At the heart of the model minority myth—often associated with Asian Americans—is the concept of civility. In this groundbreaking book, Picturing Model Citizens, Thy Phu exposes the complex links between civility and citizenship, and argues that civility plays a crucial role in constructing Asian American citizenship. Featuring works by Arnold Genthe, Carl Iwasaki, Toyo Miyatake, Nick Ut, and others, Picturing Model Citizens traces the trope of civility from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Through an examination of photographs of (...) Chinese immigrants, Japanese internment camps, the Hiroshima Maidens project, napalm victims, and the SARS epidemic, Phu explores civility's unexpected appearance in images that draw on discourses of intimacy, cultivation, apology, and hygiene. She reveals how Asian American visual culture illustrates not only cultural ideas of civility, but also contests the contradictions of state-defined citizenship. (shrink)

The nineteenth century was a period of science and imagery: when scientific theories and discoveries challenged longstanding boundaries between animal, plant, and human, and art and visual culture produced new notions about the place of the human in the natural world. Just as scientists relied on graphic representation to conceptualize their ideas, artists moved seamlessly between scientific debate and creative expression to support or contradict popular scientific theories, such as Darwin's theory of evolution and sexual selection, deliberately drawing (...) on concepts in ways that allowed them to refute popular claims or disrupt conventional knowledges. Focusing on the close kinship between the arts and sciences during the Victorian period, the art historians contributing to this volume reveal the unique ways in which nineteenth-century British and American visual culture participated in making science - and in which science informed art at a crucial moment in the history of the development of the modern world. Together, they explore topics in geology, meteorology, medicine, anatomy, evolution, and zoology, as well as a range of media, from photography to oil painting. This volume reminds us that science and art are not tightly compartmentalized, separate influences, but rather fields that shared forms - manifest as waves, layers, lines, or geometries - and invest in the idea of the evolution of form. (shrink)

The critical examination of the film American Beauty reveals characteristics illustrative of the form of culture coextensive with modern technological societies. This form of culture creates an imbalance favoring the aesthetical over the ethical dimensions of human orientation. Absorption into the aesthetical dimension of the electronic or digital visual image significantly reduces the capacity of culture to nurture a meaningful symbolic world. The relative absence of a meaningful symbolic world leaves both identity and social relationships (...) without a foundation. (shrink)

Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Chinese Literature and Visual Culture. By Seth Jacobowitz. Harvard East Asian Monographs, vol. 387. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2015. Pp. xii + 299. $39.95.

What Makes That Black? The African American Aesthetic in American Expressive Culture delineates the African-American aesthetic in both the African-American culture and the artistic cultural formation of the United States. It presents a definition of the African-American aesthetic using a typology of seventy-four tenets-markers that expand the aesthetic's definition to include its artistic structure, cultural function, and consciousness.¿The book is both anecdotal and scholarly, creating an accessible dialogue in a research area sometimes burdened (...) by excessive scholarly nomenclature. The power of story (art) reaches into cognitive spaces and impact understandings unreachable by linear academic argument. ¿Physical features such as images, links to visual media, glossary, bibliography, and index make the project easier for teachers/students to use.¿The book approaches the African-American Aesthetic from wide-ranging sources, cross-referencing literature, dance, oration, music, dress, sub-Saharan African aesthetics, scholarly text, visual arts, athletics, children's games, and anecdotal accounts. (shrink)

This special issue on affordances bases on the thesis, that all natural and artificial things inhere affordances that appeal to our cognitive system, and thus invite us to look at them, perceive them, think about them, interpret them, and use them. The concept roots in the studies of the American psychologist James J. Gibson from the 1960s. According to him, "things" offer a certain range of possible activities depending on their form, time patterns, and material qualities, thus becoming part (...) of human-thing-interactions. However, affordances can also be culturally trained. This aspect has been intensively discussed subsequently within different disciplines (e.g., Social Sciences, Design Studies). But only recently has the concept received attention in the field of Visual Culture Studies particularly through archaeological scholarship. (shrink)

While some studies suggest cultural differences in visual processing, others do not, possibly because the complexity of their tasks draws upon high-level factors that could obscure such effects. To control for this, we examined cultural differences in visual search for geometric figures, a relatively simple task for which the underlying mechanisms are reasonably well known. We replicated earlier results showing that North Americans had a reliable search asymmetry for line length: Search for long among short lines was faster (...) than vice versa. In contrast, Japanese participants showed no asymmetry. This difference did not appear to be affected by stimulus density. Other kinds of stimuli resulted in other patterns of asymmetry differences, suggesting that these are not due to factors such as analytic/holistic processing but are based instead on the target-detection process. In particular, our results indicate that at least some cultural differences reflect different ways of processing early-level features, possibly in response to environmental factors. (shrink)

Visual search studies have shown that East Asians rely more on information gathered through their extrafoveal (i.e., peripheral) vision than do Western Caucasians, who tend to rely more on information gathered using their foveal (i.e., central) vision. However, the reasons for this remain unclear. Cognitive linguists suggest that the difference is attributable linguistic variation, while cultural psychologists contend it is due to cultural factors. The current study used eye-tracking data collected during a visual search task to compare these (...) explanations by leveraging a semantic difference against a cultural difference to determine which view best explained strategies used on the task. The task was administered to Chinese, American, and Japanese participants with a primary focus on the Chinese participants’ behaviors since the semantic difference aligned the Chinese participants with the Americans, while their cultural affiliation aligned them with the Japanese participants. The results indicated that the Chinese group aligned more closely with the American group on most measures, suggesting that semantic differences were more important than cultural affiliation on this particular task. However, there were some results that could not be accounted for by the semantic differences, suggesting that linguistic and cultural factors might affect visual search strategies concurrently. (shrink)

In the United States, the steady yellow light means that a driver should either speed up or slow down. State laws written about a driver’s behavior at these yellow lights are vague and indeterminate and result in what is referred to as the dilemma zone (Hurwitz et al. in Transp Res Part F Traffic Psychol Behav 15(2): 132–143, 2012). This paper will reconsider law’s vagueness as intentional rather than problematic, insofar as cultural understandings of the yellow light lead to a (...) framework of visual jurisprudence in which drivers interact with law through legal discretion and common sense confronting a yellow light. Through a jurisprudential juxtaposition between the yellow light and red light cameras used to enforce yellow lights, the semiotics of automaticity compete with the semiotics of context-bound decision-making. (shrink)

