front cover of Masaniello
Masaniello
The Life and Afterlife of a Neapolitan Revolutionary
Silvana D'Alessio
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
This is a translation and new edition of Masaniello. La sua vita e il mito in Europa (Rome, 2007), the first historical biography of the leader of the revolt that broke out in Naples in 1647–48. Initially, its main objectives were the cancellation of the many taxes introduced in previous decades and a political reform that would allow the people to have their voice in the civic parliament. Thanks to Masaniello, the Neapolitans were able to compel the Spanish viceroy to sign new ‘capitoli’ (popular desiderata) but soon after, Masaniello was isolated by his main counselor, Giulio Genoino, and others, and ultimately abandoned to a tragic fate. From the moment of his death, a fascinating new life began in which Masaniello was exalted and condemned in many texts (historical volumes, plays, and even a dialogue with Wilhelm Tell) until, by the Risorgimento, he was remembered as an Italian hero.
[more]

front cover of Neurofilmology of the Moving Image
Neurofilmology of the Moving Image
Gravity and Vertigo in Contemporary Cinema
Adriano D'Aloia
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
A walk suspended in mid-air, a fall at breakneck speed towards a fatal impact with the ground, an upside-down flip into space, the drift of an astronaut in the void… Analysing a wide range of films, this book brings to light a series of recurrent aesthetic motifs through which contemporary cinema destabilizes and then restores the spectator’s sense of equilibrium. The ‘tensive motifs’ of acrobatics, fall, impact, overturning, and drift reflect our fears and dreams, and offer imaginary forms of transcendence of the limits of our human condition, along with an awareness of their insurmountable nature. Adopting the approach of ‘Neurofilmology’—an interdisciplinary method that puts filmology, perceptual psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive neuroscience into dialogue—, this book implements the paradigm of embodied cognition in a new ecological epistemology of the moving-image experience.
[more]

front cover of Transformations of Identity and Society in Anglo-Saxon Essex
Transformations of Identity and Society in Anglo-Saxon Essex
A Case Study of an Early Medieval North Atlantic Community
Alexander D. Mirrington
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Transformations of Identity and Society in Anglo-Saxon Essex: A Case Study of an Early Medieval North Atlantic Community presents the results of a comprehensive archaeological study of early medieval Essex (c.AD 400-1066). This region provides an important case study for examining coastal societies of north-western Europe.Drawing on a wealth of new data, the author demonstrates the profound influence of maritime contacts on changing expressions of cultural affiliation. It is argued that this Continental orientation reflects Essex’s longterm engagement with the emergent, dynamic North Sea network. The wide chronological focus and inclusive dataset enables long-term socio-economic continuity and transformation to be revealed. These include major new insights into the construction of group identity in Essex between the 5th and 11th centuries and the identification of several previously unknown sites of exchange. The presentation also includes the first full archaeological study of Essex under ‘Viking’ rule.
[more]

front cover of Korea 1905–1945
Korea 1905–1945
From Japanese Colonialism to Liberation and Independence
Ku Daeyeol
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
This important new study by one of Korea’s leading historians focuses on the international relations of colonial Korea – from the Japanese rule of the peninsula and its foreign relations (1905–1945) to the ultimate liberation of the country at the end of the Second World War. In addition, it fills a significant gap – the ‘blank space’ – in Korean diplomatic history. Furthermore, it highlights several other fundamental aspects in the history of modern Korea, such as the historical perception of the policy-making process and the attitudes of both China and Britain which influenced US policy regarding Korea at the end of World War II.
[more]

front cover of Keeping Family in an Age of Long Distance Trade, Imperial Expansion, and Exile, 1550-1850
Keeping Family in an Age of Long Distance Trade, Imperial Expansion, and Exile, 1550-1850
Heather Dalton
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Keeping Family in an Age of Long Distance Trade, Imperial Expansion and Exile, 1550-1850 brings together eleven original essays by an international group of scholars, each investigating how family, or the idea of family, was maintained or reinvented when husbands, wives, children, apprentices, servants or slaves separated, or faced separation, from their household. The result is a fresh and geographically wide-ranging discussion about the nature of family and its intersection with travel over a three hundred year period during which roles and relationships, within and between households, were increasingly affected by trade, settlement, and empire building. The imperial project may have influenced different regions in different ways at different times yet, as this collection reveals, families, especially those transcending national ties and traditional boundaries were central to its progress. Together, these essays bring new understandings of the foundations of our interconnected world and of the people who contributed to it.
[more]

front cover of Constructing and Representing Territory in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Constructing and Representing Territory in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
Mario Damen
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
In recent political and constitutional history, scholars seldom specify how and why they use the concept of territory. In research on state formation processes and nation building, for instance, the term mostly designates an enclosed geographical area ruled by a central government. Inspired by ideas from political geographers, this book explores the layered and constantly changing meanings of territory in late medieval and early modern Europe before cartography and state formation turned boundaries and territories into more fixed (but still changeable) geographical entities. Its central thesis is that analysing the notion of territory in a premodern setting involves analysing territorial practices: practices that relate people and power to space(s). The book not only examines the construction and spatial structure of premodern territories but also explores their perception and representation through the use of a broad range of sources: from administrative texts to maps, from stained glass windows to chronicles.
[more]

front cover of LGBTQ Film Festivals
LGBTQ Film Festivals
Curating Queerness
Antoine Damiens
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
While scholars have theorized major film festivals, they have ignored smaller, ephemeral, events. In taking seriously minor European and North-American LGBT festivals which often only exist as traces within archival collections, this book revisits festival studies' methodological and theoretical apparatuses. As the first 'critique' of festival studies from within, LGBTQ Film Festivals argues that both festivals and queer film cultures are by definition ephemeral. The book is organized around two concepts: First, 'critical festival studies' examines the political project and disciplinary assumptions that structure festival research. Second, 'the festival as a method' pays attention to festivals' role as producers of knowledge: it argues that festivals are not mere objects of research but also actors already shaping academic, industrial, and popular cinematic knowledge. Drawing on my experience on the festival circuit, this book pays homage to the labour of queer organizers, critics, and scholars and opens up new avenues for festival research.
[more]

front cover of Have I Got Dirt For You
Have I Got Dirt For You
Using Office Gossip to Your Advantage
Dominique Darmon
Amsterdam University Press

front cover of Lives in Transit in Early Modern England
Lives in Transit in Early Modern England
Identity and Belonging
Nandini Das
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
What did it mean in practice to be a ‘go-between’ in the early modern world? How were such figures perceived in sixteenth and seventeenth century England? And what effect did their movement between languages, countries, religions and social spaces – whether enforced or voluntary – have on the ways in which people navigated questions of identity and belonging? Lives in Transit in Early Modern England is a work of interdisciplinary scholarship which examines how questions of mobility and transculturality were negotiated in practice in the early modern world. Its twenty-four case studies cover a wide range of figures from different walks of life and corners of the globe, ranging from ambassadors to Amazons, monarchs to missionaries, translators to theologians. Together, the essays in this volume provide an invaluable resource for people interested in questions of race, belonging, and human identity.
[more]

front cover of Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England
Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England
Nandini Das
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
What did it mean to be a stranger in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England? How were other nations, cultures, and religions perceived? What happened when individuals moved between languages, countries, religions, and spaces? Following the model of Raymond Williams’s classic Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976), Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility analyses a selection of terms that were central to the conceptualisation of identity, race, migration, and transculturality in the early modern period. In many cases, the concepts, preconceptions, and debates that they embody – or sometimes subsume – came to play formative roles in the articulation of identity, rights, and power in subsequent periods. Together, the essays in this volume provide an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the development of issues of identity, belonging, and human mobility.
[more]

front cover of Preparing Data for Sharing
Preparing Data for Sharing
Guide to Social Science Data Archiving
Data Archiving and Networked Services
Amsterdam University Press, 2010

This data guide takes readers through the cycle of social science research, from applying for a research grant, through conducting the data collection phase, and ultimately to preparing the data for deposit in archives or data repositories. An adaptation of the fourth edition of the Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving of 2009 by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan, this publication will help researchers to manage, document, and archive their data and to think broadly about which types of digital content should be deposited in such an archive. 

