You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
This is the first book to explore comparatively how magic—usually portrayed as the antithesis of the modern—is also at home in modernity.
In this book a MacArthur Award-winning scholar argues for a radically new interpretation of the conversion of Scandinavia from paganism to Christianity in the early Middle Ages. Overturning the received narrative of Europe's military and religious conquest and colonization of the region, Anders Winroth contends that rather than acting as passive recipients, Scandinavians converted to Christianity because it was in individual chieftains' political, economic, and cultural interests to do so. Through a painstaking analysis and historical reconstruction of both archeological and literary sources, and drawing on scholarly work that has been unavailable in English, Winroth opens up new avenues for studying European ascendency and the expansion of Christianity in the medieval period.
This is Mickey's first year at Grandview High. After transferring, all he wants to do is keep his head down, work hard and fit in with the upscale crowd. He is approached, because of his tough reputation, to join a group of students to take back the school from the bullies. Mickey finds himself caught up in a shadowy world of violence and retribution. When their planned payback goes horribly wrong, Mickey is forced to acknowledge the thin line between victim and victimizer. This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for teen readers who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read! The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.
Thomas DuBois unravels for the first time the history of the Nordic religions in the Viking Age. "A seminal study of Nordic religions that future scholars will not be able to avoid."—Church History
"Five Friends Keep Talking" - what a groundbreaking title for this book, inspired by "The Five Friends" by Enid Blyton, whose stories the author devoured in his childhood. Now Erich Skopek himself embarks on a search for the lost art of togetherness and attempts to revive it. Because, in the author's opinion, genuine relationships with individuals have become rare. Either people have forgotten how to build such togetherness or they are afraid of the effort and expense involved in creating true community. The author is certain that this is why many people today suffer from loneliness and superficial relationships. A small group of friends now proves that it is worth living authentic friendship.
While the first decade after the fall of the Berlin wall was marked by the challenges of unification and the often difficult process of reconciling East and West German experiences, many Germans expected that the “new century” would achieve “normalization.” The essays in this volume take a closer look at Germany’s new normalcy and argue for a more nuanced picture that considers the ruptures as well as the continuities. Germany’s new generation of writers is more diverse than ever before, and their texts often not only speak of a Germany that is multicultural but also take a more playful attitude toward notions of identity. Written with an eye toward similar and dissimilar developments and traditions on both sides of the Atlantic, this volume balances overviews of significant trends in present-day cultural life with illustrative analyses of individual writers and texts.
Time holds an enduring fascination for humans. Time and Trace investigates the human experience and awareness of time and time’s impact on a wide range of cultural, psychological, and artistic phenomena, from reproductive politics and temporal logic to music and theater, from law to sustainability, from memory to the Vikings. The volume presents selected essays from the 15th triennial conference of the International Society for the Study of Time from the arts (literature, music, theater), history, law, philosophy, science (psychology, biology), and mathematics. Taken together, they pursue the trace of time into the past and future, tracing temporal processes and exploring the traces left by time in individual experience as well as culture and society. Contributors are: Michael Crawford, Orit Hilewicz, Rosemary Huisman, John S. Kafka, Erica W. Magnus, Arkadiusz Misztal, Carlos Montemayor, Stephanie Nelson, Peter Øhrstrøm, Jo Alyson Parker, Thomas Ploug, Helen Sills, Lasse C. A. Sonne, Raji C. Steineck, and Frederick Turner.
Memory plays an integral part in how individuals and societies construct their identity. While memory is usually considered in the context of a stable, unchanging environment, this collection of essays explores the effects of immigration, forced expulsions, exile, banishment, and war on individual and collective memory. The ways in which memory affects cultural representation and historical understanding across generations is examined through case studies and theoretical approaches that underscore its mutability. Memory and Migration is a truly interdisciplinary book featuring the work of leading scholars from a variety of fields across the globe. The essays are collaborative, successfully responding to the central theme and expanding upon the findings of individual authors. A groundbreaking contribution to an emerging field of study, Memory and Migration provides valuable insight into the connections between memory, place, and displacement.
Although beset by social, political, and economic instabilities, interwar Vienna was an exhilarating place, with pioneering developments in the arts and innovations in the social sphere. Research on the period long saw the city as a mere shadow of its former imperial self; more recently it has concentrated on high-profile individual figures or party politics. This volume of new essays widens the view, stretching disciplinary boundaries to consider the cultural and social movements that shaped the city. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire resulted not in an abandonment of the arts, but rather led to new forms of expression that were nevertheless conditioned by the legacies of earlier ...
CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2022 "When the world comes to an end," Viennese writer Karl Kraus lamented in 1908, "all the big city orchestras will still be playing The Merry Widow." Viennese operettas like Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow were preeminent cultural texts during the Austro-Hungarian Empire's final years. Alternately hopeful and nihilistic, operetta staged contemporary debates about gender, nationality, and labor. The Operetta Empire delves into this vibrant theatrical culture, whose creators simultaneously sought the respectability of high art and the popularity of low entertainment. Case studies examine works by Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, and Leo Fall in light of current musicological conversations about hybridity and middlebrow culture. Demonstrating a thorough mastery of the complex early twentieth-century Viennese cultural scene, and a sympathetic and redemptive critique of a neglected popular genre, Micaela Baranello establishes operetta as an important element of Viennese cultural life—one whose transgressions helped define the musical hierarchies of its day.