Flaming?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alisha Lola Jones
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
African American Men ◽  
Gospel Music ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
Music Making ◽  
The Face ◽  
Sexual Ambiguity ◽  
Over The Top

Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance examines the rituals and social interactions of African American men who use gospel music-making as a means of worshiping God and performing gendered identities. Prompted by the popular term “flaming” that is used to identify over-the-top or peculiar performance of identity, Flaming? argues that these men wield and interweave a variety of multivalent aural-visual cues, including vocal style, gesture, attire, and homiletics, to position themselves along a spectrum of gender identities. These multisensory enactments empower artists (i.e., “peculiar people”) to demonstrate modes of “competence” that affirm their fitness to minister through speech and song. Through a progression of transcongregational case studies, Flaming? observes the ways in which African American men traverse tightly knit social networks to negotiate their identities through and beyond the worship experience. Coded and “read” as either hypermasculine, queer, or sexually ambiguous, peculiar gospel performances are often a locus of nuanced protest, facilitating a critique of heteronormative theology while affording African American men opportunities for greater visibility and access to leadership. Same-sex relationships among men constitute an open secret that is carefully guarded by those who elect to remain silent in the face of traditional theology, but musically performed by those compelled to worship “in Spirit and in truth.” This book thus examines the performative mechanisms through which black men acquire an aura of sexual ambiguity, exhibit an ostensible absence of sexual preference, and thereby gain social and ritual prestige in gospel music circles.

Auditory signal dominates visual in the perception of emotional social interactions

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (0) ◽  
pp. 112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lukasz Piwek ◽  
Karin Petrini ◽  
Frank E. Pollick
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Body Movement ◽  
Visual Signal ◽  
Auditory Signal ◽  
The Face ◽  
Point Light ◽  
Multimodal Perception

Multimodal perception of emotions has been typically examined using displays of a solitary character (e.g., the face–voice and/or body–sound of one actor). We extend investigation to more complex, dyadic point-light displays combined with speech. A motion and voice capture system was used to record twenty actors interacting in couples with happy, angry and neutral emotional expressions. The obtained stimuli were validated in a pilot study and used in the present study to investigate multimodal perception of emotional social interactions. Participants were required to categorize happy and angry expressions displayed visually, auditorily, or using emotionally congruent and incongruent bimodal displays. In a series of cross-validation experiments we found that sound dominated the visual signal in the perception of emotional social interaction. Although participants’ judgments were faster in the bimodal condition, the accuracy of judgments was similar for both bimodal and auditory-only conditions. When participants watched emotionally mismatched bimodal displays, they predominantly oriented their judgments towards the auditory rather than the visual signal. This auditory dominance persisted even when the reliability of auditory signal was decreased with noise, although visual information had some effect on judgments of emotions when it was combined with a noisy auditory signal. Our results suggest that when judging emotions from observed social interaction, we rely primarily on vocal cues from the conversation, rather then visual cues from their body movement.

Supporting the Use of Rudimentary Vocalizations

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 132-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Zubow ◽  
Richard Hurtig
Keyword(s):  
Rett Syndrome ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Primary Research ◽  
Multiple Modalities ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Perceptual Judgments ◽  
The Face

Children with Rett Syndrome (RS) are reported to use multiple modalities to communicate although their intentionality is often questioned (Bartolotta, Zipp, Simpkins, & Glazewski, 2011; Hetzroni & Rubin, 2006; Sigafoos et al., 2000; Sigafoos, Woodyatt, Tuckeer, Roberts-Pennell, & Pittendreigh, 2000). This paper will present results of a study analyzing the unconventional vocalizations of a child with RS. The primary research question addresses the ability of familiar and unfamiliar listeners to interpret unconventional vocalizations as “yes” or “no” responses. This paper will also address the acoustic analysis and perceptual judgments of these vocalizations. Pre-recorded isolated vocalizations of “yes” and “no” were presented to 5 listeners (mother, father, 1 unfamiliar, and 2 familiar clinicians) and the listeners were asked to rate the vocalizations as either “yes” or “no.” The ratings were compared to the original identification made by the child's mother during the face-to-face interaction from which the samples were drawn. Findings of this study suggest, in this case, the child's vocalizations were intentional and could be interpreted by familiar and unfamiliar listeners as either “yes” or “no” without contextual or visual cues. The results suggest that communication partners should be trained to attend to eye-gaze and vocalizations to ensure the child's intended choice is accurately understood.

Dream Denied

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Soyer
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Dream ◽  
African American Men ◽  
Offending Trajectories ◽  
Minority Men

A Dream Denied: Incarceration, Recidivism, and Young Minority Men in America shows how the narrative of American dream shapes the offending trajectories of twenty-three young Latino and African American men in Boston and Chicago. Believing in the American dream helps the teenagers cope with the pains of incarceration. However, without the ability to experience themselves as creative actors, reproducing the rhetoric of American meritocracy leaves the teenagers unprepared to negotiate the complex and frustrating process of desistance and reentry.

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