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Greeks and Macedonians are presently engaged in an often heated dispute involving competing claims to a single identity. Each group asserts that they, and they alone, have the right to identify themselves as Macedonians. The Greek government denies the existence of a Macedonian nation and insists that all Macedonians are Greeks, while Macedonians vehemently assert their existence as a unique people. Here Loring Danforth examines the Macedonian conflict in light of contemporary theoretical work on ethnic nationalism, the construction of national identities and cultures, the invention of tradition, and the role of the state in the process of building a nation. The conflict is set in the broade...
This compelling text and dramatic photographic essay convey the emotional power of the death rituals of a small Greek village--the funeral, the singing of laments, the distribution of food, the daily visits to the graves, and especially the rite of exhumation. These rituals help Greek villagers face the universal paradox of mourning: how can the living sustain relationships with the dead and at the same time bring them to an end, in order to continue to live meaningfully as members of a community? That is the villagers' dilemma, and our own. Thirty-one moving photographs (reproduced in duotone to do justice to their great beauty) combine with vivid descriptions of the bereaved women of "Pota...
"If the Saint calls you, if you have an open road, then you don't feel the fire as if it were your enemy," says one of the participants in the Anastenaria. This compelling work evokes and contrasts two forms of firewalking and religious healing: first, the Anastenaria, a northern Greek ritual in which people who are possessed by Saint Constantine dance dramatically over red-hot coals, and, second, American firewalking, one of the more spectacular activities of New Age psychology. Loring Danforth not only analyzes these rituals in light of the most recent work in medical and symbolic anthropology but also describes in detail the lives of individual firewalkers, involving the reader personally...
At the height of the Greek Civil War in 1948, 38,000 children were evacuated from their homes in the mountains of northern Greece and relocated to orphanages and children's homes. This book analyses the evacuation, which remains a controversial issue within Greek society.
For many people, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia evokes images of deserts, camels, and oil, along with rich sheikh in white robes, oppressed women in black veils, and terrorists. But when Loring Danforth traveled through the country in 2012, he found a world much more complex and inspiring than he could have ever imagined. With vivid descriptions and moving personal narratives, Danforth takes us across the Kingdom, from the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, the country’s national oil company on the Persian Gulf, to the centuries-old city of Jeddah on the Red Sea coast with its population of undocumented immigrants from all over the Muslim world. He presents detailed portraits of a young woman jailed for protesting the ban on women driving, a Sufi scholar encouraging Muslims and Christians to struggle together with love to know God, and an artist citing the Quran and using metal gears and chains to celebrate the diversity of the pilgrims who come to Mecca. Crossing the Kingdom paints a lucid portrait of contemporary Saudi culture and the lives of individuals, who like us all grapple with modernity at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
Edited by Marc Bessire, Raechell Smith. Text by Loren Coleman, Loring Danforth, Dave Filipi, Sean Foley, Chris Thompson, Nato Thompson.
Macedonia has been contested by its three neighbours – Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece – during and since the demise of the Ottoman Empire. But the Macedonian Question extends far beyond the contested borders of Macedonia to immigrant communities in Europe, Australia and North America. The contributors to this collection explore the contemporary repercussions of the Macedonian Question, which has long been at the heart of Balkan politics. The volume recognises Macedonia as a global issue, and focuses on the politics of identity and difference in both homeland and diaspora.The contributors argue that Macedonia as place and as concept is forged within a transnational network of diasporas, loca...
This text asks what happens to historical memory and cultural identity when state borders undergo radical transformation. Concentrating on Trieste and the Istrian Peninsula it explores displacement from both the viewpoints of the exiles and those who stayed behind.
Compiled from "the chronicles or ancestral records" of James Spearing Loring, from his original manuscript in possession of the new england historic genealogical society, by permission; from the manuscripts of John Arthur Loring, and from many other sources
A book focusing on contemporary Saudi art, particularly the artists and artworks that have been featured in the first US exhibitions beginning in 2016. Published in conjunction with "Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston", Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine, USA, October 28, 2016 - March 18, 2017.