Search results for ""Pennsylvania State University Press""

This collection considers one of the most important figures of the modern canon of political philosophy, John Locke. A physician by training and profession, Locke not only wrote one of the most important and well-known treatises of the modern canon, but also made important contributions in the areas of seventeenth-century law and public policy, epistemology, philosophy of language, religion, and economics.There has been a long-standing debate in feminist scholarship on Locke as to whether this early founder of modern liberal thought was a strong feminist or whether he ushered in a new, and uniquely modern, form of sexism. The essays grapple with this controversy but also move beyond it to the meaning of gender, the status of femininity and masculinity, and how these affect Locke’s construction of the state and law.The volume opens with three of the early “classic” feminist essays on Locke and follows them with reflective essays by their original authors that engage Locke with issues of globalization and international justice. Other essays examine Locke’s midwifery notes, his treatise on education, his writings on Christianity, his contributions to poor-law policy, his economic writings, and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In addition to essays by leading feminist theorists, the volume also includes essays by some leading Locke scholars for whom gender is not normally a primary focus, so that the volume should speak to a wide range of scholarly interests and concerns.Besides the editors, the contributors are Teresa Brennan, Melissa Butler, Terrell Carver, Carole Pateman, Carol Pech, Gordon Schochet, Mary Lyndon Shanley, Jeremy Waldron, Joanne Wright, and Linda Zerilli.

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Historians have long been fascinated by the nobility in pre-Revolutionary France. What difference did nobles make in French society? What role did they play in the coming of the Revolution? In this book, a group of prominent French historians shows why the nobility remains a vital topic for understanding France’s past.The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century appears some thirty years after the publication of the most sweeping and influential “revisionist” assessment of the French nobility, Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret’s La noblesse au dix-huitième siècle. The contributors to this volume incorporate the important lessons of Chaussinand-Nogaret’s revisionism but also reexamine the assumptions on which that revisionism was based. At the same time, they consider what has been gained or lost through the adoption of new methods of inquiry in the intervening years. Where, in other words, should the nobility fit into the twenty-first century’s narrative about eighteenth-century France?The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century will interest not only specialists of the eighteenth century, the French Revolution, and modern European history but also those concerned with the differences in, and the developing tensions between, the methods of social and cultural history.In addition to the editor, the contributors are Rafe Blaufarb, Gail Bossenga, Mita Choudhury, Jonathan Dewald, Doina Pasca Harsanyi, Thomas E. Kaiser, Michael Kwass, Robert M. Schwartz, John Shovlin, and Johnson Kent Wright.

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Intentionality and the New Traditionalism argues that both the text and the author of a literary work are important to a cogent and full reading of that work. The author creates the text, which then leads the reader into a reading of it through its various elements or literary devices that have been consciously employed by the author. The author's presence is thus continuous in the work and important to it. Such elements and literary devices create what can be called an "intentionality" of the text and become limina, or thresholds, through which the reader can enter the world of the text. The limina direct the reader toward one means of understanding the work. Shawcross discusses and demonstrates the significance of specific types of limina, including genre, structure, and numerological relationships within the work, the use of Latin, allusion and historical/biographical context, onomastics, the performing self, and intertextuality. Some of these, such as genre, have been dismissed in recent critical stances, and others have been little considered. Shawcross first explores genre, looking at poetic genres and subgenres, the difference between genre and mode, the generic question of tragedy/comedy, the concept of lyric, and the significance of sequence. He then illustrates the importance of other limina to a variety of authors and periods. He also offers new readings of particular works and suggests possible revised readings of other works of similar nature. Shawcross draws primarily on poetry and works of the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, but drama and the novel as well as the nineteenth century are also included.

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The counter-epic is a literary style that developed in reaction to imperialist epic conventions as a means of scrutinizing the consequences of foreign conquest of dominated peoples. It also functioned as a transitional literary form, a bridge between epic narratives of military heroics and novelistic narratives of commercial success. In Discourses of Empire, Barbara Simerka examines the representation of militant Christian imperialism in early modern Spanish literature by focusing on this counter-epic discourse.Simerka is drawn to literary texts that questioned or challenged the imperial project of the Hapsburg monarchy in northern Europe and the New World. She notes the variety of critical ideas across the spectrum of diplomatic, juridical, economic, theological, philosophical, and literary writings, and she argues that the presence of such competing discourses challenges the frequent assumption of a univocal, hegemonic culture in Spain during the imperial period. Simerka is especially alert to the ways in which different discourses—hegemonic, residual, emergent—coexist and compete simultaneously in the mediation of power. Discourses of Empire offers fresh insight into the political and intellectual conditions of Hapsburg imperialism, illuminating some rarely examined literary genres, such as burlesque epics, history plays, and indiano drama. Indeed, a special feature of the book is a chapter devoted specifically to indiano literature. Simerka's thorough working knowledge of contemporary literary theory and her inclusion of American, English, and French texts as points of comparison contribute much to current studies of Spanish Golden Age literature.

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The makers of public health policy face enormous challenges in the twenty-first century. In the past, their field has been imprecisely defined, deeply conflicted, poorly organized, and constantly changing. Lines of responsibility within the field are blurred at best, and groups with similar goals sometimes find themselves at cross-purposes. In the United States, state and local agencies interact with each other, with federal programs, and with powerful private interests. Many decisions that profoundly affect the health of the public are made for reasons largely unrelated to public health per se. Since the human and financial stakes involved in public health policies are immense, these challenges are, to say the least, serious issues. Underlying this volume is the belief that historical analyses and international perspectives can help policy makers understand—and hopefully begin to address—some of those old challenges in new ways.Contributors to this volume include Virginia Berridge, James Colgrove, Howard I. Kushner, Alex Mold, Constance A. Nathanson, Harold Pollack, and Brett L. Walker.

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For almost forty years, from 1378 to 1417, the Western Church was divided into rival camps headed by two—and eventually three—competing popes. The so-called Schism provoked a profound and long-lasting anxiety throughout Europe—an anxiety that reverberated throughout clerical circles and among the ordinary faithful. In Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski looks beyond the political and ecclesiastical storm and finds an outpouring of artistic, literary, and visionary responses to one of the great calamities of the late Middle Ages. Modern historians have analyzed the Great Schism mostly from the perspective of church politics. Blumenfeld-Kosinski shifts our attention to several groups that have not before been considered together: saintly men and women (such as Catherine of Siena, Pedro of Aragon, Vincent Ferrer, and Constance de Rabastens), politically aware and committed poets (such as Philippe de Mézières and Christine de Pizan), and prophets (for example, the mysterious Telesphorus of Cosenza and the authors of the anonymous Prophecies of the Last Popes). Not surprisingly, these groups often saw the Schism as an apocalyptic sign of the end times. Images abounded of the divided Church as a two-headed monster or suffering widow.A twelfth-century “prelude” looks at the schism of 1159 and the role the famous visionaries Hildegard of Bingen and Elisabeth of Schönau played in this earlier crisis in order to define common threads of “mystical activism” as well as the profound differences with the later Great Schism. Poets, Saints, and Visionaries of the Great Schism will be of interest to students and scholars of medieval and early modern history, religious studies, and literature.

