The Signifying Monkey
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The Signifying Monkey
''The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism'' is a work of literary criticism and theory by the American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. first published in 1988. The book traces the folkloric origins of the African-American cultural practice of "signifying" and uses the concept of signifyin(g) to analyze the interplay between texts of prominent African-American writers, specifically Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston and Ishmael Reed. Gates' title alludes to the song "Signifyin' Monkey" by Oscar Brown, recorded in 1960. Literary signifying Signifyin(g) is closely related to double-talk and trickery of the type used by the Monkey of these narratives, but, as Gates himself admits, "It is difficult to arrive at a consensus of definitions of signifyin(g)." Bernard W. Bell defines it as an "elaborate, indirect form of goading or insult generally making use of profanity". Roger D. Abrahams writes that to signify is "to imply, goad, beg, b ...
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Henry Louis Gates Jr
Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He rediscovered the earliest African-American novels, long forgotten, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon. In addition to producing and hosting previous series on the history and genealogy of prominent American figures, since 2012, Gates has been host of the television series '' Finding Your Roots'' on PBS. It combines the work of expert researchers in genealogy, history, and genetics historic research to tell guests about their ancestors' lives and histories. Early life and education Gates was born in Keyser, West Virginia, to Henry Louis Gates Sr. (c. 1913–2010) ...
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Sign (semiotics)
In semiotics, a sign is anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the interpreter of the sign. The meaning can be intentional, as when a word is uttered with a specific meaning, or unintentional, as when a symptom is taken as a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can communicate through any of the senses, visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or taste. Two major theories describe the way signs acquire the ability to transfer information. Both theories understand the defining property of the sign as a relation between a number of elements. In the tradition of semiotics developed by Ferdinand de Saussure (referred to as semiology) the sign relation is dyadic, consisting only of a form of the sign (the signifier) and its meaning (the signified). Saussure saw this relation as being essentially arbitrary (the principle of semiotic arbitrariness), motivated only by social convention. Saussure's theory has been particularly influential in the study o ...
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Books About Race And Ethnicity
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a b ...
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Books Of Literary Criticism
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a bo ...
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1988 Non-fiction Books
File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian Bicentenary, Bicentennial on January 26; The 1988 Summer Olympics are held in Seoul, South Korea; Soviet Union, Soviet troops begin their Soviet-Afghan War, withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is completed the 1989, next year; The 1988 Armenian earthquake kills between 25,000-50,000 people; The 8888 Uprising in Myanmar, led by students, protests the Burma Socialist Programme Party; A bomb explodes on Pan Am Flight 103, causing the plane to crash down on the town of Lockerbie, Scotland- the event kills 270 people., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Piper Alpha rect 200 0 400 200 Iran Air Flight 655 rect 400 0 600 200 Australian Bicentenary rect 0 200 300 400 Pan Am Flight 103 rect 300 200 600 400 1988 Summer Olympics rect 0 400 200 600 8888 ...
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Rap And Race In The Urban Present
Rapping (also rhyming, spitting, emceeing or MCing) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular". It is performed or chanted, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The components of rap include "content" (what is being said), "flow" (rhythm, rhyme), and "delivery" (cadence, tone). Rap differs from spoken-word poetry in that it is usually performed off-time to musical accompaniment. Rap is a primary ingredient of hip hop music commonly associated with that genre; however, the origins of rap predate hip-hop culture by many years. Precursors to modern rap include the West African griot tradition, Cockney rhyming slang, certain vocal styles of blues, jazz, 1960s African-American poetry and ''Sprechgesang''. The use of rap in popular music originated in the Bronx, New York City in the 1970s, alongside the hip hop genre and cultural movement. Rapping developed from the role of master of ceremonies (MC) at ...
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Houston Baker
Houston Alfred Baker Jr. (born March 22, 1943) is an American scholar specializing in African-American literature and Distinguished University Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. Baker served as president of the Modern Language Association, editor of the journal ''American Literature'', and has authored several books, including ''The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism'', ''Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance'', ''Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature'', and ''Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing''.Eakin, Emily (May 5, 2001)"Black Captive in a White Culture?" ''The New York Times''.Lane, Richard J. (2006), ''Fifty Key Literary Theorists''. Routledge Key Guides series, pp. 3–9. Baker was included in the 2006 textbook ''Fifty Key Literary Theorists'', by Richard J. Lane. Early life Baker was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, a city he later described as "racist" and "stultifying"."Houston A. Baker Jr." in ...
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American Book Award
The American Book Award is an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "there are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers.""For Immediate Release:"
(August 5, 2010). Before Columbus Foundation. Retrieved February 17, 2012.
The Award is administered by the multi-cultural focused nonprofit , which established it in 1978 and inaugurated it in 1980. The Award honors excellence in American literature without restriction to ...
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Andrew Delbanco
Andrew H. Delbanco (born 1952) is the Alexander Hamilton Professor of American Studies at Columbia University and the president of thTeagle Foundation He is the author of many books, including ''The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War'' (2018), which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for "books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and human diversity", and the Mark Lynton History Prize, sponsored by the Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, for a work "of history, on any subject, that best combines intellectual or scholarly distinction with felicity of expression". ''Melville: His World and Work'' (2005) was a finalist for the ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prize in biography. He has written numerous essays on American history and literature, a selection of which appeared in ''Required Reading: Why the American Classics Matter Now'' (1997), as well as on ...
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University Of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', numerous academic journals, and advanced monographs in the academic fields. One of its quasi-independent projects is the BiblioVault, a digital repository for scholarly books. The Press building is located just south of the Midway Plaisance on the University of Chicago campus. History The University of Chicago Press was founded in 1890, making it one of the oldest continuously operating university presses in the United States. Its first published book was Robert F. Harper's ''Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum''. The book sold five copies during its first two years, but by 1900 the University of Chicago Press had published 127 books and pamphlets and 11 scholarly journals, includ ...
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Houston A
Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the List of North American cities by population, sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in 2020. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat and largest city of Harris County, Texas, Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, which is the fifth-most populous List of metropolitan statistical areas, metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second-most populous in Texas after Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, Dallas–Fort Worth. Houston is the southeast anchor of the greater megaregion known as the Texas Triangle. Comprising a land area of , Houston is the List of Uni ...
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Julie Rivkin
Julie H. Rivkin (born 1952) is an American literary critic and professor of English at Connecticut College since 1982. She is best known for her publications on literary theory and Henry James, and has published several works on both subjects. Rivkin received her B.A. and PhD from Yale University and is currently the Associate Dean of Faculty at Connecticut College, a member of the Modern Language Association, and Vice President of the Henry James Society. Her other specializations include American literature and gender studies (publisher of the '' Henry James Review''). ''False Positions'' In 1996, Rivkin published a book of essays titled ''False Positions: The Representational Logics of Henry James's Fictions'', which explores theoretical complications in Henry James's novels ''The Ambassadors'', ''The Wings of the Dove'', ''What Maisie Knew'', and ''The Awkward Age''. ''Literary Theory: An Anthology'' In 1998, Rivkin, co-editing with Michael Ryan, published ''Literary Theory: ...
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