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Cultivation and Catastrophe: The Lyric Ecology of Modern Black Literature (The <I>Callaloo</I> African Diaspora Series)
by Sonya PosmentierAt the intersection of social and environmental history there has emerged a rich body of black literary response to natural and agricultural experiences, whether the legacy of enforced agricultural labor or of the destruction and displacement brought about by a hurricane. In Cultivation and Catastrophe, Sonya Posmentier uncovers a vivid diasporic tradition of black environmental writing that responds to the aftermath of plantation slavery, urbanization, and free and forced migrations. While humanist discourses of African American and postcolonial studies often sustain a line between nature and culture, this book instead emphasizes the relationship between them, offering an innovative environmental history of modern black literature. Posmentier argues that environmental experiences of growth and rupture define the literature of black freedom, an archive that ranges from sonnets, mini-epics, documentary poems, periodicals, and novels to blues songs, dancehall productions, and ethnographic writing. In turn, this literature generates important and surprising models for ecological thought. Claude McKay, for example, connects rows of potatoes to the poetic line; Zora Neale Hurston composes rhythmic communal lyrics in the Florida "muck" following a deadly hurricane; and Derek Walcott critiques property-based ecological relations through the archipelagic shape of his mid-career poetry. Posmentier examines how these writers, along with Gwendolyn Brooks, Bessie Smith, Sterling Brown, Lloyd Lovindeer, Kamau Brathwaite, and others give voice to racialized experiences of alienation from the land while simultaneously envisioning a modern poetics of survival, repair, and generation. Going against the grain of scholarship that has situated modern black diasporic agency largely in metropolitan sites, Posmentier traces a black literary history of environmental and social disaster while exploring the possibilities and limits of poetry as an archive for black modern culture in its many forms. This pathbreaking book offers stunning new insight into modern black literature, environmental humanities, and poetry and poetics.
Cultivation and Catastrophe: The Lyric Ecology of Modern Black Literature (The <I>Callaloo</I> African Diaspora Series)
by Sonya PosmentierAt the intersection of social and environmental history there has emerged a rich body of black literary response to natural and agricultural experiences, whether the legacy of enforced agricultural labor or of the destruction and displacement brought about by a hurricane. In Cultivation and Catastrophe, Sonya Posmentier uncovers a vivid diasporic tradition of black environmental writing that responds to the aftermath of plantation slavery, urbanization, and free and forced migrations. While humanist discourses of African American and postcolonial studies often sustain a line between nature and culture, this book instead emphasizes the relationship between them, offering an innovative environmental history of modern black literature. Posmentier argues that environmental experiences of growth and rupture define the literature of black freedom, an archive that ranges from sonnets, mini-epics, documentary poems, periodicals, and novels to blues songs, dancehall productions, and ethnographic writing. In turn, this literature generates important and surprising models for ecological thought. Claude McKay, for example, connects rows of potatoes to the poetic line; Zora Neale Hurston composes rhythmic communal lyrics in the Florida "muck" following a deadly hurricane; and Derek Walcott critiques property-based ecological relations through the archipelagic shape of his mid-career poetry. Posmentier examines how these writers, along with Gwendolyn Brooks, Bessie Smith, Sterling Brown, Lloyd Lovindeer, Kamau Brathwaite, and others give voice to racialized experiences of alienation from the land while simultaneously envisioning a modern poetics of survival, repair, and generation. Going against the grain of scholarship that has situated modern black diasporic agency largely in metropolitan sites, Posmentier traces a black literary history of environmental and social disaster while exploring the possibilities and limits of poetry as an archive for black modern culture in its many forms. This pathbreaking book offers stunning new insight into modern black literature, environmental humanities, and poetry and poetics.
Cults and Conspiracies: A Literary History
by Theodore ZiolkowskiHuman beings have believed in conspiracies presumably as long as there have been groups of at least three people in which one was convinced that the other two were plotting against him or her. In that sense one might look back as far as Eve and the serpent to find the world;€™s first conspiracy. Whereas recent generations have tended to find their conspiracies in politics and government, the past often sought its mysteries in religious cults or associations. In ancient Rome, for example, the senate tried to prohibit the cult of Isis lest its euphoric excesses undermine public morality and political stability. And during the Middle Ages, many rulers feared such powerful and mysterious religious orders as the Knights Templar.Fascination with the arcane is a driving force in this comprehensive survey of conspiracy fiction. Theodore Ziolkowski traces the evolution of cults, orders, lodges, secret societies, and conspiracies through various literary manifestations;¢;‚¬;€?drama, romance, epic, novel, opera;¢;‚¬;€?down to the thrillers of the twenty-first century. Arguing that the lure of the arcane throughout the ages has remained a constant factor of human fascination, Ziolkowski demonstrates that the content of conspiracy has shifted from religion by way of philosophy and social theory to politics. In the process, he reveals, the underlying mythic pattern was gradually co-opted for the subversive ends of conspiracy.Cults and Conspiracies considers Euripides;€™s Bacchae, Andreae;€™s Chymical Wedding, Mozart;€™s The Magic Flute, and Eco;€™s Foucault;€™s Pendulum, among other seminal works. Mimicking the genre;€™s quest-driven narrative arc, the reader searches for the significance of conspiracy fiction and is rewarded with the author;€™s cogent reflections in the final chapter. After much investigation, Ziolkowski reinforces Umberto Eco;€™s notion that the most powerful secret, the magnetic center of conspiracy fiction, is in fact "a secret without content."
