Untreated Strangeness

Untreated Strangeness
Author: Momenta Art
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 21
Release: 2010-01-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0557173493

The exhibition that this catalog records, Untreated Strangeness, features the work of Los Angeles-based photographer and critic George Porcari along with three new Jorge Pardo sculptures and a video loop by Naomi Fisher. Porcari's remarkable body of work spans almost four decades. Born in Lima, Peru in the 1950s, he emigrated to Los Angeles at age 11 and began taking photographs ten years later to record his own sense of dislocation. In subsequent years, Porcari went on to document his observations of cities (New York, Chicago, Europe, Latin America) through occasional series of photographs, which have also included cinematically-inspired collages, portraits of Los Angeles/international artist friends, the US-Mexican border, and still-lives of an intensely-curated assortment of books.

Inside Cultures

Inside Cultures
Author: William Balée
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 542
Release: 2016-09-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1315426471

This concise, contemporary, and inexpensive option for instructors of cultural anthropology breaks away from the traditional structure of introductory textbooks. Emphasizing the interaction between humans and their environment, the tension between human universals and cultural variation, and the impacts of colonialism on traditional cultures, Inside Cultures shows students how cultural anthropology can help us understand the complex, globalized world around us. This second edition: includes brand new material on a variety of subjects, including genomic studies, race and racism, cross-cultural issues of gender identity, terrorism and ethnography, and business anthropology; presents updated and enhanced discussions of medical anthropology, European colonialism and disease, the Atlantic slave trade, and much more; offers personal stories of the author’s fieldwork in Amazonia, sidebars illustrating fascinating cases of cultures in action, and other pedagogical elements such as timelines; is written is clear, supple prose that delights readers while informing them

Powers of Distinction

Powers of Distinction
Author: Nancy Levene
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2017-12-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 022650767X

In this major new work, philosopher of religion Nancy Levene examines the elemental character of religion and modernity. Deep in their operating systems, she argues, are dualisms of opposition and identity that cannot be reconciled with the forms of life they ostensibly support. These dualisms are dead ends, but they conceal a richer position—another kind of dualism constitutive of mutual relation. This dualism is difficult to distinguish and its concept of relation difficult to commit to. It risks contention and even violence. But it is also the indispensable support for modernity’s most innovative ideals: democracy, criticism, and interpretation. In readings from Abraham to the present, Levene recovers this richer dualism in its difference from the alternatives—other dualisms, nondualism, multiplication. From Abraham we get the biblical call to give up tribal belonging for a promised land of covenantal relation. Yet modernity, inclusive of this call, is also the principle that critiques the promise when it divides self from other, us from them. Drawing on a long tradition of thinkers and scholars even as she breaks new ground, Levene offers here nothing less than a new way of understanding modernity as an ethical claim about our world, a philosophy of the powers of distinction to include rather than to divide.

After Said

After Said
Author: Bashir Abu-Manneh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2019
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1108429173

This book focuses on the problems and opportunities afforded by Edward Said's work and develops a materialist critique of postcolonial studies.

How to Write About Contemporary Art

How to Write About Contemporary Art
Author: Gilda Williams
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2014-10-14
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0500772177

An essential handbook for students and professionals on writing eloquently, accurately, and originally about contemporary art How to Write About Contemporary Art is the definitive guide to writing engagingly about the art of our time. Invaluable for students, arts professionals and other aspiring writers, the book first navigates readers through the key elements of style and content, from the aims and structure of a piece to its tone and language. Brimming with practical tips that range across the complete spectrum of art-writing, the second part of the book is organized around its specific forms, including academic essays; press releases and news articles; texts for auction and exhibition catalogues, gallery guides and wall labels; op-ed journalism and exhibition reviews; and writing for websites and blogs. In counseling the reader against common pitfalls—such as jargon and poor structure—Gilda Williams points instead to the power of close looking and research, showing how to deploy language effectively; how to develop new ideas; and how to construct compelling texts. More than 30 illustrations throughout support closely analysed case studies of the best writing, in Source Texts by 64 authors, including Claire Bishop, Thomas Crow, T.J. Demos, Okwui Enwezor, Dave Hickey, John Kelsey, Chris Kraus, Rosalind Krauss, Stuart Morgan, Hito Steyerl, and Adam Szymczyk. Supplemented by a general bibliography, advice on the use and misuse of grammar, and tips on how to construct your own contemporary art library, How to Write About Contemporary Art is the essential handbook for all those interested in communicating about the art of today.

