In its exploration of puppetry and animation as the performative media of choice for mastering the art of illusion, To Embody the Marvelous engages with early modern notions of wonder in religious, artistic, and social contexts. From jointed, wood-carved figures of Christ, saintly marionettes that performed hagiographical dramas, experimental puppets and automata in Cervantes' Don Quixote, and the mechanical sets around which playwright CalderOn de la Barca devised secular magic shows to deconstruct superstitions, these historical and fictional artifacts reenvisioned religious, artistic, and social notions that led early modern society to critically wrestle with enchantment and disenchantment. The use of animated performance objects in Spanish theatrical contexts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries became one of the most effective pedagogical means to engage with civil society. Regardless of social strata, readers and spectators alike were caught up in a paradigm shift wherein belief systems were increasingly governed by reason-even though the discursive primacy of supernatural doxa and Christian wonder remained firmly entrenched. Thanks to their potential for motion, religious and profane puppets, automata, and mechanical stage props deployed a rationalized sense of wonder that illustrates the relationship between faith and reason, reevaluates the boundaries of fiction in art and entertainment cultures, acknowledges the rise of science and technology, and questions normative authority.

For fifty years, music fans, hippies, artists, and songwriters have converged each spring on Quiet Valley Ranch in the Texas Hill Country. They are drawn by the thousands to the annual Kerrville Folk Festival, a weeks-long gathering of musical greats and ordinary people living in an intentional community marked by radical acceptance and the love of song. At the festival, David Johnson is known as Photo Dave, the guy who lugs around a large-format camera and captures the moments that make Kerrville special. It Can Be This Way Always collects eighty images from the past decade. Portraits of attendees and volunteers accompany scenes of stage performances, campfire jam sessions, and vans repurposed into coffee stands. In these images we see the temporary, makeshift world that festivalgoers create, a place where eccentricities are the norm and music is the foundation of friendship and unity. "It can be this way always" is a popular saying at Kerrville: simultaneously optimistic and wistful like a good folk song-or a photograph from your best life.