Reading the Contemporary
Reading the Contemporary

Author: Olu Oguibe

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13:

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In the past decade, contemporary African art has been featured in major exhibtions in museums, galleries, international biennials, and other forums. African cinema has established itself on the stage of world cinema, culminating in the Ouagadougou Film Festival. While African art and visual culture have become an integral part of the art history and cultural studies curricula in universities worldwide, critical readings and interpretations have remained difficult to obtain. This pioneering anthology collects twenty key essays in which major critical thinkers, scholars, and artists explore contemporary African visual culture, locating it within current cultural debates and within the context of the continent's history. The sections of the book are Theory and Cultural Transaction, History, Location and Practice, and Negotiated Identities. Copublished with the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA), London

Reading Beyond the Book
Reading Beyond the Book

Author: Danielle Fuller

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-04-02

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1135080372

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Literary culture has become a form of popular culture over the last fifteen years thanks to the success of televised book clubs, film adaptations, big-box book stores, online bookselling, and face-to-face and online book groups. This volume offers the first critical analysis of mass reading events and the contemporary meanings of reading in the UK, USA, and Canada based on original interviews and surveys with readers and event organizers. The resurgence of book groups has inspired new cultural formations of what the authors call "shared reading." They interrogate the enduring attraction of an old technology for readers, community organizers, and government agencies, exploring the social practices inspired by the sharing of books in public spaces and revealing the complex ideological investments made by readers, cultural workers, institutions, and the mass media in the meanings of reading.

How to Read Contemporary Art
How to Read Contemporary Art

Author: Michael Wilson

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams

Published: 2013-05-14

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781419707537

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"Today's artists create work that's challenging, complicated, and often perplexing, and this book offers a guide to understanding-and enjoying- the wide range of works on display in museums and galleries worldwide. Organized alphabetically, the book includes more than two hundred works of art made in the last twenty years by living artists from all over the globe, encompassing photography, installation, sculpture, painting, video art, perfomance, and more. Author Michael Wilson explores the impact of a broad selection of the most prominent artists at work around the world, including Francis Alys, Allora & Calzadilla, Luc Tuymans, and Marina Abramovic." - Excerpt from back cover.

Reading Contemporary Picturebooks
Reading Contemporary Picturebooks

Author: David Lewis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-11-12

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1135121524

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Reading Contemporary Picturebooks takes a look at one of the most vibrant branches of children's literature - the modern picturebook. This exciting new book takes a sample of contemporary picturebooks and closely examines the features that make them distinctive and then suggests a way of characterising the 'interanimation' of words and pictures that is the essence of the form. The reasons for the picturebook's vitality and flexibility are also explored and the close bond between the picturebook and its readers is analyzed. Advances in our understanding of how visual images are organized are examined and the book concludes with an attempt to redescribe the picturebook in such a way that pictures, readers and text may be drawn together. Picturing Text will be of interest to students, teachers and researchers interested in reading, children's literature and media studies.

The Art of Looking
The Art of Looking

Author: Lance Esplund

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2018-11-27

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0465094678

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A veteran art critic helps us make sense of modern and contemporary art The landscape of contemporary art has changed dramatically during the last hundred years: from Malevich's 1915 painting of a single black square and Duchamp's 1917 signed porcelain urinal to Jackson Pollock's midcentury "drip" paintings; Chris Burden's "Shoot" (1971), in which the artist was voluntarily shot in the arm with a rifle; Urs Fischer's "You" (2007), a giant hole dug in the floor of a New York gallery; and the conceptual and performance art of today's Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramovic. The shifts have left the art-viewing public (understandably) perplexed. In The Art of Looking, renowned art critic Lance Esplund demonstrates that works of modern and contemporary art are not as indecipherable as they might seem. With patience, insight, and wit, Esplund guides us through the last century of art and empowers us to approach and appreciate it with new eyes. Eager to democratize genres that can feel inaccessible, Esplund encourages viewers to trust their own taste, guts, and common sense. The Art of Looking will open the eyes of viewers who think that recent art is obtuse, nonsensical, and irrelevant, as well as the eyes of those who believe that the art of the past has nothing to say to our present.

