A SCHOLARLY BOOK REPOSITORY
1519 scholarly books by Amsterdam University Press and 113
1519 scholarly books by Amsterdam University Press
113 have author last names that start with M have author last names that start with M
113 have author last names that start with M have author last names that start with M
Divine and Demonic Imagery at Tor de'Specchi, 1400-1500
Religious Women and Art in 15th-century Rome
Suzanne M. Scanlan
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
In the fifteenth century, the Oblates of Santa Francesca Romana, a fledgling community of religious women in Rome, commissioned an impressive array of artwork for their newly acquired living quarters, the Tor de'Specchi. The imagery focused overwhelmingly on the sensual, corporeal nature of contemporary spirituality, populating the walls of the monastery with a highly naturalistic assortment of earthly, divine, and demonic figures. This book draws on art history, anthropology, and gender studies to explore the disciplinary and didactic role of the images, as well as their relationship to important papal projects at the Vatican.
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Redefining Eclecticism in Early Modern Bolognese Painting
Ideology, Practice, and Criticism
Daniel M. Unger
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Redefining Eclecticism in Early Modern Bolognese Painting. Ideology, Practice, and Criticism focuses on the unique nature of early modern Bolognese painting that found its expression in stylistic diversity. The flourishing of different stylistic approaches in the Mannerist paintings of the previous generation evolved, at the turn the seventeenth century, in the work of the Bolognese painters into an approach best described as eclecticism, characterized by the combination of two or more styles in a single work of art. Eclectism was a major innovation and major contribution to the history of art. But it then also became a critical term that suffered much negative press. The book therefore also traces the role of ecclecticism as a concept in the evolution of criticism and scholarship about the Bolognese school of painting over 250 years, showing how the dramatically vacillating attitudes towards this concept shaped the historical view of the Bolognese painters, ultimately having a tremendous dampening impact on our understanding of seventeenth-century art.
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Titian's Allegory of Marriage
New Approaches
Daniel M. Unger
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
This book offers nine new approaches toward a single work of art, Titian’s Allegory of Marriage or Allegory of Alfonso d’Avalos, dated to 1530/5. In earlier references, the painting was named simply Allegory, alluding to its enigmatic nature. The work follows in a tradition of such ambiguous Venetian paintings as Giovanni Bellini’s Sacred Allegory and Giorgione’s Tempest. Throughout the years, Titian’s Allegory has engendered a range of diverse interpretations. Art historians such as Hans Tietze, Erwin Panofsky, Walter Friedlaender, and Louis Hourticq, to mention only a few, promoted various explanations. This book offers novel approaches and suggests new meanings toward a further understanding of this somewhat abstruse painting.
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Collective Memory and the Dutch East Indies
Unremembering Decolonization
Paul M.M. Doolan
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
This book examines the afterlife of decolonization in the collective memory of the Netherlands. It offers a new perspective on the cultural history of representing the decolonization of the Dutch East Indies, and maps out how a contested collective memory was shaped. Taking a transdisciplinary approach and applying several theoretical frames from literary studies, sociology, cultural anthropology and film theory, the author reveals how mediated memories contributed to a process of what he calls “unremembering.” He analyses in detail a broad variety of sources, including novels, films, documentaries, radio interviews, memoires and historical studies, to reveal how five decades of representing and remembering decolonization fed into an unremembering by which some key notions were silenced or ignored. The author concludes that historians, or the historical guild, bear much responsibility for the unremembering of decolonization in Dutch collective memory.
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The Umbrella Movement
Civil Resistance and Contentious Space in Hong Kong
Ngok Ma
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
This volume examines the most spectacular struggle for democracy in post-handover Hong Kong. Bringing together scholars with different disciplinary focuses and comparative perspectives from mainland China, Taiwan and Macau, one common thread that stitches the chapters is the use of first-hand data collected through on-site fieldwork. This study unearths how trajectories can create favourable conditions for the spontaneous civil resistance despite the absence of political opportunities and surveys the dynamics through which the protestors, the regime and the wider public responses differently to the prolonged contentious space. *The Umbrella Movement: Civil Resistance and Contentious Space in Hong Kong* offers an informed analysis of the political future of Hong Kong and its relations with the authoritarian sovereignty as well as sheds light on the methodological challenges and promises in studying modern-day protests.
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The Umbrella Movement
Civil Resistance and Contentious Space in Hong Kong, Revised Edition
Ngok Ma
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
This volume examines the most spectacular struggle for democracy in post-handover Hong Kong. Bringing together scholars with different disciplinary focuses and comparative perspectives from mainland China, Taiwan and Macau, one common thread that stitches the chapters is the use of first-hand data collected through onsite fieldwork. This study unearths how trajectories can create favourable conditions for the spontaneous civil resistance despite the absence of political opportunities and surveys the dynamics through which the protestors, the regime and the wider public responses differently to the prolonged contentious space. The Umbrella Movement: Civil Resistance and Contentious Space in Hong Kong offers an informed analysis of the political future of Hong Kong and its relations with the authoritarian sovereignty as well as sheds light on the methodological challenges and promises in studying modern-day protests. This new edition includes a preface on Hong Kong’s ‘summer of dissent’ in 2019, arguing that the movement’s dynamics and resilience cannot be detached from the learning curve of the protesters and the hidden networks developed after the Umbrella Movement.
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Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia
Ran Ma
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Independent Filmmaking across Borders in Contemporary Asia examines an array of auteur-driven fiction and documentary independent film projects that have emerged since the turn of the millennium from East and Southeast Asia, a strand of transnational filmmaking that converges with Asia’s vibrant yet unevenly developed independent film movements amidst global neoliberalism. These projects bear witness to and are shaped by the ongoing historical processes of inter-Asia interaction characterized by geopolitical realignment, migration, and population displacement. This study threads together case studies of internationally acclaimed filmmakers, artists, and collectives such as Zhang Lu, Kuzoku, Li Ying, Takamine Go, Yamashiro Chikako, and Midi Z, all of whose transborder journeys and cinematic imaginations disrupt static identity affiliations built upon national, ethnic, or cultural differences. This border-crossing filmmaking can be viewed as both an aesthetic practice and a political act, reframing how people, places, and their interconnections can be perceived — thereby opening up possibilities to reimagine Asia and its connections to globalization.
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South Korean Migrants in China
An Ethnography of Education, Desire, and Temporariness
Xiao Ma
Amsterdam University Press, 2024
This book is an ethnographic account of education and migration from the perspective of three groups of South Koreans in contemporary China: migrant parents, children/students, and educational agents. The book reveals how these temporary migrants make choices, plan their trajectories and engage with the authorities, both in China and South Korea. Migrant subjectivities among these groups are driven by and respond to the education-migration regimes of both the sending and receiving countries. As ‘people in between’, they occupy flexible and multiple positionalities that are transnationally distributed. However, paradoxically, they experience a juxtaposition of privilege, integration and separation, which is indicative of the Chinese style of internationalisation. The book adds weight to the argument that China is a temporary destination for foreigners and not one for long-term settlement.
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Chinese Heritage in the Making
Experiences, Negotiations and Contestations
Christina Maags
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
The Chinese state uses cultural heritage as a source of power by linking it to political and economic goals, but heritage discourse has at the same time encouraged new actors to appropriate the discourse to protect their own traditions. This book focuses on that contested nature of heritage, especially through the lens of individuals, local communities, religious groups, and heritage experts. It examines the effect of the internet on heritage-isation, as well as how that process affects different groups of people.
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Silicon Valley, Planet Startup
Disruptive Innovation, Passionate Entrepreneurship and Hightech Startups
Arne Maas
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
For decades now, Silicon Valley has been the home of the future. It’s the birthplace of the world’s most successful high-tech companies—including Apple, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and many more. So what’s the secret? What is it about Silicon Valley that fosters entrepreneurship and innovation?
With Silicon Valley: Planet Startup, Peter Ester and Arne Maas argue that the answer lies in Silicon Valley’s culture—a corporate culture that values risk-taking, creativity, invention, and sharing. Through extensive interviews with Dutch entrepreneurs working in the area, Ester and Maas show that Silicon Valley is above all a mindset: a belief in thinking, with passion and ambition, far beyond the here and now. Scholars and business and budding entrepreneurs alike are sure to find both inspiration and illumination in the stories and analysis Ester and Maas have assembled here.
With Silicon Valley: Planet Startup, Peter Ester and Arne Maas argue that the answer lies in Silicon Valley’s culture—a corporate culture that values risk-taking, creativity, invention, and sharing. Through extensive interviews with Dutch entrepreneurs working in the area, Ester and Maas show that Silicon Valley is above all a mindset: a belief in thinking, with passion and ambition, far beyond the here and now. Scholars and business and budding entrepreneurs alike are sure to find both inspiration and illumination in the stories and analysis Ester and Maas have assembled here.
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Foreign Policies and Diplomacies in Asia
Changes in Practice, Concepts, and Thinking in a Rising Region
Matthias Maass
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
The observation of a rising Asia and its rapidly growing economic powerhouses has become a truism. These impressive economic development stories provide the backbone for the growing political assertiveness in the region. Asia's economic prowess is rapidly being transferred onto the diplomatic stage. In the light of these larger developments, the authors of this timely volume investigate the regional and international implications of a rising Asia and problematise critical developments.The first section focuses on the lack of a proper regional security community in Asia. The second part analyses the usefulness of 'Asia' as a catch-all for very distinct sub-regions. While not denying the utility of the concept of Asia as one region, the authors support the need to maintain in parallel a clear focus on issues, approaches, and characteristics that are unique to sub-regions within the continent. A third group of authors probe the regional foreign policies of key players in the region, exploring the security strategies and diplomacies of major regional actors.
