new books

The Frankenstein of 1790 and Other Lost Chapters 

from Revolutionary France

The French Revolution brings to mind violent mobs, the guillotine, and Madame Defarge, but it was also a publishing revolution: more than 1,200 novels were published between 1789 and 1804, when Napoleon declared the Revolution at an end. In this book, Julia V. Douthwaite explores how the works within this enormous corpus announced the new shapes of literature to come and reveals that vestiges of these stories can be found in novels by the likes of Mary Shelley, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, and L. Frank Baum.

Material Fantasies

EXPECTATIONS OF THE WESTERN CONSUMER WORLD AMONG EAST GERMAN

In 1989 news broadcasts all over the world were dominated for weeks by images of East Germans crossing the Berlin Wall to West Germany. But what did the East Germans expect to find when they excitedly broke through the Wall? And what did they actually find when they made it over to the other side? This study draws on fifteen months of research into both the lives of East Germans before the fall of communism and their fast-changing world after they embraced capitalism. Grounded in powerful anthropological insights, Milena Veenis argues persuasively that national identifications and the bond between state and citizenry in both East and West Germany over the past twenty years hasbeen shaped by the far-fetched, socialist and capitalist promises of consumption as the road to ultimate well-being. These promises also functioned as a way to cover up the more shameful and dirty aspects of both countries’ history and social life.

Mobility at Large

GLOBALIZATION, TEXTUALITY AND INNOVATIVE TRAVEL WRITING

Mobility at Large looks at the work of innovative contemporary travel writers who experiment with form, content, and the politics of representation. Authors such as Michael Ondaatje, Caryl Phillips, and Daphne Marlatt have transformed the genre by using a variety of experimental techniques to examine the cultural and political issues raised by travel, migration, mobility, and displacement. This book challenges those who dismiss travel writing as inherently conservative and bound up in a colonial, Eurocentric tradition.

The search for modernity : Chinese intellectuals and cultural discourse in the post-Mao era

The search for modernity : Chinese intellectuals and cultural discourse in the post-Mao era / Min Lin, with Maria Galikowski

Bib ID	1435584
Format	Book,  Online - Google Books
Author	Lin, Min, 1957-
Edition	1st ed.
Description	New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999.  xii, 271 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
ISBN	0312217587 (hbk.)  0312217587
Summary	"The Search for Modernity looks at the changing relationship between Chinese intellectuals and society, and examines the role of Chinese intellectuals in the turbulent process of modernization, comparing them to their Western counterparts. The Search for Modernity is an important attempt to understand the philosophical dilemmas and challenges facing Chinese intellectuals as they define the issues of modernity within a global context, their self-identity, and their role in an ever-changing Chinese society."--BOOK JACKET.
Full contents	1. From the Reinterpretation of Humanistic Marxism to Pragmatic Neo-Conservatism: Chinese Intellectuals' Pluralistic Exploration of Modernity 2. Li Zehou and His Enlightenment Philosophy 3. Wang Meng's "Hard Porridge" and the Paradox of Reform in China 4. Bei Dao's "13 Happiness Street" and the Young Generation's Quest for the "Unknowable" 5. Absurdity, Senselessness and Alienation: Xu Xing's Literary Reflections on the Contemporary Human Condition 6. Liang Xiaosheng's Moral Critique of China's Modernization Process 7. Individual Salvation and Ultimate Concerns: Liu Xiaofeng's Pursuit of Transcendent Human Universality 8. From "River Elegy" to China Can Say No: China's Neo-Nationalism and the Search for a Collective National Identity 9. From the Center to the Periphery: The Development of Chinese Intellectuals' "New Identity" and "Self-Awareness"

Technics and Time, 3: Cinematic time and the question of malaise

Bernard Stiegler   2011

booklist for dissertation

Pickowicz, Paul. "Huang Jianxin and the Notion of Postsocialism." In Nick Browne et al., eds. New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 57-87.


Marxism and the Chinese experience
(with the one of Arif Dirlik on postsocialism)


The Ideology of the Information Age
edited by Jennifer Daryl Slack        1987


Civilization at the Crossroads: social and human implications of the scientific and technological revolution

脑力劳动与现代化建设    宗寒 （inter-libarian loan）

人性、人道主义问题讨论集      人民出版社   1983


Primitive Passions: Visuality, sexuality, ethnography and contemporary chinese cinema
Rey Chow      1995


Marxism after Marx: an introduction     (David McLellan)
1979

Haunted media: Electric presence from telegraphy to television

(Jeffrey  Sconce, Duke UP 2000)

medium and media

(learn the way he brings "spiritual" and "electromagnetic" telegraphs together      the way of writing provides a good example for my chapter on  qigong craze and sic-fi)

booklist about information for my dissertation

The political Economy of Information
edited by Vincent Mosco and Janet Wasko    (the university of Wisconsin press , 1988)


The Laws of Cool : Knowledge work and the Culture of Information
by Alan Liu    (U of Chicago press   2004)


A history of the Modern fact: problems of knowledge in the sciences of Wealth and society
Mary Poovey    1998

Path into the unknown: The Best of Soviet Science Fiction

Ilya Varshavsky: The Conflict
about a robot nanny  superiority to human beings
(page about the author: http://translatedsf.thierstein.net/tiki-index.php?page=Ilya+Varshavsky)
Ilya Varshavsky:  Robby
about a robot who argues with the narrator with theoretical and mathematical accuracy
the narrator has a haircut the robot doesn't recognize him and shut him out


G. Gor     The boy
(a boy who is a double of another boy who was born and grew up in a spaceship    knows everything    mysterious )
(http://translatedsf.thierstein.net/tiki-index.php?page=Gennady+Gor)



Anatoly Dnieprov  Siema       (published in The Heart of the Serpent)
(http://translatedsf.thierstein.net/tiki-index.php?page=Anatoly+Dnieprov)

What cinema is! Bazin's Quest and its charge

Dudley Andrew   (Wiley-blackwell, 2010)

p2 sean cubitt has declared all cinema to be fundamentally a version of animation
     Sean Cubitt   The Cinema Effect (MIT press, 2004)

Thomas Elsaesser and Hoffmann (eds.) Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable? The Screen Arts in the Digital Age (1998)

about the interplay of photos and films   Garrett Stewart, Between Film and Screen: Modernism's photosynthesis  (chicago 1999)

p51
Jean-Pierre Geuens lamented this shift of emphasis from shooting to post-production, as the art of composing mise en scene has given way to the skill of "compositing" layers of visual elements.
Jean-Pierre Geuens "The Digital World Picture," Film Quarterly, 55 (4) (2002)

Martin Lefebvre and Marc Furstenau, "Digital Editing and Montage: The Vanishing Celluloid and Beyond," in Cinemas, 13(1-2), 2002.

