scholarly journals FIX IT BLACK JESUS: The Iconography of Christ in Good Times

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 410
Author(s):  
Coleman ◽  
Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Jim Crow ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Situation Comedy ◽  
Network Television ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
The Past ◽  
Green Housing ◽  
Black Subjectivity ◽  
Artistic Interpretation

“[I]f images from the past spring to legibility in the present, it is because they speak to its concerns”—Margaret Cohen, Profane Illumination: Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution (Cohen 1993 p. 11). Good Times is primarily remembered for the situation comedy that it became, rather than how the series began. As a part of what Means Coleman classifies as “The Lear Era: Social Relevancy and Ridiculed Black Subjectivity,” the series was the first sitcom in TV history to feature a loving, working-class, Black nuclear family—the Evanses—with a focus on recounting their racial and socioeconomic challenges and gains. While the representational treatment of the Evanses as a whole and full family by network television (CBS) was groundbreaking, Good Times, perhaps, still reinforced implicit schemas regarding Blackness as the Evanses were poor and lived in Chicago’s rough-and-tumble Cabrini Green Housing Projects. Further, as the series progressed, narrative attention focused on the character J.J., a ‘Jim Crow’ stereotype (i.e., eye-bulging, wide-smiling, hustler) whose emergence as the centerpiece of the series eventually prompted co-star, John Amos, to leave the once stereotype-busting show out of protest. Although Good Times ultimately fell into the stereotype trap, the first two seasons of the series worked effectively in representing Blackness as complex and worthy. This article focuses on “Thank You Black Jesus”, a season-one episode that centers on J.J.’s painting of Black Jesus, an artistic interpretation that is in line with the Bible’s description of Jesus. “Thank You Black Jesus” begs several important questions surrounding religious and secular symbols, the interpellation and hailing of Blackness, and faith or suspending one’s disbelief. In this article, we conduct a critical, cultural analysis to explore the meanings that are associated with symbols, Blackness, and faith. We also consider the staying power of the “Black Jesus” episode in contemporary popular culture, as witnessed in the form of memes, intertextual references to the episode in other media texts, and as elucidated by continued debates surrounding the race of Jesus and the ways to pursue an iconography of inclusiveness.

Painting the Page in the Age of Print: Central European Manuscript Illumination of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Robert Suckale, and Gude Suckale-Redlefsen, trans. David Sánchez Text · Image · Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination, 4 Studies and Texts 208. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2018, pp. XXXIII, 329.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 450-452
Author(s):  
John M. Jeep
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Manuscript Illumination ◽  
Uniform Size ◽  
Medieval Manuscript ◽  
The Past ◽  
Comprehensive Collection ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Black Art ◽  
Image Context

Under the somewhat different, certainly intentionally punning title, Unter Druck: Mitteleuropäische Buchmalerei im Zeitalter Gutenbergs / Under Pressure / Printing […] in the Age of Gutenberg, this volume first appeared in German (Lucerne: Quaternio, 2015) to accompany a series of twelve different exhibitions of largely fifteenth-century book illumination across Central Europe. The exhibitions in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland were held, in part overlapping, from September 2015 – March 2017. They were bookended by exhibits in Vienna and Munich (for the latter, see Bilderwelten. Buchmalerei zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit. Katalogband zu den Ausstellungen in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek vom 13. April 2016 bis 24. Februar 2017, ed. Jeffrey F. Hamburger et al. Buchmalerei des 15. Jahrhunderts in Mitteleuropa, 3 (Lucerne: Quaternio, 2016). For each of ten somewhat smaller exhibitions a catalogue of uniform size and format was produced; they are, according to the publisher, already out of print. The three editors of the more comprehensive collection, Painting the Page, penned contributions that complement Eberhard König’s study, “Colour for the Black Art,” which traces <?page nr="451"?>the development of ornamentation to the Gutenberg and following printed Bibles. Early printed Bibles, in Latin or in the vernacular, tended only to provide space for initial and marginal, as opposed to full page illumination. These admittedly limited artistic accomplishments often allow for more precise localization of incunabula than other available resources. At the same time, differences and even misunderstandings – such as failure to follow instructions to the illuminator – on occasion lead to fruitful cultural analysis. Finally, printed copies that were never adorned were sometimes in the past thought to be superior, untouched, as it were, by the artistry of the ‘old’ manuscript world. König argues that the study of early printed books, and especially the illuminations they contain, should be celebrated not only as ancillary scholarship, but also as a discipline in its own right.

