-Cultural Studies

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.

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"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Rihanna is arguably the most commercially successful Caribbean artist in history. She is Barbadian and has been unwavering in publicly articulating her national and regional belonging. Still, there have been varied responses to Rihanna's ascendancy, among both Barbadians and the wider Caribbean community. The responses reveal as much about our own national and regional anxieties as they do about the artist herself. The boundary-transgressing, cultural icon Rihanna is subject to anxieties about her body language and latitude from her global audiences as well; however, the essays in this collection purposely seek to de-centre the dominance of the Euro-American gaze, focusing instead on considerations of the Caribbean artist and her oeuvre from a Caribbean postcolonial corpus of academic inquiry.

This collection brings together US- and Caribbean-based scholars to discuss issues of class, gender, sexuality, race, culture and economy. Using the concept of diasporic citizenship as a theoretical frame, the authors intervene in current questions of national and transnational circuits of exchange as they pertain to the commoditization and movement of culture, knowledge, values and identity. The contributors approach the subjects of Rihanna, globalization, gender and sexuality, commerce, transnationalism, Caribbean regionalism, and Barbadian national identity and development from different disciplinary and at times radically divergent perspectives. At the same time, they collectively work through the limitations, possibilities and promise of our best Caribbean imaginings.