Examines firsthand the lives of legendary Black writers who made a way out of no way to illuminate a road map for budding creators desiring to follow in their footsteps Acclaimed Cave Canem poet and essayist Remica Bingham-Risher interweaves personal essays and interviews she conducted over a decade with 10 distinguished Black poets, such as Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, and Patricia Smith, to explore the impact of identity, joy, love, and history on the artistic process. Each essay is thematically inspired, centered on one of her interviews, and uses quotes drawn from her talks to showcase their philosophies. Each essay also delves into how her own life and work are influenced by these elders. Essays included are these: · “blk/wooomen revolution” · “Girls Loving Beyoncé and Their Names” · “The Terror of Being Destroyed” · “Standing in the Shadows of Love” · “Revision as Labyrinth” Noting the frustrating tendency for Black artists to be pigeonholed into the confines of various frameworks and ideologies—Black studies, women’s studies, LGBTQIA+ studies, and so on—Bingham-Risher reveals the multitudes contained within Black poets, both past and present. By capturing the radical love ethic of Blackness amid incessant fear, she has amassed not only a wealth of knowledge about contemporary Black poetry and poetry movements but also brings to life the historical record of Black poetry from the latter half of the 20th century to the early decades of the 21st. Examining cultural traditions, myths, and music from the Four Tops to Beyoncé, Bingham-Risher reflects on the enduring gifts of art and community. If you’ve ever felt alone on your journey into the writing world, the words of these poets are for you.

Sklansky traces a shift in American social thought as the gradual demise of the household economy rendered proprietary independence an increasingly embattled ideal. Amid the widening class divide, nineteenth-century social theorists devised a new science of American society that reconceived freedom in terms of psychic self-expression instead of economic self-interest, and they redefined democracy in terms of cultural kinship rather than social compact.

To be soul-filled has become an expression for intense sensations and experiences. And yet, aren't human beings emotional creatures, feeling impaired when psychological perceptions become dulled? Among the chapters: A Short History of the Soul Diseased Soul, The Body of the Soul Is Emotional, and The Shamed Shame Depression: Discouraged Feeling."

"A gold mine of information for American social scientists. It is a 'must have.'" -Choice "Calling in the Soul" (Hu Plig) is the chant the Hmong use to guide the soul of a newborn baby into its body on the third day after birth. Based on extensive original research conducted in the late 1980s in a village in northern Thailand, this ethnographic study examines Hmong cosmological beliefs about the cycle of life as expressed in practices surrounding birth, marriage, and death, and the gender relationships evident in these practices. The social framework of the Hmong (or Miao, as they are called in China, and Meo, in Thailand), who have lived on the fringes of powerful Southeast Asian states for centuries, is distinctly patrilineal, granting little direct power to women. Yet within the limits of this structure, Hmong women wield considerable influence in the spiritually critical realms of birth and death. Patricia Symonds situates her study within the landscape of northern Thai mountain life and anthropological perspectives on the Hmong, and then focuses on "Flower Village," telling detailed stories of births, marriages, and deaths. Recurring motifs emerge: the complementarity of women's and men's roles in daily life and in the otherworld, and their reversal at critical moments; the importance of the brother-sister relationship; the social and spiritual significance of the ceremonial clothing women create, especially their embroidered "flower cloth" and the ambiguously nuanced sev, or "modesty aprons," they wear; the endlessly cyclical nature of life, from birth to death to birth again; the importance of sound and silence at times of transition; the complex connections between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Hmong women's primary source of power in the patriline is their fecundity, through which they influence key spiritual aspects of the life cycle. This value and power is evident in the division of bride-price into two parts: "milk and care money," which compensates a woman's parents for her upbringing; and payment for the "birth shirt," or placenta, of the child the young wife will produce. Through provision of birth shirts for fetuses and of elaborately embroidered cloth shirts for the dead, women literally clothe the soul through cycles of rebirth. An epilogue and appendixes provide a discussion of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the Hmong of Thailand, cultural factors in HIV transmission, and strategies for containment; complete Hmong texts and English translations of "Calling in the Soul," and "Showing the Way," the chant which guides the soul of the deceased through the land of darkness and back to reincarnation in a new body in the land of light; Flower Village demographic information; and an account of a shamanic healing and outline of Hmong health care issues in the United States. Calling in the Soulwill be of interest to sociocultural anthropologists, medical anthropologists, Southeast Asianists, and gender specialists. Patricia V. Symondsis adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Brown University. She is the coauthor (with Brooke G. Schoepf) ofHIV/AIDS: The Global Pandemic and Struggles for Control. "Despite the now quite substantial literature on the Hmong, until now, there has been very little that explores gender issues. . . .Calling in the Soulalso makes a substantial contribution to our knowledge about Hmong death rites and religious beliefs." - Charles Keyes, University of Washington "The volume's strength is its ethnography, . . . in the numerous engaging accounts of particular events - marriages, births, etc." - Nicola Tannebaum, Lehigh University "A fascinating ethnography. Its firm grounding in an ethnic minority village in Thailand provides an interesting setting for thinking about the life cycle." - Hjorleifur Jonsson, Arizona State University

