Terms of the Day for November 23

• Text - the words of speech written or printed in such a way as to be read and analyzed by literate individuals.
• Deconstructionism -  a form of semiotic analysis, derived mainly from French philosopher Jacques Derrida's 1967 work Of Grammatology. Derrida proposed the deconstruction of all texts where binary oppositions are used in the construction of meaning and values.
• Narrative - any account that presents connected events or images.  Since Modern Art rejected narrative in favor of abstraction, many Postmodern artists were newly attracted to it in the late 20th century.
• Counternarrative – a narrative which co-exists with, while contradicting, another established narrative.

Terms of the Day for November 20

• In Living Color -  a sketch comedy television series, which originally ran on the Fox Network from April 15, 1990 to May 19, 1994, created and written by and staring the Wayans brothers. The title of the series was inspired by the NBC announcement of broadcasts being presented "in living color" during the 1950s and 1960s, prior to mainstream color television. It also refers to the fact that most of the show's cast was predominantly African-American, unlike other sketch comedy shows whose casts were usually mostly white.
• Spike Lee Joints – a term which refers to the films of African American filmmaker Spike Lee.  These films often explore American race relations and the closing credits always end with the phrases "By Any Means Necessary", "Ya Dig" and "Sho Nuff".
• Bigger & Blacker - an album by Chris Rock, originally released on July 13, 1999, on the Dreamworks label. The album features live stand-up comedy tracks recorded for an HBO special at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and studio-recorded comic sketches.

Terms of the Day for November 18

• Generation X - the generation born after the Western post-World War II baby boom, with birthdates from the early 1960s to the late 1970s.  This generation’s cultural outlook was influenced by several events, including the election of Ronald Reagan, Black Monday, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the election of George H.W. Bush, the election of Bill Clinton and the United States 1990s economic boom.
• Installation Art - an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces.

Terms of the Day for November 16

• Postmodern Art - a movement in Western art, spanning from the late 1970s until the present, which rejects the key ideas of modernism. 
• Pluralism - a Postmodern movement in art that assumes the cultural context of art should be all-encompassing in its respect for the art of the world's wide variety of cultures and artistic styles, and that diverse cultural and stylistic influences can coexist in a work of art.
• Appropriation - an artistic concept in which an artist uses an image already in existence and places it in a new context in order to give it new meanings.
• Graffiti - images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property.  Generally regarded as vandalism, the Postmodern era has recognized it as a legitimate artform.
• Pastiche - a literary, artistic, musical, or architectural work that imitates the style of previous work or an artistic composition made up of selections from different works.
• Bricolage - the construction or creation of a work of art from a diverse range of things which happen to be available.

Terms of the Day for November 11

• Protest Art – a broad term that refers to creative works that concern or are produced by activists and social movements.
• AfriCOBRA – (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) a collective of African American artists in Chicago that specifically took on the goal of creating a new revolutionary black aesthetic. 
• Exploitation Film –  an informal label which may be applied to any film which is generally considered to be both low budget and of low moral or artistic merit, and therefore apparently attempting to gain financial success by "exploiting" a current trend or a niche genre or a base desire for lurid subject matter.
• Blaxploitation Film –  a film genre which emerged in the United States in the 1970s aimed at an urban black audience.  These films were often low-budget, had majority African American casts, and used funk music and urban slang of the time.  They were often criticized for perpetuating stereotypes.

Terms of the Day for November 9

• The African-American Civil Rights Movement – a collection of social movements in the United States whose goal was to end racial segregation and discrimination against black Americans and enforce constitutional voting rights to them.  The movement was most active during a period from 1955-68.
• Spiral – a collective of AfricanAmerican artists initially formed by Romare Bearden, Charles Alston, Norman Lewis, and Hale Woodruff on July 5, 1963. The artists in the group were moved to come together and discuss their own engagement in the struggle for civil rights, even though each found engagement in a different way. 
• Washington Color School – a Washington, DC-based visual art movement of the late 1950s through the mid-1970s which was related  to abstract expressionism but made attempts to be much more minimal and structured than abstract expressionism.  Members of the movement referred to themselves as “Colorists”.

