Author: Peggy Phelan File Type: pdf Unmarked is a controversial analysis of the fraught relation between political and representational visibility in contemporary culture. Written from and for the Left, Unmarked rethinks the claims of visibility politics through a feminist psychoanalytic examination of specific performance texts - including photography, painting, film, theatre and anti-abortion demonstrations.
Author: Fred Moten
File Type: pdf
The Little Edges is a collection of poems that extends poet Fred Motens experiments in what he calls shaped prosea way of arranging prose in rhythmic blocks, or sometimes shards, in the interest of audio-visual patterning. Shaped prose is a form that works the little edges of lyric and discourse, and radiates out into the space between them. As occasional pieces, many of the poems in the book are the result of a request or commission to comment upon a work of art, or to memorialize a particular moment or person. In Motens poems, the matter and energy of a singular event or person are transformed by their entrance into the social space that they, in turn, transform. An online readers companion is available at httpfredmoten.site.wesleyan.edu.** The Little Edges is a collection of poems that extends poet Fred Motens experiments in what he calls shaped prosea way of arranging prose in rhythmic blocks, or sometimes shards, in the interest of audio-visual patterning. Shaped prose is a form that works the little edges of lyric and discourse, and radiates out into the space between them. As occasional pieces, many of the poems in the book are the result of a request or commission to comment upon a work of art, or to memorialize a particular moment or person. In Motens poems, the matter and energy of a singular event or person are transformed by their entrance into the social space that they, in turn, transform. An online readers companion is available at httpfredmoten.site.wesleyan.edu.**
Author: Gertrud Hirschi
File Type: pdf
Mudras also playfully called the finger power points are yoga positions for your hands and fingers. They can be practiced sitting, lying down, standing, or walking. They can be done at any time and place while stuck in traffic, at the office, watching TV, or whenever you have to twiddle your thumbs waiting for something. Hirschi shows you how these techniques can prevent illness, relieve stress, and heal emotional problems. 82 illustrations. Index. Bibliography.Amazon.com ReviewYoga for the hands--sounds too good to be true. Do it at the office, on an airplane, lying in bed. Seasoned yoga teacher Gertrud Hirschi has used these hand postures to ease asthma, relieve flu symptoms, think more effectively, relieve tension, even have a bowel movement. The possibilities she attributes to these ancient Indian techniques are endless. Join the tips of the index finger and thumb this clears the mind. Switch the thumb to the little finger this restores the bodys fluid balance. Its not quite that easy, of course. Hirschi is careful to lay out exercise regimens, related herbal remedies, and associated affirmations. Like a classroom instructor, she guides with simultaneous breathing advice and conjures up helpful images. From building character to healing emotional pain, from bringing luck to connecting with the divine, mudras can work wonders. Now limber up those digits and lets get into spiritual shape. --Brian Bruya
Author: Natalia Murray
File Type: pdf
This book is the first biography of Nikolay Punin (1888-1953). One of the most prominent art-critics of the avant-garde, in 1919 Punin was the Commissar of the Hermitage and Russian Museums, he was lecturing at the Academy of Arts and at the State University in Petrograd (and subsequently Leningrad). He was the right hand of Lunacharsky and the head of the Petrograd branch of the Visual Arts Department of Narkompross. From 1913 till 1938, Punin worked at the Russian Museum and organized several major exhibitions of Russian art. Yet his name is not widely known in the West, primarily because his file languished in the KGB archives since he died in 1953, partly because his grave in the Gulag where he died is marked only by a number, and partly because his own reputation became submerged under that of his lover, poet and writer Anna Akhmatova. Through the life and inheritance of Nikolay Punin, this book will examine the very phenomenon of the Russian avant-garde and its fate after the October Revolution, as well as the artistic trends and cultural policies which dominated Soviet art in the 1930-1950s.
Author: Naomi Janowitz
File Type: pdf
Using in-depth examples of magical practice such as exorcisms, love rites, alchemy and the transformation of humans into divine beings, this lively volume demonstrates that the word magic was used widely in late antique texts as part of polemics against enemies and sometimes merely as a term for other peoples rituals. Naomi Janowitz shows that magical activities were integral to late antique religious practice, and that they must be understood from the perspective of those who employed them. **
Author: Kimberly Anne Coles
File Type: pdf
Long considered marginal in early modern culture, women writers were actually central to the development of a Protestant literary tradition in England. Kimberly Anne Coles explores their contribution to this tradition through thorough archival research in publication history and book circulation the interaction of womens texts with those written by men and the traceable influence of womens writing upon other contemporary literary works. Focusing primarily upon Katherine Parr, Anne Askew, Mary Sidney Herbert, and Anne Vaughan Lok, Coles argues that the writings of these women were among the most popular and influential works of sixteenth-century England. This book is full of prevalent material and fresh analysis for scholars of early modern literature, culture and religious history.ReviewThe paperback edition of Kimberly Anne Coless Religion, Reform, and Womens Writing in Early Modern England (issued 2010) makes widely accessible (and affordable) the insights of this fascinating, provocative, and richly rewarding study....[It] utilizes an intriguing blend of materialist and formalist methodologies. Coles is as interested in how the figure of the woman writer is mobilized in contemporary religious and literary discourse as she is with women writers themselves...Coles offers a daring, meticulously researched, and sure-footed reassessment of the roles played by five women writers in the emerging literary culture of English Protestantism. In doing so, she provides signal contributions to the developing scholarship on early modern book history and challenges-in powerful and productive ways-several of our most entrenched beliefs about the roles played by men and women in the English Reformation. -Patricia Pender, Huntington Library Quarterly Book DescriptionLong considered marginal in early modern culture, women writers were actually central to the development of a Protestant literary tradition in England, Kimberly Anne Coles argues. This book is full of prevalent material and fresh analysis for scholars of early modern literature, culture and religious history.
