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This major retrospective publication confirms Carl Beam (1943 - 2005) as one of North America's most important artists. Beam broke new ground throughout his career, notably as the first artist of Native Ancestry (Ojibwe) to have his work purchased by the National Gallery of Canada as Contemporary Art. Working in various mediums - photography, oil, acrylic, stone, cement, wood, ceramics and found objects - Beam's work continually explored the tensions between Western and Aboriginal relations. Featuring more than 50 of Beam's most remarkable works from his early career in the 1970s to the end of his production in the early 2000s, this richly illustrated monograph illuminates the artist's investigations into the metaphysical aspects of Western and Indigenous culture, while powerfully illustrating the wideranging physicality of his work. Source: Publisher

This chapter wants to argue two things: the first part suggests that reality television in Africa – specifically the series Big Brother Africa, which completed its third season in November 2008 – has had profound impacts for identity politics, gender politics, and the politics of class on the continent. In fact, these are the issues most commonly illuminated by reality television and I wrote about these in a previously published article. The second part of the chapter moves into less explored territory. In that previous article, I briefly discussed how specifically Big Brother Africa can illuminate the workings of globalization in Africa and, in particular, South Africa’s hegemonic role in that process. Here, I expand on my earlier argument by exploring that hegemony in the context of the growing Chinese presence in Africa. All economic and political indicators suggest that China’s growing investment in mining and infrastructure and its political clout relative to South Africa mean that it is destined to assume a place of prominence on the continent. But here I want to argue that if we want to understand how globalization plays out in Africa, we need to look beyond China’s military and economic expansion. For me, Big Brother Africa can help us make sense of these dynamic processes. South Africa has consistently remained the highest-ranking country in Africain terms of its “global competitiveness” as measured by the World Economic Forum. South Africa dominates regional markets in Southern Africa as well as remaining competitive in the rest of the continent against business rivals from United States and Europe. As it was under Apartheid, there is a close symbiosis between the continental aspirations and interests of the postapartheid state and that of South African business. The advent of democracy in 1994 has opened up African markets for South African business on an unprecedented scale. The South African state is very active on the African continent and keen to develop a leading role for itself. In fact, successive United States governments have viewed South Africa as a continental leader. For example, former President George W. Bush referred to former South African President Thabo Mbeki as his “point man in Africa.”4The South African government underwrites and actively promotes SouthAfrican business’s continental schemes through its “Proudly South African” campaign coordinated through an International Marketing Council situated in the Office of (the country’s) President since 2002, which links state nationalism with consumption. Separately a statutory Industrial Development Corporation (established in 1940) underwrites the business expansion of South African capital.

Many games touch upon issues that are related to the postcolonial culture we live in. Be it in the shape of referring to how it has generated ethnic differences, subscribing to (post) capitalist values of winning and gaining, or by employing militarist strategies that have been partly shaped our colonial histories, cultural notions that are related to our colonial past are often resonant in games. However, one particular strand of strategy games takes the notions of colonialism as its most central focus. Games like Age Of Empires (AOE), Civilization and Rise of Nations, may differ greatly in certain ludological aspects, but all share a strong fascination with colonial history. Through employing colonial techniques of domination like exploring, trading, map-making and military manoeuvring, players create their personal colonial pasts and futures. Even though it is evident that such games share an explicit fascination with colonial history, it remains less clear in what way they may be called postcolonial. In this article I will shed light on why and how such games can be called postcolonial and should even be conceived as one of the most significant arenas to express the tensions and frictions that are part of the postcolonial culture we live in. As postcolonial playgrounds they offer the perfect means to play with and make sense of how colonial spatial practices have shaped contemporary culture. I will argue that the very character of digital games as well as the specific game mechanisms of historical strategy games makes them postcolonial playgrounds par excellence.

The western media has been eager to construct an apparent link between the so-called moral desensitization of soldiers in the 2003 Iraq War and their expe-rience of video game combat. Commentators assert that ‘games have avoided engaging the real-life issues to which they are responding’ (Zacny 2008), includ-ing the issue of combat trauma. Contrary to such positions, many video games already simulate the trauma in their gameplay experience; this article explores this concept from Brown’s definition of trauma as ‘outside the range of human experience’ (1995: 101). This evokes recent work in games studies on in-game involvement and identity-formation and raises questions about the role of moral-ity in gameplay, especially in multi-player combat games like Counter-Strike, Call of Duty 4 and America’s Army. Working from these hitherto overlooked aspects of trauma in gameplay experiences, this article challenges the oversim-plified association of video games with the desensitization of US troops in recent conflicts.

