Culture as Text, Text as Culture
Culture as Text, Text as Culture

Author: Elodie Lafitte

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2020-05-22

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1527553302

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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.

The Interpretation of Cultures
The Interpretation of Cultures

Author: Clifford Geertz

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2017-08-15

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 0465093566

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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

Author: Clare Bradford

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Published: 2015-06-22

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 1771120223

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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.

Writing Culture
Writing Culture

Author: James Clifford

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 9780520057296

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"Humanists and social scientists alike will profit from reflection on the efforts of the contributors to reimagine anthropology in terms, not only of methodology, but also of politics, ethics, and historical relevance. Every discipline in the human and social sciences could use such a book."--Hayden White, author of Metahistory

Big Tradition and Chinese Mythological Studies
Big Tradition and Chinese Mythological Studies

Author: Jiansheng Hu

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-08-11

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9811546347

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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.

The Dialogic Emergence of Culture
The Dialogic Emergence of Culture

Author: Dennis Tedlock

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780252064432

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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

Nation, Culture, Text
Nation, Culture, Text

Author: Graeme Turner

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 0415088852

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

Understanding Culture through Language and Literature
Understanding Culture through Language and Literature

Author: Erdem Erinç

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2018-12-17

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1527523705

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Within its wide boundaries, culture creates written and visual reflection areas for itself. As the reflection area expands through time, space and nature, it becomes richer, and, in doing so, it needs to be appreciated. The cultural reflection of historical accumulation leaves us in front of an immense mirror. In general terms, this book presents the reader with the intertwined relationships between culture and literature, culture and language, and culture and history or art history. More specifically, it investigates the joy of a birth, a funeral ritual, the merriness of a melody, and the taste of a meal as they are reflected within the texts that Asia has accumulated throughout its history. Its central concern is the investigation of issues related to culture and how it is reflected in literature, language, or history in a particular place.

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

Author: Jonathan Silverman

Publisher: Broadview Press

Published: 2018-04-30

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1770486852

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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.

Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature
Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature

Author: Karel Thein

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-09-30

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 1000457419

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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.