Inside Tibetan Buddhism Rituals by Robert Thurman

Inside Tibetan Buddhism Rituals by Robert Thurman

This collection of original essays examines debates on how written, printed, visual, and performed works produced meaning in American culture before 1900. The contributors argue that America has been a multimedia culture since the eighteenth century. According to Sandra M. Gustafson, the verbal arts before 1900 manifest a strikingly rich pattern of development and change. From the wide variety of indigenous traditions, through the initial productions of settler communities, to the elaborations of colonial, postcolonial, and national expressive forms, the shifting dynamics of performed, manuscript-based, and printed verbal art capture critical elements of rapidly changing societies. The contributors address performances of religion and government, race and gender, poetry, theater, and song. Their studies are based on texts--intended for reading silently or out loud--maps, recovered speech, and pictorial sources. As these essays demonstrate, media, even when they appear to be fixed, reflected a dynamic American experience.

This volume brings together some of the most exciting work in print culture and 'old new media' studies (relating to early America) that is being done today. The collection will have an avid scholarly audience as the interdisciplinary fields of book history and of media, literacy, and performance studies, and their subfields, continue to thrive. --Patricia Crain, New York University

This collection contains important contributions to our understanding of a wide range of media in America before 1900. The volumes published in A History of the Book in America have already begun to give an impressive sense of the major contribution of the history of the book to our understanding of American culture, but Cultural Narratives goes beyond the brief of those volumes both in emphasizing other media than the book and in stressing the interrelations between those media. This volume is important not only to scholars working in American Studies but also to anyone interested in the impact of 'textual media' in the making of culture and history. --Peter Stallybrass, University of Pennsylvania

Cultural Narratives encompasses an extraordinary range of topics, including cross-cultural exchanges of music, poetry, oral narrative, and theatrical traditions. It delves into codes of civility, poetic performance, and visual and verbal literacy, considering issues of race, class, and gender, and how they intersected with the 'texts' so many Americans used in shaping their own identities. --Heather S. Nathans, University of Maryland

A recognized worldwide authority on religion and spirituality, Asian history, philosophy, Tibetan Buddhism, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Robert A.F. Thurman is an eloquent advocate of the relevance of Eastern ideas to our daily lives. In doing so, he has become a leading voice of the value of reason, peace and compassion. He was named in 1997 one of Time magazine's 25 most influential Americans and has been profiled by The New York Times Magazine and People magazine. As part of his long-term commitment to the Tibetan cause, at the request of H.H. the Dalai Lama, Thurman co-founded Tibet House US in 1987 with Richard Gere, Philip Glass. Since then Uma Thurman, Melissa Mathison Ford, Natalie Merchant, Leila Hadley Luce, and others have joined the board. Tibet House US is a nonprofit organization in New York City dedicated to the preservation and renaissance of Tibetan civilization. It maintains a lively museum and cultural center, and offers programs in all aspects of the Tibetan arts and sciences. It recently founded the Menla Mountain Retreat Center in the Catskill Mountains to advance the healing arts and wisdom of Tibetan and Asian medicine traditions and offer their resources to the growing demand for alternative and complementary health practices.William Meyers has worked for twenty years to fulfill his late wife's dying wish to make the story of the Dalai Lama's heroic life better known to the wider world in the form of the graphic novel. Michael G. Burbank has dedicated his life's work to making Tibetan Buddhist culture more widely accessible to his and future generations through his work at the Dalai Lama's Cultural Center in America, Tibet House US, and its Menla Mountain Retreat (www.menla.us).The graphic artistry in Man of Peace was a team effort of five artists coordinated by master artist/designer Steve Buccellato of Legendhaus Studio in Los Angeles.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780006382997
ISBN 10	0006382991
Title	Inside Tibetan Buddhism Rituals
Author	Robert Thurman
Series	Signs Of The Sacred
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	HarperCollins Publishers Inc
Year published	1995-02-01
Number of pages	110
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.