Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism


Benedict Anderson - 1983
    In this widely acclaimed work, Benedict Anderson examines the creation and global spread of the 'imagined communities' of nationality.Anderson explores the processes that created these communities: the territorialization of religious faiths, the decline of antique kingship, the interaction between capitalism and print, the development of vernacular languages-of-state, and changing conceptions of time. He shows how an originary nationalism born in the Americas was modularly adopted by popular movements in Europe, by the imperialist powers, and by the anti-imperialist resistances in Asia and Africa.This revised edition includes two new chapters, one of which discusses the complex role of the colonialist state's mindset in the develpment of Third World nationalism, while the other analyses the processes by which, all over the world, nations came to imagine themselves as old.

The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms


Ross C. Murfin - 1997
    The second edition features many additional terms, both traditional and recent, with a greater array of examples that make it an even more useful and informative reference than before.

How Language Works: How Babies Babble, Words Change Meaning, and Languages Live or Die


David Crystal - 2006
    Along the way, we find out about eyebrow flashes, whistling languages, how parents teach their children to speak, how politeness travels across languages and how the way we talk show not just how old we are but where we're from and even who we want to be.Whether looking at the whistle languages of the Canary Islands or describing the layout of the human throat, this landmark book will enrich the lives of everyone who reads it.

Gcse Modern World History


Ben Walsh - 1996
    The core content of the major GCSE specifications in this subject is covered through explanation and carefully-selected course material. The most popular options or depth studies from each specification are covered in detail. There are questions, activities and focus tasks throughout to: deepen understanding of the content; develop evaluative and investigative skills; help students become more independent learners; and support examination preparation.

Images of the Past


T. Douglas Price - 1993
    The new edition maintains the authors' innovative solutions to two central problems of the course: first, the text continues to focus on about 80 sites, giving students less encyclopedic detail but essential coverage of the discoveries that have produced the major insights into prehistory; second, it continues to be organized into essays on sites and concepts, allowing professors complete flexibility in organizing their courses.

The Study of Language


George Yule - 1985
    It introduces the analysis of the key elements of language--sounds, words, structures and meanings, and provides a solid foundation in all of the essential topics. The third edition has been extensively revised to include new sections on important contemporary issues in language study, including language and culture, African American English, sign language, and slang. A comprehensive glossary provides useful explanations of technical terms, and each chapter contains a range of new study questions and research tasks, with suggested answers.

The Medium is the Massage


Marshall McLuhan - 1967
    Using a layout style that was later copied by Wired, McLuhan and coauthor/designer Quentin Fiore combine word and image to illustrate and enact the ideas that were first put forward in the dense and poorly organized Understanding Media. McLuhan's ideas about the nature of media, the increasing speed of communication, and the technological basis for our understanding of who we are come to life in this slender volume. Although originally printed in 1967, the art and style in The Medium is the Massage seem as fresh today as in the summer of love, and the ideas are even more resonant now that computer interfaces are becoming gateways to the global village.

Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation


Margaret Mead - 1928
      It details her historic journey to American Samoa, taken where she was just twenty-three, where she did her first fieldwork.  Here, for the first time, she presented to the public the idea that the individual experience of developmental stages could be shaped by cultural demands and expectations.  Adolescence, she wrote, might be more or less stormy, and sexual development more or less problematic in different cultures.  The "civilized" world, she taught us had much to learn from the "primitive."  Now this groundbreaking, beautifully written work as been reissued for the centennial of her birth, featuring introductions by Mary Pipher and by Mead's daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson.

The Varieties of Religious Experience


William James - 1901
    Psychology is the only branch of learning in which I am particularly versed. To the psychologist the religious propensities of man must be at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution. It would seem, therefore, as a psychologist, the natural thing for me would be to invite you to a descriptive survey of those religious propensities." When William James went to the University of Edinburgh in 1901 to deliver a series of lectures on "natural religion," he defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." Considering religion, then, not as it is defined by--or takes place in--the churches, but as it is felt in everyday life, he undertook a project that, upon completion, stands not only as one of the most important texts on psychology ever written, not only as a vitally serious contemplation of spirituality, but for many critics one of the best works of nonfiction written in the 20th century. Reading The Varieties of Religious Experience, it is easy to see why. Applying his analytic clarity to religious accounts from a variety of sources, James elaborates a pluralistic framework in which "the divine can mean no single quality, it must mean a group of qualities, by being champions of which in alternation, different men may all find worthy missions." It's an intellectual call for serious religious tolerance--indeed, respect--the vitality of which has not diminished through the subsequent decades.