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The Medieval Cultures of the Irish Sea and the North Sea
Manannán and his Neighbors
Charles MacQuarrie
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
The literary, historical, and linguistic confluence that characterized the Irish Sea region in the pre-modern period is reflected in the interdisciplinarity of these new research essays, centered on the literatures, languages, and histories of the Irish-Sea communities of the Middle Ages, much of which is still evoked in contemporary culture. The contributors to this collection dive deep into the rich historical record, heroic literature, and story lore of the medieval communities ringing the Irish Sea, with case studies that encompass Manx, Irish, Scandinavian, Welsh, and English traditions. Manannán, the famous travelling Celtic divinity who supposedly claimed the Isle of Man as his home, mingles here with his mythical, legendary, and historical neighbors, whose impact on our image and understanding of the pre-modern cultures of the Northern Atlantic has persisted down through the centuries.
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Prints as Agents of Global Exchange
1500-1800
Heather Madar
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
The significance of the media and communications revolution occasioned by printmaking was profound. Less a part of the standard narrative of printmaking’s significance is recognition of the frequency with which the widespread dissemination of printed works also occurred beyond the borders of Europe and consideration of the impact of this broader movement of printed objects. Within a decade of the invention of the printing press, European prints began to move globally. Over the course of the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, numerous prints produced in Europe traveled to areas as varied as Turkey, India, Persia, Ethiopia, China, Japan and the Americas, where they were taken by missionaries, artists, travelers, merchants and diplomats. This collection of essays explores the transmission of knowledge, both written and visual, between Europe and the rest of the world by means of prints in the early modern period.
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Social Movements and Solidarity Structures in Crisis-Ridden Greece
Haris Malamidis
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Social Movements and Solidarity Structures in Crisis-Ridden Greece explores the rich grassroots experience of social movements in Greece between 2008 and 2016. The harsh conditions of austerity triggered the rise of vibrant mobilizations that went hand-in-hand with the emergence of numerous solidarity structures, providing unofficial welfare services to the suffering population. Based on qualitative field research conducted in more than 50 social movement organizations in Greece’s two major cities, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the contentious mechanisms that led to the development of such solidarity initiatives. By analyzing the organizational structure, resources and identity of markets without middlemen, social and collective kitchens, organizations distributing food parcels, social clinics and self-managed cooperatives, this study explains the enlargement of boundaries of collective action in times of crisis.
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Environmental Movements of India
Chipko, Narmada Bachao Andolan, Navdanya
Krishna Mallick
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
In her detailed retelling of three iconic movements in India, Professor Emerita Krishna Mallick, PhD, gives hope to grassroots activists working toward environmental justice. Each movement deals with a different crisis and affected population: Chipko, famed for tree-hugging women in the Himalayan forest; Narmada, for villagers displaced by a massive dam; and Navdanya, for hundreds of thousands of farmers whose livelihoods were lost to a compact made by the Indian government and neoliberal purveyors of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Relentlessly researched, the book presents these movements in a framework that explores Hindu Vedic wisdom, as well as Development Ethics, Global Environment Ethics, Feminist Care Ethics, and the Capability Approach. At a moment when the climate threatens populations who live closest to nature--and depend upon its fodder for heat, its water for life, and its seeds for food--Mallick shows how nonviolent action can give poor people an effective voice.
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Urban Europe
Fifty Tales of the City
Virginie Mamadouh
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
In Urban Europe, urban researchers and practitioners based in Amsterdam tell the story of the European city, sharing their knowledge of and insights into urban dynamics in short, thought-provoking pieces.Their essays were collected on the occasion of the adoption of the Pact of Amsterdam with an Urban Agenda for the European Union during the Dutch Presidency of the Council in 2016.The fifty essays gathered in this volume present perspectives from diverse academic disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.The authors “ including the Mayor of Amsterdam, urban activists, civil servants and academic observers “ cover a wide range of topical issues, inviting and encouraging us to rethink citizenship, connectivity, innovation, sustainability and representation as well as the role of cities in administrative and political networks.With the Urban Agenda for the European Union, EU Member States have acknowledged the potential of cities to address the societal challenges of the 21st century. This is part of a larger, global trend. These are all good reasons to learn more about urban dynamics and to understand the challenges that cities have faced in the past and that they currently face. Often but not necessarily taking Amsterdam as an example, the essays in this volume will help you grasp the complexity of urban Europe and identify the challenges your own city is confronting.
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Comparative Everyday Aesthetics
East-West Studies in Contemporary Living
Eva Kit Wah Man
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
Leading international scholars present analysis and case studies from different cultural settings, East and West, exploring aesthetic interest and experience in our daily lives at home, in workplaces, using everyday things, in our built and natural environments, and in our relationships and communities. A wide range of views and examples of everyday aesthetics are presented from western philosophical paradigms, from Confucian and Daoist aesthetics, and from the Japanese tradition. All indicate universal features of human aesthetic lives together with their cultural variations. Comparative Everyday Aesthetics is a significant contribution to a key trend in international aesthetics for thinking beyond narrow art-centered conceptions of the aesthetic. It generates global discussions about good, aesthetic, everyday living in all its various aspects. It also promotes aesthetic education for personal, social, and environmental development and presents opportunities for global collaborative projects in philosophical aesthetics.
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Struggles for Power in the Kingdom of Italy
The Hucpoldings, c. 850-c.1100
Edoardo Manarini
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
This book presents a detailed study which focuses upon the Hucpoldings, an elite group in Carolingian and post-Carolingian Italy. Though the Hucpoldings have not received extensive treatment in previous Anglophone scholarship, they are a key clan in this period. Manarini’s ground-breaking study uses this kinship group to highlight and pinpoint the dramatic geopolitical changes in the kingdom of Italy across three crucial centuries. The research deals with the reconstruction of the political events of every identifiable member of the kinship, as well as the inquiry into their patrimony and their networks of relations and patronage throughout the kingdom of Italy. Finally, it examines the particular elements of the group, from which emerges a clearer picture of the nature of their power, their memory strategies and the shared perceptions and self-awareness among the group members.
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Sexuality, Subjectivity, and LGBTQ Militancy in the United States
Guillaume Marche
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
As LGBTQ movements in Western Europe, North America, and other regions of the world are becoming increasingly successful at awarding LGBTQ people rights, especially institutional recognition for same-sex couples and their families, what becomes of the deeper social transformation that these movements initially aimed to achieve? The United States is in many ways a paradigmatic model for LGBTQ movements in other countries. Sexuality, Subjectivity, and LGBTQ Militancy in the United States focuses on the transformations of the US LGBTQ movement since the 1980s, highlighting the relationship between its institutionalization and the disappearance of sexuality from its most visible claims, so that its growing visibility and legitimation since the 1990s have paradoxically led to a decrease in grassroots militancy. The book examines the issue from the bottom up, identifying the links between the varying importance of sexuality as a movement theme and actors’ mobilization, and enhances the import of subjectivity in militancy. It draws attention to cultural, sometimes infrapolitical, forms of militancy that perpetuate the role of sexuality in LGBTQ militancy.
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Women Filmmakers and the Visual Politics of Transnational China in the #MeToo Era
Gina Marchetti
Amsterdam University Press, 2024
Manoeuvring around mainland China’s censors and pushing back against threats of lawsuits, online harassment, and physical violence, #MeToo activists shed a particularly harsh light on the treatment of women in the cinema and entertainment industries. Focusing on films from the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora, this book considers how female directors shape Chinese visual politics through the depiction of the look, the stare, the leer, the glare, the glimpse, the glance, the queer and the oppositional gaze in fiction and documentary filmmaking. In the years leading up to and following in the wake of #MeToo, these cosmopolitan women filmmakers offer innovative angles on body image, reproduction, romance, family relations, gender identity, generational differences, female sexuality, sexual violence, sex work, labor migration, career options, minority experiences, media access, feminist activism and political rights within the rapidly changing Chinese cultural orbit.
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Nomadic Pastoralism among the Mongol Herders
Multispecies and Spatial Ethnography in Mongolia and Transbaikalia
Charlotte Marchina
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
This book, based on anthropological research carried out by the author between 2008 and 2016, addresses the spatial features of nomadic pastoralism among the Mongol herders of Mongolia and Southern Siberia from a cross-comparative perspective. In addition to classical methods of survey, Charlotte Marchina innovatively used GPS recordings to analyse the ways in which pastoralists envision and concretely occupy the landscape, which they share with their animals and invisible entities. The data, represented in abundant and original cartography, provides a better understanding of the mutual adaptations of both herders and animals in the common use of unfenced pastures, not only between different herders but also between different species. The author also highlights the herders' adaptive strategies at a time of rapid socio-political and environmental changes in these areas of the world.
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The End of Silence
Accounts of the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia
Soe Tjen Marching
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
In the late 1960s, between one and two million people were killed by Indonesian president Suharto's army in the name of suppressing communism-and more than fifty years later, the issue of stigmatisation is still relevant for many victims of the violence and their families. The End of Silence presents the stories of these individuals, revealing how many survivors from the period have been so strongly affected by the strategy used by Suharto and his Western allies that these survivors, still afraid to speak out, essentially serve to maintain the very ideology that led to their persecution.
