Search results for ""amsterdam university press""
Amsterdam University Press The Origins of the Exhibition Space (1450-1750)
Before the first purpose-designed exhibition spaces and painting exhibitions emerged, showing art was mainly related to the habit of dressing up spaces for political commemorations, religious festivals, and marketing strategies. Palaces, cloisters, façades, squares, and shops became temporary and privileged venues for art display, where sociability was performed, and the idea of exhibition developed. What were those places and events? What aesthetic, cultural, social and political discourses intersected with the early idea of exhibition space? How did displaying art shape a new vocabulary within these events, and conversely, how have these occasions conditioned exhibiting practices? This book traces the origins of the exhibition space by studying its visual and written imagery in the early modern period. It reconsiders events and habits that contributed to shaping the imagery of the exhibition space, and to defining exhibition-making practices, exploring micro-histories and long-term changes.
£107.00
Amsterdam University Press An Experts' Guide to International Protocol: Best Practice in Diplomatic and Corporate Relations
Although modern life grows increasingly casual, in many sectors, protocol still reigns supreme. An Expert's Guide to International Protocol offers an overview of its associated practices, including those found within the context of diplomatic relations and the business world. Focusing on a wide range of countries and cultures, the book covers topics like precedence, seating arrangements, flags, ceremonies, invitations, dress codes, gifts and honours, and the roles of the protocol officer, guest and host. Throughout, influential diplomatic, business, and cultural figures share their own experiences with protocols around the world, also throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
£54.95
Amsterdam University Press Scripting Justice in Late Medieval Europe: Legal Practice and Communication in the Law Courts of Utrecht, York and Paris
Late medieval societies witnessed the emergence of a particular form of socio-legal practice and logic, focused on the law court and its legal process. In a context of legal pluralism, courts tried to carve out their own position by influencing people’s conception of what justice was and how one was supposed to achieve it. These “scripts of justice” took shape through a range of media, including texts, speech, embodied activities and the spaces used to perform all these. Looking beyond traditional historiographical narratives of state building or the professionalization of law, this book argues that the development of law courts was grounded in changing forms of multimedial interaction between those who sought justice and those who claimed to provide it. Through a comparative study of three markedly different types of courts, it involves both local contexts and broader developments in tracing the communication strategies of these late medieval claimants to socio-legal authority.
£113.00
Amsterdam University Press Colonial Objects in Early Modern Sweden and Beyond: From the Kunstkammer to the Current Museum Crisis
An elaborately crafted and decorated tomahawk from somewhere along the North American east coast: how did it end up in the royal collections in Stockholm in the late seventeenth century? What does it say about the Swedish kingdom’s colonial ambitions and desires? What questions does it raise from its present place in a display cabinet in the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm? Colonial Objects in Early Modern Sweden and Beyond is about the tomahawk and other objects like it, acquired in colonial contact zones and displayed by Swedish elites in the seventeenth century. Its first part situates the objects in two distinct but related spaces: the expanding space of the colonial world, and the exclusive space of the Kunstkammer. The second part traces the objects’ physical and epistemological transfer from the Kunstkammer to the modern museum system. In the final part, colonial objects are considered at the centre of a heated debate over the present state of museums, and their possible futures.
£107.00
Amsterdam University Press Korean Cinema in Global Contexts: Post-Colonial Phantom, Blockbuster and Trans-Cinema
Offering the most comprehensive analysis of Korean cinema from its early history to the present, and including the films of Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho and Kim Ki-young, Korean Cinema in Global Contexts: Postcolonial Phantom, Blockbuster and Trans-Cinema situates itself in the local, Inter-Asian, and transnational contexts by mobilizing the critical frameworks of feminism, postcolonial critique and comparative film studies. It is attentive to an enmeshment of the cinematic, aesthetics, politics and cultural history.
£107.00
Amsterdam University Press Archive, Photography and the Language of Administration
This alternative study of archive and photography brings many types of image assemblages into view, always in relation to the regulated systems operating within the institutional milieu. The archive catalogue is presented as a critical tool for mapping image time, and the language of image description is seen as having a life, a worth and an aesthetic value of its own. Functioning at the intersection of text and image, the book combines media culture, archival techniques, and contemporary discourse on art and conceptual writing.
