Cosmopolitan Style

This is a groundbreaking work which links the novels of modernist, contemporary, and postcolonial authors to rethink the political nature of cosmopolitanism.

"Hilarious, insightful and smart. A must-read for anyone who wears clothes.” —Chelsea Handler *US Weekly, “Riveting Reads for Labor Day”* *Bustle, “2015 Books Every Funny Woman Should Read” and “September 2015’s Best Books”* *Refinery29 “Fall’s Most Highly Anticipated Nonfiction Reads”* *theSkimm, “Skimm Reads”* *Popsugar, “Motivational Books You Should Read this Fall”* *AM NY, “New Books for New Yorkers to Read This Fall”* The Lowdown on High Fashion Cosmopolitan.com editor Amy Odell knows what it’s really like to be a young woman working in the fashion industry. In Tales from the Back Row, Amy—funny and fearless—takes readers behind the stage of New York’s hottest fashion shows to meet the world’s most influential models, designers, celebrities, editors, and photographers. But first, she has to push her way through the crowds outside, where we see the lengths people go to be noticed by the lurking paparazzi, and weave her way through the packed venue, from the very back row to the front. And as Amy climbs the ladder (with tips about how you can, too), she introduces an industry powered by larger-than-life characters: she meets the intimidating Anna Wintour and the surprisingly gracious Rachel Zoe, not to mention the hilarious Chelsea Handler, and more. As she describes the allure of Alexander Wang’s ripped tights and Marchesa’s Oscar-worthy dresses, Amy artfully layers in something else: ultimately this book is about how the fashion industry is an exaggerated mirror of human fallibility—reflecting our desperate desire to belong, to make a mark, to be included. For Amy is the first to admit that as much as she is embarrassed by the thrill she gets when she receives an invitation to an exclusive after-party, she can’t help but RSVP “yes.”

Tang dynasty (618–907) China hummed with cosmopolitan trends. Its capital at Chang’an was the most populous city in the world and was connected via the Silk Road with the critical markets and thriving cultures of Central Asia and the Middle East. In Empire of Style, BuYun Chen reveals a vibrant fashion system that emerged through the efforts of Tang artisans, wearers, and critics of clothing. Across the empire, elite men and women subverted regulations on dress to acquire majestic silks and au courant designs, as shifts in economic and social structures gave rise to what we now recognize as precursors of a modern fashion system: a new consciousness of time, a game of imitation and emulation, and a shift in modes of production. This first book on fashion in premodern China is informed by archaeological sources—paintings, figurines, and silk artifacts—and textual records such as dynastic annals, poetry, tax documents, economic treatises, and sumptuary laws. Tang fashion is shown to have flourished in response to a confluence of social, economic, and political changes that brought innovative weavers and chic court elites to the forefront of history. Art History Publication Initiative. For more information, visit http://arthistorypi.org/books/empire-of-style

Supermodel and super CEO of our time Tyra Banks and her mother Carolyn show readers why when you kick perfection to the curb and showcase your unique beauty ain't nobody gonna stop you! In Perfect Is Boring, Tyra Banks and her mother, Carolyn, get raw, real and cray-in-a-good-way as they share what they’ve learned on Tyra’s journey from insecure preteen to supermodel and entrepreneurial powerhouse. Though she’ll be the first to tell you she is not her daughter’s best friend—‘cause she ain’t that kinda mama!—there’s no doubt that Carolyn’s signature mix of pep talks and tough love got Tyra to where she is today, and here they pay it forward to empower readers with a reminder that perfect really isn’t all that. Whether they’re writing about watching Tyra’s most imperfect moment go viral (Does “Be Quiet Tiffany!” ring any bells?), no-holds-barred sex talks or how they’ve overcome everything from fashion industry discrimination to media fat-shaming and a misguided attempt at a music career, they never lose their sense of humor or we-got-your-back-spirit. Full of smart, wise, and often hilarious lessons for mothers, daughters, fathers and sons everywhere—including “Take Responsibility for Yourself,” “Lip Gloss + Pizza Sauce = Boss,” and “Fix It or Flaunt It”—Perfect Is Boring is a must-read for anyone who needs a kick in the booty, a pat on the back, or a good reason to laugh-out-loud.