Defined by a Hollow: essays on Utopia, Science fiction and political epistemology

Darko Suvin 2010

文学的“意思” 黄子平

浙江文艺出版社 1988
《意思的传达》
理想的“传达”   符号  噪音   “脱离代码”的讯息


《作家论科学文艺》黄伊 主编
《谈谈我对科学文艺的认识》童恩正 122－123
科普与科学文艺区别
1）写作目的  科普介绍具体的科学知识
                         科学文艺 与其它文艺作品一样 宣扬作者的一种思想、哲理
                                           科学的人生观
2） 写作方法  科普  忠于科学 以逻辑思维为基础
                         科学文艺   通过艺术形象的塑造、故事情节的展述或某种意境的渲染，表明作者的意图   科学内容过时或荒谬  但思想内容深刻
3）文章结构   科普 受限制
                         科学文艺 遵循文艺的规律      “情节小说”

French film theory

Germaine Dulac, "The Expressive Techniques of the Cinema," in French Film Theory and Criticism,
1907-1939: volume 1  Richard Abel  (princeton, 1988)

Daniel Morgan

PUBLICATIONS
Book
Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema (University of California Press, November 2012).
Journal Articles
“Bazin’s Modernism.” Paragraph (forthcoming 2013).
“Max Ophuls and the Limits of Virtuosity: On the Aesthetics and Ethics of Camera Movement.” Critical Inquiry 38 (Autumn 2011): 127-63.
“The Place of Nature in Godard’s Late Films.” Critical Quarterly 51.3 (Fall 2009): 1-24.

Department of English University of Pittsburgh 526 Cathedral of Learning Pittsburgh, PA 15260 drmorgan@pitt.edu

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

1

“Rethinking Bazin: Ontology and Realist Aesthetics.” Critical Inquiry 32 (Spring 2006): 443-81. - Reprinted in The Film Theory Reader, ed. Marc Furstenau (Routledge, 2010): 104-30.
“’No Trickery with Montage’: On Reading a Sequence in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou.” Film Studies 5 (Winter 2004): 8-29.
Book Chapters
“Debates, 1950-1980” in The French Cinema Book, 2nd Edition, eds. Michael Temple and
Michael Witt (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).
“Beyond Destiny and Design: Camera Movement in Fritz Lang’s German Films” in A
Companion to Fritz Lang, ed. Joe McElhaney (Blackwell, forthcoming 2013).
“On Historical Knowledge and Aesthetic Form: Jean-Luc Godard’s Allemagne 90 neuf zéro” in The Image in Violence, eds. Joram ten Brink and Joshua Oppenheimer (Wallflower Press, forthcoming 2012).
“The Afterlife of Superimposition” in Opening Bazin, eds. Dudley Andrew and Hervé Joubert- Laurencin (Oxford University Press, 2011): 127-41.
“The Pause of the World” in Three Documentary Filmmakers: Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Jean Rouch, ed. William Rothman (State University of New York Press, 2009): 139-56.
Other
“Robert Bresson: A Symposium” in Robert Bresson, ed. James Quandt, revised edition (Toronto
International Film Festival and Indiana University Press, 2012): 595-628.
Invited response to Robert Pippin, “Participants and Spectators.” On the Human, The National Humanities Center, April 2010.
http://onthehuman.org/2010/04/participants_and_spectators/
“Possessing Vision: The Cinema of Jean Rouch.” The Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, June 2000). Program notes for 23 screenings of non-fiction films. 

the future of intellectuals and the rise of the new class

Alvin W. Gouldner

about professionalism
Talcott Parsons, The social systems (Glencoe, 1951), chapter 10
                          Essays in sociological Theory (1952) chapter 18
                          "the professions" International Encyclopedia of social science

note31  Eliot Freidson, "The Futures of Professionalisation," in M. Stacey et al., eds, Health and the Division of Labor (London, 1977)
                                     Professional Dominance (1970)


note 55 Robert Lilienfeld,   The Rise of Systems Theory         (1978)

Postmodernism and the Postsocialist condition

edited by Ales Erjavec

Post-Utopian Avant-Garde Art in China  (p247-283)    高名潞
（other works by Gao:  Inside/out : new Chinese art
                                   Total modernity and the avant-garde in twentieth-century Chinese art
                                   others）

late 80s  Xu Bin  "book from the sky"

(think about Xu Bin together with Wang meng and the computerization of Chinese characters)

China/Avant-Garde exhibition       89现代艺术大展




Introduction by Ales Erjavec

p2-3qutoing Bauman "what has happened in recent years could be articulated as the apperace of a vantage point which allows the view of modernity itself as an enclosed object, an essential complete product, an episode of history, with an end as much as a beginning." Late socialism is in this sense "postsocialism"— the proclamation of the end of socialism rom within socialism itself.


p4 the link between the ideological signifier and the social referent was irreparably destroyed, and the gap between the two was becoming an abyss , server as an argument for the view that socialist countries had actually entered the "hyperreal" postmodern world before their western counterparts
Mikhail N, Epstein   After the Future: the Paradoxes of postmodernism and contemporary russian culture



Cuba, china, solvenian and romania,  artists were often not aware of what artists in another were doing
yet startling similarities between their works


In cuba   eclecticism of despair
subservient and fragmentary mimesis blends with a defensive syncretic use of resources and with recontextulization. the result is an aesthetic  that long predates postmodernism but that often matches it in visual terms

list from High Culture Fever (Wang Jing)

Stuart Schram, Ideology and Policy in China Since the there'd Plenum, 1978-84

Bill Brugger and  David Kelly, Chinese marxism in the post-Mao era  1990

Merle Goldman et al.   China's intellecutals and the state: in search of a new relationship

Feng shen, trans. translator's preface to Yihua yu laodong (alienation and labor), by I.S.Narskey


Reification and alienation----   Ignace Feuerlicht, Alienation: From the past to the Future


p290  note11 .12  Adam Schaff  哲学译丛 1979 and 1981年翻译他关于“异化”的文章
english anthology      Marxism and the Human Individual   ed. Robert Cohen

postsocialism: ideals , ideologies and practices in Eurasia （2）

Rethinking Chinese Consumption : social palliatives and the rhetorics of transition in post socialist China  (Kevin Latham  pp217-237)

1) how is China postsocialist
Since reforms... the government withdrew state subsidies from many areas of social and economic life, scaled back welfare entitlements, removed centralized distribution systems and allowed 'free' markets to spring up all over the country.

