To: Multiple recipients of list VISCOM
Subject: Book: "Third Eye: Race, cinema, ethnographic spectacle" (fwd)
Date: Tuesday, 30 July, 1996 2:03PM
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 14:49:51 -0400
From: "Abdul K. Rony" <aron@LOC.GOV>
Subject: New Publication
To: Multiple recipients of list SEASIA-L <SEASIA-L@MSU.EDU>
In its Fall 1996 Catalog, Duke University Press announces
its September publication by an Indonesian American scholar Fatimah
Tobing Rony, entitled The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic
Spectacle. The catalog describes the work as follows:
"Charting the intersection of technology and ideology,
cultural production and social sciences, Fatimah Tobing Rony
explores early twentieth-century representations of non-Western
indigenous peoples in films ranging from the documentary to the
spectacular to the scientific. Turning the gaze of the
ethnographic camera back on itself, bringing the perspective of a
third eye to bear on the invention of the primitive other, Rony
reveals the collaboration of anthropology and popular culture in
Western constructions of race, gender, nation, and the empire.
Her work demonstrates the significance of these constructions--
and, more generally, of ethnographic cinema--for understanding
issues of identity.
In films as seemingly dissimilar as Nanook of the North,
King Kong and research footage of West Africans from n 1865 Paris
ethnographic exposition, Rony exposes a shared fascination with--
and anxiety over--race. She shows how photographic 'realism'
contributed to popular and scientific notions of evolution, race,
and civilization and how, in turn, anthropology understood and
critiqued its own use of photographic technology. Looking beyond
negative Western images of the Other, Rony considers performance
strategies that disrupt these images, for example, the use of
open resistance recontextualization, and parody in the films of
Katherine Dunham and Zora Neale Hurston, or the performances of
Josephine Baker. She also draws on the work of contemporary
artists such as Lorna Simpson and Victor Masayesva, Jr., and
writers such as Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin who unveil the
language of racialization in ethnographic cinema.
Elegantly written and richly illustrated, innovative in
theory and original in method, The Third Eye is remarkable
interdisciplinary contribution to critical thought in film
studies, anthropology, cultural studies, art history,
postcolonial studies, and women's Studies."
Fatimah Tobing Rony, who has received her AB from Williams
('84) and Ph.D. from Yale ('93) teaches Asian American Studies
and World Arts Cultures at UCLA.
320 pages, 50 b&w photographs
6 x 9 trim size
ISBN 0-8223-1834-2
paper, $17.90
library cloth edition, $49.95
Duke University Press:
Box 90660, Durham, North Carolina 27708-0660
Phone (919) 6888-5134 or Fax 919-688-1615
--------------------------------------------------------------
A. Kohar Rony INTERNET: aron@loc.gov
Library of Congress TEL: (202) 707-2932
Asian Division FAX: (202) 707-1724
Washington DC
20540-4744
"The opinion expressed above are my own and not those of my employer."
--------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded by --------------------------------------------------------
Elliott Parker BITNET: 3ZLUFUR@CMUVM
Journalism Dept. Internet: elliott.parker@cmich.edu
Central Michigan University Compuserve: 70701,520
Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859 USA The WELL: eparker@well.com
In-Reply-To: 199608011435.KAA29811@dag.XC.Org