Cults and Conspiracies: A Literary History
by Theodore ZiolkowskiHuman beings have believed in conspiracies presumably as long as there have been groups of at least three people in which one was convinced that the other two were plotting against him or her. In that sense one might look back as far as Eve and the serpent to find the world;€™s first conspiracy. Whereas recent generations have tended to find their conspiracies in politics and government, the past often sought its mysteries in religious cults or associations. In ancient Rome, for example, the senate tried to prohibit the cult of Isis lest its euphoric excesses undermine public morality and political stability. And during the Middle Ages, many rulers feared such powerful and mysterious religious orders as the Knights Templar.Fascination with the arcane is a driving force in this comprehensive survey of conspiracy fiction. Theodore Ziolkowski traces the evolution of cults, orders, lodges, secret societies, and conspiracies through various literary manifestations;¢;‚¬;€?drama, romance, epic, novel, opera;¢;‚¬;€?down to the thrillers of the twenty-first century. Arguing that the lure of the arcane throughout the ages has remained a constant factor of human fascination, Ziolkowski demonstrates that the content of conspiracy has shifted from religion by way of philosophy and social theory to politics. In the process, he reveals, the underlying mythic pattern was gradually co-opted for the subversive ends of conspiracy.Cults and Conspiracies considers Euripides;€™s Bacchae, Andreae;€™s Chymical Wedding, Mozart;€™s The Magic Flute, and Eco;€™s Foucault;€™s Pendulum, among other seminal works. Mimicking the genre;€™s quest-driven narrative arc, the reader searches for the significance of conspiracy fiction and is rewarded with the author;€™s cogent reflections in the final chapter. After much investigation, Ziolkowski reinforces Umberto Eco;€™s notion that the most powerful secret, the magnetic center of conspiracy fiction, is in fact "a secret without content."
The Cults of Sainte Foy and the Cultural Work of Saints (Routledge Research in Art and Religion)
by Kathleen AshleyBringing together artifacts, texts, and practices within an interpretive framework that stresses the cultural work performed by saints, Kathleen Ashley presents a comparative study of the cults of the medieval Sainte Foy at a number of the sites where she was especially venerated. This book analyzes how each cult site produced the saint it needed, appropriating or creating whatever was required to that end. Ashley’s approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, incorporating visual, religious, medieval, and women’s and gender studies as well as literary studies and social history. She uses the theoretical framework of "cultural work" to analyze how the cult of Sainte Foy was sponsored and received by specific groups in different locales in Europe. The book is comprehensive in terms of historical as well as geographical range, tracing the history of the cult from the early Middle Ages into the present day. It also includes historiographical analysis, examining the way the cults of Sainte Foy have been represented in various historical accounts. Ashley’s narrative challenges the boundary between "elite" and "popular" culture and complicates the traditional vernacular vs. Latin language binary. A chief aim of the study is to show how "art" objects always operated in conjunction with other cultural texts to construct a saint’s cult. The volume is heavily illustrated, showing artifacts such as stained-glass windows and wall paintings which are not readily available from any other source. This book will be of special interest to scholars in art history, medieval history, gender studies, and religion.