The 'post' of 'postsocialism' in the chinese context does not signify a straightforward 'after' in either logical and chronological terms . Rather, it incorporates and is based upon many of the same principles and assumptions of its supposed antecedents. Contemporary China has to be understood not only in terms of the radical economic changes and social transformations that have taken place over the last two decades of reform, but also in terms of what has not changed.
2) consumption as a social palliative
3) power and legitimacy in Post-Mao China
p223    I argue that change has been fundamental in supporting the CCP's legitimacy, this is not because all the changes are positively received by the Chinese populace. Nor is it because consumption provides a materialistic palliative for social disorientation. Rather, it is because the hegemony of the Party works discursively through a number of 'rhetorics of transition,' which require the notion of a rapidly changing and developing society.
4) Rhetorics of transition
Transition works to  maintain a hegemony where by any discontent with the present is downplayed in order not to endanger the imagined future.
The reform period has seen China increasingly divided and differentiated as a society and without Mao's promised utopia the Party has difficulty unifying the Chinese populace... China's post socialism hinges upon these divisions and the contradictions and disjunctures that accompany them.

postsocialism: ideals , ideologies and practices in Eurasia

edited by C.M. Hann      London and New York: Routledge

Whither postsocialism?   Katherine Verdery pp15-21
possible analogues beween postcolonial studies and post socialism

1)  how Soviet imperialism shaped present-day africa, Latin america, and asia
p16 'Moscow Centre' aimed to integrate its dependencies into a process of accumulating not capital but,  ... allocative power through accumulating means of production.
(verdery  1991 'Theorizing socialism: a prologue to the transition'  American ethnologies 18)
Integral to this goal was building a wall that would insulate it and its dependencies from process of capital accumulation.
2)  how the interactive field uniting colony and metropole helped to constitute and transform the imperial center. thus, how did the soviet union's relations with its various satellites constitute and transform 'Moscow center' itself?
3) The role of knowledge and representation in colonial rule
the Cold War organized the world around a dichotomy different from that of postcoloniality— not colonies and metrople, 'the West' and 'the Rest,' but East and West, communism and capitalism.....
perhaps we should speak, then, not of post socialist but of post-Cold War studies.

post Cold war   and the third world
the very concept of a third, nonaligned World itself emerged from the Cold War.
the presence of the soviet system gave a very particular shape to global politics... the global order that gave rise not only to neocolonialism but to postcolonial studies itself was an order structured by the Cold War.
(here Verdery tried to justify the historical connection between post socialism and post colonialism studies    however, socialist ideas also fueled anti-colonial struggles    here is the danger of collapsing post-socialism and post Cold-War)

Is it possible that the "flexible specialization" ... is in part a result of the challenge posed by socialism? Capitalist growth depends on consumption.. with the expansion of socialism..., a staggering proportion of the world's people was hindered from consuming Western goods.
the crisis began when consumer markets for the output of mass production became saturated. the solution was to develop new techniques for expanding demand and consumption, Without socialist autarky, would this solution have arisen precisely when it did?
(David harvey and other when examine postmodernity and flexible accumulation never consider the pressure from the socialist side   it might be a productive way to understand this issue)



Burawoy, Michael. 2001  "Neoclassical sociology: from the end of communism to the end of classes" american journal of sociology 106

contemporary china and post socialism booklist

Gloria Davies 

Voicing Concerns: Contemporary Chinese Critical Inquiry

人文精神寻思录
王晓明 编
文汇出版社1996年2月版

Foucault, Michel. "of other spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias"  Diacritics 16, no.1 1986

new philosophy for new media

Kittler "computer graphics"
(the perspective inherent to photographic optics was an obstacle to the total automation of sight, and they went on to develop other, non perspectival means, including "range finders" such as lasers or ultrasound, as the source of three-dimensional information.)


Machinic Vision and Human Perception

radical disembodiment of vision
(could be redeemed by digital images     the functional isomorphism between machine vision and human perception)
p101 whereas "vision machines" transform the activity of perceiving into a computation of the data that is , for all intents and purposes, instantaneous, human perception takes place in a rich and evolving field to which bodily modalities of tactility, proprioception, memory and duration — what I am calling affectivity— make an irreducible and constitutive contribution.

John Johnston, "Machinic Vision"  critical inquiry 26 (1999)
p99 he correlates the digitization of the image with the technical distribution of cognition beyond the human body-brain... The result is a "generalized and extended condition of visuality"—mechanic vision— in which the task of processing information, that is , perception, necessarily passes through a machinic circuit.


