"The first extensive monograph for Brazilian artist and activist Maria Thereza Alves, and the subject of her solo show at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporneo in Seville (2015), The Long Road to Xico gathers more than 20 projects made between 1991 and 2015. The publication includes several rare works in the United States and Brazil and an early participant in discourses around post-colonialism and ecology. Includes essays by the editor, Pedro de Llano, and TJ Demos, internationally recognized professor of art and visual culture at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology (2016)."--Amazon.
A study of urban nature that draws together different strands of urban ecology as well as insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought. Postindustrial transitions and changing cultures of nature have produced an unprecedented degree of fascination with urban biodiversity. The “other nature” that flourishes in marginal urban spaces, at one remove from the controlled contours of metropolitan nature, is not the poor relation of rural flora and fauna. Indeed, these islands of biodiversity underline the porosity of the distinction between urban and rural. In Natura Urbana, Matthew Gandy explores urban nature as a multilayered material and symbolic entity, through the lens of urban ecology and the parallel study of diverse cultures of nature at a global scale. Gandy examines the articulation of alternative, and in some cases, counterhegemonic, sources of knowledge about urban nature produced by artists, writers, scientists, as well as curious citizens, including voices seldom heard in environmental discourse. The book is driven by Gandy’s fascination with spontaneous forms of urban nature ranging from postindustrial wastelands brimming with life to the return of such predators as wolves and leopards on the urban fringe. Gandy develops a critical synthesis between different strands of urban ecology and considers whether "urban political ecology," broadly defined, might be imaginatively extended to take fuller account of both the historiography of the ecological sciences,and recent insights derived from feminist, posthuman, and postcolonial thought.
In many contemporary societies we encounter iconoclasm breaking out with renewed violence. Iconoclastic actions against objects of visual material culture and testimonials of history act as dynamite in the public sphere. They are expressions of political, religious, national, and identity conflicts. Even the freedom of art is threatened by censorship and cancel culture. Based on case studies from different world regions, contemporary iconoclasms in art, media, and cultural heritage are critically analyzed from both a global and an interdisciplinary perspective. Divided into three sections, the book discusses attacks on monuments and memorials, idol disputes in museums and the visual arts, and forms of mediated iconoclasm in contemporary art.
Easily digestible for even the busiest of readers, this book serves as a succinct, engaging, and informative guide on how the practice of painting can help improve or maintain health and wellbeing, both within and outside of professional settings.
Contains records describing books, book chapters, articles, and conference papers published in the field of Latin American studies. Coverage includes relevant books as well as over 800 social science and 550 humanities journals and volumes of conference proceedings. Most records include abstracts with evaluations.
The Routledge Handbook of Global Economic History documents and interprets the development of economic history as a global discipline from the later nineteenth century to the present day. Exploring the normative and relativistic nature of different schools and traditions of thought, this handbook not only examines current paradigmatic western approaches, but also those conceived in less open societies and in varied economic, political and cultural contexts. In doing so, this book clears the way for greater critical understanding and a more genuinely global approach to economic history. This handbook brings together leading international contributors in order to systematically address cultural and intellectual traditions around the globe. Many of these are exposed for consideration for the first time in English. The chapters explore dominant ideas and historiographical trends, and open them up to critical transnational perspectives. This volume is essential reading for both academics and students in economic and social history. As this field of study is very much a bridge between the social sciences and humanities, the issues examined in the book will also have relevance for those seeking to understand the evolution of other academic disciplines under the pressures of varied economic, political and cultural circumstances, on both national and global scales.
A study of the intersecting fields of art history, ecology, visual culture, geography, and environmental politics. While ecology has received little systematic attention within art history, its visibility and significance has grown in relation to the threats of climate change and environmental destruction. By engaging artists' widespread aesthetic and political engagement with environmental conditions and processes around the globe—and looking at cutting-edge theoretical, political, and cultural developments in the Global South and North—Decolonizing Nature offers a significant, original contribution to the intersecting fields of art history, ecology, visual culture, geography, and environmental politics. Art historian T. J. Demos, author of Return to the Postcolony: Specters of Colonialism in Contemporary Art (2013), considers the creative proposals of artists and activists for ways of life that bring together ecological sustainability, climate justice, and radical democracy, at a time when such creative proposals are urgently needed.