By examining the 5,413 illustrations provided in 33 introductory sociology textbooks published between 1982 and 1988, we explored the way textbook publishers in sociology pictorially construct images of gender and race. Individuals in a picture are coded for race and gender identity; each picture is coded for location in or outside the United States and for placement in 1 of 26 substantive topics. Although people of color were shown in numerically “fair” proportions, including Blacks seemed to be a way of (...) “staging” equality in the United States, while including other minorities appeared to offer “cross-cultural” comparisons to American society. Women accounted for only 36 percent of the individuals portrayed in these books, regardless of racial and ethnic category. Race and gender seemed to be conceptualized as nonoverlapping categories; White women “have” gender, while women of color apparently “have” only race. White men and boys occupied the center stage in these images of society; not only were more White men and boys presented than any other gender or race category, but they also received more exclusive attention and visually dominated the crucial institutions of politics and the economy. Although authors and publishers may strive to be fair, the way that race and gender representation is constructed in introductory sociology textbooks tends to reflect rather than critique popular American stereotypes. (shrink)

Visual cultures are being increasingly discussed in the history of science literature, although relatively very little of that work concerns the nuclear age. In addition, within the discrete yet bourgeoning literature on global nuclear art and culture, Oceania is often overlooked despite its central role in the development of the American, British, and French nuclear weapon capabilities, as well as their associated colonial legacies. This article serves to redress both concerns by examining the visual politics of (...) Maralinga in relation to settler-colonial and Aboriginal experiences, vulnerabilities and presentations. I do so by surveying artworks with a connection to the Australian experience of nuclear colonialism and find that the figure of biological life has been conspicuously left absent from contemporary non-Indigenous Australian depictions of British nuclear testing in Australia. (shrink)

From the 1910s through the 1930s, the American naturalist and photographer Arthur C. Pillsbury made time-lapse and microscopic films documenting what he, in common parlance, called the “miracles of plant life”. While these films are now mostly lost, they were part of Pillsbury’s prolific work as a conservationist and traveling film lecturer who used his cameras everywhere from Yosemite National Park to Samoa to promote both public understanding of plants and a desire to protect the natural world. Guiding this (...) work was Pillsbury’s belief that the nonhuman optics of the film camera, which revealed the animacy of plants, could also incite viewers to sympathize with them. In the context of the early American conservation movement, that sympathy stemmed in complicated ways from longstanding transcendental and pastoral ideas of nature that were entangled with imperialist visions of controlling nature. With an eye to that context, I show that Pillsbury’s filmmaking was not simply about using motion picture technologies to shape attitudes toward plants and nature more broadly; it was also about using nature to think through the techno-scientific possibilities of the cinema in the early part of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The study aims to investigate visual attention and perceived attractiveness to known versus unknown products above and beyond self-report applying physiological methods. A cross-cultural exploratory approach allows for comparing results gathered in the United States and China. We collected field data on physiological parameters accompanied by behavioral data. Mobile eye-tracking was employed to capture attention by measuring gaze parameters and electrodermal activity serves as indicator for arousal at an unconscious level. A traditional scale approach measuring perceived attractiveness of known (...) versus novel products provide insights at a conscious level. US-American and Chinese consumers in our sample indeed process novel products differently. This can be observed at an unconscious and conscious level. Different gaze movements and arousal levels are observed at an unconscious level. Regarding behavioral data, the level of vertical orientation shapes the perceived attractiveness of novel products at a conscious level. The study showcases how physiological methods complement behavioral ones when investigating visual attention to products. It underlines varying conscious as well as unconscious visual attention and attractiveness ratings comparing known versus novel products, driven by cultural differences. Data from a field setting further enrich the implications derived for new product development and applied marketing. (shrink)

An artistic discussion on the critical potential of African American expressive culture In a major reassessment of African American culture, Phillip Brian Harper intervenes in the ongoing debate about the “proper” depiction of black people. He advocates for African American aesthetic abstractionism—a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. Maintaining that realist representation reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge, (...) Harper contends that abstractionism shows up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation. Arguing against the need for “positive” representations, Abstractionist Aesthetics displaces realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics, re-centers literature as a principal site of African American cultural politics, and elevates experimental prose within the domain of African American literature. Drawing on examples across a variety of artistic production, including the visual work of Fred Wilson and Kara Walker, the music of Billie Holiday and Cecil Taylor, and the prose and verse writings of Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and John Keene, this book poses urgent questions about how racial blackness is made to assume certain social meanings. In the process, African American aesthetics are upended, rendering abstractionism as the most powerful modality for Black representation. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the visualization of Euro-American medicine and indigenous healing in John Steinbeck’s 1941 documentary-drama _The Forgotten Village_. The movie juxtaposes film and medical discourse as exemplifications of modern, visual culture by showing excerpts from hygiene films and foregrounding medical imagery (e.g., bacteria cultures). The film displaces indigenous medicine by privileging a Euro-American medical model, and the gaze of oppression is perpetuated through humanitarian medical intervention. In short, disease is not simply a material fact but (...) embedded in discourses about community identity, moral values, and politics. (shrink)

Cet article analyse le rôle des vêtements dans la métamorphose d’esclaves afro-américains en soldats de l’Union pendant la Guerre civile (1861-1865). Il explore la manière et la raison pour laquelle les uniformes militaires portent un tel poids narratif dans les portraits de ces hommes. Les textes, images, objets, gravures et photographies sont étudiés dans le contexte de la perception du corps au xixe siècle et des nouvelles théories de l’anthropologie physique et de la phrénologie. L’article souligne le rôle de ces (...) images dans la construction d’un discours cohérent sur la rédemption de l’esclavage et d’une catégorie « homme » plus inclusive, plus universelle, fondée sur le service militaire. (shrink)