Is an digital image an image?
p99 the digital image is not really an "image" at all: far from being a correlate of the imaginary domain of sense experience, it designates the "objective" circulation of digital data— Kittler's endless loop of infinite knowledge— emancipated from any constraining correlation with human perceptual ratios.



other books
Virilio   The  vision machine
              Open sky   a right to blindness       how to resist the industrialization of perception
             War and Cinema

New Philosophy for New media (Mark Hansen)

p6
The key notion here is that of the interval (as in montage cinema), which, in constituting a cut between shots, introduces "a gap between the action and the reaction." For Deleuze, this function of the cut, and of framing to which its is immediately related, is perfectly homologous with that of the body as a center of indetermination: the process by which the body islets certain aspects of images to generate perceptions is, Deleuze insists, "an operation.... exactly described as framing: certain actions undergone are isolated by frame and hence... are forestalled, anticipated." Yet, in order to assert this homology, Deleuze finds himself compelled to bracket Bergson's embodied concept of affection— affection as a constitutive impurity of this body' perception— and to offer in its place a formal understanding of affection as a specific permutation of the movement-image. Affection as a phenomenological modality of bodily life gives way to affection as a concrete type of image— the affection-image—defined exclusively by the protracted interruption of the sensorimotor circuit, the interruption, that is, of the form of the movement-image.

digital and indexical images
P8 Since the digital image culminates the transition from an indexical basis (photograph) to sequential scanning (radar), it substitutes for the image proper a procedural realization of information in time that appears as a traditional image only for contingent reasons .
what do we take recourse to a hybrid conception of the image as, at once, an analog surface and a digital infrastructure?
P9 the(digital) image does not comprise a representation of the preexistent and independent reality, but rather a means for the new media user to intervene in the production of the "real"


(Questions: isn't human body always framing images? duleuze doesn't not privilege digital in terms of the framing of the body      secondly the emphasis on digital images as information serialization seems ungrounded   are not digital images always already framed in some material interface before they reach human body? then in which sense digital images are new? in which way Hansen's philosophy is new?)


Vivian Sobchack Film and phenomenology
three metaphors have dominated film theory: the picture frame, the window, and the mirror. The mirror represents the synthetic conflation of perception and expression that characterizes most contemporary film theory.
(my notes: this mirror metaphor      and postmodernist building's use of mirror instead of glass      might be considered together in terms of architecture, visuality and cinema)

a list of my books for dissertation research

《科学家谈21世纪》 李四光、华罗庚等著   少年儿童出版社1959年

《文学的“意思”》黄子平著, 杭州市：浙江文艺出版社, 1988.
讨论文学作品语言与“意思”的传达

《杨月月与萨特之研究》諶容 中国文联出版公司
“我就是洗衣机。前天我们所长还说我是怀梦牌洗衣机。洗出的被单，比洗衣机的干净多了。”

《当代文学60年：回望与反思》

蔡翔、张旭东主编   上海大学出版社 2011 年

1。 《英雄或丑角——“重返80年代” 与“当代文学60年”》 罗岗   115-122
将“文本”与书籍、出版以及更广泛的印刷文化富有想象力地勾连在一起，的确打开了文学是研究的新思路。
Roger Chartier   《文本、印刷术、解读》
Robert Darnton   对法国大革命前书商进货订单    clandestine books  无卢梭
                           究竟是什么样的书籍——是思想著作还是淫秽读物——导致了法国大革命?
readership   what they read     and  how they read


刘心武 《班主任》中的书单 关于牛虻是否黄书
程光炜 《我们是如何“革命”的——文学阅读对一代人精神成长的影响》
贺桂梅 《先锋小说的知识谱系与意识形态》《 文艺研究》2005 （10）

《一个人的文学史（1983-2007）》  收获编辑 程永新   ---马原的书单 书目传统一些

Carlo Ginzburg      cheese and worm

2. 《文言。 方言。普通话——中国当代文学的语言学问题》   葛红兵 379-387
汉语字本位  为容纳方言的“声音”保留了特别的空间
狭隘的普通话共同体
贾平凹  《秦腔》   陕西土话
葛红兵 《语言、声音、方块字与小说》in 《莫言研究资料》 山东文艺出版社 2007

3. 《“正典结构”的精神质询——重读靳凡公开的情书和礼平晚霞消失的时候》 329-338
《公开的情书》初稿于1972年  “性别政治”与“话语政治”

争夺真真 的异性 每个异性都代表一种话语力量及其相应的人生哲学
童汝 政治骗子
石田  庸俗的好人
老嘎   艺术青年
老久 “一个面对现实而顽强寻找光明的人，一个正视生活、意识到应负的历史使命的人，一个听从祖国召唤的人”
以三角或多角恋爱的角力来申明和体现叙述者的话语立场    以操持启蒙主义话语的老久胜利为结局
《青春之歌》 林道静

Michel Serres

Hermès. Vol 1: La Communication. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1984. [1969]

Hermès. Vol 2: L’Interférence. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1972.

Hermès. Vol 3: La Traduction. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1974.

Hermès'. Vol 4: La Distribution. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1981. [1977]

Hermès. Vol 5: Le Passage du nord-ouest. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980.

Translation of Selections of the above: Hermes: Literature, Science and Philosophy. ed. Josué V. Harari and David F. Bell. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.

The Algebra of Literature. Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ed. Josué V. Harari. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1979.

Le Parasite. Paris: Grasset, 1980. Translation: The Parasite. trans. Lawrence R. Schehr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982.

Genèse. Paris : B. Grasset, 1982. Translation: Genesis. trans. Genevieve James and James Nielson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995.

Utopia's ghost: architecture and postmodernism, Again Reinhold Martin (university of Minesota Press, 2010)

Tomas Maldonado   Design, Nature and Revolution: Toward a critical ecology

p53 "Though Maldonado noted the etymological sense of ecology, he did not note the connection to economy, preferring instead to take up the systems approach of Ludwig von Bertalanffy via an analytics of the 'social system' constructed around an opposition between open and closed systems, derived from the post-Weberian school of American sociology formed in the 1950s around Talcott Parsons. This framework compels Maldonado to read the failed rebellion of the late 1960s through the notion of a system's tendency toward 'dynamic equilibrium' that absorbs and neutralizes conflict."



McLuhan, "The Invisible Environment: the future of an erosion," Perspecta 11 (1967)
p60-61
"Using a combination of cybernetics, systems theory, and communication theory, he postulates the human subject as an opaque black box communicating with and constructed by a multimedia environment through constant feedback. In perspecta McLuhan observes the necessity of what he calls 'pattern recognition' as a new form of environmental awareness. Among its instruments would be language, held together by invisible relational patterns (what McLuhan calls in his title the 'invisible environment') that we can recognize as asking to Eisenman's syntax but made available to human beings only through interaction with machines.... In other words, for McLuhan pattern recognition is a process comparable to that of acquiring a new mother tongue, a linguistic home that gives shelter to the human subject awash in a delirious, multimedia environment, by training him or her to 'see' the hidden, regulating patterns— the grammar, but also the software, if you like— that was running the new machines that were running the new environments, in a recurrent feedback loop."


