics, and shocking society with the scandals that surrounded her both on and off stage. With her perfect, lithe body, dancer and performance artist Anita Berber reigned supreme.

Gordon charts the meteoric rise and tragic fall of the notorious dancer. During her short, brilliant, and self-destructive life, she earned many names, and was called a "totally perverted woman", the "Madonna of Dresden", the "Countess of Sin", "a living embodiment of sin", and "an incarnation of the perverse." Gordon offers the reader a portrait of a difficult life--fraught with public scandal, private demons, and an avant-garde approach to dance that brought Berber the wrong sort of audience. Gordon argues that the very audience who flocked to Berber for her scandalous naked dances could not appreciate the artistic relevance of her performances, and thus heckled--and ultimately abused her.

Gordon tracks Berlin's long-standing tradition with Naked Dance as an art form and traces Berber's career from her early dance training to German Expressionist Richard-Oswald films. But it was Berber's ability to dance that brought Berlin--at least temporarily--to her feet.

The book examines Berber's disastrous relationship with petty criminal, con man, and fellow dancer--Sebastian Droste. Included are details of Droste's post-Berber career in America and his membership in a notorious New York sex cult. The major scandals in Berber's life are examined--her three husbands, her affairs with the sexually obsessed Gerda and her daughter Elsa, and the "lovesick" Baroness Leonie Puttkamer-Gessmann. Berber's health steadily declined as her various addictions grew uncontrollable, and she rapidly became a "creative liability" on stage--even whacking a businessman over the head with a bottle of champagne one evening.

The book also serves as a glimpse into artistic life of Weimar Berlin--and there are mentions here of many notables--including Leni Riefenstahl (she was Berber's understudy for one engagement), Conrad Veidt, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Marlene Dietrich, and Fritz Lang. The text is peppered with marvelous photographs, posters and graphics depicting various Berber routines (including the Dances of Depravity, Horror, and Ecstasy). Additional materials follow the text--including poems by Berber and Droste, synopses of Berber's dance performances, and a bibliography. It's sadly ironic that Anita Berber--who once was so infamous--has now almost disappeared, and it is a particular joy for those interested in Berber (me) that Mel Gordon wrote this work on a much-neglected artist. For more on the life of Anita Berber, I recommend the film "Anita: Dances of Vice" by Rosa von Praunheim--displacedhuman

The Berbers of Morocco (Elmtree Africana)

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The Berbers of Morocco (Elmtree Africana)
Alan Keohane
Manufacturer: Viking Penguin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Collections, Catalogues & Exhibitions | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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Historical Dictionary of the Berbers (Imazighen) (Historical Dictionaries of People and Cultures)

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Historical Dictionary of the Berbers (Imazighen) (Historical Dictionaries of People and Cultures)
Hsain Ilahiane
Manufacturer: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 081085452X

Berber Culture On The World Stage: From Village To Video

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A weindow to the world of Berbers

Berber Culture On The World Stage: From Village To Video
Jane E. Goodman
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0253217849

Book Description

In this nuanced study of the performance of cultural identity, Jane E. Goodman travels from contemporary Kabyle Berber communities in Algeria and France to the colonial archives, identifying the products, performances, and media through which Berber identity has developed. In the 1990s, with a major Islamist insurgency underway in Algeria, Berber cultural associations created performance forms that challenged Islamist premises while critiquing their own village practices. Goodman describes the phenomenon of new Kabyle song, a form of world music that transformed village songs for global audiences. She follows new songs as they move from their producers to the copyright agency to the Parisian stage, highlighting the networks of circulation and exchange through which Berbers have achieved global visibility.

Customer Reviews:

A weindow to the world of Berbers.......2006-03-03

This book opens a wondow to the world of Berber culture. It is written with love and care about local people. Like those who this book is about are family members of the Author. And you know, what if family for North African - is may be most important in the life.

Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity

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Berber Arts

Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity
Cynthia Becker
Manufacturer: University of Texas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

In southeastern Morocco, around the oasis of Tafilalet, the Ait Khabbash people weave brightly colored carpets, embroider indigo head coverings, paint their faces with saffron, and wear ornate jewelry. Their extraordinarily detailed arts are rich in cultural symbolism; they are always breathtakingly beautiful—and they are typically made by women. Like other Amazigh (Berber) groups (but in contrast to the Arab societies of North Africa), the Ait Khabbash have entrusted their artistic responsibilities to women. Cynthia Becker spent years in Morocco living among these women and, through family connections and female fellowship, achieved unprecedented access to the artistic rituals of the Ait Khabbash. The result is more than a stunning examination of the arts themselves, it is also an illumination of women's roles in Islamic North Africa and the many ways in which women negotiate complex social and religious issues.