scholarly journals Amendments of 2020 to the Russian Constitution as an Update to Its Symbolic and Identity Programme

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jakub Sadowski
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Current Version ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
The Past ◽  
Russian Constitution ◽  
Research Procedure ◽  
Historical Identity ◽  
Fundamental Law ◽  
Symbolic Content

AbstractIn the renewed Russian Fundamental Law, in addition to a number of provisions introducing changes to the political system, there are also statements of programmatic importance, as well as several provisions with symbolic and identity function. In this article these provisions are subject to functional and semiotic-cultural analysis. Particular emphasis has been placed on legally irrelevant content transmitted by the new regulations, on their semantic connections with the content of the preamble and on their cultural context. The research procedure carried out allows us to state that, compared with the 1993 text, the Russian Constitution in its current version participates to a much greater extent in the complex system of transmission of symbolic content, as well as the narratives that contribute to social memory, cultural and historical identity. In doing so, it goes beyond its genre limitations, opening the basic text to the functions assigned to the preamble. In the fragments I have analysed in the paper there are undoubtedly functional and genre disturbances, and with them changes the mode of semiosis of the legal text, both in its normative and programmatic form. Renewed Constitution is the case in which a legal text, by its very nature designing the possible future world, does so through ideas about the past.

Black “Crime,” Public Hysteria, and the Cinema of Containment: Black Cinema Aesthetics from Willie Dynamite to The Interrupters and a/k/a Mrs. George Gilbert

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Abugo Ongiri
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
Black Cinema ◽  
Black Subjectivity ◽  
Political Organizing

This essay will explore the ways in which African American visual culture has attempted to negotiate criminalization and the current situation of what Richard Iton rightfully characterizes as “hyperincarceration.” It will explore the ways in which contemporary African American visual culture is engaged in negotiating between the literal material realities and consequences of mass incarceration and aesthetic constructions of violence. While mass incarceration is increasingly becoming understood as “the New Jim Crow” for African American political organizing, Black criminality has become the key lens through which questions of masculinity, class exclusion, gender, and selfhood get negotiated in African American visual culture. This essay will argue that the “subtext of ongoing Black captivity” is the pretext for much of what drives Black action genres and African American representation in general as a key signifier of a racialized identity and as an indicator of a Black subjectivity fraught with complexities of non-belonging.

scholarly journals Gogolesque in the novel “The Life of Arseniev” by Ivan Bunin

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Vranchan
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Old World ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Family ◽  
Artistic Interpretation

The article deals with the peculiarities of the patriarchal noble-peasant life description in the novel “The Life of Arseniev” (1930) by Ivan Bunin, focuses on the use of characteristic Gogol’s images and techniques. Moreover, the comparison of the artistic interpretation ways of the patriarchal past by the writers reveals the Gogol's influence on the position of Bunin as the author, which is presented in the novel in different ways: from the point of view of an observer narrator who topographically accurately depicts the reality and life of the family estate, and from the point of view of an emigrant, focused on memories of the past, conveying an emotional sense of the connection between generations. In general, Bunin continues to develop the theme of the collision of immobile patriarchy with the quick movement of time that destroys the old serfdom, so his novel is imbued with nostalgia for the small-scale world going into the past. In Bunin's nostalgia, there are echoes of Gogol's sorrow about the doomed old world life.

scholarly journals The city in Soviet Lithuanian cinema

Menotyra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilona Vitkauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
The Past ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Urban Representations ◽  
Artistic Interpretation ◽  
Mother Figures ◽  
The City