Peter Eisenman



pay attention to the chapter about mirrors (instead of glass for modernism) used in architecture
mirrors   circular and tautological seriality created by,  as feedback loop; concealing the outside,
             Harvey's hypothesis of underpinnings of postmodernity as "economics with mirrors",
              rereflection technique
(black cannon incident   loop    Yao's works on feedback loops of glass)

postsocialist cinema in post-Mao China: the Cultural Revolution after the Cultural Revolution chris berry Routledge 2004

P13 This book moves in the other historical direction to ask whether this qualitative change first manifest itself in the cinema in the films under consideration here in the late seventies. Furthermore, the term adopted here for this new social and cultural condition is "post socialism.".. In Chinese studies, Arif Dirlik coined this term with different intensions before the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

Arif Dirlik, "post-socialism? Reflections on 'socialism with chinese characteristics'," in Marxism and the Chinese Experience, ed. Arif Dirlik and Maurice Meisner 1989
Tang Xiaobing,"The function of New theory: what does it mean to talk about postmodernism in China?" in Politics, Ideology and Literary Discourse in Modern China, ed Liu Kang and Tang xiaobing

I have also used the term to discuss late 1980s's cinema, attempting to extend Pickowicz's discussion by explicitly invoking its etymological roots in the "postmodern" and considering whether postsocialism is a specific form of postmodernism.

berry and Mary Ann Farquhar, "post-socialist strategies: an analysis of Yellow Earth and Black Canon Incident," in Cinematic landscapes: observations on the Visual Arts and Cinema of China and Japan

Mark Poster, Foucault, Marxism and History: Mode of production versus Mode of information (London: Polity press, 1984)

A List of Cultural Studies Journals

Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities Angelaki “was established in September 1993 to provide an international forum for vanguard work in the theoretical humanities. In itself a contentious category, 'theoretical humanities' represents the productive nexus of work in the disciplinary fields of literary criticism and theory, philosophy, and cultural studies. The journal is dedicated to the refreshing of intellectual coordinates, and to the challenging and vivifying process of re-thinking.”

ariel ariel “is a refereed journal devoted to the critical and scholarly study of the new and the established literatures in English around the world. It welcomes particularly articles on the relationships among the new literatures and between the new and the established literatures. ariel is published four times a year.”

boundary 2 “Extending beyond the postmodern, boundary 2, an international journal of literature and culture, approaches problems in these areas from a number of politically, historically, and theoretically informed perspectives. boundary 2 remains committed to understanding the present and approaching the study of national and international culture and politics through literature and the human sciences.”

Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies “is a journal founded in 2004 that publishes scholarship for an international readership on communication as a theory, practice, technology, and discipline of power. The journal features critical inquiry that cuts across academic boundaries to focus on social, political, and cultural practices from the standpoint of communication. It promotes critical reflection on the requirements of a more democratic culture by giving attention to subjects such as, but not limited to, class, race, ethnicity, gender, ability, sexuality, polity, public sphere, nation, environment, and globalization.”

Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies Continuum “is an academic journal of media and cultural studies. For over two decades it has contributed to the formation of these disciplines by identifying new areas for investigation and developing new agendas for enquiry in the fields. The journal has consistently provided a space for important new voices in media and cultural studies, while also featuring the work of internationally renowned scholars. Continuum is now one of the most highly regarded and most cited journals in media and cultural studies.”

Critical Inquiry Critical Inquiry “has published the best critical thought in the arts and humanities since 1974. Combining a commitment to rigorous scholarship with a vital concern for dialogue and debate, the journal presents articles by eminent critics, scholars, and artists on a wide variety of issues central to contemporary criticism and culture. In Critical Iinquiry new ideas and reconsideration of those traditional in criticism and culture are granted a voice. The wide interdisciplinary focus creates surprising juxtapositions and linkages of concepts, offering new grounds for theoretical debate.”

Cultural Critique “Cultural Critique brings together some of the most important work within cultural analysis, investigating culture from a theoretically broad perspective and from an international point of view. Cultural Critique provides a forum for international and interdisciplinary explorations of intellectual controversies, trends, and issues in culture, theory, and politics. Emphasizing critique rather than criticism, the journal draws on the diverse and conflictual approaches of Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, semiotics, political economy, and hermeneutics to offer readings in society and its tranformation.”

Cultural Studies Cultural Studies “is an international journal which explores the relation between cultural practices, everyday life, material, economic, political, geographical and historical contexts. It fosters more open analytic, critical and political conversations by encouraging people to push the dialogue into fresh, uncharted territory. It also aims to intervene in the processes by which the existing techniques, institutions and structures of power are reproduced, resisted and transformed.”

Culture, Theory and Critique Culture, Theory and Critique “is a refereed, interdisciplinary journal for the transformation and development of critical theories in the humanities and social sciences. It aims to critique and reconstruct theories by interfacing them with one another and by relocating them in new sites and conjunctures. Culture, Theory and Critique's approach to theoretical refinement and innovation is one of interaction and hybridisation via recontextualisation and transculturation.”

differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies “first appeared in 1989 at the moment of a critical encounter—a head-on collision, one might say—of theories of difference (primarily Continental) and the politics of diversity (primarily American). In the ensuing years, the journal has established a critical forum where the problematic of differences is explored in texts ranging from the literary and the visual to the political and social. differences highlights theoretical debates across the disciplines that address the ways concepts and categories of difference—notably but not exclusively gender—operate within culture.”

English Studies in Canada English Studies in Canada (ESC) “publishes articles on topics that fall into the disciplinary purview of "English studies" broadly understood. In addition to literary criticism, the journal welcomes articles that take up the methodologies of cultural studies, critical theory, and interdisciplinary studies. ESC also publishes review articles, book reviews, and readers' forums on matters of interest to the discipline.”

European Journal of Cultural Studies European Journal of Cultural Studies “is a major journal based in Europe which promotes a conception of cultural studies rooted in lived experience. The journal adopts a broad-ranging view of cultural studies, charting new questions and new research, and mapping the transformation of cultural studies in the years to come. The journal is interdisciplinary bringing together articles from a textual, philosophical and social scientific background, as well as from cultural studies. It engages in critical discussions on power relations concerning gender, class, sexual preference, ethnicity and other macro or micro sites of political struggle.”