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In the Middle Ages, textual amulets—short texts written on parchment or paper and worn on the body—were thought to protect the bearer against enemies, to heal afflictions caused by demonic invasions, and to bring the wearer good fortune. In Binding Words, Don C. Skemer provides the first book-length study of this once-common means of harnessing the magical power of words. Textual amulets were a unique source of empowerment, promising the believer safe passage through a precarious world by means of an ever-changing mix of scriptural quotations, divine names, common prayers, and liturgical formulas. Although theologians and canon lawyers frequently derided textual amulets as ignorant superstition, many literate clergy played a central role in producing and disseminating them. The texts were, in turn, embraced by a broad cross-section of Western Europe. Saints and parish priests, physicians and village healers, landowners and peasants alike believed in their efficacy. Skemer offers careful analysis of several dozen surviving textual amulets along with other contemporary medieval source materials. In the process, Binding Words enriches our understanding of popular religion and magic in everyday medieval life.

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It is often said that there are two Frances—Catholic and secular. This notion dates back to the 1790s, when the revolutionary government sought to divorce Catholic Christianity from national life. While Napoleon formally reconciled his regime to France’s millions of Catholics, church-state relations have remained a source of conflict and debate throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Catholic and French Forever Joseph Byrnes recounts the fights and reconciliations between French citizens who found Catholicism integral to their traditional French identity and those who found the continued presence of Catholicism an obstacle to both happiness and progress. He does so through stories of priests, legislators, intellectuals, and pilgrims whose experiences manifest the problem of being both Catholic and French in modern France. Byrnes finds that loyalties to the French nation and Catholicism became so incompatible in the revolutionary era that Catholic believers responded defensively across the nineteenth century, politicizing both religious pilgrimage and the languages of religious instruction. He shows that a détente emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century with the respect given to priests in arms during World War I and to the work of religious art historian Émile Mâle. This détente has lasted, precariously and with interruption, up to the present day.

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Emily Dickinson's fascicles, the forty booklets comprising more than 800 of her poems that she gathered and bound together with string, had long been cast into disarray until R. W. Franklin restored them to their original state, then made them available to readers in his 1981 Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson. Many Dickinson readers believe their ordering to be random, while others have proposed that one or more of the fascicles appear to center upon some organizing principle.In this important critical study, Dorothy Huff Oberhaus demonstrates for the first time the structural principles underlying Emily Dickinson's assembling of the fascicles. Oberhaus argues that Dickinson's fortieth fascicle is a three-part meditation and the triumphant conclusion of a long lyric cycle, the account of a spiritual and poetic pilgrimage that begins with the first fascicle's first poem. The author in turn finds that the other thirty-eight fascicles are meditative gatherings of interwoven poems centering upon common themes.Discovering the structural principles underlying Dickinson's arrangement of the fascicles presents a very different poet from the one portrayed by previous critics. This careful reading of the fascicles reveals that Dickinson was capable of arranging a long, sustained major work with the most subtle and complex organization. Oberhaus also finds Dickinson to be a Christian poet for whom the Bible was not merely a source of imagery, as has long been thought; rather, the Bible is essential to Dickinson's structure and meaning and therefore an essential source for understanding her poems.Discovering the structural principles underlying Dickinson’s arrangement of the fascicles presents a very different poet from the one portrayed by previous critics. This careful reading of the fascicles reveals that Dickinson was capable of arranging a long, sustained major work with the most subtle and complex organization. Oberhaus also finds Dickinson to be a Christian poet for whom the Bible was not merely a source of imagery, as has long been thought; rather, the Bible is essential to Dickinson’s structure and meaning and therefore an essential source for understanding her poems.

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Our modern society is flooded with all sorts of devices: TV sets, automobiles, microwaves, mobile phones. How are all these things affecting us? How can their role in our lives be understood? What Things Do answers these questions by focusing on how technologies mediate our actions and our perceptions of the world. Peter-Paul Verbeek develops this innovative approach by first distinguishing it from the classical philosophy of technology formulated by Jaspers and Heidegger, who were concerned that technology would alienate us from ourselves and the world around us. Against this gloomy and overly abstract view, Verbeek draws on and extends the work of more recent philosophers of technology like Don Ihde, Bruno Latour, and Albert Borgmann to present a much more empirically rich and nuanced picture of how material artifacts shape our existence and experiences. In the final part of the book Verbeek shows how his “postphenomenological” approach applies to the technological practice of industrial designers. Its systematic and historical review of the philosophy of technology makes What Things Do suitable for use as an introductory text, while its innovative approach will make it appealing to readers in many fields, including philosophy, sociology, engineering, and industrial design.

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Julian of Norwich (ca. 1343–ca. 1416), a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and John Wyclif, is the earliest woman writer of English we know about. Although she described herself as “a simple creature unlettered,” Julian is now widely recognized as one of the great speculative theologians of the Middle Ages, whose thinking about God as love has made a permanent contribution to the tradition of Christian belief. Despite her recent popularity, however, Julian is usually read only in translation and often in extracts rather than as a whole. This book presents a much-needed new edition of Julian’s writings in Middle English, one that makes possible the serious reading and study of her thought not just for students and scholars of Middle English but also for those with little or no previous experience with the language.• Separate texts of both Julian’s works, A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love, with modern punctuation and paragraphing and partly regularized spelling.• A second, analytic edition of A Vision printed underneath the text of A Revelation to show what was left out, changed, or added as Julian expanded the earlier work into the later one.• Facing-page explanatory notes, with translations of difficult words and phrases, cross-references to other parts of the text, and citations of biblical and other sources.• A thoroughly accessible introduction to Julian’s life and writings.• An appendix of medieval and early modern records relating to Julian and her writings.• An analytic bibliography of editions, translations, scholarly studies, and other works. The most distinctive feature of this volume is the editors’ approach to the manuscripts. Middle English editions habitually retain original spellings of their base manuscript intact and only emend that manuscript when its readings make no sense. At once more interventionist and more speculative, this edition synthesizes readings from all the surviving manuscripts, with careful justification of each choice involved in this process. For readers who are not concerned with textual matters, the result will be a more readable and satisfying text. For Middle English scholars, the edition is intended both as a hypothesis and as a challenge to the assumptions the field brings to the business of editing.