£107.00
Amsterdam University Press The Muslim Brotherhood: Ideology, History, Descendants
The Muslim Brotherhood is often represented in mainstream media as a theocratic organisation that preaches Qur’an-based violence and is out to grab power in the West. As this book shows, such representations are wrought with prejudice and oversimplification; the organisation is in reality much more dynamic and diverse. Its goals, ideology and influence have never been static and vary greatly amongst its descendants in both Europe and the Middle East. Joas Wagemakers introduces the reader to this fascinating organisation and the major ideological and historical developments that it has gone through since its emergence in 1928.
£33.14
Amsterdam University Press From Grain to Pixel: The Archival Life of Film in Transition, Third Revised Edition
In From Grain to Pixel, Giovanna Fossati analyzes the transition from analog to digital film and its profound effects on filmmaking and film archiving. Reflecting on the theoretical conceptualization of the medium itself, Fossati poses significant questions about the status of physical film and the practice of its archival preservation, restoration, and presentation. From Grain to Pixel attempts to bridge the fields of film archiving and academic research by addressing the discourse on film's ontology and analyzing how different interpretations of what film is affect the role and practices of film archives. By proposing a novel theorization of film archival practice, Fossati aims to stimulate a renewed dialogue between film scholars and film archivists. Almost a decade after its first publication, this revised edition covers the latest developments in the field. Besides a new general introduction, a new conclusion, and extensive updates to each chapter, a novel theoretical framework and an additional case study have been included.
£44.95
Amsterdam University Press Sino-American Relations: A New Cold War
Sino-American Relations brings together high-quality research articles in order to examine one aspect of the political mechanism of modern China, from empire to the PRC: political initiatives to root out corruption. Proceeding chronologically, the eleven chapters explore modern political history through a particular focus on the anti-corruption campaigns of early modern and modern China. Our interdisciplinary analysis draws on methodologies from several distinct fields, including political science, civil law, and mass media. Such an analysis reveals the unique characteristics of China’s urbanization, which have transformed not only the country, but also the CCP – from a rural-based totalitarian party to a city-centered authoritarian party, and from a party of the people to a party of powerful interest groups by 2002–2016.
£123.00
Amsterdam University Press Inconvenient Heritage: Colonial Collections and Restitution in the Netherlands and Belgium
The discussion about objects, ancestral remains and archives from former colonial territories is becoming increasingly heated. Over the centuries, a multitude of items – including a cannon of the King of Kandy, power-objects from DR Congo, Benin bronzes, Javanese temple statues, Maori heads and strategic documents – has ended up in museums and private collections in Belgium and the Netherlands by improper means. Since gaining independence, former colonies have been calling for the return of their lost heritage. As continued possession of these objects only grows more uncomfortable, governments and museums must decide what to do. How did these objects get here? Are they all looted, and how can we find out? How does restitution work in practice? Are there any appealing examples? How do other former colonial powers deal with restitution? Do former colonies trust their intentions? The answers to these questions are far from unambiguous, but indispensable for a balanced discussion.
£35.77
Amsterdam University Press Literary Hispanophobia and Hispanophilia in Britain and the Low Countries (1550-1850)
Spain has been a fruitful locus for the European imagination for centuries, and it has been most often perceived in black-and-white oppositions -- either as a tyrannical and fanatical force in the early modern period or as an imaginary geography of a ‘Romantic’ Spain in later centuries. However, the image of Spain, its culture and its inhabitants did not evolve inexorably from negative to positive. From the early modern period onwards, it responded to an ambiguous matrix of conflicting Hispanophobic and Hispanophilic representations. Just as in the nineteenth century latent negative stereotypes continued to resurface, even in the Romantic heyday, in the early modern period appreciation for Spain was equally undeniable. When Spain was a political and military superpower, it also enjoyed cultural hegemony with a literary Golden Age producing internationally hailed masterpieces. Literary Hispanophobia and Hispanophilia in Britain and the Low Countries (1550-1850) explores the protracted interest in Spain and its culture, and it exposes the co-existent ambiguity between scorn and fascination that characterizes Western historical perceptions, in particular in Britain and the Low Countries, two geographical spaces with a shared sense of historical connectedness and an overlapping, sometimes complicated, history with Spain.
£123.00
Amsterdam University Press Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self
What does it mean to be a good citizen today? What are practices of citizenship? And what can we learn from the past about these practices to better engage in city life in the twenty-first century? Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self is a collection of papers that examine these questions. The contributors come from a variety of different disciplines, including architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and history, and their essays make comparative examinations of the practices of citizenship from the ancient world to the present day in both the East and the West. The papers’ comparative approaches, between East and West, and ancient and modern, leads to a greater understanding of the challenges facing citizens in the urbanized twenty-first century, and by looking at past examples, suggests ways of addressing them. While the book’s point of departure is philosophical, its key aim is to examine how philosophy can be applied to everyday life for the betterment of citizens in cities not just in Asia and the West but everywhere.