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World of Difference
A Moral Perspective on Social Inequality
Gioia Marini
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
Public debates tend to see social inequality as resulting from individual decisions people make, for instance with respect to their education or lifestyle. Solutions are often sought in supporting individuals to make better choices. This neglects the importance of social groups and communities in determining individual outcomes. A moral perspective on social inequality questions the fairness of insisting on individual responsibilities, when members of some groups systematically receive fewer opportunities than others. The essays in this book have been prepared by experts from different disciplines, ranging from philosophy to engineering, and from economics to epidemiology. On the basis of recent scientific insights, World of Difference examines how group memberships impact on individual outcomes in four key domains: health, education and work, migration, and the environment. This offers a new moral perspective on social inequality, which policy makers tend to neglect.
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Creating Memories in Late 8th-century Byzantium
The Short History of Nikephoros of Constantinople
Dragoljub Marjanovic
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
The Short History of Nikephoros of Constantinople is one of the key sources for our understanding of Byzantine history in the eighth century. This book offers a close look at that volume and its manner of representing the historical role of Byzantine emperors and ecclesiology, with particular attention to the use of images, an issue of central importance amid the period's first outburst of iconoclasm. When seen through this lens, the Short History is revealed to be more engaged with and burdened by contemporary political and ecclesiastical strife than has previously been thought.
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Accounting for Services
The Economic Development of the Indonesian Service Sector, ca 1900-2000
Daan Marks
Amsterdam University Press, 2009
The most intriguing question about Indonesia’s economic development during the twentieth century is why the country’s growth performance has been so erratic and displayed such a high degree of discontinuity. This is connected with the fundamental question about the nature of long-run economic development in Indonesia.
So far the economic historiography of Indonesia has been less systematic than what the available source material would permit. Indonesia is exceptionally well endowed with rich statistical sources, which carry the potential of supporting a rigorous and systematic quantitative approach to vital questions concerning the economic growth performance in the long run.
This book takes such an approach and presents new estimates for the long-run growth of the Indonesian service sector, and analyses the role of the various service sectors in economic development. Linking empirical and theoretical analysis in a creative fashion, Daan Marks provides a rich and original contribution to our understanding of the economic history of Indonesia. He shows that the service sector has played a crucial role in Indonesia’s economic development. Or in other words, to fully understand Indonesia’s economic development path sevices need to be accounted for.
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Mysteries of Cinema
Reflections on Film Theory, History and Culture 1982-2016
Adrian Martin
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
The major essays of the distinguished and prolific Australian-born film critic Adrian Martin have long been difficult to access, so this anthology, which collects highlights of his work in one volume, will be welcomed throughout film studies. Martin offers indepth analysis of many genres of films while providing a broad understanding of the history of cinema and the history of film criticism and culture. These vibrant, highly personal essays, written between 1982 and 2016, balance breadth across cinema theory with almost encyclopedic detail, ranging between aesthetics, cinephilia, film genre, criticism, philosophy, and cultural politics. Mysteries of Cinema circumscribes a special cultural period that began with the dream of critique as a form of poetic writing, and today arrives at collaborative experiments in audiovisual essays. Throughout these essays, Martin pursues a particular vision of what cinema has been, what it is, and what it still could be.
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An Introduction to International Migration Studies
European Perspectives
Marco Martiniello
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
Focusing mainly on the European experience including Eastern Europe, this important volume offers an advanced introduction to immigrant incorporation studies from a historical, empirical and theoretical perspective. Beyond incorporation theories, renowned scholars in the field explore incorporation in action in different fields, policy issues and normative dimensions.
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The Iberian Peninsula between 300 and 850
An Archaeological Perspective
Carlos Martínez Jiménez
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
The vast transformation of the Roman world at the end of antiquity has been a subject of broad scholarly interest for decades, but until now no book has focused specifically on the Iberian Peninsula in the period as seen through an archaeological lens. Given the sparse documentary evidence available, archaeology holds the key to a richer understanding of the developments of the period, and this book addresses a number of issues that arise from analysis of the available material culture, including questions of the process of Christianisation and Islamisation, continuity and abandonment of Roman urban patterns and forms, the end of villas and the growth of villages, and the adaptation of the population and the elites to the changing political circumstances.
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A New Social Question?
On Minimum Income Protection in the Postindustrial Era
Ive Marx
Amsterdam University Press, 2007
Social scientists, politicians, and economists have recently been taken with the idea that the advanced welfare states of Europe face a “New Social Question.” The core idea is that the transition from an industrial to a postindustrial environment has brought with it a whole new set of social risks, constraints, and trade-offs, which necessitate radical recalibration of social security systems. A New Social Question? analyzes that question in depth, with particular attention to the problem of income protection and the difficulties facing Bismarckian welfare states. It will be necessary reading for anyone interested in understanding the future of European social policy.
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Travel Writing in Mongolia and Northern China, 1860-2020
Phillip Marzluf
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
Travel Writing in Mongolia and Northern China, 1860–2020 invites readers to explore Mongolia as an important cultural space for Western travelers and their audiences over three historical eras. Travelers have framed their experiences and observations through imaginative geographies and Orientalizing discourses, fixing Mongolia as a peripheral, timeless, primitive, and parochial place. Readers can examine the travelers’ literary and rhetorical strategies as they make themselves more credible and authoritative and as they identify themselves with Mongolians and Mongolian culture or, conversely, distance themselves. In this book, readers can also approach travel writing from the perspective of women travelers, Mongolian socialist intellectuals, twenty-first-century travelers, and a Han Chinese writer, Jiang Rong, who promotes cultural harmony yet anticipates the disappearance of Mongolian culture in China.
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In-Between Textiles, 1400-1800
Weaving Subjectivities and Encounters
Beatriz Marín-Aguilera
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
In-Between Textiles is a decentred study of how textiles shaped, disrupted, and transformed subjectivities in the age of the first globalisation. The volume presents a radically cross-disciplinary approach that brings together world-leading anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, conservators, curators, historians, scientists, and weavers to reflect on the power of textiles to reshape increasingly contested identities on a global scale between 1400 and 1800. Contributors posit the concept of “in-between textiles,” building upon Homi Bhabha’s notion of in-betweenness as the actual material ground of the negotiation of cultural practices and meanings; a site identified as the battleground over strategies of selfhood and the production of identity signs troubled by colonialism and consumerism across the world. In-Between Textiles establishes cutting-edge conversations between textile studies, critical cultural theory, and material culture studies to examine how textiles created and challenged experiences of subjectivity, relatedness, and dis/location that transformed social fabrics around the globe.
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The Private Diplomacy of Shibusawa Eiichi
Visionary Entrepreneur and Transnationalist of Modern Japan
Shibusawa Masahide
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
“This book offers an account of the life of Shibusawa Eiichi, who may be considered the first ‘internationalist’ in modern Japan, written by his great grandson Masahide and published in 1970 under the title, Taiheiyo ni kakeru hashi (Building Bridges Over the Pacific). Japan had a tortuous relationship with internationalism between 1840, when Shibusawa was born, and 1931, the year the nation invaded Manchuria and when he passed away. The key to understanding Shibusawa’s thoughts against the background of this history, the author shows, lies in the concept of ‘people’s diplomacy,’ namely an approach to international relations through non-governmental connections. Such connections entail more transnational than international relations. In that sense, Shibusawa was more a transnationalist than an internationalist thinker. Internationalism presupposes the prior existence of sovereign states among which they cooperate to establish a peaceful order. The best examples are the League of Nations and the United Nations. Transnationalism, in contrast, goes beyond the framework of sovereign nations and promotes connections among individuals and non-governmental organizations. It could be called “globalism” in the sense that transnationalism aims at building bridges across the globe apart from independent nation-states. In that sense Shibusawa was a pioneering globalist. It was only in the 1990s that expressions like globalism and globalization came to be widely used. This was more than sixty years after Shibusawa Eiichi’s death, which suggests how pioneering his thoughts were.” [Akira Iriye]
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Border History from a Borneo Longhouse
The Search for a Life that is Very Good
Valerie Mashman
Amsterdam University Press
Watch and Learn
Rhetorical Devices in Classroom Films after 1940
Eef Masson
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
Instructional films of the twentieth century, used to teach, train, inform, or advertise to their viewers, can provide historians and scholars of cinema studies with a wealth of information about both their creators and intended consumers. Watch and Learn focuses on the rhetoric used in these films, particularly the way in which the films used in the classroom relate to their audience, casting them both as film viewers and students. Providing the outline for a new methodology for interpreting and understanding the scripts and visuals of this peculiar brand of cinema, this book approaches the study of instructional films from a novel and illuminating perspective.
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Disaster Cinema in Historical Perspective
Mediations of the Sublime
Nikita Mathias
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
How do we experience disaster films in cinema? And where does disaster cinema come from? The two questions are more closely related than one might initially think. For the framework of the cinematic experience of natural disasters has its roots in the mid-eighteenth century when the aesthetic category of the sublime was re-established as the primary mode for appreciating nature's violent forces. In this book, the sublime is understood as a complex and culturally specific meeting point between philosophical thought, artistic creation, social and technical development, and popular imagination. On the one hand, the sublime provides a receptive model to uncover how cinematic disaster depictions affect our senses, bodies and minds. On the other hand, this experiential framework of disaster cinema is only one of the most recent agents within the historical trajectory of sublime disasters, which is traced in this book among a broad range of media: from landscape and history painting to a variety of pictorial devices like Eidophusikon, Panorama, Diorama, and, finally, cinema.
