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Figs in Frost
by Denise RobinsLucia marries young, yielding more to her parents urgings than the dictates ofher heart. As the years go by, she grows to despise her brutish, egotisticalhusband - finding contentment only in raising her two young daughters. Thensuddenly, Lucia falls gloriously in love, discovering the tenderness and blissshe has never even dared to dream of. And so her husband fights back with theonly weapon he has - forcing Lucia to choose between the children she cherishedand the man she loves...
Figurationen von Unsicherheit
by Eryk Noji Uwe Vormbusch Arndt Neumann Uwe SteinerJede Zeit, jede Gesellschaft kennt ihre eigenen Figurationen von Unsicherheit. Der Band fragt nach den historisch variablen Strategien, Mechanismen und Kulturtechniken, mittels derer Gesellschaften Unsicherheiten thematisieren und bearbeiten. Solche Praktiken sind keineswegs durchgängig auf Unsicherheitsvermeidung bzw. -absorption ausgerichtet. Vielmehr existieren Strategien der Erzeugung und der Absorption von Unsicherheit parallel und verweisen aufeinander. Dieser Diagnose versuchen die interdisziplinären Perspektiven, die dieser Band versammelt, Rechenschaft zu tragen. Geschichtswissenschaften, Literatur- und Medienwissenschaften, Philosophie, Psychologie, Soziologie – sie alle haben eigene Zugänge zum Phänomen der Unsicherheit. Dies zeigt sich auch in der Bandbreite der hier verhandelten Themen: das Entscheiden und Nicht-Entscheiden, Algorithmen und Prognosen, Prävention und Fiktion, Erfahrungsgeschichte, Emotionen und politische Repräsentation, Self-Tracking, Bewertung und Lernen.
Figurations of France: Literary Nation-Building in Times of Crisis (1550-1650)
by Marcus KellerIn Figurations of France: Literary Nation-Building in Times of Crisis (1550-1650), Marcus Keller explores the often indirect and subtle ways in which key texts of early modern French literature, from Joachim Du Bellay’s Défense et illustration de la langue française to Corneille’s Le Cid, contribute to the fiction of France as a nation. Through his fresh take on these and other classics, he shows that they not only create the French as an imaginary community but also provide venues for an incisive critique of the political and cultural construct that underpins the modern nation-state. Current theories of nationhood, in particular the concepts of the nation form and fictive ethnicity (Étienne Balibar), inform the close readings of Du Bellay’s Défense, Ronsard’s Discours, d’Aubigné’s Tragiques, Montaigne’s Essays, Malherbe’s odes, and Corneille’s Le Cid and Horace. They reveal the imaginary power and unifying force of early modern figurations of France that come to bear in this heteregoneous corpus of French literature, with texts ranging from manifesto and epic poem to essay and tragedy. Situating each author and text in their particular historical context, the study suggests that the literary invention of France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is as abundant as it is conceptually innovative: Du Bellay, for example, develops an idea of France by portraying the French language as a pruned and grafted tree while d’Aubigné proposes to think of the French as a nuclear but fatherless family. Blood functions as a highly charged metaphor of nationhood in all texts. Opening up new perspectives on these canonical works, the focus on literary nation-building also puts them into unexpected and thought-provoking relationships to each other. Figurations of France deliberately crosses the fictive boundary between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries and argues that, in terms of imaginary nation-building, the contours that delineate the early modern period and separate it from what we call the modern era quickly begin to dissolve. Ultimately, the book makes the case for early modern literature as a creative and critical discourse, able to nourish and nuance our thinking about the nation as the postmodern nation-state is increasingly called into question by the economical, political, and cultural effects of globalization. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Figurations of Peripheries Through Arts and Visual Studies: Peripheries in Parallax (Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies)
by Maiju Loukola Mari Mäkiranta Jonna TolonenThis edited volume breaks new ground for understanding peripheries and peripherality by providing a multidisciplinary cross-exposure through a collection of chapters and visual essays by researchers and artists. The book is a collection of approaches from several disciplines where the spatial, conceptual, and theoretical hierarchies and biased assumptions of ‘peripheries’ are challenged. Chapters provide a diverse collection of viewpoints, analyses, and provocations on ‘peripherality’ through bringing together international specialists to discuss the socio-political, aesthetic, artistic, ethical, and legal implications of ‘peripheral approach.’ The aim is to illuminate the existing, hidden, often incommensurable, and controversial margins in the society at large from equal, ethical, and empathic perspectives. The book is designed to assist established researchers, academics, and students across disciplines who wish to incorporate novel, arts and practice-based research and critical approaches in their research projects, artwork, and academic writing. Providing both a consolidated understanding of the peripheries, visual studies, and artistic research as they are and setting expansive and new research insights and practices, this book is essential reading for scholars of arts and humanities, visual culture, art history, design, philosophy, and cultural studies.
