Phone Booth

by Kelly, Ariana; Schaberg, Christopher; Bogost, Ian

• ISBN13: 9781628924091
• ISBN10: 1628924098
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2015-09-24
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

The phone booth exists as a fond but distant memory for some people, and as a strange and dysfunctional waste of space for many more. Ariana Kelly approaches the phone booth as an entity that embodies diverse attitudes about privacy, freedom, power, sanctuary, and communication in its various forms all around the world. Through portrayals of phone booths in literature, film, personal narrative, philosophy, and religion, Phone Booth offers a definitive account of an object on the cusp of obsolescence.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Author Biography

Ariana Kelly is a freelance writer and educator and teaches English Literature and Comparative Religion at the Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, California, USA. She has written for The L.A. Review of Books and Salon, among others.

Table of Contents

1. The phone booth and privacy
2. The phone booth and crime
3. The phone booth and psychological isolation/distance
4. The phone booth and sanctuary
5. The phone booth repurposed, revised and recreated around the world
Index