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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Customs & folklore
The Angel and the Cholent: Food Representation from the Israel
Folktale Archives by Idit Pintel-Ginsberg, translated into English
for the first time from Hebrew, analyzes how food and foodways are
the major agents generating the plots of several significant
folktales. The tales were chosen from the Israel Folktales
Archives' (IFA) extensive collection of twenty-five thousand tales.
In looking at the subject of food through the lens of the folktale,
we are invited to consider these tales both as a reflection of
society and as an art form that discloses hidden hopes and often
subversive meanings. The Angel and the Cholent presents thirty
folktales from seventeen different ethnicities and is divided into
five chapters. Chapter 1 considers food and taste-tales included
here focus on the pleasure derived by food consumption and its
reasonable limits. The tales in Chapter 2 are concerned with food
and gender, highlighting the various and intricate ways food is
used to emphasize gender functions in society, the struggle between
the sexes, and the love and lust demonstrated through food
preparations and its consumption. Chapter 3 examines food and class
with tales that reflect on how sharing food to support those in
need is a universal social act considered a ""mitzvah"" (a Jewish
religious obligation), but it can also become an unspoken burden
for the providers. Chapter 4 deals with food and kashrut-the tales
included in this chapter expose the various challenges of ""keeping
kosher,"" mainly the heavy financial burden it causes and the
social price paid by the inability of sharing meals with non-Jews.
Finally, Chapter 5 explores food and sacred time, with tales that
convey the tension and stress caused by finding and cooking
specific foods required for holiday feasts, the Shabbat and other
sacred times. The tales themselves can be appreciated for their
literary quality, humor, and profound wisdom. Readers, scholars,
and students interested in folkloristic and anthropological foodway
studies or Jewish cultural studies will delight in these tales and
find the editorial commentary illuminating.
Marriage has been a contested term in African American studies.
Contributors to this special issue address the subject of "black
marriage," broadly conceived and imaginatively considered from
different vantage points. Historically, some scholars have
maintained that the systematic enslavement of Africans completely
undermined and effectively destroyed the institutions of
heteropatriarchal marriage and family, while others have insisted
that slaves found creative ways to be together, love each other,
and build enduring conjugal relationships and family networks in
spite of forced separations, legal prohibitions against marriage,
and other hardships of the plantation system. Still others have
pointed out that not all African Americans were slaves and that
free black men and women formed stable marriages, fashioned strong
nuclear and extended families, and established thriving black
communities in antebellum cities in both the North and the South.
Against the backdrop of such scholarship, contributors look back to
scholarly, legal, and literary treatments of the marriage question
and address current concerns, from Beyonce's music and marriage to
the issues of interracial coupling, marriage equality, and the
much-discussed decline in African American marriage rates.
Contributors: Ann duCille, Oneka LaBennett, Mignon Moore, Kevin
Quashie, Renee Romano, Hortense Spillers, Kendall Thomas, Rebecca
Wanzo, Patricia Williams
Where human communication and development is possible, folklore is
developed. With the rise of digital communications and media in
past decades, humans have adopted a new form of folklore within
this online landscape. Digital folklore has been developed into a
culture that impacts the ways in which communities are formed,
media is created, and communications are carried out. It is
essential to track this growing phenomenon. The Digital Folklore of
Cyberculture and Digital Humanities focuses on the opportunities
and chances for folklore research online as well as research
challenges for online folk groups. It presents opportunities for
production of digital internet material from items and research in
the field of folk culture and for digitization, documentation, and
promotion of elements related to folk culture. Covering topics such
as e-learning programs, online communities, and costumes and
fashion archives, this premier reference source is a dynamic
resource for folklorists, sociologists, anthropologists,
psychologists, students and faculty of higher education, libraries,
researchers, and academicians.
Founded in 1961, Studia Hibernica is devoted to the study of the
Irish language and its literature, Irish history and archaeology,
Irish folklore and place names, and related subjects. Its aim is to
present the research of scholars in these fields of Irish studies
and so to bring them within easy reach of each other and the wider
public. It endeavours to provide in each issue a proportion of
articles, such as surveys of periods or theme in history or
literature, which will be of general interest. A long review
section is a special feature of the journal and all new
publications within its scope are there reviewed by competent
authorities.
The Cinema of Sofia Coppola provides the first comprehensive
analysis of Coppola's oeuvre that situates her work broadly in
relation to contemporary artistic, social and cultural currents.
Suzanne Ferriss considers the central role of fashion - in its
various manifestations - to Coppola's films, exploring fashion's
primacy in every cinematic dimension: in film narrative;
production, costume and sound design; cinematography; marketing,
distribution and auteur branding. She also explores the theme of
celebrity, including Coppola's own director-star persona, and
argues that Coppola's auteur status rests on an original and
distinct visual style, derived from the filmmaker's complex
engagement with photography and painting. Ferriss analyzes each of
Coppola's six films, categorizing them in two groups: films where
fashion commands attention (Marie Antoinette, The Beguiled and The
Bling Ring) and those where clothing and material goods do not
stand out ostentatiously, but are essential in establishing
characters' identities and relationships (The Virgin Suicides, Lost
in Translation and Somewhere). Throughout, Ferriss draws on
approaches from scholarship on fashion, film, visual culture, art
history, celebrity and material culture to capture the complexities
of Coppola's engagement with fashion, culture and celebrity. The
Cinema of Sofia Coppola is beautifully illustrated with color
images from her films, as well as artworks and advertising
artefacts.
Transforming Saints explores the transformation and function of the
images of holy females within wider religious, social, and
political contexts of Old Spain and New Spain from the Spanish
conquest to Mexican independence. The chapters here examine the
rise of the cults of the lactating Madonna, St. Anne, St. Librada,
St. Mary Magdalene, and the Suffering Virgin. Concerned with holy
figures presented as feminine archetypes, images that came under
Inquisition scrutiny, as well as cults suspected of concealing
indigenous influences, Charlene VillaseNor Black argues that these
images would come to reflect the empowerment and agency of women in
viceregal Mexico. Her close analysis of the imagery additionally
demonstrates artists' innovative responses to Inquisition
censorship and the new artistic demands occasioned by conversion.
The concerns that motivated the twenty-first century protests
against Chicana artists Yolanda LOpez in 2001 and Alma LOpez in
2003 have a long history in the Hispanic world-anxieties about the
humanization of sacred female bodies and fears of indigenous
influences infiltrating Catholicism. In this context Black also
examines a number of important artists in depth, including El
Greco, Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera, and Pedro de Mena in Spain and
Naples and Baltasar de Echave IbIa, Juan Correa, CristObal de
Villalpando, and Miguel Cabrera.
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