Aesthetics for Birds

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art for Everyone

42 Search Results for: cultural appropriation

April 24, 2018
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Beauty in Strange Places: Art First

I met a critic, I made her shit her drawers She said she thought hip-hop was only guns and alcohol I said “Oh hell naw!” But yet it’s that too You can’t discrimi-hate cause you done read a book or two What if I looked at you in a microscope, saw all the dirty organisms Living in your closet would I stop and would I pause it? …Speeches only reaches those who already know about it This is how we go about it – André 3000, “Humble Mumble” What follows is a guest post by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò (Georgetown University). This blog recently hosted a post on country music which defended country music partly because of its interaction with the class dynamics between the working class people who listen to the style and the broader culture in which they do so. The author of this piece comes close to a … Continue reading →

September 11, 2017
by Aesthetics for Birds
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New Faces at Aesthetics for Birds

Welcome back to a new year at Aesthetics for Birds! This year will bring all sorts of new things for the blog, but the most exciting is that we have five new collaborators! With these philosophers on board, we will be able to provide you with much broader, more diverse, and more frequent content. Other changes and new features will accompany this addition, but first the introductions. For those of you who are new to AFB, I will begin by introducing myself and Rebecca. (For more about AFB, visit our About page.) Alex King (Editor-in-Chief and Contributor; handles: aestheticsforbirds*, alexforbirds) Alex (that’s me) owns and is editor-in-chief of AFB. She is currently Assistant Professor at University at Buffalo (= SUNY Buffalo). Her research concerns the relationships among practical, moral, and aesthetic normativity. She also works on ‘ought implies can’ and issues surrounding high and low art (see her post on … Continue reading →

May 26, 2017
by utahphilosoraptor
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Art Rules: Conference Recap, DAY 1

Mary Beth Willard (Weber State) offers pseudo-live-blogging/recap/latergram of the Art Rules Conference, Day 1 Most people know Salt Lake City as “weren’t the Olympics there in 2002?” and some people after mine own heart know it as “Isn’t that the city where Scully was going to be banished in the first X-Files movie?”, but what they don’t know is that the art community in Salt Lake is so generous that the Art Rules: Aesthetic Reasons, Norms, and Standards (May 19-20) conference was held inside of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art for free. An aesthetics conference in an art museum! No one tell them this isn’t a thing.

Three lovely tacos Five bright, peach-colored flamingos appear from the neck up against a dark green pond in the background.
Five bright, peach-colored flamingos appear from the neck up against a dark green pond in the background.

January 19, 2023
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Top 5 Posts of 2022

Our most-viewed pieces span nature and perception, artificial intelligence, and movies and architecture. Scroll through to make sure you haven’t missed something big! Continue reading →

January 27, 2020
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Hip-hop, Gender, and Language with Underground Rappers Bl Shirelle and Bates

This is Part I of a two-part series. Part II is a roundtable discussion of the below interviews, featuring scholars working on these issues. I. What Is There To Discuss? A Prompt for Discussion by Bill Adler Bill Adler is a music journalist, hip-hop archivist, and legendary Def Jam publicist. As wonderful as it is, as impactful as it is, hip-hop music has never exactly embodied a model of civil discourse. On the contrary, it has often been—and remains—rough, rude, and heedless. Indeed, those very qualities are at least part of what makes the culture so appealing to so many folks. Happily, hip-hop has also generated a body of exemplary critical commentary from the very beginning. For over thirty years now, critics and journalists who came of age as hip-hoppers have wrestled with the music’s sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and materialism… and have done so with love, from inside the culture. … Continue reading →

October 7, 2019
by Alex King
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Culture Wars and Native American Literature in Los Angeles Review of Books

Adrian L. Jawort, a Northern Cheyenne Two Spirit journalist and writer, has written a piece for the Los Angeles Review of Books in which they reflect on the critical reception of two young adult novels by Native American author Rebecca Roanhorse. The controversy: Roanhorse is a member of the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo tribe, but her novels feature a Diné (Navajo) protagonist, and center on events in Dinétah, the traditional land of the Diné people. The problem came in the form of a 2018 letter, signed by 14 Navajo writers, that accused Roanhorse of appropriating another tribe: “Trail of Lightning is an appropriation of Diné cultural beliefs.”