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Books > Humanities
This volume continues the work of a recent collection published in
2012 by Oxford University Press, Dogen: Textual and Historical
Studies. It features some of the same outstanding authors as well
as some new experts who explore diverse aspects of the life and
teachings of Zen master Dogen (1200-1253), the founder of the Soto
Zen sect (or Sotoshu) in early Kamakura-era Japan. The contributors
examine the ritual and institutional history of the Soto school,
including the role of the Eiheji monastery established by Dogen as
well as various kinds of rites and precepts performed there and at
other temples. Dogen and Soto Zen builds upon and further refines a
continuing wave of enthusiastic popular interest and scholarly
developments in Western appropriations of Zen. In the last few
decades, research in English and European languages on Dogen and
Soto Zen has grown, aided by an increasing awareness on both sides
of the Pacific of the important influence of the religious movement
and its founder. The school has flourished throughout the medieval
and early modern periods of Japanese history, and it is still
spreading and reshaping itself in the current age of globalization.
Over the past two decades, a steady stream of recordings, videos,
feature films, festivals, and concerts has presented the music of
Balkan Gypsies, or Roma, to Western audiences, who have greeted
them with exceptional enthusiasm. Yet, as author Carol Silverman
notes, "Roma are revered as musicians and reviled as people." In
this book, Silverman introduces readers to the people and cultures
who produce this music, offering a sensitive and incisive analysis
of how Romani musicians address the challenges of discrimination.
Focusing on southeastern Europe then moving to the diaspora, her
book examines the music within Romani communities, the lives and
careers of outstanding musicians, and the marketing of music in the
electronic media and "world music" concert circuit. Silverman
touches on the way that the Roma exemplify many qualities-
adaptability, cultural hybridity, transnationalism-that are taken
to characterize late modern experience. Rather than just
celebrating these qualities, she presents the musicians as
complicated, pragmatic individuals who work creatively within the
many constraints that inform their lives. As both a performer and
presenter on the world music circuit, Silverman has worked
extensively with Romani communities for more than two decades both
in their home countries and in the diaspora. At a time when the
political and economic plight of European Roma and the popularity
of their music are objects of international attention, Silverman's
book is incredibly timely.
Ellen Muehlberger explores the diverse and inventive ideas
Christians held about angels in late antiquity. During the fourth
and fifth centuries, Christians began experimenting with new modes
of piety, adapting longstanding forms of public authority to
Christian leadership and advancing novel ways of cultivating body
and mind to further the progress of individual Christians.
Muehlberger argues that in practicing these new modes of piety,
Christians developed new ways of thinking about angels. The book
begins with a detailed examination of the two most popular
discourses about angels that developed in late antiquity. In the
first, developed by Christians cultivating certain kinds of ascetic
practices, angels were one type of being among many in a shifting
universe, and their primary purpose was to guard and to guide
Christians. In the other, articulated by urban Christian leaders in
contest with one another, angels were morally stable characters
described in the emerging canon of Scripture, available to enable
readers to render Scripture coherent with emerging theological
positions. Muehlberger goes on to show how these two discourses did
not remain isolated in separate spheres of cultivation and
contestation, but influenced one another and the wider Christian
culture. She offers in-depth analysis of popular biographies
written in late antiquity, of the community standards of emerging
monastic communities, and of the training programs developed to
prepare Christians to participate in ritual, demonstrating that new
ideas about angels shaped and directed the formation of the
definitive institutions of late antiquity. Angels in Late Ancient
Christianity is a meticulous and thorough study of early Christian
ideas about angels, but it also offers a different perspective on
late ancient Christian history, arguing that angels were central
rather than peripheral to the emergence of Christian institutions
and Christian culture in late antiquity.
In recent years, terrorism has become closely associated with
martyrdom in the minds of many terrorists and in the view of
nations around the world. In Islam, martyrdom is mostly conceived
as bearing witness to faith and God. Martyrdom is also central to
the Christian tradition, not only in the form of Christs Passion or
saints faced with persecution and death, but in the duty to lead a
good and charitable life. In both religions, the association of
religious martyrdom with political terror has a long and difficult
history. The essays of this volume illuminate this
historyfollowing, for example, Christian martyrdom from its origins
in the Roman world, to the experience of the deaths of terrorist
leaders of the French Revolution, to parallels in the contemporary
worldand explore historical parallels among Islamic, Christian, and
secular traditions. Featuring essays from eminent scholars in a
wide range of disciplines, Martyrdom and Terrorism provides a
timely comparative history of the practices and discourses of
terrorism and martyrdom from antiquity to the twenty-first century.
