Download or read book Africa Since 1935 written by Unesco. International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 1076 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hardcover edition of volume 8 was published in 1994. This paperback edition is the eighth and final volume to be published in the UNESCO General History of Africa. Volume 8 examines the period from 1935 to the present, and details the role of African states in the Second World War and the rise of postwar Africa. This is one of the most important books in the entire series, and as such, it is an unabridged paperback.

Download or read book Before We Visit the Goddess written by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A new novel from the author of Oleander Girl, a novel in stories, built around crucial moments in the lives of 3 generations of women in an Indian/Indian-American Family"--

Download or read book Sacred Space written by Augustin Ioan and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Museum Culture written by Daniel J. Sherman and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Museums display much more than artifacts; Museum Culture makes us on a tour through the complex of ideas, values and symbols that pervade and shape the practice of exhibiting today. Bringing together a broad range of perspectives from history, art history, critical theory and sociology, the contributors to this new collection argue that museums have become a central institution and metaphor in contemporary society. Discussing exhibition histories and practice in Western Europe, the former Soviet Union, Israel and the United States, the authors explore the ways in which museums assign meaning to art through various kinds of exhibitions and display strategies, examining the political implications of these strategies and the forms of knowledge they invoke and construct. The collection also discusses alternative exhibition forms, the involvement of some museums with the more spectacular practices of mass media culture, and looks at how museums construct their public.

Download or read book Narratives of Fear and Safety written by Kaisa Kaukiainen and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this edited volume, written in English and French, tackle the intriguing problems of fear and safety by analysing their various meanings and manifestations in literature and other narrative media. The articles bring forth new, cross-cultural interpretations on fear and safety through examining what kinds of genre-specific means of world-making narratives use to express these two affectivities. The articles also show how important it is to study these themes in order to understand challenges in times of global threats, such as the climate crisis, and - to imagine a better future. The main themes of the book are approached from various theoretical perspectives as related to their literary and cultural representations. Recent trends in research, such as affect and risk theory, serve as the basis for the discussion. Many of the articles in the volume discuss apocalyptic and dystopian narratives that currently permeate the entire cultural landscape. Dystopian narratives do not only deal with future threats, such as totalitarianism, technocracy, or environmental disasters, but also suggest alternative ways of being and new hopes in the form of political resistance. The articles in the volume also draw from disciplines such as gender studies and trauma studies to examine the threats posed by collective fears and aggression on individuals' lives and propose ways of coping with fear. These themes are addressed also in articles analysing new adaptations of old myths that retell stories of the past.

Download or read book The Lady in the Looking Glass written by Virginia Woolf and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms any more than they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime.' 'If she concealed so much and knew so much one must prize her open with the first tool that came to hand - the imagination.' Virginia Woolf's writing tested the boundaries of modern fiction, exploring the depths of human consciousness and creating a new language of sensation and thought. Sometimes impressionistic, sometimes experimental, sometimes brutally cruel, sometimes surprisingly warm and funny, these five stories describe love lost, friendships formed and lives questioned. This book includes The Lady in the Looking Glass, A Society, The Mark on the Wall, Solid Objects and Lappin and Lapinova.

Download or read book The Pope s Body written by Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-07 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrast to the role traditionally fulfilled by secular rulers, the pope has been perceived as an individual person existing in a body subject to decay and death, yet at the same time a corporeal representation of Christ and the Church, eternity and salvation. Using an array of evidence from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, Agostino Paravicini- Bagliani addresses this paradox. He studies the rituals, metaphors, and images of the pope's body as they developed over time and shows how they resulted in the expectation that the pope's body be simultaneously physical and metaphorical. Also included is a particular emphasis on the thirteenth century when, during the pontificate of Boniface VIII (1294-1303), the papal court became the focus of medicine and the natural sciences as physicians devised ways to protect the pope's health and prolong his life. Masterfully translated from the Italian, this engaging history of the pope's body provides a new perspective for readers to understand the papacy, both historically and in our own time.

Download or read book Immersion in the Visual Arts and Media written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume brings together contributions by distinguished experts from different disciplinary fields for a multidimensional view on immersion in the visual arts and media. In the current media debate, immersion has frequently been linked to the advent of digital technology and its capacity to provide vivid sensations of being placed in or surrounded by an artificial space. The idea of ‘liquidity’ contained in this promise to plunge into another world informs wide areas of contemporary cultural imagination, referring to a myriad of phenomena that relate to experiences of uncertainty and instability, of complexity and change. Considering the fact, however, that the idea of ‘liquid’ spaces appeared long before the digital creation of augmented or virtual environments, the contributors to this volume trace its reemerging throughout the history of the visual arts and media. By focusing on selected works of painting and architecture, photography and cinema, video installation and media art, they explore the variability of immersive experiences according to the different media environments and interfaces that constitute the actual sites of historically shifting relations between media and users. Contributors are: Matthias Bauer, Jörg von Brincken, Robin Curtis, Burcu Dogramaci, Thomas Elsaesser, Ole W. Fischer, Gundolf S. Freyermuth, Ursula Frohne, Henry Keazor, Matthias Krüger, Katja Kwastek, Fabienne Liptay, Karl Prümm, Martin Warnke.