£107.00
Amsterdam University Press Ideas of the City in Asian Settings
At a time when intense dynamics of urban development of Asian cities puzzle and disorient, Ideas of the City in Asian Settings offers knowledge about the concepts, representations, and ideas that lie beneath the historical and contemporary production of cities in Asia, in order to deepen our understanding of the processes and meanings of urban development in the continent. The book sheds more light on the vast array of rules and innovations and aspirations that make cities into complex objects that are continuously ‘in the making’. Because Asian cities have experienced unprecedented dynamics of urban development during the last fifty years, they are considered as crucial places to question the perspectives that multiple actors project onto changing urban environments, as well as the evolution of the role of cities in globalisation.
£145.00
Amsterdam University Press The Heritage Turn in China: The Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage
The Heritage Turn in China: The Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage focuses on heritage discourse and practice in China today as it has evolved from the ‘heritage turn’ that can be dated to the 1990s. Using a variety of disciplinary approaches to regionally and topically diverse case studies, the contributors to this edited volume show how particular versions of the past are selected, (re)invented, disseminated and consumed for contemporary purposes. These studies explore how the Chinese state utilises heritage not only for tourism, entertainment, educational and commercial purposes, but also as part of broader political strategies on both the national and international stage. Together, they argue that the Chinese state deploys modes of heritage governance to construct new modernities while strengthening collective national identity in support of both its political legitimacy and its claim to status as an international superpower. The authors also consider ways in which state management of heritage is contested by some stakeholders whose embrace of heritage has a different purpose and meaning.
£117.00
Amsterdam University Press Writing History!: A Companion for Historians
Historians not only have knowledge of history, but by writing about it and engaging with other historians from the past and present, they make history themselves. This companion offers young historians clear guidelines for the different phases of historical research; how do you get a good historical question? How do you engage with the literature? How do you work with sources from the past, from archives to imagery and objects, art, or landscapes? What is the influence of digitalisation of the historical craft? Broad in scope, Writing History! also addresses historians’ traditional support of policy makers and their activity in fields of public history, such as museums, the media, and the leisure sector, and offers support for developing the necessary skills for this wide range of professions.
£18.28
Amsterdam University Press An Introduction to Mathematical Statistics
Statistics is the science that focuses on drawing conclusions from data, by modeling and analyzing the data using probabilistic models. In 'An Introduction to Mathematical Statistics' the authors describe key concepts from statistics and give a mathematical basis for important statistical methods. Much attention is paid to the sound application of those methods to data. The three main topics in statistics are estimators, tests, and confidence regions. The authors illustrate these in many examples, with a separate chapter on regression models, including linear regression and analysis of variance. They also discuss the optimality of estimators and tests, as well as the selection of the best-fitting model.Each chapter ends with a case study in which the described statistical methods are applied. This book assumes a basic knowledge of probability theory, calculus, and linear algebra.
£31.99
Amsterdam University Press Rereading Huizinga: Autumn of the Middle Ages, a Century Later
Rereading Huizinga: Autumn of the Middle Ages, a Century Later explores the legacy and historiographical impact of Johan Huizinga’s 1919 masterwork a century after its publication. Often considered one of the most successful books in medieval European history, its reception has varied over the last hundred years, popular with non-academic readers, and appraised more critically by fellow historians and those more generally in the field of medieval studies. There is broad consensus, however, about the work’s absolute centrality, and the authors of this volume assess the Autumn of the Middle Ages reception, afterlife, and continued vitality.
£117.00
Amsterdam University Press Nazism and Neo-Nazism in Film and Media
This timely book takes an original transnational approach to the theme of Nazism and neo-Nazism in film, media, and popular culture, with examples drawn from mainland Europe, the UK, North and Latin America, Asia, and beyond. This approach fits with the established dominance of global multimedia formats, and will be useful for students, scholars, and researchers in all forms of film and media. Along with the essential need to examine current trends in Nazism and neo-Nazism in contemporary media globally, what makes this book even more necessary is that it engages with debates that go to the very heart of our understanding of knowledge: history, memory, meaning, and truth.
£107.00
Amsterdam University Press Late-career Risks in Changing Welfare States: Comparing Germany and the United States since the 1980s
Motivated by ongoing debates over welfare state retrenchment and growing economic insecurity, this book compares the situation of older workers in Germany and the United States over the past three decades. Both nations are seeing a rise in insecurity for older workers, but the differences in support programs, pensions, and retirement options have led to differing outcomes for workers faced with early retirement or job loss.