[more]

front cover of Everywhere Taksim
Everywhere Taksim
Sowing the Seeds for a New Turkey at Gezi
Isabel David
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
In May 2013, a small group of protesters made camp in Istanbul's Taksim Square, protesting the privatisation of what had long been a vibrant public space. When the police responded to the demonstration with brutality, the protests exploded in size and force, quickly becoming a massive statement of opposition to the Turkish regime. This book assembles a collection of field research, data, theoretical analyses, and cross-country comparisons to show the significance of the protests both within Turkey and throughout the world.
[more]

logo for Amsterdam University Press
My Name Is Not Natasha' How Albanian Women in France Use Trafficking to Overcome Social Exclusion (1998-2001)
John Davies
Amsterdam University Press, 2009
This book challenges every common presumption that exists about the trafficking of women for the sex trade. It is a detailed account of an entire population of trafficked Albanian women whose varied experiences, including selling sex on the streets of France, clearly demonstrate how much the present discourse about trafficked women is misplaced and inadequate. The heterogeneity of the women involved and their relationships with various men is clearly presented as is the way women actively created a panoptical surveillance of themselves as a means of self-policing. There is no artificial divide between women who were deceived and abused and those who “choose” sex work; in fact the book clearly shows how peripheral involvement in sex work was to the real agenda of the women involved. Most of the women described in this book were not making economic decisions to escape desperate poverty nor were they the uneducated naïve entrapped into sexual slavery. The women’s success in transiting trafficking to achieve their own goals without the assistance of any outside agency is a testimony to their resilience and resolve.
[more]

front cover of Across the Three Pagodas Pass
Across the Three Pagodas Pass
The Story of the Thai-Burma Railway
Peter Davies
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
This is a translation of the only known detailed account of the building of the notorious 262-mile long Thai-Burma Railway by one of the Japanese professional engineers who was involved in its construction. The author, Yoshihiko Futamatsu, provides an invaluable new source of historical and technical reference that complements the existing large body of literature in English on this subject. Futamatsu’s memoir also includes wide-ranging reflections on the course and conduct of ‘his’ war as well as his engineering and army experiences. The Thai-Burma Railway took eighteen months to build and cost the lives of some 90,000 people (mostly British, Australian, Dutch and American POWs, as well as great numbers of local labourers) out of a total of over 200,000, including some 12-15,000 Japanese who were engaged in the enterprise. The ‘Three Pagodas Pass’ was located at the Thai-Burma frontier. Across the Three Pagodas Pass is edited and introduced by Peter N. Davies who provides the back story to the publication of this book and the key people involved. This is followed by translator Ewart Escritt’s original Introduction to his translation of Futamatsu’s memoir which also includes a detailed account of his own POW experiences as well as his reflections on the war and its outcomes. Many contemporary original drawings, maps and photographs appear in the plate section.
[more]

front cover of Transparency in Population Forecasting
Transparency in Population Forecasting
Methods for Fitting and Projecting Fertility, Mortality and Migration
Joop de Beer
Amsterdam University Press, 2011
To create an accurate population forecast, a forecaster can use a myriad of different methods to assemble his or her data. The transparency of the forecaster’s data and methods is essential, and the forecaster must be able to argue for and explain their assumptions. In this useful book, Joop de Beer specifically investigates how a population’s fertility, life expectancy, and migration patterns can be used to shape a population forecast. He also shows how comparative data, such as the difference between longevity in Europe and Japan, can be helpful when creating population projections. 

[more]

front cover of The Art of Political Framing
The Art of Political Framing
How Politicians Convince Us That They Are Right
Hans de Bruijn
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Politicians employ a wide range of strategies to achieve their goals - and language is one of them. What impact does their language have on us, on their opponents, on the public opinion? If language matters, then the interesting question naturally arises how politicians use language to their advantage? How do they use it to convince us of the truth of their views? These questions take us into the world of political framing, which has attracted a lot of attention in recent times and forms the subject of this book.Framing is obviously not a new phenomenon, nor is it the preserve of right-wing politicians, as is sometimes suggested. The author discusses both old and new examples of framing, as well as various left and right-wing frames. The examples presented in this book have been carefully selected, in the hope that they will not only help you understand the game of framing and reframing but also show you how much impact you can have by using the right words.
[more]

front cover of The Governance of Privacy
The Governance of Privacy
Privacy as Process: The Need for Resilient Governance
Hans de Bruijn
Amsterdam University Press

front cover of Border Communities at the Edge of the Roman Empire
Border Communities at the Edge of the Roman Empire
Processes of Change in the Civitas Cananefatium
Jasper de Bruin
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
In Roman times, the area between the Lower Rhine and the Meuse in the present day province of South Holland in the Netherlands, was known as the administrative district of the community of the Cananefates (the civitas Cananefatium). The formation of this community, as well as the changes that took place within this group, were researched by means of a systematic analysis of the archaeological remains. In order to understand the role of the Roman state in these processes, the urban and military communities were also studied. In this way an overview was created of an administrative region in which aspects such as the interaction between the different groups, the character of the rural community and the differences with other rural groups along the borders of the Roman Empire could be studied.
[more]

logo for Amsterdam University Press
Yugoslav Black Wave
Polemical Cinema in Socialist Yugoslavia (1963–1972)
Greg de Cuir
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
The Yugoslav Black Wave was a controversial and highly contested movement of filmmakers in the 1960s in socialist Yugoslavia—a country situated at the time in a political, cultural, and social middle ground between the communist East and the capitalist West. It remains controversial today, its most provocative films shelved and forgotten—and, in this new era, ripe for rediscovery. This book is the first in English on the Yugoslav Black Wave, and it offers an analysis of the movement, its key players, its sociopolitical engagement, and its place in the larger story of European modernism.
 
[more]

front cover of Capitalist Workingman's Paradises Revisited
Capitalist Workingman's Paradises Revisited
Corporate Welfare Work in Great Britain, the USA, Germany and France in the Golden Age of Capitalism, 1880-1930
Erik de Gier
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
This book offers an in-depth exploration of the international phenomenon of enlightened paternalist capitalism and social engineering in the golden age of capitalism in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Erik de Gier shows how utopian socialist, religious, and craft-based ideas influenced the welfare work and educations programmes offered by paternalistic businesses in different ways from nation to nation, looking closely at sites like the Pullman community in Chicago and Port Sunlight in the UK. De Gier brings the book fully up to date with a brief comparison to contemporary welfare capitalism in our highly flexible working world.
[more]

front cover of Documentary Industrial Novels and the Sociology of Work in the Twentieth Century
Documentary Industrial Novels and the Sociology of Work in the Twentieth Century
The United States, the Soviet Union and Western Europe
Erik de Gier
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
In several European countries, the United States, and the Soviet Union, remarkable industrial novels based on empirical observations were written between 1900 and 1970. With two successive world wars and the rise of communism and fascism, this was an exceptionally turbulent time in the history of industrial capitalism as Taylorism and Fordism sought to increase production and consumption. This social landscape shaped modernist industrial novels. Key themes in these novels were class conflict, bad working conditions, worker alienation, changing workmen and employee cultures, urbanization, and worker migration. The primary goal was to document and publicize the real developments of working conditions in factories and offices, often aiming to influence both company welfare work and state social policies. This book focuses on the modernist industrial novel as written in five large industrial nations: the United States before WWII, the Stalinist Soviet Union, Weimar Germany, post-WWII Italy, and France.
[more]

front cover of World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, Malaysia
World Heritage and Urban Politics in Melaka, Malaysia
A Cityscape below the Winds
Pierpaolo De Giosa
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
This book presents a tale of heritage politics in the Malaysian historical city par excellence. Already celebrated as the first Malay sultanate and an important colonial trading port, Melaka has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2008, on the strength of its multi-ethnic and multi-religious urban fabric. Yet, contrary to the expectations of heritage experts and aficionados, the global mission of safeguarding cultural heritage has become a tumultuous issue on the ground in Melaka. World Heritage and Urban Politics in Malaysia analyses how the World Heritage 'label' is being used by different actors- such as international organizations, nation states, and society at large- to generate new economic revenues and to attract investment for large-scale real estate development projects. In doing so, it reveals the complex and often contradictory stories behind heritage designations in urban milieus.
[more]

front cover of European Security Culture
European Security Culture
Preemption and Precaution in European Security
Marieke de Goede
Amsterdam University Press, 2011

front cover of The Dutch National Research Agenda in perspective
The Dutch National Research Agenda in perspective
A reflection on Research and Science Policy in practice
Beatrice de Graaf
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
The Dutch National Research Agenda is a set of national priorities that are set by scientists working in conjunction with corporations, civil society organisations, and interested citizens. The agenda consolidates the questions that scientific research will be focused on in the coming year. This book covers the current status of the Dutch National Research Agenda and considers what changes and adjustments may need to be made to the process in order to keep Dutch national research at the top of the pack.
[more]

front cover of Research and Practice of Active Learning in Engineering Education
Research and Practice of Active Learning in Engineering Education
Erik de Graaf
Amsterdam University Press, 2005
Since 2001, the international network Active Learning in Engineering education (ALE) organized a series of international workshops on innovation of engineering education. The papers in this book are selected to reflect the state of the art, based on contributions to the 2005 ALE workshop in Holland. This overview of experiences in research and practice aims to be a source of inspiration for engineering educators. This title can be previewed in Google Books - http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9789085550914.
[more]

