Walter Benjamin and Cultural Translation


Book Description

Dissecting the radical impact of Walter Benjamin on contemporary cultural, postcolonial and translation theory, this book investigates the translation and reception of Benjamin's most famous text about translation, “The Task of the Translator,” in English language debates around 'cultural translation'. For years now, there has been a pronounced interest in translation throughout the Humanities, which has come with an increasing detachment of translation from linguistic-textual parameters. It has generated a broad spectrum of discussions subsumed under the heading of 'cultural translation', a concept that is constantly re-invented and manifests in often heavily diverging expressions. However, there seems to be a distinct constant: In their own (re-)formulations of this concept, a remarkable number of scholars-Bhabha, Chow, Niranjana, to name but a few-explicitly refer to Walter Benjamin's “The Task of the Translator.” In its first part, this book considers Benjamin and the way in which he thought about, theorized and practiced translation throughout his writings. In a second part, Walter Benjamin meets 'cultural translation': tracing various paths of translation and reception, this part also tackles the issues and debates that result from the omnipresence of Walter Benjamin in contemporary theories and discussions of 'cultural translation'. The result is a clearer picture of the translation and reception processes that have generated the immense impact of Benjamin on contemporary cultural theory, as well as new perspectives for a way of reading that re-shapes the canonized texts themselves and holds the potential of disturbing, shifting and enriching their more 'traditional' readings.




Do This in Remembrance of Me


Book Description

The Reformed tradition has often made doctrine the starting point for eucharistic theology. In this book Martha Moore-Keish seeks to counter that tendency, placing the Reformed tradition in conversation with liturgical theology and ritual theory to move toward a fuller appreciation of the ritual dimension of the Lord's Supper. While liturgical theologians assert more strongly than most Reformed theologians that knowledge of God comes primarily through liturgy, both groups, says Moore-Keish, have not always attended closely to local practice. In keeping with ritual scholars who urge closer attention to particular practices, Moore-Keish argues that we need to be cautious about claiming what the eucharist universally is and does. We must not allow predetermined "meaning" to blind us to the "doing" of eucharist in local churches. An in-depth study of a particular congregation helps flesh out Moore-Keish's thesis.




By Means of Performance


Book Description

The field of performance studies embraces performance behaviour of all kinds and in all contexts, from everyday life to high ceremony. This volume investigates a wide range of performance behaviour - dance, ritual, conflict situation, sports, storytelling and display behaviour - in a variety of circumstances and cultures. It considers such issues as the relationship between training and the finished performance; whether performance behaviour is universal or culturally specific; and the relationships between ritual aesthetics, popular entertainment and religion, and sports and theatre and dance. The volume brings together essays from leading anthropologists, artists and performance theorists to provide a definitive introduction to the burgeoning field of performance studies. It will be of value to scholars, teachers and students of anthropology, theatre, folklore, semiotics and performance studies.




Performing Blackness


Book Description

Performing Blackness offers a challenging interpretation of black cultural expression since the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Exploring drama, music, poetry, sermons, and criticism, Benston offers an exciting meditation on modern black performance's role in realising African-American aspirations for autonomy and authority. Artists covered include: * John Coltrane * Ntozake Shange * Ed Bullins * Amiri Baraka * Adrienne Kennedy * Michael Harper. Performing Blackness is an exciting contribution to the ongoing debate about the vitality and importance of black culture.




Current Trends in New Testament Study


Book Description

This book focuses on seven of the most important formal methods used to interpret the New Testament today. Several of the chapters also touch on Old Testament/Hebrew Bible interpretation. In line with the multiplicity of methods for interpretation of texts in the humanities in general, New Testament study has never before seen so many different methods. This situation poses both opportunities and challenges for scholars and students alike. The articles in this book introduce the latest methods and give examples of these methods at work. The seven methods are as follows: post-colonial, narrative, historical, performance, mathematical analysis of style; womanist; and ecological.




Performance


Book Description




Performing Objects and Theatrical Things


Book Description

This book rethinks historical and contemporary theatre, performance, and cultural events by scrutinizing and theorizing the objects and things that activate stages, venues, environments, and archives.







Embodied Performance


Book Description

Embodied Performance presents a methodology by which performer-interpreters can bring their intuitive interpretations to the scholarly conversations about biblical compositions. It may not be comfortable, for scholarship is out of practice in listening to emotion and intuition. It may not be the only way to bring the fullness of human meaning making into scholarly discussions. It is a beginning, as Sarah Agnew, storyteller and scholar, places herself as the subject and object under examination, observing her practice as a biblical storyteller making meaning through embodied performance, and develops a coherent method rigorously tested with an Embodied Performance Analysis of Romans. Follow Sarah’s story as she searches within Biblical Performance Criticism for such a method, before determining the need to strike out in a new direction from within an already innovative field. All biblical scholars are complex human beings, making meaning through their embodiment, their emotions, their embeddedness in community. Embodied Performance Analysis offers a way to attend to and incorporate the full range of human meaning making in our engagement with biblical compositions, for richer discussion closer to the intent of the compositions themselves.




Performing Early Christian Literature


Book Description

Scholars of early Christian literature acknowledge that oral traditions lie behind the New Testament gospels. While the concept of orality is widely accepted, it has not resulted in a corresponding effort to understand the reception of the gospels within their oral milieu. In this book, Kelly Iverson reconsiders the experiential context in which early Christian literature was received and interpreted. He argues that reading and performance are distinguishable media events, and, significantly, that they produce distinctive interpretive experiences for readers and audiences alike. Iverson marshals an array of methodological perspectives demonstrating how performance generates a unique experiential context that shapes and informs the interpretive process. Iverson's study explores the dynamic oral environment in which ancient audiences experienced the gospel stories. He shows why an understanding of oral performance has important implications for the study of the NT, as well as for several issues that are largely unquestioned by biblical scholars.