Dominic Janes is Reader in Cultural History and Visual Studies at
Birkbeck, University of London. In addition to a spell as a
lecturer at Lancaster University, he has been a research fellow at
London and Cambridge universities. His latest book project is Queer
Martyrdom from John Henry Newman to Derek Jarman. Alex Houen is
Senior University Lecturer in Modern Literature in the Faculty of
English, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Pembroke College.
He is author of Terrorism and Modern Literature, as well as various
articles and book chapters on literature and political violence.
This book tells the extraordinary true story of how two visionary South
Africans transformed a dream born in the Cape Flats into a powerhouse
listed on the JSE. This isn't just another business book -- it's a
gripping testament to the power of determination, community,
and economic transformation in post-apartheid South Africa.
Brimstone was founded in 1995 by an accountant, Mustaq Brey, and an
insurance salesman, Fred Robertson, who did not want to leave their
community behind. In that same year, they acquired a stake in Oceana,
raising initial capital of R3m from community shareholders in the Cape
Flats. Brimstone is the longest listed Black company on the JSE --
since 1998. In that time they have triumphed over financial crisis,
resisted hostile takeovers, recovered from poor investments and
continued to pull ahead.
This is an inspiring story of small beginnings, resilience and a social
conscience in business.
Visitors gazing out over the Highlands of coastal New Jersey might
never guess that these rolling hills have been a stage for mankind
s darkest deeds. In his thrilling new book, "Murder & Mayhem in
the Highlands," John King shines a spotlight on the region s
violent history of kidnapping, murder, smuggling and extortion.
From axe-wielding lunatics to killers who leave calling cards, King
presents each case with the care of a criminal investigator,
including details from coroners reports and witness testimonies.
In this sensational and gripping read, uncover the gritty
history of the Highlands, where a suspicious death usually meant
foul play and staying in a hotel might cost you your life.
The senses, or sensory modalities, constitute the different ways we
have of perceiving the world, such as seeing, hearing, touching,
tasting and smelling. But how many senses are there? How many could
there be? What makes the senses different? What interaction takes
place between the senses? This book is a guide to thinking about
these questions. Together with an extensive introduction to the
topic, the book contains the key classic papers on this subject
together with nine newly commissioned essays.
One reason that these questions are important is that we are
receiving a huge influx of new information from the sciences that
challenges some traditional philosophical views about the senses.
This information needs to be incorporated into our view of the
senses and perception. Can we do this whilst retaining our
pre-existing concepts of the senses and of perception or do we need
to revise our concepts? If they need to be revised, then in what
way should that be done? Research in diverse areas, such as the
nature of human perception, varieties of non-human animal
perception, the interaction between different sensory modalities,
perceptual disorders, and possible treatments for them, calls into
question the platitude that there are five senses, as well as the
pre-supposition that we know what we are counting when we count
them as five (or more).
This book will serve as an inspiring introduction to the topic and
as a basis from which further new research will grow.
Science is the most reliable means available for understanding the
world around us and our place in it. But, since science draws
conclusions based on limited empirical evidence, there is always a
chance that a scientific inference will be incorrect. That chance,
known as inductive risk, is endemic to science. Though inductive
risk has always been present in scientific practice, the role of
values in responding to it has only recently gained extensive
attention from philosophers, scientists, and policy-makers.
Exploring Inductive Risk brings together a set of eleven concrete
case studies with the goals of illustrating the pervasiveness of
inductive risk, assisting scientists and policymakers in responding
to it, and moving theoretical discussions of this phenomenon
forward. The case studies range over a wide variety of scientific
contexts, including the drug approval process, high energy particle
physics, dual-use research, climate science, research on gender
disparities in employment, clinical trials, and toxicology. The
book includes an introductory chapter that provides a conceptual
introduction to the topic and a historical overview of the argument
that values have an important role to play in responding to
inductive risk, as well as a concluding chapter that synthesizes
important themes from the book and maps out issues in need of
further consideration.
Religion and Community in the New Urban America examines the
interrelated transformations of cities and urban congregations over
the past several decades. The authors ask how the new metropolis
affects local religious communities, and what the role of those
local religious communities is in creating the new metropolis.