Terms of the Day for November 4

• The Baby Boom –  in the United States, this term most often refers to the post-World War II baby boom (1946–1964). An estimated 78.3 million Americans were born during this demographic boom in births.
• Abstract Expressionism – the first specifically American art movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the western art world, it combined the emotional intensity of German Expressionism with the abstraction of Futurism and Synthetic Cubism.

Terms of the Day for October 28

• Jim Crow Laws – state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy.
• Proletariat – a term used to identify the working class in capitalist systems.  Members of this class do not have ownership of the means of production and therefore sell their labor to those who do.
• Capitalism –  an economic system that is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods or services for profit. Other central elements include competitive markets, wage labor and capital accumulation.
• Communism –  established by Karl Marx, a revolutionary socialist movement to create a classless, moneyless, and stateless social order structured upon common ownership of the means of production. The movement claims that since the world has a superabundance of material wealth, societies can allow distribution based on need and social relations  based on freely associated individuals.

Terms of the Day for October 26

• The Great Depression – a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement which followed the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and eventually spread worldwide.
• The New Deal – a  series of economic programs enacted in the United States between 1933 and 1936 in response to the Great Depression and focused on what historians call the "3 Rs": Relief, Recovery, and Reform. That is, Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression.
• Works Progress Administration (WPA) – the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads.
• Federal Art Programs (FAP) – was the visual arts arm of the Great Depression-era New Deal Works Progress Administration program in the United States.  It’s primary goals were to employ out-of-work artists and to provide art for non-federal government buildings: schools, hospitals, libraries, etc.

Terms of the Day for October 21

• The Harlem Renaissance - a period in the 1920s and 1930s when African-American achievements in art and music and literature flourished, characterized by a deliberate reconnection with traditional and ancient African arts.
• Mammy Archetype – a reference to African American women in a time when Africans worked as domestic servants/slaves. She is often portrayed within a narrative framework or other imagery as a domestic servant of African descent, generally good-natured, often overweight, very dark skinned, middle aged, and loud.
• Jezebel Archetype – a term with roots in the biblical character Jezebel often used to describe the stereotypical primitive, sexually promiscuous, and sometimes controlling black woman.
• Primitivism – a Western art movement that borrows visual forms from non-Western or prehistoric peoples; those that were considered “primitive”.

Terms of the Day for October 19

• Modern Age– the post-medieval historical period which was marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance.
• Late Modern Era – the final phase of the Modern Age, occurring between 1900 and the 1970s, which was marked by extreme industrialization, urbanization, and strides toward race and gender equality.
• Modern Art – artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation.
• The “New Negro” – a term popularized during the Harlem Renaissance implying a more outspoken advocacy of dignity and a refusal to submit quietly to the practices and laws of Jim Crow racial segregation. The term was made popular by Alain Locke.
• The Harlem Renaissance - a period in the 1920s and 1930s when African-American achievements in art and music and literature flourished, characterized by a deliberate reconnection with traditional and ancient African arts.

Terms of the Day for October 16

• Double-consciousness – a term coined by W. E. B. Du Bois used to describe an individual whose identity is divided into several facets. Du Bois saw double consciousness as a useful theoretical model for understanding the psycho-social divisions existing within African American society.
• Negro Spirituals – religious (generally Christian) songs that were created by enslaved African people in the United States.  Originally an oral tradition that imparted Christian values while also describing the hardships of slavery, this historic group of uniquely American songs is now recognized as a distinct genre of music.
• The Birth of a Nation –  a 1915 silent drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and based on the novel and play The Clansman, both by Thomas Dixon, Jr.  The film follows the lives of two families through the Civil War, the Reconstruction period, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.
• “Love and Theft” –  a term which refers to the tendency of certain cultures to be genuinely fascinated with aspects of another culture to the point of adopting some of that culture’s characteristics, albeit with a misinterpreted understanding of that culture.

