Alchemical Belief: Occultism in the Religious Culture of Early Modern England
Author: Bruce Janacek File Type: pdf What did it mean to believe in alchemy in early modern England? In this book, Bruce Janacek considers alchemical beliefs in the context of the writings of Thomas Tymme, Robert Fludd, Francis Bacon, Sir Kenelm Digby, and Elias Ashmole. Rather than examine alchemy from a scientific or medical perspective, Janacek presents it as integrated into the broader political, philosophical, and religious upheavals of the first half of the seventeenth century, arguing that the interest of these elite figures in alchemy was part of an understanding that supported their nationaland in some cases royalistloyalty and theological orthodoxy. Janacek investigates how and why individuals who supported or were actually placed at the traditional center of power in Englands church and state believed in the relevance of alchemy at a time when their society, their government, their careers, and, in some cases, their very lives were at stake. **
Author: Mindy N. Besaw
File Type: pdf
Art for a New Understanding, an exhibition from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opening this October, seeks to radically expand and reposition the narrative of American art since 1950 by charting a history of the development of contemporary Indigenous art from the United States and Canada, beginning when artists moved from more regionally-based conversations and practices to national and international contemporary art contexts.This accompanying book documents and expands on the histories and themes of this exciting exhibition. This fully illustrated volume includes essays by art historians and historians and reflections by the artists included in the collection. Also included are key contemporary writingsfrom the 1950s onwardby artists, scholars, and critics, investigating the themes of transculturalism and pan-Indian identity, traditional practices conducted in radically new ways, displacement, forced migration, shadow histories, the role of personal mythologies as a means to reimagine the future, and much more. As both a survey of the development of Indigenous art from the 1950s to the present and a consideration of Native artists within contemporary art more broadly, Art for a New Understanding expands the definition of American art and sets the tone for future considerations of the subject. It is an essential publication for any institution or individual with an interest in contemporary Native American art, and an invaluable resource in ongoing scholarly considerations of the American contemporary art landscape at large. **
Author: Nigel Strudwick
File Type: pdf
Recent research on all aspects of the Old Kingdom in Egypt is presented in this volume, ranging through the Pyramid Texts, tomb architecture, ceramics, scene choice and layout, field reports, cemetery layout, tomb and temple statuary. The contributions also show how Egyptology is not stuck in its venerable traditions but that newer forms of technology are being used to great effect by Egyptologists. For example, two papers show how GIS technology can shed light on cemetery arrangement and how 3D scanners can be employed in the process of producing facsimile drawings of reliefs and inscriptions. The authors cover a wide range of sites and monuments. A large part of the work presented deals with material from the great cemeteries of Saqqara and Giza of the Old Kingdom capital city of Memphis but all the smaller sites are discussed. The book also includes a paper on the architecture of mastabas from the lesser-known site of Abu Roasch. The provinces are by no means overlooked, with articles on material from Deir el-Bersha, el-Sheikh Said and Akhmim. Between them, the authors discuss material from the milieu of the king right down to that which concerned the tomb workmen and those who supplied their basic needs, such as bakers, brewers and potters. Containing papers presented at a conference at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in May 2009, this book continues a series of publications of the latest research presented at previous meetings in Paris, Berlin and Prague. Much new material is published here and the papers are fully illustrated, with over 200 photographs and drawings.**
Author: Dale W. Tomich
File Type: pdf
Essays challenging conventional understandings of the slave economy of the nineteenth century. The essays presented in New Frontiers of Slavery represent new analytical and interpretive approaches to the crisis of Atlantic slavery during the nineteenth century. By treating slavery within the framework of the modern world economy, they call attention to new zones of slave production that were formed as part of processes of global economic and political restructuring. Chapters by a group of international historians, economists, and sociologists examine both the global dynamics of the new slavery, and various aspects of economy-society and master-slave relations in the new zones. They emphasize the ways in which certain slave regimes, particularly in Cuba and Brazil, were formed as specific local responses to global processes, industrialization, urbanization, market integration, the formation of national states, and the emergence of liberal ideologies and institutions. These essays thus challenge conventional understandings of slavery, which often regard it as incompatible with modernity.