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Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) was Polish, Jewish, and a woman in an international socialist movement dominated by Germans, gentiles, and men. For Luxemburg, there was no real socialism without democracy and no real democracy without socialism. In this biography Stephen Eric Bronner establishes Luxemburg's legacy to contemporary socialist theory and practice.

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Randall Griffin’s book examines the ways in which artists and critics sought to construct a new identity for America during the era dubbed the Gilded Age because of its leaders’ taste for opulence. Artists such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Thomas Anshutz explored alternative “American” themes and styles, but widespread belief in the superiority of European art led them and their audiences to look to the Old World for legitimacy. This rich, never-resolved contradiction between the native and autonomous, on the one hand, and, on the other, the European and borrowed serves as the armature of Griffin’s innovative look at how and why the world of art became a key site in the American struggle for identity. Not only does Griffin trace the interplay of issues of nationalism, class, and gender in American culture, but he also offers insightful readings of key paintings by Eakins and other canonical artists. Further, Griffin shows that by 1900 the nationalist project in art and criticism had helped open the way for the formulation of American modernism. Homer, Eakins, and Anshutz will be of importance to all those interested in American culture as well as to specialists in art history and art criticism.

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Pirro Ligorio (1510–1583), an Italian architect and antiquarian who designed the Casino of Pius IV and large portions of the gardens of the Villa d’Este, has long been a notoriously elusive subject because of his daunting erudition and because his notebooks and drawings are in collections scattered throughout the world. In this book David R. Coffin, one of America’s leading experts on Renaissance architecture and landscape architecture, mobilizes all available published and unpublished materials to offer the first comprehensive account of Ligorio’s life and multifaceted career. Coffin traces the unfolding of Ligorio’s life from his early years in Naples, to his work in Rome, where he served several popes and pored over Ancient ruins, through his residency in Ferrara as court antiquarian. In addition to illuminating Ligorio’s relationship to his patrons, Coffin sheds new light on Ligorio’s famed map of ancient Rome, a masterpiece that bears witness to Ligorio’s cartographic skills, his erudition, and his lifelong fascination with the eternal city. Copiously illustrated, Coffin’s biography includes a checklist of Ligorio’s drawings. It will be of interest to architectural historians, art historians, and all those involved with the study of Rome and of the classical heritage.

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In the religious systems of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean, gods and demigods were neither abstract nor distant, but communicated with mankind through signs and active intervention. Men and women were thus eager to interpret, appeal to, and even control the gods and their agents. In Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, a distinguished array of scholars explores the many ways in which people in the ancient world sought to gain access to—or, in some cases, to bind or escape from—the divine powers of heaven and earth. Grounded in a variety of disciplines, including Assyriology, Classics, and early Islamic history, the fifteen essays in this volume cover a broad geographic area: Greece, Egypt, Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Persia. Topics include celestial divination in early Mesopotamia, the civic festivals of classical Athens, and Christian magical papyri from Coptic Egypt. Moving forward to Late Antiquity, we see how Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each incorporated many aspects of ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman religion into their own prayers, rituals, and conceptions. Even if they no longer conceived of the sun, moon, and the stars as eternal or divine, Christians, Jews, and Muslims often continued to study the movements of the heavens as a map on which divine power could be read. The reader already familiar with studies of ancient religion will find in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars both old friends and new faces. Contributors include Gideon Bohak, Nicola Denzey, Jacco Dieleman, Radcliffe Edmonds, Marvin Meyer, Michael G. Morony, Ian Moyer, Francesca Rochberg, Jonathan Z. Smith, Mark S. Smith, Peter Struck, Michael Swartz, and Kasia Szpakowska. Published as part of Penn State's Magic in History series, Prayer, Magic, and the Stars appears at a time of renewed interest in divination and occult practices in the ancient world. It will interest a wide audience in the field of comparative religion as well as students of the ancient world and late antiquity.

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The revolutionary movements that emerged frequently in Latin America over the past century promoted goals that included overturning dictatorships, confronting economic inequalities, and creating what Cuban revolutionary hero Che Guevara called the "new man." But, in fact, many of the "new men" who participated in these movements were not men. Thousands of them were women. This book aims to show why a full understanding of revolutions needs to take account of gender. Karen Kampwirth writes here about the women who joined the revolutionary movements in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and the Mexican state of Chiapas, about how they became guerrillas, and how that experience changed their lives. In the last chapter she compares what happened in these countries with Cuba in the 1950s, where few women participated in the guerrilla struggle. Drawing on more than two hundred interviews, Kampwirth examines the political, structural, ideological, and personal factors that allowed many women to escape from the constraints of their traditional roles and led some to participate in guerrilla activities. Her emphasis on the experiences of revolutionaries adds a new dimension to the study of revolution, which has focused mainly on explaining how states are overthrown.

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Hartmann von Aue (c. 1170–1215) is universally recognized as the first medieval German poet to create world-class literature. He crafted German into a language of refined literary expression that paved the way for writers such as Gottfried von Strassburg, Walther von der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach. This volume presents the English reader for the first time with the complete works of Hartmann in readable, idiomatic English. Hartmann's literary efforts cover all the major genres and themes of medieval courtly literature. His Arthurian romances, Erec and Iwein, which he modeled after Chrétien de Troyes, introduced the Arthurian world to German audiences and set the standard for later German writers. His lyric poetry treats many aspects of courtly love, including fine examples of the crusading song. His dialogue on love delineates the theory of courtly relationships between the sexes and the quandary the lover experiences. His verse novellas Gregorius and Poor Heinrich transcend the world of mere human dimensions and examine the place and duties of the human in the divine scheme of things. Longfellow would later use Poor Heinrich in his Golden Legend.Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry is a major work destined to place Hartmann at the center of medieval courtly literature for English readers.

