- Industry: Printing & publishing
- Number of terms: 1330
- Number of blossaries: 0
- Company Profile:
Routledge is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
(born 1931) Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988 for Beloved (1987) and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Born Chloe Anthony Wofford in northern Ohio, the setting for her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), she changed her name to Toni while an undergraduate at Howard University. After briefly teaching college, she began her first novel while a Random House senior editor. Like others that followed—Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved, Jazz (1992) and Paradise (1998)—it charted the pains, emotions and intimacies of race and gender. The last three form a loose, historically based trilogy, beginning with slavery and Reconstruction, continuing with African American migration to 1920s New York City, NY, and culminating in the conflicts of an allblack township in Oklahoma in the years after the Second World War.
In 1998 Beloved was adapted for the screen by Oprah Winfrey. Since 1993 Morrison has been a professor of Humanities at Princeton University.
Industry:Culture
(born 1931) Wolfe came into prominence in the 1960s as a young, particularly passionate exponent of the “New Journalism.” In 1972 Wolfe wrote a now-famous piece for New York magazine propounding New Journalistic principles and declaring the traditional novel dead. Ironically Wolfe would later write a bestselling novel on yuppie New York, Bonfire of the Vanities (1987). Often writing in a coolly detached voice, Wolfe’s singular genius has been to capture the spirit of a time or place in a single work (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, 1968) or even a phrase, such as the term “radical chic” to describe the romance between well-heeled liberals and militant revolutionaries in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A number of Wolfe’s books have become Hollywood movies, including Bonfire and The Right Stuff (1994), exploring the first generation of American astronauts.
Industry:Culture
(1931 – 1955) Andy Warhol called him “the damaged but beautiful soul of our time” (McCann 1993:125). Three starring roles—two in movies released after his death in a car crash— seared Dean in American and global consciousness as the consummate teenage rebel (East of Eden, 1955; Rebel without a Cause, 1955; Giant, 1955). Dean embodied the anxieties of teenagers in his life and screen presence, which have made him an enduring legend for subsequent generations and highlighted the dark side of family values and Hollywood success.
Industry:Culture
(1931 – 1964) Classic soul singer of the 1950s and early 1960s, Sam Cooke mixed sensuality and sophistication with movie-idol looks and gospel-singer poise. His warm, confessional voice won him a devoted gospel following as lead singer for the Soul Stirrers and sent “You Send Me” to the top of the pop and R&B charts. It was the first of twenty-nine Top Forty hits for the Chicago-born singer, including “Chain Gang,” “You Send Me,” “Another Saturday Nïght” and “Twisting the Night Away” each proving the singer’s versatility Cooke was also a pioneering black entrepreneur who started his own music publishing company and record label. He died mysteriously in a shooting in 1964.
Industry:Culture
(1931 – 1989) Choreographer and dancer who brought a variety of African American expressions into American dance. With his New York City-based Alvin Ailey Dance Company he created exciting works like “Revelations” (1960) and also became a symbol of multicultural American dance on tours abroad. Since his premature death, Judith Jamison has developed the company and his rich legacy.
Industry:Culture
(1931 – 1998) While a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, CA, Casteneda published The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968), which recounted his spiritual and drug-induced apprenticeship with a Native American shaman. While other anthropologists soon questioned his data, the vivid adventures of this book and its bestselling sequels reverberated with both spiritual and pharmacological quests of the 1970s. As a mysterious pop cultural guru, he developed his shamanistic ideas into a spiritual program, “Tensegrity” which took on New Age and cultic overtones by the time of his death.
Industry:Culture
(born 1931); d: 1989 Barthelme became well known thanks to his innovative short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker. A literary postmodernist who argued that collage was the art form of the twentieth century, Barthelme was often linked to other experimental writers such as John Hawkes, William Gass, John Barth and Robert Coover. His stories featured surreal situations, outlandish characters and parodic takes on weighty intellectual issues such as the death of God and existential alienation. Behind Barthelme’s playful style, however, was a more serious concern with how to respond to the moral and epistemological doubts of our age.
Industry:Culture
(born 1932) A Georgia clergy member when the Civil Rights movement began to spread around the South. Young became active in crusades from Birmingham, Alabama, to St.
Augustine, Florida. Increasingly prominent in SCLC, he was elected vice-president of the organization under Ralph Abernathy. He left to pursue a political career, becoming the first African American elected to the Georgia House of Representatives since 1870.
In 1977 Jimmy Carter appointed him US ambassador to the United Nations; he was forced to resign two years later after it became known that he had met secretly with members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. From 1982 to 1990 he was a highly regarded mayor of Atlanta.
Industry:Culture
(born 1932) Academy Award-winning film actor. Although British-born, Taylor at the peak of her celebrated career was the definitive American movie goddess. Her lavish lifestyle and her unabashed appetite for romance fed the dreams of stargazers and sustained the gossip pages in the 1950s and 1960s. Taylor’s numerous, high-profile marriages—three to actor Richard Burton—were both a reinforcement and a rebellion against women’s dependence on men. After her acting career waned, Taylor became a tireless campaigner in the fight against AIDS. Her association with the cause was crucial to raising public awareness about the deadly epidemic.
Industry:Culture
(born 1932) Cash wrote songs, poems and stories after working with his parents growing cotton. As an adult, he became one of the most important American storytellers, expanding country music by adding a dark tone that went beyond love songs. His “Folsom Prison Blues” became a huge hit as his deep, resonant baritone voice, given to irony took up the cause of the lonesome and dispossessed (echoed in his biggest hit, “I Walk the Line,” 1956).
Prison rights and Native American rights (Cash is one-quarter Cherokee) have long been primary concerns. Still active in music, television, film and publishing, his daughter June Carter has also become a popular singer.
Industry:Culture