Feminist Media Studies Feminist Media Studies “provides a transdisciplinary, transnational forum for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of media and communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and analysis of sites including print and electronic media, film and the arts, and new media technologies. The journal invites contributions from feminist researchers working across a range of disciplines and conceptual perspectives.”

Film Journal International Film Journal International, “celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2009, is a trade publication and website covering the motion picture industry, with special emphasis on theatrical exhibition. Articles report on U.S. and international news, with features on upcoming movies, industry trends, theatre design, equipment, concessions, digital cinema, sound, screen advertising, and other industry-related topics. Additional issues contain special guides to international distribution and exhibition, as well as equipment and concessions for the motion picture industry.”

Film Quarterly “Combining the best of scholarship and journalism since 1959, Film Quarterly publishes wide-ranging, well-crafted, incisive, and detailed writing for thoughtful movie lovers. In Film Quarterly, you will find: In-depth review essays on major recent films; Punchy, provocative columnists; Commentary on digital technology and online moving images; Coverage of television, documentary, and the avant-garde; An unrivalled book review section; Contributions from filmmakers; Debate and argument about what matters in film culture.”

Globalizations Globalizations “seeks to publish the best work exploring new meanings of globalization, bringing fresh ideas to the concept, broadening its scope, and contributing to shaping the debates of the future. Globalizations is dedicated to opening the widest possible space for discussion of alternatives to a narrow economic understanding of globalization. The move from the singular to the plural is deliberate and implies skepticism of the idea that there can ever be a single theory or interpretation of globalization. Rather, the journal will seek to encourage the exploration and discussion of multiple interpretations and multiple processes that may constitute many possible globalizations, many possible alternatives.”

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television “The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television is an interdisciplinary journal concerned with the evidence produced by the mass media for historians and social scientists, and with the impact of mass communications on the political and social history of the twentieth century. The needs of those engaged in research and teaching are served by scholarly articles, book reviews and by archival reports concerned with the preservation and availability of records. The journal also reviews films, television and radio programmes of historical or educational importance. In addition, it aims to provide a survey of developments in the teaching of history and social science courses which involve the use of film and broadcast materials.”

Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power Identities “explores the relationship of racial, ethnic and national identities and power hierarchies within national and global arenas. It examines the collective representations of social, political, economic and cultural boundaries as aspects of processes of domination, struggle and resistance, and it probes the unidentified and unarticulated class structures and gender relations that remain integral to both maintaining and challenging subordination. The journal illuminates the relationship between culture and power and transports the field of ethnic studies beyond descriptions of cultural diversity.”

Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Inter-Asia Cultural Studies “gives a long overdue voice, throughout the global intellectual community, to those concerned with inter-Asia processes. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies includes discussion, reports and analysis from global critical circles, and especially from marginalised sites, with the aim of enhancing the communication and exchange between inter-Asia and other regions of the cultural studies world.”

International Journal of Cultural Studies International Journal of Cultural Studies “provides a lively meeting-place for international perspectives on cultural and media developments across the globe. The journal features theoretical, empirical and historical research which is based in local and regional realities, and deals with everyday practices, identities, media, texts and cultural forms. It publishes work which suggests new directions, ideas and modes of inquiry to reinvigorate cultural studies for a new generation of researchers and readers.”

Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies “is a specialist peer-reviewed journal focusing on the following aspects of postcolonial research, theory and politics: The histories of imperialism and colonialism; The role of culture (academic, literary and popular) in the operation of imperialism and in the formations of national resistance; Liberation struggles, past and ongoing; The role of religion and culture in new nationalisms; The contemporary politics of identity, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality; The economics of neo-colonialism; Diaspora and migrancy; Indigenous fourth-world cultures; The connections between colonialism and modernity, postcolonialism and postmodernism.”

Journal of African Cultural Studies “The Journal of African Cultural Studies is an international journal providing a forum for perceptions of African culture from inside and outside Africa, with a special commitment to African scholarship. It focuses on dimensions of African culture including African literatures both oral and written, performance arts, visual arts, music, the role of the media, the relationship between culture and power, as well as issues within such fields as popular culture in Africa, sociolinguistic topics of cultural interest, and culture and gender.”

Journal of Intercultural Studies Journal of Intercultural Studies “showcases innovative scholarship about emerging cultural formations, intercultural negotiations and contemporary challenges to cultures and identities. Journal of Intercultural Studies welcomes theoretically informed articles from diverse disciplines that contribute to the following discussions: Reconceptualising notions of nationhood, citizenship and racialisation; Questioning theories of diaspora, transnationalism, hybridity and 'border crossing' and their contextualised applications; Exploring the contemporary sociocultural formations of ethnicity, postcolonialism and indigeneity; Examining how past and contemporary key scholars can inform current thinking on cross-cultural knowledge, multiculturalism, race and cultural identity.

Journal of Popular Culture “The popular culture movement was founded on the principle that the perspectives and experiences of common folk offer compelling insights into the social world. The fabric of human social life is not merely the art deemed worthy to hang in museums, the books that have won literary prizes or been named "classics," or the religious and social ceremonies carried out by societies' elite. The Journal of Popular Culture continues to break down the barriers between so-called "low" and "high" culture and focuses on filling in the gaps that a neglect of popular culture has left in our understanding of the workings of society.”

Journal of Popular Film and Television “How did Casablanca affect the home front during World War II? What is the postfeminist significance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? The Journal of Popular Film and Television answers such far-ranging questions by using the methods of popular culture studies to examine commercial film and television, historical and contemporary. Articles discuss networks, genres, series, and audiences, as well as celebrity stars, directors, and studios. Regular features include essays on the social and cultural background of films and television programs, filmographies, bibliographies, and commissioned book and video reviews.”

Media, Culture, Society Media, Culture & Society “provides a major international forum for the presentation of research and discussion concerning the media, including the newer information and communication technologies, within their political, economic, cultural and historical contexts. The journal is interdisciplinary, regularly engaging with a wider range of issues in cultural and social analysis. Its focus is on substantive topics and on critique and innovation in theory and method.”