When viewing the picture of a beautiful sunset, how many of us realize that, while we admire it as a work of art, we have just taken the very first step toward pornography? And that both the beauty in the sunset and the senses that recognize such beauty are very likely to be anti-art? Making a radical departure from the conventional wisdom on art and beauty, ART, BEAUTY, AND PORNOGRAPHY presents the startling thesis that things of beauty are not only (...) unrelated to art but often responsible for pornography. How is this possible? In this controversial work, Huer argues that beauty pleases the senses, which demand to be pleased with each new stimulation. In a society whose members put a premium on pleasurable things, it is natural that the visual medium occupies a commanding position among forms of cultural expression. In the process of competing to please the human eye, American society (the most graphic and visual civilization to date) concentrates on objects and events that please consumers and, by doing so, sell products. Much of this sense-pleasing business takes place in the name of art. But those senses pleased by what is beautiful are the same senses that receive gratification from the pornographic. Art has no place in this process. Based on these arguments, Huer makes a strong case for re-orienting the purpose of art. Drawing on historical experience in the West, he defines art as a statement about life: pain, wisdom, and happiness embodied in the life process. The artist is a teacher of life, the artwork his philosophy, and the art public the beneficiaries of his teaching. Neither beauty nor sensory pleasure, therefore, has anything to do with art. This important volume is, above all, a critique of contemporary American culture directed most especially to society's confusion about art, beauty, and pornography, and its willingness to allow business to assert dominion over artistic impulse. ART, BEAUTY, AND PORNOGRAPHY is a searing commentary on the follies of our time as well as an inspired defense of high art and the creative spirit. (shrink)

In a wide-ranging study, Josh Cohen argues that the American fixation with image - literally celebrating the surface, the visual, the spectacular spaces of the cinema and the city - has produced a crisis of literary perception, with crucial cultural and political consequences.

The success of movies like The Artist and Hugo recreated the wonder and magic of silent film for modern audiences, many of whom might never have experienced a movie without sound. But while the American silent movie was one of the most significant popular art forms of the modern age, it is also one that is largely lost to us, as more than eighty percent of silent films have disappeared, the victims of age, disaster, and neglect. We now know (...) about many of these cinematic masterpieces only from the collections of still portraits and production photographs that were originally created for publicity and reference. Capturing the beauty, horror, and moodiness of silent motion pictures, these images are remarkable pieces of art in their own right. In the first history of still camera work generated by the American silent motion picture industry, David S. Shields chronicles the evolution of silent film aesthetics, glamour, and publicity, and provides unparalleled insight into this influential body of popular imagery. Exploring the work of over sixty camera artists, Still recovers the stories of the photographers who descended on early Hollywood and the stars and starlets who sat for them between 1908 and 1928. Focusing on the most culturally influential types of photographs—the performer portrait and the scene still—Shields follows photographers such as Albert Witzel and W. F. Seely as they devised the poses that newspapers and magazines would bring to Americans, who mimicked the sultry stares and dangerous glances of silent stars. He uncovers scene shots of unprecedented splendor—visions that would ignite the popular imagination. And he details how still photographs changed the film industry, whose growing preoccupation with artistry in imagery caused directors and stars to hire celebrated stage photographers and transformed cameramen into bankable names. Reproducing over one hundred and fifty of these gorgeous black-and-white photographs, Still brings to life an entire long-lost visual culture that a century later still has the power to enchant. (shrink)

As some artists discovered early in the century, there is a particular pleasure and stimulation to be derived from works of art created by cultures untouched by our own traditions of form. In part this is probably a delight in exoticism, in being away from home, and in part it possibly is our sentiment for cultures we look on as traditional, in a Jungian sense, or primitive in their unquestioning allegiance to simple cultural necessity. But more significantly, without indulging in (...) philosophical or anthropological speculation, we are forced, in looking at such objects as these elegantly designed boxes and bowls, to revise our visual thinking, our assumptions about unity and grace.Joshua C. Taylor, director of the National Collection of Fine Arts of the Smithsonian Institution, has written Learning to Look, William Page: The American Titian, and catalogues of exhibits of futurism and the works of Umberto Boccioni. Part 1 of this paper has been published in somewhat different form in Boxes and Bowls. (shrink)

American cultural technologies of the early nineteenth century shaped Nature and the synonymous "native" in contradictory ways: celebrating the wilderness but then transforming it by cultivation, mourning lost "natives" (both people and species) while also naturalizing the succession of new Euro-American settlers. Settler colonial geopolitics understood its own territorial claims in association with the retreats, migrations, and expansions of select species populations: cattle replacing American bison or Euro-Americans replacing Indians on the western frontier. In this way, Euro- (...) class='Hi'>American descendants of settlers who then considered themselves "natives" could be the natural stewards to "preserve" or "reform" wild remnants of nature while also identifying against the encroachment of the Old World. Technological arts as varied as moving panoramas and picturesque sketches depicted and enacted civilization overtaking the wild frontier through visual tours. This chapter explores how the sketch fits into technologies of seeing accompanying American settler colonialism and points to moments when it suggests ecological processes of ongoing passage rather than terminal extinction or succession. (shrink)

El siguiente artículo plantea una reflexión sobre la historiografía del arte centroamericano y latinoamericano, para establecer algunas tendencias en cómo se han estudiado y qué aportes han realizado estos campos de conocimiento al entendimiento de las artes visuales regionales y la historia cultural centroamericana. Adicionalmente, en contraste con este estado de la cuestión, se plantean las contribuciones que realiza la tesis doctoral “Hacer exportable a Centroamérica: activación de circuitos artísticos internacionales y su impacto en la consolidación de los museos de (...) arte moderno y sus colecciones en Guatemala y Costa Rica, 1950-1996”, al conocimiento de esta historiografía. Se analizan dos aportes puntuales que realiza la tesis: por un lado, la investigación evidencia contundentemente que determinados/as artistas centroamericanos/as participaron con vigor de las redes artísticas internacionales en la segunda mitad del siglo XX; esto se logra reconstruir mediante un mapeo de los eventos en los que participaron. Seguidamente, se abarca otro aporte, en el que la investigación problematiza lo que se ha dicho sobre las características del arte moderno centroamericano mediante un análisis de las colecciones de tres museos regionales. (shrink)

This paper argues that American television fiction with supernatural themes offers Danish teenage audiences a playground for exploring different religious imaginations in a continuous process of internal negotiations; thereby transforming their imaginations. This process of the mediatization of religion is strengthened by three dominating factors: the absence of a homogenous religious worldview in Danish culture, the importance of high production values and visual credibility to supernatural concepts in these shows, and the appeal of transformed religious content in (...) open-structured serial narratives. This essay presents the findings of an empirical qualitative study of seventy-two Danish teenagers and considers two primary parameters for the case-based reception study: the teenagers' levels of fandom and their connection with institutionalized religion. In other words, how are religious imaginations transformed in relation to viewers' level of commitment to the television fiction and to traditional institutionalized religion? (shrink)