£101.70
Amsterdam University Press Rembrandt and the Female Nude
Rembrandt’s extraordinary paintings of female nudes – Andromeda, Susanna, Diana and Her Nymphs, Danaë, Bathsheba – as well as his etchings of nude women, have fascinated many generations of art lovers and art historians, but they have also elicited vehement criticism. They were considered against-the-grain, anti-classical, even ugly and unpleasant. However, Rembrandt chose conventional subjects, keeping close to time-honored pictorial schemes, and was well aware of the high prestige accorded to the depiction of the naked female body. Why, then, do these works deviate so radically from the depictions of nude women by other artists? To answer this question the author examines Rembrandt’s paintings and etchings against the foil of established pictorial traditions in the Netherlands as well as Italy. Exploring Rembrandt’s intense dialogue with the works of predecessors and peers, the author demonstrates that, more than any other artist, it was Rembrandt’s purpose to incite the greatest possible empathy in the viewer. This had far-reaching consequences for the moral and erotic implications of the subjects Rembrandt chose to depict. In this richly illustrated study the author presents an innovative approach to Rembrandt’s views on the art of painting, his attitude towards antiquity and Italian art of the Renaissance, his sustained rivalry with the works of other artists, his handling of the moral and erotic issues inherent in subjects with female nudes, and the nature of Rembrandt’s artistic choices. This title was shortlisted for the Charles Rufus Morey Award of the College Art Association in 2007
£36.95
Amsterdam University Press A History of Photography in Indonesia: From the Colonial Era to the Digital Age
As a former colonized nation, Indonesia has a unique place in the history of photography. A History of Photography in Indonesia: From the Colonial Era to the Digital Age looks at the development of photography from the beginning and traces its uses in Indonesia from its invention to the present day. The Dutch colonial government first brought the medium to the East Indies in the 1840s and immediately recognized its potential in serving the colonial apparatus. As the country grew and changed, so too did the medium. Photography was not only an essential tool of colonialism, but it also became part of the movement for independence, a voice for reformasi, an agent for advocating democracy, and is now available to anyone with a phone. This book gathers essays by leading artists, scholars, and curators from around the world who have worked with photography in Indonesia and have traced the evolution of the medium from its inception to the present day, addressing the impact of photography on colonialism, independence, and democratization.
£81.00
Amsterdam University Press Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language: Origins, Developments and Current Directions
Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language concentrates on the origins, developments and current directions of the discipline Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL) within the Arab world and partially outside of it during the last 60 years, namely between 1958 and 2018. Considered in this volume are the most influential scholars, authors, educators and those significant works that have contributed to the development of the discipline. In addition, special attention is paid to the TAFL institutes, regarded as epicenters of TAFL activities and important meetings, that allow scholars to gather around the same table and discuss approaches, trends and methods used in the field. All of these aspects converge in one comprehensive study which is enriched by a narration of the main sociopolitical changes that have affected the Middle East in latter-day history.
£117.00
Amsterdam University Press Growing Up Communist in the Netherlands and Britain: Childhood, Political Activism, and Identity Formation
Growing Up Communist in the Netherlands and Britain: Childhood, Political Activism, and Identity Formation documents communists’ attempts, successful and otherwise, to overcome their isolation and to connect with the major social and political movements of the twentieth century. Communist parties in Britain and the Netherlands emerged from the Second World War expecting to play a significant role in post-war society, due to their domestic anti-fascist activities and to the part played by the Soviet Union in defeating fascism. The Cold War shattered these hopes, and isolated communist parties and their members. By analysing the accounts of communist children, Weesjes highlights their struggle to establish communities and define their identities within the specific cultural, social, and political frameworks of their countries.
£107.00
Amsterdam University Press EU Pension Law
EU pension law is a relatively new and rapidly growing field. The call for a broader practical understanding of EU pension law is growing, as pension markets are increasingly internationalized. The handbook EU Pension Law discusses the most important financial EU legislation (IORP and PEPP) and non-financial legislation (such as the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union) and its consequences for pensions. The book contains a collection of relevant articles and offers necessary basic knowledge. More importantly, it contains interesting practical cases, creating a unique bridge between theory and practice. Whether you are a student, a committed policymaker, an experienced market practitioner, or someone interested in European pension developments, EU Pension Law is designed for you.
