-Cultural Studies
An Eye for the Tropics
Images of Jamaica and the Bahamas as tropical paradises full of palm trees, white sandy beaches, and inviting warm water seem timeless. Surprisingly, the origins of those images can be traced back to the roots of the islands’ tourism industry in the 1880s. As Krista A. Thompson explains, in the late nineteenth century, tourism promoters, backed by British colonial administrators, began to market Jamaica and the Bahamas as picturesque “tropical” paradises. They hired photographers and artists to create carefully crafted representations, which then circulated internationally via postcards and illustrated guides and lectures.
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Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia
Two periods of Brazilian film history are particularly notable for their artistic momentum: the Cinema Novo movement of the 1960s and early '70s, and the film revival from the mid 1990s onwards. What makes them especially strong, this book argues, is their utopian impulse. By adopting Utopia as a theme, as well as a method of film analysis, Lucia Nagib unveils, organises and interprets a fascinating wealth of recurrent images, which are a bridge between a cinema strongly concerned with the national project and another informed by global culture. Outstanding recent films, such as Central Station, Perfumed Ball, Hans Staden, Orfeu, City of God and The Trespasser, are illuminated by Nagib's sharp analysis, which detects utopian, anti-utopian and even dystopian impulses in them. They are at once representatives of a political arena in constant struggle against underdevelopment and legitimate (as well as critical) heirs of past cinematic traditions.
Throwing new light on a large selection of Cinema Novo and contemporary films, this book thus presents a national cinema that rejects the end of history and of film history, while benefiting from, and contributing to, a new transnational aesthetics.
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Caribbean Autobiography: Cultural Identity and Self-Representation
Despite the range and abundance of autobiographical writing from the Anglophone Caribbean, this book is the first to explore this literature fully. It covers works from the colonial era up to present-day AIDS memoirs and assesses the links between more familiar works by George Lamming, C. L. R. James, Derek Walcott, V. S. Naipaul, and Jamaica Kincaid and less frequently cited works by the Hart sisters, Mary Prince, Mary Seacole, Claude McKay, Yseult Bridges, Jean Rhys, Anna Mahase, and Kamau Brathwaite.
Sandra Pouchet Paquet charts the intersection of multiple, contradictory viewpoints of the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean, differing concepts of community and levels of social integration, and a persistent pattern of both resistance and accommodation within island states that were largely shaped by British colonial practice from the mid-seventeenth through the mid-twentieth century. The texts examined here reflect the entire range of autobiographical practice, including the slave narrative and testimonial, written and oral narratives, spiritual autobiographies, fiction, serial autobiography, verse, diaries and journals, elegy, and parody.
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Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation to Diaspora
Caribbean Cultural Thought: From Plantation to Diaspora presents a critical appraisal of the range of issues and themes that have been pivotal in the study of Caribbean societies. Written from the perspective of primarily Caribbean authors and renowned scholars of the region, it excavates classic texts in Caribbean Cultural Thought and places them in dialogue with contemporary interrogations and explorations of regional cultural politics and debates concerning identity and social change; colonialism; diaspora; aesthetics; religion and spirituality; gender and sexuality and nationalisms. The result is a reader that presents a distinctive Caribbean voice that emphasizes the long history of critical writings on culture and its intersection with political work in the Caribbean intellectual tradition from within the academy and beyond. Includes contributions from: Antenor Firmin Jose Marti Jean Price-Mars Aime Cesaire Suzanne Cesaire Frantz Fanon Leon Damas Martin Carter Marcus Garvey Percy Hintzen Roberto Fernandez Retamar M. Jacqui Alexander Nicholas Guillen George Beckford George Lamming Richard Price Lucille Mathurin-Mair Sidney Mintz Michel-Rolph Trouillot Fernando Ortiz Elsa Goveia Kamau Brathwaite Patricia Mohammed Peter Wilson David Scott Antonio Benitez-Rojo Lloyd Best Rex Nettleford Jacques Stephen Alexis C.L.R. James Wilson Harris Gordon Rohlehr Sylvia Wynter Gloria Wekker Audre Lorde Kamala Kempadoo Jamaica Kincaid Margarite Fernandez Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert Patrick Bellegarde-Smith Barry Chevannes Aisha Khan Dianne M. Stewart Stuart Hall Sean Lokaisingh-Meighoo Erna Brodber Shani Mootoo Louise Bennett Linton Kwesi Johnson Derek Walcott"
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Culture on the Cutting Edge
The anglophone Caribbean has long been celebrated and known for its vibrant and innovative music. Reggae, dancehall, calypso, soca, gospel and ringbang have flourished within the Caribbean and have exploded on the worldwide stage. Somewhat surprisingly, many facets of this contribution have not been analysed or discussed by academic writing. This work deliberately moves away from the customary exclusive focus on Trinidad and Jamaica and broadens the discourse to represent the wider region. It addresses such topics as the status of Caribbean gospel; the birth of new musical styles in the Eastern Caribbean; cultural misrepresentation in Caribbean music videos; the representation of Aids in Caribbean music; and the impact of the actual music technology utilized by Caribbean musicians since the 1980s.