Download or read book Metamorphoses written by Emanuele Coccia and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-06-09 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are all fascinated by the mystery of metamorphosis – of the caterpillar that transforms itself into a butterfly. Their bodies have almost nothing in common. They don’t share the same world: one crawls on the ground and the other flutters its wings in the air. And yet they are one and the same life. Emanuele Coccia argues that metamorphosis – the phenomenon that allows the same life to subsist in disparate bodies – is the relationship that binds all species together and unites the living with the non-living. Bacteria, viruses, fungi, plants, animals: they are all one and the same life. Each species, including the human species, is the metamorphosis of all those that preceded it – the same life, cobbling together a new body and a new form in order to exist differently. And there is no opposition between the living and the non-living: life is always the reincarnation of the non-living, a carnival of the telluric substance of a planet – the Earth – that continually draws new faces and new ways of being out of even the smallest particle of its disparate body. By highlighting what joins humans together with other forms of life, Coccia’s brilliant reflection on metamorphosis encourages us to abandon our view of the human species as static and independent and to recognize instead that we are part of a much larger and interconnected form of life.

Download or read book Visuality Materiality written by Divya P. Tolia-Kelly and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-11 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two of the key theoretical shifts over the past two decades of critical work have been the 'visual turn' and the 'material turn'. This book argues that these hitherto distinct fields should be understood as in continual dialogue and co-constitution and focuses on reconceptualising the visual as an embodied, material, and often politically-charged realm. This edited volume elaborates this conceptual argument through a series of contemporary case studies, drawn from the disciplines of Architecture, Sociology, Media Studies, Geography and Cultural Studies. The case studies included are paired around four themes: consumption, translation, practice and ethics. As well as exploring the bringing together of visuality and materiality studies, the contributors raise questions of social identity and social critique, and also focus on the ethics of material visualities.

Download or read book Virtual Voyages written by Jeffrey Ruoff and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-24 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVThe different forms that travelogues have taken (documentaries, IMAX, home movies, ethnographic films) from the 1800s to the present./div

Download or read book Shivers Down Your Spine written by Alison Griffiths and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-08 with total page 719 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the architectural spectacle of the medieval cathedral and the romantic sublime of the nineteenth-century panorama to the techno-fetishism of today's London Science Museum, humans have gained a deeper understanding of the natural world through highly illusionistic representations that engender new modes of seeing, listening, and thinking. What unites and defines many of these wondrous spaces is an immersive view-an invitation to step inside the virtual world of the image and become a part of its universe, if only for a short time. Since their inception, museums of science and natural history have mixed education and entertainment, often to incredible, eye-opening effect. Immersive spaces of visual display and modes of exhibition send "shivers" down our spines, engaging the distinct cognitive and embodied mapping skills we bring to spectacular architecture and illusionistic media. They also force us to reconsider traditional models of film spectatorship in the context of a mobile and interactive spectator. Through a series of detailed historical case studies, Alison Griffiths masterfully explores the uncanny and unforgettable visceral power of the medieval cathedral, the panorama, the planetarium, the IMAX theater, and the science museum. Examining these structures as exemplary spaces of immersion and interactivity, Griffiths reveals the sometimes surprising antecedents of modern media forms, suggesting the spectator's deep-seated desire to become immersed in a virtual world. Shivers Down Your Spine demonstrates how immersive and interactive museum display techniques such as large video displays, reconstructed environments, and touch-screen computer interactives have redefined the museum space, fueling the opposition between public and private, science and spectacle, civic and corporate interests, voice and text, and life and death. In her remarkable study of sensual spaces, Griffiths explains why, for centuries, we keep coming back for more.

Download or read book Jet Age Aesthetic written by Vanessa R. Schwartz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stunning look at the profound impact of the jet plane on the mid-century aesthetic, from Disneyland to Life magazine Vanessa R. Schwartz engagingly presents the jet plane’s power to define a new age at a critical moment in the mid-20th century, arguing that the craft’s speed and smooth ride allowed people to imagine themselves living in the future. Exploring realms as diverse as airport architecture, theme park design, film, and photography, Schwartz argues that the jet created an aesthetic that circulated on the ground below. Visual and media culture, including Eero Saarinen’s airports, David Bailey’s photographs of the jet set, and Ernst Haas’s experiments in color photojournalism glamorized the imagery of motion. Drawing on unprecedented access to the archives of The Walt Disney Studios, Schwartz also examines the period’s most successful example of fluid motion meeting media culture: Disneyland. The park’s dedication to “people-moving” defined Walt Disney’s vision, shaping the very identity of the place. The jet age aesthetic laid the groundwork for our contemporary media culture, in which motion is so fluid that we can surf the internet while going nowhere at all.

