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For centuries Jewish shtetls were an active part of Belarusian life; today, they are gone. The Belarusian Shtetl is a landmark volume which offers, for the first time in English, an illuminating look at the shtetls' histories, the lives lived and lost in them, and the memories, records, and physical traces of these communities that remain today. Since 2012, under the auspices of the Sefer Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, teams of scholars and students from many different disciplines have returned to the sites of former Jewish shtetls in Belarus to reconstruct their past. These researchers have interviewed a wide range of both Jews and non-Jews to find and document traces of Shtetl history, to gain insights into community memories, and to discover surviving markers of identity and ethnic affiliation. In the process, they have also unearthed evidence from old cemeteries and prewar houses and the stories behind memorials erected for Holocaust victims. Drawing on the wealth of information these researchers have gathered, The Belarusian Shtetl creates compelling and richly textured portraits of the histories and everyday lives of each shtetl. Important for scholars and accessible to the public, these portraits set out to return the Jewish shtetls to their rightful places of prominence in the histories and legacies of Belarus.

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For centuries Jewish shtetls were an active part of Belarusian life; today, they are gone. The Belarusian Shtetl is a landmark volume which offers, for the first time in English, an illuminating look at the shtetls' histories, the lives lived and lost in them, and the memories, records, and physical traces of these communities that remain today. Since 2012, under the auspices of the Sefer Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, teams of scholars and students from many different disciplines have returned to the sites of former Jewish shtetls in Belarus to reconstruct their past. These researchers have interviewed a wide range of both Jews and non-Jews to find and document traces of Shtetl history, to gain insights into community memories, and to discover surviving markers of identity and ethnic affiliation. In the process, they have also unearthed evidence from old cemeteries and prewar houses and the stories behind memorials erected for Holocaust victims. Drawing on the wealth of information these researchers have gathered, The Belarusian Shtetl creates compelling and richly textured portraits of the histories and everyday lives of each shtetl. Important for scholars and accessible to the public, these portraits set out to return the Jewish shtetls to their rightful places of prominence in the histories and legacies of Belarus.

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Iran was home to some of the greatest civilizations of both the ancient and medieval worlds, but these achievements are now little known outside the country. Epic Iran brings together 250 fascinating objects and images to cast a rare light on 5,000 years of history, showing how civilized life emerged in Iran around 3,200 BC, and how a distinctive Iranian identity, formed 2,500 years ago, has survived until today, expressed through artistic continuities, religious affiliations and the Persian language. Lavishly illustrated, this magnificent and important book encompasses metalwork, ceramics, glass, illustrated manuscripts, textiles, carpets, oil paintings, drawings and photographs from collections around the world. It brings treasures from the ancient and Islamic worlds together with the work of contemporary artists and makers, demonstrating the rich legacy that still influences many modern-day practitioners.

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The number of immigrants in the US science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce and among recipients of advanced STEM degrees at US universities has increased in recent decades. In light of the current public debate about immigration, there is a need for evidence on the economic impacts of immigrants on the STEM workforce and on innovation. Using new data and state-of-the-art empirical methods, this volume examines various aspects of the relationships between immigration, innovation, and entrepreneurship, including the effects of changes in the number of immigrants and their skill composition on the rate of innovation; the relationship between high-skilled immigration and entrepreneurship; and the differences between immigrant and native entrepreneurs. It presents new evidence on the postgraduation migration patterns of STEM doctoral recipients, in particular the likelihood these graduates will return to their home country. This volume also examines the role of the US higher education system and of US visa policy in attracting foreign students for graduate study and retaining them after graduation.

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The Hippodrome of Gerasa: A Provincial Roman Circus publishes the unique draft manuscript by the late architect and restorer Antoni Ostrasz, the study of Roman circuses and the complex fieldwork for the restoration of the Jarash Hippodrome, a work in progress abruptly ended both in writing and in the field by his untimely death in October 1996. The manuscript is presented as it is in order to retain the authenticity of his work. It is, therefore, an unusual publication providing the researcher as well as restorer of ancient monuments with unparalleled insights of architectural studies for anastyloses. Compendia A and B have been added to supplement the incomplete segments of the manuscript with regard to his studies as well as archaeological data. This concerns the excavation and preparation for the restorations and the archaeological history or stratigraphic history of the site from the foundations to primary use as a circus to subsequent occupancies of the circus complex. The study of the architectural and archaeological remains at the hippodrome encapsulates the sequence of the urban history of the town from its early beginnings to Roman Gerasa and Byzantine and Islamic Jarash, including vestiges of the seventh century plague and still visible earthquake destructions, as well as Ottoman settlements.