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Kashmir as a Borderland
The Politics of Space and Belonging across the Line of Control
Antía Mato Bouzas
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
*Kashmir as a Borderland: The Politics of Space and Belonging across the Line of Control* examines the Kashmir dispute from both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) and within the theoretical frame of border studies. It draws on the experiences of those living in these territories such as divided families, traders, cultural and social activists. Kashmir is a borderland, that is, a context for spatial transformations, where the resulting interactions can be read as a process of ‘becoming’ rather than of ‘being’. The analysis of this borderland shows how the conflict is manifested in territory, in specific locations with a geopolitical meaning, evidencing the discrepancy between ‘representation’ and the ‘living’. The author puts forward the concept of belonging as a useful category for investigating more inclusive political spaces.
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Astronomer, Cartographer and Naturalist of the New World
The Life and Scholarly Achievements of Georg Marggrafe (1610-1643) in Colonial Dutch Brazil. Volume 2: Transcription and English Translation of His Astronomical Observations
Oscar Matsuura
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
This volume, Volume 2, is a supplementary text and consists of a text edition of his astronomical legacy, prepared for the printing press in the 1650s, but only now finalized and published. Volume 1 presents Marggrafe’s stunning biography.
Georg Marggrafe (1610-1643) is today hailed as the principal author of an influential account of the natural history of Northern Brazil and as compiler of the first accurate map of the area, which is considered as one of the most elegant products of seventeenth-century Dutch cartography. But initial he had the ambition to become known in astronomy. With the support Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, then governor-general of colonial Dutch Brazil, he built in Recife the first European-style astronomical observatory on the South-American continent, where he systematically charted the southern stars. He intended to supplement the famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, who charted the Northern sky half a century before. But Marggrafe’s untimely death (and the negligence of a Leiden professor) prevented the publication of his valuable observations. As a result, Marggrafe did not achieve fame in astronomy, but instead became famous for his equally remarkable other achievements.
[more]
Gender, Space and Experience at the Renaissance Court
Performance and Practice at the Palazzo Te
Maria Maurer
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Gender, Space, and Experience at the Renaissance Court investigates the dynamic relationships between gender and architectural space in Renaissance Italy. It examines the ceremonial use and artistic reception of the Palazzo Te from the arrival of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1530 to the Sack of Mantua in 1630. This book further proposes that we conceptualise the built environment as a performative space, a space formed by the gendered relationships and actors of its time. The Palazzo Te was constituted by the gendered behaviors of sixteenth-century courtiers, but it was not simply a passive receptor of gender performance. Through its multivalent form and ceremonial function, Maria F. Maurer argues that the palace was an active participant in the construction and perception of femininity and masculinity in the early modern court.
[more]
The State of the Japanese State
Contested Identity, Direction and Role
Gavan McCormack
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
In this his latest work, Gavan McCormack argues that Abe Shinzo’s efforts to re-engineer the Japanese state may fail, but his radicalism continues to shake the country and will have consequences not easy now to predict. The significance of this book will be widely recognized, particularly by those researching contemporary world politics, international relations and the history of modern Japan. McCormack here revisits and reassesses his previous formulations of Japan as construction state (doken kokka), client state (zokkoku), constitutional pacifist state, and colonial state (especially in its relationship to Okinawa). He adds a further chapter on what he calls the ‘rampant state’, that outlines the increasingly authoritarian or ikkyo (one strong) turn of the Abe government in the fifth year of its second term. And he critically addresses the Abe agenda for constitutional revision.
[more]
Popular Romance in Iceland
The Women, Worldviews, and Manuscript Witnesses of Nítí¿a saga
Sheryl McDonald Werronen
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
A late medieval Icelandic romance about the ‘maiden-king’ of France, Nítí¿a saga generated interest in its day and grew in popularity in post-Reformation Iceland, yet until now it has not received the comprehensive scholarly analysis that it much deserves. Analysing this saga from a variety of perspectives, this book sheds light on the manner in which Nítí¿a saga explores and negotiates the romance genre from an Icelandic perspective, showcasing this exciting saga’s strong female characters, worldviews, and long manuscript tradition. Beginning with Nítí¿a saga’s manuscript context, including its reception and transformation in early modern Iceland, this study also discusses how Nítí¿a saga was influenced by, and also later influenced, other Icelandic romances. Considering the text as literature, discussion of its unusual depiction of world geography, as well as the various characters and their relationships, provides insights into medieval Icelanders’ ideas about themselves and the world they lived in, including questions about Icelandic identity, gender, female solidarity, and the literary genre of romance itself. The book also includes a newly revised reading edition and translation of Nítí¿a saga.
[more]
Northeast Migrants in Delhi
Race, Refuge and Retail
Duncan McDuie-Ra
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
The Northeast border region of India is a crossroads of Southeast Asia, where India meets China and the Himalayas, and home to many ethnic minorities from across the continent. The area is also the birthplace of a number of secessionist and insurgent movements and a hotbed of political fervor and violent instability. In this trailblazing new study, Duncan McDuie-Ra observes the everyday lives of the thousands of men and women who leave the region every year to work, study, and find refuge in Delhi. He examines how new migrants navigate the rampant racism, harassment, and even violence they face upon their arrival in Delhi. But McDuie-Ra does not paint them simply as victims of the city, but also as contributors to Delhi’s vibrant community and increasing cosmopolitanism. India’s embrace of globalization has created employment opportunities for Northeast migrants in many capitalistic enterprises: shopping malls, restaurants, and call centers. They have been able to create their own “map” of Delhi and their own communities within the larger and often unfriendly one of the metropolis.
[more]
Skateboarding and Urban Landscapes in Asia
Endless Spots
Duncan McDuie-Ra
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
As urban development in Asia has accelerated, cities in the region have become central to skateboarding culture, livelihoods, and consumption. Asia's urban landscapes are desired for their endless supply of 'spots'. A spot is assemblage of objects, surfaces and obstacles holding the possibilities to perform skateboarding manoeuvres (tricks). Spots are not built for skateboarding; they are accidents of urban planning and commercial activity; glitches in the urban machine. Skateboarders and filmers chase these glitches searching for spots to make skate video, the currency of the industry and skateboarding's primary cultural artefact. Once captured, performances at Asia's spots circulate rapidly through digital platforms to millions of skateboarders, enrolling spots from Shenzhen, Dubai and Ramallah into an alternative cartography of the region. By focusing on this alternative way of desiring and consuming urban Asia, this book explores the ways skateboarding resets relational and comparative hierarchies of urban development within Asia and between Asia and the West.
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Borderland City in New India
Frontier to Gateway
Duncan McDuie-Ra
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
While India has been a popular subject of scholarly analysis in the past decade, the majority of that attention has been focused on its major cities. This volume instead explores contemporary urban life in a smaller city located in India's Northeast borderland at a time of dramatic change, showing how this city has been profoundly affected by armed conflict, militarism, displacement, interethnic tensions, and the expansion of neoliberal capitalism.
[more]
Gabelentz and the Science of Language
James McElvenny
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
The German sinologist and general linguist Georg von der Gabelentz (1840—1893) occupies a crucial place in linguistic scholarship around the end of the nineteenth century. As professor at the University of Leipzig and then at the University of Berlin, Gabelentz was present at the main centers of linguistics of the time. He was, however, generally critical of the narrow, technical focus of mainstream historical-comparative linguistics as practiced by the Neogrammarians and instead emphasized approaches to language inspired by a line of researchers stemming from Wilhelm von Humboldt. Gabelentz’ alternative conception of linguistics led him to several pioneering insights into language that anticipated elements of the structuralist revolution of the early twentieth century. *Gabelentz and the Science of Language* brings together four essays that explore Gabelentz’ contributions to linguistics from a historical perspective. In addition, it makes one of his key theoretical texts, ‘Content and Form of Speech’, available to an English-speaking audience for the first time.
[more]
Understanding Processes of Ethnic Concentration and Dispersal
Jennifer Leigh McGarrigle
Amsterdam University Press, 2004
The arts and sciences have evolved primarily through specialization and broadening of scope. Stepping outside of one’s established discipline, however, involves a danger of "shallowness," even if the primary challenge was a "deep" integration problem. All too often, current ways of defining academic disciplines and fields of research fail to do justice to new approaches—a problem this volume tackles as it debates the possible futures of scholarship and academia.
[more]
The Aesthetics of Global Protest
Visual Culture and Communication
Aidan McGarry
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Protestors across the world use aesthetics in order to communicate their ideas and ensure their voices are heard. This book looks at protest aesthetics, which we consider to be the visual and performative elements of protest, such as images, symbols, graffiti, art, as well as the choreography of protest actions in public spaces. Through the use of social media, protestors have been able to create an alternative space for people to engage with politics that is more inclusive and participatory than traditional politics. This volume focuses on the role of visual culture in a highly mediated environment and draws on case studies from Europe, Thailand, South Africa, USA, Argentina, and the Middle East in order to demonstrate how protestors use aesthetics to communicate their demands and ideas. It examines how digital media is harnessed by protestors and argues that all protest aesthetics are performative and communicative.
[more]
One Word - Yak Kaleme
19th Century Persian Treatise Introducing Western Codified Law
Sen McGlinn
Amsterdam University Press, 2010
One Word – Yak Kaleme was one of the first treatises in the Middle East to demonstrate that Islam is compatible with the introduction of modern western forms of government, and specifically that the principles of the sharia can be incorporated in a codified law comparable to that found in European countries. This was a daring argument in the late 19th century, when it was extremely difficult to convince the rulers and religious class that a civil code of law was needed: would it not diminish the status of the ruler, and would it not be an admission that the religious law, the sharia, was deficient?
