In recent years, works by American Indian artists and filmmakers such as Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Edgar Heap of Birds, Sherman Alexie, Shelley Niro, and Chris Eyre have illustrated the importance of visual culture as a means to mediate identity in contemporary Native America. This insightful collection of essays explores how identity is created and communicated through Native film-, video-, and art-making; what role these practices play in contemporary cultural revitalization; and how indigenous creators revisit media pasts and resignify dominant discourses through their work. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Visualities: Perspectives on Contemporary American Indian Film and Art draws on American Indian Studies, American Studies, Film Studies, Cultural Studies, Women’s Studies, and Postcolonial Studies. Among the artists examined are Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, Eric Gansworth, Melanie Printup Hope, Jolene Rickard, and George Longfish. Films analyzed include Imprint, It Starts with a Whisper, Mohawk Girls, Skins, The Business of Fancydancing, and a selection of Native Latin films.
Table of Contents:
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: Indigenous Visualities
Part One: Indigenous Film Practices
Visual Prophecies: Imprint and It Starts with a Whisper - Michelle H. Raheja
Indians Watching Indians on TV: Native Spectatorship and the Politics of Recognition in Skins and Smoke Signals - Joanna Hearne
Sherman Shoots Alexie: Working with and without Reservation(s) inThe Business of Fancydancing - Theo. Van Alst
Elusive Identities: Representations of Native Latin America in the Contemporary Film Industry - Rocío Quispe-Agnoli
Condolence Tropes and Haudenosaunee Visuality: It Starts with a Whisper and Mohawk Girls - Penelope Myrtle Kelsey
Videographic Sovereignty: Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie’s Aboriginal World View - Joseph Bauerkemper
Part Two: Contemporary American Indian Art
Indigenous Semiotics and Shared Modernity - Dean Rader
Seeing Memory, Storying Memory: Printup Hope, Rickard, Gansworth - Susan Bernardin
Aboriginal Beauty and Self-Determination: Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie’s Photographic Projects - Cynthia Fowler
Text-Messaging Prayers: George Longfish and His Art of Communication - Molly McGlennen
Contributors
Index
About the Author :
Denise K. Cummings is Assistant Professor at Rollins College, where she teaches film history, theory, and criticism, critical media and cultural studies, and American and American Indian literature, culture, and film.