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This complex account by a German governess examines households, families, and slavery in Brazil, and bears witness to how “the world the slaveholders made” would soon collapse. Ina von Binzer’s letters, published in German in 1887 and translated into English for this book, offer a rare view of three very different elite family households during the twilight years of Brazil’s Second Empire. Her woman’s gaze contrasts markedly with other contributions to the contemporary travel literature on Brazil that were nearly entirely written by men. Although von Binzer covers a multitude of topics—ranging from the management of households and plantations, the behavior of slaves and slaveowners, and the agricultural production of coffee and sugar to examinations of family relations, childrearing, culinary repertoires, and life on the street—the common theme running through her letters is the dawning perception that the world the slaveholders made could not long endure. She delves into the inevitable arrival of abolition as a national issue and a nascent movement—a destiny that her employers could no longer ignore. In recounting her conversations with them, she offers her own insights into their opinions and behaviors that make for a fascinating insider’s view of a world about to disappear. Von Binzer’s letters are prefaced by a valuable historical introduction that surveys the contexts of slavery’s slow demise after 1850 and offers new biographical research on von Binzer and the prominent families who employed her. A map of her travels together with dozens of photographs contemporary with her residence in Brazil provide visual documentation complementary to her letters.

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The Human Tradition in Premodern China is a collection of biographical essays revealing the variety and complexity of human experience in China from the earliest historical times to the dawn of the modern age. China is a vast country with a long history, and one which is by itself as complex as the history of Europe. This broad expanse of time and space in Chinese history has largely been approached in terms of narrative political and cultural history in most books. The reigns of emperors and the thoughts of the great masters such as Confucius or Laozi have been the principal focus. Yet the history of the Chinese, as with any great people, is built up from the lives of individuals, families, groups, and movements. By presenting life stories of individuals ranging from ancient court diviners to late imperial merchants to women in various periods, this engaging anthology highlights aspects of Chinese social, political and intellectual history not usually addressed. Additionally, The Human Tradition in Premodern China broadens the common image and understanding of society based on the dominant elite male discourse. Rich in new perspective and new scholarship, The Human Tradition in Premodern China is an ideal introduction to Chinese history, East Asian history, and world history.

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Women and Religiosity in Orthodox Christianity fills a significant gap in the sociology of religious practice: Studies focused on women’s religiosity have overlooked Orthodox populations, while studies of Orthodox practice (operating within the dominant theological, historical, and sociological framework) have remained gender-blind. The essays in this collection shed new light on the women who make up a considerable majority of the Orthodox population by engaging women’s lifeworlds, practices, and experiences in relation to their religion in multiple, varied localities, discussing both contemporary and pre-1989 developments. These contributions critically engage the pluralist and changing character of Orthodox institutional and social life by using feminist epistemologies and drawing on original ethnographic research to account for Orthodox women’s previously ignored perspectives, knowledges, and experiences. Combining the depth of ethnographic analysis with geographical breadth and employing a variety of research methodologies, this book expands our understanding of Orthodox Christianity by examining Orthodox women of diverse backgrounds in different settings: parishes, monasteries, and the secular spaces of everyday life, and under shifting historical conditions and political regimes. In defiance of claims that Orthodox Christianity is immutable and fixed in time, these essays argue that continuity and transformation can be found harmoniously in social practices, demographic trends, and larger material contexts at the intersection between gender, Orthodoxy, and locality. Contributors: Kristin Aune, Milica Bakic-Hayden, Maria Bucur, Ketevan Gurchiani, James Kapaló, Helena Kupari, Ina Merdjanova, Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, Eleni Sotiriou, Tatiana Tiaynen-Qadir, Detelina Tocheva

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The fantastic represents a wide and heterogeneous field in literary, cultural, and media studies. Encompassing some of the field's foremost voices such as Fred Botting and Larissa Lai, as well as exciting new perspectives by junior scholars, this volume offers a mosaic of the fantastic now. The contributions pinpoint and discuss current developments in theory and practice by offering enlightening snapshots of the contemporary Anglophone landscape of research in the fantastic. The authors' arguments and analyses thus give new impetus to the field's theoretical and methodological approaches, its textual materials, its main interests, and its crucial findings.

