front cover of A.B. Mitford and the Birth of Japan as a Modern State
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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The ABC of Life
Success Has 3 Letters
Marcus B. Muller
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
Nowadays it seems there is a manual for everything. What if there was a manual for how to interact with people so that we could all function optimally and succeed in life? This book comes closest to being the definitive manual for life. It is based on over 50 years of groundbreaking scientific research on self-determination theory which has produced a structural approach to social interaction—the ‘ABC of life’—as a concrete and actionable approach to success. For if you do not understand how people function, you will find it difficult to succeed in business, education, health, sports—or indeed almost any facet of life.
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The ABC of Modern Biography
Nigel Hamilton
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
In this book - an ABC of the genre, with 26 entries - two renowned biographers and teachers take us on a tour, from A for Authorization to Z for Zigzagging to the End. In trenchant, witty entries they explore the good, the bad and the plain ugly in modern 'life writing' and the portrayal of real lives today - and how, across history and continents, we got here. This book will fascinate general readers interested in how real lives are approached by biographers today in a multitude of media. It will make a much-needed contribution in academia, as well as providing an important text for students of history, language and literature, the arts, science and media. And, not least, for biographers trying to avoid the pitfalls of ignorance or ineptitude.
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front cover of The ABC of Modern Biography
The ABC of Modern Biography
Nigel Hamilton
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
In this book - an ABC of the genre, with 26 entries - two renowned biographers and teachers take us on a tour, from A for Authorization to Z for Zigzagging to the End. In trenchant, witty entries they explore the good, the bad and the plain ugly in modern 'life writing' and the portrayal of real lives today - and how, across history and continents, we got here.This book will fascinate general readers interested in how real lives are approached by biographers today in a multitude of media. It will make a much-needed contribution in academia, as well as providing an important text for students of history, language and literature, the arts, science and media. And, not least, for biographers trying to avoid the pitfalls of ignorance or ineptitude.
[more]

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

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The Abe Experiment and the Future of Japan
Don’t Repeat History
Junji Banno
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
With an author’s Foreword written on the day that the Abe cabinet decided to ‘revise the Japanese Constitution by reinterpretation’ (Tuesday, 1 July 2014), this timely examination of Japan’s post-war history by two leading historians committed to democratic politics is highly instructive and prompts serious reflection by anyone concerned with the future of Japan. Originally published in Japan by Iwanami Shinsho, The Abe Experiment and the Future of Japan, records a wide-ranging dialogue between two eminent Japanese scholars – Junji Banno, a political historian, and Jir? Yamaguchi, a political scientist – regarding Japan’s modern political history. The focus of the conversation is on what they perceive as disturbing parallels between the 1930s and the recent policy trajectory of the Abe government, in which relations with Japan’s immediate neighbours have seriously deteriorated. The translation is by the distinguished Oxford scholar and author Arthur Stockwin, formerly Director of the Nissan Institute.
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Abstraction in Medieval Art
Beyond the Ornament
Elina Gertsman
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
Abstraction haunts medieval art, both withdrawing figuration and suggesting elusive presence. How does it make or destroy meaning in the process? Does it suggest the failure of figuration, the faltering of iconography? Does medieval abstraction function because it is imperfect, incomplete, and uncorrected-and therefore cognitively, visually demanding? Is it, conversely, precisely about perfection? To what extent is the abstract predicated on theorization of the unrepresentable and imperceptible? Does medieval abstraction pit aesthetics against metaphysics, or does it enrich it, or frame it, or both? Essays in this collection explore these and other questions that coalesce around three broad themes: medieval abstraction as the untethering of image from what it purports to represent, abstraction as a vehicle for signification, and abstraction as a form of figuration. Contributors approach the concept of medieval abstraction from a multitude of perspectives-formal, semiotic, iconographic, material, phenomenological, epistemological.
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Academic Skills for Interdisciplinary Studies
Ger Post, Vincent Visser, and Joris Buis
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
Academic skills are the tools that enable you to gain, develop and critically discuss new knowledge during and after your Bachelor's and Master's programme. This handbook offers practical instructions, tips, and tricks that help undergraduate students to develop the skills needed for an interdisciplinary curriculum.
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Academic Skills for Interdisciplinary Studies
Revised Edition
Koen van der Gaast
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
What’s a theoretical framework for? How do you effectively present your data in a figure? What’s the secret to a good presentation?As an interdisciplinary student, you delve into theories and research methodsfrom a whole range of disciplines. Academic skills are the tools that you can use to take in, develop, integrate and question knowledge. This guide provides specific instructions, tips and examples to help students develop these skills, both during and after their studies.As academic education focuses on research, the empirical cycle forms a keytheme of the book, including when discussing the following skills:- Searching for, critically reading and analysing scholarly texts- Formulating research questions- Making concepts measurable, qualitatively and quantitatively- Organizing literature and data- Analysing and formulating an argument- Academic writing- Collaborating- Reflecting- Presenting
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Accelerators in Silicon Valley
Building Successful Startups
Peter Ester
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
This book describes how accelerators, the 'schools of startup entrepreneurship', help startups to become successful companies in Silicon Valley, the world's most successful innovation region.
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front cover of Accessing Technical Education in Modern Japan
Accessing Technical Education in Modern Japan
Erich Pauer
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
This collection of fourteen key papers deriving from CEEJA’s second international conference exploring the Japanese history of technology, concentrates on the routes to acquiring and transmitting technical knowledge in Japan’s modern era – from the very earliest endeavours in establishing opportunities for acquiring a technical education to the translation of foreign textbooks and manuals. Published in two volumes and thematically structured in three Parts, this wide-ranging work both complements and expands on the subject-matter contained in the first volume entitled Technical Knowledge in Early Modern Japan (2020).
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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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front cover of Acquisition and Loss of Nationality, Volume 1
Acquisition and Loss of Nationality, Volume 1
Comparative Analyses: Policies and Trends in 15 European Countries
Edited by Rainer Bauböck, Eva Ersboll, Kees Groenendijk, and Harald Waldrauch
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
Acquisition and Loss of Nationality brings together a team of thirty researchers for an in-depth analysis of nationality laws in all fifteen pre-2004 member states of the European Union. Volume One presents detailed comparisons of the citizenship laws of all fifteen nations, while Volume Two contains individual studies of each country's laws. Together, the books are the most comprehensive available resource on the question of European nationality.
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front cover of Acquisition and Loss of Nationality, Volume 2
Acquisition and Loss of Nationality, Volume 2
Policies and Trends in 15 European Countries: Country Analyses
Edited by Rainer Bauböck, Eva Ersbøll, Kees Groenendijk, and Harald Waldrauch
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
Acquisition and Loss of Nationality brings together a team of thirty researchers for an in-depth analysis of nationality laws in all fifteen pre-2004 member states of the European Union. Volume One presents detailed comparisons of the citizenship laws of all fifteen nations, while Volume Two contains individual studies of each country's laws. Together, the books are the most comprehensive available resource on the question of European nationality.
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front cover of Across Space and Time
Across Space and Time
Papers from the 41st Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, Perth, 25-28 March 2013
Edited by Arianna Traviglia
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
This volume presents a selection of the best papers presented at the forty-first annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology. The theme for the conference was “Across Space and Time” and the papers explore a multitude of topics related to that concept, including databases, the semantic Web, geographical information systems, data collection and management, and more.
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front cover of Across the Three Pagodas Pass
Across the Three Pagodas Pass
The Story of the Thai-Burma Railway
Peter Davies
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
This is a translation of the only known detailed account of the building of the notorious 262-mile long Thai-Burma Railway by one of the Japanese professional engineers who was involved in its construction. The author, Yoshihiko Futamatsu, provides an invaluable new source of historical and technical reference that complements the existing large body of literature in English on this subject. Futamatsu’s memoir also includes wide-ranging reflections on the course and conduct of ‘his’ war as well as his engineering and army experiences. The Thai-Burma Railway took eighteen months to build and cost the lives of some 90,000 people (mostly British, Australian, Dutch and American POWs, as well as great numbers of local labourers) out of a total of over 200,000, including some 12-15,000 Japanese who were engaged in the enterprise. The ‘Three Pagodas Pass’ was located at the Thai-Burma frontier. Across the Three Pagodas Pass is edited and introduced by Peter N. Davies who provides the back story to the publication of this book and the key people involved. This is followed by translator Ewart Escritt’s original Introduction to his translation of Futamatsu’s memoir which also includes a detailed account of his own POW experiences as well as his reflections on the war and its outcomes. Many contemporary original drawings, maps and photographs appear in the plate section.
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front cover of Adaptation in the Age of Media Convergence
Adaptation in the Age of Media Convergence
Edited by Johannes Fehrle and Werner Schäfke
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
This collection considers new phenomena emerging in a convergence environment from the perspective of adaptation studies. The contributions take the most prominent methods within the field to offer reconsiderations of theoretical concepts and practices in participatory culture, transmedia franchises, and new media adaptations. The authors discuss phenomena ranging from mash-ups of novels and YouTube cover songs to negotiations of authorial control and interpretative authority between media producers and fan communities to perspectives on the fictional and legal framework of brands and franchises. In this fashion, the collection expands the horizons of both adaptation and transmedia studies and provides reassessments of frequently discussed (BBC’s Sherlock or the LEGO franchise) and previously largely ignored phenomena (self-censorship in transnational franchises, mash-up novels, or YouTube cover videos).
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front cover of Addressing Injustice in the Medieval Body Politic
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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Advertising and the Transformation of Screen Cultures
Bo Florin
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
Advertising has played a central role in shaping the history of modern media. While often identified with American consumerism and the rise of the 'Information Society', motion picture advertising has been part of European visual culture since the late nineteenth century. With the global spread of ad agencies, moving image advertisements became a privileged cultural form to make people experience the qualities and uses of branded commodities, to articulate visions of a 'good life', and to incite social relationships. Abandoning a conventional delineation of fields by medium, country, or period, this book suggests a lateral view. It charts the audiovisual history of advertising by focussing on objects (products and services), screens (exhibition, programming, physical media), practices (production, marketing), and intermediaries (ad agencies). In this way, the book develops new historical, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.
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front cover of The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism
The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism
Walking in Films
Asli Özgen
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism: Walking in Films offers a rich exploration of the cinematic aesthetics that filmmakers devised to reflect the corporeal and affective experience of walking in the city. Drawing from literature in urban studies, film theory, and aesthetic philosophy, it is the first monograph to approach the history of cinema from the perspective of walking. A series of case studies providing nuanced analyses of widely referenced figures, such as the flaneur/flâneuse, vagabond, and nomad, reveal how filmmakers articulated their objection to repressive structures through depictions of walking: a common, everyday act yet transgressive, bold, and indomitable. Through the lens of Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space, Michel de Certeau’s concept of pedestrian acts, and Jacques Rancière’s treatment of the politics of aesthetics, Walking in Films traces how cinema evolved in conversation with the mobile body and the new images, styles, and techniques that emerged with it.
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Aesthetics of Early Sound Film
Media Change around 1930
Daniel Wiegand
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
This volume takes a fresh look at the various aesthetics emerging globally in the early sound film era, with a focus on the films’ fundamentally experimental and inventive character. By considering films and production contexts often neglected in film studies, it strives to counter the still dominant view of the transitional period as a time of yet-to-be-perfected forerunners of ‘classical’ sound film. Instead, authors highlight the sense of ‘fruitful uncertainty’ in this period of media change and transformation. Subjects covered include visual and auditory style; the uses of speech, music, and noises; aesthetic conceptions in sound film theory; and intermedial aesthetics. The volume’s scope is decidedly international, covering production and reception contexts in the Soviet Union, Japan, the USA, Germany, France, Italy, the UK, and Switzerland.
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Aesthetics of Gentrification
Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City
Christoph Lindner
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
Gentrification is reshaping cities worldwide, resulting in seductive spaces and exclusive communities that aspire to innovation, creativity, sustainability, and technological sophistication. Gentrification is also contributing to growing social-spatial division and urban inequality and precarity. In a time of escalating housing crisis, unaffordable cities, and racial tension, scholars speak of eco-gentrification, techno-gentrification, super-gentrification, and planetary-gentrification to describe the different forms and scales of involuntary displacement occurring in vulnerable communities in response to current patterns of development and the hype-driven discourses of the creative city, smart city, millennial city, and sustainable city.

