Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth-Century
Author: Gwendolyn Midlo Hall File Type: epub Although a number of important studies of American slavery have explored the formation of slave cultures in the English colonies, no book until now has undertaken a comprehensive assessment of the development of the distinctive Afro-Creole culture of colonial Louisiana. This culture, based upon a separate language community with its own folkloric, musical, religious, and historical traditions, was created by slaves brought directly from Africa to Louisiana before 1731. It still survives as the acknowledged cultural heritage of tens of thousands of people of all races in the southern part of the state. In this pathbreaking work, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall studies Louisianas creole slave community during the eighteenth century, focusing on the slaves African origins, the evolution of their own language and culture, and the role they played in the formation of the broader society, economy, and culture of the region. Hall bases her study on research in a wide range of archival sources in Louisiana, France, and Spain and employs several disciplines--history, anthropology, linguistics, and folklore--in her analysis. Among the topics she considers are the French slave trade from Africa to Louisiana, the ethnic origins of the slaves, and relations between African slaves and native Indians. She gives special consideration to race mixture between Africans, Indians, and whites to the role of slaves in the Natchez Uprising of 1729 to slave unrest and conspiracies, including the Pointe Coupee conspiracies of 1791 and 1795 and to the development of communities of runaway slaves in the cypress swamps around New Orleans.
Author: Christopher Hamilton
File Type: pdf
A Philosophy of Tragedy explores the tragic condition of man in modernity. Nietzsche knew it, but so have countless characters in literature that the modern age places us squarely before the reflection of our own tragic condition, our existence characterized by utmost contingency, homelessness, instability, unredeemed suffering, and broken morality. Christopher Hamilton examines the works of philosophers, writers, and playwrights to offer a stirring account of our tragic condition, one that explores the nature of philosophy and the ways it has understood itself and its role to mankind. Ranging from the debate over the death of the tragedy to a critique of modern virtue ethics, from a new interpretation of the evil of Auschwitz to a look at those who have seen our tragic state as inherently inconsolable, he shows that tragedy has been a crucial part of the modern human experience, one from which we shouldnt avert our eyes. **
Author: Guobin Yang
File Type: epub
Raised to be flowers of the nation, the first generation born after the founding of the Peoples Republic of China was united in its political outlook and ambitions. Its members embraced the Cultural Revolution of 1966 but soon split into warring factions. Guobin Yang investigates the causes of this fracture and argues that Chinese youth engaged in an imaginary revolution from 1966 to 1968, enacting a political mythology that encouraged violence as a way to prove ones revolutionary credentials. This same competitive dynamic would later turn the Red Guard against the communist government.Throughout the 1970s, the majority of Red Guard youth were sent to work in rural villages. These relocated revolutionaries developed an appreciation for the values of ordinary life, and an underground cultural movement was born. Rejecting idolatry, their new form of resistance marked a distinct reversal of Red Guard radicalism and signaled a new era of enlightenment, culminating in the Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and, finally, the Tiananmen protest of 1989. Yang completes his significant recasting of Red Guard activism with a chapter on the politics of history and memory, arguing that contemporary memories of the Cultural Revolution are factionalized along the lines of political division that formed fifty years before.
Author: Joe Hughes
File Type: pdf
Gilles Deleuze is without question one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century. Difference and Repetition is a classic work of contemporary philosophy and a key text in Deleuzes oeuvre, a brilliant exposition of the critique of identity that develops two key concepts pure difference and complex repetition. Deleuzes Difference and Repetition A Readers Guide offers a concise and accessible introduction to this hugely important and yet notoriously demanding work.