front cover of Designing Interdisciplinary Education
Designing Interdisciplinary Education
A Practical Handbook for University Teachers
Linda de Greef
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
Now, more than ever, higher education faces the challenge of educating students to see beyond the limits of their own discipline and to come up with innovative integrated solutions to our contemporary problems. Designing Interdisciplinary Education serves as a foothold for interdisciplinary initiatives in higher education, whether it be programmes, minors, courses or extra-curricular activities. It offers accessible guidance and practical advice for university teachers and curriculum leaders who aim to develop, implement and sustain a successful interdisciplinary approach to their teaching at the classroom, course or programme level.The book’s ‘how to’ approach addresses several important topics such as formulating and assessing interdisciplinary learning outcomes, embedding integration in the programme design, the features of an interdisciplinary teacher, interdisciplinary teaching in practice, and didactic methods that nurture interdisciplinary understanding. This handbook incorporates numerous case studies, key advices, and exercises from a variety of interdisciplinary programmes in diverse countries. The ideas elaborated in this handbook are based on the theories and practices used at the I0nstitute for Interdisciplinary Studies, the University of Amsterdam’s knowledge centre for interdisciplinary learning and teaching.
[more]

front cover of New Players, New Game?
New Players, New Game?
The Impact of Emerging Economies on Global Governance
Sijbren de Jong
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
How have emerging economies, such as Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, as well as Indonesia, Turkey and South Korea (or “BRICS+”), affected the international power balance? And to what extent are these countries cooperating strategically on economic, diplomatic, and security matters? The contributors to New Player, New Game? consider the potential for the BRICS+ to fuel the emergence of a bipolar world of ‘the West against the Rest,' thus potentially leading to an increased cost of doing business, reduced chances of promoting human rights, increased diplomatic and military tensions, and a decrease in economic globalization.  
[more]

front cover of China with a Cut
China with a Cut
Globalisation, Urban Youth and Popular Music
Jeroen de Kloet
Amsterdam University Press, 2010
In the wake of intense globalisation and commercialisation in the 1990s, China saw the emergence of a vibrant popular culture. Drawing on sixteen years of research, Jeroen de Kloet explores the popular music industry in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai, providing a fascinating history of its emergence and extensive audience analysis, while also exploring the effect of censorship on the music scene in China.China with a Cut pays particular attention to the dakou culture: so named after a cut nicked into the edge to render them unsellable, these illegally imported Western CDs still play most of the tracks. They also played a crucial role in the emergence of the new music and youth culture. De Kloet’s impressive study demonstrates how the young Chinese cope with the rapid economic and social changes in a period of intense globalisation, and offers a unique insight into the socio-cultural and political transformations of a rising global power.
[more]

front cover of Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China
Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China
Jeroen de Kloet
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
With its emergence as a global power, China aspires to transform from *made in China* to *created in China*. Mobilised as a crucial source for solid growth and *soft power*, creativity has become part of the new China Dream. Boredom, Shanzhai, and Digitisation in the Time of Creative China engages with the imperative of creativity by aligning it to three interrelated phenomena: boredom, shanzhai, and digitisation. How does creativity help mitigate boredom? Does boredom incubate creativity? How do shanzhai practices and the omnipresence of fake goods challenge notions of the original and the authentic? Which spaces for expressions and contestations has China’s fast-developing digital world of Weixin, Taobao, Youku, and Internet Plus Policy opened up? Are new technologies serving old interests? Essays, dialogues, audio-visual documents, and field notes, from thinkers, researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers, examine what is going on in China now, ultimately to tease out its implication to our understanding of *creativity*.
[more]

front cover of Spectacle and the City
Spectacle and the City
Chinese Urbanities in Art and Popular Culture
Jeroen de Kloet
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
As China becomes increasingly modern and urban, artists have responded by imagining the Chinese city at the intersections of the social, material, and political realities of modern life. This volume explores how the city-as-spectacle has been visualized and contested in art and popular culture.  Featuring essays by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, Spectacle and the City is as broad as the terrain it covers: with essays by an interdisciplinary team of experts on Chinese cities, as well as leading cultural critics, it goes beyond mainland China to include cities with cultural significance, such as Singapore and Hong Kong.  
[more]

front cover of Digital Gaming and the Advertising Landscape
Digital Gaming and the Advertising Landscape
Teresa de la Hera
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
The evolution of the game industry and changes in the advertising landscape in recent years have led to a keen interest of marketers in using digital games for advertising purposes. However, despite the increasing interest in this marketing strategy, the potential of digital games as a medium to convey advertising messages remains unexploited.*Digital Gaming and the Advertising Landscape* explores the different ways advertising messages can be embedded within digital games. An interdisciplinary approach is used to help explain how persuasive communication works within digital games. It does so by forging new links within the area of game studies where the emphasis of this book clearly lies, while also taking up new subjects such as design theories and their relation to games as well as how this relationship may be used in a practical context.
[more]

front cover of Persuasive Gaming in Context
Persuasive Gaming in Context
Teresa de La Hera
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
The rapid developments of new communication technologies have facilitated the popularization of digital games, which has translated into an exponential growth of the game industry in the last decades. The ubiquitous presence of digital games has resulted in an expansion of the applications of these games from mere entertainment purposes to a great variety of serious purposes. In this edited volume, we narrow the scope of attention by focusing on what game theorist Ian Bogost has called "persuasive games", that is, gaming practices that combine the dissemination of information with attempts to engage players in particular attitudes and behaviors. This volume offers a multifaceted reflection on persuasive gaming, that is, on the process of these particular games being played by players. The purpose is to better understand when and how digital games can be used for persuasion, by further exploring persuasive games and some other kinds of persuasive playful interaction as well. The book critically integrates what has been accomplished in separate research traditions to offer a multidisciplinary approach to understanding persuasive gaming that is closely linked to developments in the industry by including the exploration of relevant case studies.
[more]

front cover of Playful Identities
Playful Identities
The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures
Michiel de Lange
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
In this edited volume, eighteen scholars examine the increasing role of digital media technologies in identity constructionthrough play. Going beyond computer games, this interdisciplinary collection argues that present-day play and games are not only appropriate metaphors for capturing postmodern human identities, but are in fact the means by which people create their identity. From discussions of World of Warcraft and Foursquare to digital cartographies, the combined essays form a groundbreaking volume that features the most recent insights in play and game studies, media research, and identity studies.
[more]

front cover of Music of the Twentieth Century
Music of the Twentieth Century
Ton de Leeuw
Amsterdam University Press, 2005
Ton de Leeuw was a truly groundbreaking composer. As evidenced by his pioneering study of compositional methods that melded Eastern traditional music with Western musical theory, he had a profound understanding of the complex and often divisive history of twentieth-century music. Now his renowned chronicle Music of the Twentieth Century is offered here in a newly revised English-language edition.
Music of the Twentieth Century goes beyond a historical survey with its lucid and impassioned discussion of the elements, structures, compositional principles, and terminologies of twentieth-century music. De Leeuw draws on his experience as a composer, teacher, and music scholar of non-European music traditions, including Indian, Indonesian, and Japanese music, to examine how musical innovations that developed during the twentieth century transformed musical theory, composition, and scholarly thought around the globe.
[more]

front cover of Planetary Cinema
Planetary Cinema
Film, Media and the Earth
Tiago de Luca
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
The story is now familiar. In the late 1960s humanity finally saw photographic evidence of the Earth in space for the first time. According to this narrative, the impact of such images in the consolidation of a planetary consciousness is yet to be matched. This book tells a different story. It argues that this narrative has failed to account for the vertiginous global imagination underpinning the media and film culture of the late nineteenth century and beyond. Panoramas, giant globes, world exhibitions, photography and stereography: all promoted and hinged on the idea of a world made whole and newly visible. When it emerged, cinema did not simply contribute to this effervescent globalism so much as become its most significant and enduring manifestation. Planetary Cinema proposes that an exploration of that media culture can help us understand contemporary planetary imaginaries in times of environmental collapse. Engaging with a variety of media, genres and texts, the book sits at the intersection of film/media history and theory/philosophy, and it claims that we need this combined approach and expansive textual focus in order to understand the way we see the world.
[more]

front cover of Economy Studies
Economy Studies
A Guide to Rethinking Economics Education
Sam de Muijnck
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
The Economy Studies project emerged from the worldwide movement to modernise economics education, spurred on by the global financial crisis of 2008, the climate crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. It envisions a wide variety of economics graduates and specialists, equipped with a broad toolkit, enabling them to collectively understand and help tackle the issues the world faces today. This is a practical guide for (re-)designing economics courses and programs. Based on a clear conceptual framework and ten flexible building blocks, this handbook offers refreshing ideas and practical suggestions to stimulate student engagement and critical thinking across a wide range of courses. Key features Adapting Existing Courses: Plug-and-play suggestions to improve existing economics courses with attention to institutions, history, values and practical skills. Teaching materials: A guide through the rapidly growing range of innovative textbooks and other teaching materials. Example Courses and Curricula: How to design pluralist, real-world economics education within the practical limits of time and resources. The companion website, www.economystudies.com, contains a wealth of additional resources, such as tailor-made booklets for more specific audiences, additional teaching materials and links to plug-and-play syllabi and courses, and opportunities for workshops and exchange with other economics educators.
[more]

front cover of Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology
Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology
Perspectives and Prospects
Jos de Mul
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) was one of the founders of philosophical anthropology, and his book The Stages of the Organic and Man, first published in 1928, has inspired generations of philosophers, biologists, social scientists, and humanities scholars. This volume offers the first substantial introduction to Plessner’s philosophical anthropology in English, not only setting it in context with such familiar figures as Bergson, Cassirer, and Merleau-Ponty, but also showing Plessner’s relevance to contemporary discussions in a wide variety of fields in the humanities and sciences.
[more]

front cover of Colonial Memory
Colonial Memory
Contemporary Women’s Travel Writing in Britain and The Netherlands
Sarah De Mul
Amsterdam University Press, 2011