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To be a top performer in the digital economy—to become truly future ready—you need a playbook. Now you have one.It seems like almost every company you can think of—including your own—has embarked on a "digital transformation" journey. The problem is, many companies start down the road without a good sense of where they are going or a clear idea of how they will create and capture digital value. Not surprisingly, this leads to problems: failure to realize the value from digital in their bottom lines, wasted resources and effort, added complexity and dysfunction.This compact, no-nonsense book provides a solution. In their years of working with senior executives around the world, MIT research scientists Stephanie Woerner, Peter Weill, and Ina Sebastian noticed that these leaders knew they had to transform their businesses, but lacked a coherent framework and a common language—a playbook—to guide and motivate their employees and keep everyone focused on a common goal.Future Ready is that playbook. Based on years of rigorous research with data from more than a thousand companies—BBVA, CEMEX, DBS, Fidelity, Maersk, and many others—the book provides a powerful, field-tested "four pathways" framework that offers insights into the important dimensions at which a firm must excel in order to be competitive, as well as the organizational disruptions that every firm must manage as part of the transformation journey.The book includes instructive examples, sharp analyses, assessments to help companies benchmark themselves against top performers, and many illuminating visuals to help crystallize the data and ideas.Woerner, Weill, and Sebastian show that the goal isn't digital transformation but rather a profound business transformation. Future Ready is your essential guide for becoming a top performer in the digital economy.

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Innovative research solutions increasingly require deep engagement with practitioners to manage the complex problems they are attempting to solve. This often project-based research is equipped with finite resources over a limited period without much thought into future-proofing the practice. These projects must face questions of what happens when a product comes to an end and whether there are any lasting positive effects once the IT systems are no longer being actively developed. From a computing perspective, the challenge is to design IT artifacts that contribute to improving the user's work and everyday life in a sustainable way, thereby also contributing to social and ecological sustainability. Future-Proofing: Making Practice-Based IT Design Sustainable documents the experiences made by several leading research groups in Europe, North America, and South Africa. It describes their efforts to achieve sustainable design results, the difficulties that barred the way but also the strategies they adopted to achieve the goal of sustainability. The analysis of these cases has inspired thinking about how to more systematically address and possibly overcome the impediments to sustainability. This book develops a strong future-oriented perspective that conceptualizes sustainability as a complex and highly variegated issue and formulates insights and recommendations with a view to help researchers to better design for sustainability.

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Ist Gott in den Genen zu finden? Ist Religion göttlichen Ursprungs – oder doch ein natürliches, also biologisches Phänomen? Und wenn Religion in unserer Biologie angelegt ist, wie und warum ist sie entstanden? Wie sehen ihre Anfänge aus, die ja sehr einfach gewesen sein müssen – Religion im Einzellerstadium sozusagen! Wie entwickelte sie sich dann weiter, und lassen sich in dieser Entwicklung, wie bei der biologischen Evolution, Gesetzmäßigkeiten feststellen? Anders ausgedrückt: Gibt es eine Biologie der Religionen beziehungsweise eine Biologie der Religionsentstehung? Dieses Buch unternimmt erstmalig den Versuch einer umfassenden Antwort auf diese Fragen. Die Autoren – Experten aus Biologie, Paläontologie, Psychologie, Religionswissenschaft und Theologie – entwerfen auf der Basis fächerübergreifender wissenschaftlicher Befunde ein Modell der Religionsentstehung, das das Aufkommen religiöser Verhaltensweisen schlüssig aus dem natürlichen Verhaltensrepertoire des Menschen erklärt. So wird die menschheitsgeschichtliche Entwicklung von Religiosität plausibel und nachvollziehbar. Wer wissen will, wie Religion entstanden ist, wird in diesem breiten und sachkundigen Überblick die Antwort finden. _____ Die Götter fielen nicht vom Himmel – die biologischen Grundlagen der Religionsentstehung Religion ist ein universal verbreitetes Phänomen, und überall auf der Welt prägen religiöse Überzeugungen politisches und gesellschaftliches Handeln. Viele Menschen wollen verstehen, warum Religion trotz aller rationalen Kritik fortbesteht, und fragen deshalb auch nach ihren Anfängen und ihrer Entwicklung in der Menschheitsgeschichte. Götter – Gene – Genesis ist der ehrgeizige Versuch dreier interdisziplinär arbeitender Autoren, den Ursprung von Religion schlüssig und nachvollziehbar zu erklären. Ihr Buch verfolgt insofern einen originellen Ansatz, als es den aktuellen kognitionswissenschaftlichen und evolutionär-psychologischen Entwürfen zur Erklärung der Religionsentstehung eine ganz bewusst verhaltensorientierte Perspektive entgegensetzt: Religiöses Verhalten wird konsequent verhaltenswissenschaftlich – ethologisch, biologisch, psychologisch – erklärt. Entscheidende Faktoren für die frühe Entwicklung von Religiosität sind Territorialverhalten und Gefahrenabwehr, innerartliche Aggression und Ritualisierung, Angstbewältigung und Konfliktlösung sowie die kulturelle Evolution als Fortsetzung der biologischen Evolution. Mit der konsequenten Herausarbeitung der biologischen Grundlagen bietet das Buch einen Überblick zur Religionsentstehung, der sehr viel „bodenständiger“ und oft auch im Wortsinne „anschaulicher“ ist als manch andere, spekulative Entstehungsszenarien. Die Lektüre des Buches vermittelt dem Leser fundierte Kenntnisse über die Erscheinungsformen und Geschichte religiösen Verhaltens – und liefert so einen wichtigen Beitrag für die heute oft so emotional geführte Debatte zu Glaubensfragen.