The Cults of Sainte Foy and the Cultural Work of Saints (Routledge Research in Art and Religion)
by Kathleen AshleyBringing together artifacts, texts, and practices within an interpretive framework that stresses the cultural work performed by saints, Kathleen Ashley presents a comparative study of the cults of the medieval Sainte Foy at a number of the sites where she was especially venerated. This book analyzes how each cult site produced the saint it needed, appropriating or creating whatever was required to that end. Ashley’s approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, incorporating visual, religious, medieval, and women’s and gender studies as well as literary studies and social history. She uses the theoretical framework of "cultural work" to analyze how the cult of Sainte Foy was sponsored and received by specific groups in different locales in Europe. The book is comprehensive in terms of historical as well as geographical range, tracing the history of the cult from the early Middle Ages into the present day. It also includes historiographical analysis, examining the way the cults of Sainte Foy have been represented in various historical accounts. Ashley’s narrative challenges the boundary between "elite" and "popular" culture and complicates the traditional vernacular vs. Latin language binary. A chief aim of the study is to show how "art" objects always operated in conjunction with other cultural texts to construct a saint’s cult. The volume is heavily illustrated, showing artifacts such as stained-glass windows and wall paintings which are not readily available from any other source. This book will be of special interest to scholars in art history, medieval history, gender studies, and religion.
Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature: Wuthering Heights and Company
by H. ShacharFilm and television adaptations of classic literature have held a longstanding appeal for audiences, an appeal that this book sets out to examine. With a particular focus on Wuthering Heights , the book examines adaptations made from the 1930s to the twenty-first century, providing an understanding of how they help shape our cultural landscape.
Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (Picador Collection #16)
by Clive James‘In this book can be heard the merest edge of an enormous conversation. As they never were in life, we can imagine the speakers all gathered in some vast room, wearing name tags in case they don’t recognize each other (although some recognize each other all too well, and avoid contact). My heroes and heroines are here. The reader will recognize some of their names, while other names will be more obscure. My intellectual betes noires are here too, and the same division might apply.’ An almanac combining a comprehensive survey of modern culture with an annotated index of who-was-who and what-was-what, Cultural Amnesia is Clive James’ unique take on the places and the faces that shaped the twentieth-century. From Anna Akhmatova to Stefan Zweig, via Charles de Gaulle, Hitler, Thomas Mann and Wittgenstein, this varied and unfailingly absorbing book is both story and history, both public memoir and personal record – and provides an essential field-guide to the vast movements of taste, intellect, politics and delusion that helped to prepare the times we live in now.
Cultural Anatomies of the Heart in Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Harvey
by Marjorie O'Rourke BoyleThis book probes beneath modern scientific and sentimental concepts of the heart to discover its past mysteries. Historical hearts evidenced essential aspects of human existence that still endure in modern thought and experience of political community, psychological mentality, and physical vitality. Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle revises ordinary assumptions about the heart with original interdisciplinary research on religious beliefs and theological and philosophical ideas. Her book uncovers the thought of Aristotle, William Harvey, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvinas it relates to the heart. It analyzes Augustine’s outlaw heart in cultural deviance from biblical law; Aquinas’s problematic argument for the permanence of the natural law in the heart; and Calvin’s advocacy for an affective heart re-created by the Spirit from its fallen nature. This book of cultural anatomies is the climax of her dozen years of publications on the heart.
Cultural Anatomies of the Heart in Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Harvey
by Marjorie O'Rourke BoyleThis book probes beneath modern scientific and sentimental concepts of the heart to discover its past mysteries. Historical hearts evidenced essential aspects of human existence that still endure in modern thought and experience of political community, psychological mentality, and physical vitality. Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle revises ordinary assumptions about the heart with original interdisciplinary research on religious beliefs and theological and philosophical ideas. Her book uncovers the thought of Aristotle, William Harvey, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and John Calvinas it relates to the heart. It analyzes Augustine’s outlaw heart in cultural deviance from biblical law; Aquinas’s problematic argument for the permanence of the natural law in the heart; and Calvin’s advocacy for an affective heart re-created by the Spirit from its fallen nature. This book of cultural anatomies is the climax of her dozen years of publications on the heart.
Cultural and Literary Representations of the Automobile in French Indochina: A Colonial Roadshow (Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture)
by Stéphanie PonsavadyHow are the pleasures and thrills of the automobile linked to France’s history of conquest, colonialism, and exploitation in Southeast Asia? Cultural and Literary Representations of the Automobile in French Indochina addresses the contradictions of the “progress” of French colonialism and their consequences through the lens of the automobile. Stéphanie Ponsavady examines the development of transportation systems in French Indochina at the turn of the twentieth century, analyzing archival material and French and Vietnamese literature to critically assess French colonialism.
Cultural and Literary Representations of the Automobile in French Indochina: A Colonial Roadshow (Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture)
by Stéphanie PonsavadyHow are the pleasures and thrills of the automobile linked to France’s history of conquest, colonialism, and exploitation in Southeast Asia? Cultural and Literary Representations of the Automobile in French Indochina addresses the contradictions of the “progress” of French colonialism and their consequences through the lens of the automobile. Stéphanie Ponsavady examines the development of transportation systems in French Indochina at the turn of the twentieth century, analyzing archival material and French and Vietnamese literature to critically assess French colonialism.
Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror: The Melancholic Sublime (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies)
by Matthew LeggattThis book re-examines the role of the sublime across a range of disparate cultural texts, from architecture and art, to literature, digital technology, and film, detailing a worrying trend towards nostalgia and arguing that, although the sublime has the potential to be the most powerful uniting aesthetic force, it currently spreads fear, violence, and retrospection. In exploring contemporary culture, this book touches on the role of architecture to provoke feelings of sublimity, the role of art in the aftermath of destructive events, literature’s establishment of the historical moment as a point of sublime transformation and change, and the place of nostalgia and the returning of past practices in digital culture from gaming to popular cinema.
Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror: The Melancholic Sublime (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies)
by Matthew LeggattThis book re-examines the role of the sublime across a range of disparate cultural texts, from architecture and art, to literature, digital technology, and film, detailing a worrying trend towards nostalgia and arguing that, although the sublime has the potential to be the most powerful uniting aesthetic force, it currently spreads fear, violence, and retrospection. In exploring contemporary culture, this book touches on the role of architecture to provoke feelings of sublimity, the role of art in the aftermath of destructive events, literature’s establishment of the historical moment as a point of sublime transformation and change, and the place of nostalgia and the returning of past practices in digital culture from gaming to popular cinema.
Cultural Antagonism and the Crisis of Reality in Latin America
by Horacio LegrásFor most of the 20th century, Latin American literature and art have contested political and cultural projects of homogenization of a manifestly diverse continent. Cultural Antagonism and the Crisis of Reality in Twentieth-Century Latin America explores literary and humanist experimentations and questions of gender, race, and ethnicity as well as the contradictions of capitalist development that belie such homogenization by reconfiguring the sense of the real in Latin America.Covering four key geographical areas, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and the Andes, every chapter delves into a question that has been central to the humanities in the last 20 years: Indigenous world-views, gender, race, neo-liberalism and visual culture. Legrás illuminates these issues with a thorough consideration of the theoretical questions inherent to how new identities disrupt the imaginary stability of social formations.
Cultural Antagonism and the Crisis of Reality in Latin America
by Horacio LegrásFor most of the 20th century, Latin American literature and art have contested political and cultural projects of homogenization of a manifestly diverse continent. Cultural Antagonism and the Crisis of Reality in Twentieth-Century Latin America explores literary and humanist experimentations and questions of gender, race, and ethnicity as well as the contradictions of capitalist development that belie such homogenization by reconfiguring the sense of the real in Latin America.Covering four key geographical areas, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and the Andes, every chapter delves into a question that has been central to the humanities in the last 20 years: Indigenous world-views, gender, race, neo-liberalism and visual culture. Legrás illuminates these issues with a thorough consideration of the theoretical questions inherent to how new identities disrupt the imaginary stability of social formations.
Cultural Archives of Atrocity: Essays on the Protest Tradition in Kenyan Literature, Culture and Society
by Muriungi Columba Charles Kebaya Makokha Justus Kizito SiboeStudies on the aesthetic representations of atrocity the world over have taken different discursive dimensions from history, sociology, political to human rights. These perspectives are usually geared towards understanding the manifestations, extent, political and economic implications of atrocities. In all these cases, representation has been the singular concern. Cultural Archives of Atrocity: Essays on the Protest Tradition in Kenyan Literature, Culture and Society brings together generic ways of interrogating artistic representations of atrocity in Kenya. Couched on interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches, essays in this volume investigate representations of Atrocity in Kenyan Literature, Film, Popular Music and other mediated cultural art forms. Contributors to this volume not only bring on board multiple and competing perspectives on studying atrocity and how they are archived but provide refreshing and valuable insights in examining the artistic and cultural interpellations of atrocity within the socio-political imaginaries of the Kenyan nation. This volume forms part of the growing critical resources for scholars undertaking studies on atrocity within the fields of ethnic studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, peace and conflict, criminology, psychology, political economy and history in Kenya.
