History of ideas Books

Book SynopsisVirgil''s fourth Eclogue is one of the most quoted, adapted and discussed works of classical literature. This study traces the fortunes of Eclogue 4 in the literature and art of the Italian Renaissance. It sheds new light on some of the most canonical works of Western art and literature, as well as introducing a large number of other, lesser-known items, some of which have not appeared in print since their original publication, while others are extant only in manuscript. Individual chapters are devoted to the uses made of the fourth Eclogue in the political panegyric of Medici Florence, the Venetian Republic and the Renaissance papacy, and to religious appropriations of the Virgilian text in the genres of epic and pastoral poetry.The book also investigates the appearance of quotations from the poem in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century fresco cycles representing the prophetic Sibyls in Italian churches.Trade Review'This excellent volume will be a valuable guide and resource for scholars of Renaissance literature and of classical reception, and should be made available in every university library.' Syrithe Pugh, International Journal of the Classical TraditionTable of ContentsEclogue 4: text and translation; Part I. Prolegomena: 1. Introduction: noua progenies; 2. A new age: the Virgilian Renaissance; Part II. Politics: 3. Florentine fantasies: Maro and the Medici; 4. Maritime Maro: Virgil in Venice; 5. Princely propaganda: the Italian states; 6. Vatican vaticinations: the Papal Golden Age; Part III. Religion: 7. Poet and Christian? The Messianic Fourth Eclogue; 8. tua dicere facta: the Messianic epic; 9. A child is born: the Nativity eclogue; 10. teste Sibylla: Virgil in church; Epilogue: time regained.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn 1972, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis began collaborating on the Gaia hypothesis. They suggested that over geological time, life on Earth has had a major role in both producing and regulating its own environment. Gaia is now an ecological and environmental worldview underpinning vital scientific and cultural debates over environmental issues. Their ideas have transformed the Earth and life sciences, as well as contemporary conceptions of nature. Their correspondence describes these crucial developments from the inside, showing how their partnership proved decisive for the development of the Gaia hypothesis. Clarke and Dutreuil provide historical background and explain the concepts and references introduced throughout the Lovelock-Margulis correspondence, while highlighting the major landmarks of their collaboration within the sequence of almost 300 letters written between 1970 and 2007. This book will be of interest to researchers in ecology, history of science, environmental histoTrade Review'Gaia – a hypothesis, a theory, a research program, a philosophy of nature. For the last half century, the astonishing work of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis has cast and recast again a concept with implications for the atmosphere, Earth history, ecology, and exobiology. Both of them would have already stood as major figures in modern science; together, they gave us a concept that remains generative across fields. In this vital, remarkable volume of their letters, one can see the origin and development of Gaia, in the complementarity of their interventions, in their mutual support, in their occasional substantive disagreement. Bruce Clarke and Sébastien Dutreuil bring us a volume that will be read for decades across the very wide range of the environmental sciences.' Peter Galison, Joseph Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University, USA'Indeed, Lovelock and Margulis found that they 'had something to say' together, a question they ask in 1971 in a letter! What they had to say changed my life and the lives of many people. Gaia is a polymorphous concept, hypothesis, planet, boundary object in conflict, and collaboration among scientists of different disciplines and persuasions, Earth systems' conceptual foundation, popular passion, and much more. Gaia matters, and Lovelock and Margulis gave us this generative formulation of the living Earth as a complex dynamic, self-organizing system. This collection – with its sober, extensive, enticing scholarly apparatus – makes the hairs of my arms stand up with pleasure and excitement. Here the reader will find unadorned letters between two very different kinds of professional scientist over many years of a complex personal and intellectual relationship. I am deeply grateful to the scholarship and passion of Bruce Clarke and Sébastien Dutreuil for this book.' Donna Haraway, University of California at Santa Cruz, author of Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene'Writing Gaia offers a fascinating window on the meeting of two great minds. This insightful set of correspondence and commentaries provides an unprecedented resource on the history of the Gaia concept.' Michael R. Dietrich, University of Pittsburgh, USA'Writing Gaia is a revealing and