Reading Contemporary Performance
Reading Contemporary Performance

Author: Gabrielle Cody

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-09-25

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 1136246568

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As the nature of contemporary performance continues to expand into new forms, genres and media, it requires an increasingly diverse vocabulary. Reading Contemporary Performance provides students, critics and creators with a rich understanding of the key terms and ideas that are central to any discussion of this evolving theatricality. Specially commissioned entries from a wealth of contributors map out the many and varied ways of discussing performance in all of its forms – from theatrical and site-specific performances to live and New Media art. The book is divided into two sections: Concepts - Key terms and ideas arranged according to the five characteristic elements of performance art: time; space; action; performer; audience. Methodologies and Turning Points - The seminal theories and ways of reading performance, such as postmodernism, epic theatre, feminisms, happenings and animal studies. Case Studies – entries in both sections are accompanied by short studies of specific performances and events, demonstrating creative examples of the ideas and issues in question. Three different introductory essays provide multiple entry points into the discussion of contemporary performance, and cross-references for each entry also allow the plotting of one’s own pathway. Reading Contemporary Performance is an invaluable guide, providing not just a solid set of familiarities, but an exploration and contextualisation of this broad and vital field.

Reading Contemporary African Literature
Reading Contemporary African Literature

Author: Reuben Makayiko Chirambo

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 427

ISBN-13: 9401209375

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Reading Contemporary African Literature brings together scholarship on, critical debates about, and examples of reading African literature in all genres – poetry, fiction, and drama including popular culture. The anthology offers studies of African literature from interdisciplinary perspectives that employ sociological, historical, and ethnographic besides literary analysis of the literatures. It has assembled critical and researched essays on a range of topics, theoretical and empirical, by renowned critics and theorists of African literature that evaluate and provide examples of reading African literature that should be of interest to academics, researchers, and students of African literature, culture, and history amongst other subjects. Some of the essays examine authors that have received little or no attention to date in books on recent African literature. These essays provide new insights and scholarship that should broaden and deepen our understanding and appreciation of African literature.

Ali Smith
Ali Smith

Author: Monica Germanà

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-07-18

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1441181555

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In such novels as Hotel World and the Whitbread Prize winning The Accidental, Ali Smith has established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary fiction. Covering her complete oeuvre, from the short stories to her most recent novel There but for the, this is the first comprehensive critical guide to Smith's work. Bringing together leading scholars, Ali Smith: Contemporary Critical Perspectives covers such topics as: • Language, truth and reality • Spectral presences and the uncanny • Gender and sexuality • Cosmopolitanism • Smith's place in the contemporary canon Including a new interview with the author, a chronology of her life and authoritative guides to further reading, this is an essential guide for anyone interested in the best of contemporary fiction.

The Reading Lives of Teens
The Reading Lives of Teens

Author: Chin Ee Loh

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-11-04

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1040223540

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In these changing times of global flows of media and technologies and reports of declining reading enjoyment, researchers, policymakers and educators need to engage anew with essential issues of what counts as reading, what kinds of reading matter and how to support teen reading engagement in school and out-of-school settings. Bringing together contributions from well-known and emerging adolescent literacy researchers from different disciplinary perspectives, this edited collection consolidates contemporary research on teens’ volitional print and digital reading, whether in school or out-of-school contexts. The first part of the book offers overviews of what teens are reading, followed by chapters on community support on reading and new ways of researching teen reading. With chapters from North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and the Middle East, the collection will offer multifaceted and complex insights into what, how and why teens read in different contexts. Reflection questions at the end of each chapter encourage readers to consider how the research can be applied in their own research, policy and practice contexts. This book will be of interest to researchers, policymakers and educators who are invested in supporting adolescent-engaged reading with evidence- based policies and strategies.