The article analyzes urban representations of Soviet-era Lithuanian cinema. Like any other object of reality, the city in cinema is a secondary reality, the fruit of artistic interpretation. At the same time, images of the city in film can reflect individual and collective consciousness of the period. The analysis of urban space of Lithuanian feature cinema reveals that cinematographic space can be treated as a composite construct, which creates and represents projections of identities and feelings, reflects demands, ideas, cinema fashions of its time and “hides” real sociocultural and sociopolitical discourses. Most of Soviet-style feature films much easier incorporate countryside spaces, images, landscapes and lifestyle. Meanwhile the city often not only creates an impression of a claustrophobic space, but even looks very decorative. It seems that most of filmmakers can’t identify cities with their own, Lithuanian, national living space. In search of identity or inspiration they turn to idealized village, agrarian culture and its images. Therefore, the city of Soviet Lithuanian cinema is more likely to become a space of collapsed hopes, prison, ideological repressive space, which is stuck between the present and the past. Filmmakers, like their characters, run to the shelter of nature, the mythologized, well-decorated farmstead, where archetypal father and mother figures or a calm, meditative landscape await. It seems that movie characters (and filmmakers), who have escaped from the socialist reality and its challenges to the landscapes of nature and village, have never returned.

scholarly journals Que família é esta? Mosaico de diferenças, contradições, discriminações |What family is this? Mosaic of differences, contradictions, discriminations

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (42) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edilane Bertelli ◽  
Liliane Moser
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Nuclear Family ◽  
Social Discrimination ◽  
Racial Relations ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
Brazilian Society ◽  
The Past ◽  
Human And Social Sciences ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
Professional Intervention

As análises desenvolvidas sobre família nas ciências humanas e sociais no Brasil revelam o quanto se trata de um tema sujeito a determinismos e generalizações, os quais se tornam obstáculos à investigação científica e à intervenção profissional. A diversidade de questões na reflexão acerca da família na sociedade brasileira, concomitantemente às diferenças culturais, mostram contradições, desigualdades e discriminações sociais, conforme as relações sociais de classe, de gênero e étnico-raciais. Neste artigo, a partir de revisão bibliográfica do ponto de vista histórico, objetiva-se problematizar concepções naturalizadas e universalizantes quando se trata “da” família brasileira. Inicialmente, situa-se a concepção pretérita de família patriarcal, bem como as incongruências da generalização da família nuclear moderna para o contexto brasileiro. Em seguida, apontam-se tendências sociodemográficas às sociedades ocidentais e os rumos da família, concluindo que é de fundamental importância desnaturalizar concepções de família e pensá-la como fenômeno histórico e produto de determinadas circunstâncias econômicas, políticas, sociais e culturais, na medida em que seu entendimento impacta na formulação de políticas sociais e nas intervenções de profissionais de diferentes áreas.                                                                                                   Palavras-Chave: família; família patriarcal; família nuclear; gênero. Abstract – The analyzes carried out on family in the human and social sciences in Brazil reveal how much this theme is subject to determinism and generalization, which become obstacles to scientific research and professional intervention. The diversity of questions in the reflections about family in Brazilian society, along with cultural differences, show contradictions, inequalities, and social discrimination, according to class, gender, and ethnic-racial relations. This article, based on a bibliographical revision of a historical perspective, aims to problematize naturalized and universalized traces when it comes to “the” Brazilian family. Initially, the past conception of a patriarchal family is presented, as well as the incongruities of the generalization of modern nuclear family in relation to the Brazilian context. Afterwards, sociodemographic tendencies are pointed out to Western societies and the ways family is developing. It is concluded that to denaturalize conceptions of family is of fundamental importance, and also to rethink it as a historical phenomenon and product of certain economic, political, social, and cultural circumstances, in so far as its understanding impacts the formulation of social policies and the interventions of professionals from different areas.Keywords: family; patriarchal family; nuclear family; gender.

