Wednesday, June 03, 2020

New from the Institute for the Regional Studies of the Californias and SDSU Press! -- Loreto, Mexico: Challenges for a Sustainable Future

Loreto, Mexico: Challenges for a Sustainable Future

Edited by Paul Ganster, Oscar Arizpe C., and Vinod Sasidharan

Book Description
Essays by leading researchers on the history, natural environment, society, tourism, & economy that Loreto faces for sustainable development. The threat of mass tourism is heightened by the specter of mining that compromise the view shed, pollute the land and water, and destroy the region as a sustainable tourism destination. Freshwater is scarce and poorly managed. Climate change will increase sea levels and cause flooding of urban areas, raise ambient temperatures, and reduce rain while increasing drought. Adaptive measures can offset these challenges but require community engagement and improved public admin at local, state, and federal levels.

Author's Bios 

Oscar Arizpe Covarrubias currently works at the Ecology of Coastal Sciences Lab. in Autonomous University of South of Baja California. Oscar does research in Ecology of Coastal Systems. Their current project is Vulnerability and sustainable development strategies on relevant areas of South of Baja California. 

Paul Ganster is director of the Institute for Regional Studies of the Californias at San Diego State University. He is the author of numerous articles, chapters of books, and edited works related to border regions. Recent publications include The U.S.-Mexican Border Today: Conflict and Cooperation in Historical Perspective (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) and with Kimberly Collins, “Binational Cooperation and Twinning: A View from the US–Mexican Border, San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Baja California” (Journal of Borderlands Studies, 32:4, 2017). His ongoing research is on management of the binational Tijuana River Watershed, air quality at border crossings, crossborder collaboration, the binational problem of used tires, and sustainable tourism in the peninsula of Baja California. 

Dr. Vinod Sasidharan is the Program Coordinator of the Recreation and Tourism Management Program at San Diego State University. His teaching interests include global tourism trends, sustainable tourism, geotourism, ecotourism, cultural tourism, grassroots tourism development, and cross-cultural analysis of tourism, and recreation behaviors. Currently, he teaches Recreational Travel and Tourism Management, Tourism Planning, and Cross-Cultural Perspectives of Tourism. 

Monday, June 01, 2020

Representations of Fashion: The Metropolis and Mediological Reflection between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Centuries #sdsupress

Representations of Fashion: The Metropolis and Mediological Reflection between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Centuries (Bi Sheng/Juan Pablos Digitovisuo Artifacts Series) 


Interpretations and Reviews

Interpretation from:
FREDERICK LUIS ALDAMA | Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor at The Ohio State University

The rest of us interpreters of culture might as well lay pens to rest. Antonio Rafele’s rapid injection in the arm spirals us down through rabbit holes where we glimpse with penetrating insight projections of our urban-made psychic selves. As if lucid dreaming, we come to understand how authors such as Poe, Leopardi, and García Márquez offer pit-stops in our otherwise impossibly fast-forward moving, Ritalin-induced life filled to the brim with TV, internet, and videogames. We can reach through this illusion, but choose instead to buy into the discontinuities of fashion that never quite satiate our existential emptiness. Not since Baudrillard, Barthes, McLuhan, and the Wachowski Bros has such a mind come along who can zip open reality to show with such precision the specular and spectacular nature of our existence...Dare if you will to step into this daydream.

Review from:
RYAN SCHNEIDER | Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Studies, Department of English and Affiliated Faculty, Program in American Studies, Purdue University

“In this provocative and pathbreaking book, Rafele shows us how a mediological approach can radically and productively reframe our understanding of modernist subjectivity. His lyrical meditations on the works of Simmel and Benjamin reveal the extent to which 20th century notions of subjectivity must be understood in relation to 19nth-century concepts of the metropolis and the technology of photography. If you've ever wondered what the ‘New’ in New Media Studies might actually look like, you'll find a compelling example in this brilliantly-conceived and well-executed study.”