Exploring the intersections of memory, gender, and the postcolonial, Colonial Memory explores the phenomenon of colonial memory through the specific genre of women’s travel writing. Building on criticism of memory and travel writing, Sarah De Mul seeks to open Dutch literature to postcolonial themes and concepts and to insert the history of the Dutch colonies and its critical recollection into the traditionally Anglophone-dominated field of postcolonial studies.

“A vividly conceived and theoretically astute reading of the complicated weavings between the past and present involved in memory work and the process of nostalgic return.”—Elleke Boehmer, University of Oxford
[more]

front cover of Urban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800-1100
Urban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800-1100
Christian de Pee
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
In the eleventh century, the cities of the Song Empire (960-1279) emerged into writing. Literati in prior centuries had looked away from crowded streets, but literati in the eleventh century found beauty in towering buildings and busy harbors. Their purpose in writing the city was ideological. On the written page, they tried to establish a distinction that eluded them in the avenues and to discern an immanent pattern in the movement of people, goods, and money. By the end of the eleventh century, however, they recognized that they had failed in their efforts. They had lost the Way in the city. Urban Life and Intellectual Crisis in Middle-Period China, 800-1100 reveals the central place of urban life in the history of the eleventh century. Important developments in literary innovation and monetary policy, in canonical exegesis and civil engineering, in financial reform and public health, converge in this book as they converged in the city.
[more]

front cover of A Tiny Spot on the Earth
A Tiny Spot on the Earth
The Political Culture of the Netherlands in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Piet de Rooy
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
In this survey of the Dutch political culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Piet de Rooy reveals that the 'polder model' often used to describe economic and social policymaking based on consensus is a myth. Instead, modern political culture in the Dutch Low Countries began with a revolution and is rife with rivalries among political and ideological factions. De Rooy argues that because of its extremely open economy, the country is vulnerable to external political, cultural, and economic pressures, and Dutch politics is a balancing act between profiting from international developments and maintaining sovereignty. The sudden rise of populism and Euroscepticism at the turn of the millennium, then, indicated a loss of this balance. Shining new light on the political culture of the Netherlands, this book provides insights into the polder model and the principles of pillarization in Dutch society.The Dutch edition of this book, Ons stipje op de wereldkaart, was awarded the Prinsjesboekenprijs for the best book on Dutch national politics in 2014.
[more]

front cover of Film Festivals
Film Festivals
From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia
Marijke de Valck
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
The film festival has come a long way from its relatively humble origins in Venice in 1932—when nine nations presented twenty-five feature films screened in an open-air cinema where men had to adhere to standards of formal evening attire. Hugely popular events that attract diverse lovers of cinema worldwide, today’s most famous film festivals—Cannes, Berlin, Venice, and Rotterdam—continue the story of a phenomenon that began in the midst of geopolitical disputes in war-torn Europe. Film Festivals shows how these festivals turned impediments into advantages and developed a successful global network that addresses issues as diverse as programming and prizes, national legitimation, city marketing, cinephilia, glamour, and audience. Discussing the festival as a media event and looking closer at various festival visitors, this volume also questions whether “successful” is in fact the appropriate term for understanding developments that could be considered dogmatic in their insistence on framing filmmakers as auteurs and films as belonging to “new waves.” An essential title for everyone interested in the culture, politics, and history that surround the celebration of cinema, Film Festivals proves that the movies are still our greatest—and most fêted—escape
[more]

front cover of Cinephilia
Cinephilia
Movies, Love and Memory
Marijke de Valck
Amsterdam University Press, 2005
They obsess over the nuances of a Douglas Sirk or Ingmar Bergman film; they revel in books such as François Truffaut's Hitchcock; they happily subscribe to the Sundance Channel—they are the rare breed known as cinephiles. Though much has been made of the classic era of cinephilia from the 1950s to the 1970s, Cinephilia documents the latest generation of cinephiles and their use of new technologies. With the advent of home theaters, digital recording devices, online film communities, cinephiles today pursue their dedication to film outside of institutional settings. A radical new history of film culture, Cinephilia breaks new ground for students and scholars alike.
[more]

front cover of Tantalisingly Close
Tantalisingly Close
An Archaeology of Communication Desires in Discourses of Mobile Wireless Media
Imar de Vries
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
While studies of mobile wireless communication devices usually focus on their social implications, De Vries proposes to venture into a more historical and comparative direction to shed light on our preoccupation with them in the first place. He constructs an archaeological view of the development of communication technologies over the past 200 years, providing a comprehensive account of how persistent hopes and beliefs have come to give mobile wireless media such a prominent position today. Our expectations and uses of them are surprisingly similar to those of older media; consequently, they reconfirm the idea that living in an ‘anyone, anything, anytime, anywhere’ world is both a blessing and a curse, and that the desire for sublime communication is a tragic yet highly powerful regulative principle in our media evolution.
[more]

front cover of 80 Years of Research at the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (1914-1994)
80 Years of Research at the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (1914-1994)
The Role of the Nat. Lab. at Philips
Marc J. de Vries
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
Since World War I, the Natuurkundig Laboratorium has been a crucial center of industrial research for Philips, one of the world’s largest electronics companies. In this study, Marc J. de Vries demonstrates how the history of the laboratory can help us understand important changes in the production and uses of technology in the twentieth century. 

Breaking their study into three periods, each characterized by different research goals and approaches, the authors augment this general history with detailed case studies. The result will be of value to anyone studying the history and philosophy of technology.

[more]

front cover of Imagining Global Amsterdam
Imagining Global Amsterdam
History, Culture, and Geography in a World City
Marco de Waard
Amsterdam University Press, 2012

Imagining Global Amsterdambrings together new essays on the image of Amsterdam as articulated in film, literature, art, and urban discourse, considered within the context of globalization and its impact on urban culture. Subjects include: Amsterdam’s place in global cultural memory; expressions of global consciousness in Amsterdam in the ‘Golden Age’; articulations of Amsterdam as a tolerant, multicultural, and permissive ‘global village’; and globalization’s impact ‘on the ground’ through city branding, the cultural heritage industry, and cultural production in the city.

Written by an interdisciplinary team of scholars, and united by a broad humanities approach, this collection forms a multifaceted inquiry into the dynamic relationship between Amsterdam, globalization, and the urban imaginary.

[more]

front cover of Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800-1600
Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800-1600
Hilde De Weerdt
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
Based on a collaboration between historians of Chinese and European politics, this volume offers a first comprehensive overview of current research on political communication in middle-period European and Chinese history. The chapters present new work on the sources and processes of political communication in European and Chinese history partly through juxtaposing and combining formerly separate historiographies and partly through direct comparison. Contrary to earlier comparative work on empires and state formation, which aimed to explain similarities and differences with encompassing models and new theories of divergence, the goal is to further conversations between historians by engaging regional historiographies from the bottom up.
[more]

front cover of The Art of Military Coercion
The Art of Military Coercion
Why the West's Military Superiority Scarcely Matters
Rob de Wijk
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
The United States spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. And Western nations in general spend far more than developing nations around the globe. Yet when Western nations have found themselves in conflicts in recent decades, their performance has been mixed at best. In his fully updated new edition of The Art of Military Coercion, Rob de Wijk presents a theory on the use of force. He argues that the key is a failure to use force decisively, to properly understand the dynamics of conflict and balance means and ends. Without that ability, superiority of dollars, numbers, and weaponry won't necessarily translate to victory.
[more]

front cover of Power Politics
Power Politics
How China and Russia Reshape the World
Rob de Wijk
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
We tend to think of ourselves as living in a time when nations, for the most part, obey the rule of law - and where they certainly don't engage in the violent grabs for territory that have characterised so much of human history. But as Rob de Wijk shows in this book, power politics very much remains a force on the international scene. Offering analyses of such actions as Putin's annexation of the Crimea and China's attempts to claim large parts of the South China Sea, de Wijk explains why power politics never truly went away-and why, as the West's position weakens, it's likely to play a bigger and bigger role on the global stage in the coming years.
[more]