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Cyberculture: The Key Concepts
The only A-Z guide available on this subject, this book provides a wide-ranging and up-to-date overview of the fast-changing and increasingly important world of cyberculture. Its clear and accessible entries cover aspects ranging from the technical to the theoretical, and from movies to the everyday, including:
Fully cross-referenced and with suggestions for further reading, this comprehensive guide is an essential resource for anyone interested in this fascinating area.
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Echoes of the Haitian Revolution 1804-2004
The bicentenary of Haitian independence in 2004 triggered a renewed interest in Haitian history and culture. In many ways, however, much work is still required in this fertile field. Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and Its Cultural Aftershocks, the first collection of essays edited by Martin Munro and Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, addressed the repercussions of the Haitian Revolution in Haiti, the Caribbean, North America and Europe. This present volume develops and complements the previous collection to meet the growing demand for original scholarly work on Haiti. Widening the cultural lens to include diasporic studies, art, and questions of race and gender, Echoes of the Haitian Revolution exposes how the history of Haiti has shaped our ideas of race, nation and civilization in ways that we are often unaware of. Haiti's lessons continue to engage us in a dynamic dialog that compels us to question and revisit received arguments. The essays collected here provoke and stimulate these necessary conversations by approaching the legacies and repercussions of the revolution from a cultural perspective.
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Feminism and the Women's Movement: Dynamics of Change in Social Movement
In Feminism and the Women's Movement, Barbara Ryan integrates a broad historical view with an analytical framework drawn from the theory of social movements. Relying on participation and observation of diverse groups involved in the woman's movement, interviews with long-term activists, and readings of historical and contemporary movement publications, she discusses the changing nature of feminist ideology and movement organizing. Ryan portrays the successes and difficulties that women have faced in their efforts to effect social change in recent history.
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Feminist Genealogies: Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures
Feminist Geneaologies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures provides a feminist anaylsis of the questions of sexual and gender politics, economic and cultural marginality, and anti-racist and anti-colonial practices both in the "West" and in the "Third World." This collection, edited by Jacqui Alexander and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, charts the underlying theoretical perspectives and organization practices of the different varieties of feminism that take on questions of colonialism, imperialism, and the repressive rule of colonial, post-colonial and advanced capitalist nation-states. It provides a comparative, relational, historically grounded conception of feminist praxis that differs markedly from the liberal pluralist, multicultural understanding that sheapes some of the dominant version of Euro-American feminism. As a whole, the collection poses a unique challenge to the naturalization of gender based in the experiences, histories and practices of Euro-American women.
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For Coloured Girls who have considered Suicide
From its inception in California in 1974 to its highly acclaimed critical success at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and on Broadway, the Obie Award-winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country. Passionate and fearless, Shange's words reveal what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century. First published in 1975 when it was praised by The New Yorker for "encompassing...every feeling and experience a woman has ever had," for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf will be read and performed for generations to come. Here is the complete text, with stage directions, of a groundbreaking dramatic prose poem written in vivid and powerful language that resonates with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world.
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Hispanic & Francophone Caribbean Studies: Contemporary Perspectives
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Imaging the Caribbean: Culture and Visual Translation
Imagine turning the leaves of a book in which five hundred years of Caribbean history unfolds in colour. Read about and see the people who made this history, those who came, saw and conquered, those who were found in the region, those who were brought in as settlers for their labour. Not only do we discover the range of peoples but also their crafting of religion, art and artefacts to create a new aesthetic that is popularly perceived as Caribbean.In "Imaging the Caribbean", Patricia Mohammed takes you through a visual journey of the making of a new world culture. Using over three hundred images of maps, drawings, sketches, paintings and photographs from Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and other Caribbean territories, alongside anthropological, literary and historical texts, she reconstructs the process by which another variegated culture is created out of the broken shards of parent cultures, combining elements of Europe, Africa and Asia, privileging no one group and seeing all as mutual exchanges that are necessary to the constant rebirth of the region and its diaspora.
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In Search of the Black Fantastic
Prior to the 1960s, when African Americans had little access to formal political power, black popular culture was commonly seen as a means of forging community and effecting political change.