£16.19
Amsterdam University Press Astronomer, Cartographer and Naturalist of the New World: The Life and Scholarly Achievements of Georg Marggrafe (1610-1643) in Colonial Dutch Brazil. Volume 1: Life, Work and Legacy
This volume, Volume 1, presents Marggrafe’s stunning biography. Volume 2 consists of a text edition of his astronomical legacy, prepared for the printing press in the 1650s, but only now finalized and published. Georg Marggrafe (1610-1643) is today hailed as the principal author of an influential account of the natural history of Northern Brazil and as compiler of the first accurate map of the area, which is considered as one of the most elegant products of seventeenth-century Dutch cartography. But initial he had the ambition to become known in astronomy. With the support Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, then governor-general of colonial Dutch Brazil, he built in Recife the first European-style astronomical observatory on the South-American continent, where he systematically charted the southern stars. He intended to supplement the famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, who charted the Northern sky half a century before. But Marggrafe’s untimely death (and the negligence of a Leiden professor) prevented the publication of his valuable observations. As a result, Marggrafe did not achieve fame in astronomy, but instead became famous for his equally remarkable other achievements.
£58.56
Amsterdam University Press European Mail Armour: Ringed Battle Shirts from the Iron Age, Roman Period and Early Middle Ages
Mail armour (commonly mislabelled 'chainmail') was used for more than two millennia on the battlefield. After its invention in the Iron Age, mail rapidly spread all over Europe and beyond. The Roman army, keen on new military technology, soon adopted mail armour and used it successfully for centuries. Its history did not stop there and mail played a vital role in warfare during the Middle Ages up to the Early Modern Period. Given its long history, one would think mail is a well-documented material, but that is not the case. For the first time, this books lays a solid foundation for the understanding of mail armour and its context through time. It applies a long-term multi-dimensional approach to extract a wealth of as yet untapped information from archaeological, iconographic and written sources. This is complemented with technical insights on the mail maker’s chaîne opératoire.
£166.00
Amsterdam University Press The Life of Texts: An Introduction to Literary Studies
This innovative introduction to literary studies takes 'the life of texts' as its overarching frame. It provides a conceptual and methodological toolbox for analysing novels, poems, and all sorts of other texts as they circulate in oral, print, and digital form. It shows how texts inspire each other, and how stories migrate across media. It explains why literature has been interpreted in different ways across time. Finally, it asks why some texts fascinate people so much that they are reproduced and passed on to others in the form of new editions, in adaptations to film and theatre, and, last but not least, in the ways we look at the world and act out our lives. The Life of Texts is designed around particular issues rather than the history of the discipline as such. Each chapter concentrates on a different aspect of 'the life of texts' and introduces the key debates and concepts relevant to its study. The issues discussed range from aesthetics and narrative to intertextuality and intermediality, from reading practices to hermeneutics and semiotics, popular culture to literary canonisation, postcolonial criticism to cultural memory. Key concepts and schools in the field have been highlighted in the text and then collected in a glossary for ease of reference. All chapters are richly illustrated with examples from different language areas.
£35.99
Amsterdam University Press Alfonso X of Castile-León: Royal Patronage, Self-Promotion and Manuscripts in Thirteenth-century Spain
Alfonso X 'the Learned' of Castile (1252-1284) was praised in his lifetime as a king who devoted himself to discovering all worldly and divine knowledge. He commissioned chronicles and law codes and composed poems to the Virgin Mary, he gathered together Jewish scholars to translate works of Arab astrology and astronomy, and he founded a university of Latin and Arabic studies at Seville. Moreover, according to his nephew Juan Manuel, Alfonso was careful to ensure that 'he had leisure to look into things he wanted for himself'. The level of his personal involvement in this literary activity marks him out as an exceptional patron in any period. However, Alfonso's relationship with the arts also had much in common with that of other thirteenth-century European royal patrons, among them his first cousin, Louis IX of France. Like his contemporaries, he relentlessly used literary works as a vehicle to promote his royal status and advance his claim to the imperial crown. His motivation for the foundation of the university at Seville was arguably political rather than educational, and instead of promoting institutional learning during his reign, Alfonso preferred to direct the messages about his kingship in the lavish manuscripts he patronized to a restricted, courtly audience. Yet such was the interest of the works he commissioned, that those who could obtain copies did so, even if these were still incomplete drafts. Three codices traditionally held to have been copied for Alfonso in fact show how this learning reserved for the few began to filter out beyond the Learned King's immediate circle.