Art in Renaissance Italy


John T. Paoletti - 1996
    People expected painting, sculpture, architecture, and other forms of visual art to have a meaningful effect on their lives, " write the authors of this important new look at Italian Renaissance art. A glance at the pages of Art in Renaissance Italy shows at once its freshness and breadth of approach, which includes thorough explanation into how and why works of art, buildings, prints, and other kinds of art came to be. This book discusses how men and women of the Renissance regarded art and artists as well as why works of Renaissance art look the way they do, and what this means to us. It covers not only Florence and Rome, but also Venice and the Veneto, Assisi, Siena, Milan, Pavia, Padua, Mantua, Verona, Ferrara, Urbino, and Naples -- each governed in a distinctly different manner, every one with its own political and social structures that inevitably affected artistic styles. Spanning more than three centuries, the narrative brings to life the rich tapestry of Italian Renaissance society and the art works that are its enduring legacy.

Art Is the Highest Form of Hope Other Quotes by Artists


Phaidon - 2016
    As painters, sculptors, photographers, and other visual artists see and experience the world through a unique lens, Art Is the Highest Form of Hope & Other Quotes by Artists shows that their life lessons, private revelations, and frank, often irreverent, opinions can guide us all.This unique and carefully curated book, packed with totally original research, is a go-to resource for revealing thoughts and personal advice on subjects as diverse as beauty, colour, light, sex, chance, discipline, money troubles, originality, fear of failure, danger of success, the creative process, and more – all messages transmitted from the artistic trenches.

Living Religions


Mary Pat Fisher - 1990
    "Living Religions" delves the traditional as well as the new religious movements. Looks at historical and contemporary beliefs, allowing the reader to see how different religions have unfolded throughout time. Contains expanded coverage of women in addition to religious background boxes on such people as Winona LaDuke, Dr. Karan Singh, Dalai Lama, Janice Perlman, Desmond Tutu, Farid Esack, and Baba Virsa Singh. For those with an interest in World Religions, or Comparative Religions, or for those seeking an introduction to religion.

Photography: A Cultural History


Mary Warner Marien - 2002
    Mary Warner Marien has constructed a richer and more kaleidoscopic account of the history of photography than has previously been available. Her comprehensive survey shows compellingly how photography has sharpened, if not altered forever, our perception of the world. The book was written to introduce students to photography. It does not require that students possess any technical know-how and can be taught without referring to techniques in photography. Incorporating the latest research and international uses of photography, the text surveys the history of photography in such a way that students can gauge the medium's long-term multifold developments and see the historical and intellectual contexts in which photographers lived and worked. It also provides a unique focus on contemporary photo-based work and electronic media.

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature


Erich Auerbach - 1942
    A brilliant display of erudition, wit, and wisdom, his exploration of how great European writers from Homer to Virginia Woolf depicted reality has taught generations how to read Western literature. This new expanded edition includes a substantial essay in introduction by Edward Said as well as an essay, never before translated into English, in which Auerbach responds to his critics.A German Jew, Auerbach was forced out of his professorship at the University of Marburg in 1935. He left for Turkey, where he taught at the state university in Istanbul. There he wrote "Mimesis," publishing it in German after the end of the war. Displaced as he was, Auerbach produced a work of great erudition that contains no footnotes, basing his arguments instead on searching, illuminating readings of key passages from his primary texts. His aim was to show how from antiquity to the twentieth century literature progressed toward ever more naturalistic and democratic forms of representation. This essentially optimistic view of European history now appears as a defensive--and impassioned--response to the inhumanity he saw in the Third Reich. Ranging over works in Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and English, Auerbach used his remarkable skills in philology and comparative literature to refute any narrow form of nationalism or chauvinism, in his own day and ours. For many readers, both inside and outside the academy, "Mimesis" is among the finest works of literary criticism ever written.

The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles


Martin Gayford - 2006
    This was, without doubt, the most celebrated cohabitation in art history: never, before or since have two such towering artistic talents been penned up in so small a space. They were the Odd Couple of art history. Predictably, the results were explosive. The dâenouement of their life together has entered into folklore. Two months after Gauguin arrived in Arles, Van Gogh suffered a psychological crisis. He spent most of the rest of his life in a mental institution. Gauguin fled from Arles, and they never saw each other again. But in the brief period during which they worked together a stream of masterpieces was created within the studio they shared. Here, for the first time, the full story of their life together is told.