Culture as Text, Text as Culture

Culture as Text, Text as Culture PDF Author: Elodie Lafitte
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527553302
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Culture as Text, Text as Culture represents a novel, interdisciplinary analysis of textuality as it pertains to Cultural Studies. More specifically, the work examines how the analysis of texts has shaped the most vital contemporary debate of Cultural Studies: the recognition that all texts and their contexts are constructs. Building upon a Post-structural/Post-modern understanding of truth as a construct, Cultural Studies has long since acknowledged the ability of texts to express the time and culture of their origin. This work, however, expands this idea, demonstrating not only how a culture is preserved in a text, but how that text can in turn define its culture, even redefine its history. This compendium is structured around four of the most prominent contemporary topics of Cultural Studies: the relationship between historical and fictional writing, the ability of authors to recreate or redefine history, the relationship between language and image, and the ability for traditionally marginalized groups to reassert their place in history. The book presents articles from a large spectrum of disciplinary fields and civilizations in order to demonstrate how the application of Cultural Studies can unite seemingly disparate disciplines.

Culture as Text, Text as Culture

Culture as Text, Text as Culture PDF Author: Elodie Lafitte
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527553302
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Get Book Here

Book Description
Culture as Text, Text as Culture represents a novel, interdisciplinary analysis of textuality as it pertains to Cultural Studies. More specifically, the work examines how the analysis of texts has shaped the most vital contemporary debate of Cultural Studies: the recognition that all texts and their contexts are constructs. Building upon a Post-structural/Post-modern understanding of truth as a construct, Cultural Studies has long since acknowledged the ability of texts to express the time and culture of their origin. This work, however, expands this idea, demonstrating not only how a culture is preserved in a text, but how that text can in turn define its culture, even redefine its history. This compendium is structured around four of the most prominent contemporary topics of Cultural Studies: the relationship between historical and fictional writing, the ability of authors to recreate or redefine history, the relationship between language and image, and the ability for traditionally marginalized groups to reassert their place in history. The book presents articles from a large spectrum of disciplinary fields and civilizations in order to demonstrate how the application of Cultural Studies can unite seemingly disparate disciplines.

Visualizing the Text

Visualizing the Text PDF Author: Lauren Beck
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611496462
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
This volume presents in-depth and contextualized analyses of a wealth of visual materials. The images included in the book provide readers with a mesmerizing and informative glimpse into how the early modern world was interpreted by image-makers and presented to viewers during a period that spans from manuscript culture to the age of caricature.

The Interpretation of Cultures

The Interpretation of Cultures PDF Author: Clifford Geertz
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465093566
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
One of the twentieth century's most influential books, this classic work of anthropology offers a groundbreaking exploration of what culture is With The Interpretation of Cultures, the distinguished anthropologist Clifford Geertz developed the concept of thick description, and in so doing, he virtually rewrote the rules of his field. Culture, Geertz argues, does not drive human behavior. Rather, it is a web of symbols that can help us better understand what that behavior means. A thick description explains not only the behavior, but the context in which it occurs, and to describe something thickly, Geertz argues, is the fundamental role of the anthropologist. Named one of the 100 most important books published since World War II by the Times Literary Supplement, The Interpretation of Cultures transformed how we think about others' cultures and our own. This definitive edition, with a foreword by Robert Darnton, remains an essential book for anthropologists, historians, and anyone else seeking to better understand human cultures.

Girls, Texts, Cultures

Girls, Texts, Cultures PDF Author: Clare Bradford
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1771120223
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
This book focuses on girls and girlhoods, texts for and about girls, and the cultural contexts that shape girls’ experience. It brings together scholars from girls’ studies and children’s literature, fields that have traditionally conducted their research separately, and the collaboration showcases the breadth and complexity of girl-related studies. Contributors from disciplines such as sociology, literature, education, and gender studies combine these disciplinary approaches in novel ways with insights from international studies, postcolonial studies, game studies, and other fields. Several of the authors engage in activist and policy-development work around girls who experience poverty and marginalization. Each essay is concerned in one way or another with the politics of girlhood as they manifest in national and cultural contexts, in the everyday practices of girls, and in textual ideologies and agendas. In contemporary Western societies girls and girlhood function to some degree as markers of cultural reproduction and change. The essays in this book proceed from the assumption that girls are active participants in the production of texts and cultural forms; they offer accounts of the diversity of girls’ experience and complex significances of texts by, for, and about girls.