surprisingly entertaining record of the long intellectual and personal relationship between two idiosyncratic scientific geniuses and rebels from whose cerebral symbiosis and complex friendship was born the Gaia hypothesis, which profoundly changed how we think about Earth and life. The collected letters of Lovelock and Margulis, along with accompanying essays by some of their key collaborators, have been skillfully assembled with insightful commentary by Clarke and Dutreuil. The result is a riveting intellectual journey, spiced with gossip, intellectual feuds, and occasional moments of touching intimacy. This book will be required reading for students of Earth's biosphere and of modern history of science.' David Grinspoon, Astrobiologist and author of Earth in Human Hands'It is not hyperbole to say that microbiologist and cell biologist Lynn Margulis and atmospheric chemist James Lovelock were two giants of twentieth-century science. Margulis's serial endosymbiosis theory resolved the riddle of the origin of the eukaryotic cell, forever changing biology. Lovelock developed the Gaia hypothesis, a radically synthetic vision of life on Earth, in which Margulis became his chief collaborator. Published here for the first time, their correspondence provides a fascinating window into the lively interaction of two extraordinary minds and personalities, while also showing the evolution of the Gaia idea and its cultural and scientific reception. This is captivating reading, and I could not put it down!' James Strick, Professor and Chair of Program in Science, Technology and Society, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, USA'… a fascinating read that reproduces and contextualizes a four-decade-long conversation …' Paul Falkowski, Science'Writing Gaia charts the inside story of a long-running collaboration that gave birth to one of the most influential environmental ideas in the modern world … fascinating reading.' Adam Vaughan, New ScientistTable of ContentsPreface; Part I. 1970-1972: 1970; 1971; 1972; Part II. 1973-1979: 1973; 1974; 1975; 1976; 1977; 1978; 1979; Part III. 1980-1991: 1980; 1981; 1982; 1983; 1984; 1985; 1986; 1987; 1988; 1989; 1990; 1991; Part IV. 1992-2007: 1992; 1993; 1994; 1995; 1996; 1997; 1998; 1999; 2000; 2001; 2002; 2003; 2004; 2005; 2006; 2007; Part V. Commentaries on Lovelock and Margulis: Darwinizing Gaia W. Ford Doolittle; Gaia at the Margulis lab Betsey Dexter Dyer; Gaia and the water of life Stephan Harding; Gaia as a problem of social theory Bruno Latour; Befriending Gaia: My early correspondence with Jim Lovelock Tim Lenton; Gaia's pervasive influence Chris Rapley; Gaia's microbiome John F. Stolz; Tangled up in Gaia Tyler Volk Lovelock and Margulis Andrew Watson; Discovering geology, discovering Gaia Peter Westbroek; Glossary of names; Glossary of terms; Bibliography; Index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn interrogation of the often-unexamined assumption that silence is oppressive, to consider the multiple possibilities silence enables. The volume features diverse feminist reflections on the nuanced relationship between silence and voice to foreground the creative, meditative, generative and resistive power our silences engender.Table of ContentsStill the Silence: Introductory Reflections on Silence and Power; A.C.Rowe & S.Malhotra PART I: TRANSFORMATIVE SILENCES: INTERSECTIONALITY, PRIVILEGE, ALLIANCES Resistant Silences; C.Keating Between Speech and Silence: Reflections on Accountability; A.Russo Qwe're Performances of Silence: Many Ways to Live 'Out Loud'; J.Johnson Silence Speaks Volumes: Counter-Hegemonic Silences, Deafness, and Alliance Work; R.Levitt PART II: LEARNING TO LISTEN: ACADEMIA, SILENCE AND RESISTANCE Imposed Silence and the Story of the Warramunga Woman: Alternative Interpretations and Possibilities; R.Clair Silence and Voice in a More-than-Human World; J.Bile Inila: An Account of Opening to Sacred Knowing; S.A.De la Garza Attuned to Silence: A Pedagogy of Presence; A.Fidyk Hear I Meet the Silence: The Wise Pedagogue; C.Lossie The U.S. Day of Silence: Sexualities, Silences and the Will to Unsay in the Age of Empire; G.A.Yep & S.B.Shimanoff PART III: RECOVERING SILENCES: COMMUNITY, FAMILY, INTIMACY Keeping Quiet: Performing Pain; D.Pollock '3210 S. Indiana: Silence and the Meanings of Home'; F.Royster Fences, Weapons, Gifts: Silences in the Context of Addiction; K.Acheson My Monster and My Muse: Re-Writing the Colonial Hangover; K.Pérez PART IV: LEGACIES OF SILENCE: MEMORY, HEALING, POWER The Silence in My Belly; S.Malhotra Standing in the Wake of My Father's Silence (An Alternative Eulogy); B.K.Alexander Stitching Survival: Revisioning Silence and Expression; L.Farah Sun Moon Silence; A.C.Rowe Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThrough a collection of critical essays, this work explores twelve keywords central in Latin American and Caribbean Studies: indigenismo, Americanism, colonialism, criollismo, race, transculturation, modernity, nation, gender, sexuality, testimonio, and popular culture.Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Latin American Keywords Project: A Critical Disciplinary Genealogy; Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui, and Marisa BelausteguigoitiaPART I: INDIGENISMO1. Indigenism, Zapatismo and Indigeneidad: Listening to the Space of Silence; Marisa Belausteguigoitia2. Indigenismo as Nationalism, From the Liberal to the Revolutionary Era; María Josefina Saldaña-PortilloPART II: AMERICANISMO3. Americanism/o: Intercultural Border Zones in Post-social Times; Juan Poblete4. Americanism/o and the Internalization of U.S. Imperialism: A Response to Juan Poblete; John Carlos RowePART III: COLONIALISM5. Colonialism, Postcolonial, Neocolonial, Internal Colonialism, Coloniality and Decoloniality; Nelson Maldonado Torres6. Mapping Colonial Resistance: Colonialism, Anti- '' ''Indianism, '' '' and Nationalism in the Americas; Leece Lee-OliverPART IV: CRIOLLISMO/CREOLIZATION7. Criollismo, Creole and Créolité; José Antonio Mazzotti8. Creole, Criollismo and Créolité; H. Adlai MurdochPART V: MESTIZAJE9. Race and the Constitutive Inequality of the Modern/Colonial Condition; José Buscaglia-Salgado10. The Asian Presence in Mestizo Nations: A Response; Kathleen LópezPART VI: TRANSCULTURATION11. Transculturation, Syncretism, and Hibridity; Jossianna Arroyo12. The Persistence of Racism in Critical Imaginaries on Latin America; Laura CatelliPART VII: MODERNIDAD 13. Modernity and Modernization: the Geopolitical Relocation of Latin America; Graciela Montaldo14. Beyond Modernity; Alejandra LaeraPART VIII: NATION15. The Latin America Nation and its Cultural Inscriptions: Archives of Promise or Lament?; Román de la Campa16. Multiplicity and its Discontents: A Response to Román de la Campa; Héctor HoyosPART IX GENDER17. Gender/Género in Latin America; Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes18. Gender Travels South: Response to Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes; Montserrat SagotPART X: SEXUALITY19. Queer/Sexualities; Licia Fiol Matta20. Queer Articulations; Carlos FigariPART XI. TESTIMONIO21. Testimonio: The Witness, the Truth and the Inaudible; Ana Forcinito22. Enunciating Alleged Truths: A Response to Ana Forcinito; Arturo AriasPART XII. POPULAR CULTURE23. Lo popular/ Popular Culture: Performing the Borders of Power and Resistance; Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado24. Globalized Digital Popular Cultures: A Response to Ignacio Sánchez Prado; Susan AntebiNotesNotes on ContributorsIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisCarlo Ginzburg is Franklin D. Murphy Professor of Italian Renaissance Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Emeritus Professor of History of European Cultures at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy.Lucio Biasiori is Research Fellow at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. His interests encompass early modern religious and cultural history.Trade ReviewGinzburg has assembled some of the world’s leading thinkers to explore casuistry as a fundamental and surprisingly neglected approach to intractable dilemmas and paradoxes throughout history. Traversing disciplines and centuries, this volume will change the way we think and the way we think about thinking. * Matthew C. Mirow, Professor of Law, Florida International University, USA *As these wide-ranging essays demonstrate, casuistry is hardly so simple as normally believed, but a style of thought in which norms and exceptions are mutually constitutive, dialogically and dialectically interrelated. Time after time, we observe how established authorities in one domain or another (law, medicine, theology; Europe, Asia, the Americas) responded to deviations from what they prescribed and expected, struggling to defuse the challenge these anomalies present by construing them -- often with extraordinary ingenuity -- as exceptions that prove, rather than threaten the rule. Each chapter makes for fascinating reading, as does the volume as a whole. * Bruce Lincoln, Caroline E. Haskell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History of Religions, University of Chicago, USA *Besides the adventure, provocation, and irony, through each essay we find a wonderful appreciation of the epistemic richness of ethics when it dares to consider the particular as well as the exceptional. The book is a significant contribution to the field. * Journal of Jesuit Studies *Table of ContentsPreface, Carlo Ginzburg (University of California, Los Angeles, USA; Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy) Acknowledgments Part I Casuistry and Medicine across Time and Space 1. The Royal College of Paediatrics 2004 / 2015 Guidance for Decision Making at The End of Life : A Framework for Casuistry, Avishai Sarfatti (Oxford University, UK) 2. The Medical Case Narrative in Pre-Modern Europe and China: Comparative History of an Epistemic Genre, Gianna Pomata (Johns Hopkins University, USA) Part II Religious Anomalies in the Ancient and Medieval World 3. (Un)written Laws and Transgressions in Ancient Greece and Rome, Jan Bremmer (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Netherlands) 4. The Case About Jesus: (Counter-)History and Casuistry in