One of the reasons Amazigh women are artists is that the arts are expressions of ethnic identity, and it follows that the guardians of Amazigh identity ought to be those who literally ensure its continuation from generation to generation, the Amazigh women. Not surprisingly, the arts are visual expressions of womanhood, and fertility symbols are prevalent. Controlling the visual symbols of Amazigh identity has given these women power and prestige. Their clothing, tattoos, and jewelry are public identity statements; such public artistic expressions contrast with the stereotype that women in the Islamic world are secluded and veiled. But their role as public identity symbols can also be restrictive, and history (French colonialism, the subsequent rise of an Arab-dominated government in Morocco, and the recent emergence of a transnational Berber movement) has forced Ait Khabbash women to adapt their arts as their people adapt to the contemporary world. By framing Amazigh arts with historical and cultural context, Cynthia Becker allows the reader to see the full measure of these fascinating artworks.

Customer Reviews:

Berber Arts.......2007-01-05

This book presents the role of women in Berber culture. It goes into great depth concerning the symbolism found in the arts of Berber women. For those who first glimpsed this world in Imazighen, the Vanishing Traditions of Berber Women, by Margaret Courtney-Clarke, the present work provides a study in great detail.

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Mersad Berber (Modern art monographs)
Mersad Berber
Manufacturer: Control Data Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Berbers (The Peoples of Africa)
Michael Brett , and Elizabeth Fentress
Manufacturer: Blackwell Publishing Limited
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Africa | History | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

The Berbers is the first attempt by English scholars to provide a comprehensive overview of the history of the Berber-speaking peoples. From the first appearance of humans in the Maghreb, through the rise of the formidable Berber kingdoms of Numidia and Mauretania, the book traces the origins of the distinct characteristics of these disparate peoples, regarded as the indigenous inhabitants of North Africa. In examining, too, the responses to external overlords, whether Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, or, most recently, European imperial powers, the authors indicate the importance for the various Berber communities of such factors as language, tradition, social organization and geographical location. The book also covers the role of religion and trade as forces of social change in North Africa.The authors draw on a wide range of sources, from archaeology and history, to anthropology and literature. In showing the Berber-speaking peoples in their immediate social environments, the book explains how they retained a range of traditional systems of organization alongside those of the dominant cultures. The Berbers will thus help the reader to appreciate the Berber past and to understand their present.

The Berbers and the Islamic State: The Marinid Experience in Pre-Protectorate Morocco

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An interesting example of partial assimilation

The Berbers and the Islamic State: The Marinid Experience in Pre-Protectorate Morocco
Maya Shatzmiller
Manufacturer: Markus Wiener Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1558762248

Book Description

The Arab conquest of North Africa in the 8th century gave birth to a new political body on the Western Mediterranean shores, a Berber-Islamic state, which continued to evolve throughout the entire medieval period and achieved viability, coherence and stability by implementing Islamic norms of community and statehood, identity and institutions. The process was not a peaceful one, however. The drive to bring the Berber populace into the mainstream of Islamic statehood, through intensified islamization, indoctrination in Islamic theology and expansion of the judicial system, deepened the awareness of Berber particularism, and refined and defined its expression vis-a-vis the Islamic state and its institutions. The story told here is that of the acculturation and alienation of the Berbers to the Islamic state under the Marinids, a confederation of Zanata Berber tribes, ruling a stable, even imperial state in Morocco and parts of eastern North Africa in the 13th-15th centuries. This book studies how the Berbers participated in the process of the state's formation in the medieval Maghreb, while at the same time resisting uniformity and conformity to cultural norms and institutions, through which acculturation was enforced. The sources used here are evidence to challenge the view that no independent Berber intellectual and literary activity existed, and to substantiate expressions of Berber self-awareness in the Arab chronicles.

Customer Reviews:

An interesting example of partial assimilation.......2005-05-22

A welcome addition to Berber and western Islamic history. It follows up on Bovill's GOLDEN TRADE OF THE MOORS and fills out Berber history in association with Richard Fletcher's MOORISH SPAIN. The author's stated objective is to examine the Banu Marin's contributions to the development of the Islamic Berber state.