The author, Mirza Yu¯suf Kha¯n Mustashar al-Dawla (d. 1895), was a liberal-minded bureaucrat campaigning for reform of the absolutist system and the creation of one based on European principles of government. He held several posts abroad including St Petersburg (1854-62), and Paris (1867-71), as well as carrying out administrative duties in Iran itself.
In One Word he argues that the principles underlying constitutional government can be found in Islamic sources, particularly in the Quran and traditions of the Prophet. Unlike some Oriental travellers to Europe at that time, he observed that European dominance was not derived from a few technological advances, but primarily from the organisation of society, on the basis of codified law. One Word was a significant text in the lead-up to the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, but its message is relevant today.
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Petrarch and the Making of Gender in Renaissance Italy
Shannon McHugh
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
This book is a new history of early modern gender, told through the lyric poetry of Renaissance Italy. In the evolution of Western gender roles, the Italian Renaissance was a watershed moment, when a confluence of cultural developments disrupted centuries of Aristotelian, binary thinking. Men and women living through this upheaval exploited Petrarchism’s capacity for subjective expression and experimentation - as well as its status as the most accessible of genres - in order to imagine new gendered possibilities in realms such as marriage, war, and religion. One of the first studies to examine writing by early modern Italian men and women together, it is also a revolutionary testament to poetry’s work in the world. These poets’ works challenge the traditional boundaries drawn around lyric’s utility. They show us how poems could be sites of resistance against the pervading social order - how they are texts capable not only of recording social history, but also of shaping it.
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Their Footprints Remain
Biomedical Beginnings Across the Indo-Tibetan Frontier
Alex McKay
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
By the end of the 19th century, British imperial medical officers and Christian medical missionaries had introduced Western medicine to Tibet, Sikkim, and Bhutan. Their Footprints Remain uses archival sources, personal letters, diaries, and oral sources in order to tell the fascinating story of how this once-new medical system became imbedded in the Himalayas. Of interest to anyone with an interest in medical history and anthropology, as well as the Himalayan world, this volume not only identifies the individuals involved and describes how they helped to spread this form of imperialist medicine, but also discusses its reception by a local people whose own medical practices were based on an entirely different understanding of the world.
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The Rise of the Cult of Rembrandt
Reinventing an Old Master in Nineteenth-Century France
Alison McQueen
Amsterdam University Press, 2003
Rembrandt's life and art had an almost mythic resonance in nineteenth-century France with artists, critics, and collectors alike using his artistic persona both as a benchmark and as justification for their own goals. This first in-depth study of the traditional critical reception of Rembrandt reveals the preoccupation with his perceived "authenticity," "naturalism," and "naiveté," demonstrating how the artist became an ancestral figure, a talisman with whom others aligned themselves to increase the value of their own work. And in a concluding chapter, the author looks at the play Rembrandt, staged in Paris in 1898, whose production and advertising are a testament to the enduring power of the artist's myth.
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Representing from Life in Seventeenth-century Italy
Sheila McTighe
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
In drawing or painting from live models and real landscapes, more was at stake for artists in early modern Italy than achieving greater naturalism. To work with the model in front of your eyes, and to retain their identity in the finished work of art, had an impact on concepts of artistry and authorship, the authority of the image as a source of knowledge, the boundaries between repetition and invention, and even the relation of images to words. This book focuses on artists who worked in Italy, both native Italians and migrants from northern Europe. The practice of depicting from life became a self-conscious departure from the norms of Italian arts. In the context of court culture in Rome and Florence, works by artists ranging from Caravaggio to Claude Lorrain, Pieter van Laer to Jacques Callot, reveal new aspects of their artistic practice and its critical implications.
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Cross-border Mobility
Women, Work and Malay Identity in Indonesia
Wendy Mee
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Cross-border Mobility: Women, Work and Malay Identity in Indonesia offers a fresh perspective on the association between mobility and the ethnocultural category ‘Malay’. In so doing, it raises new research questions that are relevant to the study of Indonesian women’s socioeconomic mobility more generally. Based on fieldwork in Sambas, a region of Indonesia bordering Malaysia, this study documents the ethnocultural consequences of the highly mobile working lives of Sambas Malay women. Emphasising the significance of territorial borders in women’s working lives, this study highlights how women’s border location not only facilitates cross-border pathways of international labour migration and trade, but also generates feelings of peripherality that inform women’s imaginative construction of other, nonterritorial borders that need to be crossed. Shaped by social class, gender, and the economic and cultural possibilities of political decentralization, the study identifies three borderscopes that orient women’s work-related mobility and create diverse outcomes for the ethnocultural category 'Sambas Malay'.
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Fact or Fluke?
A Critical Look at Statistical Evidence
Ronald Meester
Amsterdam University Press
Science and Culture for Members Only
The Amsterdam Zoo Artis in the Nineteenth Century
Donna C. Mehos
Amsterdam University Press, 2005
The Amsterdam zoo Artis was recognized as the preeminent cultural center of the city for much of the nineteenth century. Donna Mehos here examines the exclusive nature of Artis and how the Amsterdam middle class utilized it to cultivate a culture of science that would reflect well on the nation and its capital. This volume offers a fascinating study of the role of science in the development of Dutch national and class identities during a period of national and colonial expansion.
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A New Perspective on Antisthenes
Logos, Predicate and Ethics in his Philosophy
Piet Meijer
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
Antisthenes (c. 445- c. 365 BC), was a prominent follower of Socrates and bitter rival of Plato. In this revisionary account of his philosophy in all its aspects, P. A. Meijer claims that Plato and Aristotle have corrupted our perspective on this witty and ingenious thinker. The first part of the book reexamines afresh Antisthenes' ideas about definition and predication and concludes from these that Antisthenes never held the (in)famous theory that contradiction is impossible. The second part of the book argues that Antisthenes' logical theories bear directly on his activities as an exegete of Homer and hence as a theological thinker. Part three, finally, offers innovative readings of Antisthenes' ethical fragments.
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Guardians of Living History
An Ethnography of Post-Soviet Memory Making in Estonia
Inge Melchior
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Guardians of Living History: An Ethnography of Post-Soviet Memory Making in Estonia interrogates how people living in a society with an extremely complicated, violent past, only a short history of independence, and a desire to belong to Europe engage with the past, both within their families and as members of a national community. In line with other scholarship on memory, this book shows that many Estonians desire an established collective story, as they live in a society where their national identity is quite regularly under threat. At the same time however, that same closure is perceived to pose a threat to the survival of Estonian culture and independence. Guardians of Living History provides an intimate insight into the lives of Estonians from the countryside, former deportees, young intellectuals, and memory activists, who all in their own ways act as guardians of a national history: a history which they wish to keep alive, apolitical, and as close to their family stories as possible.
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An Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research
Theory and Practice
Steph Menken
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
One of the major areas of emphasis in academia in recent years has been interdisciplinary research, a trend that promises new insights and innovations rooted in cross-disciplinary collaboration. This book is designed to help students understand the tools required for stepping beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and applying knowledge and insights from multiple fields. Relentlessly focused on practical applications, the book will enable students to plan and execute their own interdisciplinary research projects.
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Motivation – Mechanisms of the Mind and their Quest for Expression
Introduction to a Study on a Theoretical Model of the Process of Motivation
Menno A. Mennes
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
This Volume presents a first introduction to a thought-provoking Model of Motivation developed by Menno Mennes over a period of almost thirty years. The Model of Motivation in its approach presents a radical departure from everything that has appeared so far in literature on the subject.
And yet, it provides a surprisingly detailed account of how motivation works, which appears to be supported by findings from theories and research from current literature. In an unparalleled analysis, the Model seamlessly integrates these major theories into a consistent comprehensive approach to motivation, explaining not only the essentials of each theory, but also providing explanations for controversies that have hitherto remained largely unresolved. Motivation appears to be an 'inner dialogue', a stepwise, partly cyclical Process in which we deal with our surroundings that often interfere in our ambitions, our wishes and desires. Deep personal insights into those ‘Mechanisms of the Mind’ reveal implications that may lead to a fundamental, new understanding of the origins of many disturbing issues we witness in present-day society, including neglect and denial, intolerance, discord and polarization.
And yet, it provides a surprisingly detailed account of how motivation works, which appears to be supported by findings from theories and research from current literature. In an unparalleled analysis, the Model seamlessly integrates these major theories into a consistent comprehensive approach to motivation, explaining not only the essentials of each theory, but also providing explanations for controversies that have hitherto remained largely unresolved. Motivation appears to be an 'inner dialogue', a stepwise, partly cyclical Process in which we deal with our surroundings that often interfere in our ambitions, our wishes and desires. Deep personal insights into those ‘Mechanisms of the Mind’ reveal implications that may lead to a fundamental, new understanding of the origins of many disturbing issues we witness in present-day society, including neglect and denial, intolerance, discord and polarization.
[more]
Movie Circuits
Curatorial Approaches to Cinema Technology
Gabriel Menotti
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Movie Circuits: Curatorial Approaches to Cinema Technology attempts to grasp media in the making. It delves into the underbelly of cinema in order to explore how images circulate and apparatus crystallize across different material formations. The indisciplinary experience of curators and projectionists provides a means to suspend traditional film studies and engage with the medium as it happens, as a continuing, self-differing mess. From contemporary art exhibitions to pirate screenings, research and practice come together in a vibrant form of media scholarship, built from the angle of cinema’s functionaries — a call to reinvent the medium from within.