Author: Shuqin Cui
File Type: pdf
Gender and nation have often served as narrative subjects and visual tropes in Chinese cinema. The intersections between the two that occur in cinematic representation, however, have received little critical attention. Women through the Lens raises the question of how gender, especially the image of woman, acts as a visual and discursive sign in the creation of the nation-state in twentieth-century China. Tracing the history of Chinese cinema through the last hundred years from the perspective of transnational feminism, Shuqin Cui reveals how women have been granted a privileged visibility on screen while being denied discursive positions as subjects. In addition, her careful attention to the visual language system of cinema shows how woman has served as the site for the narration of nation in the context of Chinas changing social and political climate. Placing gender and nation in a historical framework, the book first shows how early productions had their roots in shadow plays, a popular form of public entertainment. These films were soon supplanted by cinematic narratives meant to further the causes of social reform and strident nationalism. As Leftist filmmaking turned to the female image to signify a motherland suffering foreign invasions as well as domestic afflictions, gender and nation became inextricably intertwined in the cinematic representation of China. In examining the Red Classics of socialist cinema as a mass cultural form, the book shows how the utopian vision of emancipating the entire proletariat, women included, produced a collective ideology that declared an end to gender difference. Sex and desire cannot be eradicated, however, and one of the most valuable contributions of this work is its consideration of the fate of gender difference in a milieu of official suppression. The emergence of New Wave films brought heightened international attention to Chinese cinema. Filmmakers became keenly aware of visuality as a language system as they experimented with modes of representation. Cui documents and discusses the cinematic spectacle of woman as essential to such widely popular films as Chen Kaiges Farewell My Concubine and Zhang Yimous Ju Do. In these films, the screen image of the Chinese woman is both nationalized and sexualized, and for international audiences she is the exotic and erotic other, the image of China. Finally, the author brings a feminist perspective to the issues of gender and nation by turning her attention to women directors and their self-representations. She reveals a concealed female identity at the margins where women directors attempt to inject female consciousness and perspective even as they submit to the conventions necessary to get their films produced. She concludes that if Chinese women continue to count on the promises of nationalist discourse for their emancipation, they may fail to realize that the need to free feminism from nationalist narratives is a prerequisite for freeing oneself. Well conceived and intelligently written, Women through the Lens will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of film, gender, and Asian studies, and to general readers interested in Chinese cinema.About the AuthorShuqin Cui is assistant professor at Southern Methodist University.
Author: John C. Inscoe
File Type: pdf
Only recently have scholars come to fully discover the complex relationships of blacks and whites in the southern Appalachians, both before and after emancipation. From slave labor in iron works, coalfields, and salt mines to postwar racial violence and Jim Crow oppression, the integral role of African Americans in highland society is at last being acknowledged. The eighteen essays in this collection recognize not only a far greater African American presence in the highland South than was once assumed but a wider variety of interaction between blacks and whites during the nineteenth century. Leading scholars of Appalachian studies explore topics as varied as black migration into and out of the region, educational and religious missions directed at African Americans, the musical influences of interracial contacts, and much more. This collection should immediately emerge as the most convenient and most fruitful starting point for any scholar wishing an introduction to the topic of race relations in the mountain south. Robert Tracy McKenzie, University of WashingtonReviewA compact introduction to a wide range of excellent scholarship. -- Virginia MagazineA pictorial history, elegantly designed and profusley illustrated. -- Copely News ServiceAn engrossing compendium of rare photos and accompanying text that celebrate Americas most important performing dynasty. -- msn.comEarns a place on any list of basic readings in Appalachian history. -- Georgia Historical ReviewMost of the family-album material-baby pictures, honeymoon snapshots, group portraits-has never been shown pubicly. -- Chicago TribuneAn exciting, insightful look at what actually went on among race in Southern Appalachia. -- Ashville Citizen-TimesPresents a major contribution to scholarship in Appalachian studies as well as in southern race-relations generally. -- Durwood Dunn, Tennessee Wesleyan CollegeThe essays jar common and long held assumptions about racial relationships in southern mountain societies. -- Arkansas Historical QuarterlyThis excellent collection continues the important process of debunking the myths about the mountain South. -- Anniston StarAbout the AuthorJohn Inscoe, professor of history at the Unviersity of Georgia and editor of the Georgia Historical Quarterly, is the author or editor of several books including Mountain Masters and The Heart of Confederate Appalachia.