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This open-ended anthology is a journey into the very canon that Mary Daly has argued to be patriarchal and demeaning to women. This volume deauthorizes the official canon of Western philosophy and disrupts a related story told by some feminists who claim that Daly’s work is unworthy of re-reading because it contains fatal errors. The editors and contributors attempt to prove that Mary Daly is located in the Western intellectual tradition. Daly may be highly critical of conventional Western epistemological and theological traditions, but she nevertheless appropriates themes “out-of-context” for the building of her own systematic philosophy.The following are just a few of the many themes explored in this volume:• the question of subjectivity understood as an ongoing process of be-coming• the ambiguity of the need for feminists of colonial nations to speak out about violence against women in other parts of the world while that speaking carries with it the stamp of a colonial location• the territoriality of lesbian and women’s space• the theological dimensions of twentieth-century Western philosophy.Contributors are Wanda Warren Berry, Purushottama Bilimoria, Debra Campbell, Molly Dragiewicz, Frances Gray, Amber L. Katherine, AnaLouise Keating, Anne-Marie Korte, María Lugones, Geraldine Moane, Sheilagh A. Mogford, Laurel C. Schneider, Renuka Sharma, and Marja Suhonen.

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Rarely are we privileged to see the making of a saint, but it is just what this book gives us for John of Kronstadt (1829–1908), a major figure in the religious life of Late Imperial Russia. So popular was Father John during his years of ministry that Kronstadt became a pilgrimage site replete with peddlers selling souvenir photographs, postcards, and commemorative mugs. A Prodigal Saint follows Father John’s development from activist priest to venerated spiritual leader and, after his death, to his elevation to sainthood in 1990. We see both the inner life of an aspiring saint and the symbiotic relationship between a living icon and his followers. Father John represented a fundamentally new type of religious behavior and a new standard of sanctity in Late Imperial Russia. He ministered to the poor of Kronstadt, creating shelters and employment programs and participating in the temperance movement. In the process he acquired a reputation for prayerful intercession that soon spread beyond Kronstadt. When he was asked to minister to the dying Alexander III in 1894, his fame became international as he attracted correspondents from the United States and Europe. In his later years he allied himself increasingly with the radical right, which has had momentous implications for the Russian Orthodox Church in the twentieth century.Kizenko draws upon rich and virtually unknown documents from the Russian archives, including Father John’s diaries, thousands of letters he received from his followers, and the police reports on the sect that formed around him. John’s diaries are a truly unique source, for they document the making of a modern saint: his struggles with doubt, his ascetic practices, and his growing realization that others saw him as a saint. Kizenko explores the extent to which Father John collaborated in the formation of his own cult and how he himself was influenced by the expectations and desires of his audience. In the final chapter she follows Father John’s posthumous reputation (and the struggles over how to use that reputation) in Russia, the Soviet Union, and throughout the world. A Prodigal Saint is published in collaboration with the Harriman Institute at Columbia University as part of its Studies of the Harriman Institute series. It is a pioneering study that contributes to our understanding of lived religion, saints’ cults, and modern Russian history.

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The Medieval Calendar Year celebrates the pictorial convention known as "The Labors of the Months" and the ways it was used in the Middle Ages. Richly illustrated and elegantly presented, it provides valuable insights into prevailing social attitudes and values and will fascinate all readers who are interested in the history and culture of medieval Europe.The "Labors" cycle was most popular during the High Middle Ages (ca. 1200–1500). The traditional cycle depicts the year as a round of seasonal activities on the land. Each month has its allotted task, and each of these represents one stage in the never-ending process of providing food for society. The small scenes that made up the cycle were well-known and used widely throughout Europe. They were chosen to decorate both public and private spaces: churches and houses, town fountains, baptismal fonts, as well as books of devotion intended both for priests and for the laity. The cycle was sculpted in stone, carved in wood, painted on glass and on manuscript pages. Examples from such media are described, but most of the illustrations have been taken from manuscripts, primarily Books of Hours.The author has spent the past fifteen years studying calendar after calendar, and one of her great strengths is her ability to see the social reality that lies hidden, even masked, behind the stylized presentation. In the chapter on winter, she shows how the image of this season, dreaded in the Middle Ages, was softened and sweetened by calendar artists to bring it more into harmony with the characteristic mood of the cycle as a whole. For autumn, she reveals how depictions of the harvest of grain, grapes, and livestock hint at a sophisticated market economy. Thematic chapters on children, women, and the hardship of work brilliantly cut through idealized conventions and assumptions to unveil the underlying complexities of life. The "Labors" cycle and its social context have not hitherto been examined in depth and with the care they deserve. The Medieval Calendar Year is a book worthy of the beautiful and beguiling tradition it describes.

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From the 1930s to the 1980s, the capital of weightlifting in America was York, Pennsylvania, the home of the York Barbell Company. Bob Hoffman, the founder of York Barbell, propagated an ideology of success for Americans seeking physical improvement. Often called the "Father of World Weightlifting," Hoffman was a pioneer in marketing barbells and health foods. He popularized weight training and inaugurated a golden age of American weightlifting. Muscletown USA—part biography, part business history, and part sports history—chronicles how Hoffman made York the mecca of manly culture for millions of followers worldwide.Hoffman created his so-called muscle empire out of an oil-burner business that he started in the early 1920s. Within a decade, his passion for sport exceeded his need to produce oil burners and by the outset of the Depression he began manufacturing barbells at the factory. He soon discovered a willing public of aspiring weightlifters like himself who would buy not only barbells but also health and fitness products. Hoffman soon recruited a remarkable group of athletes, whom he tagged his "York Gang." He gave these men jobs in the factory, where they trained for national and international meets. Gradually, Hoffman emerged as one of the most prominent muscle peddlers in America, using his fame and fortune to promote competitive weightlifting, bodybuilding, and powerlifting. Muscletown USA reveals other innovations in which Hoffman played a major role, including weight training for athletes, health foods, bottled spring water, isometrics, and women's weightlifting. Even anabolic steroids, first used by weightlifters in the early 1960s, were a direct outgrowth of the fitness culture spawned by Hoffman.Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Fair's book will appeal to a wide range of readers, including anyone fascinated by American sports history and the iron game.