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Creating Place in Early Modern European Architecture
Elizabeth Merrill
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
The importance of place—as a unique spatial identity—has been recognized since antiquity. Ancient references to the ‘genius loci’, or spirit of place, evoked not only the location of a distinct atmosphere or environment, but also the protection of this location, and implicitly, its making and construction. This volume examines the concept of place as it relates to architectural production and building knowledge in early modern Europe (1400-1800). The places explored in the book’s ten essays take various forms, from an individual dwelling to a cohesive urban development to an extensive political territory. Within the scope of each study, the authors draw on primary source documents and original research to demonstrate the distinctive features of a given architectural place, and how these are related to a geographic location, social circumstances, and the contributions of individual practitioners. The essays underscore the distinct techniques, practices and organizational structures by which physical places were made in the early modern period.
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Melodrama After the Tears
New Perspectives on the Politics of Victimhood
Jörg Metelmann
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
Melodrama, it is said, has expanded beyond the borders of genre and fiction to become a pervasive cultural mode. It encompasses distinct signifying practices and interpretive codes for meaning-making that help determine the parameters of identification and subject formation. From the public staging of personal suffering or the psychologization of the self in relation to consumer capitalism, to the emotionalization and sentimentalization of national politics, contributions to this volume address the following question: If melodramatic models of sense-making have become so culturally pervasive and emotionally persuasive, what is the political potential of melodramatic victimhood and where are its political limitations?This volume represents both a condensation and an expansion in the growing field of melodrama studies. It condenses elements of theory on melodrama by bringing into focus what it recognizes to be the locus for subjective identification within melodramatic narratives: the victim. On the other hand, it provides an expansion by going beyond the common methodology of primarily examining fictive works - be they from the stage, the screen or the written word - for their explicit or latent commentary on and connection to the historical contexts within which they are produced. Inspiration for the volume is rooted in a curiosity about melodramatic forms purported to increasingly characterize aspects of both the private and the social sphere in occidental and western-oriented societies.
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Addressing Injustice in the Medieval Body Politic
Constant Jan Mews
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
Justice and injustice were subjects of ongoing debate in medieval Europe. Received classical and biblical models both influenced how these qualities of moral and political life were perceived, discussed and acted upon. Important among these influences was the anonymous seventh-century Irish text, On The Twelve Abuses of the Age, a biblically-inspired discussion of the moral duties particular to each sector of society. This volume probes its long influence, and its interaction with the revival of classical ideas. By bringing together scholars of political thought and practice, in lay and religious contexts spanning the seventh to fourteenth centuries, this volume crosses boundaries of periodisation, discipline and approach to reflect upon the medieval evolution of concepts of injustice and means of redress. Contributions address how ideas about justice and injustice were discussed among scholars and theologians, and how those ideas were translated into action through complaint and advice throughout the medieval period.
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Maniera Greca in Europe's Catholic East
On Identities of Images in Lithuania and Poland (1380s–1720s)
Giedre Mickunaite
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
How and why does vernacular art become foreign? What does ‘Greek manner’ mean in regions far beyond the Mediterranean? What stories do images need? How do narratives shape pictures? The study addresses these questions in Byzantine paintings from the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, contextualized with evidence from Poland, Serbia, Russia, and Italy. The research follows developments in artistic practices and the reception of these images, as well as distinguishing between the Greek manner – based on visual qualities – and the style favoured by the devout, sustained by cults and altered through stories. Following the reception of Byzantine and pseudo-Byzantine art in Lithuania and Poland from the late fourteenth through the early eighteenth centuries, Maniera Greca in Europe’s Catholic East argues that tradition is repetitive order achieved through reduction and oblivion, and concludes that the sole persistent understanding of the Greek image has been stereotyped as the icon of the Mother of God.
[more]
The Big Reset Revised Edition
War on Gold and the Financial Endgame
Willem Middelkoop
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
A system reset seems imminent. The world's financial system will need to find a new anchor before the year 2020. Since the beginning of the credit crisis, the US realized the dollar will lose its role as the world's reserve currency, and has been planning for a monetary reset. According to Willem Middelkoop, this reset will be designed to keep the US in the driver's seat, allowing the new monetary system to include significant roles for other currencies such as the euro and China's renminbi. Prepare for the coming ResetIn all likelihood gold will be re-introduced as one of the pillars of this next phase in the global financial system. The prediction is that gold could be revalued at $ 7,000 per troy ounce. By looking past the American 'smokescreen' surrounding gold and the dollar long ago, China and Russia have been accumulating massive amounts of gold reserves, positioning themselves for a more prominent role in the future to come. The reset will come as a shock to many. The Big Reset will help everyone who wants to be fully prepared. This fully revised edition of Middelkoop's book takes into account developments since its original publication, which have only strengthened the case for the coming return of gold.
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Science 3.0
Real Science, Real Knowledge
Frank Miedema
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
When people think of a scientist, they often think of someone who has his or her head in the clouds, motivated by an entirely untainted desire for the pursuit of knowledge and truth. In Science 3.0, Frank Miedema casts aside these beliefs about scientists as needlessly naïve, and instead suggests that we rebuild our idea of the sciences, particularly the life sciences, with today’s economic reality in mind.
This book is a frank discussion of the impact of external forces on the sciences, dealing with topics as diverse as social media for the scientist, the role of academic independence, and the tension between university and business. Miedema also shows the way science shapes both economic and social progress in modern society, and how increasing pressure to solve real-world problems has forced scientists out of the ivory tower and into the corporate world. Sharply observed and exceptionally well-researched, Science 3.0 provides scientists with a powerful overview of their field that is singular in its candor and breadth.
[more]
Camering
Fernand Deligny on Cinema and the Image
Marlon Miguel
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
Fernand Deligny (1913-1996), ‘poet and ethologist’, is mostly known for his work with autistic children and for his influence on the revolutions in French post-war psychiatry. Though neither director nor a theorist of the image, cinema is constantly called into his social, pedagogical, and clinical experimentations. More interested in the processes of making, he distinguishes ‘camering’ from filming, thus emphasizing not the finished film but a ‘film to come’. This volume provides Deligny’s essential corpus on cinema and the image. It shows both the role of cameras in many of his experimental ‘attempts’ with delinquents and autistic children and his highly speculative reflections on image.
[more]
New Germans, New Dutch
Literary Interventions
Liesbeth Minnaard
Amsterdam University Press, 2009
In the globalised world of today, traditional definitions of national Self and national Other no longer hold. The unmistakable transformation of German and Dutch societies demands a thorough rethinking of national boundaries on several levels. This book examines how literature of migration intervenes in public discourses on multiculturality in Germany and the Netherlands, epitomised in the strikingly parallel debates on the ‘German Leitkultur’ and the Dutch ‘multicultural drama’ in the year 2000. By juxtaposing detailed analyses of literary work by the Turkish-German writers Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Feridun Zaimoglu and the Moroccan-Dutch writers Abdelkader Benali and Hafid Bouazza, New Germans, New Dutch offers crucial insights into the specific ways in which this literature negotiates its national context of writing. This book demonstrates how German literature of migration seeks alternative forms of community outside the national parameters, whereas the Dutch literature negotiates difference and re-imagines Dutchness within the national framework.
[more]
Videogame Formalism
On Form, Aesthetic Experience and Methodology
Alex Mitchell
Amsterdam University Press, 2024
Formalism is often used as an all-embracing term covering a range of ontological and methodological approaches in game studies, with little connection to the history or tradition of the approach in other fields. This dilutes the usefulness of the approach, and invites (often unfounded) criticism. Videogame Formalism addresses these issues through an exploration of the historical and theoretical roots of formalist approaches to videogame analysis, situating this approach within games studies, and arguing for its importance and applicability as a methodological toolkit and a theoretical framework for understanding the aesthetic experience of videogames. It presents an overview of how formalist approaches can provide insights into the ways games create aesthetic experiences through the use of poetic gameplay devices, and lays out a comprehensive yet flexible methodological framework for undertaking a formalist analysis of games. This approach is then demonstrated through a series of detailed examples and case studies.
[more]
Handbook of Japanese Media and Popular Culture in Transition
Forum Mithani
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
The Handbook of Japanese Media and Popular Culture in Transition brings together new research and perspectives on popular media phenomena, as well as shining a spotlight on texts that are less well known or studied. Organized into five thematic sections, the chapters span a diverse range of cultural genres, including contemporary film and television, postwar cinema, advertising, popular fiction, men’s magazines, manga and anime, karaoke and digital media. They address issues critical to contemporary Japanese society: the politicization of history, authenticity and representation, constructions of identity, trauma and social disaffection, intersectionality and trans/nationalism. Drawing on methods and approaches from a range of disciplines, the chapters make explicit the interconnections between these areas of research and map out possible trajectories for future inquiry. As such, the handbook will be of value to both novice scholars and seasoned researchers, working within and/or beyond the Japanese media studies remit.
[more]
Depression and Play in Early Childhood
Annemieke Mol Lous
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
Depression in early childhood is an underestimated health problem which is known for its severity, endurance, and negative impact on the quality of life of children and their families. The lack of appropriate assessment procedures hinders early identification and therefore the possibilities for intervention and prevention. This dissertation includes three studies about markers of depression in play behavior of young children and the possibilities to use play observation procedures as an assessment tool for early identification of depression in 3- to 6-year old children. In the first two studies, depressed and nondepressed preschoolers were observed in a standardized play procedure including solitary free play, interactive free play, and play narratives with an adult researcher. Depressed children showed less play, and particularly less symbolic play than non-depressed children, and also more fragmented play behavior. This was most visible in play narratives, where induction of sad emotions had a severe dampening effect on depressed children's symbolic play. The third and last study shows that preschool teachers can use a play observation questionnaire, based on the outcomes of the observational studies, to recognize these markers of depression in children's everyday play behavior in the classroom. The findings of these studies offer new insights in the relationship between play and depression and the emotion regulation problems that negatively affect depressed children's play.