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Lying between deserts, mountain chains and seas, Iran developed a fascinating cultural landscape. 360 objects from the time of the first advanced civilisations during the 3rd millennium BC until the end of the Safavid Empire in the early 18th century illustrate the outstanding significance of Iran as the initiator and centre of intercultural exchange. Exquisite artworks from the Sarikhani Collection in London and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin invite visitors to embark on a journey in time through the cultural heritage of Iran. The highlights include the great pre-Islamic empires of the Achaemenids and the Sassanids, the establishment of a Persian-Islamic culture, the masterly artistic achievements of the 9th to the 13th centuries and the Golden Age of the Safavids. They are brought together as in a multifaceted kaleidoscope in the copious illustrations and provide insight into the art of the courts and the urban elites.

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Life Writing in the Posthuman Anthropocene is a timely collection of insightful contributions that negotiate how the genre of life writing, traditionally tied to the human perspective and thus anthropocentric qua definition, can provide adequate perspectives for an age of ecological disasters and global climate change. The volume’s eight chapters illustrate the aptness of life writing and life writing studies to critically reevaluate the role of “the human” vis-à-vis non-human others while remaining mindful of persisting inequalities between humans regarding who causes and who suffers damage in the Anthropocene age. The authors in this collection not only expand the toolbox of life writing studies by engaging with critical insights from the fields of posthumanism and ecocriticism, but, in turn, also enrich those fields by offering unique approaches to contemplate the responsibility of humans for as well as their relational existence in the posthuman Anthropocene.

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Women and Religiosity in Orthodox Christianity fills a significant gap in the sociology of religious practice: Studies focused on women’s religiosity have overlooked Orthodox populations, while studies of Orthodox practice (operating within the dominant theological, historical, and sociological framework) have remained gender-blind. The essays in this collection shed new light on the women who make up a considerable majority of the Orthodox population by engaging women’s lifeworlds, practices, and experiences in relation to their religion in multiple, varied localities, discussing both contemporary and pre-1989 developments. These contributions critically engage the pluralist and changing character of Orthodox institutional and social life by using feminist epistemologies and drawing on original ethnographic research to account for Orthodox women’s previously ignored perspectives, knowledges, and experiences. Combining the depth of ethnographic analysis with geographical breadth and employing a variety of research methodologies, this book expands our understanding of Orthodox Christianity by examining Orthodox women of diverse backgrounds in different settings: parishes, monasteries, and the secular spaces of everyday life, and under shifting historical conditions and political regimes. In defiance of claims that Orthodox Christianity is immutable and fixed in time, these essays argue that continuity and transformation can be found harmoniously in social practices, demographic trends, and larger material contexts at the intersection between gender, Orthodoxy, and locality. Contributors: Kristin Aune, Milica Bakic-Hayden, Maria Bucur, Ketevan Gurchiani, James Kapaló, Helena Kupari, Ina Merdjanova, Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, Eleni Sotiriou, Tatiana Tiaynen-Qadir, Detelina Tocheva

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