In this context, how do contemporary creative practices in art, architecture, and related fields help to produce or resist gentrification? What does gentrification look and feel like in specific sites and communities around the globe, and how is that appearance or feeling implicated in promoting stylized renewal to a privileged public? In what ways do the aesthetics of gentrification express contested conditions of migration and mobility? Addressing these questions, this book examines the relationship between aesthetics and gentrification in contemporary cities from multiple, comparative, global, and transnational perspectives.
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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.
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African-Asian Encounters
New Cooperations and New Dependencies
Edited by Arndt Graf and Azirah Hashim
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
In recent decades, ties between Africa and Asia have greatly increased. And while most of the scholarly attention to the phenomenon has focused on China, often with an emphasis on asymmetric power relations in both politics and economics, this book takes a much broader view, looking at various small and medium-sized actors in Asia and Africa in a wide range of fields. It will be essential for scholars working on Asian-African studies and will also offer insights for policymakers working in this fast-changing field.
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After the Break
Television Theory Today
Edited by Marijke de Valck and Jan Teurlings
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
Television is evolving rapidly. How, then, might we respond to television today in light of its past? And do the old theoretical concepts still apply, or must we invent a new framework for this mutable medium? To answer these fundamental questions, the contributors to this provocative collection examine diverse case studies, including up-to-date scholarship on the current television zeitgeist, nostalgic programming on broadcast television, YouTube, and public television art programming of the 1980s. As a whole, these essays challenge the supposed crisis in television in the light of its burgeoning development. 
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Aftershocks
Economic Crisis and Institutional Choice
Edited by Anton Hemerijck, Ben Knapen and Ellen van Doorne
Amsterdam University Press, 2009

Although it would be premature to presume to identify the exact repercussions of the current economic crisis, it is clear that it will have profound effects in the political, economic, and social spheres. Written in the midst of the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression, Aftershocks contains twenty-four essays—based on interviews with scholars, prominent European politicians, and leading figures from business and banking—that reflect on the origins of the crisis as well as the possible social, economic, and political transformations it may engender. Among the many contributors are Barry Eichengreen, Tony Atkinson, David Soskice, Nancy Birdsall, Amitai Etzioni, Helmut Schmidt, and Jacques Delors.