Terms of the Day for October 14

• Ethnology – the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.  During Victorian imperialism, this science was used to classify certain ethnicities as “primitive” and “inferior” to whites and in need of white social control.
• Darky Iconography – a term which refers to overly cartoonish and highly stereotypical depictions of African Americans in the late 19th and into the 20th centuries often used for mass-market items and in literature.

Terms of the Day for October 12

• Diaspora – meaning “a scattering” and originally used as a term for the dispersal of the Hebrews after the Babylonian occupation, this word has come to refer to historical mass-dispersions of people with common roots, particularly movements of an involuntary nature, such as the African Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
• Imperialism –  the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship between states or cultures, often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination.  Also referred to as Colonialism, this term is often specifically applied to the period of western domination during the 19th-20th centuries.

Terms of the Day for September 30

• Dinh – a community house which serves as a shrine for the guardian spirit of villages in Vietnam.  During Chinese rule, a village was required to apply for permission to build a dinh.
• Confucianism –  a Chinese ethical and philosophical system developed from the teachings of the Chinese philosopher Confucius whose core teaching was humanism, the belief that human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavor.
• Peranakan –  a term which refers to the descendants of noble Chinese who migrated to the British Straits Settlements of Malacca and adopted the local Malay culture through intermarriage. 

Terms of the Day for September 28

• Kendi – an earthenware flask with a neck and spout, usually for drinking water.
• Celadon – a green glaze used in pottery, invented in China and widely adopted in Thailand, produced by the reaction of differing amounts of iron oxide in the solution to a burning atmosphere.
• Sawankhalok – a city and kiln site in Thailand that produced ceramics in high quantities during the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya periods.
• Finial –  an architectural device, typically carved in stone and employed decoratively to emphasize the apex of a gable or any of various distinctive ornaments at the top, end, or corner of a building or structure.

Terms of the Day for September 23

• Batik – a technique of decorating textiles by applying wax to resist dye.
• Barung –  a thick, leaf-shaped, single-edged blade sword. It is a weapon used by Islamic tribes in the Southern Philippines.
• Keris – an asymmetrical dagger most strongly associated with cultures of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.  It is famous for its distinctive wavy blade and elaborate decoration.

Terms of the Day for September 21

• Islam – a monotheistic religion articulated by the Qur'an.  The religion is based on submission to a single, indivisible God (Allah), whose Prophet, Mohammad, lived in the 6th and 7th centuries AD.
• Qur’an – meaning “the recitation”, the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims believe to be the verbatim word of Allah. It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language.
• Balai – a central public hall or meeting house found in many Malay and Indonesian villages which were often converted for Muslim worship.
• Mosque – a place of worship for followers of Islam.
• Minaret - the tall slender tower of an Islamic mosque, from which an announcer recites the call to prayer.

Terms of the Day for September 16

• Pagoda – a general term for a multiple-tiered tower sometimes applied to religious monuments with a relic chamber such as the Shwezigon.
• Wat – a term used for a Buddhist monastery complex in Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.
• Prang – in Thai cultures of Khmer, Sukhothai, and Ayutthayan, a tall, narrow monument representing the many levels of heaven in Buddhist belief.
• Ubosot - a building in a Buddhist Wat, considered the holiest prayer room, that serves as the assembly hall where new monks are ordinated.

Terms of the Day for Septemeber 14

• Buddhism –a religion strongly connected with Hinduism that is largely based on teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, an awakened or enlightened teacher who shared his insights to help people end suffering through eliminating ignorance and desire to reach nirvana.
• Buddah – meaning, “the awakened one”, a being which has reached the perfect state of enlightenment or nirvana.  THE Buddha typically refers to Siddhartha Gautama.
• Bodhisattva – (bode-hee-SAHT-vah) in Buddhism, one who has delayed the attainment of buddhahood and nirvana in order to teach others.
• Stupa – (STOO-pah) a bell- or mound-like structure containing Buddhist relics, typically the remains of Buddha, used by Buddhists as a place of worship.  Originally, these were earthen domes, but were later constructed.