Toledot Yeshu, Daniel Barbu (CNRS, UMR 8584, Laboratoire d’études sur les monothéismes, Paris, France) Part III Legal Casuistry between Judaism and Islam 5. “I signed but I did not say”: The Status of Chess in Early Modern Judaism, Andrew Berns (University of South Carolina, USA) 6. The Many Roads to Justice: A Case of Adultery in Sixteenth-Century Cairo, Caterina Bori (Università di Bologna, Italy) 7. Islamic Casuistry and Galenic Medicine: Hashish, Coffee and the Emergence of the Jurist-Physician, Islam Dayeh (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) Part IV Casuistry between Reformation and Counter Reformation 8. The Exception as Norm: Casuistry of Suicide in John Donne’s Biathanatos, Lucio Biasiori (Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy) 9. “Whether ’tis lawful for a man to beat his wife”: Casuistical Exercises in Late-Stuart and Early-Hanoverian England, Giovanni Tarantino (University of Western Australia) Part V Norms and Exceptions in the Early Modern Global World (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries) 10. Indians’ Forced Labour as Case for Exception in Seventeenth-Century Colonial America, Angela Ballone (Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) 11. Morality and Empire: Cases, Norms and Exceptions in Sixteenth-Century Portuguese Asia, Sanjay Subrahmanyam (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) 12. An ‘Our Father’ for the Hottentots: Religion, Language and the Consensus Gentium, Martin Mulsow (Universität Erfurt, Germany) Part VI Inside and Outside Port-Royal 13. Port-Royal at grips with its own casuistry and Pascal’s stand, Silvia Berti (Sapienza - Università di Roma, Italy) 14. Casuistry and Irony: Some Reflections on Pascal’s Provinciales, Carlo Ginzburg (University of California, Los Angeles, USA; Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy) Sources Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisTracing Austrian intellectual life from Maria Theresa to Hitler's annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia, this innovative book offers a precise and engaging account of Austrian intellectual history since the Enlightenment. Here, David S. Luft begins by locating his narrative in the region known as Cisleithanian Austria, the area to the west of the Leitha River that was the basis for the modern Austrian state after 1740. Chapter 2 provides a history of the German-speaking intellectual life of these central lands of the Habsburg Monarchy (Austria and Bohemia) from the Enlightenment to annexation by Nazi Germany. Chapters 3 to 5 identify the most important philosophers, writers, and social thinkers who contributed to Austrian intellectual life in the period between 1740 and 1938/1939 and address the intellectual significance of their work. Elegantly written and meticulously researched, Luft's book brings out the contributions of major figures such as Wittgenstein, Hofmannsthal, MTrade ReviewLuft’s book is one of unusual breadth and truly interdisciplinary scope. It will appeal most immediately to graduate students and fellow scholars of Central Europe. The thematically and geographically uninitiated ... will find themselves on a steep and rewarding learning curve—and may be well-advised to spend time pondering the historical maps included in the introductory chapters—on two hundred beautifully argued pages. * Austrian History Yearbook *The Austrian Dimension in German Intellectual History is an impressive attempt to explore different perspectives in the formulation of cultural and social values between German intellectuals and writers and their Austrian counterparts, from the late eighteenth century to the twentieth centuries. Not only will this comparative study of German and Austrian liberal culture in the modern period be very useful to Habsburg historians and to students of modern European intellectual history, but it should find a welcome audience among scholars and students of modern German history and culture. The book will also be valuable for scholars of contemporary Austrian nation-building and national identity, since it seeks to draw out the self-perceived distinctiveness of Austrian intellectuals writing in the context of the larger German linguistic realm. A wonderfully ambitious book. * John W. Boyer, Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of History and the College, University of Chicago, USA *In this eminently readable book David Luft, a leading American expert on modern Austrian cultural history, succeeds in moving beyond the established praise of Austria’s artistic and musical achievements, especially of Vienna at 1900, and the accompanying neglect of its intellectual legacy. It is Luft’s magnum opus of his life-long pursuit of clarifying the place of Austrian creativeness within the larger culture of German-speaking Central Europa. He moves with authority between the Austrian enlightenment of the eighteenth century, the underappreciated intellectual contributions of philosphers like Bolzano, Brentano, Mach, Wittgenstein and the achievements of Austrian social scientists and economists like Hayek and Schumpeter