£107.00
Amsterdam University Press Making Media: Production, Practices, and Professions
'Making Media' uncovers what it means and what it takes to make media, focusing on the lived experience of media professionals within the global media, including rich case studies of the main media industries and professions: television, journalism, social media entertainment, advertising and public relations, digital games, and music. This carefully edited volume features 35 authoritative essays by 53 researchers from 14 countries across 6 continents, all of whom are at the cutting edge of media production studies. The book is particularly designed for use in coursework on media production, media work, media management, and media industries. Specific topics highlighted:the history of media industries and production studies; production studies as a field and a research method; changing business models, economics, and management; global concentration and convergence of media industries and professions; the rise and role of startups and entrepreneurship; freelancing in the digital age; the role of creativity and innovation; the emotional quality of media work; diversity and inequality in the media industries. Open Uva CourseThe University of Amsterdam has a open course around the book. The course offers a review of the key readings and debates in media production studies.
£27.05
Amsterdam University Press Antipodean Early Modern: European Art in Australian Collections, c. 1200-1600
A Prayer Book owned by the Rothschilds, an Italian bronze casket by Antico, a lavishly illustrated Carnival chronicle from sixteenth-century Germany, an altarpiece by Pieter Brueghel the Younger - much of the artwork in this book, held by Australian collections, is essentially unknown beyond the continent. The authors of these essays showcase these extraordinary objects to their full potential, revealing a wide range of contemporary art and historical research. This collection of essays will surprise even specialists.
£96.30
Amsterdam University Press Silicon Valley: Planet Startup: Disruptive Innovation, Passionate Entrepreneurship & High-tech Startups
For decades now, Silicon Valley has been the home of the future. It's the birthplace of the world's most successful high-tech companies-including Apple, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and many more. So what's the secret? What is it about Silicon Valley that fosters entrepreneurship and innovation? With Silicon Valley, Planet Startup, Peter Ester and Arne Maas argue that the answer lies in Silicon Valley's culture-a corporate culture that values risk-taking, creativity, invention, and sharing. Through extensive interviews with Dutch entrepreneurs working in the area, Ester and Maas show that Silicon Valley is above all a mind-set: a belief in thinking, with passion and ambition, far beyond the here and now. Scholars and business people and budding entrepreneurs alike are sure to find both inspiration and illumination in the stories and analyses Ester and Maas have assembled here.
£36.95
Amsterdam University Press Adaptation in the Age of Media Convergence
This collection considers new phenomena emerging in a convergence environment from the perspective of adaptation studies. The contributions take the most prominent methods within the field to offer reconsiderations of theoretical concepts and practices in participatory culture, transmedia franchises, and new media adaptations. The authors discuss phenomena ranging from mash-ups of novels and YouTube cover songs to negotiations of authorial control and interpretative authority between media producers and fan communities to perspectives on the fictional and legal framework of brands and franchises. In this fashion, the collection expands the horizons of both adaptation and transmedia studies and provides reassessments of frequently discussed (BBC’s Sherlock or the LEGO franchise) and previously largely ignored phenomena (self-censorship in transnational franchises, mash-up novels, or YouTube cover videos).
£96.30
Amsterdam University Press The Art of Military Coercion: Why the West's Military Superiority Scarcely Matters
The United States spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. And Western nations in general spend far more than developing nations around the globe. Yet when Western nations have found themselves in conflicts in recent decades, their performance has been mixed at best. In his fully updated new edition of The Art of Military Coercion, Rob de Wijk presents a theory on the use of force. He argues that the key is a failure to use force decisively, to properly understand the dynamics of conflict and balance means and ends. Without that ability, superiority of dollars, numbers, and weaponry won't necessarily translate to victory.
£44.95
Amsterdam University Press Our Strange Body: Philosophical Reflections on Identity and Medical Interventions
The ever increasing ability of medical technology to reshape the human body in fundamental ways - from organ and tissue transplants to reconstructive surgery and prosthetics - is something now largely taken for granted. But for a philosopher, such interventions raise fundamental and fascinating questions about our sense of individual identity and its relationship to the physical body. Drawing on and engaging with philosophers from across the centuries, Jenny Slatman here develops a novel argument: that our own body always entails a strange dimension, a strangeness that enables us to incorporate radical physical changes.
£24.38
Amsterdam University Press Rembrandt. The Painter at Work
Rembrandt's paintings have been admired throughout centuries because of their artistic freedom. But Rembrandt was also a craftsman whose painting technique was rooted the tradition. This sweeping examination of Rembrandt's oeuvre is the result of a lifelong search for the artist's working methods, his intellectual approach to painting and the way in which his studio functioned. Ernst van de Wetering demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to tackle questions about authenticity and other art-historical issues. Approximately 350 illustrations, half of which are reproduced in colour, make this book into a monumental tribute to one of the worlds most important painters.
