This book provides a record of an important exhibition--Reinventing Tradition in the New World: The Arts of Gu Wenda, Wang Mansheng, Xu Bing, and Zhang Hongtu--held at Gettysburg College's Schmucker Art Gallery in late 2004.Each of the featured artists has a distinctive style and voice, and the diversity of the objects in the catalogue is great, ranging from large stone slabs engraved with poetry to a tiny glass bubble containing only air. Despite these artistic divergences, the four artists are linked by cultural experiences. All grew up in socialist China and later immigrated to New York City. The artists also share a fascination with the power of language. In his or her own way, each artist is concerned with, in Katheryn M. Linduff's phrasing, "words and their significance, whether conventional and readable or fictional and indecipherable." Essays by Wang Ying, Yan Sun, and Regan Golden-McNerney, interviews with each of the artists, and a glossary of Chinese terms supplement this fully illustrated catalogue.

How was the Jewish tradition reinvented in Russian-Jewish literature after a long period of assimilation, the Holocaust, and decades of Communism? The process of reinventing the tradition began in the counter-culture of Jewish dissidents, in the midst of the late-Soviet underground of the 1960-1970s, and it continues to the present day. In this period, Jewish literature addresses the reader of the ‘post-human’ epoch, when the knowledge about traditional Jewry and Judaism is received not from the family members or the collective environment, but rather from books, paintings, museums and popular culture. Klavdia Smola explores how contemporary Russian-Jewish literature turns to the traditions of Jewish writing, from biblical Judaism to early-Soviet (anti-)Zionist novels, and how it ‘re-writes’ Haskalah satire, Hassidic Midrash or Yiddish travelogues.

The many different localities of the Pacific region have a long history of transformation, under both pre- and post-colonial conditions. More recently, rates of local transformation have increased tremendously under post-colonial regimes. The forces of globalization, which rapidly distribute commodities, images, and political and moral concepts across the region, have presented Pacific populations with an unprecedented need and opportunity to fashion new and expanded understandings of their cultural and individual identities. This volume, the first in a new series, examines the forces of globalization at different levels, as they manifest themselves and operate across cultural, cognitive and biographical dimensions of human life in the Pacific. While posing familiar questions, it offers new answers through the integration of cultural and psychological methods. The contributors draw on practice theory, cognitive science and the anthropology of space and place while exploring the key analytical rubrics of human agency, memory and landscape.

An original investigation into how tradition has developed over the centuries into our modern understanding of the term.

An expanded and radically revised new edition that is essential reading for those who are interested in anthropological theory and current post-colonial debates, or simply curious about the ways in which we systematically misunderstand other peoples.

Self reinvention is easy! Everybody can reinvent themselves in a challenging economy by incorporating the simple indisputable truths in Reinvention Made Easy. But even the most creative leaders will find this a personally challenging and value changing read. "The economy doesn't go up or down; it becomes different!" The realities of your business have changed forever. Leaders manage the way they react to change. The next year is probably the end of the way we will do business. Your business purpose is not determined by you, but by the needs or wants that are satisfied when the customer buys a product or service. Effective market leaders see themselves from the customer's viewpoint. To reinvent yourself, you must answer these questions raised in Reinvention Made Easy: When will the recession end?, Why don't people buy what I sell?, Why does my team hate me?, Why doesn't my team work always work?, How am I punishing my customers?, What is costing me more money than making me? The answers are so un-comfortable, you will be forced to think your way to very last page.

Throughout the Americas, performances deriving from medieval European rituals, ceremonies, and festivities made up a crucial part of the cultural cargo shipped from Europe to the overseas settlements. In 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed from Plymouth, England, to Newfoundland, bringing with him "morris dancers, hobby horses, and Maylike Conceits" for the "allurement of the savages" and the "solace of our people." His voyage closely resembled that of twelve Franciscan friars who in 1524 had arrived in what is now Mexico armed with a repertoire of miracle plays, religious processions, and other performances. These two events, although far from unique, helped shape initial encounters between Europeans and indigenous peoples; they also marked the first stages of the process that would lead—by no means smoothly—to a distinctively American culture. Ritual Imports is a groundbreaking cultural history of European performance traditions in the New World, from the sixteenth century to the present. Claire Sponsler examines the role of survivals and adaptations of medieval drama in shaping American culture from colonization through nation building and on to today's multicultural society. The book's subjects include New Mexican matachines dances and Spanish conquest drama, Albany's Pinkster festival and Afro-Dutch religious celebrations, Philadelphia's mummers and the Anglo-Saxon revival, a Brooklyn Italian American saint's play, American and German passion plays, and academic reconstructions of medieval drama. Drawing on theories of cultural appropriation, Ritual Imports makes an important contribution to medieval and American studies as well as to cultural studies and the history of theater.

Not all original works invoke the encore impulse in their audiences. Those that do generally spawn replications - sequels, spin-offs, or re-makes. This book presents a theory of why some replications succeed and others fail across genres and media.

Ours is the era of "reinvention". From psychotherapy to life coaching, from self-help manuals to cosmetic surgery and from corporate rebranding to urban redesign: the art of reinvention is inextricably interwoven with the lure of the next frontier, the breakthrough to the next boundary – especially boundaries of the self. In this new, updated edition of this remarkable book, Anthony Elliott examines "reinvention" as a key buzzword of our times. Through a wide-ranging and impassioned assessment, Elliott unmasks the ever-increasing globalization of reinvention – from reinvention gurus to business reinvention, from personal makeovers to corporate rebrandings. In doing so, he undertakes a serious if often amusing consideration of contemporary reinvention practices, including super-fast weight-loss diets, celebrity makeovers, body augmentations, speed dating, online relationship therapies, organizational restructurings, business downsizings and many more. The second edition of Reinvention includes a new chapter on the digital revolution and artificial intelligence, which situates reinvention within the context of technological automation. There is also a discussion of how the Covid-19 global pandemic has impacted today’s cultures of reinvention. In addition, there is a new concluding chapter in which the author develops further his theoretical account of the nature of reinvention societies. This absorbing book will continue to be the ideal introduction to reinvention for students and general readers alike. Reinvention offers a provocative and radical reflection on an issue (sometimes treated as trivial in the public sphere) that is increasingly politically urgent in terms of its personal, social and environmental consequences.

This revised edition of Carolyn Merchant’s classic Reinventing Eden has been updated with a new foreword and afterword. Visionary quests to return to the Garden of Eden have shaped Western Culture. This book traces the idea of rebuilding the primeval garden from its origins to its latest incarnations and offers a bold new way to think about the earth.