Posts Tagged culture

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81-year-old Native woman creates dictionary of her tribe’s language

Meet Marie Wilcox, an 81-year-old great-grandmother and the last fluent speaker of the Wukchumni language. The Wukchumni are believed to have numbered 50,000 before colonizer contact, but there are now only 200 people left living in the San Joaquin Valley of California.

Meet Marie Wilcox, an 81-year-old great-grandmother and the last fluent speaker of the Wukchumni language. The Wukchumni are believed to have numbered 50,000 before colonizer contact, but there are now only 200 people left living in the San ...

The Feministing Five: crystal am nelson

crystal am nelson debuted her most recent exhibit “Dark Desires: The Erotic Lives of Black Women” this Friday at the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco. The exhibition brings together art, literature, and historical materials to provide a framework on how black women have created, imagined, and self-represented sexual positivity. crystal am nelson collaborated with around ten artists to join her on this examination of black women’s sexuality, and together they have created an incredible exhibit that shows the myriad ways desire extends from sexuality to political and social spheres.

crystal am nelson is both an artist and a scholar. As “Dark Desires” demonstrates, her work combines intensive archival research, collaborative creativity, and thoughtful intention. The exhibit runs ...

crystal am nelson debuted her most recent exhibit “Dark Desires: The Erotic Lives of Black Women” this Friday at the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco. The exhibition brings together art, literature, and historical ...

The One In Which I Share My Entry Point To Feminist Thought

I want to tell you an old story. During my first year at Columbia, it occurred to me during a brief reverie that something was odd about the literature we were reading and how it represented women. In the margins of my notebook, I began making a branch of every book we read in Literature Humanities (aka Lit Hum), and I noted how each author in the western canon defined women over time– from St. Augustine, Boccaccio, Apuleius, Dante, to Goethe.

I remember some vague controversy my first year among instructors and administration about whether or not A Vindication of The Rights of Women should be mandated in the curriculum’s reading list. I think a mild concession was reached which allowed ...

I want to tell you an old story. During my first year at Columbia, it occurred to me during a brief reverie that something was odd about the literature we were reading and how it represented women. ...

Belle navigates blurred lines of race, gender and class in 18th Century Britain

One might as well begin with this painting.

In this image, we see two women of status, Dido Elizabeth Belle alongside her cousin, white Lady Elizabeth Murray. It is an oil portrait from 1779. I’m no art historian, but I can tell you that the image communicated an intimacy and nod towards an equality in social status that I hadn’t seen in European paintings of dark skinned peoples from the medieval through to the Victorian period. A great Tumblr, People of Color in European Art History has collected a host of images and in most of them, the darker body is subordinate to the lighter body. While Murray assumes considerable real estate in the foreground ...

One might as well begin with this painting.

In this image, we see two women of status, Dido Elizabeth Belle alongside her cousin, white Lady Elizabeth Murray. It is an oil portrait from 1779. I’m no ...

Quick Hit: Syreeta on racial bias in photography

This weekend, our own Syreeta chatted with NPR’s On The Media about her recent Buzzfeed piece on the bias against dark skin embedded in the very technology of film photography. Give it a listen. And if you haven’t read her piece yet, you should — it’s a lovely blend of personal narrative and fascinating cultural history.

This weekend, our own Syreeta chatted with NPR’s On The Media about her recent Buzzfeed piece on the bias against dark skin embedded in the very technology of film photography. Give it a listen. And ...

“Paycheck to Paycheck” documentary puts a human face to the treadmill of poverty in the US

“Alis Volat Propilus…It means ‘I fly with my own wings.’ I don’t need anyone else to hold me up.” Katrina Gilbert looks into the camera fingering the tattoo of a bird just above her breast. The ink is a reminder and totem. It is our first introduction to Gilbert, whose story in the documentary Paycheck to Paycheck: The Life and Times of Katrina Gilbert becomes the visual embodiment of the Shriver Report released earlier this year. Gilbert is one of 42 million American women who live at or below the poverty line. It is only a short moment later in the film that we become acutely aware that Gilbert may very well have her own wings, but it is ...

“Alis Volat Propilus…It means ‘I fly with my own wings.’ I don’t need anyone else to hold me up.” Katrina Gilbert looks into the camera fingering the tattoo of a bird just above her breast. The ...

It’s time for Hollywood to take advice from Octavia Butler and stretch its imagination

In this deliciously rare clip, Octavia Butler talks about how she began writing science fiction in response to an absence of great storytelling she felt. After seeing a terrible sci fi film when she was 12, she explains, “I turned off the television and said to myself, I can write a better story than that.” Let Butler’s thoughts on the possibility inherent in science fiction serve as talisman and inspiration:

It’s a wonderful way to think about possibilities. It’s a wonderful way to explore exotic politics. It’s a wonderful–it’s a freedom. It’s a way of doing anything you want. There are all sorts of walls around other genres. Romances, mysteries, westerns. There are no real walls around science fiction. We can build them, ...

In this deliciously rare clip, Octavia Butler talks about how she began writing science fiction in response to an absence of great storytelling she felt. After seeing a terrible sci fi film when she was 12, she ...

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