The Grand Narrative of Christianity that the Bible created is dead, and the Bible is silent. Does the Bible have anything relevant to say to our modern circumstances? We ask, where did God come from? What happened to God? God’s Autopsy reinterprets soul and God as historical-psychological phenomena related to the cultural structure of consciousness, the invisible shared context of thought, which has changed dramatically over the past three millennia. This book offers a new way to understand the trajectory of Western civilization by making the implicit foundation of Western consciousness—soul—visible and conscious. Our modern Western consciousness is radically different from that of antiquity when the Bible emerged. Jung’s psychological-philosophical insight that whenever we speak about the psyche it is the psyche speaking about itself, leads to the realization that today consciousness has come home to itself. Beginning with preliterate polytheism, the emergence of the transcendent god Yahweh and Christ, which led directly to the Enlightenment, objective soul continues to unfold itself. How did late modernity become a topsy-turvy, quantum, virtual, digital, impersonal, and abstract world that appears to be running away from us? The answer is unexpectedly and shockingly in the Bible itself.

"This groundbreaking book provides guidance to counselors working with Native Peoples and other vulnerable populations. Including an important new chapter devoted to working with veterans, the second edition presents case materials that illustrate effective intervention strategies for prevalent problems, including substance abuse, intergenerational trauma, and internalized oppression"--

Americans care about the public value of moral habits. They like to see virtue rewarded and vice censured, appealing as this does to the nation's deep sense that one's success rests neither in money nor in power but in one's civility. In The Soul of Civil Society Don Eberly and Ryan Streeter look beyond such abstractions as the 'voluntary sector' and superficial communitarian solutions to civic anomie to identify the pivotal role played by local voluntary associations in a civil society. Not only important for the services they provide, these 'little platoons,' as Edmund Burke labeled them, are the public incubators of a 'new' morality, their emphasis on civic engagement at the local level central to preserving America's democratic culture on the national and international stage. More than simply championing the promise of a social renaissance, The Soul of Civil Society is essential reading for those seeking to do battle with a culturally entrenched individualism that threatens the core of America's moral vitality.

The history of eugenics and racial nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe is a neglected topic of analysis in contemporary scholarship. The 20 essays in this volume, written by distinguished scholars of eugenics and fascism alongside a new generation of scholars, excavate the hitherto unknown eugenics movements in Central and Southeast Europe, including Austria and Germany. Eugenics and racial nationalism are topics that have constantly been marginalized and rated as incompatible with local national traditions in Central and Southeast Europe. These topics receive a new treatment here. On the one hand, the historiographic perspective connects developments in the history of anthropology and eugenics with political ideologies such as racial nationalism and anti-Semitism; on the other hand, it contests the 'Sonderweg' approach adopted by scholars dealing with these issues.

In Search of Soul explores the meaning of “soul” in sacred and profane incarnations, from its biblical origins to its central place in the rich traditions of black and Latin history. Surveying the work of writers, artists, poets, musicians, philosophers and theologians, Alejandro Nava shows how their understandings of the “soul” revolve around narratives of justice, liberation, and spiritual redemption. He contends that biblical traditions and hip-hop emerged out of experiences of dispossession and oppression. Whether born in the ghettos of America or of the Roman Empire, hip-hop and Christianity have endured by giving voice to the persecuted. This book offers a view of soul in living color, as a breathing, suffering, dreaming thing.