Not That Pet!

Not That Pet!
Author: Smriti Prasadam-Halls
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Total Pages: 33
Release: 2022-02
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 153621776X

Some are too scary, some are too smelly, some are too wiggly, and some are too giggly. Can Mabel find the perfect pet for her family? Not noisy or scary or covered in spikes. She’d choose something friendly that EVERYONE likes. Mabel’s family is letting her pick what kind of pet to get, and she is determined to find the very BEST one. “Any pet you like delivered to your door,” promises the sign. But what if the ants are too tiny, the hyenas too giggly, the owl too loud? What if the snake almost strangles Granddad and the skunk wants to spray the baby? None of the pets she tries out seems like the right fit. Readers will love following through several comical reveals until Mabel meets her furry match (not what you might guess!). Best-selling author Smriti Prasadam-Halls’s hilarious rhyming read-aloud and Rosalind Beardshaw’s charming illustrations will have kids laughing—and dreaming of their own quirky pets.

Heritage and Debt

Heritage and Debt
Author: David Joselit
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2020-03-10
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0262043696

How global contemporary art reanimates the past as a resource for the present, combating modern art's legacy of Eurocentrism. If European modernism was premised on the new—on surpassing the past, often by assigning it to the “traditional” societies of the Global South—global contemporary art reanimates the past as a resource for the present. In this account of what globalization means for contemporary art, David Joselit argues that the creative use of tradition by artists from around the world serves as a means of combatting modern art's legacy of Eurocentrism. Modernism claimed to live in the future and relegated the rest of the world to the past. Global contemporary art shatters this myth by reactivating various forms of heritage—from literati ink painting in China to Aboriginal painting in Australia—in order to propose new and different futures. Joselit analyzes not only how heritage becomes contemporary through the practice of individual artists but also how a cultural infrastructure of museums, biennials, and art fairs worldwide has emerged as a means of generating economic value, attracting capital and tourist dollars. Joselit traces three distinct forms of modernism that developed outside the West, in opposition to Euro-American modernism: postcolonial, socialist realism, and the underground. He argues that these modern genealogies are synchronized with one another and with Western modernism to produce global contemporary art. Joselit discusses curation and what he terms “the curatorial episteme,” which, through its acts of framing or curating, can become a means of recalibrating hierarchies of knowledge—and can contribute to the dual projects of decolonization and deimperialization.

Loop of Jade

Loop of Jade
Author: Sarah Howe
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 71
Release: 2015-05-07
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1448190681

*WINNER OF THE T. S. ELIOT PRIZE 2015* *WINNER OF THE SUNDAY TIMES / PETERS FRASER + DUNLOP YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2015* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION 2015* There is a Chinese proverb that says: ‘It is more profitable to raise geese than daughters.’ But geese, like daughters, know the obligation to return home. In her exquisite first collection, Sarah Howe explores a dual heritage, journeying back to Hong Kong in search of her roots. With extraordinary range and power, the poems build into a meditation on hybridity, intermarriage and love – what meaning we find in the world, in art, and in each other. Crossing the bounds of time, race and language, this is an enthralling exploration of self and place, of migration and inheritance, and introduces an unmistakable new voice in British poetry.

Socialist Heritage

Socialist Heritage
Author: Emanuela Grama
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2019-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0253044839

This prize-winning study of post-WWII Romania examines the fraught relationship between national heritage and Socialist statecraft. In Socialist Heritage, ethnographer and historian Emanuela Grama explores the socialist state’s attempt to create its own heritage, as well as the ongoing legacy of that project. While many argue that the socialist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe aimed to erase the pre-war history of the socialist cities, Grama shows that the communist state in Romania sought to exploit the past for its own benefit. The book traces the transformation of Bucharest’s Old Town district from the early twentieth century into the twenty-first. Under socialism, politicians and professionals used the district’s historic buildings—especially the ruins of a medieval palace—to emphasize the city’s Romanian past and erase its ethnically diverse history. Since the collapse of socialism, the cultural and economic value of the Old Town has become highly contested. Its poor residents decry their semi-decrepit homes, while entrepreneurs see it as a source of easy money. Such arguments point to recent negotiations about the meanings of class, political participation, and ethnic and economic belonging in today’s Romania. Grama’s rich historical and ethnographic research reveals the fundamentally dual nature of heritage: every search for an idealized past relies on strategies of differentiation that can lead to further marginalization and exclusion. Winner of the 2020 Ed A. Hewitt Book Prize

Breaking the Ocean

Breaking the Ocean
Author: Annahid Dashtgard
Publisher: House of Anansi
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019-08-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1487006489

In Breaking the Ocean, diversity and inclusion specialist Annahid Dashtgard addresses the long-term impacts of exile, immigration, and racism by offering a vulnerable, deeply personal account of her life and work. Annahid Dashtgard was born into a supportive mixed-race family in 1970s Iran. Then came the 1979 Revolution, which ushered in a powerful and orthodox religious regime. Her family was forced to flee their homeland, immigrating to a small town in Alberta, Canada. As a young girl, Dashtgard was bullied, shunned, and ostracized both by her peers at school and adults in the community. Home offered little respite, with her parents embroiled in their own struggles, exposing the sharp contrasts between her British mother and Persian father. Determined to break free from her past, Dashtgard created a new identity for herself as a driven young woman who found strength through political activism, eventually becoming a leader in the anti–corporate globalization movement of the late 1990s. But her unhealed trauma was re-activated following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Suffering burnout, Dashtgard checked out of her life and took the first steps towards personal healing, a journey that continues to this day. Breaking the Ocean introduces a unique perspective on how racism and systemic discrimination result in emotional scarring and ongoing PTSD. It is a wake-up call to acknowledge our differences, addressing the universal questions of what it means to belong and ultimately what is required to create change in ourselves and in society.

