Download or read book Mbari Owerri written by Oledinma P. Nwanna-Nzewunwa and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Art and Intimacy written by Ellen Dissanayake and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To Ellen Dissanayake, the arts are biologically evolved propensities of human nature: their fundamental features helped early humans adapt to their environment and reproduce themselves successfully over generations. In Art and Intimacy she argues for the joint evolutionary origin of art and intimacy, what we commonly call love. It all begins with the human trait of birthing immature and helpless infants. To ensure that mothers find their demanding babies worth caring for, humans evolved to be lovable and to attune themselves to others from the moment of birth. The ways in which mother and infant respond to each other are rhythmically patterned vocalizations and exaggerated face and body movements that Dissanayake calls rhythms and sensory modes. Rhythms and modes also give rise to the arts. Because humans are born predisposed to respond to and use rhythmic-modal signals, societies everywhere have elaborated them further as music, mime, dance, and display, in rituals which instill and reinforce valued cultural beliefs. Just as rhythms and modes coordinate and unify the mother-infant pair, in ceremonies they coordinate and unify members of a group. Today we humans live in environments very different from those of our ancestors. They used ceremonies (the arts) to address matters of serious concern, such as health, prosperity, and fecundity, that affected their survival. Now we tend to dismiss the arts, to see them as superfluous, only for an elite. But if we are biologically predisposed to participate in artlike behavior, then we actually need the arts. Even -- or perhaps especially -- in our fast-paced, sophisticated modern lives, the arts encourage us to show that we care about important things.
Download or read book An Interdisciplinary Introduction to Black Studies written by Alfred L. Bright and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Embodying Colonial Memories written by Paul Stoller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the West African Hauka - spirits that grotesquely mimic and mock "Europeans" of the colonial epoch. The author considers spirit possession as a set of embodied practices with serious social and cultural consequences. Embodying Colonial Memories is the first in-depth study of the West African Hauka, spirits in the body of (human) mediums which mimic and mock Europeans of the colonial epoch. Paul Stoller, who was initiated into a spirit possession troupe, recounts an insider's tale of the Hauka with respect and "brotherly" deference. He combines narrative description, historical analysis, and reflections on the importance of embodiment and mimesis to social theory, with particular reference to the Songhay peoples of the Republic of Niger.
Download or read book Architecture and Embodiment written by Harry Francis Mallgrave and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-26 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years we have seen a number of dramatic discoveries within the biological and related sciences. Traditional arguments such as "nature versus nurture" are rapidly disappearing because of the realization that just as we are affecting our environments, so too do these altered environments restructure our cognitive abilities and outlooks. If the biological and technological breakthroughs are promising benefits such as extended life expectancies, these same discoveries also have the potential to improve in significant ways the quality of our built environments. This poses a compelling challenge to conventional architectural theory... This is the first book to consider these new scientific and humanistic models in architectural terms. Constructed as a series of five essays around the themes of beauty, culture, emotion, the experience of architecture, and artistic play, this book draws upon a broad range of discussions taking place in philosophy, psychology, biology, neuroscience, and anthropology, and in doing so questions what implications these discussions hold for architectural design. Drawing upon a wealth of research, Mallgrave argues that we should turn our focus away from the objectification of architecture (treating design as the creation of objects) and redirect it back to those for whom we design: the people inhabiting our built environments.
Download or read book African Arts written by and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Political Organization in Nigeria since the Late Stone Age written by J. Oriji and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-01-17 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the Igbo constitute one of the largest ethnic nationalities of Nigeria and the West African sub-region, little is known about their political history before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. This book is a pioneer study of the broad changes Igbo political systems have undergone since the prehistoric period.