£60.95
Amsterdam University Press Sclass destroyer Piet Hein ex HMS Serapis
£20.00
Amsterdam University Press The Mass Market for History Paintings in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Production, Distribution, and Consumption
Millions of paintings were produced in the Dutch Republic. The works that we know and see in museums today constitute only the tip of the iceberg — the top-quality part. But what else was painted? This book explores the low-quality end of the seventeenth-century art market and outlines the significance of that production in the genre of history paintings, which in traditional art historical studies, is usually linked to high prices, famous painters, and elite buyers. Angela Jager analyses the producers, suppliers, and consumers active in this segment to gain insight into this enormous market for cheap history paintings. What did the supply consist of in terms of quantity, quality, price, and subject? Who produced all these works and which production methods did these painters employ? Who distributed these paintings, to whom, and which strategies were used to market them? Who bought these paintings, and why?
£123.00
Amsterdam University Press Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism: Depression and the Politics of Existence
The hegemonic meaning of depression as a universal mental illness embodied by an individualized subject is propped up by psychiatry’s clinical gaze. Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism turns to the work of contemporary filmmakers who express a shared concern for mental health under global capitalism to explore how else depression can be perceived. In taking their critical visions as intercessors for thought, Adam Szymanski proposes a thoroughly relational understanding of depression attentive to eventful, collective and contingent qualities of subjectivity. What emerges is a melancholy aesthetics attuned to the existential contours and political stakes of health. Cinemas of Therapeutic Activism adventurously builds affinities across the lines of national, linguistic and cultural difference. The films of Angela Schanelec, Kelly Reichardt, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Kanakan Balintagos are grouped together for the first time, constituting a polystylistic common front of artist-physicians who live, work, and create on the belief that life can be more liveable.
£96.00
Amsterdam University Press Data-Gathering in Colonial Southeast Asia 1800-1900: Framing the Other
Empire-building did not only involve the use of excessive violence against native communities, but also required the gathering of data about the native Other. This is a book about books, which looks at the writings of Western colonial administrators, company-men and map-makers who wrote about Southeast Asia in the 19th century. In the course of their information-gathering they had also framed the people of Southeast Asia in a manner that gave rise to Orientalist racial stereotypes that would be used again and again. Data-Gathering in Colonial Southeast Asia 1800-1900: Framing the Other revisits the era of colonial data-collecting to demonstrate the workings of the imperial echo chamber, and how in the discourse of 19th century colonial-capitalism data was effectively weaponized to serve the interests of Empire.
£107.00
Amsterdam University Press Cultural Interactions: Conflict and Cooperation
The common saying is that people have a culture. This book argues that people live a culture – which may explain why they are so affectively attached to it. By considering cultural interactions on a global scale, this book investigates how cultures can be understood in terms of conflict and cooperation, in relation to the nation-state, a multiplicity of worlds, society, civilization and community. It considers how culture is at the basis of the construction of individual and collective selves; how they can come to be alienated; are defined in relation to others; are perhaps in-comparable; when they are considered to be dis-abled; and whether we can speak of animal cultural selves and mechanical cultural selves. Its twelve chapters consists of two parts each that both start with a piece of music. The pieces are taken from different cultures and all connote that getting to understand cultures depends on listening, first and foremost.
£20.04
Amsterdam University Press The Javanese Way of Law: Early Modern Sloka Phenomena
The author's investigation of early-modern Javanese law reveals that judicial authority does not come from the contents of legal titles or juridical texts, but from legal maxims and variations thereof. A century and a half ago Simon Keyzer, a recognized scholar of Javanese law, noted that understanding of that law is dependent upon a grasp of such pithy expressions, which provide the key to the whole body of suits. (Preface, C.F. Winter, Javaansche Zamenspraken, 1858, which examines hundreds of sloka, the majority of which are directed to prevailing legal practice). Drawing upon the contents of 18th century Javanese legal texts, the present work builds upon Keyzer's and Winter's references to 'sloka-phenomena', namely sloka proper (maxims) and its derivatives sinalokan (that made of sloka), aksara here meaning legal principles, and prakara (matter, case). These are usually conveyed in vignettes illustrating their function and as a group, constitute the essence of traditional Javanese written law.
