Reading Room

Re-Lektüren des Innenraums

by Christine Göttler, Peter J. Schneemann, Birgitt Borkopp-Restle, Norberto Gramaccini, Peter W. Marx, Bernd Nicolai

Reading Room erprobt Entwürfe, Theorien und Lektüren des Innenraums von der Frühen Neuzeit bis in die Gegenwart. Ausgangspunkt ist ein dynamisches und relationales Raumkonzept, das die Vielfalt historischer Medien, Kontexte und Diskurse berücksichtigt. Die Beiträge untersuchen die Erzeugung und Umformung von Innenräumen durch soziale Praktiken und visuelle und materielle Strategien. Sie bieten exemplarische Lektüren heterotopischer, dystopischer und utopischer Raumsituationen in Kunst, Architektur und Theater im Spannungsfeld von Innen und Außen, Realität und Repräsentation. Das Buch entwickelt Fragestellungen weiter, die gegenwärtig in der Kunst- und Architekturgeschichte und der Theaterwissenschaft verhandelt werden.

Interpretations of Jihad in South Asia

An Intellectual History

by Tariq Rahman

In the wake of radical Islamist terrorist attacks described as jihad worldwide and in South Asia, it is imperative that there should be a book-length study of this idea in this part of the world. The focus of the study is the idea of jihad with its changing interpretations mostly those available in exegetical literature of key figures in South Asia. The hermeneutic devices used to understand the meaning of the Quranic verses and the Prophetic traditions relating to jihad will be the focus of this study. The main thrust of the study is to understand how interpretations of jihad vary. It is seen as being both defensive and aggressive by traditionalists; only defensive and mainly about moral improvement by progressive Muslims; and being insurrectionist, aggressive, eternal and justifying violence against civilians by radical Islamists. One purpose of the book is to understand how the radical interpretation came to South Asia. The book also explains how theories about jihad are influenced by the political and social circumstances of the period and how these insights feed into practice legitimizing militant movements called jihad for that period.

Westerweel Group: Non-Conformist Resistance against Nazi-Germany

A Joint Rescue Effort of Dutch Idealists and Dutch-German Zionists

by Hans Schippers

The book about the Westerweel Group tells the fascinating story about the cooperation of some ten non-conformist Dutch socialists and a group of Palestine Pioneers who mostly had arrived in the Netherlands from Germany and Austria the late thirties. With the help of Joop Westerweel, the headmaster of a Rotterdam Montessori School, they found hiding places in the Netherlands. Later on, an escape route to France via Belgium was worked out. Posing as Atlantic Wall workers, the pioneers found their way to the south of France. With the help of the Armée Juive, a French Jewish resistance organization, some 70 pioneers reached Spain at the beginning of 1944. From here they went to Palestine. Finding and maintaining the escape route cost the members of the Westerweel Group dear. With some exceptions, all members of the group were arrested by the Germans. Joop Westerweel was executed in August 1944. Other members, both in the Netherlands and France, were send to German concentration camps, where some perished.

The Spanish Anarchists of Northern Australia

Revolution in the Sugar Cane Fields

by Robert Mason

This book connects histories of Australia and the British Empire, with Spain and the Spanish-speaking world. It follows the unexpected passage of a group of radical Spanish-speakers in the isolated region of northern Australia during the first half of the twentieth-century, a period of rapidly expanding globalisation as well as the duration of the Spanish Civil War. The present study explores how their community responded to these rapid changes through the lessons of the Spanish-speaking world.

Soul-Health

Therapeutic Reading in Later Medieval England

by Daniel McCann

This is a book about reading and healing. It shows how literature that makes us feel sad, horrified, or fearful was understood to bring about health of the soul in the Middle Ages. Over five chapters, it considers a specific set of negative emotions and demonstrates precisely how words can evoke strong feelings.

Arthur in the Celtic Languages

The Arthurian Legend in Celtic Literature and Traditions

by Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan and Erich Poppe

A collection of essays providing a reliable, accessible and up-to-date introduction to Arthurian literature and popular traditions in the Celtic languages, from the early Middle Ages to the twentieth century. The figure of Arthur and the characters associated with him change as the stories are reworked for audiences in the different countries and at different periods.

Freedom Music

Wales, Emancipation and Jazz 1850-1950

by Jen Wilson

This book traces the story of how early African American and jazz music came to Wales. From Abolitionist collaborations, minstrelsy, ‘weird slave songs’, ragtime, blues, hot music and swing, the story unfolds through women’s emancipation and gender politics, social history and the heritage and culture of Wales.