The Figure In The Distance
by Otto De KatCambridge, Budapest, New York, Zurich, The Hague, Tel Aviv, the South Downs of England: the narrator has travelled everywhere. He has observed some of the major upheavals of the century - the Six Day War, the Prague Spring - and collected friends, lovers, and passions every step of the way. As he ages, the memories of his past grow sharper, the events of his childhood more vivid - so vivid, in fact, that his present life recedes into oblivion. He inhabits a world of ghosts and shadows and absence. Throughout his perambulations of time and space, one absence always looms largest: that of his father. The figure of his dead father materializes again and again, drawing the narrator back into the past, reviving the people and places of long ago. The Figure in the Distance is a hypnotic novel, told with a cinematic cross-cutting that suspends the reader in the cobwebs of memory and longing that haunt the narrator.
The Figure of Christ in the Long Nineteenth Century (Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture)
by Elizabeth LudlowThis book is an interdisciplinary collection of essays that explores the variety ofways in which the interface between understanding the figure of Christ, theplace of the cross, and the contours of lived experience, was articulated throughthe long nineteenth century. Collectively, the chapters respond to thetheological turn in postmodern thought by asking vital questions about the wayin which representations of Christ shape understandings of personhood and ofthe divine.
The Figure of the Witness in International Criminal Tribunals: Memory, Atrocities and Transitional Justice
by Benjamin ThorneThis book analyses how international criminal institutions, and their actors – legal counsels, judges, investigators, registrars – construct witness identity and memory. Filling an important gap within transitional justice scholarship, this conceptually led and empirically grounded interdisciplinary study takes the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as a case study. It asks: How do legal witnesses of human rights violations contribute to memory production in transitional post-conflict societies? Witnessing at tribunals entails individuals externalising memories of violations. This is commonly construed within the transitional justice legal scholarship as an opportunity for individuals to ensure their memories are entered into an historical record. Yet this predominant understanding of witness testimony fails to comprehend the nature of memory. Memory construction entails fragments of individual and collective memories within a contestable and contingent framing of the past. Accordingly, the book challenges the claim that international criminal courts and tribunals are able to produce a collective memory of atrocities; as it maintains that witnessing must be understood as a contingent and multi-layered discursive process. Contributing to the specific analysis of witnessing and memory, but also to the broader field of transitional justice, this book will appeal to scholars and practitioners in these areas, as well as others in legal theory, global criminology, memory studies, international relations, and international human rights.
Figure Skating in the Formative Years: Singles, Pairs, and the Expanding Role of Women
by James R HinesOnce a winter pastime for socializing and courtship, skating evolved into the wildly popular competitive sport of figure skating, one of the few athletic arenas where female athletes hold a public profile--and earning power--equal to that of men. Renowned sports historian James R. Hines chronicles figure skating's rise from its earliest days through its head-turning debut at the 1908 Olympics and its breakthrough as entertainment in the 1930s. Hines credits figure skating's explosive expansion to an ever-increasing number of women who had become proficient skaters and wanted to compete, not just in singles but with partners as well. Matters reached a turning point when British skater Madge Syers entered the otherwise-male 1902 World Championship held in London and finished second. Called skating's first feminist, Syers led a wave of women who made significant contributions to figure skating and helped turn it into today's star-making showcase at every Winter Olympics. Packed with stories and hard-to-find details, Figure Skating in the Formative Years tells the early history of a sport loved and followed by fans around the world.
