LITERARY STUDIES O B J E C T L E S S O N S
Perfume
Recipe
Trench Coat
Megan Volpert
Lynn Z. Bloom
Jane Tynan
Our sense of smell is crucial to our survival. We can smell fear, disease, and food. Fragrance is also entertainment. We can smell an expensive bottle of perfume at a high-end department store. Perhaps it reminds us of someone. A memory in a bottle is a powerful thing. Megan Volpert carefully balances the artistry with the science of perfume.
Reveals the surprising lessons that recipes teach—in hospitality, friendship, community, family and ethnic heritage, tradition, nutrition, survival, seduction, love, and more. A recipe is a signature, as individual as the cook’s fingerprint; a passport to travel the world without leaving the kitchen; a lifeline for people in hunger and in want; and always a means to expand one’s worldview, if not waistline.
We all know what a trench coat is but where does it comes from? This book explores the trench coat’s role in the modern imagination. A product of science and technology, the trench coat quickly took on a tough and seductive image blending easily into literature, music, film and fashion to become the uniform of some of the most attractive and enigmatic characters of the modern world.
May 2022 • 160 pages • 120 x 165mm 9781501367106 • Bloomsbury Academic Series: Object Lessons
June 2022 • 160 pages • 120 x 165mm 9781501375163 • Bloomsbury Academic Series: Object Lessons
March 2022 • 160 pages • 120 x 165mm 9781501367144 • Bloomsbury Academic Series: Object Lessons
Glitter
OK
Nicole Seymour
Michelle McSweeney
Revealing the complexity of an object often dismissed as frivolous, Nicole Seymour describes how glitter’s consumption and status have shifted across centuries—from ancient cosmetic to queer activist tool, environmental pollutant to biodegradable accessory—along with its composition, which has variously included insects, glass, rocks, salt, sugar, plastic, and cellulose. Seymour shows how glitter reflects the entanglements of consumerism, emotion, environmentalism, and gender/sexual identity.
"OK" as a word accepts proposals, describes the world as satisfactory (but not good), provides conversational momentum, or even agrees (or disagrees). OK as an object, however, tells a story of how technology writes itself into language, permanently altering communication. Drawing on linguistics, history, and new media studies, Michelle McSweeney traces OK from its birth in the Penny Presses through telephone lines, grammar books, and television signals into the digital age.
May 2022 • 160 pages • 120 x 165mm 9781501373763 • Bloomsbury Academic Series: Object Lessons
June 2022 • 160 pages • 120 x 165mm 9781501367182 • Bloomsbury Academic Series: Object Lessons
“Whatever the subject, these descriptions reveal the rich worlds hidden under the surface of things.” – Book Riot
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