Central and East Europeans have a great deal in common, both historically and culturally, with West Europeans and North Americans, but tend to be more interdependent. Interdependence has been shown to be linked to holistic cognition. East Asians are more interdependent than Americans and are more holistic. If interdependence causes holism, we would expect Central and East Europeans to be more holistic than West Europeans and North Americans. In two studies we found evidence that Central and East Europeans are indeed (...) more holistic than Westerners on three tasks, one of which examined categorization and two of which measured patterns of visual attention. These studies support the argument that cross-cultural differences in cognition are due to society level differences in independence/interdependence. (shrink)

Often distinguished by their characteristic five-petalled rosette emblems, objects dedicated to the Rasūlid sultans of Yemen in Egypt or Syria have long been identified as a distinct corpus in histories of Islamic art. Whether treated singly or as a group, these objects have usually been positioned in the periphery of discussions about Mamlūk luxury arts or cited briefly as evidence of diplomatic relations between the Mamlūk and Rasūlid leadership. Perhaps reflecting a general marginalization of South Arabia in the historiographic traditions (...) of Islamic art scholarship, narratives centered on the imperial Mamlūk enterprise tend to overshadow both the Rasūlid context for these objects and the complexities of their global material histories. This essay explores these two themes together, drawing broadly on visual culture connected with the Rasūlid court to analyze a selection of case studies. It reviews art historical literature on the Rasūlid-Mamlūk corpus as reflected in European and North American scholarship, outlines the various modalities by which this material exchange is understood to have taken place, explores the setting for Rasūlid patronage and collection of such objects, and examines their material afterlives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art as a Political Act:Expression of Cultural Identity, Self-Identity, and Gender by Suk Nam Yun and Yong Soon MinHwa Young Choi Caruso (bio)IntroductionA number of artists of color, including Asian American women, are creating art from the basis of their lived experiences. Within minority groups searching for their cultural identity, establishing self-identity is an important process. For various psychological and sociological reasons, artists seem inspired to seek deeper (...) meaning and a broader participation in cultural work.1 Asian American women artists, in particular, are currently making art as a means of exploring self-identity, cultural identity, and gender issues. Korean/Korean American minority women artists are creating art as a reaction to their cultural upbringing, which questions issues of identity, gender, ethnicity, politics, cultural, and socioeconomic status. These contemporary artists are breaking away from traditional cultural expectations and overcoming social barriers as artists, women, and Koreans/Korean Americans. With the growing public awareness of women's consciousness and sense of self as women in Korea and as an ethnic minority in America, these artists are redefining their identity. Despite the traditional patriarchal Confucian hierarchy; lack of social, institutional, and political support; and stereotypic gender, cultural, and socioeconomic status expectations for women, a few have stepped out of their traditional roles as women and have become successful artists in Korea and America.The artworks of these artists are worthy of investigation because they appear to be a culturally, socially, and politically motivated artistic expression of the complex multifaceted Korean/Korean American life experiences as women and as Korean immigrant members of a cultural (ethnic) minority in American society. Therefore, two main research questions can be posed: [End Page 71]• Given that art can be constructed out of layers of different experiences and influences, to what extent do the dimensions of cultural identity, self-identity, and gender interweave and contribute to the function of art as a political act for Korean/Korean American women artists?• How do Korean/Korean American cultural, social, and female experiences influence the artistic expression of Korean/Korean American women artists?In order to answer these questions, I selected case study methodology2 and adapted elements of interpretive biography,3 and narrative approaches as developed by Wallace and Gruber.4 According to Denzin,5 interpretive biography involves the collection and analysis of personal experiences, life documents, stories, accounts, and narratives that describe turning-point moments in individuals' lives. Denzin argues that personal experiences and personal stories are derived from a larger cultural, ideological, and historical context. The intent of the biographical project is to problematize the social, economic, cultural, structural, and historical forces that shape, distort, and otherwise alter lived experiences.By using narrative case study methods, I explore elements of self-identity formation, cultural identity, gender issues, personal thoughts, artistic expression, meaning of artworks, professional achievement, and life circumstances. I examine each participant's life in the Korean and American historical, cultural, social, and political environments. I interpret participants' outer lives (what they do) and inner lives (feelings, thoughts, inner self) to capture their deep, profound life experiences. I examine salient themes of their art expression and how the role of art and artistic activity is a part of political, cultural, social, and feminist activism. I further investigate their professional activities in order to identify the multiple roles that contribute to personal and professional identity formation.For the purpose of this study, I selected the contemporary Korean woman artist Suk Nam Yun and the contemporary Korean American woman artist Yong Soon Min as primary participants. These two women artists, despite many social and cultural barriers, chose to become artists; feminists; and social, cultural, and political activists; in addition to fulfilling traditional Korean family and domestic roles. Yun and Min are regarded as the leading contemporary Korean/Korean American women artists whose artworks deal with issues of cultural, social, feminist, political, and hybrid identity and art as political activism.Lippard acknowledges that visual images play an increasingly important role in society.6 Art that connects everyday experience with social critique and creative expression becomes a vital means of reflecting upon the nature of society and social existence.7 Artworks can function as... (shrink)

