Present Past

Present Past
Author: Richard Terdiman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 150171760X

This book is about memory—about how the past persists into the present, and about how this persistence has been understood over the past two centuries. Since the French Revolution, memory has been the source of an intense disquiet. Fundamental cultural theories have sought to understand it, and have striven to represent its stresses.

Howardena Pindell

Howardena Pindell
Author: Sarah Louise Cowan
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2022-01-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0300264291

Exploring the art and life of this important American artist whose work bridged the gaps between abstraction, feminism, and Blackness Howardena Pindell: Reclaiming Abstraction is a fascinating examination of the multifaceted career of artist, activist, curator, and writer Howardena Pindell (b. 1943). It offers a fresh perspective on her abstract practice from the late 1960s through the early 1980s--a period in which debates about Black Power, feminism, and modernist abstraction intersected in uniquely contentious yet generative ways. Sarah Louise Cowan not only asserts Pindell's rightful place within the canon but also recenters dominant historical narratives to reveal the profound and overlooked roles that Black women artists have played in shaping modernist abstraction. Pindell's career acts as a springboard for a broader study of how artists have responded during periods of heightened social activism and used abstraction to convey political urgency. With works that drew on Ghanaian textiles, administrative labor, cosmetics, and postminimalism, Pindell deployed abstraction in deeply personal ways that resonated with collective African diasporic and women's practices. In her groundbreaking analysis, Cowan argues that such work advanced Black feminist modernisms, diverse creative practices that unsettle racist and sexist logics.

Abject Performances

Abject Performances
Author: Leticia Alvarado
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2018-04-19
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0822371936

In Abject Performances Leticia Alvarado draws out the irreverent, disruptive aesthetic strategies used by Latino artists and cultural producers who shun standards of respectability that are typically used to conjure concrete minority identities. In place of works imbued with pride, redemption, or celebration, artists such as Ana Mendieta, Nao Bustamante, and the Chicano art collective known as Asco employ negative affects—shame, disgust, and unbelonging—to capture experiences that lie at the edge of the mainstream, inspirational Latino-centered social justice struggles. Drawing from a diverse expressive archive that ranges from performance art to performative testimonies of personal faith-based subjection, Alvarado illuminates modes of community formation and social critique defined by a refusal of identitarian coherence that nonetheless coalesce into Latino affiliation and possibility.

Taking place

Taking place
Author: Erin Silver
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2023-02-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1526162377

Taking place examines feminist and queer alternative art spaces across Canada and the United States from the late-1960s to the present. It looks at how queer and feminist artists working in the present day engage with, respond to and challenge the institutions they have inherited. Through a series of regional case studies, the book interrogates different understandings of ‘alternative’ space and the possibilities the term affords for queer and feminist artistic imaginaries.

Helios

Helios
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 424
Release: 1980
Genre: Classical literature
ISBN:

The Center of the Web

The Center of the Web
Author: Delese Wear
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 1993-08-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 143842342X

The Center of the Web examines the complexities of how solitude is perceived by women. Each contributor describes how solitude is a dimension of her personal and public life: how she defines it, if and how she seeks it, where she finds it, and how it influences her life. The voices in the book come from varied vantage points, illuminating women's perspectives of solitude with regard to class, culture, race, and sexual identity. Some essays are grounded in philosophy, literature, or psychology, others are autobiographical, and some confront the seeming dichotomy of solitude on one hand, and care, connection, and responsibility on the other. With the contemporary focus on women's experiences grounded in context and connection to others, this book presents a perspective often overlooked or unexamined.