Tense, Mood, and Aspect

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Simon
Keyword(s):  
Jim Crow ◽  
Temporal Structure ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Musical Analysis ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Migration Narratives ◽  
And Migration

The verbal characteristics of tense, mood, and aspect are used in this chapter to examine the structuring of narratives in the blues. Arguing that the blues articulate an unconventional story arc marked by a timeline that both reaches back retrospectively into the past and gestures toward a future, Simon argues that the temporal structure approximates Jim Crow and migration narratives in its open-endedness. The discussion of tense, mood, and aspect reveals an unstable, resonant, and oscillating system of temporalities and subject positions. Beginning with explorations of Memphis Minnie’s “In My Girlish Days” and Freddie King’s “Someday, After Awhile,” the chapter culminates in a close reading of Freddie King’s guitar solo in “Have You Ever Loved a Woman.” Through musical analysis, musical correlates to tense, mood, and aspect demonstrate the musical narrative’s reliance on structures similar to those that underpin the lyric content.

The Entanglements of Ethnography and Participatory Action Research (PAR) in Educational Research in North America

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Eisenhart
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
North America ◽  
Participatory Action Research ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Educational Research ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
The Past

The traditions of ethnography and participatory action research (PAR) have different roots and different priorities, but their trajectories have become entangled in educational research over the past halfcentury. In many ways, ethnography and PAR are compatible. Both make participants’ perspectives central to the research. Both rely primarily on qualitative methods. Both are ethically committed to appreciating cultural differences and promoting the welfare of the groups they work with. Taken together, each adds something important to the other: PAR offers ethnography a “stance toward research” that is more democratic and action-oriented than traditional ethnography; ethnography lends PAR legitimacy as a research approach. Nonetheless, differences between the two create contradictions and tensions when they are combined. While educational researchers remain enthusiastic about the potential of combining activism with cultural analysis, it is important not to collapse ethnography and participatory action research, or privilege one over the other, but to find productive ways to move forward with the tensions between them.

DIVERSITY AND MEANING IN THE STUDY OF BLACK FATHERHOOD

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria S. Johnson ◽  
Alford A. Young
Keyword(s):  
Black Men ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Black Fathers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Expectations ◽  
The Many

AbstractFor the past several decades, numerous studies have focused on the so-called “crisis of Black fatherhood”—that is, the many ways in which Black fathers struggle to fulfill traditional paternal roles and duties. Given major shifts in both the structural conditions and cultural expectations of fatherhood in general over the past century, we argue that it is necessary to reestablish not only what Black fatherhood looks like today—in particular, the internal diversity and dynamism of this category—but also how Black men (as well as other members of Black families and communities) make sense of these changes and meaningfully negotiate their implications. We outline a two-pronged research agenda that: first, identifies gaps in the existing literature that limit our knowledge of the full range of Black fathering practices and experiences; and second, reclaims and repurposes “cultural analysis,” not to pathologize “what’s wrong with Black families and fathers,” but to shed much needed light on the ways in which Black fathers themselves process and make meaning of their roles and realities.

Race Talk, Race, and Contemporary Racism

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (5) ◽  
pp. 1363-1379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arif Dirlik
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Labor Migration ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Modernity

How do we talk about racism, which we must, given its pervasiveness, without erasing significant changes that distinguish the present from the past and, even more important, without contributing to further racialization of the language of social and cultural analysis—and, by implication, to racist discourses? Much has changed over the last half century in the consciousness of racism and in efforts to overcome it. It is obscurantist to overlook these changes and speak of racism today as if it were the racism of earlier times. On the other hand, recent decades have witnessed the globalization of racism, the racialization of social categories, and the proliferation of race talk, which contributes to the reification of race. This article seeks to evaluate the ways in which race talk finds expression in discourses of political economy, labor migration, biogenetics, and neoliberal attacks on the idea of the social, as well as in putatively antiracist arguments in cultural and postcolonial studies that nevertheless contribute to the pervasiveness of race talk. It suggests that contemporary issues of race are best grasped within a condition of global modernity and sees in the restoration of the social a precondition for overcoming political and cultural racialization.

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