How should one think about popular media in the African context? Should we attempt to understand and analyse the increasing proliferation of tabloids, reality television shows, pop music, websites and mobile communications through the analytical frameworks constructed by scholars in the Global North, or does Africa pose unique research questions? Is there a danger of either essentializing Africa by treating her as ‘different’, or by ignoring her specificity by approaching her media via Western theoretical constructs? The scholar wishing to understand the interface between popular media, development and democracy in contemporary African societies is faced with a complex double bind. Elsewhere (Nyamnjoh 2005: 2-3) I have argued that African worldviews and cultural values are doubly excluded from global media discourses, first by the ideology of hierarchies and boundedness of cultures, and second by cultural industries more interested in profits than the promotion of creative diversity and cultural plurality. Little attention is accorded to how Africans negotiate and navigate the various identity margins and cultural influences in their lives, in ways that are not easily reducible to simple options or straightforward choices. The consequence of rigid dichotomies or stubborn prescriptiveness based on externally induced expectations of social transformation is an idea of democracy hardly informed by popular articulations of personhood and agency in Africa, and media whose professional values and content are not in tune with the expectations of those they purport to serve. The predicament of media practitioners in such a situation, as well as those wishing to understand African media practice through media theory, is obvious: to be of real service to liberal democracy and its expectations of modernity, they must ignore alternative ideas of personhood and agency in the cultural communities within which such practices take place and of which such practitioners and, often, scholars form part. Attending to the interests of particular cultural groups as strategically essential entities risks contradicting the principles of liberal democracy and its emphasis on civic citizenship and the autonomous individual, which media practitioners in African societies are being held accountable to.

Este artículo discute el concepto de tiempo en la historia-disciplina como una noción política. A partir del análisis de las relaciones entre historia, nación y temporalidad, el autor intenta desentrañar por qué existe una distribución jerárquica de sujetos de la historia y sujetos de la cultura. Estudiando casos concretos de Sudáfrica y Argentina, intenta ver de qué manera esa distribución (incluso resignificada en la “nación multicultural”) impide ver ciertas continuidades en la reproducción de las asimetrías. El trabajo culmina analizando una noción poscolonial de historia como pérdida, como un regimen híbrido de historicidad. This article discusses the concept of time in History (the discipline) as a political notion. Starting with and analysis of the connivences between history, nation and temporality, the author tries to unravel why it operates a hierarchical distribution of “subjets of history” and “subjects of culture”. Dealing with specific cases of South Africa and Argentina, he tries to see how this distribution (even resignified in the “multicultural nation”) prevents to realize certain continuities in the reproduction of asymmetries. This piece of work ends analyzing a postcolonial notion of history as loss, meaning a hybrid regime of historicity.

Discussion of Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2008) by Mabel Moraña, Enrique Dussel, and Carlos A. Jauregui (eds.).

Combines post-modern theory with the comic wisdom of the tribal trickster to explore the effects of nostalgic simulations of "Indian-ness".

This article is a portal into the rapidly expanding historiography of modern Brazil. It highlights the major nodes of discussion and debate among historians of Brazil over the last two decades, and describes how these debates have been shaped by broader shifts in the historical profession. Two themes frame this survey of the new historiographical trends for postcolonial Brazil. One is the impact of the linguistic or cultural turn on that historiography. Slower to have an impact in the Brazilian historiography were the writings of the Subaltern Studies scholars and postcolonial theorists.

In recent years, Arab television has undergone a dramatic and profound transformation from terrestrial, government-owned, national channels to satellite, privately owned, transnational networks. The latter is the Arab television that matters today, economically, socially and politically. The resulting pan-Arab industry is vibrant, diverse, and fluid - very different, the authors of this major new study argue, from the prevailing view in the West, which focuses only on the al-Jazeera network. Based on a wealth of primary Arabic language sources, interviews with Arab television executives, and the authors' personal and professional experience with the industry, Arab Television Industries tells the story of that transformation, featuring compelling portraits of major players and institutions, and captures dominant trends in the industry. Readers learn how the transformation of Arab television came to be, the different kinds of channels, how programs are made and promoted, and how they are regulated. Throughout, the analysis focuses on the interaction of the television industry with Arab politics, business, societies and cultures.

Traces the rise of black participation in cyberspace.Deftly interweaving history, culture, and critical theory, Anna Everett traces the rise of black participation in cyberspace, particularly during the early years of the Internet. She challenges the problematic historical view of black people as quintessential information-age outsiders or poster children for the digital divide by uncovering their early technolust and repositioning them as eager technology adopters and consumers, and thus as coconstituent elements in the information technology revolution. She offers several case studies that include lessons learned from early adoption of the Internet by the Association of Nigerians Living Abroad and their Niajanet virtual community, the grassroots organizing efforts that led to the phenomenally successful Million Woman March, the migration of several historic black presses online, and an interventionist critique of race in contemporary video games. Ultimately, Digital Diaspora shows how African Americans and African diasporic peoples developed the necessary technomastery to ride in the front of the bus on the information superhighway.Anna Everett is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her books include Learning Race and Ethnicity: Youth and Digital Media; New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality; and Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909–1949.

From Amos 'n' Andy to The Jeffersons to Family Matters to Chappelle's Show, this volume covers it all with entries on all different genres_animation, documentaries, sitcoms, sports, talk shows, and variety shows_and performers such as Muhammad Ali, Louis Armstrong, Bill Cosby, and Oprah Winfrey. Additionally, information can be found on general issues, ranging from African American audiences and stereotypes through the related networks and organizations. This book has hundreds of cross-referenced entries, from A to Z, in the dictionary and a list of acronyms with their corresponding definitions. The extensive chronology shows who did what and when and the introduction traces the often difficult circumstances African American performers faced compared to the more satisfactory present situation. Finally, the bibliography is useful to those readers who want to know more about specific topics or persons.

