Search results for ""Author Valerie Smith""

Rational Dissent was a branch of Protestant religious nonconformity which emerged to prominence in England between c. 1770 and c. 1800. While small, the movement provoked fierce opposition from both Anglicans and Orthodox Dissenters. Rational Dissent was a branch of Protestant religious nonconformity which emerged to prominence in England between c. 1770 and c. 1800. Based on the sole study of the Scriptures and the application of individual reasoning to understanding the word of God, Rational Dissent rejected the role and authority of Anglican priests but also stood apart from Orthodox Dissent in its denial of the Trinity and Original Sin, arguing that these concepts were 'irrational'. While small, the movement provoked fierce opposition from both Anglicans and Orthodox Dissenters. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary published and unpublished sources, this study explores the theology of Rational Dissent in its entirety, arguing that it was considerably more diverse than has previously been acknowledged. Through an examination of lists of subscribers to Rational Dissenting publications and organizations, and of Unitarian libraries and their readers, the book uncovers the movement's less visible adherents, mapping them both socially and geographically. It also explores the impact of vehement attacks by Anglicans and Orthodox Dissenters on the development of a Rational Dissenting identity. Within the context of the struggle for civil and political rights and of the American and French Revolutions, the book establishes that the theology of Rational Dissenters underpinned their political beliefs and concepts of liberty, drove their ideas on the nature of society, and determined the lives and priorities of its lay adherents. The final stage of the book explores the largely Unitarian legacy of Rational Dissent and its theological, cultural and social impact in England post 1800.

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This compelling study explores the inextricable links between the Nobel laureate’s aesthetic practice and her political vision, through an analysis of the key texts as well as her lesser-studied works, books for children, and most recent novels. Offers provocative new insights and a refreshingly original contribution to the scholarship of one of the most important contemporary American writers Analyzes the celebrated fiction of Morrison in relation to her critical writing about the process of reading and writing literature, the relationship between readers and writers, and the cultural contributions of African-American literature Features extended analyses of Morrison’s lesser-known works, most recent novels, and books for children as well as the key texts

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A prolifically creative artistic polymath, American artist Amy Sillman (b.1955) works in drawing, zines, iPhone videos, installation, collaboration, teaching and curating, but painting has remained always at the very heart of her practice. This comprehensive monograph covers two decades of production, from the late-1990s to the present. Valerie Smith’s text reveals Sillman’s uniquely time-based approach to painting, influenced and inflected as much by filmmakers and musicians and the processes of her other chosen disciplines as by strictly art-historical forebears. Sillman’s works perform an intensive cognitive and gestural interrogation of her chosen materials: discovering, undoing and reforming trains of painterly thought, often over long periods of time and across large numbers of linked works. Sillman’s painting emerges as a radically expressive force; a pointedly self-reflexive practice that reformulates contemporary painting as an ever-evolving continuum and never simply a finished work.

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