Transforming Saints explores the transformation and function of the images of holy females within wider religious, social, and political contexts of Old Spain and New Spain from the Spanish conquest to Mexican independence. The chapters here examine the rise of the cults of the lactating Madonna, St. Anne, St. Librada, St. Mary Magdalene, and the Suffering Virgin. Concerned with holy figures presented as feminine archetypes, images that came under Inquisition scrutiny, as well as cults suspected of concealing indigenous influences, Charlene VillaseNor Black argues that these images would come to reflect the empowerment and agency of women in viceregal Mexico. Her close analysis of the imagery additionally demonstrates artists' innovative responses to Inquisition censorship and the new artistic demands occasioned by conversion. The concerns that motivated the twenty-first century protests against Chicana artists Yolanda LOpez in 2001 and Alma LOpez in 2003 have a long history in the Hispanic world-anxieties about the humanization of sacred female bodies and fears of indigenous influences infiltrating Catholicism. In this context Black also examines a number of important artists in depth, including El Greco, Murillo, Jusepe de Ribera, and Pedro de Mena in Spain and Naples and Baltasar de Echave IbIa, Juan Correa, CristObal de Villalpando, and Miguel Cabrera.

Mobile is simultaneously a typical and unique city in the postwar United States. It was a quintessential boomtown during World War II. That prosperity was followed by a period of rapid urban decline and subsequent attempts at revitalizing (or gentrifying) its downtown area. As in many other US cities, urban renewal, integration, and other socioeconomic developments led to white flight, marginalized the African American population, and set the stage for the development of LGBTQ+ community building and subculture. Yet these usually segregated segments of society in Mobile converged once a year to create a common identity, that of a Carnival City. Carnival in Alabama looks not only at the people who participated in Mardi Gras organizations divided by race, gender, and/or sexual orientation, but also investigates the experience of "marked bodies" outside of these organizations, or people involved in Carnival through their labor or as audiences (or publics) of the spectacle. It also expands the definition of Mobile's Carnival "tradition" beyond the official pageantry by including street maskers and laborers and neighborhood cookouts. Using archival sources and oral history interviews to investigate and analyze the roles assigned, inaccessible to, or claimed and appropriated by straight-identified African American men and women and people who defied gender and sexuality normativity in the festivities (regardless of their racial identity), this book seeks to understand power dynamics through culture and ritual. By looking at Carnival as an "invented tradition" and as a semiotic system associated with discourses of power, it joins a transnational conversation about the phenomenon.

Native American History and Culture: An Anthology contains diverse perspectives and illuminates the sociocultural and political complexity of American Indian history. The selected readings in this anthology explore the full context of Indian life and present readers with leading scholarship that rejects ethnocentrism and respects Native American heritage. The text is organized into five chapters. Chapter 1 features three readings that explore the history of Native Americans before and after European contact. In Chapter 2, students read about disparities in health status and care between American Indians and other groups over time. The readings help students better understand how economic and political forces can explain both the persistence of health disparities and the controversies that surround them. Chapter 3 examines Native nations and western expansion, including treaties, settler colonialism, and more, and Chapter 4 explores American Indian activism. The final chapter illuminates the legacies of settler colonialism through discussion of white supremacy, the Indian male body and the heroic ideal, and American Indian identity and blood quantum.

Divining with Achi and Tara is a book on Tibetan methods of prognostics with dice and prayer beads (mala). Jan-Ulrich Sobisch offers a thorough discussion of Chinese, Indian, Turkic, and Tibetan traditions of divination, its techniques, rituals, tools, and poetic language. Interviews with Tibetan masters of divination introduce the main part with a translation of a dice divination manual of the deity Achi that is still part of a living tradition. Solvej Nielsen contributes further interviews, a mala divination of Tara and its oral tradition, and very useful glossaries of the terminology of Tibetan divination and fortune telling. Appendices provide lists of deities and spirits and of numerous identified ritual remedies and supports that are an essential element of a still vibrant Tibetan culture.

SENSORIVM: The Senses in Roman Polytheism explores how a range of cults and rituals were perceived and experienced by participants through one or more senses. The present collection brings together papers from an international group of researchers all inspired by 'the sensory turn'. Focusing on a wide range of ritual traditions from around the ancient Roman world, they explore the many ways in which smell and taste, sight and sound, separately and together, involved participants in religious performance. Music, incense, images and colors, contrasts of light and dark played as great a role as belief or observance in generating religious experience. Together they contribute to an original understanding of the Roman sensory universe, and add an embodied perspective to the notion of Lived Ancient Religion. Contributors are Martin Devecka; Visa Helenius; Yulia Ustinova; Attilio Mastrocinque; Maik Patzelt; Mark Bradley; Adeline Grand-Clement; Rocio Gordillo Hervas; Rebeca Rubio; Elena Muniz Grijalvo; David Espinosa-Espinosa; A. Cesar Gonzalez-Garcia, Marco V. Garcia-Quintela; Joerg Rupke; Rosa Sierra del Molino; Israel Campos Mendez; Valentino Gasparini; Nicole Belayche; Anton Alvar Nuno; Jaime Alvar Ezquerra; Clelia Martinez Maza.

Whether it is morning coffee or tea, or champagne with dinner and a glass of port after, these handy reference books offer insight into coffee and tea blends and champaigne and port vintages. Over 100 full-color photographs help to identify the "best of the best." Drink and enjoy!

Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture by Doreen G. Fernandez is a groundbreaking work that introduces readers to the wondrous history of Filipino foodways. First published by Anvil in 1994, Tikim explores the local and global nuances of Philippine cuisine through its people, places, feasts, and flavors. Doreen Gamboa Fernandez (1934-2002) was a cultural historian, professor, author, and columnist. Her food writing educated and inspired generations of chefs and food enthusiasts in the Philippines and throughout the world. This Brill volume honors and preserves Fernandez's legacy with a reprinting of Tikim, a foreword by chef and educator Aileen Suzara, and an editor's preface by historian Catherine Ceniza Choy.

Don't just see the sights-get to know the people. Ghana is among the friendliest and safest countries in Africa. Visitors are warmly welcomed but are expected to be sympathetic to local customs and beliefs, and to follow certain codes of conduct. Culture Smart! Ghana describes the complexities and nuances of Ghanaian society with clarity and humor, and offers the reader an opportunity to get to know Ghanaians on their own terms, and to enjoy all that this beautiful country has to offer. Have a more meaningful and successful time abroad through a better understanding of the local culture. Chapters on values, attitudes, customs, and daily life will help you make the most of your visit, while tips on etiquette and communication will help you navigate unfamiliar situations and avoid faux pas.