Meredith A. Bak's Books

Playful Visions

Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children's Media Culture

By: Meredith A. Bak

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Playful Visions

Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children's Media Culture

By: Meredith A. Bak

The kaleidoscope, the stereoscope, and other nineteenth-century optical toys analyzed as “new media” of their era, provoking anxieties similar to our own about children and screens. In the nineteenth century, the kaleidoscope, the thaumatrope, the zoetrope, the stereoscope, and other optical toys were standard accessories of a middle-class childhood, used both at home and at school. In Playful Visions, Meredith Bak argues that the optical toys of the nineteenth century were the “new media” of their era, teaching children to be discerning consumers of media—and also provoking anxieties similar to contemporary worries about children's screen time. Bak shows that optical toys—which produced visual effects ranging from a moving image to the illusion of depth—established and reinforced a new understanding of vision as an interpretive process. At the same time, the expansion of the middle class as well as education and labor reforms contributed to a new notion of childhood as a time of innocence and play. Modern media culture and the emergence of modern Western childhood are thus deeply interconnected. Drawing on extensive archival research, Bak discusses, among other things, the circulation of optical toys, and the wide visibility gained by their appearance as printed templates and textual descriptions in periodicals; expanding conceptions of literacy, which came to include visual acuity; and how optical play allowed children to exercise a sense of visual mastery. She examines optical toys alongside related visual technologies including chromolithography—which inspired both chromatic delight and chromophobia. Finally, considering the contemporary use of optical toys in advertising, education, and art, Bak analyzes the endurance of nineteenth-century visual paradigms.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

297

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262538717

ISBN 13

9780262538718

Le Pigeon

Cooking at the Dirty Bird [A Cookbook]

By: Gabriel Rucker,Meredith Erickson,Lauren Fortgang,Andrew Fortgang

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Le Pigeon

Cooking at the Dirty Bird [A Cookbook]

By: Gabriel Rucker,Meredith Erickson,Lauren Fortgang,Andrew Fortgang

This debut cookbook from James Beard Rising Star Chef Gabriel Rucker features a serious yet playful collection of 150 recipes from his phenomenally popular Portland restaurant. In the five years since Gabriel Rucker took the helm at Le Pigeon, he has catapulted from culinary school dropout to award-winning chef. Le Pigeon is offal-centric and meat-heavy, but by no means dogmatic, offering adventures into delicacies unknown along with the chance to order a vegetarian mustard greens quiche and a Miller High Life if that's what you're craving. In their first cookbook, Rucker and general manager/sommelier Andrew Fortgang celebrate high-low extremes in cooking, combining the wild and the refined in a unique and progressive style. Featuring wine recommendations from sommelier Andrew Fortgang, stand-out desserts from pastry chef Lauren Fortgang, and stories about the restaurant’s raucous, seat-of-the-pants history by writer Meredith Erickson, Le Pigeon combines the wild and the refined in a unique, progressive, and delicious style.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

354

Publisher

Ten Speed Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1607744449

ISBN 13

9781607744443

Playful Visions

Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children's Media Culture

By: Meredith A. Bak

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Playful Visions

Optical Toys and the Emergence of Children's Media Culture

By: Meredith A. Bak

The kaleidoscope, the stereoscope, and other nineteenth-century optical toys analyzed as "new media" of their era, provoking anxieties similar to our own about children and screens.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

288

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262358042

ISBN 13

9780262358040

Book's by Meredith A. Bak

Playful Visions

Playful Visions

Le Pigeon

Le Pigeon

Playful Visions

Playful Visions

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email