Rome and The Guidebook Tradition

From the Middle Ages to the 20th Century

by Anna Blennow, Stefano Fogelberg Rota

To this day, no comprehensive academic study of the development of guidebooks to Rome over time has been performed. This book treats the history of guidebooks to Rome from the Middle Ages up to the early twentieth century. It is based on the results of the interdisciplinary research project Topos and Topography, led by Anna Blennow and Stefano Fogelberg Rota. From the case studies performed within the project, it becomes evident that the guidebook as a phenomenon was formed in Rome during the later Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The elements and rhetorical strategies of guidebooks over time have shown to be surprisingly uniform, with three important points of development: a turn towards a more user-friendly structure from the seventeenth century and onward; the so-called ’Baedeker effect’ in the mid-nineteenth century; and the introduction of a personalized guiding voice in the first half of the twentieth century. Thus, the ‘guidebook tradition’ is an unusually consistent literary oeuvre, which also forms a warranty for the authority of every new guidebook. In this respect, the guidebook tradition is intimately associated with the city of Rome, with which it shares a constantly renovating yet eternally fixed nature.

Protection, Patronage, or Plunder? British Machinations and (B)uganda’s Struggle for Independence

by Author(s): Apollo N. Makubuya

In the scramble for Africa, Britain took a lion’s share of the continent. It occupied and controlled vast territories, including the Uganda Protectorate – which it ruled for 68 years. Early administrators in the region encountered the progressive kingdom of Buganda, which they incorporated into the British Empire. Under the guise of protection, indirect rule and patronage, Britain overran, plundered and disempowered the kingdom’s traditional institutions. On liquidation of the Empire, Buganda was coaxed into a problematic political order largely dictated from London. Today, 56 years after independence, the kingdom struggles to rediscover itself within Uganda’s fragile politics. Based on newly de-classified records, this book reconstructs a history of the machinations underpinning British imperial interests in (B)Uganda and the personalities who embodied colonial rule. It addresses Anglo-Uganda relations, demonstrating how Uganda’s politics reflects its colonial past, and the forces shaping its future. It is a far-reaching examination of British rule in (B)uganda, questioning whether it was designed for protection, for patronage or for plunder.

A History of Money

by Glyn Davies New edition updated and edited by Dr. Duncan Connors

A History of Money looks at how money as we know it developed through time. Starting with the barter system, the basic function of exchanging goods evolved into a monetary system based on coins made up of precious metals and, from the 1500s onwards, financial systems were established through which money became intertwined with commerce and trade, to settle by the mid-1800s into a stable system based upon Gold. This book presents its closing argument that, since the collapse of the Gold Standard, the global monetary system has undergone constant crisis and evolution continuing into the present day.

Feng·Ya·Song

by Wu Gou

This is an interesting book dealing with the elegant demeanor and graceful bearing in Song Dynasty. Having the aid of the combination of Song pictures, historical documents and the positive result of the post-research, the author reveals all the aspects of people's daily life in Song Dynasty, full of vim and vigor, showing the social ethos and the spirit of time. The book is divided into six parts in its edition, the first part tells about Song people's daily life; the second, Song people's fined playing and cultivated taste; the third, the social condition; the fourth, the public facilities; the fifth, the commercial prosperity; the last, the communicative protocol. The successive achievements in the book depend on the good treatment of hundreds of Song Pictures and paintings, and at the same time from a few pictures and paintings of the dynasties of Tang, Ming and Qing. Between each other of them, they were made fair comparisons.

The Character of China

by Lou Yulie

The book is a master work of 50 years’ academic exploration. It is a popularization work which introduces the connotation and humanism of Chinese traditional culture. The professor from PekingU spent 50 years in philosophy studies exploring Chinese culture root from the ups and downs of centuries which made this book into 8 parts: including interpreting the relations of traditional cultural conceptions with the three major ideas’ (Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism) , with the artistic spirit, and with the Chinese medicine.

Great Plagues

Virus, Destruction And the Defiance of the Empire

by Liu Dichuan

The focus of this book is on the plague and epidemic in the history of Qin and Han Dynasties. It not only studies the historical reasons, historical characteristics, epidemic areas and host animals of the natural epidemic diseases that caused these plagues and epidemics, but also the plague influences. In the history of Qin and Han Dynasties, the study of the Qin and Han plagues has had a major and profound impact on the Chinese civilization in the Qin and Han Dynasties and later generations. It can be said that this is a history of alternative civilization that tells about the prosperity and destruction caused by the plague. Understanding the history of the plague will not only help to understand Chinese history more stereoscopically, but also greatly help modern people to prevent plague and eliminate plague.

