Download or read book The Lost Land of Lemuria written by Sumathi Ramaswamy and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-09-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a fascinating study of Lemuria--a mythical continent which was once believed to bridge the land masses of India and Africa millennia ago before ultimately sinking into the Indian sea.

Download or read book The Goddess and the Nation written by Sumathi Ramaswamy and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-09 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making the case for a new kind of visual history, The Goddess and the Nation charts the pictorial life and career of Bharat Mata, “Mother India,” the Indian nation imagined as mother/goddess, embodiment of national territory, and unifying symbol for the country’s diverse communities. Soon after Mother India’s emergence in the late nineteenth century, artists, both famous and amateur, began to picture her in various media, incorporating the map of India into her visual persona. The images they produced enabled patriotic men and women in a heterogeneous population to collectively visualize India, affectively identify with it, and even become willing to surrender their lives for it. Filled with illustrations, including 100 in color, The Goddess and the Nation draws on visual studies, gender studies, and the history of cartography to offer a rigorous analysis of Mother India’s appearance in painting, print, poster art, and pictures from the late nineteenth century to the present. By exploring the mutual entanglement of the scientifically mapped image of India and a (Hindu) mother/goddess, Sumathi Ramaswamy reveals Mother India as a figure who relies on the British colonial mapped image of her dominion to distinguish her from the other goddesses of India, and to guarantee her novel status as embodiment, sign, and symbol of national territory. Providing an exemplary critique of ideologies of gender and the science of cartography, Ramaswamy demonstrates that images do not merely reflect history; they actively make it. In The Goddess and the Nation, she teaches us about pictorial ways of learning the form of the nation, of how to live with it—and ultimately to die for it.

Download or read book Stigmas of the Tamil Stage written by Susan Seizer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2005-04-11 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the lives of popular theater artists, Stigmas of the Tamil Stage is the first in-depth analysis of Special Drama, a genre of performance unique to the southernmost Indian state of Tamilnadu. Held in towns and villages throughout the region, Special Drama performances last from 10 p.m. until dawn. There are no theatrical troupes in Special Drama; individual artists are contracted “specially” for each event. The first two hours of each performance are filled with the kind of bawdy, improvisational comedy that is the primary focus of this study; the remaining hours present more markedly staid dramatic treatments of myth and history. Special Drama artists themselves are of all ages, castes, and ethnic and religious affiliations; the one common denominator in their lives is their lower-class status. Artists regularly speak of how poverty compelled their entrance into the field. Special Drama is looked down upon by the middle- and upper-classes as too popular, too vulgar, and too “mixed.” The artists are stigmatized: people insult them in public and landlords refuse to rent to them. Stigma falls most heavily, however, on actresses, who are marked as “public women” by their participation in Special Drama. As Susan Seizer’s sensitive study shows, one of the primary ways the performers deal with such stigma is through humor and linguistic play. Their comedic performances in particular directly address questions of class, culture, and gender deviations—the very issues that so stigmatize them. Seizer draws on extensive interviews with performers, sponsors, audience members, and drama agents as well as on careful readings of live Special Drama performances in considering the complexities of performers’ lives both on stage and off.

Download or read book Cultural Constellations Place Making and Ethnicity in Eastern India c 1850 1927 written by Swarupa Gupta and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-11-01 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cultural Constellations, Place-Making and Ethnicity in Eastern India, c. 1850-1927, Swarupa Gupta outlines a fresh paradigm moving beyond stereotypical representations of eastern India as a site of ethnic fragmentation. The book traces unities by exploring intersections between (1) cultural constellations; (2) place-making and (3) ethnicity. Centralising place-making, it tells the story of how people made places, mediating caste / religious / linguistic contestations. It offers new meanings of ‘region’ in Eastern Indian and global contexts by showing how an interregional arena comprising Bengal, Assam and Orissa was forged. Using historical tracts, novels, poetry and travelogues, the book argues that commonalities in Eastern India were linked to imaginings of Indian nationhood. The analysis contains interpretive strategies for mediating federalist separatisms and fragmentation in contemporary India.