Download or read book Performative Inter Actions in African Theatre 3 written by Kene Igweonu and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is part of a three-volume book-set published under the general title of Performative Inter-Actions in African Theatre. Each of the three books in the set has a unique subtitle that works to better focus its content, and differentiates it from the other two volumes. The contributors’ backgrounds and global spread adequately reflect the international focus of the three books that make up the collection. The contributions, in their various ways, demonstrate the many advances and ingenious solutions adopted by African theatre practitioners in tackling some of the challenges arising from the adverse colonial experience, as well as the “one-sided” advance of globalisation. The contributions attest to the thriving nature of African theatre and performance, which in the face of these challenges, has managed to retain its distinctiveness, while at the same time acknowledging, contesting, and appropriating influences from elsewhere into an aesthetic that is identifiably African. Consequently, the three books are presented as a comprehensive exploration of the current state of African theatre and performance, both on the continent and diaspora. Performative Inter-Actions in African Theatre 3: Making Space, Rethinking Drama and Theatre in Africa offers essays that seek to re-conceptualise notions of drama and theatre in Africa, and therefore redefine our understanding of the practice, role, and place they occupy in a constantly evolving African socio-cultural contexts. Contributions in Making Space, Rethinking Drama and Theatre in Africa range from essays that explore notions of space in performance, to those that challenge the perceived orthodoxy of conventional forms and approaches to theatre.
Download or read book Od n written by Cristina Boscolo and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A poetic ‘voice’ scans the rhythm of academic research, telling of the encounter with odún; then the voice falls silent. What is then raised is the dust of a forgotten academic debate on the nature of theatre and drama, and the following divergent standpoints of critical discourses bent on empowering their own vision, and defining themselves, rather, as counterdiscourses. This, the first part of the book: a metacritical discourse, on the geopolitics (the inherent power imbalances) of academic writing and its effects on odún, the performances dedicated to the gods, ancestors, and heroes of Yorùbá history. But odún: where is it? and what is it? And the ‘voice’? The many critical discourses have not really answered these questions. In effect, odún is many things. To enable the reader to see these, the study proceeds with an ‘intermezzo’: a frame of reference that sets odún, the festival, in its own historico-cultural ecoenvironment, identifying the strategies that inform the performance and constitute its aesthetic. It is a ‘classical’ yet, for odún, an innovative procedure. This interdisciplinary background equips the reader with the knowledge necessary to watch the performance, to witness its beauty, and to understand the ‘half words’ odún utters. And now the performance can begin. The ‘voice’ emerges one last time, to introduce the second section, which presents two case studies. The reader is led, day by day, through the celebrations –odún edì, Morèmi’s story, and its realization in performance; then confrontation by the masks of the ancestors duing odún egúngún (particularly as held in Ibadan). The meaning of odún becomes clearer and clearer. Odún is poetry, dances, masks, food, prayer. It is play (eré) and belief (ìgbàgbó). It is interaction between the players (both performers and spectators). It is also politics and power. It contains secrets and sacrifices. It is a reality with its own dimension and, above all, as the quintessential site of knowledge, it possesses the power to transform. In short, it is a challenge – a challenge that the present book and its voices take up.
Download or read book Nwanyibu written by Phanuel Akubueze Egejuru and published by Africa World Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Continuum Encyclopedia of Native Art written by Hope B. Werness and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lavishly produced voulume is the first reference work to focus on the symbols, meaning, and significance of art in native, or indigenous, cultures.
Download or read book The Chinua Achebe Encyclopedia written by M. Keith Booker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-12-30 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several hundred A-Z entries cover Achebe's major works, important characters and settings, key concepts and issues, and more. Though best known as a novelist, Achebe is also a critic, activist, and spokesman for African culture. This reference is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to his life and writings. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries. Some of these are substantive summary discussions of Achebe's major works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Entries are written by expert contributors and close with brief bibliographies. The volume also provides a general bibliography and chronology. Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe is widely regarded as the most important of the numerous African novelists who gained global attention in the second half of the 20th century. Achebe is certainly the African writer best known in the West, and his first novel, Things Fall Apart, is a founding text of postcolonial African literature and regarded as one of the central works of world literature of the last 50 years. Though best known as a novelist, Achebe is also a critic, activist, and spokesman for African culture. This reference is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to his life and writings. Included are several hundred alphabetically arranged entries. Some of these are substantive summary discussions of Achebe's major works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Other topics include all of his major fictional characters and settings, important concepts and issues central to his writings, historical persons, places, and events relevant to his works, and influential texts by other writers. Entries are written by expert contributors and close with brief bibliographies. The volume also provides a general bibliography and chronology.
