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2 books match the query 'Journeys into'
Journeys into the Invisible
Shamanic Technologies of the ImaginationCharles Stépanoff
HAU, 2025
A lively exploration of the Indigenous traditions of shamanism in the Far North of Eurasia and North America.
Charles Stépanoff draws on ethnographic literature and his fieldwork in Siberia to reveal the immense contribution to the scope of human imagination made by shamans and the cognitive techniques they developed over the centuries.
Northern Shamans travel in mind in ways that appear mysterious to Westerners, but which rely on the human capacity of imagination. They perceive themselves simultaneously in two types of space—one visible, the other invisible—putting them in contact and establishing links with non-human beings in their surroundings. Shamans share their experience of mind travel with their patients, families, or the wider community, allowing them to participate in their odyssey through the invisible. Stépanoff offers an anthropological reflection on the relationships between our uses of the imagination, our relationships with the environment, and the emergence of social hierarchies.
This work will appeal to anthropologists as well as to anyone interested in learning about the power of imagination from the masters of the invisible, the shamans of the Far North.
Charles Stépanoff draws on ethnographic literature and his fieldwork in Siberia to reveal the immense contribution to the scope of human imagination made by shamans and the cognitive techniques they developed over the centuries.
Northern Shamans travel in mind in ways that appear mysterious to Westerners, but which rely on the human capacity of imagination. They perceive themselves simultaneously in two types of space—one visible, the other invisible—putting them in contact and establishing links with non-human beings in their surroundings. Shamans share their experience of mind travel with their patients, families, or the wider community, allowing them to participate in their odyssey through the invisible. Stépanoff offers an anthropological reflection on the relationships between our uses of the imagination, our relationships with the environment, and the emergence of social hierarchies.
This work will appeal to anthropologists as well as to anyone interested in learning about the power of imagination from the masters of the invisible, the shamans of the Far North.
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Past Titan Rock
Journeys into an Appalachian ValleyEllesa Clay High
West Virginia University Press, 2021
A classic book about Appalachian life and music, now updated with new material.
Past Titan Rock, a winner of the Appalachian Award for Literature, is available in a new edition as part of the series Sounding Appalachia, with an introduction by series editor Travis D. Stimeling.
In 1977 Ellesa Clay High thought she would spend an afternoon interviewing Lily May Ledford, best known as the lead performer of an all-female string band that began playing on the radio in the 1930s. That meeting began an unexpected journey leading into the mountains of eastern Kentucky and a hundred years into the past. Set in Red River Gorge, an area of steep ridges and box canyons, Past Titan Rock is a multigenre, multivocal re-creation of life in that region. With Ledford’s guidance, High traveled and lived in the gorge, visiting with people who could remember life there before the Works Progress Administration built roads across the ridges and into the valleys during the New Deal. What emerges through a unique combination of personal essay, oral history, and short fiction is a portrait of a mountain culture rich in custom, oral tradition, and song. Past Titan Rock demonstrates the depth of community ties in the Red River Gorge and raises important questions about how to resist destructive forces today.
Past Titan Rock, a winner of the Appalachian Award for Literature, is available in a new edition as part of the series Sounding Appalachia, with an introduction by series editor Travis D. Stimeling.
In 1977 Ellesa Clay High thought she would spend an afternoon interviewing Lily May Ledford, best known as the lead performer of an all-female string band that began playing on the radio in the 1930s. That meeting began an unexpected journey leading into the mountains of eastern Kentucky and a hundred years into the past. Set in Red River Gorge, an area of steep ridges and box canyons, Past Titan Rock is a multigenre, multivocal re-creation of life in that region. With Ledford’s guidance, High traveled and lived in the gorge, visiting with people who could remember life there before the Works Progress Administration built roads across the ridges and into the valleys during the New Deal. What emerges through a unique combination of personal essay, oral history, and short fiction is a portrait of a mountain culture rich in custom, oral tradition, and song. Past Titan Rock demonstrates the depth of community ties in the Red River Gorge and raises important questions about how to resist destructive forces today.
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