This overview of the "sister arts" of the nineteenth century by younger scholars in art history, literature, and American studies presents a startling array of perspectives on the fundamental role played by images in culture and society. Drawing on the latest thinking about vision and visuality as well as on recent developments in literary theory and cultural studies, the contributors situate paintings, sculpture, monument art, and literary images within a variety of cultural contexts. The volume offers fresh and (...) sometimes extended discussions of single works as well as reevaluations of artistic and literary conventions and analyses of the economic, social, and technological forces that gave them shape and were influenced by them in turn. A wide range of figures are significantly reassessed, including the painters Charles Willson Peale, Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, George Caleb Bingham, Fitz Hugh Lane, and Mary Cassatt, and such writers as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and William Dean Howells. One overarching theme to emerge is the development of an American national subjectivity as it interacted with the transformation of a culture dominated by religious values to one increasingly influenced by commercial imperatives. The essays probe the ways in which artists and writers responded to the changing conditions of the cultural milieu as it was mediated by such factors as class and gender, modes of perception and representation, and conflicting ideals and realities. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to trace the American Society for the Control of Cancer's (ASCC) influence on the Portuguese Institute of Oncology's (IPO) Bulletin. The time period featured is from 1934 to 1940, which spans the first two decades of the newly formed Portuguese dictatorship, known as the Estado Novo (1933–1974). The analysis of the ASCC's “imprint” on the IPO's Bulletin aims to shed new light on how American culture influenced Portugal, from its first appearance (...) at the beginning of the 20th century. It brings together the disciplines of history of science and history of art and visual studies, in order to analyse these campaigns' strategic relationship with their “patients and contributors to be.” The public is encouraged by this means not only to seek timely assistance, but also to participate financially in the “cancer cause.” This is achieved by means of international consumer culture media in everyday forms, such as film, adverts in written form, and exhibitions publicising the cause. Lastly, this analysis approaches transnationalism, modernism, and the scientific nature of the Estado Novo's nationalism from new and innovative angles, allowing for a “rethinking” of said nationalism. (shrink)

The outburst of antiracist protests in the USA in 2020 demonstrates how deeply this society’s present-day problems are rooted in its past. From this perspective, a study of the cultural memory of the time of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the key moment in the contemporary American nation formation, is especially relevant and important. The cultural frontier between the North and the South that had appeared as an outcome of differences in US history has not disappeared (...) up to now. By example of the complexity and inconsistency of the historical memory of the Civil War, slavery, and its abolition in the USA manifested in their visual representations, the article documents how through collective memory, history does not just invade modernity but is present in it, particularly in the form of memorials, monuments, museum expositions, and therefore determines the nation’s modernity to a large degree. (shrink)

This chapter explores perspectivism in the American Pragmatist tradition. On the one hand, the thematization of perspectivism in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science can benefit from resources in the American Pragmatist philosophical tradition. On the other hand, the Pragmatists have interesting and innovative, pluralistic views that can be illuminated through the lens of perspectivism. I pursue this inquiry primarily through examining relevant sources from the Pragmatist tradition. I will illustrate productive engagements between pragmatism and perspectivism in three (...) areas: in the pragmatists’ fallibilistic theories of inquiry and truth, in their pluralistic metaphysics, and in their views on cultural pluralism. While there are some potential sticking points between pragmatism and perspectivism, particularly around the visual metaphor of perspective, these philosophical approaches nonetheless have much to learn from each other. Perspectivism is in danger of falling between the horns of pernicious relativism and a platitudinous view of the limits of human perception and cognition. The pragmatists accounts of truth and reality open the possibility of a more thoroughgoing perspectivism. I will follow this thread through Charles S. Peirce’s, William James’, and John Dewey’s theories of inquiry and truth, Peirce’s evolutionary metaphysics, James’ radical pluralism, Dewey’s cultural naturalism, Richard Rorty’s anti-essentialism, Jane Addams’ standpoint epistemology, W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of race consciousness, Horace Kallen’s and Alain LeRoy Locke’s cultural pluralism, and Mary Parker Follett’s account of pluralistic integration. (shrink)

To explore 3- to 7-year-old children's developing understanding of human and non-human minds, a battery of "background knowledge" tasks was administered to 51 American children. The children were asked to speculate about how three other intentional agents would understand various visual displays. First, children answered when they themselves did not understand the displays, then they answered after they had been given information necessary to understand the displays. Results revealed that children begin to understand the role of background knowledge (...) around the same age that they pass false-belief tasks; and that before thoroughly understanding the role of background knowledge they already begin to discriminate between different types of minds. By age four, children began to show some understanding that because of having different minds than people, God is more able and dogs are less able to understand some visual displays even with full visual access. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America by Michael John WitgenGeronimo Barrera de la TorreSeeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America BY MICHAEL JOHN WITGEN Williamsburg, Va., and Chapel Hill, N.C.: Omohundro Institute for the Study of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina (...) Press, 2022The colonial projects of nation-states in the Americas have defined the relationship between states and Indigenous peoples by means of [End Page 138] dispossession, as Anishinaabeg thinker Leanne Betasamosake Simpson asserts.1 Seeing Red delves into the processes through which dispossession of Indigenous land became the ideology and systematic practice behind US expansion as Indigenous communities struggled to reshape their place in the new context. The book carefully details the settler- colonial ideology and logic of elimination that permeated US territorial expansion over the Northwest Territories at the end of the eighteen and the first decades of the nineteenth centuries. Seeing Red thoroughly examines the complex context of dispossession by the US colonial power, centering on Anishinaabeg communities, the “mix- race” population, and the different Indigenous people inhabiting this region. However, the book focuses on what the author names “unthinkable history,” following Michel- Rolph Trouillot’s argument that this region, and the whole continent, was conceived as an unsettled territory instead of belonging to many Indigenous peoples. Thus, the text explores Indigenous and mixed- raced communities’ political imaginaries and imagined futures to retain autonomy and territory.Author Michael John Witgen is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe and a professor in the Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University. His research centers on the complex relations between Indigenous people and settler colonizers in the Great Lakes and the Northwest Territories. Seeing Red expands his previous analysis of race, ethnicity, and citizenship intersections, bringing to the fore Indigenous people’s history to rethink the statemaking process in the United States.This book’s pages show that theft lies at the foundation of wealth transfer from Indigenous territories to the United States government and white citizens. The white settler ideology, based on a “doctrine of discovery,” established a stark division between the civilized and uncivilized to rationalize, among other things, the theft of Indigenous people. This is a central argument of the book that signals how the civili zation project underpinning the territorial expansion of the United States was based on the transformation of commons into private property. Indigenous land became critical in the “political economy of plunder” advanced by the state and the meaning of “native” as a racial categorization of exclusion. Chapter 1 explores this economy of plunder by detailing the advancement of the settler frontier through different [End Page 139] mechanisms, such as the treaty policy— subsequently violated by the state— and territory surveying to make land legible for the state and cheap for settlers. It is worth mentioning that the book contains historical and thematic maps that visually represent the ideology of wilderness behind the colonization project and evidence of the territorial extent of dispossession suffered by Indigenous communities. However, this crusade to dispossess Indigenous peoples from their territory also rested on the national mythology that strengthened the trope of Indigenous vanishing. The author shows how during the years of the study, the Indigenous population was not vanishing but immersed in an intricate social world and transregional trade networks. Chapter 2 explores such context, following the story of an Ojibwe man to evidence the context in which settlers and federal officials relied on Indigenous customs to profit from the fur trade while using ties with communities to further land cessions.Mix- race families played a crucial role in expanding the settler frontier through treaty negotiations but remained marginalized as they identified themselves as both Natives and US citizens. Chapter 3 examines the significance of mixed- raced families, particularly women, in establishing and expanding missions’ schools that relied on their domestic and linguistic labor. Moreover, it shows the intricate landscape of the civilization mission that depended on the complex networks that had created... (shrink)

