Inventions of the imagination

romanticism and beyond

The dialectic between reason and imagination forms a key element in Romantic and post-Romantic philosophy, science, literature, and art. Inventions of the Imagination, Romanticism and Beyond explores the diverse theories and assessments of this dialectic in a collection of essays by philosophers and literary and ...

Torture

power, democracy, and the human body

The counterterrorism policies following September 11, 2001, brought the definition and legitimacy of torture to the forefront of political, military, and public debates. This timely volume explores the question of torture through multiple lenses by situating it within systems of belief, social networks of power ...

Tribes and empire on the margins of nineteenth-century Iran

"Tribes and Empire on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Iran" traces the history of the Bakhtiyari tribal confederacy of the Zagros Mountains through momentous times that saw the opening of their lands to the outside world. As the Qajar dynasty sought to integrate the people on ...

The merchant houses of Mocha

trade and architecture in an Indian Ocean port

Gaining prominence as a seaport under the Ottomans in the mid-1500s, the city of Mocha on the Red Sea coast of Yemen pulsed with maritime commerce. Its very name became synonymous with Yemen's most important revenue-producing crop - coffee. After the imams of the Qasimi ...

Reading orientalism

Said and the unsaid

The late Edward Said remains one of the most influential critics and public intellectuals of our time, with lasting contributions to many disciplines. Much of his reputation derives from the phenomenal multidisciplinary influence of his 1978 book "Orientalism". Said's seminal polemic analyzes novels, travelogues ...

Writing and law in late imperial China

crime, conflict, and judgment

Edited by Robert E. Hegel and Katherine Carlitz In this fascinating, multidisciplinary volume, scholars of Chinese history, law, literature, and religions explore the intersections of legal practice with writing in many different social contexts. They consider the overlapping concerns of legal culture and the arts ...

Middle east historiographies

narrating the twentieth century

"Middle East Historiographies" examines Middle East history writing from the cusp of the twenty-first century. Internationally renowned scholars consider how individual historians, historical schools, and historical paradigms have shaped the study of the history of the Middle East over the twentieth century, chiefly after the ...

Open wounds

the crisis of jewish thought in the aftermath of Auschwitz

In this book, David Patterson sets out to describe why Jews must live - but especially think - in a way that is distinctly Jewish. For Patterson, the primary responsibility of post-Holocaust Jewish thought is to avoid thinking in the same categories that led to the attempted ...

Time and trasnformation

in Seventeenth-Century dutch art

Time and Transformationbrings together a variety of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings and works on paper in a major examination of themes dealing with the transformative effects of time and circumstance. The Dutch were fascinated with this idea and the variety of motifs used to convey it ...

Along the silk road

The reluctant dragon

crisis cycles in Chinese foreign economic policy

Chinese foreign economic policy before 1978 has been seen as isolationist and centered on Maoist self-reliance. This revisionist analysis argues that the dramatic economic reforms initiated by China's leaders in 1978 were in fact revisions and expansions of policies from the Maoist period

Islamist mobilization in Turkey

a study in vernacular politics

The emergence of an Islamist movement and the startling buoyancy of Islamic political parties in Turkey - a model of secular modernization, a cosmopolitan frontier, and NATO ally - has puzzled Western observers. As the appeal of the Islamist Welfare Party spread through Turkish society, including the ...

Battle of the nudes

Pollaiuolo's Renaissance masterpiece