Through an in-depth study of fifteen Chicago congregations-Catholic
parishes, Protestant churches, Jewish synagogues, Muslim mosques,
and a Hindu temple, city and suburban, neighborhood-based and
commuter-this book describes the lives of their members and
measures the influences of those congregations on urban
environments. Paul D. Numrich and Elfriede Wedam challenge the view
held by many urban studies scholars that religion plays a small
role-if any-in shaping postindustrial cities and that religious
communities merely adapt to urban structures in a passive fashion.
Taking into account the spatial distribution of constituents,
internal traits, and external actions, each congregation's urban
impact is plotted on a continuum of weak, to moderate, to strong,
thus providing a nuanced understanding of the significance of
religion in the contemporary urban context. Providing a thoughtful
analysis that includes several original maps illustrating such
things as membership distribution for each congregation, the
authors offer an insightful look into urban community life today,
from congregations to the social-geographic places in which they
are embedded.
Writing the Rebellion presents a cultural history of loyalist
writing in early America. There has been a spate of related works
recently, but Philip Gould's narrative offers a completely
different view of the loyalist/patriot contentions than appears in
any of these accounts. By focusing on the literary projections of
the loyalist cause, Gould dissolves the old legend that loyalists
were more British than American, and patriots the embodiment of a
new sensibility drawn from their American situation and upbringing.
He shows that both sides claimed to be heritors of British civil
discourse, Old World learning, and the genius of English culture.
The first half of Writing Rebellion deals with the ways "political
disputation spilled into arguments about style, form, and
aesthetics, as though these subjects could secure (or ruin) the
very status of political authorship." Chapters in this section
illustrate how loyalists attack patriot rhetoric by invoking
British satires of an inflated Whig style by Alexander Pope and
Jonathan Swift. Another chapter turns to Loyalist critiques of
Congressional language and especially the Continental Association,
which was responsible for radical and increasingly violent measures
against the Loyalists. The second half of Gould's book looks at
satiric adaptations of the ancient ballad tradition to see what
happens when patriots and loyalists interpret and adapt the same
text (or texts) for distinctive yet related purposes. The last two
chapters look at the Loyalist response to Thomas Paine's Common
Sense and the ways the concept of the author became defined in
early America. Throughout the manuscript, Gould acknowledges the
purchase English literary culture continued to have in
revolutionary America, even among revolutionaries.
Tales of ghostly spirits envelop the northeast Tennessee landscape
like a familiar mountain fog. Join Pete Dykes, editor of
Kingsport's "Daily News," as he offers up a collection of spooky
local stories and legends from centuries past, including such
spine-chilling accounts as the foreboding ghost of Netherland Inn
Road, spectral disturbances at the Rotherwood Mansion, devilish
felines, ruthless poltergeists in Caney Creek Falls, the tortured
cries from fallen Rebel soldiers still heard today- and could
bigfoot really be buried in the woods of Big Stone Gap?
Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in
the Spanish Civil War.
The nineteenth and early twentieth century saw the emergence of a
controversial school of Russian thinkers, led by the philosopher
Nikolai Fedorov and united in the conviction that humanity was
entering a new stage of evolution in which it must assume a new,
active, managerial role in the cosmos. In the first account in
English of this fascinating tradition, George M. Young offers a
dynamic and wide-ranging examination of the lives and ideas of the
Russian Cosmists.
Suppressed during the Soviet period and little noticed in the West,
the ideas of the Cosmists have in recent decades been rediscovered
and embraced by many Russian intellectuals and are now recognized
as essential to a native Russian cultural and intellectual
tradition. Although they were scientists, theologians, and
philosophers, the Cosmists addressed topics traditionally confined
to occult and esoteric literature. Major themes include the
indefinite extension of the human life span to establish universal
immortality; the restoration of life to the dead; the
reconstitution of the human organism to enable future generations
to live beyond earth; the regulation of nature to bring all
manifestations of blind natural force under rational human control;
the transition of our biosphere into a "noosphere," with a sheath
of mental activity surrounding the planet; the effect of cosmic
rays and currently unrecognized particles of energy on human
history; practical steps toward the reversal and eventual human
control over the flow of time; and the virtues of human androgyny,
autotrophy, and invisibility.
The Russian Cosmists is a crucial contribution to scholarship
concerning Russian intellectual history, the future of technology,
and the history of western esotericism.
