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What if our entire civilization could write its own memoirs and tell the complete story of Christmas past? Surprisingly, the tale would begin not in Bethlehem, but two thousand years earlier in the cradle of civilization. It would be a nostalgic story involving Christians and non-Christians alike. Babylonians Greeks, and Romans - whose ancient customs became part of the Christmas celebration - would people its pages. We would see early Europeans hanging fir sprigs and winter greenery to renew life and protect against the cold blasts of Arctic wind. People who had not yet learned of the Christ child would be burning Yule logs. Of course, the most important chapter in these memoirs would take place in a manger surrounded by Wise Men and marked with a brilliant star. But the tale would continue on for another two thousand years as generation after generation added to the customs of Christmas.
Haller (history, medical humanities, Southern Illinois U.) examines the scientific "proof" of racial inferiority in the US during the period between the 1859 publication of Darwin's Origin of Species and the discovery in 1900 of Gregor Mendel's experiments with genetics, in this reprint of a work first published in 1971 by University of Illinois Press. He shows how scientists sought to apply evolutionary ideas to morality, health, and the physiognomy of nonwhite races, and looks at the relationship between scientific theories and public policy. Includes bandw illustrations. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
What is your attitude toward the holiday season? Do you have the "Christmas Spirit"? Do you refuse to observe such "pagan celebrations"? Or do you just say, "Bah, Humbug!"? Rosemary St. Nichols is a single mother (and a "Recovering Catholic") who has just moved to River City with her son Jonathan. Here, she meets Teniqua Johnson and her son Mychal, who celebrate Kwanzaa rather than Christmas. After a Nativity Scene placed outside City Hall causes controversy in the community, Rosemary wonders, "If even churches can't agree to cooperate, how in the world will all the people in River City ever learn to put aside our differences-if even for one day?" There are no angelic visitations or "Christm...
This book offers an overview of iconographic methods and their application to archaeological analysis. It offers a truly interdisciplinary approach that draws equally from art history and anthropology. Vernon James Knight, Jr., begins with a historigraphical overview, addressing the methodologies and theories that underpin both archaeology and art history. He then demonstrates how iconographic methods can be integrated with the scientific methods that are at the core of much archaeological inquiry. Focusing on artifacts from the pre-Columbian civilizations of North and Meso-American sites, Knight shows how the use of iconographic analysis yields new insights into these objects and civilizations.
The weekly source of African American political and entertainment news.
There’s more to Christmas than presents. The fun and thoughtful ideas in 1,001 Ways to Celebrate Christmas instill how to keep others in mind, especially those for whom the holiday season can be difficult. From homemade cards to cookie recipes and ideas about how to give back to your community, readers of all ages will be encouraged to create joy and good tidings, and be reminded why the holiday season is special.
"In a fascinating, concise tour through history, the book tells the story of Christmas-from its pre-Christian roots, through the birth of Jesus, to the holiday's spread across Europe into the Americas and beyond, and to its mind-boggling transformation through modern consumer culture."--Page 2 of cover.
"What was the role of anthropology in the German Enlightenment? Why did this discipline emerge as one of the most popular modes of inquiry in the eighteenth century, permeating fields as disparate as aesthetics, medicine, and law? As the essays in this volume show, the "body" of Enlightenment knowledge was by no means universal." "During the German Enlightenment the study of nature, humanity, and everything that humanity created was the topic of the day. But the period that defined moral reason as the sovereign human faculty also applied its scrutiny to the body that such a mind inhabited. What did it look like? Could moral superiority be deduced from physiognomy?" "In the massive effort to ...
This book attempts to come to grips with a set of widely ranging but connected problems concerning myths: their relation to folktales on the one hand, to rituals on the other; the validity and scope of the structuralist theory of myth; the range of possible mythical functions; the effects of developed social institutions and literacy; the character and meaning of ancient Near-Eastern myths and their influence on Greece; the special forms taken by Greek myths and their involvement with rational modes of thought; the status of myths as expressions of the unconscious, as allied with dreams, as universal symbols, or as accidents of primarily narrative aims. Almost none of these problems has been...