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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
A Method For Space Archaeology Research: The International Space Station Archaeological Project, Justin St. P. Walsh, Alice C. Gorman
A Method For Space Archaeology Research: The International Space Station Archaeological Project, Justin St. P. Walsh, Alice C. Gorman
Art Faculty Articles and Research
How does a ‘space culture’ emerge and evolve, and how can archaeologists study such a phenomenon? The International Space Station Archaeological Project seeks to analyse the social and cultural context of an assemblage relating to the human presence in space. Drawing on concepts from contemporary archaeology, the project pursues a unique perspective beyond sociological or ethnographical approaches. Semiotic analysis of material culture and proxemic analysis of embodied space can be achieved using NASA's archives of documentation, images, video and audio media. Here, the authors set out a method for the study of this evidence. Understanding how individuals and groups use …
Material Girls: Consumption And The Making Of Middle Class Identity In The Experiences Of Black Single Mothers In The Washington, Dc Metropolitan Area, Aysha L. Preston Ph.D.
Material Girls: Consumption And The Making Of Middle Class Identity In The Experiences Of Black Single Mothers In The Washington, Dc Metropolitan Area, Aysha L. Preston Ph.D.
FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This dissertation explores the ways in which black single mothers in the Washington, DC metropolitan area use material goods and consumption practices to inform their identities as members of the middle class. Black middle class women are challenging stereotypes surrounding single mother households, the idea of family, and class status in the United States, as more women overall are having children while single, delaying or deciding against marriage, and are entering the middle and upper-middle classes as a result of advanced education and career opportunities. Because of these demographic and sociocultural shifts, the romanticized “nuclear family” which consists of a …
Wearing Memories: Clothing And The Global Lives Of Mourning In Swaziland, Casey Golomski
Wearing Memories: Clothing And The Global Lives Of Mourning In Swaziland, Casey Golomski
Anthropology
This article situates a cultural phenomenon of women’s memory work through clothing in Swaziland. It explores clothing as both action and object of everyday, personalized practice that constitutes psychosocial well-being and material proximities between the living and the dead, namely, in how clothing of the deceased is privately possessed and ritually manipulated by the bereaved. While human and spiritual self-other relations are produced through clothing and its material efficacy, current global ideologies of immaterial mortuary ritual associated with Pentecostalism have emerged as contraries to this local, intersubjective grief work. This article describes how such contrarian ideologies paper over existing global …
Response To The Unthinkable: Collecting And Archiving Condolence And Temporary Memorial Materials Following Public Tragedies, Ashley R. Maynor
Response To The Unthinkable: Collecting And Archiving Condolence And Temporary Memorial Materials Following Public Tragedies, Ashley R. Maynor
UT Libraries Faculty: Peer-Reviewed Publications
From Oklahoma City to Columbine to the Boston Marathon finish line, individuals around the world have responded to violent mass deaths publicized in mainstream media by creating ever-larger temporary memorials and sending expressions of sympathy—such as letters, flowers, tokens, and mementos—by the tens and even hundreds of thousands. Increasingly, there is an expectation that some, if not all, of the condolence and temporary memorial items will be kept or saved. This unusual and unexpected task of archiving so-called “spontaneous shrines” often falls to libraries and archives and few protocols, if any, exist for librarians and archivists in this role. This …
Shamanic Knowledge: The Challenge To Information Science, Jay H. Bernstein
Shamanic Knowledge: The Challenge To Information Science, Jay H. Bernstein
Publications and Research
Shamanism, a form of healing involving soul travel and trance found in many traditional societies the world over, has been studied by anthropologists and scholars of religious studies. Shamanic traditions are characterized by specialized, restricted, and esoteric knowledge domains that are encoded and communicated through condensed and mystified symbols and reproduced in ceremonies. Shamanic knowledge is acquired through direct experience of the numinous, usually in the process of overcoming personal affliction. Information science so far has been silent on shamanic knowledge. This is understandable given the latter discipline's focus on formal documentary information systems and advanced information technologies. But in …
Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis
Can Developing Women Create Primitive Art? And Other Questions Of Value, Meaning And Identity In The Circulation Of Janakpur Art, Coralynn V. Davis
Faculty Journal Articles
In this article, I examine the values and meanings that adhere to objects made by Maithil women at a development project in Janakpur, Nepal – objects collectors have called ‘Janakpur Art’. I seek to explain how and why changes in pictorial content in Janakpur Art – shifts that took place over a period of five or six years in the 1990s – occurred, and what such a change might indicate about the link between Maithil women’s lives, development, and tourism. As I will demonstrate, part of the appeal for consumers of Janakpur Art has been that it is produced at …