In America, as in Britain, the Victorian era enjoyed a long life,
stretching from the 1830s to the 1910s. It marked the transition
from a pre-modern to a modern way of life. Ellen White's life
(1827-1915) spanned those years and then some, but the last three
months of a single year, 1844, served as the pivot for everything
else. When the Lord failed to return on October 22, as she and
other followers of William Miller had predicted, White did not lose
heart. Fired by a vision she experienced, White played the
principal role in transforming a remnant minority of Millerites
into the sturdy sect that soon came to be known as the Seventh-day
Adventists. She and a small group of fellow believers emphasized a
Saturday Sabbath and an imminent Advent. Today that flourishing
denomination posts twenty million adherents globally and one of the
largest education, hospital, publishing, and missionary outreach
programs in the world. Over the course of her life White generated
50,000 manuscript pages and letters, and produced 40 books that
have enjoyed extremely wide circulation. She ranks as one of the
most gifted and influential religious leaders in American history,
and Ellen Harmon White tells her story in a new and remarkably
informative way. Some of the contributors identify with the
Adventist tradition, some with other Christian denominations, and
some with no religious tradition at all. Taken together their
essays call for White to be seen as a significant figure in
American religious history and for her to be understood her within
the context of her times.
Drawing on her work with the Cold Case Investigative Research
Institute at Bauder College and Ghost Hounds Paranormal Research
Society, elite psychic medium and cold case researcher Reese
Christian writes of the tragic past and the haunted present of
Greater Atlanta. From Peachtree Street in the heart of downtown to
the plantations and battlefields surrounding the city, join her in
discovering the twisted histories of some of Atlanta's most
infamous landmarks and forgotten moments.
Sound coming from outside the field of vision, from somewhere
beyond, holds a privileged place in the Western imagination. When
separated from their source, sounds seem to manifest transcendent
realms, divine powers, or supernatural forces. According to legend,
the philosopher Pythagoras lectured to his disciples from behind a
veil, and two thousand years later, in the age of absolute music,
listeners were similarly fascinated with disembodied sounds,
employing various techniques to isolate sounds from their sources.
With recording and radio came spatial and temporal separation of
sounds from sources, and new ways of composing music.
Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice explores the
phenomenon of acousmatic sound. An unusual and neglected word,
"acousmatic" was first introduced into modern parlance in the
mid-1960s by avant garde composer of musique concrete Pierre
Schaeffer to describe the experience of hearing a sound without
seeing its cause. Working through, and often against, Schaeffer's
ideas, Brian Kane presents a powerful argument for the central yet
overlooked role of acousmatic sound in music aesthetics, sound
studies, literature, philosophy and the history of the senses. Kane
investigates acousmatic sound from a number of methodological
perspectives -- historical, cultural, philosophical and musical --
and provides a framework that makes sense of the many surprising
and paradoxical ways that unseen sound has been understood. Finely
detailed and thoroughly researched, Sound Unseenpursues unseen
sounds through a stunning array of cases -- from Bayreuth to
Kafka's "Burrow," Apollinaire to %Zi%zek, music and metaphysics to
architecture and automata, and from Pythagoras to the present-to
offer the definitive account of acousmatic sound in theory and
practice.
The first major study in English of Pierre Schaeffer's theory of
"acousmatics," Sound Unseen is an essential text for scholars of
philosophy of music, electronic music, sound studies, and the
history of the senses."
Why put Abraham Lincoln, the sometime corporate lawyer and American
President, in dialogue with Karl Marx, the intellectual
revolutionary? On the surface, they would appear to share few
interests. Yet, though Lincoln and Marx never met one another, both
had an abiding interest in the most important issue of the
nineteenth-century Atlantic world-the condition of labor in a
capitalist world, one that linked slave labor in the American south
to England's (and continental Europe's) dark satanic mills. Each
sought solutions-Lincoln through a polity that supported free men,
free soil, and free labor; Marx by organizing the working class to
resist capitalist exploitation. While both men espoused
emancipation for American slaves, here their agreements ended.
Lincoln thought that the free labor society of the American North
provided great opportunities for free men missing from the American
South, a kind of "farm ladder" that gave every man the ability to
become a landowner. Marx thought such "free land" a chimera and
(with information from German-American correspondents), was certain
that the American future lay in the proletarianized cities. Abraham
Lincoln and Karl Marx in Dialogue intersperses short selections
from the two writers from their voluminous works, opening with an
introduction that puts the ideas of the two men in the broad
context of nineteenth-century thought and politics. The volume
excerpts Lincoln's and Marx's views on slavery (they both opposed
it for different reasons), the Civil War (Marx claimed the war
concerned slavery and should have as its goal abolition; Lincoln
insisted that his goal was just the defeat of the Confederacy), and
the opportunities American free men had to gain land and economic
independence. Through this volume, readers will gain a firmer
understanding of nineteenth-century labor relations throughout the
Atlantic world: slavery and free labor; the interconnections
between slave-made cotton and the exploitation of English
proletarians; and the global impact of the American Civil War.
