Playing with the relation between truth and representation in the stories we tell as ethnographers and theater makers, this book contributes to the current debates around experimental research methodologies and ethnographically grounded theatrical forms. It departs from other studies by proposing a unique and accessible methodology that brings together theatrical devising practices and anthropology. Through its theoretical exploration and performative script, the book bridges the relation between ethnographic writing and performativity, and simultaneously troubles conventional narrative practices in theater and anthropology. The practice described in the book, Affect Theater, also emphasizes embodied and affective approaches to empirical research and defines a process for rendering this type of material into imaginative academic writing, collaborative performance, and other inventive forms, applicable across a range of academic disciplines.
Migrants in Translation is an ethnographic reflection on foreign migration, mental health, and cultural translation in Italy. Its larger context is Europe and the rapid shifts in cultural and political identities that are negotiated between cultural affinity and a multicultural, multiracial Europe. The issue of migration and cultural difference figures as central in the process of forming diverse yet unified European identities. In this context, legal and illegal foreigners—mostly from Eastern Europe and Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa—are often portrayed as a threat to national and supranational identities, security, cultural foundations, and religious values. This book addresses the legal, therapeutic, and moral techniques of recognition and cultural translation that emerge in response to these social uncertainties. In particular, Migrants in Translation focuses on Italian ethno-psychiatry as an emerging technique that provides culturally appropriate therapeutic services exclusively to migrants, political refugees, and victims of torture and trafficking. Cristiana Giordano argues that ethno-psychiatry’s focus on cultural identifications as therapeutic—inasmuch as it complies with current political desires for diversity and multiculturalism—also provides a radical critique of psychiatric, legal, and moral categories of inclusion, and allows for a rethinking of the politics of recognition.
For fans of Amy Rosenthal’s I wish You More and Joe Witek’s In My Heart, Cristiana Valentini’s Stay Little Seed is a moving tale of love and the courage of letting go. “Both children and adult readers will identify with timeless themes, from the joy in comforting familial bonds to the growth that can only happen with independence.” —Booklist Every year when the wind blows, the tree’s seeds sail away to a mysterious place—until one little seed decides to stay. At first, the tree supposes the seed should leave. How else would it grow roots to rise tall and strong? But the tree is also lonely, and the mysterious place is far, far away. Will the seed be safe on its own? Stay, Little Seed celebrates the rhythms of the natural world and shares a gentle message for all of us, no matter our age: Sometimes, by letting go and being brave, we begin life’s greatest adventures.
Playing with the relation between truth and representation in the stories we tell as ethnographers and theater makers, this book contributes to the current debates around experimental research methodologies and ethnographically grounded theatrical forms. It departs from other studies by proposing a unique and accessible methodology that brings together theatrical devising practices and anthropology. Through its theoretical exploration and performative script, the book bridges the relation between ethnographic writing and performativity, and simultaneously troubles conventional narrative practices in theater and anthropology. The practice described in the book, Affect Theater, also emphasizes embodied and affective approaches to empirical research and defines a process for rendering this type of material into imaginative academic writing, collaborative performance, and other inventive forms, applicable across a range of academic disciplines.
Migrants in Translation is an ethnographic reflection on foreign migration, mental health, and cultural translation in Italy. Its larger context is Europe and the rapid shifts in cultural and political identities that are negotiated between cultural affinity and a multicultural, multiracial Europe. The issue of migration and cultural difference figures as central in the process of forming diverse yet unified European identities. In this context, legal and illegal foreigners—mostly from Eastern Europe and Northern and Sub-Saharan Africa—are often portrayed as a threat to national and supranational identities, security, cultural foundations, and religious values. This book addresses the legal, therapeutic, and moral techniques of recognition and cultural translation that emerge in response to these social uncertainties. In particular, Migrants in Translation focuses on Italian ethno-psychiatry as an emerging technique that provides culturally appropriate therapeutic services exclusively to migrants, political refugees, and victims of torture and trafficking. Cristiana Giordano argues that ethno-psychiatry’s focus on cultural identifications as therapeutic—inasmuch as it complies with current political desires for diversity and multiculturalism—also provides a radical critique of psychiatric, legal, and moral categories of inclusion, and allows for a rethinking of the politics of recognition.
For fans of Amy Rosenthal’s I wish You More and Joe Witek’s In My Heart, Cristiana Valentini’s Stay Little Seed is a moving tale of love and the courage of letting go. “Both children and adult readers will identify with timeless themes, from the joy in comforting familial bonds to the growth that can only happen with independence.” —Booklist Every year when the wind blows, the tree’s seeds sail away to a mysterious place—until one little seed decides to stay. At first, the tree supposes the seed should leave. How else would it grow roots to rise tall and strong? But the tree is also lonely, and the mysterious place is far, far away. Will the seed be safe on its own? Stay, Little Seed celebrates the rhythms of the natural world and shares a gentle message for all of us, no matter our age: Sometimes, by letting go and being brave, we begin life’s greatest adventures.
The figure of the dog is a paradox. As in so many cultures, past and present, the dog in ancient Greece was seen as the animal closest to humans, even as it elicited from them the most negative representations. Still a loaded term today, the word bitch not only signified shamelessness and a lack of self-control but was also exclusively figured as female. Woman and dogs in the Greek imagination were intimately intertwined, and in this careful, engaging analysis, Cristiana Franco explores the ancients' complex relationship with both. By analyzing the relationship between humans and dogs as depicted in a vast array of myths, proverbs, spontaneous metaphors, and comic jokes, Franco in particular shows how the symbolic overlap between dog and woman provided the conceptual tools to maintain feminine subordination. Intended for general readers as well as scholars, Shameless extends the boundaries of classics and anthropology, forming a model of the sensitive work that can be done to illuminate how deeply animals are imbricated in human history. The English translation has been revised and expanded from the original Italian edition, and it includes a new methodological appendix by the author that points the way toward future work in the emerging field of human-animal studies.
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