front cover of The Pop Theology of Videogames
The Pop Theology of Videogames
Producing and Playing with Religion
Lars de Wildt
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
Young people in the West are more likely to encounter religion in videogames than in places of worship like churches, mosques or temples. Lars de Wildt interviews developers and players of games such as Assassin’s Creed to find out how and why the Pop Theology of Videogames is so appealing to modern audiences. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book argues that developers of videogames and their players engage in a ‘Pop Theology’ through which laymen reconsider traditional questions of religion by playing with them. Games allow us to play with religious questions and identities in the same way that children play at being a soldier, or choose to ‘play house.’ This requires a radical rethinking of religious questions as no longer just questions of belief or disbelief; but as truths to be tried on, compared, and discarded at will.
[more]

front cover of Translingualism, Translation and Caribbean Poetry
Translingualism, Translation and Caribbean Poetry
Mother Tongue Has Crossed the Ocean
Hilda de Windt Ayoubi
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
Linguists estimate that there are around 7,000 languages in the world, but many are under threat. Translingualism, Translation and Caribbean Poetry is a multi-language poetry collection comprising over fifty translations of Curaçao poet Hilda de Windt Ayoubi’s ‘Lenga di mama’ (‘Mother Tongue’), alongside three additional poems each providing a different perspective on the mother tongue. De Windt Ayoubi’s sharp and socially charged poetry has inspired translations from across the world; collected here for the first time, they serve to protect the native languages and cultures – particularly the minority languages – of their translators, who range from expert linguists to speakers of underrepresented languages. In his accompanying essay, Pieter Muysken considers the role of translation in addressing this urgent cultural concern, discussing language loss and revitalization, bilingual translations and mass translations. Complete with maps, language profiles, and the poet’s personal interviews, this collection explores the emotional, cultural and intellectual importance of language conservation through poetry.
[more]

front cover of Making Shift Happen
Making Shift Happen
Directing Impact
Margareth de Wit
Amsterdam University Press

front cover of Outlawry, Liminality, and Sanctity in the Literature of the Early Medieval North Atlantic
Outlawry, Liminality, and Sanctity in the Literature of the Early Medieval North Atlantic
Jeremy DeAngelo
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
In reality, medieval outlaws were dangerous, desperate individuals. In the fiction of the Middle Ages, however, the possibilities afforded by their position on societies’ margins granted them the ability to fill a number of transitory, transgressive roles: young adventurer, freedom fighter, and even saint. Outlawry, Liminality, and Sanctity in the Literature of the Early Medieval North Atlantic examines the development of the literary outlaw in the early Middle Ages, when traditions drawn from Anglo-Saxon England, early Christian Ireland, and Viking Age Iceland informed a generous view of itinerant criminality and facilitated the application of outlaw tropes to moral questions of conduct in both secular and religious life. Taken together, the traditions of the North Atlantic archipelago reveal a world of interconnected cultures with an expansive view of movement across boundaries both literal and conceptual, capable of finding value in unlikely places and countenancing the challenges presented by such discoveries.
[more]

front cover of Cycling Pathways
Cycling Pathways
The Politics and Governance of Dutch Cycling Infrastructure, 1920-2020
Henk-Jan Dekker
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
In an effort to fight climate change, many cities try to boost their cycling levels. They often look towards the Dutch for guidance. However, historians have only begun to uncover how and why the Netherlands became the premier cycling country of the world. Why were Dutch cyclists so successful in their fight for a place on the road? Cycling Pathways explores the long political struggle that culminated in today’s high cycling levels. Delving into the archives, it uncovers the important role of social movements and shows in detail how these interacted with national, provincial, and urban engineers and policymakers to govern the distribution of road space and construction of cycling infrastructure. It discusses a wide range of topics, ranging from activists to engineering committees, from urban commuters to recreational cyclists and from the early 1900s to today in order to uncover the long and all-but-forgotten history of Dutch cycling governance.
[more]

logo for Amsterdam University Press
Abduction, Marriage, and Consent in the Late Medieval Low Countries
Chanelle Delameillieure
Amsterdam University Press

front cover of Framing Power in Visigothic Society
Framing Power in Visigothic Society
Discourses, Devices, and Artifacts
Eleonora Dell' Elicine
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
This volume examines how power was framed in Visigothic society and how a diverse population with a complex and often conflicting cultural inheritance was thereby held together as a single kingdom. Indeed, through this dynamic process a new, early medieval society emerged. Understanding this transformation is no simple matter, as it involved the deployment of an array of political and cultural resources: the production of knowledge, the appropriation of Patristic literature, controlling and administering rural populations, reconceptualizing the sacred, capital punishment and exile, controlling the manufacture of currency, and defining Visigothic society in relation to other polities such as the neighbouring Byzantine state. In order to achieve an analysis of these different phenomena, this volume brings together researchers from a variety of disciplines. This interdisciplinary approach therefore expands the available sources and reformulates topics of traditional scholarship in order to engage with a renewal of Visigothic Studies and reformulate the paradigm of study itself. As a result, this volume rethinks frameworks of power in the Peninsula along not only historical and archaeological but also anthropological terms, presenting the reader with a new understanding of Iberian society as a whole.
[more]

front cover of Global Diffusion of Protest
Global Diffusion of Protest
Riding the Protest Wave in the Neoliberal Crisis
Donatella della Porta
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
Recent years have seen a new development in the growth and spread of popular protest: protests that began as local, homogeneous events-such as Occupy Wall Street or the protests of the Arab Spring-quickly left their original locations and local specificity behind and became global. This book looks at the development of this wave of protests, with an eye on protests against austerity and neoliberal economic policies, and offers a global view, covering events in Turkey, Brazil, Venezuela, South Africa, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and other locations.
[more]

front cover of Images of Dutchness
Images of Dutchness
Popular Visual Culture, Early Cinema and the Emergence of a National Cliché, 1800-1914
Sarah Dellmann
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
Why do early films present the Netherlands as a country full of canals and windmills, where people wear traditional costumes and wooden shoes, while industries and modern urban life are all but absent? Images of Dutchness investigates the roots of this visual repertoire from diverse sources, ranging from magazines to tourist brochures, from anthropological treatises to advertising trade cards, stereoscopic photographs, picture postcards, magic lantern slide sets and films of early cinema.This richly illustrated book provides an in-depth study of the fascinating corpus of popular visual media and their written comments that are studied for the first time. Through the combined analysis of words and images, the author identifies not only what has been considered Ÿtypically DutchŒ in the long nineteenth century, but also provides new insights into the logic and emergence of national clichés in the Western world.
[more]

front cover of Reading Memory Sites Through Signs
Reading Memory Sites Through Signs
Hiding into Landscape
Cristina Demaria
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
What can space tell us about our past? Which stories do memory sites narrate? Which memories do they transmit? And, more importantly, how can we read their meanings? Semiotics can provide us with a homogeneous, shareable and theoretically sound methodology to analyse space within a comparable and common frame of reference for scholars of memory studies and traumatic heritage, as well as for historians, architects and museum curators. The book describes in clear and understandable language the main semiotic concepts that can be used to analyse space, illustrating them with carefully chosen case studies of memory spaces – monuments, museums, post-war urban restoration, filmed and virtual space – in order to show the applicability and efficacy of a semiotic methodology.
[more]

front cover of Villa Landscapes in the Roman North
Villa Landscapes in the Roman North
Economy, Culture and Lifestyles
Ton Derks
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
This edited volume presents a synthesis of recent research on villas and villa landscapes in the northern provinces of the Roman world. It offers an original, multi-dimensional perspective on the social, economic and cultural functioning of villas within the context of the Roman empire. Themes discussed include the economic basis of villa dominated landscapes, rural slavery, town-country dynamics, the role of monumental burials in villa landscapes, and self-representation and lifestyle of villa owners. This study offers a major contribution to the comparative research of villa landscapes and the phenomenon of regionality in Roman rural landscapes.Amsterdam Archaeological Studies is a series devoted to the study of past human societies from the prehistory up into modern times, primarily based on the study of archaeological remains. The series will include excavation reports of modern fieldwork; studies of categories of material culture; and synthesising studies with broader images of past societies, thereby contributing to the theoretical and methodological debates in archaeology.
[more]

front cover of Making Media
Making Media
Production, Practices, and Professions
Mark Deuze
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Making Media uncovers what it means and what it takes to make media, focusing on the lived experience of media professionals within the global media, including rich case studies of the main media industries and professions: television, journalism, social media entertainment, advertising and public relations, digital games, and music. This carefully edited volume features 35 authoritative essays by 53 researchers from 14 countries across 6 continents, all of whom are at the cutting edge of media production studies. The book is particularly designed for use in coursework on media production, media work, media management, and media industries.Specific topics highlighted:the history of media industries and production studies; production studies as a field and a research method; changing business models, economics, and management; global concentration and convergence of media industries and professions; the rise and role of startups and entrepreneurship; freelancing in the digital age; the role of creativity and innovation; the emotional quality of media work; diversity and inequality in the media industries.
[more]