Download or read book There Was a Country written by Chinua Achebe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-10-11 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart—a long-awaited memoir of coming of age in a fragile new nation, and its destruction in a tragic civil war For more than forty years, Chinua Achebe maintained a considered silence on the events of the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967–1970, addressing them only obliquely through his poetry. Decades in the making, There Was a Country is a towering account of one of modern Africa’s most disastrous events, from a writer whose words and courage left an enduring stamp on world literature. A marriage of history and memoir, vivid firsthand observation and decades of research and reflection, There Was a Country is a work whose wisdom and compassion remind us of Chinua Achebe’s place as one of the great literary and moral voices of our age.
Download or read book Reading Buchi Emecheta written by Katherine Fishburn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1995-04-25 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first full-length study of Emecheta's fiction, Fishburn highlights the difficulties inherent in reading across cultures. She challenges the notion that all we need to understand African texts is a willingness to be open to them, arguing that too many of the cultural and critical preconceptions we bring to these texts interfere with our ability to understand them. Directly responding to Western feminist criticism written about Emecheta, this study argues that Emecheta herself is not a feminist in the Western sense and that her novels should not be construed as reflecting this political interest. In close readings of eight of her best known works, this study reveals a complex narrative voice which is far more supportive of Emecheta's own African culture and its tradition than has been recognized previously.
Download or read book Among the Ibos of Nigeria written by G.T. Basden and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-02-01 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1966. This book offers a description of the primitive life, customs and animistic beliefs of the Ibo people of Nigeria by one who, for thirty-five years, enjoyed the privilege of their intimate confidence and friendship. It includes 70 Illustrations and a Sketch Map and a new Bibliographical Note by John Ralph Willis.
Download or read book Interdisciplinary Measures written by Graham Huggan and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where now for postcolonial studies? That is the central question in this new volume from one of the field’s most original thinkers. Not so long ago, the driving force behind postcolonial criticism was literary; increasingly, however, many have claimed that the future of postcolonial studies is interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinary Measures thoroughly considers this alternative trajectory through the field of postcolonial studies by setting up a series of conversations among these newly postcolonial disciplines—notably geography, environmental studies, history, and anthropology—and literary studies in which the imaginative possibilities of non-Western epistemologies are brought to the fore.
Download or read book Earth Matters written by Karen E. Milbourne and published by The Monacelli Press, LLC. This book was released on 2013-11-12 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring more than 100 extraordinary works of art from 1800 to the present, Earth Matters reveals how African individuals and communities have visually mediated their most poignant relationships with the land—whether it be to earth as a sacred or medicinal material, as something uncovered by mining or claimed by burial, as a surface to be interpreted and turned to for inspiration, or as an environment to be protected. Both internationally recognized and emerging contemporary artists are represented, from the continent and diaspora, including El Anatsui, Ghada Amer, Sammy Baloji, Ingrid Mwangi and William Kentridge. Highlights include a pair of rare Yoruba onile figures, a one-of-a-kind Punu reliquary from Gabon, and 3 bocio figures from the personal collection of legendary French dealer Jacques Kerchache. The text includes statements by contemporary African artists including Wangechi Mutu, Clive van den Berg, Allan de Souza, and George Osodi. National Museum of African Art curator Karen E. Milbourne explores how diverse African concepts of healing, the sacred, identity, memory, history, and environmental sustainability have all been formed in relation to the land in this pioneering scholarly study.