Mediations “Published twice yearly, Mediations is the journal of the Marxist Literary Group. We publish dossiers of translated material on special topics and peer-reviewed general issues, usually in alternation.”

New Formations new formations “has established a reputation nationally and internationally as Britain's most significant interdisciplinary journal of culture, politics and theory. It brings new and challenging perspectives of cultural analysis to bear on the cutting edge of politics. Always at the forefront of intellectual debate, new formations has covered issues ranging from the seduction of perversity to questions of nationalism and post-colonialism.”

New Left Review “Established for forty years as a key journal of the international Left, NLR has been transformed since 2000 into a new resource for the new century. Its range covers world politics and the global economy; state powers and protest movements; contemporary social theory; history and philosophy; cinema and literature; heterodox art and aesthetics. It stands resolutely opposed to Third Way pieties and neoliberal prescriptions, combating capital's current apologists with sharp and scholarly analysis, internationalist critique, polemic and experiential prose.”

October “At the forefront of art criticism and theory, October focuses critical attention on the contemporary arts and their various contexts of interpretation: film, painting, music, media, photography, performance, sculpture, and literature. Examining relationships between the arts and their critical and social contexts, October addresses a broad range of readers. Original, innovative, provocative, each issue presents the best, most current texts by and about today's artistic, intellectual and critical vanguard.”

Parallax “Founded in 1995, parallax has established an international reputation for bringing together outstanding new work in cultural studies, critical theory and philosophy. parallax publishes themed issues that aim to provoke exploratory, interdisciplinary thinking and response. Each issue of parallax provides a forum for a wide spectrum of perspectives on a topical question or concern. parallax will be of interest to those working in cultural studies, critical theory, cultural history, philosophy, gender studies, queer theory, post-colonial theory, English and comparative literature, aesthetics, art history and visual cultures.”

Public Culture “In the twenty years of its existence, Public Culture has established itself as a prize-winning, field-defining cultural studies journal. Public Culture seeks a critical understanding of the global cultural flows and the cultural forms of the public sphere which define the late twentieth century. As such, the journal provides a forum for the discussion of the places and occasions where cultural, social, and political differences emerge as public phenomena, manifested in everything from highly particular and localized events in popular or folk culture to global advertising, consumption, and information networks.”

Quarterly Review of Film and Video Quarterly Review of Film and Video “publishes critical, historical, and theoretical essays, book reviews, and interviews in the area of moving image studies including film, video, and digital imagery studies.Our scope is international and interdisciplinary. Contributions from diverse critical, theoretical, and historical perspectives are welcomed.”

Resources for Feminist Research/ Documentation sur la recherche féministe “Resources for Feminist Research / Documentation sur la recherche féministe is a bilingual (English/French) Canadian scholarly journal published since 1972 in the Centre for Women's Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education / University of Toronto. RFR/DRF addresses Canadian and international feminist research issues and debates. The journal's objectives are to publish critical work addressing a broad range of issues relevant to feminist theory and activism, provide an educational resource and a forum for the communication of ideas, news, and other information of interest to the community of feminist scholars, and to encourage research on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality and class, and how they inform and affect the conditions of women's lives.”

Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies The Review of Education, Pedagogy & Cultural Studies “is the only journal which publishes critical essays that explore pedagogy and its relation to a wide variety of political, social, cultural and economic issues. It is particularly concerned with issues focusing on how pedagogy works within and across a variety of sites (not limited to formal spaces of education, but including popular culture, museums, film, and other cultural spaces) and how pedagogical practices emerge out of specific historical struggles, concrete projects, and particular relations of power. The journal is interdisciplinary, and addresses the relationship of race, class, age and gender to particular projects, struggles, and issues.”

Social Text Social Text “covers a broad spectrum of social and cultural phenomena, applying the latest interpretive methods to the world at large. A daring and controversial leader in the field of cultural studies, the journal consistently focuses attention on questions of gender, sexuality, race, and the environment, publishing key works by the most influential social and cultural theorists. As a journal at the forefront of cultural theory, Social Text invites provocative interviews and challenging articles from emerging critical voices. Each issue breaks new ground in the debates about postcolonialism, postmodernism, and popular culture.”

Social Identities “Recent years have witnessed considerable worldwide changes concerning social identities such as race, nation and ethnicity, as well as the emergence of new forms of racism and nationalism as discriminatory exclusions. Social Identities aims to furnish an interdisciplinary and international focal point for theorizing issues at the interface of social identities.The journal is especially concerned to address these issues in the context of the transforming political economies and cultures of postmodern and postcolonial conditions. Social Identities is intended as a forum for contesting ideas and debates concerning the formations of, and transformations in, socially significant identities, their attendant forms of material exclusion and power, as well as the political and cultural possibilities opened up by these identifications.

South Atlantic Quarterly “Founded amid controversy in 1901, the South Atlantic Quarterly continues to cover the beat, center and fringe, with bold analyses of the current scene—national, cultural, intellectual—worldwide. Now published exclusively in special issues, this vanguard centenarian journal is tackling embattled states, evaluating postmodernity's influential writers and intellectuals, and examining a wide range of cultural phenomena.”

Space and Culture Space and Culture brings together dynamic, critical interdisciplinary research at the interface of cultural geography, sociology, cultural studies, architectural theory, ethnography, communications, urban studies, environmental studies and discourse analysis. Space and Culture's unique focus is on social spaces, such as the home, laboratory, leisure spaces, the city, and virtual spaces. In every issue, Space and Culture explores and critiques everyday life in contemporary cities, environment, and new media.”

Substance Substance “is a major interdisciplinary journal with a long-standing reputation for publishing innovative work on literature and culture. While its main focus has been on French literature and continental theory, the journal is known for its openness to original thinking in all the discourses that interact with literature, including philosophy, natural and social sciences, and the arts. Join the discerning readers of Substance who enjoy crossing borders and challenging limits.”

Television and New Media Television & New Media “is a new international journal devoted to the most recent trends in television and new media studies. TVNM addresses questions of how issues of economics and power are enacted in television. The journal focuses on textual analysis, political economy, cultural history, policy advocacy, audience ethnography, and economic and power issues that have an impact on the media.”