logo for Amsterdam University Press
Bishops, Community and Authority in Late Roman Society
Northwestern Hispania, c. 370-470 C.E.
Rebecca Devlin
Amsterdam University Press

front cover of Visualizing the Street
Visualizing the Street
New Practices of Documenting, Navigating and Imagining the City
Pedram Dibazar
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
From user-generated images of streets to professional architectural renderings, and from digital maps and drone footages to representations of invisible digital ecologies, this collection of essays analyses the emergent practices of visualizing the street. Today, advancements in digital technologies of the image have given rise to the production and dissemination of imagery of streets and urban realities in multiple forms. The ubiquitous presence of digital visualizations has in turn created new forms of urban practice and modes of spatial encounter. Everyone who carries a smartphone not only plays an increasingly significant role in the production, editing and circulation of images of the street, but also relies on those images to experience urban worlds and to navigate in them. Such entangled forms of image-making and image-sharing have constructed new imaginaries of the street and have had a significant impact on theways in which contemporary and future streets are understood, imagined, documented, navigated, mediated and visualized.Visualizing the Street investigates the social and cultural significance of these new developments at the intersection of visual culture and urban space. The interdisciplinary essays provide new concepts, theories and research methods that combine close analyses of street images and imaginaries with the study of the practices of their production and circulation. The book covers a wide range of visible and invisible geographies — From Hong Kong’s streets to Rio’s favelas, from Sydney’s suburbs to London’s street markets, and from Damascus’ war-torn streets to Istanbul’s sidewalks — and engages with multiple ways in which visualizations of the street function to document street protests and urban change, to build imaginaries of urban communities and alternate worlds, and to help navigate streetscapes.
[more]

front cover of Human Evolution and Development
Human Evolution and Development
Nico M. van Straalen Dick Roelofs
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Our understanding of human evolution is proceeding at an unprecedented rate over the last years due to spectacular fossil finds, reconstructions based on genome comparison, ancient DNA sequencing and new insights into developmental genetics. This book takes an integrative approach in which the development of the human embryo, the evolutionary history of our body, the structure of human populations, their dispersal over the world and their cultures are examined by integrating paleoanthropology, developmental biology, comparative zoology, population genetics and phylogenetic reconstruction.
The authors discuss questions like: - What do we know about ancient humans? - What happens in the development of an embryo? - How did we manage to walk upright and why did we lose our hair? - What is the relationship between language, migration and evolution? - How does our body respond to the challenges of modern society?
In addition to being a core text for the study of the life sciences, Human Evolution and Development is an easy-to-read overview for the interested layperson.
[more]

front cover of Rembrandt and his Circle
Rembrandt and his Circle
Insights and Discoveries
Stephanie Dickey
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
This collection brings together art historians, museum professionals, conservators, and conservation scientists whose work involves Rembrandt van Rijn and associated artists such as Gerrit Dou, Jan Lievens, and Ferdinand Bol. The range of subjects considered is wide: from the presentation of convincing evidence that Rembrandt and his contemporary Frans Hals rubbed elbows in the Amsterdam workshop of Hendrick Uylenburgh to critical reassessments of the role of printmaking in Rembrandt's studio, his competition with Lievens as a landscape painter, his reputation as a collector, and much more. Developed from a series of international conferences devoted to charting new directions in Rembrandt research, these essays illuminate the current state of Rembrandt studies and suggest avenues for future inquiry."Skilfully chosen and edited by Stephanie Dickey, these papers were presented at the highly successful conferences on Rembrandt and his pupils held at Herstmonceaux Castle in recent years. This is cutting-edge Rembrandt scholarship full of valuable insights and new discoveries." -- Christopher Brown, Professor of Netherlandish Art, University of Oxford"[This book] contains a wealth of fresh and lucidly argued insights, not only into Rembrandt's art, thinking and practice: notably, a significant place is reserved for such artists as Jan Lievens, Ferdinand Bol, Gerrit Dou, Johannes van Vliet and, unexpectedly, Frans Hals. In these thoughtful reflections on the artist and his milieu, the reader will find many generally accepted notions critically revised." - Eric Jan Sluijter, emeritus professor of Art History at the University of Amsterdam
[more]

front cover of Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy
An Introduction
Cock Dieleman
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
The image of the dramaturg resembling a stuffy librarian, as opposed to the largely intuitive process of theatre making, belongs to the past. Contemporary theatre performances not only tell a story, but constantly reflect on the world in which that story takes place and is shown. As a result, dramaturgy has become part of the artistic process. Thus everybody involved in a theatre production is concerned with dramaturgical thinking, i.e. how to relate to material, process, audience and society. The dramaturg crosses borders between theory and practice, between theatre makers, performance and audience.

Dramaturgy. An Introduction provides a broad overview of the concept of dramaturgy and the profession of the dramaturg. It is intended for students and teachers of theatre and performance studies, but also for directors, scenographers, actors and for all lovers of theatre.
[more]

front cover of Navigating Reformed Identity in the Rural Dutch Republic
Navigating Reformed Identity in the Rural Dutch Republic
Communities, Belief, and Piety
Kyle Dieleman
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
Through an examination of Dutch Reformed church records and theological texts, Kyle Dieleman explores the local dynamics of religious life in the early modern Dutch Republic. The book argues that within the religiously plural setting of the Dutch Republic church officials used a variety of means to establish a Reformed identity in their communities. As such, the book explores the topics of church orders, elders and deacons, intra-confessional and inter-confessional conflicts, and Sabbath observance as local means by which small, rural communities negotiated and experienced their religious lives. In exploring rural Dutch Reformed congregations, the book examines the complicated relationships between theology and practice and ‘lay’ and ‘elite’ religion and highlights challenges rural churches faced. As they faced these issues, Dieleman demonstrates that local congregations exercised agency within their lived religious experiences as they sought unique ways to navigate their own Reformed identity within their small, rural communities.
[more]

front cover of The Rhythm of Strategy
The Rhythm of Strategy
A Corporate Biography of the Salim Group of Indonesia
Marleen Dieleman
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
The Rhythm of Strategy provides a richly documented analysis of the Salim Group, one of the largest family conglomerates in Southeast Asia. Set up by Liem Sioe Liong, a Chinese emigrant, the Salim Group evolved from a small trading venture in colonial Java into one of the largest diversified businesses on the Asian continent. While the Salim Group is generally reluctant to provide information on its strategy to the general public, this volume proposes that the conglomerate’s strategy oscillates between a business model built on connections and a professional model adapted to markets. Dismissing the view that the group is a typical Chinese ethnic firm—in which the cultural values of the founding family influences corporate behavior—The Rhythm of Strategy argues that the group’s strategy made sense in the evolving institutional context of Indonesia, which is characterized by high transaction costs, corruption, political risk, and ample business opportunities to cater to a large and rapidly growing consumer base.
[more]

front cover of Feminisms and Contemporary Art in Indonesia
Feminisms and Contemporary Art in Indonesia
Defining Experiences
Wulandani Dirgantoro
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
While Indonesian contemporary art is currently on the rise on the international art scene, there hasn't yet been an in-depth study of the works of Indonesian women artists and the feminist strategies they employ within the art world. This book fills that gap, presenting the first comprehensive study of feminisms and contemporary art in Indonesia; using feminist readings to analyse the works of Indonesian women artists historically and today; illuminating the sociocultural contexts in which they have worked; and offering a nuanced understanding of local feminisms in the nation.
[more]

logo for Amsterdam University Press
Monstrosity, Bodies, and Knowledge in Early Modern England
Curiosity to See and Behold
Whitney Dirks
Amsterdam University Press

front cover of Medical Case Studies (Consilia medica) of the Early Modern Period
Medical Case Studies (Consilia medica) of the Early Modern Period
Great Pox Documented
Bohdana Divisová
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
Consilia played an important role in not only medieval but also early modern professional health literature. A literary ‘consilium’ consisted of a written statement of one particular case, including the patient's condition and disease as well as advice concerning medical treatment. In the sixteenth century, consilia literature was a common component of the practices of many eminent physicians. This is illustrated through an analysis of consilia from twenty-two different collections and anthologies by fifteen selected authors, who represent university professors, personal physicians, and urban physicians from early modern Italy, France, and German-speaking Central Europe. A closer look at nearly 7,000 consilia shows how important a link they were within the medical community. A detailed view of consilia intended for patients suffering from the ‘French disease’ reveals details about, for instance, the most common treatments for syphilis – mercury and guaiacum – alongside many other interesting and important details.
[more]

front cover of The Learned Eye
The Learned Eye
Regarding Art, Theory, and the Artist's Reputation
Marieke van den Doel
Amsterdam University Press, 2005
Artists of the seventeenth century were known not just for their skill with a brush and canvas, but also for their knowledge of history, poetry, and literature—what was referred to as an oculuseruditus or "learned eye." Rembrandt, for example, was known during his lifetime for mixing his own colors and for his seemingly "rough" and unique manner of texturing his works. He was not simply an artist; he was a teacher and a salesman too—his etchings were hugely popular with his contemporaries.