Download or read book The Transformation of the World written by Jürgen Osterhammel and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 1192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A panoramic global history of the nineteenth century A monumental history of the nineteenth century, The Transformation of the World offers a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of a world in transition. Jürgen Osterhammel, an eminent scholar who has been called the Braudel of the nineteenth century, moves beyond conventional Eurocentric and chronological accounts of the era, presenting instead a truly global history of breathtaking scope and towering erudition. He examines the powerful and complex forces that drove global change during the "long nineteenth century," taking readers from New York to New Delhi, from the Latin American revolutions to the Taiping Rebellion, from the perils and promise of Europe's transatlantic labor markets to the hardships endured by nomadic, tribal peoples across the planet. Osterhammel describes a world increasingly networked by the telegraph, the steamship, and the railways. He explores the changing relationship between human beings and nature, looks at the importance of cities, explains the role slavery and its abolition played in the emergence of new nations, challenges the widely held belief that the nineteenth century witnessed the triumph of the nation-state, and much more. This is the highly anticipated English edition of the spectacularly successful and critically acclaimed German book, which is also being translated into Chinese, Polish, Russian, and French. Indispensable for any historian, The Transformation of the World sheds important new light on this momentous epoch, showing how the nineteenth century paved the way for the global catastrophes of the twentieth century, yet how it also gave rise to pacifism, liberalism, the trade union, and a host of other crucial developments.

Download or read book Oceanic Histories written by David Armitage and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freshly presents world history through its oceans and seas in uniquely wide-ranging, original chapters by leading experts in their fields.

Download or read book H P Lovecraft written by Michel Houellebecq and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning French novelist pays tribute to a literary hero in this critical biography of the master of horror—with a foreword by Stephen King. Best known for his acclaimed novels, such as the Prix Goncourt-winning The Map and the Territory, Michael Houellebecq devotes his single work of nonfiction to the pioneering author of horror and weird fiction, H. P. Lovecraft. In a volume that is part biographical sketch and part pronouncement on existence and literature, France's most famous contemporary author praises his prewar American alter ego, whose style couldn't be less like his own. With a foreword by Lovecraft admirer Stephen King, this eloquently translated edition is an insightful introduction to both Lovecraft’s dark mythology and Houellebecq’s deadpan prose.

Download or read book The Story of Atlantis written by W. Scott-Elliot and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Beyond Appearances written by Sumathi Ramaswamy and published by Sage Publications Pvt Limited. This book was released on 2003 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Papers presented at a conference held at Michigan in May 2000; previously published in the journal, Contributions to Indian sociology, 36 (1&2).

Download or read book UNESCO General History of Africa Vol I Abridged Edition written by Jacqueline Ki-Zerbo and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume covers the period from the end of the Neolithic era to the beginning of the seventh century of our era. This lengthy period includes the civilization of Ancient Egypt, the history of Nubia, Ethiopia, North Africa and the Sahara, as well as of the other regions of the continent and its islands."--Publisher's description

Download or read book Worlds of Natural History written by Helen Anne Curry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-22 with total page 683 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the development of natural history since the Renaissance and contextualizes current discussions of biodiversity.

Download or read book Passions of the Tongue written by Sumathi Ramaswamy and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why would love for their language lead several men in southern India to burn themselves alive in its name? Passions of the Tongue analyzes the discourses of love, labor, and life that transformed Tamil into an object of such passionate attachment, producing in the process one of modern India's most intense movements for linguistic revival and separatism. Sumathi Ramaswamy suggests that these discourses cannot be contained within a singular metanarrative of linguistic nationalism and instead proposes a new analytic, "language devotion." She uses this concept to track the many ways in which Tamil was imagined by its speakers and connects these multiple imaginings to their experience of colonial and post-colonial modernity. Focusing in particular on the transformation of the language into a goddess, mother, and maiden, Ramaswamy explores the pious, filial, and erotic aspects of Tamil devotion. She considers why, as its speakers sought political and social empowerment, metaphors of motherhood eventually came to dominate representations of the language.

Download or read book Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism written by David Harvey and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Harvey examines the foundational contradictions of capital, and reveals the fatal contradictions that are now inexorably leading to its end

Download or read book Beyond the Metropolis written by Louise Young and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Beyond the Metropolis, Louise Young looks at the emergence of urbanism in the interwar period, a global moment when the material and ideological structures that constitute “the city” took their characteristic modern shape. In Japan, as elsewhere, cities became the staging ground for wide ranging social, cultural, economic, and political transformations. The rise of social problems, the formation of a consumer marketplace, the proliferation of streetcars and streetcar suburbs, and the cascade of investments in urban development reinvented the city as both socio-spatial form and set of ideas. Young tells this story through the optic of the provincial city, examining four second-tier cities: Sapporo, Kanazawa, Niigata, and Okayama. As prefectural capitals, these cities constituted centers of their respective regions. All four grew at an enormous rate in the interwar decades, much as the metropolitan giants did. In spite of their commonalities, local conditions meant that policies of national development and the vagaries of the business cycle affected individual cities in diverse ways. As their differences reveal, there is no single master narrative of twentieth century modernization. By engaging urban culture beyond the metropolis, this study shows that Japanese modernity was not made in Tokyo and exported to the provinces, but rather co-constituted through the circulation and exchange of people and ideas throughout the country and beyond.

