Berghahn Books
Framing the fifties; cinema in a divided Germany.
German and North American scholars of film and of German literature and culture examine German cinema during a period most scholars seem happy enough to dismiss as an aberration to be safely ignored. Their topics include ambivalences of national identity and masculinity in the star persona of Peter van Eyck, Cold War fantasies, representations of the Other Germany in documentaries, and re-territorializing enjoyment in the Adenaur era. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The future of indigenous museums; perspectives from the southwest Pacific.
The goals of many indigenous cultural centers and museums include preserving the heritage of the local population but also may involve capturing the tourist market. As they attempt to attain both goals they must create practices as they go, and sometimes must make compromises. Editor Stanley (art and design, U. of Central England) calls upon his and his contributors' extensive experience in both collection and display in Melanesia, Europe and North America to determine how these cultural centers and museums evolve and develop best practices, including those most likely to support community and cultural development. The case studies presented here come from island Melanesia, including the Solomon Islands, Southern New Ireland and New Caledonia, northern Australia, and New Guinea with examples of women's projects, museums for field workers, and even displays of violent events. The collection closes with comments on the future of indigenous museums. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Intersected identities; strategies of visualisation in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Mexican culture.
Segre (Hispanic studies, U. of Cambridge, UK) examines the ways in which the interdisciplinary, the eclectic and the combinatory have served a strategic purpose in the development of a self-aware and identity-conscious visual discourse in Mexico, from the formative 19th century to the post-national 1990s. The analysis considers a broad array of creative forms — observational writing, illustrated periodicals, graphic art, painting, photography and film — in a series of linked studies examining the construction and interrogation of visual identities in reproductive media. In particular , it looks at ways in which discourses concerning ethnicity and cultural hybridity have been echoed and transformed in Mexican visual culture, resulting in fields of visual discourse which are eclectic and increasingly self-reflexive. Illustrated throughout in b&w. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Locating memory; photographic arts.
How do photographic images shape memory and identity in the postmodern world? Kuhn (film studies, Lancaster U., UK) and McAllister (communication, Simon Fraser U., Canada) introduce this theme in a collection of 11 essays. North American and UK contributors explore such issues as documenting disappearing indigenous traditions and historical evidence (e.g., of the Holocaust); re-framing normative narratives of gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality; and the role of photography in family memories, views about war, and in performance art. Not indexed. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
