Between Culture and Fantasy

Between Culture and Fantasy
Author: Gillian Gillison
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 1993-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226293806

The myths of the Gimi, a people of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, attribute the origin of death and misery to the incestuous desires of the first woman or man, as if one sex or the other were guilty of the very first misdeed. Working for years among the Gimi, speaking their language, anthropologist Gillian Gillison gained rare insight into these myths and their pervasive influence in the organization of social life. Hers is a fascinating account of relations between the sexes and the role of myth in the transition between unconscious fantasy and cultural forms. Gillison shows how the themes expressed in Gimi myths—especially sexual hostility and an obsession with menstrual blood—are dramatized in the elaborate public rituals that accompany marriage, death, and other life crises. The separate myths of Gimi women and men seem to speak to one another, to protest, alter, and enlarge upon myths of the other sex. The sexes cast blame in the veiled imagery of myth and then play out their debate in joint rituals, cooperating in shows of conflict and resolution that leave men undefeated and accord women the greater blame for misfortune.

Between Culture and Fantasy

Between Culture and Fantasy
Author: Gillian Gillison
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 416
Release: 1993-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226293815

The myths of the Gimi, a people of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea, attribute the origin of death and misery to the incestuous desires of the first woman or man, as if one sex or the other were guilty of the very first misdeed. Working for years among the Gimi, speaking their language, anthropologist Gillian Gillison gained rare insight into these myths and their pervasive influence in the organization of social life. Hers is a fascinating account of relations between the sexes and the role of myth in the transition between unconscious fantasy and cultural forms. Gillison shows how the themes expressed in Gimi myths—especially sexual hostility and an obsession with menstrual blood—are dramatized in the elaborate public rituals that accompany marriage, death, and other life crises. The separate myths of Gimi women and men seem to speak to one another, to protest, alter, and enlarge upon myths of the other sex. The sexes cast blame in the veiled imagery of myth and then play out their debate in joint rituals, cooperating in shows of conflict and resolution that leave men undefeated and accord women the greater blame for misfortune.

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight

Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight
Author: Eric Avila
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2006-04
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0520248112

"In Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, Eric Avila offers a unique argument about the restructuring of urban space in the two decades following World War II and the role played by new suburban spaces in dramatically transforming the political culture of the United States. Avila's work helps us see how and why the postwar suburb produced the political culture of 'balanced budget conservatism' that is now the dominant force in politics, how the eclipse of the New Deal since the 1970s represents not only a change of views but also an alteration of spaces."—George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness

Performing Fantasy and Reality in Contemporary Culture

Performing Fantasy and Reality in Contemporary Culture
Author: Anastasia Seregina
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2018-09-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351613383

We frequently engage with that which we consciously perceive not to be real, yet fantasy, despite its pervasive presence and strong role in everyday life through its connection to identities, communities, desires, and meanings, has yet to be properly defined and researched. This book examines fantasy from a performance theory perspective. Drawing on multidisciplinary literature, it presents ethnographic and art-based research on live action role-playing games to explore fantasy as a bodily and negotiated phenomenon that involves various kinds of engagement with one’s surroundings. Overall, this book is a study of various forms and roles that fantasy can take on as part of contemporary Western culture. The study suggests that fantasy emerges as a different type of interpretation of normalised performance and reality, and can thus provide individuals with the tools to wield agency in everyday life. The book will appeal to scholars of sociology, cultural and media studies, literature and performance studies.

Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism
Author: Ytasha L. Womack
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1613747993

2014 Locus Awards Finalist, Nonfiction Category In this hip, accessible primer to the music, literature, and art of Afrofuturism, author Ytasha Womack introduces readers to the burgeoning community of artists creating Afrofuturist works, the innovators from the past, and the wide range of subjects they explore. From the sci-fi literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and N. K. Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, the book's topics range from the "alien" experience of blacks in America to the "wake up" cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism. With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves.

Mobility and Fantasy in Visual Culture

Mobility and Fantasy in Visual Culture
Author: Lewis Johnson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2014-02-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 113674715X

This volume offers a varied and informed series of approaches to questions of mobility—actual, social, virtual, and imaginary—as related to visual culture. Contributors address these questions in light of important contemporary issues such as migration; globalization; trans-nationality and trans-cultural difference; art, space and place; new media; fantasy and identity; and the movement across and the transgression of the proprieties of boundaries and borders. The book invites the reader to read across the collection, noting differences or making connections between media and forms and between audiences, critical traditions and practitioners, with a view to developing a more informed understanding of visual culture and its modalities of mobility and fantasy as encouraged by dominant, emergent, and radical forms of visual practice.

Gaming as Culture

Gaming as Culture
Author: J. Patrick Williams
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 0786454067

Since tabletop fantasy role-playing games emerged in the 1970s, fantasy gaming has made a unique contribution to popular culture and perceptions of social realities in America and around the world. This contribution is increasingly apparent as the gaming industry has diversified with the addition of collectible strategy games and other innovative products, as well as the recent advancements in videogame technology. This book presents the most current research in fantasy games and examines the cultural and constructionist dimensions of fantasy gaming as a leisure activity. Each chapter investigates some social or behavioral aspect of fantasy gaming and provides insight into the cultural, linguistic, sociological, and psychological impact of games on both the individual and society. Section I discusses the intersection of fantasy and real-world scenarios and how the construction of a fantasy world is dialectically related to the construction of a gamer's social reality. Because the basic premise of fantasy gaming is the assumption of virtual identities, Section II looks at the relationship between gaming and various aspects of identity. The third and final section examines what the personal experiences of gamers can tell us about how humans experience reality. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Fantasies of Identification

Fantasies of Identification
Author: Ellen Jean Samuels
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2014
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1479855049

In the mid-nineteenth-century United States, as it became increasingly difficult to distinguish between bodies understood as black, white, or Indian; able-bodied or disabled; and male or female, intense efforts emerged to define these identities as biologically distinct and scientifically verifiable in a literally marked body. Combining literary analysis, legal history, and visual culture, Ellen Samuels traces the evolution of the fantasy of identificationOCothe powerful belief that embodied social identities are fixed, verifiable, and visible through modern science. From birthmarks and fingerprints to blood quantum and DNA, she examines how this fantasy has circulated between cultural representations, law, science, and policy to become one of the most powerfully institutionalized ideologies of modern society. Yet, as Samuels demonstrates, in every case, the fantasy distorts its claimed scientific basis, substituting subjective language for claimed objective fact.From its early emergence in discourses about disability fakery and fugitive slaves in the nineteenth century to its most recent manifestation in the question of sex testing at the 2012 Olympic Games, a Fantasies of Identification aexplores the roots of modern understandings of bodily identity."

Hand of Isis

Hand of Isis
Author: Jo Graham
Publisher: Hachette+ORM
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2009-03-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0316040770

Following her acclaimed debut, Jo Graham returns to the ancient world with a novel that will captivate lovers of fantasy, history and romance. Set in Ancient Egypt, Hand of Isis is the story of Charmian, a handmaiden, and her two sisters. It is a novel of lovers who transcend death, of gods who meddle in mortal affairs, and of women who guide empires.

Comics as a Nexus of Cultures

Comics as a Nexus of Cultures
Author: Mark Berninger
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2010-03-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 078645587X

These essays from various critical disciplines examine how comic books and graphic narratives move between various media, while merging youth and adult cultures and popular and high art. The articles feature international perspectives on comics and graphic novels published in the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Portugal, Germany, Turkey, India, and Japan. Topics range from film adaptation, to journalism in comics, to the current manga boom.