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Art historians have in the past narrowly defined primitivism, limiting their inquiry to examples of direct stylistic borrowing from African, Oceanic, or Native American imagery. The drawbacks of such an approach have become increasingly apparent, the most problematic being its perpetuation of the notion that certain traditions are indeed "primitive." Frances Connelly argues that "primitive" art was not a style at all, but a cultural construction by modern Europeans, a cluster of concepts principally forged during the Enlightenment concerning the nature of the origins of artistic expression. She contends that, instead of the paintings of Gauguin, the publication of Vico's New Science in 1725 lies much closer to the origins of primitivism because it first articulated the essential framework of ideas through which Europeans would understand "primitive" expression. Based upon a close reading of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources, including voyage accounts, ethnographies, aesthetic theories, and popular journals, The Sleep of Reason establishes that the term "primitive" art did not refer so much to actual stylistic traditions but to a collection of visual attributes that Europeans construed to be universal characteristics of "primitive" expression, specifically the hieroglyph, the grotesque, and the ornamental. Connelly provides case studies of artists and aestheticians who advocated, attempted, or realized the assimilation of these "primitive" characteristics, including some artists never before associated with primitivism as well as significant re-evaluations of Gauguin and Picasso.

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In this book James Turner Johnson explores the cultural traditions of the Christian West and Islam in an effort to encourage a constructive dialogue on the nature of war for religion. No other issue highlights the difference between these two cultures more clearly or with more relevance for their interrelations throughout history and in the contemporary world.In the West, war for religion is most often dismissed as a relic of the past, belonging to a time less rational and less civilized than our own. From this perspective, Muslims who advocate holy war are seen as religious fanatics who are supporting criminal and terrorist activity. By contrast, war for religion has an honored place in the Islamic world, associated with a perennial religious requirement: striving in the path of faith by heart, tongue, and hands. This striving is designated by the now familiar term jihad. In fact, striving by the sword is the "lesser" jihad, and many Muslims themselves are troubled by reductionistic appeals to jihad to justify terrorism, revolution, and anti-western activity. According to Johnson, for there to be any dialogue between Islam and the West we must understand that in the West religion and politics are placed in separate spheres, while normative Islam regards religion as properly integral to the political order. From this perspective religious concerns should have a place in statecraft, including the use of military force.Three questions form the heart of Johnson's inquiry: Is there a legitimate justification for war for religion? What authority is required? What is the proper conduct in such wars? In each case, he asks the question by comparing religious wars with other kinds of wars. The picture that emerges is of war for religion not as an expression of fanatical excess but as a controlled, purposeful activity. With an eye to the present day, Johnson examines cases in history where distinctive models of war for religion were implemented by rulers. This in turn sets the stage for critical judgment on contemporary appeals to the idea of jihad in relation to political aims.Well known for his work on peace and just war, Johnson draws upon a wide base of historical and comparative scholarship. While the book is anchored primarily on the past, on the roots and historical development of the two traditions, his aim throughout is to shed light on contemporary attitudes, ideals, and behaviors, especially as they bear on real problems that affect relations between Western and Islamic cultures in the world today.

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When Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as foreign minister of the Soviet Union in 1990, he ended one of the most remarkable and controversial political partnerships in modern history. Together with Mikhail Gorbachev and Alexander Yakovlev, Shevardnadze led the dramatic Soviet about-face in the 1980s that ended the Cold War and transformed the international political climate. While Gorbachev and Yakovlev focused on domestic reform, Shevardnadze redirected foreign policy. His willingness to act decisively made him the "moral force" of new thinking and the point man for the policies of perestroika. This major book is the first to take a critical look at the many battles Shevardnadze has fought at home and abroad throughout his remarkable career. Carolyn Ekedahl and Melvin Goodman—veteran observers of the Soviet system—describe and analyze Shevardnadze’s career, beginning with his Georgian past. They assess his responsibility for the Soviet collapse and the leadership role he continues to play in the independent state of Georgia. While sympathetic to what he has achieved, the authors show how Shevardnadze was a product of the Soviet system he sought to change but would help to destroy. He has proven a skillful politician who exploited available instruments of power to advance his career and further his policy objectives. For this book, the authors have interviewed many high-ranking American, Georgian, Russian, and Soviet officials, including Shevardnadze himself and former secretaries of state George Shultz and James Baker. Both Shultz and Baker credit Shevardnadze with convincing them that Moscow was committed to serious negotiations. They conclude that history would have been far different if it were not for the personal diplomacy of Shevardnadze. As historians and specialists seek to explain the end of the Cold War in terms of endemic weaknesses in the Soviet system and the steadfast policies of the West, The Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze shows the folly of neglecting the essential role played by Soviet leaders who saw the need for reform and implemented policies designed to accomplish profound, but peaceful, change.

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With the exception of early Egypt and Minoan Crete, no early culture had such a vigorous stone vase-making industry as the Cyclades. Figures and vessels of stone, overwhelmingly of marble, are the most distinctive and appealing products of the Early Cycladic culture. The vessels, like the better-known figures, formed a special class of object that conformed to a strict traditional typology. Ranging from charming miniatures to works of impressive size, they often show a striking purity of form, beauty of material, and excellence in their workmanship. Stone Vessels of the Cyclades in the Early Bronze Age is the first comprehensive study of these vessels.For each vessel type, Pat Getz-Gentle considers the material used, the size range, and the formal characteristics and the extent of their variation. She also discusses manufacturing methods, the incidence of repairs occasioned by accidental damage, and the possible function or functions, as well as the development, frequency, dating, and distribution of each vessel type within the Cyclades and beyond. She stresses the human element—how the vessels were used, held, and carried; how much they weigh; and how much they hold. She examines the sculptors who made them—how they might have designed and executed their works, how on occasion they seem to have modified their original plans, and how they stand out as individual artists working within a traditional craft. The 114 plates, with more than 500 separate photographs, illustrate works that show both the homogeneity and the diversity within each type.

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This book explores a little-noticed tradition in the history of European political thought. From Plato to Aristotle to Tacitus and Machiavelli, and from Tocqueville to Max Weber and Hannah Arendt, political thinkers have examined the tyrannies of their times and have wondered how these tyrannies come about, how they work, and how they might be defeated. In examining this perennial problem of tyranny, Roger Boesche looks at how these thinkers borrowed from the past—thus entering into an established dialogue—to analyze the present. Although obviously tyrannies are not identical over time (Hitler certainly did not rule as Nero), we can learn partial lessons from past thinkers that can help us to better understand twentieth-century tyrannies.

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This is a collection of documents covering all aspects of slavery in Brazil, from its beginnings in Portugal and Africa in the 15th century to its abolition in 1888.

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Cynthia Arnson incorporates substantial amounts of new primary source and recently declassified material coming out of the Iran-Contra trials and other Freedom of Information Act requests in this new edition of Crossroads. She also includes an entirely new chapter that carries the story of the Nicaragua and El Salvador policy debates to the end of the Bush Administration.

