Perspectives on Humanity in the Fine Arts introduces students to the fine arts as expressions and reflections of the human condition. After introducing readers to the elements of each art form, the book explores specific historical periods and geographical areas and presents their arts to help readers better understand their living conditions, religion, philosophy, aspirations, failures, politics, and views on love and war. Through studying a diverse group of arts-including visual art, music, dramatic art, and dance-within a specific geographical and historical context, students experience each culture as a contemporary participant might. Areas covered include prehistory, the ancient Near East and Egypt, classical Greece and Rome, the Byzantine Empire, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, baroque, neoclassical, romantic and twentieth-century art forms, and others. The second edition features vocabulary lists at the end of each chapter, many new images, and fresh content throughout, including new material on Ancient Egyptian landscape gardening; Roman architecture; Byzantine artwork; Rococo art; neoclassic art and landscaping; romanticism in the arts; and realism. Perspectives on Humanity in the Fine Arts is intended for survey courses that cover the fine arts for non-majors.

Comprising material from the 15th century through to the present day, Portraying Pregnancy accompanies an exhibition at the Foundling Museum, which is the first ever to focus on portraits of pregnant women in British art. The book will be extensively illustrated with painted portraits, drawings, miniatures, prints, photographs, sculpture, textiles and objects. Although up to the early 20th century many women spent most of their adult years being pregnant, their pregnancies are seldom made apparent in surviving portraits. Portraying Pregnancy considers the different ways in which (from the late Middle Ages onwards) a sitter's pregnancy was, or was not, visibly represented to the viewer. Over a span of more than 500 years, Portraying Pregnancy interrogates how the social mores and preoccupations of different periods have impacted the ways in which pregnant women have been depicted - sometimes reinforcing an 'ideal' female role (especially within a religious context), while at other times celebrating fertility, or asserting shock value. Prior to the 20th century, the possibility of death in childbirth was a constant reality that brought an additional tension to such a representation. Portraying Pregnancy also explores the extent to which female sitters have had agency over their depiction. Written by Karen Hearn, the leading expert on this topic, Portraying Pregnancy will address representations of pregnancy in a religious context; early popular and medical understanding of pregnancy; dress and fashion; pregnancy portraits in 16th- and early 17th-century England; mid 17th-century female portraits; 18th-century British grand portraiture; the rarity of 19th-century images of pregnant women; the shift in early 20th-century male artists' depictions of their wives and partners, as they began to celebrate pregnancy visually; how British women artists now addressed their own pregnancies in their work; and other later 20th-century nude portrayals.

Exploring the Black Venus Figure in Aesthetic Practices critically examines a longstanding colonial fascination with the black female body as an object of sexual desire, envy, and anxiety. Since the 2002 repatriation of the remains of Sara Baartman to post-apartheid South Africa, the interest in the figure of Black Venus has skyrocketed, making her a key symbol for the restoration of the racialized female body in feminist, anti-racist and postcolonial terms. Edited by Jorunn Gjerden, Kari Jegerstedt, and Zeljka Svrljuga, this volume considers Black Venus as a product of art established and potentially refigured through aesthetic practices, following her travels through different periods, geographies and art forms from Baudelaire to Kara Walker, and from the Caribbean to Scandinavia. Contributors: Kjersti Aarstein, Carmen Birkle, Jorunn Svensen Gjerden, Kari Jegerstedt, Ulla Angkjaer Jorgensen, Ljubica Matek, Margery Vibe Skagen, Camilla Erichsen Skalle, Zeljka Svrljuga.

In this meditation/how-to guide on drawing as an ethnographic method, Andrew Causey offers insights, inspiration, practical techniques, and encouragement for social scientists interested in exploring drawing as a way of translating what they "see" during their research.