£113.00
Amsterdam University Press Art, Honor and Success in The Dutch Republic: The Life and Career of Jacob van Loo
Focusing on the interrelationship between Jacob van Loo's art, honor, and career, this book argues that Van Loo's lifelong success and unblemished reputation were by no means incompatible, as art historians have long assumed, with his specialization in painting nudes and his conviction for manslaughter. Van Loo's iconographic specialty - the nude - allowed his clientele to present themselves as judges of beauty and display their mastery of decorum, while his portraiture perfectly expressed his clients' social and political ambitions. Van Loo's honor explains why his success lasted a lifetime, whereas that of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Vermeer did not. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book reinterprets the manslaughter case as a sign that Van Loo's elite patrons recognized him as a gentleman and highly-esteemed artist.
£128.00
Amsterdam University Press Syntax of Hungarian: Nouns and Noun Phrases, Volume 1
These books aim to present a synthesis of the currently available syntactic knowledge of the Hungarian language, rooted in theory but providing highly detailed descriptions, and intended to be of use to researchers, as well as advanced students of language and linguistics. As research in language leads to extensive changes in our understanding and representations of grammar, the Comprehensive Grammar Resources series intends to present the most current understanding of grammar and syntax as completely as possible in a way that will both speak to modern linguists and serve as a resource for the non-specialist.
£150.00
Amsterdam University Press Guerrilla Networks: An Anarchaeology of 1970s Radical Media Ecologies
The radical youth movements of the 1960s and '70s gave rise to both militant political groups ranging from urban guerrilla groups to autonomist counterculture, as well as radical media, including radio, music, film, video, and television. This book is concerned with both of those tendencies considered as bifurcations of radical media ecologies in the 1970s. While some of the forms of media creativity and invention mapped here, such as militant film and video, pirate radio and guerrilla television, fit within conventional definitions of media, others, such as urban guerrilla groups and autonomous movements, do not. Nevertheless what was at stake in all these ventures was the use of available means of expression in order to produce transformative effects, and they were all in different ways responding to ideas and practices of guerrilla struggle and specifically of guerrilla media. This book examines these radical media ecologies as guerrilla networks, emphasising the proximity and inseparability of radical media and political practices.
£117.00
Amsterdam University Press Across Space and Time: Papers from the 41st Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, Perth, 25-28 March 2013
This volume presents a selection of the best papers presented at the forty-first annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. The theme for the conference was "Across Space and Time", and the papers explore a multitude of topics related to that concept, including databases, the semantic Web, geographical information systems, data collection and management, and more.
£135.00
Amsterdam University Press Bodies of Stone in the Media, Visual Culture and the Arts
If mediatization has surprisingly revealed the secret life of inert matter and the ‘face of things’, the flipside of this has been the petrification of living organisms, an invasion of stone bodies in a state of suspended animation. Within a contemporary imaginary pervaded by new forms of animism, the paradigm of death looms large in many areas of artistic experimentation, pushing the modern body towards mineral modes of being which revive ancient myths of flesh-made-stone and the issue of the monument. Scholars in media, visual culture and the arts propose studies of bodies of stone, from actors simulating statues to the transmutation of the filmic body into a fossil; from the real treatment of the cadaver as a mineral living object to the rediscovery of materials such as wax; from the quest for a ‘thermal’ equivalence between stone and flesh to the transformation of the biomedical body into a living monument.
£123.00
Amsterdam University Press Art and Allegiance in the Dutch Golden Age: The Ambitions of a Wealthy Widow in a Painted Chamber by Ferdinand Bol
In the early 1650s Ferdinand Bol produced a series of wall-covering paintings. This ‘painted chamber’ is a unique example of a branch of the art of painting which was extremely popular in the seventeenth century, although hardly any of it now remains. Bol’s ensemble has always been surrounded by mysteries. Who was the initial owner, what was the reason for its commission and how were the ceiling-high canvases originally placed? Through a combination of material-technical research and archival, stylistic, iconographic and cultural-historical investigation these questions have for the first time been given convincing answers. This book, with Bol’s unique ensemble in the lead role, is the account of an exciting (art) historical quest. The journey begins with apparently insignificant damage to the canvases and small remnants of old paint and varnish, passing via Biblical, classical and contemporary history to its eventual destination in the remarkable life of a particularly ambitious Utrecht widow. The reader becomes familiar with the religious beliefs, ideals and social ambitions of a remarkable woman, and sees close-up how, through Bol’s paintings, she was able to give literal expression to her endeavours in the turbulent Utrecht in the middle of the Golden Age.
£60.95