Fifteen years in the making, Tangible Visions is a comprehensive study of the spectacular ritual objects created by Northwest Coast shamans, including the masks, rattles, costumes, amulets and other paraphernalia of shaman rituals, dating from as recently as the turn of the century. 600 illustrations, 325 in color.

Fifteen years in the making, Tangible Visions is a comprehensive study of the spectacular ritual objects created by Northwest Coast shamans, including the masks, rattles, costumes, amulets and other paraphernalia of shaman rituals, dating from as recently as the turn of the century. 600 illustrations, 325 in color.

In a world obsessed with the virtual, tangible things are once again making history. Tangible Things invites readers to look closely at the things around them, ordinary things like the food on their plate and extraordinary things like the transit of planets across the sky. It argues that almost any material thing, when examined closely, can be a link between present and past. The authors of this book pulled an astonishing array of materials out of storage--from a pencil manufactured by Henry David Thoreau to a bracelet made from iridescent beetles--in a wide range of Harvard University collections to mount an innovative exhibition alongside a new general education course. The exhibition challenged the rigid distinctions between history, anthropology, science, and the arts. It showed that object-centered inquiry inevitably leads to a questioning of categories within and beyond history. Tangible Things is both an introduction to the range and scope of Harvard's remarkable collections and an invitation to reassess collections of all sorts, including those that reside in the bottom drawers or attics of people's houses. It interrogates the nineteenth-century categories that still divide art museums from science museums and historical collections from anthropological displays and that assume history is made only from written documents. Although it builds on a larger discussion among specialists, it makes its arguments through case studies, hoping to simultaneously entertain and inspire. The twenty case studies take us from the Galapagos Islands to India and from a third-century Egyptian papyrus fragment to a board game based on the twentieth-century comic strip "Dagwood and Blondie." A companion website catalogs the more than two hundred objects in the original exhibition and suggests ways in which the principles outlined in the book might change the way people understand the tangible things that surround them.

Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: The idea to write my master s thesis on Organization and Management of Virtual Teams arose during the 6th term of my studies, which was an exceptional term in many ways. I was part of several teams then, which is nothing extraordinary, I guess. What made those teams special were the people I was working with - or better - I got the possibility to work with. I had worked in teams before in the course of my studies and had had some really bad experience with lazy and unproductive people, who simply couldn t or did not want to identify with tasks and goals of various projects. What was so special with those teams in the summer term of 1999 was, that most of the team members could identify with the goals set, they worked, they tried really hard to stick to deadlines and targets, they took justified criticism as positive feedback, they were punctual, they communicated and so on - in short: I was part of some very, very productive, purposeful teams (one of the results was that I did my most successful term that term - the work of nearly two terms during this one). Well, two seminars during this spring were dealing with the topic Virtual teams and I got really interested in. So I decided to do my master s thesis on this subject. I found a nice and easy going supervisor who was interested in the topic, as well, and I started to write on the thesis at the end of my stay in Stockholm, Sweden, as an ERASMUS exchange student. But why this topic, why a thesis on virtual teams? Several reasons should be mentioned: My interest in the topic: Since I am studying Wirtschaftsinformatik (Economical Computer Science, a mixture between economics and computer science), I am interested in both economics and technology. What topic suits that combination better than Virtual Teams , which have to work for economic reasons across distances and organizational borders - all this with the help of the latest technology. The challenge: Not a lot was written about the subject Virtual Teams when I started to look for literature suitable for my thesis. I hardly could find books in Sweden and the ones I finally chose I had to order from the US (which is also a reason why this thesis is written in English, because all the literature I used was written in English). So it was quite a challenge (but exciting) to write about something new. Furthermore, as I did part of the thesis in Sweden and the other part in Austria, I had the opportunity to do [...]

Don Smith - or Lelooska, as he was usually called - was a prominent Native American artist and storyteller in the Pacific Northwest. Born in 1933 of �mixed blood� Cherokee heritage, he was adopted as an adult by the prestigious Kwakiutl Sewid clan and had relationships with elders from a wide range of tribal backgrounds. Initially producing curio items for sale to tourists and regalia for Oregon Indians, Lelooska emerged in the late 1950s as one of a handful of artists who proved crucial to the renaissance of Northwest Coast Indian art. He also developed into a supreme performer and educator, staging shows of dances, songs, and storytelling. During the peak years, from the 1970s to the early 1990s, the family shows with Lelooska as the centerpiece attracted as many as 30,000 people annually. In this book, historian and family friend Chris Friday shares and annotates interviews that he conducted with Lelooska, between 1993 and ending shortly before the artist's death, in 1996. This is the story of a man who reached, quite literally, a million or more people in his lifetime and whose life was at once exceptional and emblematic.