and, of course, Freud. Clarifying the concept of Austrian culture also means an extensive reckoning of its deep roots in Bohemia and Moravia and the centuries-old ties between Vienna and Prague. Luft’s “Austrian dimension” is indispensable for an understanding of the intellectual history of German-speaking Central Europe. * Frank Trommler, Professor Emeritus of German, University of Pennsylvania, USA *The Austrian Dimension in German Intellectual History, convincingly written by one of the most prominent scholars of Austrian cultural history, is a fascinating story on Austrian thinking in the context of the German speaking world in Central Europe (esp. in Vienna and Prague). Its novelty lies in the description and interpretation of mostly Jewish thinkers in philosophy, the human sciences, economics, and literature from the Enlightenment to the Anschluss, on the one side, as well as in the geographical focus on the Austrian core land together with Bohemia/Moravia as part of Cisleithanian Habsburg Monarchy, on the other. This book is expected to become another milestone of comparative Austrian intellectual history up to Fin de siècleliberalism andmodernity, thereby complementing the pathbreaking books of William Johnston, Allan Janik/Stephen Toulmin, Carl Schorske, and Steven Beller. * Friedrich Stadler, Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Vienna, Austria *Table of ContentsPreface Introduction 1. Austria and Bohemia before the Austrian State 2. The Development of Austrian Intellectual Life 3. Philosophy in Austria 4. German Literature in Austria 5. The Human Sciences in Austria Afterword: After Cisleithanian Austria Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisJukka Kortti is Adjunct Professor at the University of Helsinki and Aalto University, Finland. He is a social and media historian specializing in the history of television, advertising, journalism and intellectual history.Trade ReviewKortti’s aim to provide a historical perspective for the history of media is ambitious and far reaching. This is a useful textbook for those exploring the evolution of our modern digital media culture. * Toni Weller, De Montfort University, UK *Kortti's Media in History is a wonderful addition to the media history landscape, because it places media history in a global framework that goes far beyond the US/European framework most authors use. * Meredith Guthrie, University of Pittsburgh, USA *Table of ContentsIntroduction PART I: THE DEVELOPMENT OF MEDIA 1. From Speech to Print 2.The Birth of New Media 3. Media for the Masses 4. In the Global Village PART II: THEMES 5. Media, Democracy and the Public Sphere 6. Media, Commerce and Globalization 7. Control and Power: Censorship and Propaganda 8. Media and Everyday Life 9. The Cultural History Meanings of Media Conclusion: Media in History.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Sex, Gender and Science, Myra Hird outlines the social study of science and nature, specifically in relation to sex, sex differences, and sexuality. She examines how Western understandings of sex are based less upon understanding material sex differences than on a discourse that emphasizes sex dichotomy over sex diversity and argues for a feminist engagement with scientific debate that embraces the diversity and complexity of nature.Trade Review'...the wealth of informatin presented here...is invaluable to those grappling with the social construction of 'sex' and 'sex differences'...it is refreshing to read research that has 'gone back' to the body and recognized its genetic and material realities.' - Danny Beusch, Sociology (British Sociological Association)Table of ContentsIntroduction Making Sex, Making Sexual Difference The Body of Sexual Difference New Materialism, Nonlinear Biology, and the Superabundance of Diversity The Nonlinear Evolution of Human Sex Sex Diversity in Non-Human Animals Sex Diversity in Human Animals How to Have Sex Without Women or Men Glossary of Terms Bibliography

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis is first intellectual history of the Caribbean written by a top Caribbean studies scholar. The book examines both the work of natives of the region as well as texts interpretive of the region produced by Western authors. Stressing the experimental and cultural particularity of the Caribbean, the study considers major questions in the field.Trade ReviewChoice Outstanding Academic Title 2006 '...is an extremely stimulating and at times provocative interpretive essay which examines and criticises a number of ways of looking at Caribbean history, society, and literature.' - John Gilmore, The Caribbean Review of Books '...this is a work of impressive erudition, interdisciplinary in scope and pan-Caribbean by Conviction.' - Clem Seecharan, Modernism / ModernityTable of ContentsIntroduction: Caribbean Unity in Nature, in History, in Defeat Colonial Migration and Theoric Awakening: An Antillean's Voyage of Discovery The Neverending History: Western Discursive Siege Caliban's Betrayal: Failed Heroes, Memory Remade, New Ways to Hope Epilogue: A Century of Caribbean Diaspora

Read more less