Theory, Culture & Society Theory, Culture & Society “is a highly ranked, high impact factor, rigorously peer reviewed journal that publishes original research and review articles in the social and cultural sciences. Launched in 1982 to cater for the resurgence of interest in culture within contemporary social science, Theory, Culture & Society provides a forum for articles which theorize the relationship between culture and society. Theory, Culture & Society is at the cutting edge of recent developments in social and cultural theory. The journal has helped to break down some of the disciplinary barriers between the humanities and the social sciences by opening up a wide range of new questions in cultural theory.”

Theory and Society “The journal Theory and Society publishes theoretically-informed analyses of social processes, providing a forum for an international community of scholars. It opens its pages to authors working at the frontiers of social analysis, regardless of discipline. The coverage ranges across a broad landscape, from prehistory to contemporary affairs, from treatments of individuals to nations to world culture, from discussions of theory to methodological critique, from First World to Third World. The effort is always to bring together theory, criticism and concrete observation.”

Third Text Third Text “is an international scholarly journal dedicated to providing critical perspectives on art and visual culture. The journal examines the theoretical and historical ground by which the West legitimises its position as the ultimate arbiter of what is significant within this field. Established in 1987, the journal provides a forum for the discussion and (re)appraisal of theory and practice of art, art history and criticism, and the work of artists hitherto marginalised through racial, gender, religious and cultural differences. Dealing with diversity of art practices - visual arts, sculpture, installation, performance, photography, video and film - Third Text addresses the complex cultural realities that emerge when different worldviews meet, and the challenge this poses to Eurocentrism and ethnocentric aesthetic criteria.”

empire or imperialism?

1汪晖 帝国的冲突，或帝国主义时代的冲突？－－《帝国的话语政治》座谈会上的发言 http://wen.org.cn/modules/article/view.article.php/1862

2 Samir Amin has written more than 30 books including Imperialism & Unequal Development, Specters of Capitalism: A Critique of Current Intellectual Fashions, Obsolescent Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder and The Liberal Virus. His memoirs were published in October 2006. also http://monthlyreview.org/2005/10/01/empire-and-multitude

3.Hannah Arendt, Imperialism [= Part II of The Origins of Totalitarianism. But her economics is bad.]

4. Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past [The first section has a very interesting discussion of the determinants of imperial size]

5. William McNeill [Excellent works, whose main flaw is a tactful silence about the American and even the Soviet empires.] The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society since A.D. 1000 The Global Condition: Conquerors, Catastrophe and Community

6Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance 7 Daniel R. Headrick a) The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century

b) Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present [blurb]

8 Bernard Semmel, The Liberal Ideal and the Demons of Empire: Theories of Imperialism from Adam Smith to Lenin 9 George Steinmetz, The Devil's Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa

10 (For a quite annihilating leftist critique of Samir Amin, Arghiri Emmanuel, et al., see Alec Nove's The Economics of Feasibly Socialism.)

mostly from http://www.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/

soviet film

about stalinist Charisma The Abyss 1992 glasnost'films by Sergei Soloviev Assa (1988) The black rose 1990--- full title "black rose is an emblem of sadness, red rose is an emblem of love" The House under the starry sky (1988)

common places: mythologies of everyday life in Russia

Chekhov stories about banal domestic life "The Literature Teacher" romance between a young schoolteacher and a young girl banality "the little plump wife" and her "little fluffy cat" p53 "The last sentence pits 'conscious life' against family happiness, an opposition that will be at the center of modernist aesthetics and ethics."

common places: mythologies of everyday life in Russia Svetlana Boym

Harvard university Press 1994

Kitsch: The Anthology of Bad Taste ed. Gillo Dorfles 1969 Chernyshevsky and the age of realism: study in the semiotics of behavior, Irina Paperno 1989

Between Tsar and People: Educated society and the quest for public identity in late imperial Russia, eds. Edith W. Clowes etc.. 1991 (about Russian middle-class)

on the intelligentsia: Isaiah Berlin The Russian thinkers 1956 Richard Pipes, ed. Russian Intelligentsia 1961 Lev Gudkov, "Intelligenty i intellectualy" in Znamia 3/4, 1992, 203-220

on the making of a new soviet man see Rufus W. Mathewson, Jr., The positive hero in Russian literature 1975

Bolshevik Visions, ed. William Rosenberg 1990 (about soviet new city)

Montage and Modern Life ed Matthew Teitelbaum 1992 (about soviet construction of space and politics of montage)

For a historical description of revolutionary utopias, see Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution; Moisei Ginzburg, Style and Epoch 1982 For theory and comparative views on Utopia see Frank and Frizie Maneul, Utopian Thought in the Western world 1979

S. Frederick Starr, Melnikov: solo Architect in the mass society 1978

The body in Pain: the making and unmaking of the world 1985

Susan Stewart, On Longing: narratives of the miniature, the Gigantic, the souvenir, the collection 1984

Late Soviet Culture from Perestroika to Novostroika 1993

(bordom and domesticity) Cathy Popkin, The Pragmatics of Insignificance: Chekhov,Zoshchenko, Gogol 1993

Mario Praz, An illustrated history of interior decoration from Pompeii to Art Nouveau (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981)

Man Ray and Lee Miller

rayography solarization

Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China Fostering Talent Search the full text of this book Lisa M. Hoffman

In the post-Maoist era, China adopted a strategy for investing in the "quality" of its people—through education and training opportunities—that created talented labor. In her significant ethnographic study, Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China, Lisa Hoffman explains why the development of "human capital" is seen as fundamental for economic growth and national progress. She examines these new urban employees, who were deemed vital to the success of the global city in China, and who hoped for social mobility, a satisfying career, and perhaps a family. Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China addresses the emergence of this urban professional subject in Dalian, a port city in China. Hoffman identifies who these new professionals are, what choices they have made, and how they have remained closely connected with the nation—although not necessarily the Communist party—leading to a new social form she calls "Patriotic Professionalism." Hoffman contributes to the understanding of changing urban life in China while providing an analysis of the country's "late-socialist neoliberalism." In the process, she asks pressing questions about how such shifts impact cities, how individuals and families negotiate these changes, and how "choice" itself is a part of the subject formation process for these young professionals.