Download or read book Hidden Geographies written by Marko Krevs and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book defines and discusses the term “hidden geographies” in two ways: systematically and by presenting a variety of examples of the research fields and topics concerning hidden geographies, with the aim of stimulating further basic and applied research in this area. While the term is quite rarely used in the scientific literature (more often as a figure of speech than to illustrate or problematize its deeper meaning), we argue that hidden geographies are everywhere and many of them have significant impacts on (other) natural and social phenomena and processes, subsequently triggering changes, for example in landscape, economy, culture, health or quality of life. The introductory section of the book conceptualises hidden geographies and discusses cognitive geography, symbolization of space, and the hidden geographies in mystical literature. Case studies of hidden environmental geographies address soils, air pollution, coastal pollution and the allocation of an astronomical tourism site. Revealing hidden historical and sacred places is illustrated through examples of the visualisation of the subterranean mining landscape, the analysis of the historical road network and trade, border stones and historical spatial boundaries, and the monastic Carthusian space. Hidden urban geographies are discussed in terms of the urban development of an entire city, presenting the role of geography in rescuing architecture, revealing illegal urbanisation, and the quality of habitation in Roma neighbourhoods. Case studies of hidden population geographies shed light on the ageing of rural populations and the impact of spatial-demographic disparities on fertility variations. Discussions of hidden social and economic geographies problematize recent social changes and conflicts in a country, present the implementation of the fourth industrial revolution and borders as hidden obstacles in the organisation of public transport. Hidden geographies are explicitly linked to perceptions and explanations in case studies that address local responses to perceived marginalisation in a city, the solo women travellers’ perceived risk and safety, and hidden geographical contexts of visible post-war landscapes. The book brings such a diversity of views, ideas and examples related to hidden geographies that can serve both to deepen their understanding and their various impacts on our lives and environment, and to attract further cross-disciplinary interest in considering hidden geographies – in research and in our every-day lives.

Download or read book Global Matters written by Paul Jay and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-15 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the pace of cultural globalization accelerates, the discipline of literary studies is undergoing dramatic transformation. Scholars and critics focus increasingly on theorizing difference and complicating the geographical framework defining their approaches. At the same time, Anglophone literature is being created by a remarkably transnational, multicultural group of writers exploring many of the same concerns, including the intersecting effects of colonialism, decolonization, migration, and globalization. Paul Jay surveys these developments, highlighting key debates within literary and cultural studies about the impact of globalization over the past two decades. Global Matters provides a concise, informative overview of theoretical, critical, and curricular issues driving the transnational turn in literary studies and how these issues have come to dominate contemporary global fiction as well. Through close, imaginative readings Jay analyzes the intersecting histories of colonialism, decolonization, and globalization engaged by an array of texts from Africa, Europe, South Asia, and the Americas, including Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, Vikram Chandra's Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Mohsin Hamid's Moth Smoke, and Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness. A timely intervention in the most exciting debates within literary studies, Global Matters is a comprehensive guide to the transnational nature of Anglophone literature today and its relationship to the globalization of Western culture.

Download or read book Oceans Rising written by Daniela Zyman and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty-one thoughtful and generous contributions by artists, scholars, scientists, and ocean activists in response to the rapidly changing oceans. The ocean is rising and with it sea level, water temperature, acidity, algal blooms, and storm surges. Also on the rise are the metrics of accelerated human activity. How are we to fathom the political, aesthetic, and epistemological rise of the oceans from centuries-long invisibilization and forgetting? What ideas and memories do the oceans hold in their depth and reanimate, when the earth’s ecosystems suffer? Asking different questions and using multiple registers of sensing expand the possibilities to engage with the oceanic at this precarious moment and rethink its relations to the terrestrial. Oceans Rising is a companion reader to “Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation,” an independent oceanic research initiative commissioned by TBA21–Academy and operating out of Ocean Space in Venice. It offers forty-one thoughtful contributions by artists, scholars, scientists, and ocean activists in response to the rapidly changing oceans. Writing from places of conflict and concern, the contributions reveal the magnitude and urgency of ecological devastation, but more important, they provide alternative narratives that strengthen our knowledge communities and contribute to worldmaking practices from an oceanic perspective.