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Agreement Restrictions in Persian
Anousha Sedighi
Amsterdam University Press, 2010
Agreement Restrictions in Persian is the first comprehensive attempt to tackle the issue of verbal agreement in Persian from a cross-linguistic point of view. Persian is a field of research within theoretical linguistics that is yet to be sufficiently explored. This book adopts the Minimalist Program of Chomsky (1995-2004) which is at the forefront of recent theories of formal syntax and applies it to the Persian language. Although it is commonly believed that in Persian the verb agrees with the subject, several constructions seem to constrain this obligatory rule. Adopting the framework of Distributed Morphology, the author argues that agreement is in fact obtained with the plural inanimate subjects but a morphological rule may block the result. Unlike the previous analyses which consider the experiencer as the subject of the psychological constructions, the author argues that the psychological state is the subject of the sentence. The findings of this book not only contribute to better understanding of Persian syntax, but also have important implications for grammar theory.
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front cover of AIDS, Intimacy and Care in Rural KwaZulu-Natal
AIDS, Intimacy and Care in Rural KwaZulu-Natal
A Kinship of Bones
Patricia C. Henderson
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
Patricia C. Henderson, a South African anthropologist, resided from March 2003 to February 2006 in Okhahlamba, a municipality in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. In this book, she recounts her experience among this rural population who lived under the shadow of HIV/AIDS. Spanning a period that starts before antiretrovirals were readily available to a time when these treatments were finally used to care for the ill, this powerful account of a terrible disease and the communities which it affects focuses on the ties between suffering and kinship in South Africa.
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Albania on the Move
Links between Internal and International Migration
Julie Vullnetari
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
Starting from a cluster of villages in southeast Albania, Albanian-born British scholar Julie Vullnetari follows rural migrants to domestic urban destinations such as Tirana and abroad to Thessaloniki in Greece. Vullnetari has conducted more than 150 interviews, and drawing upon this rich empirical material, she offers a profound account of Albanian migration from start to finish. A rare, exhaustive overview of Albania’s post-communist internal and international migrations, Albania on the Move is a powerful combination of ethnography and multifaceted academic analysis, grounded in the personal experience of the author.
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Albanian Cinema through the Fall of Communism
Silver Screens and Red Flags
Bruce Williams
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
Albanian cinema truly represents a terra incognita for most of the world. Decidedly Europe’s most isolated country during the Cold War era, communist Albania had already been cut off from the West for centuries as a one of the western-most outposts of the Ottoman empire. Nonetheless, and unknown to most of the world, communist Albania had a vibrant cinema tradition. Although bound by official orthodoxy, the films of the state-run Kinostudio enterprise were surprisingly innovative and, at times, daringly subversive. This book opens with examinations of moving images in Albania from the Ottoman period, through those captured under independence and the Fascist occupation. It subsequently foregrounds transformations in Kinostudio, from the early optimism of socialist realism through the brooding social angst of the 1980s, which constitute a bridge to the socioeconomic concerns of Albanian films of the postcommunist period.
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Alexander Kluge
Raw Materials for the Imagination
Edited by Tara Forrest
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
Alexander Kluge is best known as a founding member of the New German Cinema movement, but his work has spanned a number of genres and media. This wide-ranging book assembles a diverse selection of texts, from nonfiction writings and short stories by Kluge, to critical essays by renowned international scholars on Kluge’s work, to transcripts of interviews with the artist himself. A valuable collection for students and scholars in the fields of film, television, and media studies, Alexander Kluge: Raw Materials for the Imagination is a perfect introduction to Kluge’s key themes and ideas.
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Alfonso X of Castile-León
Royal Patronage, Self-Promotion and Manuscripts in Thirteenth-century Spain
Kirstin Kennedy
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Today, the literary patronage of Alfonso X 'the Learned' of Castile (1252-1284) seems extraordinary for its time in the context of Europe. His cultural programme, which promoted his royal status and imperial ambitions, was hugely ambitious, and the paucity of information about the intellectual circumstances in which it took place magnifies the scope of Alfonso's achievements still further. This book argues that rather than providing a new cultural template for his kingdoms, Alfonso did little to promote institutional learning and preferred instead to direct the literary works he commissioned to a restricted, courtly audience who would understand the complex layers of symbolism in the representations of him that accompanied the texts. Despite this careful control, this book cites codicological and paleographical evidence to show that some codices traditionally ascribed to the royal scriptorium were copied at the behest of readers beyond the king's immediate circle.
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Algorithmic Regimes
Methods, Interactions, and Politics
Juliane Jarke
Amsterdam University Press, 2024
Algorithms have risen to become one, if not the central technology for producing, circulating, and evaluating knowledge in multiple societal arenas. In this book, scholars from the social sciences, humanities, and computer science argue that this shift has, and will continue to have, profound implications for how knowledge is produced and what and whose knowledge is valued and deemed valid. To attend to this fundamental change, the authors propose the concept of algorithmic regimes and demonstrate how they transform the epistemological, methodological, and political foundations of knowledge production, sensemaking, and decision-making in contemporary societies. Across sixteen chapters, the volume offers a diverse collection of contributions along three perspectives on algorithmic regimes: the methods necessary to research and design algorithmic regimes, the ways in which algorithmic regimes reconfigure sociotechnical interactions, and the politics engrained in algorithmic regimes.
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Alter Ego
Twenty Confronting Views on the European Experience
Edited by Guido Snel
Amsterdam University Press, 2004
This extraordinary volume explores the modern melding of cultures, languages, and traditions on the European continent and the human consequences of the rapidly shifting borders in the new era of the European Union. Twenty contributors, from a British-based Iraqi Jewish sociologist to a Romanian playwright in New York, relate their fascinating life experiences that span countries and continents and the multiple identities that they have cultivated during their life journeys. Alter Ego is a compelling volume that probes deeply into the modern European experience and allows a host of voices to share the joys, challenges, and frustrations of living across multiple cultures.
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front cover of American Folk Music as Tactical Media
American Folk Music as Tactical Media
Henry Adam Svec
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
American folk music has long presented a problematic conception of authenticity, but the reality of the folk scene, and its relationship to media, is far more complicated. This book draws on the fields of media archaeology, performance studies, and sound studies to explore the various modes of communication that can be uncovered from the long American folk revival. From Alan Lomax's cybernetic visions to Bob Dylan's noisy writing machines, this book retrieves a subterranean discourse on the concept of media that might help us to reimagine the potential of the networks in which we work, play, and sing.
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front cover of American Mass Incarceration and Post-Network Quality Television
American Mass Incarceration and Post-Network Quality Television
Captivating Aspirations
Lee Flamand
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
Far more than a building of brick and mortar, the prison relies upon gruesome stories circulated as commercial media to legitimize its institutional reproduction. Perhaps no medium has done more in recent years to both produce and intervene in such stories than television. This unapologetically interdisciplinary work presents a series of investigations into some of the most influential and innovative treatments of American mass incarceration to hit our screens in recent decades. Looking beyond celebratory accolades, Lee A. Flamand argues that we cannot understand the eagerness of influential programs such as OZ, The Wire, Orange Is the New Black, 13th, and Queen Sugar to integrate the sensibilities of prison ethnography, urban sociology, identity politics activism, and even Black feminist theory into their narrative structures without understanding how such critical postures relate to the cultural aspirations and commercial goals of a quickly evolving TV industry and the most deeply ingrained continuities of American storytelling practices.
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front cover of American Multiculturalism after 9/11
American Multiculturalism after 9/11
Transatlantic Perspectives
Edited by Derek Rubin and Jaap Verheul
Amsterdam University Press, 2009

This groundbreaking volume explores the multicultural debate that has evolved in the United States and Europe since the cataclysmic events of 9/11. Instead of suggesting closure by presenting a unified narrative about cultural diversity, national identity, and social stratification, the essays in this well-balanced collection present a variety of perspectives, each highlighting the undiminished relevance of key issues such as immigration, assimilation, and citizenship, while also pointing to unresolved conflicts over universalism, religion, and tolerance. Most importantly, this volume shows that the struggle over multiculturalism is not limited to the political domain, but also has profound cultural implications. American Multiculturalism after 9/11: Transatlantic Perspectives is an invaluable, thought-provoking addition to the debate about multiculturalism as central to the study of the United States in a global context.



 