Early twentieth-century China paired the local community to the worldùa place and time when English dominated urban-centered higher and secondary education and Chinese-edited English-language magazines surfaced as a new form of translingual practice. Cosmopolitan Publics focuses on China's "cosmopolitans" Western-educated intellectuals who returned to Shanghai in the late 1920s to publish in English and who, ultimately, became both cultural translators and citizens of the wider world. Shuang Shen highlights their work in publications such as The China Critic and T'ien Hsia, providing readers with a broader understanding of the role and function of cultural mixing, translation, and multilingualism in China's cultural modernity. Decades later, as nationalist biases and political restrictions emerged within China, the influence of the cosmopolitans was neglected and the significance of cosmopolitan practice was underplayed. Shen's encompassing study revisits and presents the experience of Chinese modernity as far more heterogeneous, emergent, and transnational than it has been characterized until now.

Sheldon Pollock’s work on the history of literary cultures in the ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’ broke new ground in the theorization of historical processes of vernacularization and served as a wake-up call for comparative approaches to such processes in other translocal cultural formations. But are his characterizations of vernacularization in the Sinographic Sphere accurate, and do his ideas and framework allow us to speak of a ‘Sinographic Cosmopolis’? How do the special typology of sinographic writing and associated technologies of vernacular reading complicate comparisons between the Sankrit and Latinate cosmopoleis? Such are the questions tackled in this volume. Contributors are Daehoe Ahn, Yufen Chang, Wiebke Denecke, Torquil Duthie, Marion Eggert, Greg Evon, Hoduk Hwang, John Jorgensen, Ross King, David Lurie, Alexey Lushchenko, Si Nae Park, John Phan, Mareshi Saito, and S. William Wells.

Traces the development of cosmopolitanism and the growing importance of the city in nineteenth-century literature.

The ultimate collection of 75+ sex moves for each star sign from Cosmopolitan! Ever wonder why one month is a nonstop bonefest and the next is more bust than thrust? Blame it on astrology! That's because each sign has its own sexy season and its own crazy sexy moves. Put this knowledge to sexcellent use with these zodiac-inspired positions. From Bossy in Bed Aries season with its commanding positions, to Slow 'n Sizzly Taurus season with its sensual vibe, you'll find yourself trying new foreplay, incorporating toys, and hooking up in places you've never dared to before. Get ready for sex so good, you'll be seeing stars! Includes: A full-color illustration for every position A Mercury Retrograde Emergency chapter with intimate sex positions for a time when misfortunes and miscommunications happen A compatibility chart to find out how well you and bae vibe in bed together

During World War II and the early Cold War period, factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation, or class made a number of American writers feel marginalized in U.S. society. Cosmopolitan Minds focuses on a core of transnational writers—Kay Boyle, Pearl S. Buck, William Gardner Smith, Richard Wright, and Paul Bowles—who found themselves prompted to seek experiences outside of their home country, experiences that profoundly changed their self-understanding and creative imagination as they encountered alternative points of views and cultural practices in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Alexa Weik von Mossner offers a new perspective on the affective underpinnings of critical and reflexive cosmopolitanism by drawing on theories of emotion and literary imagination from cognitive psychology, philosophy, and cognitive literary studies. She analyzes how physical dislocation, and the sometimes violent shifts in understanding that result from our affective encounters with others, led Boyle, Buck, Smith, Wright, and Bowles to develop new, cosmopolitan solidarities across national, ethnic, and religious boundaries. She also shows how, in their literary texts, these writers employed strategic empathy to provoke strong emotions such as love, sympathy, compassion, fear, anger, guilt, shame, and disgust in their readers in order to challenge their parochial worldviews and practices. Reading these texts as emotionally powerful indictments of institutionalized racism and national violence inside and outside of the United States, Weik von Mossner demonstrates that our emotional engagements with others—real and imagined—are crucially important for the development of transnational and cosmopolitan imaginations.

In Doing Style, Constantine V. Nakassis explores the world of youth and mass media in South India, where what Tamil youth call “style” anchors their day-to-day lives and media worlds. Through intimate ethnographic descriptions of college life in Tamil Nadu, Nakassis explores the complex ways that acts and objects of style such as brand fashion, English slang, and film representations express the multiple desires and anxieties of this generation, who live in the shadow of the promise of global modernity. As Nakassis shows, while signs of the global, modern world are everywhere in post-liberalization India, for most of these young people this world is still very distant—a paradox that results in youth’s profound sense of being in between. This in-betweenness manifests itself in the ambivalent quality of style, the ways in which stylish objects are necessarily marked as counterfeit, mixed, or ironical. In order to show how this in-betweenness materializes in particular media, Nakassis explores the entanglements between youth peer groups and the sites where such stylish media objects are produced, arguing that these entanglements deeply condition the production and circulation of the media objects themselves. The result is an important and timely look at the tremendous forces of youth culture, globalization, and mass media as they interact in the vibrancy of a rapidly changing India.