Author: Pasquale Verdicchio Loredana Di Martino
File Type: pdf
This volume explores the Italian contribution to the current global phenomenon of a return to reality by examining the countrys rich cultural production in literature and cinema. The focus is particularly on works from the period spanning the Nineties to the present day which offer alternatives to notions of reality as manufactured by the collusion between the neo-liberal state and the media. The book also discusses Italys relationship with its own cultural past by investigating how Italian authors deal with the return of the specter of Neorealism as it haunts the modern artistic imagination in this new epoch of crisis. Furthermore, the volume engages in dialogue with previous works of criticism on contemporary Italian realism, while going beyond them in devoting equal attention to cinema and literature. The resulting interactions will aid the reader in understanding how the critical arts respond to the triumph of hyperrealism in the current era of the virtual spectacle as they seek new ways to promote cognitive transformations and foster ethical interventions. **
Author: Robert B. Partlow
File Type: epub
Harry T. Moore, major biographer and pioneer in Lawrence scholarship, characterizes this book as altogether one of the truly fine critical and expository volumes on the man whom so many major critics now regard as the outstanding English writer of this century.The 27 essays in this book are divided into 8 parts An introductory section Lawrences Short Stories The Textual Edition of Lawrences Works Ideas and Techniques Lawrences Major Works Lawrence and Women The Textual Edition of Lawrences Letters and Some Conclusions.Contributors include Ernest Tedlock, Lawrences Voice A Keynote Address Gerald Pollinger, The Lawrence Estate Michael Black, The Works of D. H. Lawrence The Cambridge Edition and Warren Roberts, Problems in Editing D. H. Lawrence. Other established scholars include George J. Zytaruk, Editing Lawrences Letters The Strategy of Volume Division Mark Spilka, Lawrence versus Peeperkorn on Abdication or, What Happens to a Pagan When the Juice Runs Out? L. D. Clark, Immediacy and Recollection The Rhythm of the Visual in D. H. Lawrence (with photographs by LaVerne Harrell Clark) James C. Cowan, D. H. Lawrence and the Resurrection of the Body and Harry T. Moore, The Prose of D. H. Lawrence.Other scholars contributing to this book are Keith Cushman, John S. Poynter, Ian MacNiven, Peter H. Balbert, Michael Squires, Sandra M. Gilbert, Emile Delavanay, Scott Sanders, Charles L. Ross, and Charles Rossman. There are also essays by Armin Arnold, Lydia Blanchard, Evelyn J. Hinz and John J. Teunissen, James T. Boulton, Gerald M. Lacy, David Farmer, and Keith Sagar.
Author: Anthony Dimaggio
File Type: pdf
In this fresh and provocative book, Anthony DiMaggio uses the war in Iraq and the United States confrontations with Iran as his touchstones to probe the sometimes fine line between news and propaganda. Using Antonio Gramscis concept of hegemony and drawing upon the seminal works of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Robert McChesney, DiMaggio combines a rigorousempirical analysis and clear, lucid prose to enlighten readers about issues essential to the struggle for a critical media and a functioning democracy. If, as DiMaggio shows, our newspapers and television news programs play a decisive role in determining what we think, and if, as he demonstrates convincingly, what the media give us is largely propaganda that supports an oppressive and undemocratic status quo, then it is incumbent upon us to make sure that they are responsive to the majority and not just the powerful and privileged few.**
Author: Paul Mattick
File Type: pdf
Theory as Critique, while discussing many central issues of Marxian theory, has two main emphases First, as the title suggests, it takes seriously Capitals claim to be a critique of economic theory, rather than a contribution to political economy. Understanding what this means, it shows, goes far to unravelling many difficulties traditionally found in Marxs book, from the nature of his theory of class to the transformation problem. Secondly, Matticks volume carefully explores how to bridge the gap between the extreme abstraction of Marxs ideas and the complex reality that they are intended to help us understand.
Author: Michael Smith
File Type: epub
Ernest Shackleton is one of historys great explorers, an extraordinary character who pioneered the path to the South Pole over 100 years ago and became a dominant figure in Antarctic discovery. A charismatic personality, his incredible adventures on four expeditions have captivated generations and inspired a dynamic, modern following in business leadership. None more so than the Endurance mission, where Shackletons commanding presence saved the lives of his crew when their ship was crushed by ice and they were turned out on to the savage frozen landscape. But Shackleton was a flawed character whose chaotic private life, marked by romantic affairs, unfulfilled ambitions, overwhelming debts and failed business ventures, contrasted with his celebrity status as a leading explorer. Drawing on extensive research of original diaries and personal correspondence, Michael Smiths definitive biography brings a fresh perspective to our understanding of this complex man and the heroic age of polar exploration.