Rembrandt's "learned eye," his understanding of both the methods and the reality of being an artist, is also visible in the work and lives of other masters like Anthony van Dyck, Frans Hals, and Nicholas Poussin. Contributors to The Learned Eye examine their visions, as well as those of other, more modern artists, all dedicated to the interdisciplinary fields of art, art history, curation, and restoration. Dedicated to the leader of the Rembrandt Research Project, Ernst van de Wetering, The Learned Eye is a superb overview of the artist at work and an exquisite argument for creative and expansive art scholarship.
[more]

front cover of Policies and Practice in Language Learning and Teaching
Policies and Practice in Language Learning and Teaching
20th-century Historical Perspectives
Sabine Doff
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
In contrast with other works on the history of language learning and teaching, this book is innovative in assigning a much more important role to practice and to the reciprocal relationship of policies and practice (rather than investigating top.down processes from policies to practice). The 14 contributions highlight various contexts of language education in the 20th century, combining inside.out (‘emic’) perspectives, drawing on teachers’/learners’ experience within the classroom, and outside.in (‘etic’) perspectives, looking at external factors such as the curriculum or education policies and considering how teachers and learners respond to these. Each chapter starts from one perspective, yet at the same time takes into account the reciprocal effects between the two directions of movement (inside.out / outside.in). This volume asks, how has the practice of language learning and teaching been influenced by policies and context – and vice versa?
[more]

front cover of Engraving Accuracy in Early Modern England
Engraving Accuracy in Early Modern England
Visual Communication and the Royal Society
Meghan Doherty
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
The book traces major concepts including: the creation of the visual effects of accuracy through careful action and training; the development of visual judgment and connoisseurship; the role of a network in the production of knowledge; balancing readers’ expectations with representational conventions; and the effects of acts of collecting on the creation and circulation of knowledge. On the one hand, this study uncovers that approaches to knowledge production were different in the seventeenth century, as compared with in the twenty-first century. On the other, it reveals how the early modern struggle to sort through an overwhelming quantity of visual information - brought on by major changes in image production and circulation - resonates with our own.
[more]

front cover of Modes of Migration Regulation and Control in Europe
Modes of Migration Regulation and Control in Europe
Jeroen Doomernik
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
In Europe, immigration is a politically potent issue—especially when it comes to the treatment of asylum seekers and illegal labor immigrants. This volume draws the reader into the complex and contradictory world of migration regulation and control, covering the wide range of different policy approaches that aim to control the entry and residence of non-EU citizens. Revealing the common framework, tendencies, and policy convergences brought about less by design than a common concern about migration’s impact on the future of the EU, Modes of Migration Regulation and Control in Europe questions the effectiveness of additional efforts in terms of their fiscal and societal costs.
 
“This important book emphasizes that European countries individually and collectively are converging in their efforts to manage migration.”—Philip Martin, University of California, Davis
 
[more]

front cover of Art in Progress
Art in Progress
Maarten Doorman
Amsterdam University Press, 2004
In this challenging essay, Maarten Doorman argues that in art, belief in progress is still relevant, if not essential. The radical freedoms of postmodernism, he claims, have had a crippling effect on art, leaving it in danger of becoming meaningless. Art can only acquire meaning through context; the concept of progress, then, is ideal as the primary criterion for establishing that context. The history of art, in fact, can be seen as a process of constant accumulation, works of art commenting on one another and enriching one another's meanings. It is these complex interrelationships and the progress they create in both art and its observers that Doorman, in a display of great philosophical erudition, defends.
[more]

front cover of Cantankerous Essays
Cantankerous Essays
Musings of a Disillusioned Japanophile
Ronald Dore
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
Prompted by increasing evidence of the world’s shift to the right, not least among the industrialised nations, here is a cri de coeur from almost the last survivor from the post-war crop of European sociologists and scholars of Japanese Studies. After six decades following developments in Japanese society, economy and culture and as a well-known ‘leftie’ – he describes the evolution of his cognitive and evaluative/emotional perceptions of Japan, and explains why he can no longer be described as a Japanophile. To which are added essays on more general issues of the day, such as events in the Ukraine, Iran and Israel. The key words are indeed ‘cantankerous’ (because he is greatly exercised by the ‘conspiracies of silence’ embedded in the culture of modern political and public life); ‘musings’ (because this is not so much a single-focus monograph, rather a collection of spontaneous, but deeply-considered reflections on matters of the moment) and ‘disillusioned’ (both by Japan’s reversion to chauvinistic nationalism, and because, as a youth, he hoped for and expected an enhancement of the role of reason in international affairs.) This will be of special interest to all who know or have accessed the author’s vast literary output relating to Japan; but it also has considerably wider relevance among those who are in any way connected with contemporary society, politics and economics and wish to confront the ‘conspiracy of silence’ within our interdependent world.
[more]

front cover of The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials
The Emotional Life of Contemporary Public Memorials
Towards a Theory of Temporary Memorials
Erika Doss
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
From the commemoration of September 11 to the Holocaust memorial in Berlin to the 2004 unveiling of the National World War II Memorial in Washington D.C., recent decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the number of new public memorials built in both Europe and the United States. This volume considers the contemporary explosion of public commemoration in terms of changed cultural and social practices of mourning, memory, and public feeling. Positing memorials as the physical and visual embodiment of our affective responses to loss, Erika Doss focuses especially on the memorial ephemera of flowers, candles, balloons, and cards placed at sites of tragic death in order to better comprehend how grief is mediated in contemporary commemorative cultures.
[more]

front cover of How Dutch Americans Stayed Dutch
How Dutch Americans Stayed Dutch
Michael J. Douma
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
This study explores Dutch identity in the United States, demonstrating how over time Dutch Americans have remained persistently present as a distinct group, yet at the same time have represented a wide range of perspectives on “Dutchness” itself. Exploring the long history of Dutch identity, Michael J. Douma argues that the very flexibility of the concept of Dutchness has enabled this ethnic group to evolve to meet changing circumstances even as it has allowed Dutch Americans to retain a sense of themselves as fundamentally Dutch.
[more]

front cover of Bernardino Poccetti and the Art of Religious Painting at the End of the Florentine Renaissance
Bernardino Poccetti and the Art of Religious Painting at the End of the Florentine Renaissance
Douglas Dow
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
By almost any measure Bernardino Barbatelli, called Poccetti, was a successful and sought after painter in late sixteenth-century Florence, but his works have remained largely overlooked. This study situates representative examples of his religious painting within their respective contexts to demonstrate how Poccetti and his patrons negotiated the increasingly fraught terrain of sacred painting in the period of religious reform. These case studies demonstrate how patrons ranging from the Dominicans to the Carthusians to prominent Florentine patricians relied on Poccetti’s skill in creating compelling narratives that reflected current concerns within the Catholic world. In the process, Poccetti invoked an august Florentine tradition of fresco painting, shaping it to better address the demands placed on religious imagery at the end of the Renaissance.
[more]

front cover of Beyond Bali
Beyond Bali
Subaltern Citizens and Post-Colonial Intimacy
Ana Dragojlovic
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
This ethnography explores how Balinese citizens produce postcolonial intimacy-a complex interaction of claims to proximity and mutuality between themselves and the Dutch under colonialism that continues today. Such claims, Ana Dragojlovic explains, are crucial for the diasporic reconfiguration of kebalian, or Balinese-ness, a concept that encompasses the personal, social, and cultural complexities involved in Balinese identity in Dutch postcolonial society. This identity enables Balinese migrants to see themselves as carriers of unique cultural traditions both promoted by and in disagreement with Dutch cultural values.
[more]

logo for Amsterdam University Press
The Study of Religion and the Training of Muslim Clergy in Europe
Academic and Religious Freedom in the 21st Century
Willem Drees
Amsterdam University Press, 2007
Religious scholarship can be offensive tobelievers, as conflicts from the time ofGalileo and Spinoza to the recent critiqueof Danish religious scholars in the wake ofthe infamous Muhammad cartoons haveshown. Studies of this type of scholarshiphave been appropriated by believers as ameans of reinventing their own identities– as the training of twentieth-centuryMuslim clergy demonstrates. This volumeoffers a unique collection of training materialsfrom European Muslim clergy sincethe 1940s – including Third Reich reports on debriefing imams, surveillance files onMuslim activists, and information onBosnian clergy and their training centres– as well as an exploration of religion andacademic freedom in general, accompaniedby appendices in both Arabic and English.
[more]