Marcel Proust offered the twentieth century a new psychology of memory and seeing. His novel In Search of Lost Time was written in the modern age of photography and art history. In Looking Back One Learns to See: Marcel Proust and Photography is an intellectual adventure that brings to light Proust’s visual imagination, his visual metaphors, and his photographic resources and imaginings. The book features over 90 illustrations. Mary Bergstein highlights various kinds of photography: daguerreotypes, stereoscopic cards, cartes-de-visite, (...) postcards, book illustrations, and other photographic mediums. Portraiture, medical photography, spirit photography, architectural photography, Orientalism, ethnographic photography, and fin-de-siècle studies of Botticelli, Leonardo, and Vermeer, are considered in terms of Proust’s life and work. The net is cast wide, and each image under discussion has been researched with subtle attention to art, literature, and cultural history. This scholarly study in literature and visual culture will be a delight, too, for general readers who love photography or Proust. Mary Bergstein is professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at the Rhode Island School of Design. She won the 2012 “Courage to Dream” book prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association for, Mirrors of Memory: Freud, Photography, and the History of Art (Cornell 2010). She has published numerous books and articles on art and visual culture from Italian Renaissance sculpture to contemporary photography. (shrink)

This paper examines how photography shaped the American public’s perception of psychiatric hospitals during the immediate post-WWII period. I will analyze photographs that appeared in popular exposé articles of that period and that used photography as a visual aid for disclosing the poor conditions of state hospitals, intending to promote reform efforts focused on turning antiquated asylums into modern hospitals. Existing scholarship has mentioned how these photographs had a significant influence on shaping the public’s view of asylum conditions. (...) Through a close examination of these photographs, I will argue that they often contained unintentional messages which stigmatized disabled people. (shrink)

Utilizing a pre-experimental pre-test post-test design, this study investigated the effect of an authentic audio-visual American sitcom on the intercultural sensitivity and intercultural effectiveness of a sample of male and female upper-intermediate English students. To this aim, 34 Iranian EFL students were selected through convenient non-random sampling. In order to assure the participants' homogeneity in English proficiency, the selected students were given the Oxford Quick Placement Test prior to the intervention. Over a 10-week period, the participants were presented (...) with nearly 30-min-long episodes of Friends in a flipped context, two episodes every week uploaded to the accompanying website. An online 10-item quiz on the day of watching and a next-day meeting were held. During the online discussion meetings, the participants discussed cultural questions tailored to the aims of the study. The required data were collected through the administration of the intercultural sensitivity scale and intercultural effectiveness scale in pre- and post-test assessments. The analyses of the data indicated that both ICS and ICE improved significantly during the intervention. However, ICS indicated more improvement. In addition, a semi-structured interview was administered to the participants to examine their perception of the flipped classroom experience. Having analyzed the data using MAXQDA 2020, some significant themes emerged which are reported. On the whole, the participants portrayed positive attitudes toward using technology in flipped classes. The educational and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