Figureheads of the Royal Navy
by David PulvertaftThe first figureheads that were carved to represent the names of British warships appeared during the reign of Henry VIII; the last ones were carved in the early years of the twentieth century. During the intervening three hundred and fifty years it is estimated that some 5000 ships of the Royal Navy carried a figurehead of some description. This book follows the development of these diverse carvings, examining how the figurehead carvers interpreted the names and the symbolism incorporated in their designs. Evidence is drawn from a wide range of sources: contemporary ship models, ship plans, designs submitted for approval of the Navy Board and, of course, from those figureheads that have survived.Lavishly illustrated with much previously unpublished material, the book explores the wide range of subjects that were represented on the bows of Their Majesties Ships and recounts many of the stories that were told about them.The narrative is complemented by a catalogue that provides a brief description of each surviving figurehead, each carvers design drawing with its source and reference number as well as those ship plans and contemporary models that show the figureheads detail. This combination makes the book useful to a wide range of historians, researchers and anyone with an interest in Britains maritime past.
Figuren der Resonanz: Das 18. Jahrhundert und seine musikalische Anthropologie
by Arne StollbergAb der Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts vollzog sich in der Medizin ein Paradigmenwechsel von hoher ästhetischer Relevanz. Hatten die Nerven bis dahin als Transportkanäle für die „Lebensgeister“ gegolten, so trat nunmehr eine konkurrierende Theorie auf den Plan, nach der es sich um elastische Fasern handle, die in Analogie zur Saitenvibration, also über das Prinzip der Schwingung zu erklären seien. Der menschliche Leib avancierte buchstäblich zu einem Musikinstrument, das emotionale Erleben (nicht nur) von Musik zu einem Resonanzeffekt. Die Folgen dieser Sichtweise waren einschneidend: Das vorliegende Buch zeigt anhand zahlreicher Quellen aus den Bereichen Musik, Medizin, Literatur und Ästhetik, wie eine „musikalische Anthropologie“ entstand, die wiederum auf die Kompositionspraxis zurückwirkte, etwa bei Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Georg Anton Benda und Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Figures in a Western Landscape: Men and Women of the Northern Rockies
by Elizabeth Stevenson""Figures in a Western Landscape is an absolutely stunning book. A biographer's take on the story of the American West, it posits that the turns of history are based on people-major 'figures' who shape their time and place. In her sequence of biographical essays, Elizabeth Stevenson tells the story of the northern Rockies and, in particular, Montana, a state of mind even more than it is a state of the Union. As her readers have come to expect, she offers more than a mere recounting of events. Stevenson captures the humanity of her subjects."" -Charles Little, author of Louis Bromfield at Malabar and Greenways for AmericaThe northern Rocky Mountains and adjacent high plains were the last American West. Here was the final enactment of our national drama-the last explorations, the final battles of the Indian wars, the closing of the frontier. In Figures in a Western Landscape, award-winning biographer Elizabeth Stevenson humanizes the history of the region with a procession of individual lives moving across generations. Each of the sixteen men and women depicted left behind his or her own unique written record or oral history. The stories they have bequeathed are rich in revealing anecdote and colorful detail. Among them: Meriwether Lewis, America's ""most introspective explorer,"" John Kirk Townsend, known to the Chinooks as ""the bird chief,"" Pretty-Shield, wife of the Crow scout who warned Custer to turn back at Little Big Horn, James and Granville Stuart, early settlers lured by rumors of gold in the 1850s.In a concluding chapter, Stevenson draws on previously unpublished material to reveal new information about Martha Jane Cannary Burke, better known as Calamity Jane, the woman who could ride, shoot, and drive a mule team as well as any man (but who once failed to ""pass"" because she didn't cuss her mules like one). She lies buried in Deadwood, South Dakota, next to the man some said was her husband, Wild Bill Hickok.These and other men and women whose stories Stevenson
Figures in Silk
by Vanora BennettJohn Lambert marries off his two beautiful daughters. The elder, Jane Shore, soon begins a notorious liaison with King Edward IV. The other sister, Isabel, is wed to the scion of a wealthy silk dynasty--and faces a monumental challenge when her husband is killed. Forced into apprenticeship to her mother-in-law, Alice Claver, Isabel learns to love the exotic fabrics from Italy, Persia, Spain, Tunisia, and beyond, discovering both loyal friends and dangerous enemies in this breathtaking new world.
Figures in Silk: A Novel
by Vanora Bennett“Bennett’s medieval England comes alive in ways a reader can immediately relate to, even while being transported away from the modern world.”—Christian Science MonitorThe story of two sisters caught up in the maelstrom of historic events, Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett combines the fascinating art and history of silk making with political intrigue and a sweeping, unforgettable love story. A breathing immersion into a Tudor England torn asunder by the War of the Roses, Figures in Silk is historical fiction at its finest—a rare and welcome treat for readers captivated by the fiction of Tracy Chevalier, Sarah Dunant, Geraldine Brooks, Susan Vreeland, and the Boleyn novels of Phillipa Gregory.