Download or read book Creative Reckonings written by Jessica Winegar and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnographic study of cultural politics in the contemporary Egyptian art world, examining how art-making is a crucial aspect of the transformation from socialism to neoliberalism in postcolonial countries.

Download or read book When was Modernism written by Geeta Kapur and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A commitment to modernity is the underlying theme of this volume. Through essays that are interpretive and theoretical, the author seeks to situate the modern in contemporary cultural practice. She sets up an ideological vantage point to view modernism along its multiple tracks in India and the third world.The essays divide into three sections. The first two sections, Artists and ArtWork and Film/Narratives, raise questions of authorship, genre, and contemporary features of national culture that materialize into an aesthetic in the Indian context. The last section, Frames of Reference, formalizes the polemical options developed across the book. The essays here propose resistance to the depoliticization of narratives, and affirm an open-ended engagement with the avant-garde. They explore the possibility of art practice finding its own signifying space that is still a space for radical transformation.Geeta Kapur is an independent art critic and curator living in New Delhi. Her extensive publications on modern Indian art include the book Contemporary Indian Artists (Delhi, 1978), exhibition catalogues and monographs on artists. She is currently writing a monograph on Tyeb Mehta. Her essays on cultural criticism have been widely presented in forums of art history and cultural studies. Her curatorial work includes the show Bombay/Mumbai 1992 2001 in the multi-part exhibition titled Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis , at Tate Modern, London, in 2001. Geeta Kapur is a founder-editor of the Journal of Arts & Ideas and advisory editor to Third Text. She has held research fellowships at Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, and Clare Hall, Cambridge University. For the past three decades, [Geeta Kapur s] has been the singular dominant presence in the field to a point that her writings alone seem to have constituted the whole field of modern Indian art theory and criticism. Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Biblio (Delhi), May June 2001. Geeta Kapur is a magisterial presence in the sphere of modern Indian art. [The] insistence on the primacy of bearing witness to creative practice has been the leitmotif of Kapur s work. . . . Kapur s contribution . . . is best understood by reflection on the radical change that her activity has brought about in Indian art criticism. Ranjit Hoskote, Art India (Mumbai), Vol. VI, 1, 2001. When Was Modernism is a book of essays: imaginative, interpretive, argumentative, polemical, political and, in the combined sense of all these, historical. . . . [It] provides an instance of passionate engagement that, at its best moments, verges on the poetic. Chaitanya Sambrani, ART AsiaPacific (Australia), Issue 30, 2001.

Download or read book Mediarchy written by Yves Citton and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-11-11 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We think that we live in democracies: in fact, we live in mediarchies. Our political regimes are based less on nations or citizens than on audiences shaped by the media. We assume that our social and political destinies are shaped by the will of the people without realizing that ‘the people’ are always produced, both as individuals and as aggregates, by the media: we are all embedded in mediated publics, ‘intra-structured’ by the apparatuses of communication that govern our interactions. In this major book, Yves Citton maps out the new regime of experience, media and power that he designates by the term ‘mediarchy’. To understand mediarchy, we need to look both at the effects that the media have on us and also at the new forms of being and experience that they induce in us. We can never entirely escape from the effects of the mediarchies that operate through us but by becoming more aware of their conditioning, we can develop the new forms of political analysis and practice which are essential if we are to rise to the unprecedented challenges of our time. This comprehensive and far-reaching book will be essential reading for students and scholars in media and communications, politics and sociology, and it will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the multiple and complex ways that the media – from newspapers and TV to social media and the internet – shape our social, political and personal lives today.

Download or read book The Panorama written by Stephan Oettermann and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The significance of panorama painting in the nineteenth century is frequently cited in contemporary debates about visuality and the emergence of the modern spectator. Stephan Oettermann's The Panorama is the first major historical study to appear in English of the rich phenomenon of the panorama, one of the most influential forms of visual entertainment in the nineteenth century. In this richly illustrated book Oettermann gives readers a concrete sense of the structural and experiential reality of the panorama, and the many forms it took throughout Europe and North America--a crucial task given that very few of the original nineteenth-century panoramas survive. At the same time, he outlines the many ways in which these remarkable and often immense 360-degree images were part of a larger transformation of the status of the observer and of popular culture. Thus, the panorama is treated not only as a new kind of image but also as an architectural and informational component of the new urban spaces and media networks.