[more]
The Frisian Popular Militias between 1480 and 1560
Hans Mol
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
In the late Middle Ages and early modern times, able-bodied men between sixteen and sixty years of age were called upon all over Europe to participate in raids, sieges and battles, for the defense of home and hearth. Because these men are regarded as amateurs, military historiography has paid little attention to their efforts. This book aims to change that by studying the mobilization, organization and weaponry of popular levies for a time when war was frequently waged between states in the making. Central to the book is the composition and development of the rural and urban militias in Friesland, dissected in a comparative Northwest European perspective, along with an examination of why the self-defense of the Frisians ultimately failed in their efforts to preserve their political autonomy. The main source is an extensive series of muster lists from 1552 that have survived for six cities and fourteen rural districts.
[more]
EU Development Policy in a Changing World
Challenges for the 21st Century
Andrew Mold
Amsterdam University Press, 2007
On many fronts, European Union development policy is at a critical juncture: in the face of new obstacles, the EU has been forced to rethink trade, security, and its relationship with neighbors in North Africa and the Middle East. Contentious questions have centered on the effects of EU expansion, agricultural protectionism, and development-friendly trade policy in the EU and its member nations. To answer these questions and others, this expertly edited volume draws on analysis from well-known specialists in fields such as public policy and economic development, providing a critical overview of EU development policy and the challenges it must confront in an increasingly volatile and changing world.
[more]
State and Crafts in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)
Christine Moll-Murata
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
This book, full of quantitative evidence and limited-circulation archives, details manufacturing and the beginnings of industrialisation in China from 1644 to 1911. It thoroughly examines the interior organisation of public craft production and the complementary activities of the private sector. It offers detailed knowledge of shipbuilding and printing. Moreover, it contributes to the research of labour history and the rise of capitalism in China through its examination of living conditions, working conditions, and wages.
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Transit Migration in Europe
Irina Molodikova
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
Transit migration, comprising mixed flows of refugees and labour, is widely considered a concern and even security threat. However, the concept is as vague and blurred as it is politicised. This volume offers evidence-based, comprehensive coverage of the entire belt of countries in the neighbourhood of the EU, ranging from Russia to Morocco. Transit migration is critically analyzed from the perspective of sending, transit and receiving countries, offering new insights into refugee and irregular migration flows, transnational migration networks and overlapping migration systems.
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Film Production and Consumption in Contemporary Taiwan
Cinema as a Sensory Circuit
Ya-Feng Mon
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
This book uses the potent case study of contemporary Taiwanese queer romance films to address the question of how capitalism in Taiwan has privileged the film industry at the expense of the audience's freedom to choose and respond to culture on its own terms. Interweaving in-depth interviews with filmmakers, producers, marketers, and spectators, Ya-Fong Mon takes a biopolitical approach to the question, showing how the industry uses investments in techno-science, ancillary marketing, and media convergence to seduce and control the sensory experience of the audience-yet that control only extends so far: volatility remains a key component of the film-going experience.
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The Intellectual Dynamism of the High Middle Ages
Clare Monagle
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
Constant J. Mews's groundbreaking work reveals the wide world of medieval letters. Looking beyond the cathedral and the cloister for his investigations, and taking a broad view of intellectual practice in the Middle Ages, Mews demands that we expand our horizons as we explore the history of ideas. Alongside his cutting-edge work on Abelard, he has been a leader in the study of medieval women writers, paying heed to Hildegard and Heloise in particular. Mews has also expanded our knowledge of medieval music, and its theoretical foundations. In Mews' Middle Ages, the world of ideas always belongs to a larger world: one that is cultural, gendered and politicized. The essays in this volume pay tribute to Constant, in spirit and in content, revealing a nuanced and integrated vision of the intellectual history of the medieval West.
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European Women's Letter-writing from the 11th to the 20th Centuries
Clare Monagle
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
This book reveals the importance of personal letters in the history of European women between the year 1000 and the advent of the telephone. It explores the changing ways that women used correspondence for self-expression and political mobilization over this period, enabling them to navigate the myriad gendered restrictions that limited women’s engagement in the world. Whether written from the medieval cloister, or the renaissance court, or the artisan’s workshop, or the drawing room, letters crossed geographical and social distance and were mobile in ways that women themselves could not always be. Women wrote to govern, to argue, to plead, and to demand. They also wrote to express love and intimacy, and in so doing, to explain and to understand themselves. This book argues that the personal letter was a crucial place for European women’s self-fashioning, and that exploring the history of their letters offers a profound insight into their subjectivity and agency over time.
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Hands on Film
Actants, Aesthetics, Affects
Barry Monahan
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
Hands on Film is a comprehensive study of the representations and uses of that human limb from the birth of cinema to contemporary times. It examines how filmmakers have framed the hand for a variety of effects, from stylistic to thematic, and for the development of characterisation and narrative. The book offers insights into how films have created meaning by focusing on that part of the anatomy and, in turn, proposes a variety of ways in which its on-screen appearances might shed light on what it means to be sentient, cultured, and creative beings in the world.
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An Experts' Guide to International Protocol
Best Practice in Diplomatic and Corporate Relations
Gilbert Monod de Froideville
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
Although modern life grows increasingly casual, in many sectors, protocol still reigns supreme. An Expert's Guide to International Protocol offers an overview of its associated practices, including those found within the context of diplomatic relations and the business world. Focusing on a wide range of countries and cultures, the book covers topics like seating arrangements, the history and use of flags, ceremonies, invitations and dress codes, and gifts and decorations. Throughout, influential diplomatic, business, cultural, and sports figures share their own experiences with protocols around the world, also throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
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An Experts' Guide to International Protocol
Best Practices in Diplomatic and Corporate Relations
Gilbert Monod de Froideville
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
Although modern life grows increasingly casual, in many sectors, protocol still reigns supreme. An Expert's Guide to International Protocol offers an overview of its associated practices, including those found within the context of diplomatic relations and the business world. Focusing on a wide range of countries and cultures, the book covers topics like seating arrangements, the history and use of flags, ceremonies, invitations and dress codes, and gifts and decorations. Throughout, influential diplomatic, business, cultural, and sports figures share their own experiences with protocols around the world.
[more]
Cleopatra in Italian and English Renaissance Drama
Anna Maria Montanari
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
This book considers some of the main adaptations of the character of Cleopatra for the Renaissance stage, travelling from Italy to England to arrive finally to Shakespeare. It shows how each reading of the story of Cleopatra is unique to and expressive of the culture which produced it, even as writers drew from the same sources from Antiquity. For the first time texts belonging to different cultures, rigorously presented, are brought into dialogue on such questions as moral standpoint, gender and the representation of the exotic. Moreover, through the fascinating figure of Cleopatra, the reader is able to explore the development of Renaissance tragedy, in its commercial and non-commercial versions. Ultimately both questions at the heart of this study - concerning Cleopatra's identity and her translation into theatre - converge to be (dis)solved by Shakespeare.
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Art at Auction in 17th Century Amsterdam
J. Montias
Amsterdam University Press, 2003
This book exploits a trove of original documents that have survived on the auctions organized by the Orphan Chamber of Amsterdam in the first half of the 17th century. For the first time, the names of some 2000 buyers of works of art at auction in the 29 extant notebooks of the Chamber have been systematically analyzed. On the basis of archival research, data have been assembled on the occupation of these buyers (most of whom were merchants), their origin (Southern Netherlands, Holland, and other), their religion, their year of birth, their date of marriage, the taxes they paid and other indicators of their wealth. Buyers were found to cluster in groups, not only by extended family but by occupation, religion (Remonstrants, Counter-Remonstrants) and avocation (amateurs of tulips and of porcelain, members of Chambers of Rhetoricians, and so forth). The subjects of the works of art they bought and the artists to which they were attributed (only the most important were attributed) are also analyzed. In the second part of the book on “Selected Buyers”, three chapters are devoted to art dealers who bought at auction and four to buyers who had special connections with artists, including principally Rembrandt. To forge a link between the cultural milieu of Amsterdam in this period and the buying public, two chapters are given over to buyers who were either poets themselves or were connected with contemporary poets. As a whole, the book offers a penetrating insight into the culture of the Amsterdam elite in the 17th century.
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Divine Interiors
Mural Paintings in Greek and Roman Sanctuaries
Eric Moormann
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
Divine Interiors is an investigation into the decoration of Greek and Roman temples with wall paintings. Mighty marble facades, sculptures and paintings played an important role in relation to these monuments. While the official temples, which were connected to the city or state, usually had a simple but solemn appearance, the more popular buildings were true multi-color expressions of religiosity. Scenes from the life of the revered deity, supporters and practitioners of the cult, or of plants and animals could carry visitors of the shrines away to different worlds. It is also striking to find in the vast Greco-Roman world that there are many similarities between often widely separated temples. The wall paintings were characterized by stylistic and taste changes, but they had the same look everywhere. Besides using archeological remains, this book also uses the texts of antiquity, whose descriptions of the monuments provide additional information.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.