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In Perception, Empathy, and Judgment Arne Johan Vetlesen focuses on the indispensable role of emotion, especially the faculty of empathy, in morality. He contends that moral conduct is severely threatened once empathy is prevented from taking part in an interplay with cognitive faculties (such as abstraction or imagination) in acts of moral perception and judgment. Drawing on developmental psychology, especially British "object relations" theory, to illuminate the nature and functioning of empathy, Vetlesen shows how moral performance is constituted by a sequence involving perception, judgment, and action, with an interplay between the agent's emotional (empathic) and cognitive faculties occurring at each stage. In the powerful tradition from Kant to present-day theorists such as Kohlberg, Rawls, and Habermas, reason is privileged over feeling and judgment over perception, in such a way that basic philosophical questions remain unasked. Vetlesen focuses our attention on these questions and challenges the long-standing assertion that emotions are damaging to moral response. In the final chapter he relates his argument to recent feminist critiques that have also castigated moral theorists in the Kantian tradition for their refusal to recognize a role for emotion in morality. While the book's argument is philosophical, its method and scope are interdisciplinary. In addition to critiques of such philosophers as Arendt, MacIntyre, and Habermas, it contains discussions of specific historical, ideological, and sociological factors that may cause "numbing"—selective or broad-ranging, pathological insensitivity—in humans. The Nazis' mass killing of Jews is studied to illuminate these and other relevant empirical aspects of large-scale immoral action.

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Beginning with an overview of the Castro regime's program to transform Cuban culture as guided by the tenets of Marxist-Leninist ideology, Julie Bunck first outlines in a broad way the four phases through which the regime's strategy evolved, from 1959 to the present, with a variety of methods tried—noncoercive, indirectly coercive, and directly coercive. The four main chapters then each focus on one of the principal targets at which the regime aimed in trying to change popular attitudes: youth, women, labor, and sports. The last chapter offers an overall assessment and explanation of the regime's few successes and many failures, suggesting lessons from Cuba's experience that help account for the collapse of communist regimes elsewhere in the world that foundered on the resistance of traditional culture to revolutionary change.

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John Berger famously said that “in the last two centuries, animals have gradually disappeared.” Those who share his view contend that animals have been removed from our daily lives and that we have been removed from the daily lives of animals. This has been the impetus for a plethora of representational practices that, broadly conceived, work to fill in the gap between humans and animals. Ironically, many of these may ultimately intensify the very nostalgia, distance, and ignorance they were devised to remedy. Animals on Display presents nine lively and engaging essays on the historical representation and display of nonhuman animals. Looking at a wide range of examples, many of them now little known, the essays situate them in their historical and sociocultural contexts, while speaking to the ongoing importance of making animals visible for the arrangement and sustenance of human-animal relations.Aside from the editors, the contributors are Brita Brenna, Guro Flinterud, Henry A. McGhie, Brian W. Ogilvie, Nigel Rothfels, and Lise Camilla Ruud.

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In this volume, Nicholas R. Jones analyzes white appropriations of black African voices in Spanish theater from the 1500s through the 1700s, when the performance of Africanized Castilian, commonly referred to as habla de negros (black speech), was in vogue.Focusing on Spanish Golden Age theater and performative poetry from authors such as Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Rueda, and Rodrigo de Reinosa, Jones makes a strong case for revising the belief, long held by literary critics and linguists, that white appropriations and representations of habla de negros language are “racist buffoonery” or stereotype. Instead, Jones shows black characters who laugh, sing, and shout, ultimately combating the violent desire of white supremacy. By placing early modern Iberia in conversation with discourses on African diaspora studies, Jones showcases how black Africans and their descendants who built communities in early modern Spain were rendered legible in performative literary texts.Accessibly written and theoretically sophisticated, Jones’s groundbreaking study elucidates the ways that habla de negros animated black Africans’ agency, empowered their resistance, and highlighted their African cultural retentions. This must-read book on identity building, performance, and race will captivate audiences across disciplines.

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This book, covering the period 1832 to 1868, describes how the so-called "church rates" controversy contributed to the rise of a secular liberal state in England and Wales. The church rate was an ancient tax required of all ratepayers, regardless of denomination, for the upkeep of parish churches of the Church of England. This meant that Dissenters and other non-Anglicans paid for the support of the established Church. In the 1830s, however, the Dissenters determined to tolerate the situation no longer. The resulting thirty-six-year struggle became the central church-state issue of the Victorian period. Ellens further argues that church rates played a pivotal role in the shaping of Victorian liberalism. Dissenters desired a society in which church and state would be separate and religious affairs voluntary. When Gladstone decided to champion the Dissenters' "voluntaryist" cause in the 1860s, he established the relationship that would give him the solid basis of electoral strength he needed to carry out the great liberal reforms of his governments after 1868. Elegantly written and argued, this book carefully details the process of disestablishment in England and Wales and uncovers an important and little-recognized dimension to the formation of the Liberal party.

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This book shows how institutional religion and the religiosity of political and cultural life provide a necessary dimension to Walter Benjamin, one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers. Lived religion surrounded Benjamin, whose upper-middle-class Jewish family celebrated Christmas and Hanukkah in Berlin as the turmoil of war, collapsing empires, and modern urban life gave rise to the Nazi regime that would destroy most of Europe’s Jews, including Benjamin himself. Documenting the vitality and diversity of religious life that surrounded Benjamin in Germany, France, and beyond, Brian Britt shows the extent to which religious communities and traditions, especially those of Christians, influenced his work. Britt surveys and analyzes the intellectual, cultural, and social contexts of religion in Benjamin’s world and broadens the religious frame around discussions of his work to include lived religion—the daily practices of ordinary people. Seeing religion around Benjamin requires looking at forms of life and institutions that he rarely discussed. As Britt shows, dramatic changes in religious practices, particularly in Berlin, reflected broader political and cultural currents that would soon transform the lives of all Europeans.An original perspective on the religious context of a thinker who habitually raised questions about the survival of religion in modernity, Religion Around Walter Benjamin contributes to wider discussions of religious tradition and secular modernity in religious and cultural studies. It provides a foundational overview and introduction to the context of Benjamin’s writing that will be appreciated by scholars and students alike.

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In Doctored, Tanya Sheehan takes a new look at the relationship between photography and medicine in American culture from the nineteenth century to the present. Sheehan focuses on Civil War and postbellum Philadelphia, exploring the ways in which medical models and metaphors helped strengthen the professional legitimacy of the city’s commercial photographic community at a time when it was not well established. By reading the trade literature and material practices of portrait photography and medicine in relation to one another, she shows how their interaction defined the space of the urban portrait studio as well as the physical and social effects of studio operations. Integrating the methods of social art history, science studies, and media studies, Doctored reveals important connections between the professionalization of American photographers and the construction of photography’s cultural identity.

