"Mixed-Blood" Indians
by Theda Perdue
University of Georgia Press
On the Southern frontier in the 18th and early
19th centuries, European men-- including traders, soldiers and government
agents- sometimes
married Native woman. Children of these unions were known by whites
as "halfbreeds." The Indian societies into which they were
born, however, had no corresponding concepts of race or "blood."
Moreover, counter to European customs and laws, Native lineage was
traced through the mother only. No familial status or rights stemmed
from the father.
"
Mixed Blood" Indians looks at an array of such birth- and kin-
related issues as they were alternately misunderstood and astutely
exploited by both Native and European cultures. Author Thelma Perdue,
who received her master's (1975) and doctoral (1976) degrees in history
from UGA, discusses the assimilation of non-Indians into Native societies,
their participation in tribal life and white cultural assumptions
conveyed in the designation "mixed blood."
"
Mixed Blood" Indians rereads a number of early writings to
show the Native outlook on these misperceptions and to make clear
that
race is too simple a measure of their-or any people's-motives.
Colors of Africa
by James Kilgo
University of Georgia Press
Retired UGA Professor of English James Kilgo finished Colors of Africa
just a few months before his death from cancer in December 2002.
A few years earlier Kilgo had been asked if
there was anything he regretted not having done in his lifetime.
At first he answered
no, but then found himself answering back, "except to have gone to
Africa." So he went.
Colors of Africa is Kilgo's account of his sojourn to Zambia. This
autumnal memoir conveys the untamed beauty of the bush country with
the attention of a seasoned naturalist and the wonder of a first-time
visitor.
With startling immediancy, Kilgo recorded what the Luangwa River
revealed to him: its voices, scents, textures and, most meaningfully,
colors.
Hues like sienna, ochre and umber forged a visceral link between
the people, animals and landscapes Kilgo encountered and the muted
palette
of ancient rock paintings in caves and overhangs across southern
Africa.
Kilgo barely knew the man who invited him to Africa. A further complication:
the trip was a big-game safari, which conjured troubling images
of priviledge and excess.
Yet he went, as an observer, because Africa had enthralled him since
boyhood. Kilgo's recollections of his fellow travelers and the safari
staff-their forays into the bush, visits to nearby villages and
long evening talks about nature, family and faith-are all informed
by a
growing awareness of Africa's complexities and contradictions.
The Reality Effect
by Joel Black
Routledge
It used to be only movies were on film, but now reality television
and security cameras are recording the most intimate and banal moments
of people's lives for public consumption.
In The Reality Effect, Joel Black argues that
people's steadily increasing desire to make visible every aspect
of their lives is an
impulse derived
from cinema-one that has made life both more graphic and less "real." A
UGA associate professor of comparative literature, Black approaches
film not as art or entertainment, but as a documentary medium that
has obscured-if not obliterated-the line between reality and fiction.
Selected by Choice as one of the outstanding
academic titles of 2002, The Realty Effect traces the interplay
between movies and real-life
events through a series of provacative and unsettling comparative
analyses-- from Antonioni's Blow-Up and President John F. Kennedy's
assasination to Lolita and the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey to Wag
the
Dog and the Clinton scandal to David Cronenberg's Crash and Princess
Diana's violent death, from Casablanca and pornography to Brian
De Palma's Body Double and Freud's "Wolf-Man."
An ambitious work of both film theory and cultural criticism, The
Realty Effect will reframe readers' view on cinematic culture, in
which nothing is left to chance, nothing must appear to be unreal
and nothing can be left unseen.
Lusosex
by Susan Quinlan
Lusosex: Gender and Sexuality in the Portuguese-Speaking World is
the first volume to focus on the connections between nationhood, sex
and gender in the Luso-phone, or Portuguese-speaking, world. Lusosex
is edited by Susan Canty Quinlan, associate professor of Portuguese-
who's also affiliated with the women's studies program at UGA-and
Fernando Arenas, associate professor of Portuguese studies at the
University of Minnesota.
Chapters take up questions of queer performativity and activism,
female subjectivity and erotic desire, the sexual customs of indigenous
versus
European Brazilians and the inport of popular music (as represented
by Caetano Veloso and others) on interpretations of gender and sexuality.
Challenging static notions of sexualities within the Portuguese-speaking
world, these essays expand readers' understanding of the multiplicity
of differences and marginalized subjectivities that fall under the
intersections of sexuality, gender and race.