But as Richard Iton shows in this provocative and insightful volume, despite the changes brought about by the civil rights movement, and contrary to the wishes of those committed to narrower conceptions of politics, black artists have continued to play a significant role in the making and maintenance of critical social spaces. Iton offers an original portrait of the relationship between popular culture and institutionalized politics tracing the connections between artists such as Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Pryor, Bob Marley, and Erykah Badu and those individuals working in the protest, electoral, and policy making arenas. With an emphasis on questions of class, gender and sexuality-and diaspora and coloniality-the author also illustrates how creative artists destabilize modern notions of the proper location of politics, and politics itself.
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Inna di Dancehall: popular Culture and the Politics of Identity in Jamaica
This work provides an accessible account of a poorly understood aspect of Jamaican popular culture. It explores the socio-political meanings of Jamaica's dancehall culture. In particular, the book gives an account of the power relations within the dancehall and between the dancehall and the wider Jamaican society. Hope gives the reader an unmatched insider's view and explanation of power, violence and gender relations in Jamaica as seen through the prism of the dancehall.
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Marching To A Different Drummer: Elements of Barbadian Culture
The themes of culture and identity will forever bear relevance in a Caribbean context. P. Antonio 'Boo' Rudder approaches these themes from the very intimate knowledge which he has acquired from being both an artist and an administrator, a CEO and a cultural warrior; one who has worn and continues to wear several of these caps. He has taken up the challenge to address them honestly and forthrightly in the context of a Barbadian perspective.This work traces developments in the creative and artistic landscape of Barbados over the past three decades, describing policies, initiatives and personalities that have significantly impacted these developments. In doing so it exposes the milestone achievements, outstanding contributions, opportunities, benchmarks, stumbling blocks, errors, foibles, and conundrums emerging from such developments. It is a case study which can inform researchers, developers of cultural policies and programmes, and cultural practitioners across the Caribbean.After reading Marching to a Different Drummer, it will be difficult to plead innocence when questioned about the state of culture and our cultural perceptions in Barbados.
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Museum Frictions
Museum Frictions is the third volume in a bestselling series on culture, society, and museums. The first two volumes in the series, Exhibiting Cultures and Museums and Communities, have become defining books for those interested in the politics of museum display and heritage sites. Another classic in the making, Museum Frictions is a lavishly illustrated examination of the significant and varied effects of the increasingly globalized world on contemporary museum, heritage, and exhibition practice. The contributors-scholars, artists, and curators-present case studies drawn from Africa, Australia, North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Together they offer a multifaceted analysis of the complex roles that national and community museums, museums of art and history, monuments, heritage sites, and theme parks play in creating public cultures.
Whether contrasting the transformation of Africa's oldest museum, the South Africa Museum, with one of its newest, the Lwandle Migrant Labor Museum; offering an interpretation of the audio guide at the Guggenheim Bilbao; reflecting on the relative paucity of art museums in Peru and Cambodia; considering representations of slavery in the United States and Ghana; or meditating on the ramifications of an exhibition of Australian aboriginal art at the Asia Society in New York City, the contributors highlight the frictions, contradictions, and collaborations emerging in museums and heritage sites around the world. The volume opens with an extensive introductory essay by Ivan Karp and Corinne A. Kratz, leading scholars in museum and heritage studies.
Contributors. Tony Bennett, David Bunn, Gustavo Buntinx, Cuauhtémoc Camarena, Andrea Fraser, Martin Hall, Ivan Karp, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Corinne A. Kratz, Christine Mullen Kreamer, Joseph Masco, Teresa Morales, Howard Morphy, Ingrid Muan, Fred Myers, Ciraj Rassool, Vicente Razo, Fath Davis Ruffins, Lynn Szwaja, Krista A. Thompson, Leslie Witz, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto
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New Register of Caribbean English Usage
The New Register of Caribbean English Usage is a pan-Caribbean publication which seeks to provide a representative sample of the development of Caribbean English usage since 1992, after the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage was completed. The New Register, which was intended to be a companion work to the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage on a smaller scale, comprises about seven hundred items, including words with new senses or usages, acronyms, and abbreviations that have emerged out of the ecological and cultural domains of the CARICOM territories, from Guyana to Belize.
The New Register, like the Dictionary, shows the contribution of homeland British English to Caribbean English creoles which spread across the Anglophone Caribbean as it merged with the hundreds of West African languages introduced during trans-Atlantic slavery to form those English-based Creoles. It also identifies the various levels of Caribbean English usage from formal to anti-formal and the various sub-levels of the latter.
The continued inventorying and chronicling of Caribbean culture and history are vital in helping us to recognize and understand our unique Caribbean identity, and this is an essential reference book for students and educators in the region and in the diaspora. As well as being a practical guide to current Caribbean English usage, the New Register is a tool for raising the level of the production and use of English and for demonstrating the way in which Caribbean English works.
