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Body, Subject & Subjected
Hominids have always been obsessed with representing their own bodies. The first "selfies" were prehistoric negative hand images and human stick figures, followed by stone and ceramic representations of the human figure. Thousands of years later, moving via historic art and literature to contemporary social media, the contemporary term "selfie" was self-generated. The book illuminates some "selfies". This collection of critical essays about the fixation on the human self addresses a multi-faceted geographic set of cultures -- the Iberian Peninsula to pre-Columbian America and Hispanic America -- analysing such representations from medical, literal and metaphorical perspectives over centuries...
Sustenance for the Body & Soul
The food-secure and/or privileged worldwide no longer eat and drink simply to maintain life itself. They have the advantage and choice to regard "sustenance" not just as fuel for the body/machine but as a source of pleasure and entertainment for the mind/intellect. This enhanced concept of "sustenance" embraces all the senses: visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and tactile, thus including not just food & drink but ceremonies & art forms dealing with them. This book explores the substantive ways food & drink impact human existence. The work comprises five parts: medicine; ceremonies; literature & cinema; art & artists; space/architecture & advertising/art. Food & drink start with the phys...
Crossroads
Crossroads! Intersections physical and/or metaphorical demand processes of consideration, determination, decision and commitment. Stasis is no longer an option where convergence is poised before the unknown. Where categories such as gender, culture, ethnicity, socio-economic status, philosophy and religion clash, the multivariate process can reach such complexity that literary, sociological and psychological tools can have differing interpretations. Real-life intersections range from the mundane (choosing among food items on a menu according to taste preferences) to survival-determinants (evaluating the efficacy of various medical procedures). But such intersections are at the two ends of a ...
Rites, Rituals & Religions
Philosophers have contemplated the meaning of life, the who & the why, since nascent self-consciousness of the evolving hominid species. Yet practical efforts, i.e., control of life, have always transcended the philosophical: how to dominate what happens to the physical body itself, how to control the environment, and the interaction therefrom. Thus are born rites, rituals & religions. A rite can be a prescribed religious or other solemn ceremony or act it can be a social custom or practice, or even a mundane conventional act. A ritual can be the established form for a ceremony, the order of words used for example; a ritual observance can be either a system of ceremonial acts or actions, or ...
Women as Creators and Subjects Across Disciplines and Cultures
This book crosses multiple world cultures as the chapters highlight both women as creators (by) and women as subjects (about). Chapter topics address widely varying socio-cultural facets of multi-cultures from various historical, sociological, artistic and literary perspectives. The title, Women as Creators and Subjects, in that order, summarizes the content of the book, which begins with commentary on women as creators and moves to elucidating about women to establish a framework. Themes range from power and politics in regards to Aztec women’s bodies, roles of historical indigenous, Spanish, Latin America, and Latinx women, and female participation in development efforts in the Global South of studio art, i.e., visual representations of women by women, as well as of female muses for male artists—and critical articles about all manner of works and genres literally by a litany of women artists and writers, both in literature and film, as well as women as represented in works by males, all from across the Middle East, Global South, Europe and the Americas.
Family, Friends and Foes
Jigsaw puzzles' notorious complexity and mega-multiple, amorphously-shaped pieces provide an appropriate metaphor for the navigating and maneuvering necessary throughout all aspects of human dynamics. Involvement comprises not only efforts by an individual personally trying to fit together a life of relationships with Family, Friends & Foes within complex categories and different levels, but the efforts by groups of individuals within those categories, progressively, by those groups within a larger society and/or societies, and then, across so many so-called boundaries: geographic, ethnic, linguistic, artistic and more. Such is the starting point for this particular collection of essays, whi...
Death & Dying in Hispanic Worlds
The dispassionate intellectual examination of the concepts of death & dying contrasts dramatically with the emotive grieving process experienced by those who mourn. Death & dying are binary concepts in human cultures. Cultural differences reveal their mutual exclusiveness in philosophical outlook, language, and much more. Other sets of binaries come into play under intellectual consideration and emotive behavior, which further divide and shape perceptions, beliefs, and actions of individuals and groups. The presence or absence of religious beliefs about life and death, and disposition of the body and/or soul, are prime distinctions. Likewise the age-old binary of reason vs. faith. To many ob...
Deceit Plus Desire Equals Violence
In comedia societies, a public-opinion system known as honor, complicated by love and desire among men and women, organizes the characters. Violence, the oldest means of social control, results, defining class lines as well as sex roles. A model based on René Girard's theories exposes the social dynamic of works by Lope de Vega and Calderón, and illuminates their portrayal of societies, especially as interpreted for the viewing public.
Laura Esquivel's Mexican Fictions
Explores Laura Esquivel's critical reputation, contextualizes her work in literary movements, and considers hers four novels and the film based on "Like Water for Chocolate" from various perspectives. This book assesses the twenty years of Esquivel criticism.
