For the last fifteen years, performance artist and writer Guillermo Gomez-Pena has led a series of ongoing conversations with cultural luminaries from both North and South America. These dialogues with theorists, curators, activists, and fellow artis...

Chicago has been called by many names. Nelson Algren declared it a "City on the Make". Carl Sandburg dubbed it the "City of Big Shoulders". Upton Sinclair christened it "The Jungle", while New Yorkers, naturally, pronounced it "the Second City". At...

During the 1920s and '30s, Franz Taibosh – whose stage name was Clicko – performed in front of millions as one of the stars of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Prior to his fame in the United States, Taibosh toured the world as the "...

From nineteenth-century paintings of fires raging through New York City to scenes of Manhattan engulfed by a gigantic wave in the 1998 movie "Deep Impact", images of the city's end have been prolific and diverse. Why have Americans repeatedly imagine...

Despite Western culture's roots and much touted pride in its classical Greek and Roman legacy, the sexual freedoms of the ancient world have had no place in the official cultures of Western societies. As late as the 19th Century, homosexuality was th...

For sale in CIS only! Historians have long regarded fashion as something peculiarly Western. In this surprising, sumptuously illustrated book, Antonia Finnane challenges this view, which she argues is based on nineteenth- and twentieth-century repre...

For sale in CIS only! Squeezed between more powerful France and Spain, Catalonia has endured a violent history. Its medieval empire that conquered Naples, Sicily and Athens was crushed by Spain. Its geography, with the Pyrenees falling sharply to th...

Controversial, challenging and outspoken, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is best known as a deconstructionist and post-colonial theorist. With an awe-inspiring track record in several areas, ranging from Feminism and Marxism to Literary Criticism and of...

Censorship was once a predictable topic, dividing liberals and conservatives down the middle on issues like obscenity and national security. Today, the debate over the regulation of speech offers no such easy dichotomy, with feminists joining forces...

For sale in CIS only! Cairo is a city of extremes. On its chaotic streets BMWs driven by sharp-suited businessmen compete for space with donkey carts laden with farm produce; in its mosques the wealthy and the destitute pray next to each other. The...