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In this book, Natasha Ruiz-Gómez delves into an extraordinary collection of pathological drawings, photographs, sculptures, and casts created by neurologists at Paris's Hôpital de la Salpêtrière in the nineteenth century. Led by Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot (18251893) and known collectively as the Salpêtrière School, these savants-artistes produced works that demonstrated an engagement with contemporary artistic discourses and the history of art, even as the artists/clinicians professed their dedication to absolute objectivity. During his lifetime, Charcot became internationally famous for his studies of hysteria and hypnosis, establishing himself as a pioneer in modern neurology. However, this book brings to light the often-overlooked contributions of other clinicians, such as Dr. Paul Richer, who created scientific artworks that merged scientific objectivity with artistic intervention. Challenging conventional interpretations of visual media in medicine, Ruiz-Gómez analyzes how these im

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Prints of a New Kind details the political strategies and scandals that inspired the first generation of American caricaturists to share news and opinions with their audiences in shockingly radical ways. Complementing studies on British and European printmaking, this book is a survey and catalogue of all known American political caricatures created in the country's transformative early years, as the nation sought to define itself in relation to European models of governance and artistry. Allison Stagg examines printed caricatures that mocked events reported in newspapers and politicians in the United States' fledgling government, reactions captured in the personal papers of the politicians being satirized, and the lives of the artists who satirized them. Stagg's work fills a large gap in early American scholarship, one that has escaped thorough art-historical attention because of the rarity of extant images and the lack of understanding of how these images fit into their political co

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Often referred to as the last Surrealist and first Abstract Expressionist, Arshile Gorky (c. 1900–1948) appears as an interstice within art history’s linear progression. Gorky embraced dream imagery in the tradition of the Surrealists, used all-over patterning before Jackson Pollock, promoted disembodied color before Mark Rothko, exploited the physicality of paint before Willem de Kooning, and anticipated stain painting. His life—he escaped the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and struggled as an immigrant artist in New York in the 1930s and 1940s—and his tumultuous personal relationships have cast the artist as a tragic figure and often overshadowed the genius of his art. Rethinking Arshile Gorky is an examination of the artist and his work based on themes of displacement, self-fashioning, trauma, and memory. By applying a multitude of techniques, including psychoanalytic, semiotic, and constructivist analyses, to explain and demythologize the artist, Kim Theriault offers a contemporary critique of both the way we construct the idea of the “artist” in modern society and the manner in which Arshile Gorky and his art have historically been addressed.

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The Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II was one of the most important and famous rulers of ancient Mesopotamia. In this volume of critically important ancient documents, Grant Frame presents reliable, updated editions of Sargon’s approximately 130 historical inscriptions, as well as several from his wife, his brother, and other high officials.Beginning with a thorough introduction to the reign of Sargon II and an overview of the previous scholarship on his inscriptions, this modern scholarly edition contains the entire extant corpus. It presents more than 130 inscriptions, preserved on stone wall slabs from his palace, paving slabs, colossi, steles, prisms, cylinders, bricks, metal, and other objects, along with brief introductions, commentaries, comprehensive bibliographies, accurate transliterations, and elegant English translations of the Akkadian texts. This monumental work is complemented by more than two dozen photographs of the inscribed objects; indices of museum and excavation numbers, selected publications, and proper names; and translations of relevant passages from several other Akkadian texts, including chronicles and king lists.Informed by advances in the study of the Akkadian language and featuring more than twice as many texts as previous editions of Sargon II’s inscriptions, this will be the editio princeps for Assyriologists and students of the Sargonic inscriptions for decades to come.

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The second volume of Hoffner and Melchert’s Grammar, this tutorial consists of a series of graded lessons with illustrative sentences for the student to translate. The tutorial is keyed to the reference grammar and provides extensive notes. To get maximum use out of the Tutorial, we recommend purchasing the Grammar, which also contains a CD-ROM of both texts with hyperlinks.

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While the perception of magic as harmful is age-old, the notion of witches gathering together in large numbers, overtly worshiping demons, and receiving instruction in how to work harmful magic as part of a conspiratorial plot against Christian society was an innovation of the early fifteenth century. The sources collected in this book reveal this concept in its formative stages.The idea that witches were members of organized heretical sects or part of a vast diabolical conspiracy crystalized most clearly in a handful of texts written in the 1430s and clustered geographically around the arc of the western Alps. Michael D. Bailey presents accessible English translations of the five oldest surviving texts describing the witches’ sabbath and of two witch trials from the period. These sources, some of which were previously unavailable in English or available only in incomplete or out-of-date translations, show how perceptions of witchcraft shifted from a general belief in harmful magic practiced by individuals to a conspiratorial and organized threat that led to the witch hunts that shook northern Europe and went on to influence conceptions of diabolical witchcraft for centuries to come.Origins of the Witches’ Sabbath makes freshly available a profoundly important group of texts that are key to understanding the cultural context of this dark chapter in Europe’s history. It will be especially valuable to those studying the history of witchcraft, medieval and early modern legal history, religion and theology, magic, and esotericism.

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Italian court culture of the fifteenth century was a golden age, gleaming with dazzling princes, splendid surfaces, and luminous images that separated the lords from the (literally) lackluster masses. In Brilliant Bodies, Timothy McCall describes and interprets the Renaissance glitterati—gorgeously dressed and adorned men—to reveal how charismatic bodies, in the palazzo and the piazza, seduced audiences and materialized power.Fifteenth-century Italian courts put men on display. Here, men were peacocks, attracting attention with scintillating brocades, shining armor, sparkling jewels, and glistening swords, spurs, and sequins. McCall’s investigation of these spectacular masculinities challenges widely held assumptions about appropriate male display and adornment. Interpreting surviving objects, visual representations in a wide range of media, and a diverse array of primary textual sources, McCall argues that Renaissance masculine dress was a political phenomenon that fashioned power and patriarchal authority. Brilliant Bodies describes and recontextualizes the technical construction and cultural meanings of attire, casts a critical eye toward the complex and entangled relations between bodies and clothing, and explores the negotiations among makers, wearers, and materials.This groundbreaking study of masculinity makes an important intervention in the history of male ornamentation and fashion by examining a period when the public display of splendid men not only supported but also constituted authority. It will appeal to specialists in art history and fashion history as well as scholars working at the intersections of gender and politics in quattrocento Italy.