This interesting, if sometimes dry, book is divided into 3 main parts, according to the author's Introduction: (1) the Berbers' search for their place in Islamic history, (2) the development of an Islamic State, and (3) the implementation of Islamic Institutions.

The first part of the book studies the acculturation and resistance of the Berbers to the society of the conquering Arabs: original physical - and continued social - opposition toward the conquerors; the development of the myth that Berbers were originally of Arabic stock (in opposition to Arab ideas of superiority); and the praise of Berber culture and society during the taifa period of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) after the fall of the caliphate and the rise of small, ethnic kingdoms & conflicts.

The second part of the book deals with the rise of the Banu Marin (or Marinid dynasty of 1250 to 1465) of Zanata Berber stock after the fall of the Almohads. It looks at Arabic and popular opposition to the legitimacy of the Marinids and of the backlash against the Jewish population associated with the Banu Marin regime and the attempt to gain control of appointments in religious and social institutions as the State continued to be reformed along Islamic lines.

The 3rd part of the book looks at the evolution of tribal customs as they are integrated into the developing Islamic culture, as well as the development of numerous endowments for religious and other education - especially of the Medresas - and the conflict between the religious schools and the religious leadership. The Conclusion touches on the "importance of history in the creation of national identity" and the problem of historical accuracy in this context.

This book is very much so a scholarly paper - probably developed from an earlier Master's thesis or Doctoral dissertation - complete with a mild style and copious end notes.

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A Low-burning Flame
exciting historical thriller

The Torch of Tangier
Aileen G. Baron
Manufacturer: Poisoned Pen Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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Book Description

War time Tangier, policed by Franco's Guardia Civil, thick with many nationalities including Germans and Allies, bitter with the insults of Colonialism, is a dangerous place. Archaeologist Lily Sampson, recruited from her studies in Chicago by the enigmatic Dr. Drury, finds herself in Morocco digging up Neanderthal artifacts at the Cave of Hercules. And soon, working at the American Legation on an undercover mission linked to Operation Torch. The target date: November 8, 1942. The mission: to control French Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, squash Rommel, and thrust into Europe's underbelly. Out in the Atlantic, Ike will rely on relayed communications. But Lily's mastery of code is interrupted by murder--not one, but twoÂ—which not only imperils her, but Torch itself.

Customer Reviews:

A Low-burning Flame.......2007-06-22

This is a good beach read, when the lethargy of too much sun halts the crirical faculties. There are many holes in motivation, plot, and history. The author can't decide if Lily is Jackie Chan or Florence Nightingale, and when Lily does kill in self-defence ... it goes nowhere. Lily grieves for her Great Lost Love, Rafi (Ralph Landon), for about 5 minutes after learning he died a year earlier, and hastily acquires a new suitor about twice her age. But it's light fun, and zooms past in an hour or so.

exciting historical thriller .......2006-07-05

Archeologist Dr. Drury entices dissertation candidate Lily Sampson to accompany him to a Tangier excavation of a Neanderthal site in the Cave of Hercules. She has been there for over a year and has seen it turn from an International zone into an area controlled by Spain. At present she cannot work because mud flooded the caves and the Spanish Governor denies the Americans access.

Dr. Drury confesses that he is OSS and had asked Lily to join his dig because she has skills that will prove useful to the Allies. Lily agrees to work for the American Legation on a top secret mission Operation Torch, the Ally landing of men to push out the Axis from North Africa. As she begins her assignment her mentor is killed and the key code box missing; Lily realizes that she must find it or Operation Torch will be compromised.

This exciting historical thriller gives the reader a first hand seat to the exotic North Africana region during 1942. Readers, like the heroine, are unsure who to trust as an ally today can be tomorrow's enemy. The protagonist is a strong-willed and courageous person who does her part to support the war effort, which means in her case being in danger at all times. Think Casablanca as Aileen G. Baron makes the past come vividly alive so that the audience will believe this is the beginning of a long friendship.

Harriet Klausner

Word Works: Why the Alphabet Is a Kid's Best Friend (Brown Paper School Book)

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Word Works: Why the Alphabet Is a Kid's Best Friend (Brown Paper School Book)
Cathryn Berber Kaye , and Martha Weston
Manufacturer: Little Brown & Co (Juv Pap)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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