Author: Roy Porter
File Type: pdf
This book in the highly respected Cambridge History of Science series is devoted to the history of the life and earth sciences since 1800. It provides comprehensive and authoritative surveys of historical thinking on major developments in these areas of science, on the social and cultural milieus in which the knowledge was generated, and on the wider impact of the major theoretical and practical innovations. The articles were written by acknowledged experts who provide concise accounts of the latest historical thinking coupled with guides to the most important recent literature. In addition to histories of traditional sciences, the book covers the emergence of newer disciplines such as genetics, biochemistry, and geophysics. The interaction of scientific techniques with their practical applications in areas such as medicine is a major focus of the book, as is its coverage of controversial areas such as science and religion and environmentalism. Review Volume 6 together with the others of the same series, will serve as a useful reference source. Nuncius Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science Book DescriptionThis book is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the latest thinking among historians of science dealing with developments in the life and earth sciences since 1800. It covers developments within traditional areas of science, major theoretical innovations such as evolutionism, the emergence of new disciplines such as genetics and biochemistry, and the changing interactions of medical science and practice.
Author: Richard Crowder
File Type: pdf
In a decade, between 1940 and 1950, the old world order collapsed, and a new one was created. Old European empires - France, Germany and the United Kingdom - receded, replaced by two new superpowers - the Soviet Union and the United States. Beyond Europe, a swath of new countries was created India, Communist China, Israel and the modern Arab states, Indonesia, the Koreas. But there were darker shadows too, cast by the onset of the Cold War the failure to establish international controls on atomic energy, or the growth of the national security state and modern intelligence apparatus. This era also produced some of the most remarkable statesmen of modern times, including leaders such as Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Truman, de Gaulle, Nehru and Mao Tsetung diplomats like George Marshall, Dean Acheson, Anthony Eden, Ernest Bevin and Robert Schuman and international fixers, such as Averell Harriman, John Maynard Keynes, or Jean Monnet. Their stories form the core fabric of this book. Richard Crowder examines their shared ambition to rebuild the world, and launch a second age of globalization.
Author: Juan Suriano
File Type: pdf
An engaging historical look at fin de siecle Buenos Aires that brings to life the vibrant culture behind one of the worlds largest anarchist movements the radical schools, newspapers, theaters, and social clubs that made revolution a way of life. Cultural history in the best sense, Paradoxes of Utopia explores how a revolutionary ideology was woven into the ordinary lives of tens of thousands of people, creating a complex tapestry of symbols, rituals, and daily practices that supportedand indeed created the possibility ofthe Argentine labor movement.Juan Suriano is a professor of social history at the University of Buenos Aires.**
Author: Toby Wilkinson
File Type: epub
A hypnotic journey in the company of one of the worlds most acclaimed Egyptologists over the fabled river telling how the Nile continually brought life to an ancient civilization now dead and how it sustained its successors, now in tumult. Renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson leads us through space as much as time from the rivers mystical sources (the Blue Nile which rises in Ethiopia, and the White Nile coursing from majestic Lake Victoria) to Thebes, with its Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, and Luxor Temple the fertile Delta Giza, home of the Great Pyramid, the sole surviving Wonder of the Ancient World and finally, to the pulsating capital city of Cairo, where the Arab Spring erupted on the bridges over the Nile. Along the way, he introduces us to mysterious and fabled characters-the gods, godlike pharaohs, emperors and empresses, who joined their fate to the Nile and gained immortality the adventurers, archaeologists, and historians who have all fallen under its spell. With matchless erudition and storytelling skill, through a lens equal to both panoramas and close-ups, Wilkinson brings millennia of history into view.**
Author: Xinran
File Type: mobi
China Witness is an extraordinary work of oral history that illuminates the diverse ways in which the Chinese perceive and understand their own history. Xinran, the acclaimed author of The Good Women of China and Sky Burial, traveled across China in 2005 and 2006, seeking out the nations grandparents and great-grandparents, the men and women who have experienced, firsthand, the vast changes of the modern era. In cities and remote villages, Xinran spoke with members of these generations from all tiers of society, interviewing them for the first and perhaps the last time. Although many of them feared repercussions for speaking freely, they spoke to Xinran with stunning candor about their hopes, fears, and struggles, and about what they have witnessed from the Long March to land reform, from Mao to marriage, from revolution to Westernization. While the West has commonly viewed the last one hundred years in China through the single narrative lens of Maos rise and rule, the experience of this same period for the Chinese themselves has been infinitely more complex. In the same way that Studs Terkels Working and Tom Brokaws The Greatest Generation gave us the essence of very particular times, China Witness gives us the essence of modern Chinaa portrait more intimate, nuanced, and revelatory than any we have had before.From the Hardcover edition.
Author: James Baldwin
File Type: epub
Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwins now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart. **