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front cover of The American Southern Gothic on Screen
The American Southern Gothic on Screen
Karen Horsley
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
The Southern Gothic on Screen explores a body of screen texts that conform to certain generic conventions and aesthetics that, since the early twentieth century, have led to the construction of the American South as a space of ruin, decay, melancholy, loss, and haunting. The book considers the cultural significance of the Southern Gothic on screen by examining southern otherness as the primary mechanism through which the South is rendered a space of darkness and danger. This opens up a critical space for the Southern Gothic to be discussed as a screen genre with its own complex visual, thematic and narrative codes. The book establishes a perspective that synthesizes a broad understanding of Southern Gothic genericity with pre-existing cultural and political discourses on the South, resulting in an analysis that is specific to film and television while remaining heedful of the intersecting discourses that inform both the Gothic and the South as historic and mediated constructs.
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front cover of American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia
American Visions of the Netherlands East Indies/Indonesia
US Foreign Policy and Indonesian Nationalism 1920-1949
Frances Gouda and Thijs Brocades Zaalberg
Amsterdam University Press, 2002
The result of a Fulbright senior research fellowship celebrating the simultaneous 50th anniversaries of the Fulbright Exchange Foundation and the Indonesian Republic, this book offers a new perspective on American attitudes toward Dutch colonial rule and Indonesia’s struggle for independence. Drawing on extensive research in American, Dutch, Indonesian, and Australian diplomatic records and archival documents, as well as the archives of the United Nations, the authors give a new overview of the political background and changing rationale of American foreign policies.
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front cover of America's Encounters with Southeast Asia, 1800-1900
America's Encounters with Southeast Asia, 1800-1900
Before the Pivot
Farish A. Noor
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
A century before the Philippines came under American control, Americans were already travelling to Southeast Asia regularly. This book looks at the writings of American diplomats, adventurers, and scientists and chronicles how nineteenth-century Americans viewed and imagined Southeast Asia through their own cultural-political lenses. It argues that as Americans came to visit the region they also brought with them a train of cultural assumptions and biases that contributed to the development of American Orientalism in Southeast Asia.
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Amsterdam Human Capital
Edited by Willem Salet and Sako Musterd
Amsterdam University Press, 2003
The familiar shape of western cities is changing dramatically. For long times the urban core was taken for granted as the focal point for international contacts and day-to-day activities in the region. Currently, the urban scope is transforming into multi centred forms at metropolitan scale. The transition is not just a matter of spatial form, it is reflecting social, economic and cultural processes. The question is what new identities may develop in such changing historical conditions of space and place.The book is a first attempt to analyse the process of urban transformation in an integral way. The focus is on the region of Amsterdam. All contributions are written by senior researchers of the Amsterdam studycentre for the Metropolitan Environment (AME). AME is the interdisciplinary urban research institute of the Universiteit van Amsterdam.As the urban research institute at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, the Amsterdam studycentre for the Metropolitan Environment (AME) analyses the economic, social and cultural aspects of this spatial transformation, usually in international comparative research. All contributions to this book are written by senior researchers of AME in an attempt to analyse in an integral way the present and future dilemmas out of the historical growth paths of this dynamic city.
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front cover of Analogy and Exemplary Reasoning in Legal Discourse
Analogy and Exemplary Reasoning in Legal Discourse
Edited by Hendrik Kaptein and Bastiaan van der Velden
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
This book brings together contributions from leading figures in legal studies on analogy and related forms of reasoning in the law. Analogical reasoning-which relies on the concept of two different things being in some way like each other-is hugely important not just in the practice of law, but it is nonetheless strongly contested. This volume raises key questions like: What is the logical, argumentative, rhetorical, or just heuristic force of analogy in law? Is analogy really different from extensive interpretation, reasoning by precedent and appeal to paradigm?
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Anatomy Live
Performance and the Operating Theatre
Edited by Maaike Bleeker
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
Gross anatomy, the study of anatomical structures that can be seen by unassisted vision, has long been a subject of fascination for artists. For most modern viewers, however, the anatomy lesson—the technically precise province of clinical surgeons and medical faculties—hardly seems the proper breeding ground for the hybrid workings of art and theory. We forget that, in its early stages, anatomy pursued the highly theatrical spirit of Renaissance science, as painters such as Rembrandt and Da Vinci and medical instructors like Fabricius of Aquapendente shared audiences devoted to the workings of the human body. Anatomy Live: Performance and the Operating Theatre, a remarkable consideration of new developments on the stage, as well as in contemporary writings of theorists such as Donna Haraway and Brian Massumi, turns our modern notions of the dissecting table on its head—using anatomical theatre as a means of obtaining a fresh perspective on representations of the body, conceptions of subjectivity, and own knowledge about science and the stage. Critically dissecting well-known exhibitions like Body Worlds and The Visible Human Project and featuring contributions from a number of diverse scholars on such subjects as the construction of spectatorship and the implications of anatomical history, Anatomy Live is not to be missed by anyone with an interest in this engaging intersection of science and artistic practice.
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front cover of Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West
Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West
Care of the Self
Gregory Bracken
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
What does it mean to be a good citizen today? What are practices of citizenship? And what can we learn from the past about these practices to better engage in city life in the twenty-first century? Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self is a collection of papers that examine these questions. The contributors come from a variety of different disciplines, including architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and history, and their essays make comparative examinations of the practices of citizenship from the ancient world to the present day in both the East and the West. The papers’ comparative approaches, between East and West, and ancient and modern, leads to a greater understanding of the challenges facing citizens in the urbanized twenty-first century, and by looking at past examples, suggests ways of addressing them. While the book’s point of departure is philosophical, its key aim is to examine how philosophy can be applied to everyday life for the betterment of citizens in cities not just in Asia and the West but everywhere.
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The Anglo-Saxon Elite
Northumbrian Society in the Long Eighth Century
Renato Rodrigues da Silva
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
In all of the literature on Anglo-Saxon England, rarely has the question of social class been confronted head-on. This study draws upon recent research into topics such as religious practice, emotions, daily life, and intellectual culture to investigate how the aristocracy of Northumbria maintained social dominance over wider society. Moreover, this monograph suggests that the crisis that brought an end to Northumbria as an independent kingdom was the product of the social contradictions produced by the ruling class as social domination developed over time. The analysis is divided into three broad parts – production, circulation, and consumption – both as a nod to Marxist historiography and also to signal a commitment to a methodology that situates the subject within a global context.
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Anglo-Saxon Literary Landscapes
Ecotheory and the Environmental Imagination
Heide Estes
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
Literary scholars have traditionally understood landscapes, whether natural or manmade, as metaphors for humanity instead of concrete settings for people's actions. This book accepts the natural world as such by investigating how Anglo-Saxons interacted with and conceived of their lived environments. Examining Old English poems, such as Beowulf and Judith, as well as descriptions of natural events from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and other documentary texts, Heide Estes shows that Anglo-Saxon ideologies which view nature as diametrically opposed to humans, and the natural world as designed for human use, have become deeply embedded in our cultural heritage, language, and more.
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Animal Rights Activism
A Moral-Sociological Perspective on Social Movements
Kerstin Jacobsson and Jonas Lindblom
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
We're in an era of ever increasing attention to animal rights, and activism around the issue is growing more widespread and prominent. In this volume, Jonas Lindblom and Kerstin Jacobsson use the animal rights movement in Sweden to offer the first analysis of social movements through the lens of Emile Durkheim's sociology of morality. By positing social movements as essentially a moral phenomenon-and morality itself as a social fact-the book complements more structural, cultural, or strategic action-based approaches, even as it also demonstrates the continuing value of classical sociological approaches to understanding contemporary society.
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The Animal Rights Struggle
An Essay in Historical Sociology
Christophe Traïni
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
Since the early nineteenth century, numerous campaigns have denounced the mistreatment of animals. Originally published in French as La cause animale, this book compares the British and French histories of the animal-protection movement to retrace its origins and assess its impact up to the present day. As Christophe Traïni shows, the struggle for animal rights-inextricably linked to the rise of philanthropy and established long before the birth of the ecology movement-developed out of several important social and political processes, including changes in sensibilities and socially approved emotions, new definitions of what constitutes legitimate violence, and the influence of religious beliefs.
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Anjin - The Life and Times of Samurai William Adams, 1564-1620
A Japanese Perspective
Hiromi Rogers
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
The year is 1600. It is April and Japan’s iconic cherry trees are in full flower. A battered ship drifts on the tide into Usuki Bay in southern Japan. On board, barely able to stand, are twenty-three Dutchmen and one Englishman, the remnants of a fleet of five ships and 500 men that had set out from Rotterdam in 1598. The Englishman was William Adams, later to be known as Anjin Miura by the Japanese, whose subsequent transformation from wretched prisoner to one of the Shogun’s closest advisers is the centrepiece of this book. As a native of Japan, and a scholar of seventeenth-century Japanese history, the author delves deep into the cultural context facing Adams in what is one of the great examples of assimilation into the highest reaches of a foreign culture. Her access to Japanese sources, including contemporary accounts – some not previously seen by Western scholars researching the subject – offers us a fuller understanding of the life lived by William Adams as a high-ranking samurai and his grandstand view of the collision of cultures that led to Japan’s self-imposed isolation, lasting over two centuries. This is a highly readable account of Adams’ voyage to and twenty years in Japan and that is supported by detailed observations of Japanese culture and society at this time. New light is shed on Adams’ relations with the Dutch and his countrymen, including the disastrous relationship with Captain John Saris, the key role likely to have been played by the munitions, including cannon, removed from Adams’ ship De Liefde in the great battle of Sekigahara (September 1600), the shipbuilding skills that enabled Japan to advance its international maritime ambitions, as well as the scientific and technical support Adams was able to provide in the refining process of Japan’s gold and silver.
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The Annotated Constitution of Japan
A Handbook
Colin Jones
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
The Annotated Constitution of Japan: A Handbook for the first time makes the entirety of Japan’s constitution accessible in English. The book consists of a historical and contextual overview of how the constitution came into being, followed by descriptions of each of its 103 articles; the meaning of the text, interpretive disputes, academic theories and leading cases arising under them. The book also points out the many subtle distinctions between the English version and the Japanese, some of which arose from the charter’s unique provenance. With contributors representing a broad range of expertise in various areas of Japanese law, the book is written to appeal to academics, students and general readers alike. It is intended to be the first port of call for anyone needing to understand the fundamentals of Japanese constitutional law, whether from the perspective of Japanese studies, comparative law, or political science, but unable to access the text and related literature available in Japanese. Key reference documents in English and Japanese are included as appendices for ease of reference.
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The Anthology in Digital Culture
Forms and Affordances
Giulia Taurino
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
As a cultural form, media practice and organizational model, the anthology has represented an important editorial framework in the development, preservation and retrieval of narratives, from paper-based media to machine-generated content, all throughout a series of discontinued analog and digital technologies. Over time, anthologies became part of the “metaphors we live by” (Lakoff and Johnson 2008), figurative lenses through which we read, navigate, interpret stories and organize human thoughts for better understanding. By providing an overview on the role of the anthology on streaming platform environments, this book examines how traditional editorial practices of anthologization intersect with data-driven content classification and sorting in the context of both pre- and post-digital culture. The author ultimately proposes to insert “anthology” in a vocabulary of digital culture that accounts for new curatorial and algorithmic processes of content filtering, in the attempt to expand the critical “keywords” (Williams 1983; Striphas 2015; Thylstrup et al. 2021) for the study of culture, society, data.
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Anthropologists Wanted
Why Organizations Need Anthropology
Laurens Bakker
Amsterdam University Press

front cover of Anticipating Sin in Medieval Society
Anticipating Sin in Medieval Society
Childhood, Sexuality, and Violence in the Early Penitentials
Erin V. Abraham
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
Composed between the sixth and ninth centuries, penitentials were little books of penance that address a wide range of human fallibility. But they are far more than mere registers of sin and penance: rather, by revealing the multiple contexts in which their authors anticipated various sins, they reveal much about the ways those authors and, presumably, their audiences understood a variety of social phenomena. Offering new, more accurate translations of the penitentials than what has previously been available, this book delves into the potentialities addressed in these manuals for clues about less tangible aspects of early medieval history, including the innocence and vulnerability of young children and the relationship between speech and culpability; the links between puberty, autonomy, and moral accountability; early medieval efforts to regulate sexual relationships; and much more.
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Antipodean Early Modern
European Art in Australian Collections, c. 1200-1600
Edited by Anne Dunlop
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
A Prayer Book owned by the Rothschilds, an Italian bronze casket by Antico, a lavishly illustrated Carnival chronicle from sixteenth-century Germany, an altarpiece by Pieter Brueghel the Younger - much of the artwork in this book, held by Australian collections, is essentially unknown beyond the continent. The authors of these essays showcase these extraordinary objects to their full potential,revealing a wide range of contemporary art and historical research. This collection of essays will surprise even specialists.
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Anton Pannekoek
Ways of Viewing Science and Society
Chaokang Tai
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960), prominent astronomer and world-renowned socialist theorist, stood at the nexus of the revolutions in politics, science and the arts of the early twentieth century. His astronomy was uniquely visual and highly innovative, while his politics were radical. Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society collects essays on Pannekoek and his contemporaries at the crossroads of political history, the history of science and art history.
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The Apollonian Clockwork
On Stravinsky
Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schonberger
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
‘I think my music deserves to be considered as a whole’, Igor Stravinsky remarked at the end of a long and restless career, and that is exactly what the authors of The Apollonian Clockwork do. In 1982, convinced that there is no essential difference between ‘early’ and ‘late’ Stravinsky, Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger were the first to write a monograph on the composer which radically breaks with the habit of dividing his works into ‘Russian’, ‘neoclassical’ and ‘serial’. In an essay which continually shifts in its approach, style and perspective, the authors elaborate on their insight that a single, immutable compositional attitude underlies the whole of Stravinsky’s oeuvre. By this token the book not only offers an analysis of the composer’s protean work and artistry but takes example by it as well.
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front cover of Archaeological Approaches to and Heritage Perspectives on Modern Conflict
Archaeological Approaches to and Heritage Perspectives on Modern Conflict
Beyond the Battlefields
Max van der Schriek
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
From a wider disciplinary perspective, modern conflict archaeology is now a thoroughly established and mature sub-discipline. However, a significant problem conflict archaeologists in the Netherlands face is that modern eras, including both World Wars, have so far not received serious attention. Although both World Wars appeal strongly to the popular imagination, until recently Dutch researchers had not approached modern conflict from an academic archaeological perspective to any great extent. This is partly the result of problematic legislation on archaeological activity in the Netherlands. When applied and interpreted appropriately, archaeology can play an important role in the preservation, contemporary experience and historical reconstruction of recent conflicts. However, as this book argues, research methods other than excavations will be needed in order to conduct conflict archaeology in the Netherlands effectively. This study aims to develop a Dutch approach to conflict archaeology, integrating archaeology, heritage research and history at a landscape scale.
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Archaeology in the Digital Era
Papers from the 40th Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA), Southampton, 26-29 March 2012
Edited by Graeme Earl, et al.
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
CAA is the foremost conference on digital archaeology, and this volume offers a comprehensive and up-to date reference to the state of the art. This volume contains a selection of the best papers presented at the 40th Annual Conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA), held in Southampton from 26 to 29 March 2012. The papers, all written and peer-reviewed by experts in the field of digital archaeology, explore a multitude of topics to showcase ground-breaking technologies and best practice from various archaeological and informatics disciplines, with a variety of case studies from all over the world.Download the Table of Contents and a sample chapter
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front cover of The Archaeology of South-East Italy in the First Millennium BC
The Archaeology of South-East Italy in the First Millennium BC
Greek and Native Societies of Apulia and Lucania between the 10th and the 1st Century BC
Douwe Yntema
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
Synthesizing some 30 years of archaeological research in south-east Italy, this book discusses a millennium that witnessed breathtaking changes: the first millennium BC. In nine to ten centuries the Mediterranean societies changed from a great variety of mostly small entities of predominantly tribal nature into the enormous state currently indicated as the Roman Empire. This volume is a case study discussing the pathway to complexity of one of the regions that contributed to the formation of this large state:south-east Italy. It highlights how initially small groups developed into complex societies, how and why these adapted to increasingly wide horizons, and how and why Italic groups and migrants from the eastern Mediterranean interacted and created entirely new social, economic, cultural and physical landscapes. This synthesis is based on research carried out by many Italian archaeologists and by research groups from quite a variety of other countries.
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front cover of Architecture and Elite Culture in the United Provinces, England and Ireland, 1500-1700
Architecture and Elite Culture in the United Provinces, England and Ireland, 1500-1700
Hanneke Ronnes
Amsterdam University Press, 2007
This study aims to elucidate concepts of castle in the Netherlands, England and Ireland in both past en present times. The first part of the book examines current, respectively, academic, national and personal appropriations of 'castle'; the second part moves into the past, juxtaposing elite culture and the spatial organisation of 16th and 17th century domestic architecture.
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front cover of The Architecture of Empire in Modern Europe
The Architecture of Empire in Modern Europe
Space, Place, and the Construction of an Imperial Environment, 1860-1960
Miel Groten
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
Empires stretched around the world, but also made their presence felt in architecture and urban landscapes. The Architecture of Empire in Modern Europe traces the entanglement of the European built environment with overseas imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As part of imperial networks between metropole and colonies, in cities as diverse as Glasgow, Hamburg, or Paris, numerous new buildings were erected such as factories, mission houses, offices, and museums. These sites developed into the physical manifestations of imperial networks. As Europeans designed, used, and portrayed them, these buildings became meaningful imperial places that conveyed the power relations of empire and Eurocentric self-images. Engaging with recent debates about colonial history and heritage, this book combines a variety of sources, an interdisciplinary approach, and an international scope to produce a cultural history of European imperial architecture across borders.
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front cover of Architecture, Opportunity, and Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Sicily
Architecture, Opportunity, and Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Sicily
Rebuilding after Natural Disaster
Martin Nixon
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
The catastrophic Sicilian earthquake of 1693 led to the rebuilding of over 60 towns in the island’s south-west. The rebuilding extended into the eighteenth century and gave opportunities for the reassertion and the transformation of power relations. Although eight of the towns are now protected by UNESCO, the remarkable architecture resulting from this rebuilding is little known outside Sicily. This is the first book-length study in English of this interesting area of early modern architecture. Rather than seek to address all of the towns, five case studies discuss key aspects of the rebuilding by approaching the architecture from different scales, from that of a whole town to parts of a town, or single buildings, or parts of buildings and their decoration. Each case study also investigates a different theoretical assumption in architecture, including ideas of the Baroque, rational planning, and the relegation of decoration in architectural discourse.
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Archival Film Curatorship
Early and Silent Cinema from Analog to Digital
Grazia Ingravalle
Amsterdam University Press, 2024
Archival Film Curatorship is the first book-length study that investigates film archives at the intersection of institutional histories, early and silent film historiography, and archival curatorship. It examines three institutions at the forefront of experimentation with film exhibition and curatorship. The Eye Film Museum in Amsterdam, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY, and the National Fairground and Circus Archive in Sheffield, UK serve as exemplary sites of historical mediation between early and silent cinema and the digital age. A range of elements, from preservation protocols to technologies of display and from museum architectures to curatorial discourses in blogs, catalogs, and interviews, shape what the author innovatively theorizes as the archive’s hermeneutic dispositif. Archival Film Curatorship offers film and preservation scholars a unique take on the shifting definitions, histories, and uses of the medium of film by those tasked with preserving and presenting it to new digital-age audiences.
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Archive, Photography and the Language of Administration
Jane Birkin
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
This alternative study of archive and photography brings many types of image assemblages into view, always in relation to the regulated systems operating within the institutional milieu. The archive catalogue is presented as a critical tool for mapping image time, and the language of image description is seen as having a life, a worth and an aesthetic value of its own. Functioning at the intersection of text and image, the book combines media culture, archival techniques, and contemporary discourse on art and conceptual writing.
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front cover of Arguments Against the Christian Religion in Amsterdam by Saul Levi Morteira, Spinoza's Rabbi
Arguments Against the Christian Religion in Amsterdam by Saul Levi Morteira, Spinoza's Rabbi
Gregory Kaplan
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
This is the first book to offer a translation into English-as well as a critical study-of a Spanish treatise written around 1650 by Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira, whose most renowned congregant was Baruch Spinoza. Aimed at encouraging the practice of halachic Judaism among the Amsterdam-based descendants of conversos, Spanish and Portuguese Sephardic Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity, the book stages a dialogue between two conversos that ultimately leads to a vision of a Jewish homeland-an outcome that Morteira thought was only possible through his program for rejudaisation.
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Armed Batavians
Use and Significance of Weaponry and Horse Gear from Non-military Contexts in the Rhine Delta (50 BC to AD 450)
Johan Nicolay
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
Using a life-cycle model for Roman soldiers, Johan Nicolay interprets the large quantity of first-century finds as personal memorabilia brought home by ex-soldiers as a reminder of their twenty-five years of service and a symbol of their newly-acquired veteran status. Underpinning Nicolay’s research is an extensive inventory of militaria from urban centers, rural settlements, rivers, and graves—presented in nearly one hundred individual color plates. Introducing a considerable body of unpublished data, as well as offering a perspective on daily life in the northern frontier of the Roman Empire, this volume is a valuable addition to Roman military and material history.
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front cover of The Art and Government Service of Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei (c. 1421 - c. 1495)
The Art and Government Service of Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei (c. 1421 - c. 1495)
Visual Propaganda and Undercover Agency for the Republic of Siena
Anabel Thomas
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
In 1454 the Sienese painter Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei faced litigation from the Mercanzia in Siena for defaulting on a contract from one of the leading Franciscan confraternities in the city. Two fellow Sienese artists, Giovanni di Paolo and Sano di Pietro, had recently completed a new altarpiece for the same entity. Anabel Thomas considers how the two commissions were linked and questions why Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei’s brief to fresco the confraternity chapel remained unfinished. In a wide ranging analysis of mainly unpublished records, focussing on the artist’s association with key members of Sienese society, fellow artisans and government officials, Thomas concludes that Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei might have honoured his contract had he not become immersed in the military strategy, diplomacy and visual propaganda of the Republic of Siena. +
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Art and Its Geographies
Configuring Schools of Art in Europe (1550-1815)
Ingrid Vermeulen
Amsterdam University Press

front cover of Art and Ocean Objects of Early Modern Eurasia
Art and Ocean Objects of Early Modern Eurasia
Shells, Bodies, and Materiality
Anna K Grasskamp
Amsterdam University Press, 2021
During the early modern period, objects of maritime material culture were removed from their places of origin and traded, collected and displayed worldwide. Focusing on shells and pearls exchanged within local and global networks, this monograph compares and connects Asian, in particular Chinese, and European practices of oceanic exploitation in the framework of a transcultural history of art with an understanding of maritime material culture as gendered. Perceiving the ocean as mother of all things, as womb and birthplace, Chinese and European artists and collectors exoticized and eroticized shells’ shapes and surfaces. Defining China and Europe as spaces entangled with South and Southeast Asian sites of knowledge production, source and supply between 1500 and 1700, the book understands oceanic goods and maritime networks as transcending and subverting territorial and topographical boundaries. It also links the study of globally connected port cities to local ecologies of oceanic exploitation and creative practices.
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Art and Politics
Between Purity and Propaganda
Joes Segal
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
In Art and Politics, Segal explores the collision of politics and art in seven enticing essays. The book explores the position of art and artists under a number of different political regimes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, traveling around the world to consider how art and politics have interacted and influenced each other in different conditions. Joes Segal takes you on a journey to the Third Reich, where Emil Nolde supported the regime while being called degenerate; shows us Diego Rivera creating Marxist murals in Mexico and the United States for anti-Marxist governments and clients; ties Jackson Pollock's drip paintings in their Cold War context to both the FBI and the CIA; and considers the countless images of Mao Zedong in China as unlikely witnesses of radical political change.
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Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy
Guy Tal
Amsterdam University Press, 2024
The figure of the witch is familiar from the work of early modern German, Dutch, and Flemish artists, but much less so in the work of their Italian counterparts. Art and Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy seeks to explore the ways in which representations of witchcraft emerged from and coincided with the main cultural currents and artistic climate of an epoch chiefly celebrated for its humanistic and rational approaches. Through an in-depth examination of a panoply of arresting paintings, engravings, and drawings—variously portraying a hag-ridden colossal phallus, a horror-stricken necromancer dodging the devil’s scrabbling claws, and a nocturnal procession presided over by an infanticidal crone—Guy Tal offers new ways of reading witchcraft images through and beyond conventional iconography. Artists such as Parmigianino, Alessandro Allori, Leonello Spada, and Angelo Caroselli effected visual commentaries on demonological notions that engaged their audience in a tantalizing experience of interpretation.
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Art at Auction in 17th Century Amsterdam
John Michael 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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Art in Progress
Maarten Doorman
Amsterdam University Press, 2004
In this challenging essay, Maarten Doorman argues that in art, belief in progress is still relevant, if not essential. The radical freedoms of postmodernism, he claims, have had a crippling effect on art, leaving it in danger of becoming meaningless. Art can only acquire meaning through context; the concept of progress, then, is ideal as the primary criterion for establishing that context. The history of art, in fact, can be seen as a process of constant accumulation, works of art commenting on one another and enriching one another's meanings. It is these complex interrelationships and the progress they create in both art and its observers that Doorman, in a display of great philosophical erudition, defends.
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front cover of Art in Spain and Portugal from the Romans to the Early Middle Ages
Art in Spain and Portugal from the Romans to the Early Middle Ages
Routes and Myths
Rose Walker
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
In this colorfully illustrated book, Rose Walker surveys Spanish and Portuguese art and architecture from the time of the Roman conquest to the early twelfth century. For generations, scholarly discussions of such art have been complicated by a focus on maps of the pilgrimage roads and images of the Reconquista. Walker contextualizes these aspects by bringing together an exceptionally diverse range of academic studies, including work previously familiar only to Hispanophone audiences. By breaking down chronological, regional, and disciplinary divides that have limited scholarship on the subject for decades, this book enriches the wider English-language literature on early medieval art.
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Art Market and Connoisseurship
A Closer Look at Paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and Their Contemporaries
Anna Tummers
Amsterdam University Press, 2008
The question whether or not seventeenthcentury painters such as Rembrandt and Rubens created the paintings which were later sold under their names, has caused many a heated debate. Much is still unknown about the ways in which paintings were produced, assessed, priced, and marketed. For example, did contemporary connoisseurs expect masters such as Rembrandt to paint their works entirely by their own hand? Who was credited with the ability to assess paintings? How did a painting’s price relate to its quality? And how did connoisseurship change as the art market became increasingly complex? The contributors to this essential volume trace the evolution of connoisseurship in the booming art market of the seventeenth- and eighteenth centuries. Among them are the renowned Golden Age scholars Eric Jan Sluijter, Hans Van Miegroet and Neil De Marchi. It is not to be missed by anyone with an interest in the Old Masters and the early modern art market.
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The Art of Audit
Eight remarkable government auditors on stage
Roel Janssen
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
Accountability, good government and public trust are intricately linked. Supreme Audit Institutions fulfil an exceptional role in the public domain, checking if governments spend their money properly. They are like 'watchdogs' for citizens and parliaments with the purpose of auditing public expenditure and examining the effectiveness of policies. They aim to strengthen the trustworthiness of government institutions, all the more so in fragile democracies. They do so, for instance, in striving to disclose cases of corruption, not just in the highest echelons of government, but also in everyday petty bribery. And they can be found counting houses, roads and water taps, to see if government's promises are being kept.On the occasion of the retirement of Saskia J. Stuiveling as the president of the Netherlands Court of Audit, eight (former) heads of audit institutions talk candidly about their work and innovations in the area of public auditing, about how the financial crisis affected their profession, about the advent of open data and about the need for new skills to audit the oil industry. Each of them - Faiza Kefi (Tunisia), Josef Moser (Austria), Terence Nombembe (South Africa), Heidi Mendoza (Philippines), Alar Karis (Estonia), David Walker (USA), John Muwanga (Uganda) and Abdulbasit Turki Saeed (Iraq) - has made a difference in his or her country, often under difficult, adverse and sometimes outright dangerous circumstances.
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The Art of Ethics in the Information Society
Liisa Janssens
Amsterdam University Press, 2016
New technologies are often implemented before their ethical consequences have been fully understood. In this volume, experts working in the sciences, arts, and philosophy of technology share novel perspectives on how we can best identify and navigate the new ethical crossroads emerging in our information society. With an eye toward the future, the contributors present an essential and unique view on the interplay between ethics and modern technology.
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front cover of The Art of Lobbying the EU
The Art of Lobbying the EU
More Machiavelli in Brussels (revised edition)
M. P. C. M. van Schendelen
Amsterdam University Press, 2013
Every day in Brussels, countless governmental and civil society interest groups seek to influence the policies of the European Union (EU). Many groups, once they have established themselves in the EU capital, apply the insights of Public Affairs (PA) management, the modern art of lobbying. Many PA practitioners in the EU as well as academics specialised in EU and PA studies developed fresh insights on ‘how to influence the EU better’. This manual brings together the most up-to-date collection of PA expertise available to anyone desiring to enhance the success of their efforts to influence the EU. This new edition of the best-selling title is filled with new details, cases, findings and practices. This fully revised and updated fourth edition of the 2002 bestseller offers compelling new insights into the most advanced practices of influencing the decision-making in the European Union’s corridors of power. The author’s uniquely privileged position as advisor to a wide range of lobby groups from several different countries throws much-needed light on best practice and success in public affairs management.
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front cover of The Art of Military Coercion
The Art of Military Coercion
Why the West's Military Superiority Scarcely Matters
Rob de Wijk
Amsterdam University Press, 2014
The United States spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined. And Western nations in general spend far more than developing nations around the globe. Yet when Western nations have found themselves in conflicts in recent decades, their performance has been mixed at best. In his fully updated new edition of The Art of Military Coercion, Rob de Wijk presents a theory on the use of force. He argues that the key is a failure to use force decisively, to properly understand the dynamics of conflict and balance means and ends. Without that ability, superiority of dollars, numbers, and weaponry won't necessarily translate to victory.
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front cover of The Art of Neighbouring
The Art of Neighbouring
Making Relations Across China's Borders
Edited by Martin Saxer and Juan Zhang
Amsterdam University Press, 2017
For the nations on its borders, the rapid rise of China represents an opportunity-but it also brings worry, especially in areas that have long been disputed territories of contact and exchange. This book gathers contributors from a range of disciplines to look at how people in those areas are actively engaging in making relationships across the border, and how those interactions are shaping life in the region-and in the process helping to reconfigure the cultural and political landscape of post-Cold War Asia.
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The Art of Political Framing
How Politicians Convince Us That They Are Right
Hans de Bruijn
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Politicians employ a wide range of strategies to achieve their goals - and language is one of them. What impact does their language have on us, on their opponents, on the public opinion? If language matters, then the interesting question naturally arises how politicians use language to their advantage? How do they use it to convince us of the truth of their views? These questions take us into the world of political framing, which has attracted a lot of attention in recent times and forms the subject of this book.Framing is obviously not a new phenomenon, nor is it the preserve of right-wing politicians, as is sometimes suggested. The author discusses both old and new examples of framing, as well as various left and right-wing frames. The examples presented in this book have been carefully selected, in the hope that they will not only help you understand the game of framing and reframing but also show you how much impact you can have by using the right words.
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front cover of The Art of Staying Neutral
The Art of Staying Neutral
The Netherlands in the First World War, 1914-1918
Maartje Abbenhuis
Amsterdam University Press, 2006
An insightful account of the challenges of neutrality in an era of total war, The Art of Staying Neutral shows how the Netherlands remained peaceful throughout World War I. This sustained neutrality, Maartje Abbenhuis demonstrates, was the result of many factors, including masterly diplomacy, careful adherence to international laws and a decisive measure of good fortune. Neutrality, however, did not come without considerable costs to the nation’s economy and security. 

This book is a major contribution both to the study of neutrality and the domestic history of the Netherlands.

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front cover of Artisans, Objects and Everyday Life in Renaissance Italy
Artisans, Objects and Everyday Life in Renaissance Italy
The Material Culture of the Middling Class
Paula Hohti Erichsen
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Did ordinary Italians have a ‘Renaissance’? This book presents the first in-depth exploration of how artisans and small local traders experienced the material and cultural Renaissance. Drawing on a rich blend of sixteenthcentury visual and archival evidence, it examines how individuals and families at artisanal levels (such as shoemakers, barbers, bakers and innkeepers) lived and worked, managed their household economies and consumption, socialised in their homes, and engaged with the arts and the markets for luxury goods. It demonstrates that although the economic and social status of local craftsmen and traders was relatively low, their material possessions show how these men and women who rarely make it into the history books were fully engaged with contemporary culture, cultural customs and the urban way of life.
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The Asia-Europe Meeting
Contributing to a New Global Governance Architecture: The Eighth ASEM Summit in Brussels (2010)
Edited by Sebastian Bersick and Paul van der Velde
Amsterdam University Press, 2011
The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) process was designed in 1996 to bring Asia and Europe closer together. The Asia-Europe Meeting: Contributing to a New Global Governance Architecture focuses on the discussions and results of the eighth ASEM Summit that took place in October 2010 in Brussels. It gives a multifaceted picture of Asia-Europe convergences and disparities and helps to understand how these are dealt with through interregional political dialogue. Renowned academics and observers of Asia-Europe relations provide analysis and essential insights into the advantages and limitations of contemporary ASEM affairs, their most pertinent issues, and the role of ASEM as a constituent of the developing new global governance architecture. In addition, the book offers a unique insider’s perspective of the preparations and negotiations of the Brussels events. The Annex of the book furthermore includes ASEM related primary sources not available in any publicly accessible record.
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Asian Alleyways
An Urban Vernacular in Times of Globalization
Marie Gibert-Flutre
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
Asian Alleyways: An Urban Vernacular in Times of Globalization critically explores "Global Asia" and the metropolization process, specifically from its alleyways, which are understood as ordinary neighbourhood landscapes providing the setting for everyday urban life and place-based identities being shaped by varied everyday practices, collective experiences and forces. Beyond the mainstream, standardising vision of the metropolization process, Asian Alleyways offers a nuanced overview of urban production in Asia at a time of great changes, and will be welcomed by an array of scholars, students, and all those interested in the modern transformation of Asian cities and their urban cultures.
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Asian Cities
Colonial to Global
Edited by Gregory Bracken
Amsterdam University Press, 2015
When people look at success stories among postcolonial nations, the focus almost always turns to Asia, where many cities in former colonies have become key locations of international commerce and culture. This book brings together a stellar group of scholars from a number of disciplines to explore the rise of Asian cities, including Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, and more. Dealing with history, geography, culture, architecture, urbanism, and other topics, the book attempts to formulate a new understanding of what makes Asian cities such global leaders.
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Asian Migrants and Religious Experience
From Missionary Journeys to Labor Mobility
Edited by Bernardo Brown and Brenda S.A. Yeoh
Amsterdam University Press, 2018
Typically, scholars approach migrants’ religions as a safeguard of cultural identity, something that connects migrants to their communities of origin. This ethnographic anthology challenges that position by reframing the religious experiences of migrants as a transformative force capable of refashioning narratives of displacement into journeys of spiritual awakening and missionary calling. These essays explore migrants’ motivations in support of an argument that to travel inspires a search for new meaning in religion.
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front cover of The Asian Migrant's Body
The Asian Migrant's Body
Emotion, Gender and Sexuality
Michiel Baas
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
The Asian Migrant’s Body: Emotion, Gender and Sexuality brings together papers that investigate the way Asian migrants experience, think about, perceive and utilize their bodies as part of the journeys they have embarked on. In exploring how bodies are physically and symbolically marked by migration experiences, this edited volume seeks to move beyond the immediate effects of hard labour and (potentially) exploitative or abusive situations. It shows that migrants are not only on the receiving end where it concerns their bodies, nor are their bodies only utilized for their work as migrants: they also seek control over their bodies and to make them part of strategies to express themselves. The collective papers in The Asian Migrant’s Body argue that the body itself is a primary site for understanding how migrants reflect on and experience their migration trajectories.
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front cover of Asian Self-Representation at World's Fairs
Asian Self-Representation at World's Fairs
William Peterson
Amsterdam University Press, 2020
International expositions or "world's fairs" are the largest and most important stage on which millions routinely gather to directly experience, express, and respond to cultural difference. Rather than looking at Asian representation at the hands of colonizing powers, something already much examined, this book instead focuses on expressions of an empowered Asian self-representation at world's fairs in the West after the so-called golden age of the exhibition. New modes of representation became possible as the older "exhibitionary order" of earlier fairs gave way to a dominant "performative order," one increasingly preoccupied with generating experience and affect. Using case studies of national representation at selected fairs over the hundred-year period from 1915-2015, this book considers both the politics of representation as well as what happens within the imaginative worlds of Asian country pavilions, where the performative has become the dominant mode for imprinting directly on human bodies.
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front cover of Asian Smallholders in Comparative Perspective
Asian Smallholders in Comparative Perspective
Eric Thompson
Amsterdam University Press, 2019
Asian Smallholders in Comparative Perspective provides the first multicountry, inter-disciplinary analysis of the single most important social and economic formation in the Asian countryside: the smallholder. Based on ten core country chapters, the volume describes and explains the persistence, transformations, functioning and future of the smallholder and smallholdings across East and Southeast Asia. As well as providing a source book for scholars working on agrarian change in the region, it also engages with a number of key current areas of debate, including: the nature and direction of the agrarian transition in Asia, and its distinctiveness vis à vis transitions in the global North; the persistence of the smallholder notwithstanding deep and rapid structural change; and the question of the efficiency and productivity of smallholder-based farming set against concerns over global and national food security.
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front cover of Aspects of Urbanization in China
Aspects of Urbanization in China
Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou
Edited by Gregory Bracken
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
China’s rise as a global power is one of the major economic and political developments of the past fifty years. One seemingly inevitable outcome of industrialization is urbanization, and this definitive study surveys the key aspects of China’s massive wave of urbanization with an emphasis on the changes to the quality of life of urban dewellers. With contributions from authors in a variety of fields, Aspects of Urbanization in China creates a resonant and rich portrait of China’s global ambitions, as well as their culture, architecture, and economy. While the volume deals with disparate aspects of urbanization, the articles included are unified by a deep concern for Chinese citizens.  
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front cover of Astronomer, Cartographer and Naturalist of the New World
Astronomer, Cartographer and Naturalist of the New World
The Life and Scholarly Achievements of Georg Marggrafe (1610-1643) in Colonial Dutch Brazil. Volume 1: Life, Work and Legacy
Huib Zuidervaart
Amsterdam University Press, 2023
This volume, Volume 1, presents Marggrafe’s stunning biography. Volume 2 consists of a text edition of his astronomical legacy, prepared for the printing press in the 1650s, but only now finalized and published. 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.
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front cover of Astronomer, Cartographer and Naturalist of the New World
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.
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front cover of Atlantis Lost
Atlantis Lost
The American Experience with De Gaulle, 1958-1969
Sebastian Reyn
Amsterdam University Press, 2010

During the 1960s, Charles de Gaulle’s greatest quarrel was with the Americans. The American attitude towards this forceful European leader was, however, an equally defining part of the dispute. In this riveting study of transatlantic international relations, Sebastian Reyn traces American responses to de Gaulle’s foreign policy from 1958 to 1969, concluding that how Americans judged de Gaulle depended largely on whether their politics leaned to the left or the right.

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front cover of Attached to the World
Attached to the World
On the Anchoring and Strategy of Dutch Foreign Policy
Ben Knapen, Gera Arts, Yvonne Kleistra, Martijn Klem, and Marijke Rem
Amsterdam University Press, 2011
Due to the rapid rise of globalization, the Netherlands has never been more politically, socially, and economically connected to other countries. To address this development, the Scientific Council for Government Policy is providing new reflections on Dutch foreign policy in this report. The most important suggestions include more governmental transparency, smart use of nongovernmental organizations, and adapting government structures to take advantage of the Netherlands’ position within Europe.
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front cover of Audiences
Audiences
Edited by Ian Christie
Amsterdam University Press, 2012
Moving away from the recent prevalence of text-based analysis in the field of film studies, Audience tackles one of the most important issues in cinema—how the audience engages with film. Ian Christie has assembled contributions from many of the major figures in media studies, including Gregory Waller, John Sedgwick, and Martin Baker, in order to provide a wide-ranging survey of viewers’ relationships with the screen. Audiences utilizes psychoanalysis and psychology, which dominated early academic examinations of film, to parse and explain modern film-viewing habits. This wide-ranging volume also takes advantage of new technology to gain access to important data on audiences, from traditional box office studies to information on digital access to movies in the home. With a particular interest in individual consumers and their motivations, this timely collection spans the spectrum of contemporary audience studies.
As the film experience fragments across multiple formats, Audiences studies a broad range of viewers, andis essential reading for scholars and lovers of cinema.

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Audiovisions
Cinema and Television as Entr'actes in History
Siegfried Zielinski
Amsterdam University Press, 1999
The production, distribution, and perception of moving images are undergoing a radical transformation. Ever-faster computers, digital technology, and microelectronic are joining forces to produce advanced audiovision -the media vanishing point of the 20th century. Very little will remain unchanged.

The classic institutions for the mediation of film - cinema and television - are revealed to be no more than interludes in the broader history of the audiovisual media. This book interprets these changes not simply as a cultural loss but also as a challenge: the new audiovisions have to be confronted squarely to make strategic intervention possible.

Audiovisions provides a historical underpinning for this active approach. Spanning 100 years, from the end of the 19th to the end of the 20th century, it reconstructs the complex genesis of cinema and television as historically relative - and thus finite - cultural forms, focussing on the dynamics and tension in the interaction between the apparatus and its uses. The book is also a plea for "staying power" in studies of cultural technology and technological culture of film.

Essayistic in style, it dispenses with complicated cross references and, instead, is structured around distinct historical phases. Montages of images and text provide supplemental information, contrast, and comment.





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Austronesian Soundscapes
Performing Arts in Oceania and Southeast Asia
Edited by Birgit Abels
Amsterdam University Press, 2011

In Austronesia—the region that stretches from Madagascar in the west to Easter Island in the east—music plays a vital role in both the construction and expression of social and cultural identities. Yet research into the music of Austronesia has hitherto been sparse. Drawing together contemporary cultural studies and musical analysis, Austronesian Soundscapes will fill this research gap, offering a comprehensive analysis of traditional and contemporary Austronesian music and, at the same time, investigating how music reflects the challenges that Austronesian cultures face in this age of globalization.

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front cover of Authorizing Early Modern European Women
Authorizing Early Modern European Women
From Biography to Biofiction
James Fitzmaurice
Amsterdam University Press, 2022
The essays in this volume analyze strategies adopted by contemporary novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and biographers interested in bringing the stories of early modern women to modern audiences. It also pays attention to the historical women creators themselves, who, be they saints or midwives, visual artists or poets and playwrights, stand out for their roles as active practitioners of their own arts and for their accomplishments as creators. Whether they delivered infants or governed as monarchs, or produced embroideries, letters, paintings or poems, their visions, the authors argue, have endured across the centuries. As the title of the volume suggests, the essays gathered here participate in a wider conversation about the relation between biography, historical fiction, and the growing field of biofiction (that is, contemporary fictionalizations of historical figures), and explore the complicated interconnections between celebrating early modern women and perpetuating popular stereotypes about them.
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Avoiding the Subject
Media, Culture and the Object
Justin Clemens and Dominic Pettman
Amsterdam University Press, 2005
What can Roger Rabbit tell us about the Second Gulf War? What can a woman married to the Berlin Wall tell us about posthumanism and inter-subjectivity? What can DJ Shadow tell us about the end of history? What can our local bus route tell us about the fortification of the West? What can Reality TV tell us about the crisis of contemporary community? And what can unauthorized pictures of Osama Bin Laden tell us about new methods of popular propaganda? These are only some of the thought-provoking questions raised in Avoiding the Subject, which highlights the feedback-loops between philosophy, technology, and politics in today's mediascape.
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