Engaging with the work of contemporary African and Chinese artists while analysing broader material production, the essays in this volume are wide-ranging in their analysis of ceramics, photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film, performance, postcards, stamps, installations, political posters, cartoons and architecture.

With China’s rise as the new superpower, its presence in Africa has expanded, leading to significant economic, geopolitical and cultural shifts. Chinese and African encounters through the lens of the visual arts and material culture, however, is a neglected field.

Visualising China in Southern Africa is a ground-breaking volume that addresses this deficit through engaging with the work of contemporary African and Chinese artists while analysing broader material production that prefigures the current relationship. The essays are wide-ranging in their analysis of ceramics, photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film, performance, postcards, stamps, installations, political posters, cartoons and architecture.

Richly illustrated, the collection includes scholarly chapters, photo essays, interviews, and artists’ personal accounts, organised around four themes: material flows, orientations and transgressions, spatial imaginaries, and biographies. Some of the artists, photographers, filmmakers, curators and collectors in this volume include: Stary Mwaba, Hua Jiming, Anawana Haloba, Gerald Machona, Nobukho Nqaba, Marcus Neustetter, Brett Murray, Diane Victor, William Kentridge, Kristin NG-Yang, Kok Nam, Mark Lewis, the Chinese Camera Club of South Africa, Wu Jing, Henion Han and Shengkai Wu.

"The Bible in the Latin West" is the first volume in a series that addresses the codicology of texts. In considering how and why the appearance of a manuscript changes over the centuries, Margaret T. Gibson introduces students to the study of manuscripts and to the wider range of information and expertise that can be brought to bear on the study of manuscripts as historical objects as well as texts. Here Gibson surveys the changes in the most important book in the western world, the Latin Bible. She begins the survey in late antiquity, discussing the volumes of the great senatorial houses of the 4th century and how they influenced the early great Bibles of northern Europe. The discussion then moves through the Carolingian period, with its increased interest in commentary to early vernacular versions, and goes on to reveal how in the 11th and 12th centuries the growing numbers of monastic and university readers made new demands on the texts which led to the inclusion of glosses and other scholarly apparatus. Later, the combined influences of increased literacy and growing wealth among the population called for vernacular translations and devotional aids such as Books of Hours. Gibson completes the survey with a look at early printed Bibles. A useful volume for anyone being introduced to the firsthand study of texts and their transmission, as well as for graduate students in history, English, modern languages, classics, and religious studies. "The Bible in the Latin West" contains an introductory survey.

A society's culture is a contributing factor to the structure and design of its architecture. As contemporary globalism brings about the evolution of the world, architectural style evolves along with it, which can be observed on an international scale. Cultural Influences on Architecture is a pivotal reference source for the latest research on the impact of culture on architecture through the aspects of planning and production, and highlights the importance of communicative dimension in design. Featuring exhaustive coverage on a variety of relevant perspectives and topics, such as the evolution of construction systems, benefits of nature-based architecture, and fundamentals of social capital, this publication is ideally designed for researchers, scholars, and students seeking current research on the connection between culture and architecture on a global level.

What is art; why should we value it; and what allows us to say that one work is better than another? Traditional answers have emphasized aesthetic form. But this has been challenged by institutional definitions of art and postmodern critique. The idea of distinctively artistic value based on aesthetic criteria is at best doubted, and at worst, rejected. This book, however, champions these notions in a new way. It does so through a rethink of the mimetic definition of art on the basis of factors which traditional answers neglect, namely the conceptual link between art's aesthetic value and 'non-exhibited' epistemological and historical relations. These factors converge on an expanded notion of the artistic image (a notion which can even encompass music, abstract art, and some conceptual idioms). The image's style serves to interpret its subject-matter. If this style is original (in comparative historical terms) it can manifest that special kind of aesthetic unity which we call art. Appreciation of this involves a heightened interaction of capacities (such as imagination and understanding) which are basic to knowledge and personal identity. By negotiating these factors, it is possible to define art and its canonic dimensions objectively, and to show that aforementioned sceptical alternatives are incomplete and self-contradictory.