Description
On the Las Vegas Strip, blockbuster casinos burst out of the desert, billboards promise "hot babes," actual hot babes proffer complimentary drinks, and a million happy slot machines ring day and night. It's loud and excessive, but, as the Project on Vegas demonstrates, the Strip is not a world apart. Combining written critique with more than one hundred photographs by Karen Klugman, Strip Cultures examines the politics of food and water, art and spectacle, entertainment and branding, body and sensory experience. In confronting the ordinary on America's most famous four-mile stretch of pavement, the authors reveal how the Strip concentrates and magnifies the basic truths and practices of American culture where consumerism is the stuff of life, digital surveillance annuls the right to privacy, and nature-all but destroyed-is refashioned as an element of decor.
About the Author
The members of the Project on Vegas are Stacy M. Jameson, Instructor of Film/Media at the University of Rhode Island; Karen Klugman, photographer and Chair of the Art Department at the Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut; Jane Kuenz, Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine; and Susan Willis, Associate Professor of Literature at Duke University.
Reviews
"[T]he chapter on surveillance and 'security aesthetics' is downright chilling. This study may not expose all of Las Vegas's secrets, but it still feels like someone pulling back the curtain for a peek at the Wizard." * Publishers Weekly *
"Strip Cultures explores all aspects of Vegas from the perspectives of art, photography and the visual, from the sensory experience to nature and technology, and brand and image. Every facet goes under the microscope, which makes for diverting reading in itself - viewing this city, its culture and its bizarre mix of inhabitants for the sheer theatre it is." -- Sam Marsden * Jackpot.co.uk *
"[A] book of often startling richness and complexity, often very finely written. ...Strip Cultures is an admirably even-handed and non-judgemental account, for the most part, of a city whose openness allows its authors to experience it in some new ways. But as they make clear, it's also a city whose pleasures come at a human cost. Without hectoring or harangue, but instead by steady accumulation of data and anecdote, that is the disturbing conclusion this book leaves." -- Richard J. Williams * Times Higher Education *
"This book is an excellent travelogue with pictures and commentary of the experience that is Las Vegas and American culture." -- Brad Eden * Journal of American Culture *
Book Information
ISBN 9780822359678
Author The Project on Vegas
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 544g
About the Author
The members of the Project on Vegas are Stacy M. Jameson, Instructor of Film/Media at the University of Rhode Island; Karen Klugman, photographer and Chair of the Art Department at the Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut; Jane Kuenz, Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine; and Susan Willis, Associate Professor of Literature at Duke University.
Reviews
"[T]he chapter on surveillance and 'security aesthetics' is downright chilling. This study may not expose all of Las Vegas's secrets, but it still feels like someone pulling back the curtain for a peek at the Wizard." * Publishers Weekly *
"Strip Cultures explores all aspects of Vegas from the perspectives of art, photography and the visual, from the sensory experience to nature and technology, and brand and image. Every facet goes under the microscope, which makes for diverting reading in itself - viewing this city, its culture and its bizarre mix of inhabitants for the sheer theatre it is." -- Sam Marsden * Jackpot.co.uk *
"[A] book of often startling richness and complexity, often very finely written. ...Strip Cultures is an admirably even-handed and non-judgemental account, for the most part, of a city whose openness allows its authors to experience it in some new ways. But as they make clear, it's also a city whose pleasures come at a human cost. Without hectoring or harangue, but instead by steady accumulation of data and anecdote, that is the disturbing conclusion this book leaves." -- Richard J. Williams * Times Higher Education *
"This book is an excellent travelogue with pictures and commentary of the experience that is Las Vegas and American culture." -- Brad Eden * Journal of American Culture *
Book Information
ISBN 9780822359678
Author The Project on Vegas
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 544g