Figures of a Changing World: Metaphor and the Emergence of Modern Culture
by Harry BergerFigures of a Changing World offers a dramatic new account of cultural change, an account based on the distinction between two familiar rhetorical figures, metonymy and metaphor. The book treats metonymy as the basic organizing trope of traditional culture and metaphor as the basic organizing trope of modern culture. On the one hand, metonymies present themselves as analogies that articulate or reaffirm preexisting states of affairs. They are guarantors of facticity, a term that can be translated or defined as fact-like-ness. On the other hand, metaphors challenge the similarity they claim to establish, in order to feature departures from preexisting states of affairs. On the basis of this distinction, the author argues that metaphor and metonymy can be used as instruments both for the large-scale interpretation of tensions in cultural change and for the micro-interpretation of tensions within particular texts. In addressing the functioning of the two terms, the author draws upon and critiques the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Roman Jakobson, Christian Metz, Paul Ricoeur, Umberto Eco, Edmund Leach, and Paul de Man.
Figures of Memory: The Rhetoric of Displacement at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
by Michael Bernard-DonalsFigures of Memory examines how the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC, uses its space and the design of its exhibits to "move" its visitors to memory. From the objects and their placement to the architectural design of the building and the floor plan, the USHMM was meant to teach visitors about the Holocaust. But what Michael Bernard-Donals found is that while they learn, and remember, the Holocaust, visitors also call to mind other, sometimes unrelated memories. Partly this is because memory itself works in multidirectional ways, but partly it's because of decisions made in the planning that led to the creation of the museum.Drawing on material from the USHMM's institutional archive, including meeting minutes, architectural renderings, visitor surveys, and comments left by visitors, Figures of Memory is both a theoretical exploration of memory—its relation to identity, space, and ethics—and a practical analysis of one of the most discussed memorials in the United States. The book also extends recent discussions of the rhetoric of memorial sites and museums by arguing that sites like the USHMM don't so much "make a case for" events through the act of memorialization, but actually displace memory, disturbing it—and the museum visitor—so much so that they call it into question. Memory, like rhetorical figures, moves, and the USHMM moves its visitors, figuratively and literally, both to and beyond the events the museum is meant to commemorate.
Figures of Possibility: Aesthetic Experience, Mysticism, and the Play of the Senses (Cultural Memory in the Present)
by Niklaus LargierFrom medieval contemplation to the early modern cosmopoetic imagination, to the invention of aesthetic experience, to nineteenth-century decadent literature, and to early-twentieth century essayistic forms of writing and film, Niklaus Largier shows that mystical practices have been reinvented across the centuries, generating a notion of possibility with unexpected critical potential. Arguing for a new understanding of mystical experience, Largier foregrounds the ways in which devotion builds on experimental practices of figuration in order to shape perception, emotions, and thoughts anew. Largier illuminates how devotional practices are invested in the creation of possibilities, and this investment has been a key element in a wide range of experimental engagements in literature and art from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and most recently in forms of "new materialism." Read as a history of the senses and emotions, the book argues that mystical and devotional practices have long been invested in the modulating and reconfiguring of sensation, affects, and thoughts. Read as a book about practices of figuration, it questions ordinary protocols of interpretation in the humanities, and the priority given to a hermeneutic understanding of texts and cultural artifacts.
Figures of Resistance: Essays in Feminist Theory
by Patricia White Teresa De LauretisThe changing face of feminist discourse as reflected by the career of one of its preeminent scholars Figures of Resistance brings together the unpublished lectures and little-seen essays of internationally renowned theorist Teresa de Lauretis, spanning over twenty years of her finest work. Thirty years after the height of feminist theory, this collection invites us to reflect on the history of feminism and take a hard look at where it stands today. Selected essays include "Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation," "The Lure of the Mannish Lesbian," "Eccentric Subjects," "Habit Changes," "The Intractability of Desire," and the unpublished article "Figures of Resistance." An introduction from feminist film scholar Patricia White provides an overview of the development of de Lauretis's thought and of feminist theory over past decades.
