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The history of the Philippines is a long and complex one but the stories and reflections in Dark Days of Authoritarianism, from remarkable individuals who were willing to stake their lives for freedom, shed light on life under the martial law instituted by President Ferdinand Marcos from 1972 to 1981, and up to the peaceful popular uprising of 1986. This book not only covers the social, economic and political conditions across the country during martial law but also how those conditions affected ordinary people personally and spiritually. Many of the contributions illustrate the strength and determination of Philippine women to create a better society despite being met by great adversity and the importance of Christian faith for sustaining the lives of those who suffered and survived this tumultuous period. This book provides important lessons for a new generation facing the menace of authoritarianism today, wherever they are, to fight for democracy and resist any attempts to diminish people’s freedom.
Collective Creativity combines complex and ambivalent concepts. While ‘creativity’ is currently experiencing an inflationary boom in popularity, the term ‘collective’ appeared, until recently, rather controversial due to its ideological implications in twentieth-century politics. In a world defined by global cultural practice, the notion of collectivity has gained new relevance. This publication discusses a number of concepts of creativity and shows that, in opposition to the traditional ideal of the individual as creative genius, cultural theorists today emphasize the collaborative nature of creativity; they show that ‘creativity makes alterity, discontinuity and difference attrac...
The Berlin Wall was coming down, the Soviet Union was dissolving, Communist China was well on its way down the capitalist path; the world was witnessing political and social transformations without precedent. Artists, seeing it all firsthand, responded with a revolution of their own. What form this revolution took—how artists in the 1980s marked their societies' traumatic transition from decaying socialism to an insecure future—emerges in this remarkable volume. With in-depth perspectives on art and artists in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans and Mitteleuropa, China, and Cuba—all from scholars and art critics who were players in the tumultuous cultural landscapes they describe—th...
"Essays, poems, songs, folkloric anecdotes and photographs celebrating the myth of Mao. ... The editor supplies an insightful, and cohesing introduction". -- Reference & Research Book News "(A) highly entertaining and informative collection of translations of official, admiring, tacky, but sometimes also highly critical writings, and illustrations of objects, all featuring Mao. ... A must-have book for everybody interested in contemporary China, Mao, and his legacy now and in the future". -- China Information
In Global Goes Local, international scholars from a variety of disciplinary perspectives examine different forms of popular culture in Asia. Covering topics from pop music in Korea to TV commercials in Malaysia, this collection shows how imported cultural forms can be invested with fresh meaning and transformed by local artists to result in new forms of assertion and resistance that also meet the needs of their particular audiences.
How the valorization of artistic and political dissidence has contributed to the rise of Chinese contemporary art in the West. Interest in Chinese contemporary art increased dramatically in the West shortly after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Sparked by political sympathy and the mediatized response to the event, Western curators, critics, and art historians were quick to view the new art as an expression of dissident resistance to the Chinese regime. In this book, Marie Leduc proposes that this attribution of political dissidence is not only the result of latent Cold War perceptions about China, but also indicative of the art world's demand for artistically and politically provocative...
Modern Chinese painting embodies the constant renewal and reinvigorations of Chinese civilization amidst rebellions, reforms, and revolutions, even if the process may appear confusing and bewildering. It also demonstrates the persistence of tradition and limits of continuities and changes in modern Chinese cluture. Most significantly, it compels us to ask several important questions in the study of modern Chinese culture: How extensively can cultural tradition be re-interpreted before it is subverted? At what point is creative re-invention an act of betrayal of tradition? How has selective borrowing from Chinese tradition and foreign cultrue enabled modern Chinese artists to sustain themselves in the modern world? By focusing on the art of Huang Pin-hung (1865-1955), particularly his late work, this book attempts to provide some answers to these questions.
As increasing attention is drawn to globalization, questions arise about the fate of "the nation," a political and social unit that for centuries has seemed the common-sense way to organize the world. In Nation Work, Timothy Brook and Andr Schmid draw together eight essays that use historical examples from Asian countries--China, India, Korea, and Japan--to enrich our understandings of the origin and growth of nations. Asia provides fertile ground for this inquiry, the volume argues, because in Asia the history of the modern nation has been inseparable from global influences in the form of Western imperialism. Yet, while the impetus for building a modern national identity may have come from ...
Cultural Revolution Culture, often denigrated as nothing but propaganda, was liked not only in its heyday but continues to be enjoyed today. A Continuous Revolution sets out to explain its legacy. By considering Cultural Revolution propaganda art—music, stage works, prints and posters, comics, and literature—from the point of view of its longue durée, Barbara Mittler suggests it was able to build on a tradition of earlier art works, and this allowed for its sedimentation in cultural memory and its proliferation in contemporary China. Taking the aesthetic experience of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) as her base, Mittler juxtaposes close readings and analyses of cultural products from the period with impressions given in a series of personal interviews conducted in the early 2000s with Chinese from diverse class and generational backgrounds. By including much testimony from these original voices, Mittler illustrates the extremely multifaceted and contradictory nature of the Cultural Revolution, both in terms of artistic production and of its cultural experience.
Performance Art in China takes as its subject one of the most dynamic and controversial areas of experimental art practice in China. In his comprehensive study, Sydney-based theorist and art historian Thomas J. Berghuis introduces and investigates the idea of the "role of the mediated subject of the acting body in art," a notion grounded in the realization that the body is always present in art practice, as well as its subsequent, secondary representations. Through a series of in-depth case studies, Berghuis reveals how, during the past 25 years, Chinese performance artists have "acted out" their art, often in opposition to the principles governing correct behavior in the public domain. In addition to a 25-year chronology of events, a systematic index of places, names and key terms, as well as a bibliography and a glossary in English and Chinese, this study also offers the reader numerous previously unpublished photos and documents.