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“Ask the beast and it will teach thee, and the birds of heaven and they will tell thee.” —Job 12:7In the Middle Ages, the bestiary achieved a popularity second only to that of the Bible. In addition to being a kind of encyclopedia of the animal kingdom, the bestiary also served as a book of moral and religious instruction, teaching human virtues through a portrayal of an animal’s true or imagined behavior. In A Jewish Bestiary, Mark Podwal revisits animals, both real and mythical, that have captured the Jewish imagination through the centuries.Originally published in 1984 and called “broad in learning and deep in subtle humor” by the New York Times, this updated edition of A Jewish Bestiary features new full-color renderings of thirty-five creatures from Hebraic legend and lore. The illustrations are accompanied by entertaining and instructive tales drawn from biblical, talmudic, midrashic, and kabbalistic sources. Throughout, Podwal combines traditional Jewish themes with his own distinctive style. The resulting juxtaposition of art with history results in a delightful and enlightening bestiary for the twenty-first century.From the ant to the ziz, herein are the creatures that exert a special force on the Jewish fancy.

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Founded in 1956, the French psychiatric clinic La Chesnaie is an open and welcoming facility that houses about one hundred people of all ages. It provides traditional forms of care for people with serious mental illness, but it does so in a uniquely supportive environment where patients and caregivers participate equally in the day-to-day operations of the clinic. The driving force of La Chesnaie is the “Club,” a nonprofit organization serving as a liaison between the clinic and the outside world. It arranges cultural and recreational outings for the patients as well as activities like concerts and exhibitions that bring the public to La Chesnaie. As a result, days at the clinic are quite lively and never routine.Author Aurélien Ducoudray and illustrator Jeff Pourquié immersed themselves for a time in the culture of La Chesnaie. Like everyone there, including the patients, supervisors, and caregivers, they took part in the daily chores of the clinic, cooking and cleaning. They participated in group events and even led a comics workshop to teach the residents about their craft. The Third Population is the engaging, inspiring, and often poignantly funny result of this project. The Third Population is a sensitive and uncompromising portrayal of daily life in this singular psychiatric health facility where patients are encouraged to build human relationships in spite of the difficulties that mental illness can pose. As the supervisors and caregivers take part in the daily activities of their patients, differences are erased and empathic bonds are formed, with the result that sometimes it is difficult to distinguish the patients from the caregivers.

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Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), sculptor, architect, painter, and playwright, was the most influential artist of seventeenth-century Rome and, indeed, one of the leading creative forces in European art for most of that century. He is universally recognized as one of the creators of the vastly popular Roman Baroque style, which was quickly disseminated throughout all of Europe. His influence lasted well beyond his death, and the popularity of his numerous works—fountains, statues, churches, and public squares—is today as great as it was during his own lifetime, if not more so. Domenico Bernini (1657–1723) was the artist’s youngest child. Domenico’s full-length biography of his famous father represents one of the most important and most intimate primary sources for the artist’s life and work. In this edition, Franco Mormando presents the first critical translation in any language of the complete Italian text, together with annotated translations of two other significant but brief biographical sketches. Mormando provides a lengthy Introduction that closely examines the author and his career, his editorial agenda and critical reception, Baroque biography as a literary genre, the other extant primary sources, and the artistic vocabulary of early modern Europe, among other relevant topics. Extensive commentary accompanies and illuminates the text from a multiplicity of historical, linguistic, and cultural perspectives. This edition is, in effect, a one-volume encyclopedia on the artist’s life and work. As such, it stands alone within the immense bibliography of Bernini scholarship.

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In this beautifully illustrated graphic novel, now translated into English from Dutch, artist Ephameron chronicles her father’s losing battle with early-onset primary progressive aphasia (PPA)—a rare form of dementia that advanced slowly and left him unable to speak or to coordinate his thoughts and actions. A moving sequence of paper collage illustrations layered under text depicts Ephameron’s father’s decline and her family’s experience of caring for him. Compositional techniques combined with image, rhythm, and narrative work both to convey emotion and to frame illness in its context. Unlike other portrayals of dementia, Ephameron’s does not shy away from portraying the brutality of the disease. Us Two Together is a poetic and melancholic depiction of how dementia slowly disintegrates a body.

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Lydia Hamilton Smith (1813–1884) was a prominent African American businesswoman in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and the longtime housekeeper, life companion, and collaborator of the state’s abolitionist congressman Thaddeus Stevens. In his biography of this remarkable woman, Mark Kelley reveals how Smith served the cause of abolition, managed Stevens’s household, acquired property, and crossed racialized social boundaries.Born a free woman near Gettysburg, Smith began working for Stevens in 1844. Her relationship with Stevens fascinated and infuriated many, and it made Smith a highly recognizable figure both locally and nationally. The two walked side by side in Lancaster and in Washington, DC, as they worked to secure the rights of African Americans, sheltered people on the Underground Railroad, managed two households, raised her sons and his nephews, and built a real-estate business. In the last years of Stevens’s life, as his declining health threatened to short-circuit his work, Smith risked her own well-being to keep him alive while he led the drive to end slavery, impeach Andrew Johnson, and push for the ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.An Uncommon Woman is a vital history that accords Lydia Hamilton Smith the recognition that she deserves. Every American should know Smith’s inspiring story.

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This inaugural volume in the Graphic Medicine series establishes the principles of graphic medicine and begins to map the field. The volume combines scholarly essays by members of the editorial team with previously unpublished visual narratives by Ian Williams and MK Czerwiec, and it includes arresting visual work from a wide range of graphic medicine practitioners. The book’s first section, featuring essays by Scott Smith and Susan Squier, argues that as a new area of scholarship, research on graphic medicine has the potential to challenge the conventional boundaries of academic disciplines, raise questions about their foundations, and reinvigorate literary scholarship—and the notion of the literary text—for a broader audience. The second section, incorporating essays by Michael Green and Kimberly Myers, demonstrates that graphic medicine narratives can engage members of the health professions with literary and visual representations and symbolic practices that offer patients, family members, physicians, and other caregivers new ways to experience and work with the complex challenges of the medical experience. The final section, by Ian Williams and MK Czerwiec, focuses on the practice of creating graphic narratives, iconography, drawing as a social practice, and the nature of comics as visual rhetoric. A conclusion (in comics form) testifies to the diverse and growing graphic medicine community. Two valuable bibliographies guide readers to comics and scholarly works relevant to the field.

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