Figures of the Imagination: Fiction and Song in Britain, 1790–1850 (Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain)
by Roger HansfordThis new study of the intersection of romance novels with vocal music records a society on the cusp of modernisation, with a printing industry emerging to serve people’s growing appetites for entertainment amidst their changing views of religion and the occult. No mere diversion, fiction was integral to musical culture and together both art forms reveal key intellectual currents that circulated in the early nineteenth-century British home and were shared by many consumers. Roger Hansford explores relationships between music produced in the early 1800s for domestic consumption and the fictional genre of romance, offering a new view of romanticism in British print culture. He surveys romance novels by Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, Sir Walter Scott, James Hogg, Edward Bulwer and Charles Kingsley in the period 1790–1850, interrogating the ways that music served to create mood and atmosphere, enlivened social scenes and contributed to plot developments. He explores the connections between musical scenes in romance fiction and the domestic song literature, treating both types of source and their intersection as examples of material culture. Hansford’s intersectional reading revolves around a series of imaginative figures – including the minstrel, fairies, mermaids, ghosts, and witches, and Christians engaged both in virtue and vice – the identities of which remained consistent as influence passed between the art forms. While romance authors quoted song lyrics and included musical descriptions and characters, their novels recorded and modelled the performance of songs by the middle and upper classes, influencing the work of composers and the actions of performers who read romance fiction.
Figures of Time: Affect and the Television of Preemption (Thought in the Act)
by Toni PapeMany contemporary television series from Modern Family to How to Get Away with Murder open an episode or season with a conflict and then go back in time to show how that conflict came to be. In Figures of Time Toni Pape examines these narratives, showing how these leaps in time create aesthetic experiences of time that attune their audiences to the political doctrine of preemption—a logic that justifies preemptive action to nullify a perceived future threat. Examining questions of temporality in Life on Mars, the political ramifications of living under the auspices of a catastrophic future in FlashForward, and how Damages disrupts the logic of preemption, Pape shows how television helps shift political culture away from a model of rational deliberation and representation toward a politics of preemption and conformity. Exposing the mechanisms through which television supports a fear-based politics, Pape contends, will allow for the rechanneling of television's affective force into building a more productive and positive politics.
Figurierte Zahlen: Veranschaulichung als heuristische Strategie
by Jochen ZiegenbalgDieses Buch behandelt die Visualisierung als Methode des mathematischen Problemlösens, Begründens und Beweisens: Konkrete Beispiele zur Veranschaulichung durch mathematische Figuren und Bilder bieten einen faszinierenden Einblick in das Argumentieren anhand strukturierter und strukturierender Figuren zur Betrachtung von Zahlen und Zahlenfolgen. Die historischen Wurzeln dieses mathematischen Handwerkszeugs werden dabei so weit wie möglich einbezogen. Die Beispiele sind in der Regel konstruktiver Natur; gelegentlich wird, wo angebracht, die algorithmische Erschließung durch Hinweise auf die Programmierung mit Hilfe von Computeralgebra Systemen ergänzt. Das Buch richtet sich an Studierende und Lehrende an Schulen und Hochschulen, sowie an alle an der Elementarmathematik interessierten Nichtspezialisten, die das mathematische Arbeiten einmal außerhalb der von den Bildungsinstitutionen vorgezeichneten Pfade kennenlernen wollen. Es liefert insbesondere Lehrkräften und Lehramtsstudierenden wertvolle Anregungen, etwa zur Förderung mathematisch interessierter Schülerinnen und Schüler. In der 2. Auflage ist mit den mathematisch fundamentalen und historisch bedeutsamen Themen Wechselwegnahme, Teilbarkeit, Euklidischer Algorithmus, Inkommensurabilität und Kettenbrüche ein neues, für Visualisierungen gut geeignetes Kapitel hinzugekommen. Bereits bestehende Kapitel wurde durch Abschnitte über Trapezzahlen, ungerade Quadratzahlen und zentrierte Polygonalzahlen ergänzt.