The Oxford Handbook of The American Musical offers new and
cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling issues and
topics in the growing, interdisciplinary field of musical-theater
and film-musical studies. Taking the form of a "keywords" book, it
introduces readers to the concepts and terms that define the
history of the musical as a genre and that offer ways to reflect on
the specific creative choices that shape musicals and their
performance on stage and screen. The handbook offers a
cross-section of essays written by leading experts in the field,
organized within broad conceptual groups, which together capture
the breadth, direction, and tone of musicals studies today.
Each essay traces the genealogy of the term or issue it addresses,
including related issues and controversies, positions and
problematizes those issues within larger bodies of scholarship, and
provides specific examples drawn from shows and films. Essays both
re-examine traditional topics and introduce underexplored areas.
Reflecting the concerns of scholars and students alike, the authors
emphasize critical and accessible perspectives, and supplement
theory with concrete examples that may be accessed through links to
the handbook's website.
Taking into account issues of composition, performance, and
reception, the book's contributors bring a wide range of practical
and theoretical perspectives to bear on their considerations of one
of America's most lively, enduring artistic traditions. The Oxford
Handbook of The AmericanMusical will engage all readers interested
in the form, from students to scholars to fans and aficionados, as
it analyses the complex relationships among the creators,
performers, and audiences who sustain the genre.
The study of Roman sculpture has been an essential part of the
disciplines of Art History and Classics since the eighteenth
century. From formal concerns such as Kopienkritic (copy criticism)
to social readings of plebeian and patrician art and beyond,
scholars have returned to Roman sculpture to answer a variety of
questions about Roman art, society, and history. Indeed, the field
of Roman sculptural studies encompasses not only the full
chronological range of the Roman world but also its expansive
geography, and a variety of artistic media, formats, sizes, and
functions. Exciting new theories, methods, and approaches have
transformed the specialized literature on the subject in recent
decades. Rather than creating another chronological ARCH15OXH of
representative examples of various periods, genres, and settings,
The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture synthesizes current best
practices for studying this central medium of Roman art, situating
it within the larger fields of art history, classical archaeology,
and Roman studies. This volume fills the gap between introductory
textbooks-which hide the critical apparatus from the reader-and the
highly focused professional literature. The handbook conveniently
presents new technical, scientific, literary, and theoretical
approaches to the study of Roman sculpture in one reference volume
and complements textbooks and other publications that present
well-known works in the corpus. Chronologically, the volume
addresses material from the Early Republican period through Late
Antiquity. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture not only
contributes to the field of classical art and archaeology but also
provides a useful reference for classicists and historians of the
ancient world.
This book conceives of "religion-making" broadly as the multiple
ways in which social and cultural phenomena are configured and
reconfigured within the matrix of a world-religion discourse that
is historically and semantically rooted in particular Western and
predominantly Christian experiences, knowledges, and institutions.
It investigates how religion is universalized and certain ideas,
social formations, and practices rendered "religious" are thus
integrated in and subordinated to very particular - mostly
liberal-secular - assumptions about the relationship between
history, politics, and religion.
The individual contributions, written by a new generation of
scholars with decisively interdisciplinary approaches, examine the
processes of translation and globalization of historically specific
concepts and practices of religion - and its dialectical
counterpart, the secular - into new contexts. This volume
contributes to the relatively new field of thought that aspires to
unravel the thoroughly intertwined relationships between religion
and secularism as modern concepts.
For over thirty years Susan Wolf has been writing about moral and
nonmoral values and the relation between them. This volume collects
Wolf's most important essays on the topics of morality, love, and
meaning, ranging from her classic essay "Moral Saints" to her most
recent "The Importance of Love." Wolf's essays warn us against the
common tendency to classify values in terms of a dichotomy that
contrasts the personal, self-interested, or egoistic with the
impersonal, altruistic or moral. On Wolf's view, this tendency
ignores or distorts the significance of such values as love,
beauty, and truth, and neglects the importance of meaningfulness as
a dimension of the good life. These essays show us how a
self-conscious recognition of the variety of values leads to new
understandings of the point, the content, and the limits of
morality and to new ways of thinking about happiness and
well-being.
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