What Can and Can't be Said

What Can and Can't be Said
Author: Dell Upton
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2015-01-01
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0300211759

"An original study of monuments to the civil rights movement and African American history that have been erected in the U.S. South over the past three decades, this powerful work explores how commemorative structures have been used to assert the presence of black Americans in contemporary Southern society. The author cogently argues that these public memorials, ranging from the famous to the obscure, have emerged from, and speak directly to, the region's complex racial politics since monument builders have had to contend with widely varied interpretations of the African American past as well as a continuing presence of white supremacist attitudes and monuments."--Book jacket.

Mobilizing Heritage

Mobilizing Heritage
Author: Kathryn L. Samuels
Publisher: University Press of Florida
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2018-04-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0813052181

"Compelling, energizing, and foundational. Opens up an anthropological orientation, one which is welcome and exhilarating. Lafrenz Samuels's equally significant introduction of the transnational as a new orientation in heritage studies offers an escape route from the conception of heritage as monopolized by the nation-state."--Denis Byrne, author of Counterheritage: Critical Perspectives on Heritage Conservation in Asia Mapping out emerging areas for global cultural heritage, this book provides an anthropological perspective on the growing field of heritage studies. Kathryn Lafrenz Samuels adopts a dual focus--looking back on the anthropological foundations for cultural heritage research while looking forward to areas of practice that reach beyond national borders: economic development, climate action, democratic practice, heritage rights, and global justice. Working around the traditional authority of the nation-state and intergovernmental treaty-based organizations such as UNESCO, these issues characterize heritage activity in transnational networks. Lafrenz Samuels argues that transnational heritage involves an important shift from a paradigm of preservation to a paradigm of development. Responding to this expanding developmental sensibility, she positions cultural heritage as a persuasive tool for transformative action, capable of mobilizing and shaping social change. She shows how anthropological approaches help support the persuasive power of heritage in the transnational sphere.

Mixed Messages

Mixed Messages
Author: Robert A. Paul
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2015-04-24
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 022624086X

Nearly everyone would agree that humans and their societies evolved by natural selection, that humans are biologically a single species but societies vary greatly, and neither genetic inheritance nor cultural inheritance alone can fully explain humans and their social systems. While there is a literature that addresses dual inheritance theory or the coevolution of culture and genetics, almost all of it is written from a perspective that accepts the neo-Darwinian evolutionary framework but does not give proper weight to social and cultural theory as it has been developed by cultural anthropologists. At the same time, cultural anthropologists have ignored the question of dual inheritance altogether, leaving the theorizing of how it works almost exclusively in the hands of those with a strong biological viewpoint. In this book anthropologist and psychoanalyst Robert Paul attempts to reconcile evolutionary and cultural approaches in anthropology through a comparative ethnographic exploration of how humans receive behavioral instructions from two separate channelsthe genetic code carried in the DNA and the symbolic systems that constitute culture. He develops a dual inheritance model that aims to do justice to both the genetic and cultural channels of inheritance. Paul elaborates his model of the relationship between genes and cultural symbols and then shows how it can make sense of both the similarities and variations found in human social life as captured in the now very extensive ethnographic record. He argues that cultural systems evolve to manage intra-group competition that would ensue from the genetic program pursuing its interests. The book uses thick descriptions and heavy interpretations from the ethnographic record to demonstrate how different societies tackle this challenge. The book fills a niche, connecting the dual-inheritance literature and symbolic cultural anthropology, using insights from the former to detect patterns in the latter. This is a rare and well-researched project, and should receive a broad readership among biological and cultural anthropologists, and students of human nature more broadly."

Global Tourism

Global Tourism
Author: Sarah M. Lyon
Publisher: Rowman Altamira
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0759120935

Global tourism is perhaps the largest scale movement of goods, services, and people in history. Consequently, it is a significant catalyst for economic development and sociopolitical change. While tourism increasingly accounts for ever greater segments of national economies, the consequences of this growth for intercultural interaction are diverse and uncertain. The proliferation of tourists also challenges classic theoretical descriptions of just what an economy is. What are the commodities being consumed? What is the division of labor between producers and clients in creating the value of tourist exchanges? How do culture, power, and history shape these interactions? What are the prospects for sustainable tourism? How is cultural heritage being shaped by tourists around the world? These critical questions inspired this volume in which the contributors explore the connections among economy, sustainability, heritage, and identity that tourism and related processes makes explicit. The volume moves beyond the limits of place-specific discussions, case studies, and best practice examples. Accordingly, it is organized according to three overarching themes: exploring dimensions of cultural heritage, the multi-faceted impacts of tourism on both hosts and guests, and the nature of touristic encounters. Based on ethnographic and archaeological research conducted in distinct locations, the contributors’ conclusions and theoretical arguments reach far beyond the limits of isolated case studies. Together, they contribute to a new synthesis for the anthropology of tourism while simultaneously demonstrating how emerging theories of the economics of tourism can lead to the rethinking of traditionally non-touristic enterprises—from farming to medical occupations.

Cautivos

Cautivos
Author: Ariel Dorfman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2019
Genre: Contemplation
ISBN: 9781682192290

"Set in the last years of the 16th century, Cautivos is a meditation on writing, writers, and creativity. More than that, this short novel is about confinement, both of the mind and of the body, and therefore also about liberation. Then as now, Islam and Christianity were at loggerheads and women found themselves playing new roles, and imprisonment or worse was society's answer to everything from murder to dissent."--