front cover of Contingent Loyalties
Contingent Loyalties
State Agents in the Yunnan Borderlands (1856-1911)
Diana Zhidan Duan
Amsterdam University Press, 2024
From the mid-nineteenth-century Hui rebellions, which challenged centralised state control, to the early-twentieth-century revolutions, which led to Yunnan’s decades-long independence, local actors shaped the history of Yunnan through their extensive cross-border networks and contradictory roles in the attempted state consolidation of this contested area. Among the local elites, the state agents, both Han and non-Han, acted on the state's behalf in the borderlands’ affairs while seeking the balance between the interests of the state and their own communities. The state agents competed with each other while utilising and wresting with the state authorities. The dynamic relationship between the state and local actors created another contested facet of modern Yunnan’s transformation. Competing narratives emerged when local actors negotiated and reconstructed their status within the contemporary Chinese nation-state. Bandits became heroes; separatists became patriots; a vibrant regional center became an isolated, exotic, and marginal province of the People’s Republic of China.
[more]

front cover of Disabled Clerics in the Late Middle Ages
Disabled Clerics in the Late Middle Ages
Un/suitable for Divine Service?
Ninon Dubourg
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
The petitions received and the letters sent by the Papal Chancery during the Late Middle Ages attest to the recognition of disability at the highest levels of the medieval Church. These documents acknowledge the existence of physical and/or mental impairments, with the papacy issuing dispensations allowing some supplicants to adapt their clerical missions according to their abilities. A disease, impairment, or old age could prevent both secular and regular clerics from fulfilling the duties of their divine office. Such conditions can, thus, be understood as forms of disability. In these cases, the Papal Chancery bore the responsibility for determining if disabled people were suitable to serve as clerics, with all the rights and duties of divine services. Whilst some petitioners were allowed to enter the clergy, or – in the case of currently serving churchmen – to stay more or less active in their work, others were compelled to resign their position and leave the clergy entirely. Petitions and papal letters lie at intersection of authorized, institutional policy and practical sources chronicling the lived experiences of disabled people in the Middle Ages. As such, they constitute an excellent analytical laboratory in which to study medieval disability in its relation to the papacy as an institution, alongside the impact of official ecclesiastical judgments on disabled lives.
[more]

front cover of Fish Trade in Medieval North Atlantic Societies
Fish Trade in Medieval North Atlantic Societies
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Human Ecodynamics
Val Dufeu
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
Val Dufeu here reconstructs settlement patterns of fishing communities in Viking Age Iceland and proposes socio-economic and environmental models relevant to any study of the Vikings or the North Atlantic. She integrates written sources, geoarchaeologicaldata, and zooarchaeological data to examine how fishing propelled political change in the North Atlantic. The evolution of survival fishing to internal fish markets to overseas fish trade mirrors wider social changes in the Vikings’ world.
[more]

front cover of Fragments of the Holocaust
Fragments of the Holocaust
The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory
David Duindam
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
Why do we attach so much value to sites of Holocaust memory, if all we ever encounter are fragments of a past that can never be fully comprehended? David Duindam examines how the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theater in Amsterdam used for the registration and deportation of nearly 50,000 Jews, fell into disrepair after World War II before it became the first Holocaust memorial museum of the Netherlands. Fragments of the Holocaust: The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory combines a detailed historical study of the postwar period of this site with a critical analysis of its contemporary presentation by placing it within international debates concerning memory, emotionally fraught heritage and museum studies. A case is made for the continued importance of theHollandsche Schouwburg and other comparable sites, arguing that these will remain important in the future as indexical fragments where new generations can engage with the memory of the Holocaust on a personal and affective level.
[more]

front cover of Antipodean Early Modern
Antipodean Early Modern
European Art in Australian Collections, c. 1200-1600
Anne Dunlop
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
A Prayer Book owned by the Rothschilds, an Italian bronze casket by Antico, a lavishly illustrated Carnival chronicle from sixteenth-century Germany, an altarpiece by Pieter Brueghel the Younger - much of the artwork in this book, held by Australian collections, is essentially unknown beyond the continent. The authors of these essays showcase these extraordinary objects to their full potential,revealing a wide range of contemporary art and historical research. This collection of essays will surprise even specialists.
[more]

front cover of Reconstruction, Replication and Re-enactment in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Reconstruction, Replication and Re-enactment in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Sven Dupré
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Performative methods are playing an increasingly prominent role in research into historical production processes, materials, bodily knowledge and sensory skills, and in forms of education and public engagement in classrooms and museums. This book offers, for the first time, sustained, interdisciplinary reflections on performative methods, variously known as Reconstruction, Replication and Re-enactment (RRR) practices across the fields of history of science, archaeology, art history, conservation, musicology and anthropology. Each of these fields has distinct histories, approaches, tools and research questions. Researchers in the historical disciplines have used reconstructions to learn about the materials and practices of the past, while anthropologists and ethnographers have more often studied the re-enactments themselves, participating in these performances as engaged observers. In this book, authors bring their experiences of RRR practices within their discipline into conversation with RRR practices in other disciplines, providing a basis for interdisciplinary cross-fertilization.
[more]

front cover of The Universe, Life and Everything
The Universe, Life and Everything
Dialogues on our Changing Understanding of Reality
Sarah Durston
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
Our current understanding of our world is nearly 350 years old. It stems from the ideas of Descartes and Newton and has brought us many great things, including modern science and increases in wealth, health and everyday living standards. Furthermore, it is so ingrained in our daily lives that we have forgotten it is a paradigm, not a fact. There are, however, some problems with it. First, there is no satisfactory explanation for why we have consciousness and experience meaning in our lives. Second, modern-day physics tells us that observations depend on characteristics of the observer at the large, cosmic, and small, subatomic scales. Third, ongoing humanitarian and environmental crises show us that our world is vastly interconnected. Our understanding of reality is expanding to incorporate these issues. In The Universe, Life and Everything . . . Dialogues on our Changing Understanding of Reality, some of the scholars at the forefront of this change, from the fields of physics, psychology, and social sciences, discuss the direction it is taking and its urgency.
[more]

front cover of City in Sight
City in Sight
Dutch Dealings with Urban Change
Jan Willem Duyvendak
Amsterdam University Press, 2009

City in Sight presents recent scholarship on the various issues facing today’s Dutch metropolitan areas, including immigration and the growing diversity among the urban population, urban restructuring and neighborhood renewal, shifts in urban governance, and the promotion of active citizenship. With its wealth of information and up-to-date research, this text will appeal to scholars of urban politics and social history from all over the globe.

[more]

front cover of Breaking Down the State
Breaking Down the State
Protestors Engaged
Jan Willem Duyvendak
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
In this important book, Jan Willem Duyvendak and James M. Jasper bring together an internationally acclaimed group of contributors to demonstrate the complexities of the social and political spheres in various areas of public policy. By breaking down the state into the players who really make decisions and pursue coherent strategies, these essays provide new perspectives on the interactions between political protestors and the many parts of the state“from courts, political parties, and legislators to police, armies, and intelligence services. By analyzing politics as the interplay of various players within structured arenas, Breaking Down the State provides an innovative look at law and order versus opposition movements in countries across the globe.
[more]

front cover of Players and Arenas
Players and Arenas
The Interactive Dynamics of Protest
Jan Willem Duyvendak
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
Players and Arenas brings together a diverse group of experts to examine the interactions between political protestors and the many strategic players they encounter, such as cultural institutions, religious organizations, and the mass media“as well as potential allies, competitors, recruits, and funders. Discussing protestors and players as they interact within the arenas of specific social contexts, the essays show that the main constraints on what protestors can accomplish come not from social and political structures, but from other players with different goals and interests. Through a careful treatment of these situations, this volume offers a new way to approach the role of social protest in national and international politics.
[more]

front cover of Policy, People, and the New Professional
Policy, People, and the New Professional
De-professionalisation and Re-professionalisation in Care and Welfare
Jan Willem Duyvendak
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
In recent decades, social and political pressures have forced a reevaluation of the roles of health and welfare professionals throughout Europe. Policy, People, and the New Professional examines those changes and their consequences. 

The volume reveals how public dissatisfaction with caregivers, financial pressures from government agencies, and attempts to cope with Europe’s increasingly multicultural population have led to changes in responsibilities and oversight for a wide range of practitioners. Though more changes are certain to come as Europe’s population ages—Policy, People, and the New Professional provides an essential explanation of the road traveled so far. 

[more]

front cover of New Publication Cultures in the Humanities
New Publication Cultures in the Humanities
Exploring the Paradigm Shift
Péter Dávidházi
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
The changes we have seen in recent years in the scholarly publishing world - including the growth of digital publishing and changes to the role and strategies of publishers and libraries alike - represent the most dramatic paradigm shift in scholarly communications in centuries. This volume brings together leading scholars from across the humanities to explore that transformation and consider the challenges and opportunities it brings.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter