Neil Gotanda

Kendall Thomas

Kimberlé Crenshaw

Garry Peller

Smoke and Mirrors is a passionate, richly nuanced work that shows television as a circus, a wishing well, and a cure for loneliness. Ranging from Ed Sullivan to cyberspace, from kid shows to cable, and from the cheap thrills of "action adventure" to the solemn boredom of PBS pledge week, Leonard argues for a whole new way of thinking about television. For Leonard, the situation comedy is a socializing agency, the talk show is a legitimating agency, the made-for-television movie is the last redoubt of social conscience, and television criticism itself is the last refuge of time-serving thugs and postmodernists. Instead of scapegoating television as the cause of crime in our streets, stupidity in our schools, and spectacle rather than substance in our government, Leonard sees something else inside the box: an echo chamber and a feedback loop, a medium neither wholly innocent of nor entirely responsible for the frantic disorder it brings into our homes.

The Key Writings that Formed the Movement

Critical Race Theory

Andrew Ross

Manning Marable

Nellie Y. McKay

Cornel West

Nell Irvin Painter

Patricia J. Williams

Homi K. Bhabha

Michael Thelwell

Margaret A. Burnham

Paula Giddings

A. Leon Higginbotham

Claudia Brodsky Lacour

Wahneema H. Lubiano

Gayle Pemberton

Christine Stansell

Carol Miller Swain

Eighteen essays by prominent scholars reflect on the cultural, historical, political, personal, legal, sexual, and linguistic implications of the Thomas hearings and Hill's accusations

Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality

Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power

Judith Butler

John Guillory

A debate on the politics of theory is being conducted within literary studies. What is meant by politics? What is meant by theory? This book brings together not only outstanding questioners, but outstanding questions.

New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory

What's Left of Theory?

Kendall Thomas

Books

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