[E.H. Gombrich wrote on May 13, 1975:] . . . I recently was invited to talk about "Art" at the Institution for Education of our University. There was a well-intentioned teacher there who put forward the view that we had no right whatever to influence the likes and dislikes of our pupils because every generation had a different outlook and we could not possibly tell what theirs would be. It is the same extreme relativism, which has invaded our art schools (...) and resulted in the doctrine that art could not possibly be taught because only what has been done already can be taught, and since art is creativity it is not possible to teach it. Q.E.D.—I recently asked my history finalists what "Quod erat demonstrandum" means and they did not know. . . . [Quentin Bell responded on May 15, 1975:] . . . Your teacher at the Institute, is he really a relativist? Isn't he a kind of religious zealot? I used to teach school children. With me there was a much better teacher . One day she came into the room where I had been teaching and found a series of the most surprising and beautiful water colours. "What are these?" said she. I explained that they were copies of Raphael made by eleven and twelve year old children. I would have gone on to explain how interested I was by their resemblance, not to Raphael but rather to Simone Martini, for they had all the shapes beautifully right but none of the internal drawing or the sentiment, but I was checked by her look of horror. "You've made them copy from Raphael?" she said. Her expression was exactly that of someone who had been casually informed that that I had committed a series of indecent assaults upon the brats. And in fact in subsequent conversation it appeared that this was very nearly what she did feel. For her, what she called "self expression" was as precious as virginity. E.H. Gombrich was director of the Warburg Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition at the University of London from 1959 to 1976. His books include The Story of Art, Art and Illusion, Meditations on a Hobby Horse, Norm and Form, Symbolic Images, The Heritage of Apelles, and In Search of Cultural History. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1960, a Commander of the British Empire in 1966, and was knighted in 1972. He is also a trustee of the British Museum and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Philosophical Society. His contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Notes and Exchanges" ,"Standards of Truth: The Arrested Image and the Moving Eye" , and, with Quentin Bell, "Canons and Values in the Visual Arts: A Correspondence" . Quentin Bell is professor of the history and theory of art, Sussex University. He has written Virginia Woolf: A Biography, Of Human Finery, Ruskin, Victorian Artists and Bloomsbury. Other contributions to Critical Inquiry are "The Art Critic and the Art Historian" , "Notes and Exchanges" , and "Bloomsbury and 'the Vulgar Passions'". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ENVIRONMENT, SPACE, PLACE / VOLUME 13 / ISSUE 2 / 2021 142 Mathewson, Tom Mels, Theano S. Terkenli, Tim Waterman, Claudio Minca, MichaelJones,KennethR.Olwig,“TheMeaningsofLandscape:EssaysonPlace,Space, Environment and Justice,” The AAG Review of Books 7, no. 4 (2019): 291–­304. 11. Linde Egberts, Review of The Meanings of Landscape: Essays on Place, Space, Environment and Justice by Kenneth R. Olwig. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 111, no. 2 (2020): 199–­200. The Sprawl: (...) Reconsidering the Weird American Suburbs BY JASON DIAMOND Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2020 REVIEWED BY JULIE WILHELM JasonDiamond’sTheSprawl:ReconsideringtheWeirdAmericanSuburbs provides an often fascinating and meandering trip through American suburbs of the past and present. Diamond, who lives in Brooklyn but grew up in the suburbs of Florida and Illinois, explores the suburbs through both his own experiences and the experiences of the creative and everyday individuals he profiles. “The Sprawl,” a title drawn from the speculative fiction writer William Gibson, names for Diamond the worst of the suburbs, the thoughtless piling on of chain stores and houses without attention to design or community. The subtitle calls up the best of the suburbs, which is in some ways connected to the sprawl: the creativity and weirdness that crops up without design or in refusal of the rigid designs of suburban communities. In studying the dynamic of creative expression and suburban living, Diamond provides a cultural tour of visual art, literature, music, movies, and other creative artifacts of or about the suburbs. Throughout the genres he explores, Diamond focuses on what he calls “the undercurrent of strangeness” (xvii), the creativity, passion, and possibilities that have come out of places that seem inhospitable to them. Chapters are thoroughly researched and topics are exhaustively covered: most readers will complete the book with at least a short list of music, literature, and other art to track down based on Diamond’s sometimes encyclopedic coverage. The genre of The Sprawl is uniquely hybrid. Diamond blends his- Book Reviews 143 tories of various suburbs, descriptions of art, anecdotes of his explorations of particular suburbs, and memories of his own suburban childhood to explore each chapter topic. As historian/cultural enthusiast /tour guide/friend, Diamond is warm and personable, sharing his own painful experiences as a child moving from house to house in the suburbs and ultimately leaving them for the city. Diamond focuses chapters on themes such as exclusionary practices of the suburbs, suburban “garage rock,” and the “ruin porn” of faded malls, each adding a dimension to readers’ understanding of American suburbia. A striking quality of The Sprawl is Diamond’s attention to the feelings of the suburbs and evocation of those feelings in descriptions of his own and others’ experiences. Several chapters touch on teenage anxiety, boredom, and alienation, often through the perspectives of fictional characters and artists. Chapter seven: “Mousepacks,” for instance,onculturalportrayalsandexperiencesofsuburbanteens,traces the relationship between teenage alienation and boredom, and spatial and design attributes: the inability of teenagers to get places in many suburbs since they cannot drive, the absence of cultural spaces that bring people together, the homogeny for which the suburbs are infamous, and racism evoked in texts such as Get Out. Nostalgia also pervades the book and the experiences of the author and others relating to the suburbs: the sense that, though there is nothing place-­ specific about a breakfast from IHOP or the cologne-­ scented mall of one’s childhood, it is a place-­ less experience one still longs for. Particularly poignant, chapter nine, titled “Mondo-­ Condo-­ Shopping-­ Mall-­ Hell,” opens with a description of Cecil Robert’s YouTube video “Toto-­Africa (playing in an empty shopping centre).” The video features the glossy tiled floor, lighting, and decorative plants of an empty shopping mall as Toto’s “Africa” plays from a distant mall speaker. Intrigued by Diamond’s description, I watched the video myself, which is mesmerizing in its uneventfulness, and saw that it has over three million views on YouTube. Why is this exploration of suburban banality so moving to so many? What drove Robert, who was a teenager after the heyday of the mall, nostalgic for this “placeless place”? These are some of the most compelling questions that Diamond explores. Chapter three... (shrink)

Previous findings in cultural psychology indicated that East Asians are more likely than North Americans to be attentive to contextual information (e.g., Nisbett & Masuda, ). However, to what extent and in which conditions culture influences patterns of attention has not been fully examined. As a result, universal patterns of attention may be obscured, and culturally unique patterns may be wrongly assumed to be constant across situations. By carrying out two cross-cultural studies, we demonstrated that (a) both European Canadians (...) and Japanese attended to moving objects similarly when the task was to simply observe the visual information; however, (b) there were cultural variations in patterns of attention when participants actively engaged in the task by constructing narratives of their observation (narrative construction). These findings suggest that cultural effects are most pronounced in narrative construction conditions, where the need to act in accordance with a culturally shared meaning system is elicited. (shrink)

Political cartoons make meaning by drawing on scenarios that must be immediately recognizable by their intended audience. Crucial meaning-making mechanisms in these scenarios are verbo-visual ensembles of metaphors and metonymies. In this paper we investigate 69 Chinese and 60 American political cartoons published in 2018 and 2019 that pertain to the two nations’ trade conflict. By examining the cross-cultural similarities and differences between metaphors and metonymies, we chart how Chinese and American cartoonists portray this trade conflict. We (...) end by showing how a complete interpretation of the cartoons requires enrichment with insights provided by yet other analytical instruments. (shrink)

This paper traces the development of a deliberate and intense emphasis on visuality in literary representation of the second through fourth centuries C.E., resulting in a new cultural phenomenon: attributing the characteristics and functions of images to living persons. Calling on a range of sources from Lucian's Eikones to the Life of St. Daniel the Stylite and recent scholarship in art history and critical theory, the paper analyzes a series of interfaces between verbal and visual representation in terms of (...) an active transaction between viewer and viewed to construct meaning and establish and communicate social power. (shrink)

