Identity Politics

Throughout his career, Johnny Cash was depicted - and depicted himself - as a walking contradiction: social protestor and establishment patriot, drugged wildman and devout Christian crusader, rebel outlaw hillbilly thug and elder statesman. Leigh H. Edwards explores the allure of this paradoxical image and its cultural significance. She argues that Cash embodied irresolvable contradictions of American identity that reflect foundational issues in the American experience.

In Real Americans, Jared A. Goldstein boldly challenges the conventional wisdom that a shared devotion to the Constitution is the essence of what it means to be American.

Finding Normal explores how people are using the internet to find community, forge connections, and create identity in ways that challenge a variety of sexual norms. Based on a highly candid interview series conducted for New York magazine's human science column - "What It's Like" - each story in Finding Normal intimately immerses the listener in the world of a person who is grappling with a unique set of circumstances relating to sexuality.

Dana Laine ha ingresado en el Centro Nacional de Inteligencia español. Su primera misión será localizar a Aleksandr Potosky, un peligroso criminal que ha aterrizado en Madrid. Todo parece sencillo de ejecutar, hasta que alguien pondrá en peligro su existencia y la confianza de los servicios españoles. En un mundo de hombres, su reputación ahora pende de un hilo. En una ciudad donde nadie aparenta ser quien es, Dana no tendrá más opción que atrapar al terrorista y salvar la vida de cientos de personas.

Devouring Cultures brings together contributors from a wide range of disciplines including media studies, rhetoric, gender studies, philosophy, anthropology, literary criticism, film criticism, race theory, history, and linguistics to examine the ways food signifies both culture and identity. The essays in Devouring Cultures show how our choices about what we eat, where we eat, and with whom we eat are linked to identity and meaning.

What does it mean to be white? Beyond just a skin colour, is it also a way of thinking? If so, how did it come about, and why? Drawing on history, personal experience and activist literature, Lilian Thuram looks at the origins and workings of white thinking, how it divides us and how it has become ubiquitous and accepted without challenge. He demonstrates how centuries of white bias and denial justified slavery and colonialism, and have reinforced norms and structures of oppression, limiting the roles and horizons of both non-whites and whites alike.

In the English language there are over 700 expressions for female mammary glands – the majority of which are mostly used by men. In Tits Up, bestselling author, sociologist and journalist Sarah Thornton asks how is it that we look at breasts so much, but reflect on them so little. It was after Sarah underwent a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery that she found herself considering how we think about breasts, and what that tells us about ourselves.

The story of a search for Armenian identity. Join the author as he examines what it is to be Armenian in an entirely non-Armenian world, exploring the alienation of being different.

Part memoir, part commentary on masculinity, Raven Smith’s Men isn’t so much for men as about them. Raven has been trying to distil what it is about men that has kept him intrigued his whole life. It boils down to three things. Firstly, he loves them. Secondly, he can see how endlessly problematic they are. Thirdly, both these things converge in his own sense of self and his own masculinity.

Written by one of America's leading political thinkers, this is a book about the good, the bad, and the ugly of identity politics. Amy Gutmann rises above the raging polemics that often characterize discussions of identity groups and offers a fair-minded assessment of the role they play in democracies.

Spy craft between the United States and Iraq takes a turn for the deadly when Iraq teams up with Iran to steal highly classified scientific information. Just as Majors Paul Remmich and Eric Miller are beginning to heal from their sly kidnapping ordeal in Europe, they encounter two Middle Eastern spies who infiltrate their secret post at Fort Belvoir.

As a young, queer, plus-size person, Essie Dennis has spent a lot of time feeling like they weren't enough—not queer enough, not feminine enough, not perfect enough. When they took to social media to share how they felt, they were overwhelmed by how many others felt the same. Inviting you to challenge accepted beauty standards and the concept of 'the perfect body', Essie takes everything they have learned on their journey to self-acceptance and body satisfaction to help guide you towards loving your queer body.

The slippery online ecosystem is the perfect breeding ground for identities: true, false, and in between. The Internet shorthand IRL - "in real life" - now seems naïve. We no longer question the reality of online experiences but the reality of selfhood in the digital age. In The Secret Life, the essayist and novelist Andrew O'Hagan issues three bulletins from the porous border between cyberspace and IRL.

In 1960s Alabama, a family secret shatters Mark Lawson's world. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed, 14-year-old Mark discovers he is black, a revelation that changes everything. Kicked out of his segregated school and threatened on his baseball team, Mark must navigate a society where prejudice and race define your fate. This revelation also adversely affects his recent friendship with Eddie, the new black pitcher, who he now sees as a threat to his future.

Egyptian-born and London-raised, Alya Mooro grew up between two cultures and felt a pull from both. Where could she turn for advice and inspiration when it seemed there was nobody else like her? Today, Mooro is determined to explore and explode the myth that she must identify either as ‘Western’ or as one of almost 400 million other ‘Arabs’ across the Middle East.

An absorbing investigation into a little-known historical tragedy—an insurrection at the turn of the twentieth century which upended post-Reconstruction gains made by Black residents in a small North Carolina town.

Having been drugged, hypnotized, and conditioned, Paul Remmich believes the Tariq'Allah organization is a force for good in the world. Delighted with his performance when stealing documents from the US, the underground Tariq'Allah once again deploy him on a new mission. The scheme is to abduct another man to increase their profits. Major Eric Miller is the target. He extends his military intelligence role and also accepts a position in the CIC, the counterintelligence corps. A temporary transfer to Cuba is both a training exercise and a hunt for AWOL soldiers.

What does it mean to be Muslim in India? What does it mean to look like one's religion? Does one's faith determine how one is perceived? Is there a secular ideal one is supposed to live up to? Can people of different faiths have a shared culture, a shared identity? But You Don't Look Like a Muslim is a work that every thinking Indian must hear.

Nev Schulman is the host of the wildly popular TV series Catfish which investigates online relationships to determine whether they are based on truth or fiction (spoiler: it's almost always fiction).

What is it that makes you distinct from me? Identity is a term much used but hard to define. For that very reason, it has long been a topic of fascination for philosophers but has been regarded with aversion by neuroscientists - until now. Susan Greenfield takes us on a journey in search of a biological interpretation of this most elusive of concepts, guiding us through the social and psychiatric perspectives and ultimately to the heart of the physical brain.