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Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland
Rajput Identity during the Early Colonial Encounter
Arik Moran
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Kingship and Polity on the Himalayan Borderland explores the modern transformation of state and society in the Indian Himalaya. Centred on three Rajput led-kingdoms during the transition to British rule (c. 1790-1840) and their interconnected histories, it demonstrates how border making practices engendered a modern reading of ‘tradition’ that informs communal identities to this day. Countering the common depiction of these states as all-male, caste-exclusive entities, it reveals the strong familial base of Rajput polity, wherein women — and regent queens in particular — played a key role alongside numerous non-Rajput groups. Drawing on rich archival records, rarely examined local histories, and nearly two decades of ethnographic research, it offers an alternative to the popular and scholarly discourses that developed with the rise of colonial knowledge. The analysis exposes the cardinal contribution of borderland spaces to the fabrication of group identities. This book will interest historians and anthropologists of South Asia and of the Himalaya, as well as scholars working on postcolonialism, gender, and historiography.
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The Sacred Heart of Jesus
The Visual Evolution of a Devotion
David Morgan
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
From its origins in the mid-seventeenth century visions of the French nun Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–90) to its continuing employment in worship today, the Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has been controversial. Vigorously promoted by Jesuit spiritual directors, embroiled in the controversies of Jansenist writers, closely associated with Royalist political causes in France, and taken around the world by Sister Sophie Barat in the nineteenth century, the Devotion’s practices took on the shape of its evolving visual culture and iconography. This volume traces the unfolding visual biography of the sacred heart and shows how imagery documents the Devotion’s remarkable evolution.
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A.B. Mitford and the Birth of Japan as a Modern State
Letters Home
Robert Morton
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
Mitford (later to become the first Lord Redesdale) was an urbane aristocrat, had charm, looks and excellent manners. He was always in the right place at the right time, almost drowned, could have burned to death, was shot at, and was nearly cut down by samurai swords. But 'Bertie', as he was known, was never fazed by events. He stood face-to-face with the new, teenage Emperor when almost everybody else, including the Shogun, could only talk to him behind a screen. He became friendly with the last Shogun and witnessed a hara-kiri, his atmospheric account of which is now a classic. An accomplished linguist and writer, Mitford was the outstanding chronicler of the Meiji Restoration, complementing the writings of his contemporary Ernest Satow. This book will be of particular interest to students and readers of Japanese history, as well as readers of nineteenth-century biography in general. It will also have special appeal to those who are familiar with the Mitford family history.
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A Life of Sir Harry Parkes
British Minister to Japan, China and Korea, 1865-1885
Robert Morton
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Harry Parkes was at the heart of Britain’s relations with the Far East from the start of his working life at fourteen, to his death at fifty-seven. Orphaned at the age of five, he went to China on his own as a child and worked his way to the top. God-fearing and fearless, he believed his mission was to bring trade and ‘civilisation’ to East Asia. In his day, he was seen as both a hero and a monster and is still bitterly resented in China for his part in the country’s humiliations at Western hands, but largely esteemed in Japan for helping it to industrialise. Morton’s new biography, the first in over thirty years, and benefiting in part from access to the Parkes’ family and archives, offers a more intimate and informed profile of the personal and professional life of a Victorian titan and one of Britain’s most undiplomatic diplomats in the history of the British Civil Service.
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The Great West Ukrainian Prison Massacre of 1941
A Sourcebook
Alexander Motyl
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, executed a staggering number of political prisoners in Western Ukraine-somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000-in the space of eight days, in one of the greatest atrocities perpetrated by the Soviet state. Yet the Great West Ukrainian Prison Massacre of 1941 is largely unknown. This sourcebook aims to change that, offering detailed scholarly analysis, eyewitness testimonies and profiles of known victims, and a selection of fiction, memoirs, and poetry that testifies to the lasting impact of the massacre in the collective memory of Ukrainians.
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Post-cinema
Cinema in the Post-art Era
José Moure
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Post-cinema designates a new way of making films. It is time to ask whether this novelty is complete or relative and to evaluate to what extent it represents a unitary or diversified current. The book proposes to integrate the post-cinema question within the post-art question in order to study the new ways of making filmic images. The issue will be considered at three levels: the impression of post-art on "regular" films; the "relocation" (Casetti) of the same films that can be seen using devices of all kinds in conditions more or less removed from the dispositif of the theater; the integration of cinema into contemporary art in all kinds of forms of creation and exhibition, parallel to the integration of contemporary art in "regular" cinema.
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Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Film
Daniel Mourenza
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Walter Benjamin is today regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century. Often captured in pensive pose, his image is now that of a serious intellectual. But Benjamin was also a fan of the comedies of Adolphe Menjou, Mickey Mouse, and Charlie Chaplin. As an antidote to repressive civilization, he developed, through these figures, a theory of laughter. Walter Benjamin and the Aesthetics of Film is the first monograph to thoroughly analyse Benjamin's film writings, contextualizing them within his oeuvre whilst also paying attention to the various films, actors, and directors that sparked his interest. The book situates all these writings with Benjamin's 'anthropological materialism', a concept that analyses the transformations of the human sensorium through technology. Through the term 'innervation', Benjamin thought of film spectatorship as an empowering reception that, through a rush of energy, would form a collective body within the audience, interpenetrating a liberated technology into the distracted spectators. Benjamin's writings on Soviet film and German cinema, Charlie Chaplin, and Mickey Mouse are analysed in relation to this posthuman constellation that Benjamin had started to dream of in the early twenties, long before he started to theorize about films.
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Improvising Cinema
Gilles Mouëllic
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
This spirited volume explores the history and diversity of improvisation in the cinema, including works by Jean Renoir, Jean-Luc Godard, and Nobuhiro Suwa. Gilles Mouëllic examines improvisational practices that can be specifically attributed to the cinema and argues in favors of their powers as instigators of unprecedented forms of expression. Improvising Cinema reflects both on the permanence of attempting improvisation and the relationship between technology and aesthetics. Mouëllic concludes preservation becomes even more invaluable in the case of improvisation, as the creative act exists only within the brief time span of the performance.
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Premodern Rulership and Contemporary Political Power
The King's Body Never Dies
Karolina Anna Mroziewicz
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
In the medieval period, the monarch was seen as the embodiment of the community of his kingdom, the body politic. And while we've long since shed that view, it nonetheless continues to influence our understanding of contemporary politics. This book offers thirteen case studies from premodern and contemporary Europe that demonstrate the process through which political corporations-bodies politic-were and continue to be constructed and challenged. Drawing on history, archaeology, literary criticism, and art history, the contributors survey a wide geographical and chronological spectrum to offer a panoramic view of these dynamic political entities.
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Women Religious and Epistolary Exchange in the Carmelite Reform
The Disciples of Teresa de Avila
Bárbara Mujica
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
The sixteenth century was a period of crisis in the Catholic Church. Monastic reorganization was a major issue, and women were at the forefront of charting new directions in convent policy. The story of the Carmelite Reform has been told before, but never from the perspective of the women on the front lines. Nearly all accounts of the movement focus on Teresa de Avila, (1515-1582), and end with her death in 1582. Women Religious and Epistolary Exchange in the Carmelite Reform: The Disciples of Teresa de Avila carries the story beyond Teresa’s death, showing how the next generation of Carmelite nuns struggled into the seventeenth century to continue her mission. It is unique in that it draws primarily from female-authored sources, in particular, the letters of three of Teresa’s most dynamic disciples: María de San José, Ana de Jesús and Ana de San Bartolomé.
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National Language Planning and Language Shifts in Malaysian Minority Communities
Speaking in Many Tongues
Dipika Mukherjee
Amsterdam University Press, 2011
Malaysia has long been a melting pot of various cultures and ethnicities, including the three largest populations, the Malay, Chinese, and Indians. Despite this, efforts to implement multilingualism, advocated by language educators and policy makers, have been marred by political and religious affiliations. Drawing on two decades of field research, this timely analysis of language variation in Malaysia is an important contribution to the understanding not only of linguistic pluralism in the country, but also of the Indian Diaspora, and of the effects of language change on urban migrant populations. The research presented here will be of interest to scholars of Southeast Asian and South Asian Studies.
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Cruiser HNLMS Tromp
Jantinus Mulder
Amsterdam University Press
Fast Combat Support Ship HNLMS Zuiderkruis
Jantinus Mulder
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
HNLMS Zuiderkruis (1975-2012) was the second Fast Combat Support Ship of the Royal Netherlands Navy. It was primarily intended for Replenishment At Sea, fueling task groups and NATO units. As a modern design Zuiderkruis enabled a “one stop replenishment” and also carried AVCAT, fresh water and spare parts. A helicopter deck facilitated vertical replenishment.
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Frigate HMS Leander
Jantinus Mulder
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
HMS Leander was completed in 1963 as the first ship of the Leander Class Improved Type 12 General Purpose Frigates. In 1974, she joined the 3rd Frigate Squadron, which included other Leander-class frigates. The design was the most successful Western frigate of its time and led to several new international designs.
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Protected cruiser Gelderland
Jantinus Mulder
Amsterdam University Press
S-class destroyer Piet Hein (ex HMS Serapis)
Jantinus Mulder
Amsterdam University Press
Type 42 destroyer Southampton
Jantinus Mulder
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
The primary role of the Type 42 destroyers was providing air defense for the fleet. With their long-range sensors, the ships could also act as radar pickets, sailing ahead of a task group. HMS Southampton was the eighth ship originally destined to be a 16-ship class – two of these ships have been exported to Argentina. The type 42 comprised eight Batch 1 vessels, four Batch 2 and four Batch 3 Stretched Type 42.
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