The End of the West and Other Cautionary Tales

The End of the West and Other Cautionary Tales
Author: Sean Meighoo
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2016-04-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231541406

Most historical accounts of "the West" take it for granted that the guiding principles of the Western tradition—reason, progress, and freedom—have been passed down directly from ancient Greece to modern Europe, evolving in isolation from all non-Western cultures. Today, many political analysts and cultural critics maintain that the Western tradition is fast approaching its end, for better or worse, as it becomes more and more integrated with non-Western cultures in an increasingly globalized world. But what if we are witnessing something else entirely—not the "end" of the West but rather another historical mutation of the idea of the West itself? This groundbreaking work shows that whether the West is hailed as the source of all historical progress or scorned as the root of all cultural imperialism, it remains a deeply problematic concept that is intrinsically connected to an ethnocentric view of the world. In a critical reading of the continental philosophers Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and Derrida as well as the postcolonial thinkers Said, Mohanty, Bhabha, and Trinh, Sean Meighoo strikes at the intellectual foundations of Western exceptionalism until its ideological supports show through. Deconstructing the concept of the West in his provocative interpretations of Martin Bernal's controversial publication Black Athena and the Beatles' second film Help!, Meighoo poses a formidable question to philosophers, writers, political analysts, and cultural critics alike: Can we mount an effective critique of Western ethnocentrism without reinforcing the very idea of the West?

Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory

Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory
Author: Scott Appelrouth
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 1277
Release: 2020-08-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 154435858X

The authors are proud sponsors of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award—enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop. Now available for the first time in print and e-book formats Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory: Text and Readings offers students with the best of both worlds—carefully-edited excerpts from the original works of sociology′s key thinkers accompanied by an analytical framework that discusses the lives, ideas, and historical circumstances of each theorist. This unique format enables students to examine, compare, and contrast each theorist’s major themes and concepts. In the Fourth Edition of this bestseller, examples from contemporary life and a rich variety of updated pedagogical tools (tables, figures, discussion questions, and photographs) come together to illuminate complex ideas for today’s readers. Included with this title: The password-protected Instructor Resource Site (formally known as SAGE Edge) offers access to all text-specific resources, including a test bank and editable, chapter-specific PowerPoint® slides.

Victor Segalen and the Aesthetics of Diversity

Victor Segalen and the Aesthetics of Diversity
Author: Charles Forsdick
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191584371

From his premature death in 1919 until the final decades of the twentieth century, the French traveller, author, and naval doctor Victor Segalen remained relatively obscure, his extensive work on exoticism largely unavailable. With the appearance of the Complete Works in 1995, the dramatic scope and wide-ranging implications of his reflections on diversity were at last fully apparent. Segalen's understanding of the exotic is radically different from that of his colonial contemporaries. His exoticism - or Aesthetics of Diversity - focuses on the instability of contact between different cultures and represents a unique response to the decline of diversity triggered by colonialism and Westernization. Recent attention to Segalen in a variety of fields - post-modern sociology, post-colonialism, literary criticism, anthropology - indicates his role as a precursory theorist of the exotic whose work is of increasing contemporary relevance. At a moment when exoticism is rapidly emerging as a term of critical currency, this study of the genesis of Segalen's aesthetics is a timely contribution to work in this area.

Orientalism

Orientalism
Author: Edward W. Said
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2014-10-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0804153868

A groundbreaking critique of the West's historical, cultural, and political perceptions of the East that is—three decades after its first publication—one of the most important books written about our divided world. "Intellectual history on a high order ... and very exciting." —The New York Times In this wide-ranging, intellectually vigorous study, Said traces the origins of "orientalism" to the centuries-long period during which Europe dominated the Middle and Near East and, from its position of power, defined "the orient" simply as "other than" the occident. This entrenched view continues to dominate western ideas and, because it does not allow the East to represent itself, prevents true understanding.

The Poetics of Slavdom

The Poetics of Slavdom
Author: Zdenko Zlatar
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2007
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780820481357

Between 1400 and 1878, the majority of Southern Slavic peoples endured several centuries of Ottoman rule. In the nineteenth century there was a movement among both the Croats and the Serbs to set aside regional, ethnic, religious, and cultural differences in order to work together toward the liberation of all the Southern Slavs from the Ottoman yoke. These volumes explore how the masterpieces of two leading poets among the Croats and Serbs - Ivan Mazuranić (1814-1890) and Petar II Petrović Njegos (1813-1851), who was Prince-Bishop of Montenegro from 1830-1851 - dealt with the Southern Slavs' relationship to Islam in their greatest poetic works, The Death of Smail-agha Čengić and The Mountain Wreath, respectively.