The Sexual Politics of Meat explores a relationship between patriarchal values and meat-eating by interweaving the insights of feminism, vegetarianism, animal defense, and literary theory. The book describes how a process of objectification, fragmentation, and consumption enables the oppression of animals so they are rendered being-less through technology, language, and cultural representation. This cycle links butchering with both the representation and reality of sexual violence in Western cultures that have a tendency to normalize sexual consumption.
Adams is the author and editor of more than 20 other books, including The Bedside, Bathtub, and Armchair Guide to Jane Austen. She has written a pastoral care guide on woman-battering, books of prayers for animals, and most recently co-authored Never Too Late to Go Vegan: The Over-50 Guide to Adopting and Thriving on a Plant-Based Diet. She also co-edited the anthology, Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth.
Adams graduated from the University of Rochester in 1972 with degrees in English and history. While an undergraduate, she advocated for the first women's studies classes that were taught at the University, and was one of the organizers of the 1971 feminist protest of the all-male Boars Head dinner that restricted women to the role of playing barmaid. She received a Master of Divinity degree from Yale University in 1976.
For a decade after graduation, Adams served as the director of the Chautauqua County (NY) Rural Ministry, a not-for-profit organization that works with resettled migrant workers and other dislocated and at-risk individuals. Since 1987, she has lived in Dallas, Texas with her spouse, the Rev. Bruce A. Buchanan.
]]>In all of his writing, Akhtar attempts to open a window on the vibrant and complex reality of the Muslim American experience. In American Dervish, he has blown the door open on this world, demonstrating a deft understanding of faith and our complex relationship with it and of pubescent love and caprice.
The novel centers on one family's struggle to identify both as Muslim and American, one boy's devotion to his faith, and the sometimes tragic implications of extremism. As an American-born, first-generation Pakistani-American, Akhtar wanted to recount the rarely told coming-of-age story of a Muslim-American boy. The Shah family copes with faith and belonging in pre-9/11 suburbia, and through them the reader understands the struggles, challenges, value, and cost of being Muslim in America.
Published in 25 languages worldwide, American Dervish was voted a 2012 Best Book of the Year at Kirkus Reviews, Toronto's Globe and Mail, Shelf-Awareness, and O (Oprah) Magazine.
Akhtar is also a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter. His stage play Disgraced won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as the Jeff Equity Award for Best New Play in 2012. Disgraced is the story of a successful Pakistani-American lawyer whose dinner party spins out of control amid a heated discussion of identity and religion.
As a screenwriter, he was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay for The War Within. He has received commissions from Lincoln Center and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
Akhtar was born in New York City and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is a graduate of Brown and Columbia Universities with degrees in Theater and Film Directing. He was briefly enrolled at the University of Rochester, where his talent for creative writing was recognized in a fiction class. Since the 1990s he has been a resident of New York City, where he has taught acting on his own and alongside Andre Gregory (My Dinner with Andre, Vanya on 42nd Street).
Akhtar was introduced by one of his former Rochester instructors, Dr. Th. Emil Homerin, professor of religion and chair of the Department of Religion and Classics.
]]>Her book, Playing with Feelings traces a compelling intellectual history and uses affect theory to rethink some core game studies debates. Aubrey Anable’s insights on casual, indie, and art games are particularly important at this historical moment in game studies.
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