You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Based on research in two African communities, this volume presents a new methodology for examining visual media--one that suggests a phenomenology of filmmaking and an ethnography of mediated communication. Comprehensively developed and discusses, this methodology can be used for analysis of any informant-made visual communication.
Beyond biography: a legendary performer's legacy of symbolism
The American public’s perception of New Religious Movements (NRMs) as fundamentally harmful cults stems from the "anticult" movement of the 1970s, which gave a sometimes hysterical and often distorted image of NRMs to the media. At the same time, academics pioneered a new field, studying these same NRMs from sociological and historical perspectives. They offered an interpretation that ran counter to that of the anticult movement. For these scholars in the new field of NRM studies, NRMs were legitimate religions deserving of those freedoms granted to established religions. Those scholars in NRM studies continued to evolve methods and theories to study NRMs. This book tells their story. Each...
Once seen as a collection of artifacts and ritual objects, African art now commands respect from museums and collectors. Bennetta Jules-Rosette and J.R. Osborn explore the reframing of African art through case studies of museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, and Africa. The authors take a three-pronged approach. Part One ranges from curiosity cabinets to virtual websites to offer a history of ethnographic and art museums and look at their organization and methods of reaching out to the public. In the second part, the authors examine museums as ecosystems and communities within communities, and they use semiotic methods to analyze images, signs, and symbols drawn from the experiences of curators and artists. The third part introduces innovative strategies for displaying, disseminating, and reclaiming African art. The authors also propose how to reinterpret the art inside and outside the museum and show ways of remixing the results. Drawing on extensive conversations with curators, collectors, and artists, African Art Reframed is an essential guide to building new exchanges and connections in the dynamic worlds of African and global art.
Visualizing Theory is a lavishly illustrated collection of provocative essays, occasional pieces, and dialogues that first appeared in Visual Anthropology Review between 1990 and 1994. It contains contributions from anthropologists, from cultural, literary and film critics and from image makers themselves. Reclaiming visual anthropology as a space for the critical representation of visual culture from the naive realist and exoticist inclinations that have beleaguered practitioners' efforts to date, Visualizing Theory is a major intervention into this growing field.
Tabona Shoko contends that religion and healing are intricately intertwined in African religions. This book on the religion of the Karanga people of Zimbabwe sheds light on important methodological issues relevant to research in the study of African religions. Analysing the traditional Karanga views of the causes of illness and disease, mechanisms of diagnosis at their disposal and the methods they use to restore health, Shoko discusses the views of a specific African Independent Church of the Apostolic tradition. The conclusion Shoko reaches about the central religious concerns of the Karanga people is derived from detailed field research consisting of interviews and participant observation. This book testifies that the centrality of health and well-being is not only confined to traditional religion but reflects its adaptive potential in new religious systems manifest in the phenomenon of Independent Churches. Rather than succumbing to the folly of static generalizations, Tabona Shoko offers important insights into a particular society upon which theories can be reassessed, adding new dimensions to modern features of the religious scene in Africa.
Star of stage and screen, cultural ambassador, civil rights and political activist--Josephine Baker was defined by the various public roles that made her 50-year career an exemplar of postmodern identity. Her legacy continues to influence modern culture more than 40 years after her death. This new collection of essays interprets Baker's life in the context of modernism, feminism, race, gender and sexuality. The contributors focus on various aspects of her life and career, including her performances and public reception, civil rights efforts, the architecture of her unbuilt house, and her modern-day "afterlife."
Black Paris documents the struggles and successes of three generations of African writers as they strive to establish their artistic, literary, and cultural identities in France. Based on long-term ethnographic, archival, and historical research, the work is enriched by interviews with many writers of the new generation. Bennetta Jules-Rosette explores African writing and identity in France from the early négritude movement and the founding of the Présence Africaine publishing house in 1947 to the mid-1990s. Examining the relationship between African writing and French anthropology as well as the emergence of new styles and discourses, Jules-Rosette covers French Pan-Africanism and the revolutionary writing of the 1960s and 1970s. She also discusses the new generation of African writers who appeared in Paris during the 1980s and 1990s.