Culture. Social Networks and Collective Action

Focusing on the Late Qing Religious Case and the Boxer Rebellion

by Cheng Xiao

"Culture, Social Network and Collective Action: Focusing on the Late Qing Religious Case and the Boxer Rebellion", a total of 26 papers were published in the academic papers that the author has written over the past two decades and a few chapters drawn from the old books. The research directions of these works are basically the same, only for the convenience of reading, not arranged in the order of publication, but according to the content of the writing, which is roughly divided into four catalogs. The boundaries between the various editors are not necessarily clear. This is quite different from the current academic research institutes of some historians, and the cataloging in their essays is also quite clear. It is not the same. The first part is a few works focusing on the methods of history. The second part is about the exploration of the research object of the history of ideology and culture. The third part is the analysis of the late Qing dynasty. The fourth part is the study of several issues of the Boxer.

Colonizing Christianity

Greek and Latin Religious Identity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade

by George E. Demacopoulos

Colonizing Christianity employs postcolonial critique to analyze the transformations of Greek and Latin religious identity in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. Through close readings of texts from the period of Latin occupation, this book argues that the experience of colonization splintered the Greek community over how best to respond to the Latin other while illuminating the mechanisms by which Western Christians authorized and exploited the Christian East. The experience of colonial subjugation opened permanent fissures within the Orthodox community, which struggled to develop a consistent response to aggressive demands for submission to the Roman Church.

Whose Middle Ages?

Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past

by Andrew Albin, Mary C. Erler, Thomas O'Donnell, Nicholas L. Paul, Nina Rowe, David Perry, Geraldine Heng, Sandy Bardsley, Fred Donner, Nicholas L. Paul, Cord Whitaker, Magda Teter, W. Ormrod, Katherine Wilson, Ryan Szpiech, William Diebold, Lauren Mancia, Stephennie Mulder, Sarah Guérin, Pamela Patton, Elizabeth Tyler, David Wacks, Marian Bleeke, Andrew Reeves, Will Cerbone, Maggie Williams, Helen Young, Adam Bishop, J. Patrick Hornbeck II

Whose Middle Ages? is an ideal course reader, featuring scholarship on the Middle Ages and the misuses of medievalism from across fields and disciplines including history, literature, religion and theology, art history, critical race studies, labor and economic history, gender and sexuality, Crusades studies, migration studies, Islamic studies, and more

A Little Gay History of Wales

by Daryl Leeworthy

A Little Gay History of Wales tells the compelling story of Welsh LGBT life from the Middle Ages to the present day. Drawing on a rich array of archival sources from across Britain, together with oral testimony and material culture, this pioneering study is the first to examine the experiences of ordinary LGBT men and women, and how they embarked on coming out, coming together and changing the world. This is the story of poets who wrote about same-sex love and translators who worked to create a language to describe it; activists who campaigned for equality and politicians who created the legislation providing it; teenagers ringing advice lines for guidance on coming out, and revellers in the pioneering bars and clubs on a Friday and Saturday night. It is also a study of prejudice and of intolerance, of emigration and isolation, of HIV/AIDS and Section 28 – all features of the complex historical reality of LGBT life and same-sex desire. Engaging and accessible, absorbing and perceptive, this book is an important advance in our understanding of Welsh history.

The Economy of Medieval Wales, 1067-1536

by Matthew Frank Stevens

This book surveys the economy of Wales from Norman invasion to Anglo-Welsh union. Key themes include the evolution of the agrarian economy; the growth of towns; the adoption of a money economy; English colonization; the collapse of native Welsh social structures and the rise of economic individualism; the disastrous effect of the Glyndŵr rebellion; and alignment with the English economy.

New Perspectives on Welsh Industrial History

by Louise Miskell

The aim of this volume is to tell a story of Welsh industrial history different to the one traditionally dominated by the coal and iron communities of Victorian and Edwardian Wales. Extending their chronological scope from the early eighteenth- to the late twentieth-century, and encompassing a wider range of industries, the essays in this book combine studies of the internal organisation of workplace and production with outward-facing perspectives of Welsh industry in the context of the global economy. The contributors to the volume offer important new insights into the companies, the employers, the markets and the money behind some of the key sectors of the Welsh economy – from coal to copper, and from steel to manufacturing. By acknowledging the numerical significance but often unsung importance of the thousands who worked in domestic service, the book challenges us also to reconsider what we think of as constituting ‘industry’ in Wales.

Uniquely Okinawan

Determining Identity During the U.S. Wartime Occupation

by Courtney A. Short

Since 1945 and continuing for as far and one can foresee, the issue of U.S. forces struggling on battlegrounds with large, potentially hostile, culturally diverse populations will continue to resonate. The “lessons learned” from Okinawa will continue to provide guidance.