Big Tradition and Chinese Mythological Studies

Big Tradition and Chinese Mythological Studies PDF Author: Jiansheng Hu
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9811546347
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This book focuses on reinterpreting mythical China from the perspective of the cultural theory of big tradition. It is divided into two parts: the first explains the theoretical development and features of the Chinese version of big tradition, identifying the differences between the Eastern and Western cultural traditions (big tradition and great tradition). The second part then reinterprets the core values and mythical ideas of Chinese civilization and traditional culture from the perspective of big tradition. Moving beyond the small tradition of text centrism and using new methods and materials, the book reveals the original meaning and the cultural coding function of big tradition during the preliterate period. Drawing on integrated evidence from literature handed down from ancient times, oral and intangible cultural heritage, tangible culture, cross-cultures, image culture and unearthed documents, the book interprets Chinese cultural traditions and spiritual values from local, archaeological, experiential and survival perspectives, to help readers better understand the mythical codes and genes of early Chinese culture.

Nation, Culture, Text

Nation, Culture, Text PDF Author: Graeme Turner
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415088852
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The first collection of cultural studies essays from Australia, selected and introduced for an international readership.

The Dialogic Emergence of Culture

The Dialogic Emergence of Culture PDF Author: Dennis Tedlock
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252064432
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Major figures in contemporary anthropology present a dialogic critique of ethnography. Moving beyond sociolinguistics and performance theory, and inspired by Bakhtin and by their own field experiences, the contributors revise notions of where culture actually resides. This pioneering effort integrates a concern for linguistic processes with interpretive approaches to culture. Culture and ethnography are located in social interaction. The collection contains dialogues that trace the entire course of ethnographic interpretation, from field research to publication. The authors explore an anthropology that actively acknowledges the dialogical nature of its own production. Chapters strike a balance between theory and practice and will also be of interest in cultural studies, literary criticism, linguistics, and philosophy. CONTRIBUTORS: Deborah Tannen, John Attinasi, Paul Friedrich, Billie Jean Isbell, Allan F. Burns, Jane H. Hill, Ruth Behar, Jean DeBernardi, R. P. McDermott, Henry Tylbor, Alton L. Becker, Bruce Mannheim, Dennis Tedlock

Art and Text in Roman Culture

Art and Text in Roman Culture PDF Author: Jas Elsner
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521430302
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
This is a collection of specially commissioned essays exploring the interface between words and images in the Roman world.

Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature

Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature PDF Author: Karel Thein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000457419
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
This volume takes a fresh look at ekphrasis as a textual practice closely connected to our embodied imagination and its verbal dimension; it offers the first detailed study of a large family of ancient ecphrastic shields, often studied separately, but never as an ensemble with its own development. The main objective consists of establishing a theoretical and historical framework that is applied to a series of famous ecphrastic shields starting with the Homeric shield of Achilles. The latter is reinterpreted as a paradigmatic "thing" whose echoing down the centuries is reinforced by the fundamental connection between ekphrasis and artefacts as its primary objects. The book demonstrates that although the ancient sources do not limit ekphrasis to artificial creations, the latter are most efficient in bringing out the intimate affinity between artefacts and vivid mental images as two kind of entities that lack a natural scale and are rightly understood as ontologically unstable. Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature: The World’s Forge should be read by those interested in ancient culture, art and philosophy, but also by those fascinated by the broader issue of imagination and by the interplay between the natural and the artificial.

The World is a Text: Writing About Visual and Popular Culture

The World is a Text: Writing About Visual and Popular Culture PDF Author: Jonathan Silverman
Publisher: Broadview Press
ISBN: 1770486852
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Wherever we look today, popular culture greets us with “texts” that make implicit arguments; this book helps students to think and write critically about these texts. The World Is a Text teaches critical reading, writing, and argument in the context of pop-culture and visual examples, showing students how to “read” everyday objects and visual texts with basic semiotics. The book shows how texts of all kinds, from a painting to a university building to a pair of sneakers, make complex arguments through their use of signs and symbols, and shows students how to make these arguments in their own essays. This new edition is rich with images, real-world examples, writing and discussion prompts, and examples of academic and student writing. The first part of the book is a rhetoric covering argumentation, research, the writing process, and adapting from high-school to college writing, while the second part explores writing about specific cultural topics. Notes, instruction, and advice about research are woven into the text, with research instruction closely tied to the topic being discussed. New to the updated compact edition are chapters on fashion, sports, and nature and the environment.