The Figurine: The brand NEW novel from the No 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Island
by Victoria HislopIn her irresistible new novel, Sunday Times No 1 bestselling author Victoria Hislop shines a light on the questionable acquisition of cultural treasures and the price people - and countries - will pay to cling on to them.Of all the ancient art that captures the imagination, none is more appealing than the Cycladic figurine. An air of mystery swirls around these statuettes from the Bronze Age and they are highly sought after by collectors - and looters - alike. When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed with memories of the summers she spent there as a child, when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Her remote, cruel grandfather was one of the regime's generals and as she sifts through the dusty rooms, Helena discovers an array of valuable objects and antiquities. How did her grandfather amass such a trove? What human price was paid for them?Helena's desire to find answers about her heritage dovetails with a growing curiosity for archaeology, ignited by a summer spent with volunteers on a dig on an Aegean island. Their finds fuel her determination to protect the precious fragments recovered from the baked earth - and to understand the origins of her grandfather's collection.Helena's attempt to make amends for some of her grandfather's actions sees her wrestle with the meaning of 'home', both in relation to looted objects of antiquity ... and herself.
The Figurine: The brand NEW novel from the No 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Island
by Victoria HislopMulti-million copy bestselling author Victoria Hislop returns with the captivating tale of one woman's quest to come to terms with her family's brutal past.In her irresistible new novel, Sunday Times No 1 bestselling author Victoria Hislop shines a light on the questionable acquisition of cultural treasures and the price people - and countries - will pay to cling on to them.Of all the ancient art that captures the imagination, none is more appealing than the Cycladic figurine. An air of mystery swirls around these statuettes from the Bronze Age and they are highly sought after by collectors - and looters - alike. When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed with memories of the summers she spent there as a child, when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Her remote, cruel grandfather was one of the regime's generals and as she sifts through the dusty rooms, Helena discovers an array of valuable objects and antiquities. How did her grandfather amass such a trove? What human price was paid for them?Helena's desire to find answers about her heritage dovetails with a growing curiosity for archaeology, ignited by a summer spent with volunteers on a dig on an Aegean island. Their finds fuel her determination to protect the precious fragments recovered from the baked earth - and to understand the origins of her grandfather's collection.Helena's attempt to make amends for some of her grandfather's actions sees her wrestle with the meaning of 'home', both in relation to looted objects of antiquity ... and herself.(P)2023 Headline Publishing Group Ltd
The Figurine: The brand NEW novel from the much-loved author of The Island
by Victoria HislopIn her irresistible new novel, Sunday Times No 1 bestselling author* Victoria Hislop shines a light on the questionable acquisition of cultural treasures and the price people - and countries - will pay to cling on to them.Of all the ancient art that captures the imagination, none is more appealing than the Cycladic figurine. An air of mystery swirls around these statuettes from the Bronze Age and they are highly sought after by collectors - and looters - alike. When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in Athens, she is overwhelmed with memories of the summers she spent there as a child, when Greece was under a brutal military dictatorship. Her remote, cruel grandfather was one of the regime's generals and as she sifts through the dusty rooms, Helena discovers an array of valuable objects and antiquities. How did her grandfather amass such a trove? What human price was paid for them?Helena's desire to find answers about her heritage dovetails with a growing curiosity for archaeology, ignited by a summer spent with volunteers on a dig on an Aegean island. Their finds fuel her determination to protect the precious fragments recovered from the baked earth - and to understand the origins of her grandfather's collection.Helena's attempt to make amends for some of her grandfather's actions sees her wrestle with the meaning of 'home', both in relation to looted objects of antiquity ... and herself.*Victoria Hislop's One August Night was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller in paperback in the first week of August 2021; Those Who Are Loved was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller in paperback for four weeks in August and September 2020.
Figurines in Hellenistic Babylonia: Miniaturization and Cultural Hybridity
by Stephanie M. Langin-HooperIn this volume, Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper investigates the impact of Greek art on the miniature figure sculptures produced in Babylonia after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Figurines in Hellenistic Babylonia were used as agents of social change, by visually expressing and negotiating cultural differences. The scaled-down quality of figurines encouraged both visual and tactile engagement, enabling them to effectively work as non-threatening instruments of cultural blending. Reconstructing the embodied experience of miniaturization in detailed case studies, Langin-Hooper illuminates the dynamic process of combining Greek and Babylonian sculpture forms, social customs, and viewing habits into new, hybrid works of art. Her innovative focus on figurines as instruments of both personal encounter and global cultural shifts has important implications for the study of tiny objects in art history, anthropology, classics, and other disciplines.
Figuring: Fortune Favours The Fast
by Maria PopovaFiguring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries—beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement. <P><P>Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists—mostly women, mostly queer—whose public contribution have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson. <P><P>Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? <P><P>Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman—and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>