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Policing the Transnational - (1962-2008)
The book examines the efficacy of the cultural policy tradition in the Anglophone Caribbean during the forty-five odd years since independence. It argues that cultural policy development is in stasis because it has consistently been at odds with the transnational character of Caribbean people as well as the organisational structure of the cultural industries. Moreover, the current approaches are inadequate to the demands of the new policy paradigm that require linkages with the economy, technology and the society at the micro and macro levels. These assertions are amplified through an in-depth analysis of four sectors in the Caribbean arts and cultural industry domain, namely the Trinidad carnival complex, the performing arts, book publishing and the Jamaican music industry. The study concludes that a more collaborative approach to cultural policy formulation, namely one that embraces the dynamic structure of the region's cultural sector, along with the convergence of other public policy areas is necessary to harness the region's cultural wealth and strategically reposition the Caribbean within the emerging high growth areas of the global creative economy.
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Readings in African Popular Culture
"This is an extraordinarily rich collection full of informative detail and excellent interpretative analysis. There is not a single piece that fails to fascinate... " -- Leeds African Studies Bulletin
"... an impressive collection of inspiring and thought-provoking essays." -- Media Development
"This is a book that should find its way into many syllabuses and onto the bookshelves of Africanist scholars in many disciplines. Its publication marks a key turning point in scholarlship on the cultures of contemporary Africa." -- Africa Today
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Roots & Culture: Cultural Politics in the Making of Black Britain
How did a distinct and powerful Black British identity emerge? In the 1950s, when many Caribbean migrants came to Britain, there was no such recognised entity as "Black Britain." Yet by the 1980s, the cultural landscape had radically changed, and a remarkable array of creative practices such as theatre, poetry, literature, music and the visual arts gave voice to striking new articulations of Black-British identity. This new book chronicles the extraordinary blend of social, political and cultural influences from the mid-1950s to late 1970s that gave rise to new heights of Black-British artistic expression in the 1980s. Eddie Chambers relates how and why during these decades "West Indians" became "Afro-Caribbeans," and how in turn "Afro-Caribbeans" became "Black-British" - and the centrality of the arts to this important narrative. The British Empire, migration, Rastafari, the Anti-Apartheid struggle, reggae music, dub poetry, the ascendance of the West Indies cricket team and the coming of Margaret Thatcher - all of these factors, and others, have had a part to play in the compelling story of how the African Diaspora transformed itself to give rise to Black Britain.
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Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large
Megawattage sound systems have blasted the electronically-enhanced riddims and tongue-twisting lyrics of Jamaica's dancehall DJs across the globe. This high-energy raggamuffin music is often dismissed by old-school roots reggae fans as a raucous degeneration of classic Jamaican popular music. In this provocative study of dancehall culture, Cooper offers a sympathetic account of the philosophy of a wide range of dancehall DJs: Shabba Ranks, Lady Saw, Ninjaman, Capleton, Buju Banton, Anthony B and Apache Indian. Cooper also demonstrates the ways in which the language of dancehall culture, often devalued as mere 'noise,' articulates a complex understanding of the border clashes which characterize Jamaican society, and analyzes the sound clashes that erupt in the movement of Jamaican dancehall culture across national borders.
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The Basics: Semiotics 2ed.
This updated second edition provides a clear and concise introduction to the key concepts of semiotics in accessible and jargon-free language. With a revised introduction and glossary, extended index and suggestions for further reading, this new edition provides an increased number of examples including computer and mobile phone technology, television commercials and the web.
Demystifying what is a complex, highly interdisciplinary field, key questions covered include:
- What is a sign?
- Which codes do we take for granted?
- How can semiotics be used in textual analysis?
- What is a text?
A highly useful, must-have resource, Semiotics: The Basics is the ideal introductory text for those studying this growing area.
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The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics
Complementing traditional views with fresh ones, The Brazil Reader’s historical selections range from early colonization to the present day, with sections on imperial and republican Brazil, the days of slavery, the Vargas years, and the more recent return to democracy. They include letters, photographs, interviews, legal documents, visual art, music, poetry, fiction, reminiscences, and scholarly analyses. They also include observations by ordinary residents, both urban and rural, as well as foreign visitors and experts on Brazil. Probing beneath the surface of Brazilian reality—past and present—The Reader looks at social behavior, women’s lives, architecture, literature, sexuality, popular culture, and strategies for coping with the travails of life in a country where the affluent live in walled compounds to separate themselves from the millions of Brazilians hard-pressed to find food and shelter. Contributing to a full geographic account—from the Amazon to the Northeast and the Central-South—of this country’s singular multiplicity, many pieces have been written expressly for this volume or were translated for it, having never previously been published in English.
This second book in The Latin America Readers series will interest students, specialists, travelers for both business and leisure, and those desiring an in-depth introduction to Brazilian life and culture.
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The Caribbean Postcolonial
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