Cultural Archives of Atrocity: Essays on the Protest Tradition in Kenyan Literature, Culture and Society
by Charles Kebaya Colomba Kaburi Muriungi J. K. S. MakokhaStudies on the aesthetic representations of atrocity the world over have taken different discursive dimensions from history, sociology, political to human rights. These perspectives are usually geared towards understanding the manifestations, extent, political and economic implications of atrocities. In all these cases, representation has been the singular concern. Cultural Archives of Atrocity: Essays on the Protest Tradition in Kenyan Literature, Culture and Society brings together generic ways of interrogating artistic representations of atrocity in Kenya. Couched on interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches, essays in this volume investigate representations of Atrocity in Kenyan Literature, Film, Popular Music and other mediated cultural art forms. Contributors to this volume not only bring on board multiple and competing perspectives on studying atrocity and how they are archived but provide refreshing and valuable insights in examining the artistic and cultural interpellations of atrocity within the socio-political imaginaries of the Kenyan nation. This volume forms part of the growing critical resources for scholars undertaking studies on atrocity within the fields of ethnic studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, peace and conflict, criminology, psychology, political economy and history in Kenya.
Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
by John GuilloryJohn Guillory challenges the most fundamental premises of the canon debate by resituating the problem of canon formation in an entirely new theoretical framework. The result is a book that promises to recast not only the debate about the literary curriculum but also the controversy over "multiculturalism" and the current "crisis of the humanities." Employing concepts drawn from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology, Guillory argues that canon formation must be understood less as a question of the representation of social groups than as a question of the distribution of "cultural capital" in the schools, which regulate access to literacy, to the practices of reading and writing.
Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
by John GuilloryJohn Guillory challenges the most fundamental premises of the canon debate by resituating the problem of canon formation in an entirely new theoretical framework. The result is a book that promises to recast not only the debate about the literary curriculum but also the controversy over "multiculturalism" and the current "crisis of the humanities." Employing concepts drawn from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology, Guillory argues that canon formation must be understood less as a question of the representation of social groups than as a question of the distribution of "cultural capital" in the schools, which regulate access to literacy, to the practices of reading and writing.
Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
by John GuilloryJohn Guillory challenges the most fundamental premises of the canon debate by resituating the problem of canon formation in an entirely new theoretical framework. The result is a book that promises to recast not only the debate about the literary curriculum but also the controversy over "multiculturalism" and the current "crisis of the humanities." Employing concepts drawn from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology, Guillory argues that canon formation must be understood less as a question of the representation of social groups than as a question of the distribution of "cultural capital" in the schools, which regulate access to literacy, to the practices of reading and writing.
Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
by John GuilloryJohn Guillory challenges the most fundamental premises of the canon debate by resituating the problem of canon formation in an entirely new theoretical framework. The result is a book that promises to recast not only the debate about the literary curriculum but also the controversy over "multiculturalism" and the current "crisis of the humanities." Employing concepts drawn from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology, Guillory argues that canon formation must be understood less as a question of the representation of social groups than as a question of the distribution of "cultural capital" in the schools, which regulate access to literacy, to the practices of reading and writing.
Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
by John GuilloryJohn Guillory challenges the most fundamental premises of the canon debate by resituating the problem of canon formation in an entirely new theoretical framework. The result is a book that promises to recast not only the debate about the literary curriculum but also the controversy over "multiculturalism" and the current "crisis of the humanities." Employing concepts drawn from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology, Guillory argues that canon formation must be understood less as a question of the representation of social groups than as a question of the distribution of "cultural capital" in the schools, which regulate access to literacy, to the practices of reading and writing.
Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
by John GuilloryJohn Guillory challenges the most fundamental premises of the canon debate by resituating the problem of canon formation in an entirely new theoretical framework. The result is a book that promises to recast not only the debate about the literary curriculum but also the controversy over "multiculturalism" and the current "crisis of the humanities." Employing concepts drawn from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology, Guillory argues that canon formation must be understood less as a question of the representation of social groups than as a question of the distribution of "cultural capital" in the schools, which regulate access to literacy, to the practices of reading and writing.
Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation
by John GuilloryAn enlarged edition to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of John Guillory’s formative text on the literary canon. Since its publication in 1993, John Guillory’s Cultural Capital has been a signal text for understanding the codification and uses of the literary canon. Cultural Capital reconsiders the social basis for aesthetic judgment and exposes the unequal distribution of symbolic and linguistic knowledge on which culture has long been based. Drawing from Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology, Guillory argues that canon formation must be understood less as a question of the representation of social groups and more as a question of the distribution of cultural capital in schools, which regulate access to literacy, to the practices of reading and writing. Now, as the crisis of the canon has evolved into the so-called crisis of the humanities, Guillory’s groundbreaking, incisive work has never been more urgent. As scholar and critic Merve Emre writes in her introduction to this enlarged edition: “Exclusion, selection, reflection, representation—these are the terms on which the canon wars of the last century were fought, and the terms that continue to inform debates about, for instance, decolonizing the curriculum and the rhetoric of antiracist pedagogy.”