A Matrix of Meanings

A Matrix of Meanings
Author: Craig Detweiler
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2003-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 080102417X

A candid, often humorous look at how to find truth in music, movies, television, and other aspects of pop culture. Includes photos, artwork, and sidebars.

Representing

Representing
Author: S. Craig Watkins
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 1998
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780226874890

Representing examines developments in black cinema. It looks at the distinct contradiction in American society, black youths have become targets of a racial backlash but their popular cultures have become commercially viable.

The Cultural Matrix

The Cultural Matrix
Author: Orlando Patterson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 686
Release: 2015-02-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0674728750

The Cultural Matrix seeks to unravel an American paradox: the socioeconomic crisis and social isolation of disadvantaged black youth, on the one hand, and their extraordinary integration and prominence in popular culture on the other. This interdisciplinary work explains how a complex matrix of cultures influences black youth.

A Matrix of Meanings (Engaging Culture)

A Matrix of Meanings (Engaging Culture)
Author: Craig Detweiler
Publisher: Baker Books
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2003-11-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1585583324

From the glittering tinsel of Hollywood to the advertising slogan you can't get out of your head, we are surrounded by popular culture. In A Matrix of Meanings Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor analyze aspects of popular culture and ask, What are they doing? What do they represent? and What do they say about the world in which we live? Rather than deciding whether Bono deserves our admiration, the authors examine the phenomenon of celebrity idolization. Instead of deciding whether Nike's "Just do it" campaign is morally questionable, they ask what its success reflects about our society. A Matrix of Meanings is a hip, entertaining guide to the maze of popular culture. Plentiful photos, artwork, and humorous sidebars make for delightful reading. Readers who distrust popular culture as well as those who love it will find useful insight into developing a Christian worldview in a secular culture.

The Grey Album

The Grey Album
Author: Kevin Young
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012-03-13
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9781555976071

*Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism* *A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Literary Criticism and Essays Pick for Spring 2012* The Grey Album, the first work of prose by the brilliant poet Kevin Young, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's The Black Album and the Beatles' The White Album, Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying—storytelling, telling tales, fibbing, improvising, "jazzing." What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways that African American culture is American culture, and for the centrality of art—and artfulness—to our daily life. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix, the grey areas of our history, literature, and music.

Representations of Black Women in the Media

Representations of Black Women in the Media
Author: Marquita Marie Gammage
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2015-10-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317370481

In 1920 W.E.B. Du Bois cited the damnation of women as linked to the devaluation of motherhood. This dilemma, he argues, had a crushing blow on Black women as they were forced into slavery. Black womanhood, portrayed as hypersexual by nature, became an enduring stereotype which did not coincide with the dignity of mother and wife. This portrayal continues to reinforce negative stereotypes of Black women in the media today. This book highlights how Black women have been negatively portrayed in the media, focusing on the export nature of media and its ability to convey notions of Blackness to the public. It argues that media such as rap music videos, television dramas, reality television shows, and newscasts create and affect expectations of Black women. Exploring the role that racism, misogyny and media play in the representation of Black womanhood, it provides a foundation for challenging contemporary media’s portrayal of Black women.

Underground Rap as Religion

Underground Rap as Religion
Author: Jon Ivan Gill
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2019-10-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1351391321

Underground rap is largely a subversive, grassroots, and revolutionary movement in underground hip-hop, tending to privilege creative freedom as well as progressive and liberating thoughts and actions. This book contends that many practitioners of underground rap have absorbed religious traditions and ideas, and implement, critique, or abandon them in their writings. This in turn creates processural mutations of God that coincide with and speak to the particular context from which they originate. Utilising the work of scholars like Monica Miller and Alfred North Whitehead, Gill uses a secular religious methodology to put forward an aesthetic philosophy of religion for the rap portion of underground hip-hop. Drawing from Whiteheadian process thought, a theopoetic argument is made. Namely, that it is not simply the case that is God the "poet of the world", but rather rap can, in fact, be the poet (creator) of its own form of quasi-religion. This is a unique look at the religious workings and implications of underground rap and hip hop. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Hip-Hop Studies and Process Philosophy and Theology.

SPIN

SPIN
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 152
Release: 1998-11
Genre:
ISBN:

From the concert stage to the dressing room, from the recording studio to the digital realm, SPIN surveys the modern musical landscape and the culture around it with authoritative reporting, provocative interviews, and a discerning critical ear. With dynamic photography, bold graphic design, and informed irreverence, the pages of SPIN pulsate with the energy of today's most innovative sounds. Whether covering what's new or what's next, SPIN is your monthly VIP pass to all that rocks.

The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop

The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop
Author: H. Osumare
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2016-09-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137059648

Asserting that hip hop culture has become another locus of postmodernity, Osumare explores the intricacies of this phenomenon from the beginning of the Twenty-First century, tracing the aesthetic and socio-political path of the currency of hip hop across the globe.