Through staged photographs in which she herself is often the lead actor or through appropriation of historical photographs, contemporary African American artist Carrie Mae Weems deconstructs the shaming of the black female body in American visual culture and offers counter-hegemonic images of black female beauty. The mirror has been foundational in Western theories of subjectivity and discussions of beauty. In the artworks I analyze in this article, Weems tactically employs the mirror to engage the topos of (...) shame in order to reject it as a way of seeing the self and to offer a new way of lovingly seeing the self. I use the work of Kelly Oliver, Helen Block Lewis, and bell hooks to articulate the relationships among the mirror, shame, and black female subjectivity in Weems's work. Weems's subjects often reckon with what Oliver calls “social melancholy” as they experience shame while standing before the mirror. However, Weems also shows that by looking again—a critical strategy I explain using Oliver's model of “the loving eye”—her subjects can use the mirror as a corrective to the social shaming gaze and make it a stage for establishing black female subjectivity, a gaze of self-love, and beauty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002) 267-296 [Access article in PDF] Allegory and Democratic Public Culture in the Postmodern Era Robert Hariman The man lies on the hotel bed, clad only in his underwear, as he watches the TV screen just beyond his feet. His right hand holds the remote control, which he uses to scan through the cable channels. To his left sits Abraham Lincoln, clothed in long-sleeved (...) white shirt and black pants and reading a book. Lincoln's long, angular frame is just a bit stooped, and his brow is slightly furrowed, as if long accustomed to thinking on the edge of melancholy. Lincoln is mulling over a statement by Walter Benjamin: "Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things" (Benjamin 1977, 178). 1Seated to the man's right is a woman wearing the terry cloth bathrobe provided by the hotel. She leans slightly forward, legs crossed, as she reads the New York Times Magazine cover story about President Clinton. "Listen to this," she says with a bemused smile. "In the clutter around his desk in the Oval Office stands not a single bust of a favorite predecessor, but five: Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Truman and two of F.D.R., plus a statuette of Will Rogers for good measure. If governing is choosing, this collection is a metaphor for this President's trouble with choices, and he himself allows, 'That's the story of my Presidency, that desk'" (Purdum 1996, 36).The man says nothing as he continues to watch the succession of images on the screen: a lizard flicks its tongue in the desert heat; a child in a stroller laughs as she holds a strawberry ice cream cone; a congressman in blue suit, white shirt, and red tie jabs his finger into the air as he talks earnestly; cars plastered with automotive product logos curl around a race track; Fred and Ginger swirl around the dance floor; soldiers wade ashore at Omaha Beach; the Space Shuttle lifts off; Groucho lifts his eyebrows; Regis smiles; mushrooms and peppers simmer in a pan.The succession of images could go on indefinitely. The tableau remains static. The composition is an allegory: a figural presentation that organizes multiple interpretations regarding collective experience. It also contains and comments on other forms of itself: Clinton's desk is an example [End Page 267] of the figural anecdote that has been a staple of American public address. The manifold of televisual images exemplifies the allegorical encoding that operates within postmodern art forms, including fragmentary appropriation, paratactic association, encyclopedic range, and non-linear temporality. The statement by Benjamin illuminates the nature of allegory in a specific genre and historical period, and as it is a general mode of representation, and perhaps as it is a model for all textual interpretation.The composition also evokes a set of dialectical tensions that are characteristic of both allegory in general and fundamental anxieties in the contemporary period. Past and present sit side by side, but incongruously, as if by artifice alone. So it is also with the print and visual media, which are held together by mutual competencies but otherwise in figural isolation that perhaps represents different destinies. Likewise, one might wonder about the peculiar relationship between public affairs and private life: the succession of images on the screen adhere to no hierarchy of values, no principle of loyalty or sacrifice, no basis for discerning obligations or maintaining rights, yet they are replete with the paraphernalia of these concerns, and the arrangement of figures in the room likewise is at once suggestive yet inconclusive. If this tableau contains familiar features of the mass-mediated experience that now saturates American politics, one might wonder: Is the democratic tradition in ruins?Allegories give us dynamic juxtapositions in a static frame. This principle of composition seems particularly suited to periods of cultural change. To the extent that the genre of allegory has a history, it is one of eternal recurrence at periods of loss and fragmentation produced by the expansion of a new, somewhat... (shrink)

We investigated, by means of the Reverse Correlation Task, visual representations of the culturally dominating group of local people held by sojourners as a function of their degree of cross-cultural adaptation. In three studies, using three different methods with three independent samples of sojourners and seven independent samples of Portuguese and US-American raters, we gathered clear evidence that poor adaptation goes along with more negative representations of locals. This indicates that sojourner adaptation is reflected, at a social-cognitive level, (...) in the valence of outgroup representations. (shrink)

The author’s practice-led research explores “the act of living.” In order to advance this idea, the author has acquired skills in investigation and expressed her thinking through a descriptive and explanatory visual language. The author’s learning journey, while not unique, has not been an ordinary one. Initial academic failure to achieve in the school education system contributes to choosing a life working on the land and harbouring the belief that she is unable to learn academically. Still, the author has (...) gained a rich base of physical knowledge and experience through the traditional oral route including learning interpersonal communication through body language and vocal tonality. The author has used this intuitive knowledge to develop an arts practice where she explores the bio-cultural links between people and the lands they inhabit, creating works that aim to extend knowing through emphasising the experience and atmosphere of landscape. At this time, when our lives have become increasingly encoded and intellectually based, the author shares a belief with American philosopher Eugene Gendlin (b. 1926) that the “felt sense” can be developed in order to enable us to engage more fully with the world around us. The author explores this idea in her visual art but also realizes the need to express it in writing, both in order to reach a wider public and because of the possibilities offered by the written word to make public which is private and held deep within. (shrink)

This article turns a critical eye on the indigenista movement that flourished in Latin America in the first half of the twentieth century, specifically as it relates to gender, race, and the visual...

Buddhism-influenced essays, stories, and reviews by National Book Award winner Charles R. Johnson. This wide and varied collection of essays, reviews, and short stories by the renowned author Charles Johnson offers incisive views on politics, race, and Buddhism. Johnson notes that in his life the two activities that have anchored him and reinforce each other are creative production and spiritual practice. This book is a crystallization of what he has learned during his passage through American literature, the visual (...) arts, and the Buddha dharma. Essays include: "And if Peace Is Their Goal" on the principles of enlightened politics, "The King We Need" on the deep and sophisticated moral philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and why King's teachings and example are important to all Americans, "Why Buddhists Should Vote"--Johnson posits that voting can be seen as a way to reduce suffering, "The Meaning of Barack Obama"--an appreciation of the man who became one of the most historic US presidents, even before his first 100 days were through, "Why Buddhism for Black America Now?"--what Buddhism can offer the African-American community in the post-MLK era. (shrink)