Games and gaming have always been an important part of society and culture. Within the last 35 years, due to numerous technology innovations, electronic games in many formats have not only become ubiquitous in everyday recreational life but have also permeated many professional fields and disciplines for multiple purposes including teaching and learning.The Handbook of Research on Effective Electronic Gaming in Education presents a framework for understanding games for educational purposes while providing a broader sense of current related research. Compiling over 50 groundbreaking research studies from leading international authorities in the field, this advanced and uniquely comprehensive reference is a must-have for academic and research libraries and for all those interested in expanding their theoretical and practical knowledge of the exciting field of electronic gaming.

This important book showcases institutional and private efforts to collect, document, and preserve African American art in American's fourth largest city, Houston, Texas. Eminent historian John Hope Franklin's essay reveals his passionate commitment to collect African American art, while curator Alvia J. Wardlaw discusses works by Robert S. Duncanson, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Horace Pippen, and Bill Traylor as well as pieces by contemporary artists Kojo Griffin and Mequitta Ahuja. Quilts, pottery, and a desk made by an African American slave for his daughter contribute to the overview. The book also focuses on the collections of the "black intelligentsia," African Americans who taught at black colleges like Fisk University, where Aaron Douglas founded the art department. A number of the artists represented were collected privately before they were able to exhibit in mainstream museums.

This first volume of the DIGAREC Series holds the proceedings of the conference The Philosophy of Computer Gamesʺ, held at the University of Potsdam from May 8-10, 2008. The contributions of the conference address three fields of computer game research that are philosophically relevant and, likewise, to which philosophical reflection is crucial. These are: ethics and politics, the action-space of games, and the magic circle. All three topics are interlinked and constitute the paradigmatic object of computer games: Whereas the first describes computer games on the outside, looking at the cultural effects of games as well as on moral practices acted out with them, the second describes computer games on the inside, i.e. how they are constituted as a medium. The latter finally discusses the way in which a border between these two realms, games and non-games, persists or is already transgressed in respect to a general performativity.

This article focuses on questioning and theorizing the visual and discursive disappearance of blackness from virtual fantasy worlds. Using EverQuest, EverQuest II, and World of Warcraft as illustrative of a timeline of character creation design trends, this article argues that the disappearance of blackness is a gradual erasure facilitated by multicultural design strategies and regressive racial logics. Contemporary fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) privilege whiteness and contextualize it as the default selection, rendering any alterations in coloration or racial selection exotic stylistic deviations. Given the Eurocentrism inherent in the fantasy genre and embraced by MMORPGs, in conjunction with commonsense conceptions of Blacks as hyper-masculine and ghettoized in the gamer imaginary, players and designers do not see blackness as appropriate for the discourse of heroic fantasy. As a result, reductive racial stereotypes and representations proliferate while productive and politically disruptive racial differences are ejected or neutralized through fantastical proxies.

This collection explores the relationship between digital gaming and its cultural context by focusing on the burgeoning Asia-Pacific region. Encompassing key locations for global gaming production and consumption such as Japan, China, and South Korea, as well as increasingly significant sites including Australia and Singapore, the region provides divergent examples of the role of gaming as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Drawing from micro ethnographic studies of specific games and gaming locales to macro political economy analyses of techno-nationalisms and trans-cultural flows, this collection provides an interdisciplinary model for thinking through the politics of gaming production, representation, and consumption in the region.

Undercurrents engages the critical rubric of "queer" to examine Hong Kong's screen and media culture during the transitional and immediate postcolonial period. Helen Hok-Sze Leung draws on theoretical insights from a range of disciplines to reveal parallels between the crisis and uncertainty of the territory's postcolonial transition and the queer aspects of its cultural productions. Leung explores Hong Kong cultural productions -- cinema, fiction, popular music and subcultural projects -- and argues that while there is no overt consolidation of gay and lesbian identities in Hong Kong culture, undercurrents of diverse and complex expressions of gender and sexual variance are widely in evidence. Undercurrents uncovers a queer media culture that has been largely overloo... Source: Publisher

Cet article est une introduction à la pensée critique latino-américaine, de la philosophie de la libération au tournant décolonial proposé par le groupe de recherche pluridisciplinaire Modernité/Colonialité. Dans un premier temps sont présentées les principales contributions de la philosophie de la libération en tant que pensée critique latino-américaine. Est abordée ensuite la question de la pertinence actuelle des motivations et des inquiétudes initiales de la philosophie de la libération, ainsi que la pertinence de ses thèses et de ses principales catégories. Puis sont présentées les principales critiques adressées à ce courant de pensée en quarante ans d’existence. Enfin est introduit le tournant décolonial du groupe Modernité/Colonialité. L’accent est mis sur la notion de pluriversalité que proposent les penseurs critiques latino-américains présentés dans cet article.