Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs (1914––97) is an iconic figure of the Beat generation. In William S. Burroughs, Phil Baker investigates this cult writer’s life and work—from small-town Kansas to New York in the ’40s, Mexico and the South American jungle, to Tangier and the writing of Naked Lunch, to Paris and the Beat Hotel, and ’60s London—alongside Burrough’s self-portrayal as an explorer of inner space, reporting back from the frontiers of experience.
After accidentally shooting his wife in 1951, Burroughs felt his destiny as a writer was bound up with a struggle to come to terms with the “Ugly Spirit” that had possessed him. In this fascinating biography, Baker explores how Burroughs’s early absorption in psychoanalysis shifted through Scientology, demonology, and Native American mysticism, eventually leading Burroughs to believe that he lived in an increasingly magical universe, where he sent curses and operated a “wishing machine.” His lifelong preoccupation with freedom and its opposites—forms of control or addiction—coupled with the globally paranoid vision of his work can be seen to evolve into a larger ecological concern, exemplified in his idea of a divide between decent people or “Johnsons” and those who impose themselves upon others, wrecking the planet in the process.
Drawing on newly available material, and rooted in Burroughs’s vulnerable emotional life and seminal friendships, this insightful and revealing study provides a powerful and lucid account of his career and significance.
In Feeling Persecuted, Anthony Bale explores the medieval Christian attitude toward Jews, which included a pervasive fear of persecution and an imagined fear of violence enacted against Christians. As a result, Christians retaliated with expulsions, riots, and murders that systematically denied Jews the right to religious freedom and peace. Through close readings of a wide range of sources, Bale exposes the perceived violence enacted by the Jews and how the images of this Christian suffering and persecution were central to medieval ideas of love, community, and home. The images and texts explored by Bale expose a surprising practice of recreational persecution and show that the violence perpetrated against medieval Jews was far from simple anti-Semitism and was in fact a complex part of medieval life and culture.
Bale’s comprehensive look at medieval poetry, drama, visual culture, theology, and philosophy makes Feeling Persecuted an important read for anyone interested in the history of Christian-Jewish relations and the impact of this history on modern culture.
With its distinctive gables and arches, Tudor-style architecture is recognized around the world as a symbol of British culture; it represents the idea of home to British citizens in the United Kingdom and abroad. Some love it, others hate it, but the Tudoresque is still being built—to give a house an old-fashioned air or to create a sense of exotica. Yet few people know anything about how Tudor Revival buildings came to be. To fill this gap is Tudoresque, an insightful book that explores the origin of the style, tracing its roots to the antiquarian enthusiasms of the eighteenth century.
It looks at the Tudoresque cottage style, which later influenced 1930s architecture, and the Tudor-style manor house, particularly favored in the nineteenth century. While the style has been discouraged since the 1920s (and is especially reviled by modernists) it continues to be a popular choice—particularly when the architect doesn’t have the upper hand. The authors here show how the style is the mainstream of twentieth-century British architecture and explore how it has travelled abroad. From Tudor Village in Queens to Stan Hywet Hall in Akron to Malaysia, Shanghai, and Singapore, Tudor Revival has found a comfortable home across the globe. These black and white gabled buildings are important not so much because they are great architecture, but because they are everywhere.
Illustrated with images from more than 200 years of the Tudor Revival, and including examples from Britain, America, India and East Asia, this knowledgable and entertaining book will be an indispensable guide to the one of the world’s most iconic architectural styles.Broadway Avenue in downtown Los Angeles contains an extraordinary collection of twelve abandoned film palaces, all built between 1910 and 1931. In most cities worldwide such a concentration of original cinema houses would have been demolished long ago—but in a city whose identity is inseparable from the film industry, the buildings have survived mainly intact, some of their interiors dilapidated and gutted and others transformed and re-imagined as churches and nightclubs. Stephen Barber’s Abandoned Images takes us inside these remarkable structures in order to understand the birth and death of film as both a medium and a social event.
Due to the rise of digital filmmaking and straight-to-DVD and on-demand distribution, the film industry is presently undergoing a process of profound transformation in both how movies are made and how they are watched. Barber explores what this means for the cinematic experience: Are movies losing some essential element of their identity and purpose, and can the distinctive aura of film survive when the specialized venues required to display movies have been comprehensively overhauled or erased? Barber also forecasts the future of film, revealing how its distinctive and flexible nature will be vital to its survival.
Featuring many evocative images alongside insightful reflections on the role of film and its viewing in the global culture, Abandoned Images will be of interest to all those engaged in contemporary developments in film, visual media, and digital arts.
In 2006 a long-forgotten canister of film was discovered in a church in Devon, a county located in the southwestern corner of the United Kingdom. No one knew how it had gotten there, but its contents were tantalizing—the grainy black and white footage showed members of the German SS and police building a road in Ukraine and Crimea in 1943. The BBC caused a sensation when it aired the footage, but the film gave few clues to the protagonists or their task.
A decimated Shiite shrine in Iraq. The smoking World Trade Center site. The scorched cityscape of 1945 Dresden. Among the most indelible scars left by war is the destroyed landscapes, and such architectural devastation damages far more than mere buildings. Robert Bevan argues herethat shattered buildings are not merely “collateral damage,” but rather calculated acts of cultural annihilation.
From Hitler’s Kristallnacht to the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in the Iraq War, Bevan deftly sifts through military campaigns and their tactics throughout history, and analyzes the cultural impact and catastrophic consequences of architectural destruction. For Bevan, these actions are nothing less than cultural genocide. Ultimately, Bevan forcefully argues for the prosecution of nations that purposely flout established international treaties against destroyed architecture.
A passionate and thought-provoking cri de coeur, The Destruction of Memory raises questions about the costs of war that run deeper than blood and money.
“The idea of a global inheritance seems to have fallen by the wayside and lessons that should have long ago been learned are still being recklessly disregarded. This is what makes Bevan’s book relevant, even urgent: much of the destruction of which it speaks is still under way.”—Financial Times Magazine
“The message of Robert Bevan’s devastating book is that war is about killing cultures, identities and memories as much as it is about killing people and occupying territory.”—Sunday Times
“As Bevan’s fascinating, melancholy book shows, symbolic buildings have long been targeted in and out of war as a particular kind of mnemonic violence against those to whom they are special.”—The Guardian
Though more than sixty years have passed since the signing of the proclamation of the State of Israel, the impact of that epochal event continues to shape the political policies and public opinion of not only the Middle East but much of the world. The consequent conflict between Arabs and Israelis for sovereignty over the land of Palestine has been one of the most bloody, intractable, and drawn-out of modern times. It continues today in cycles of aggressive violence followed by temporary, tenuous ceasefires that are marked and complicated by resolute opinions and fractious religious ideologies. In this timely volume, noted military historian Ian J. Bickerton cuts through the complex perspectives in order to explain this struggle in objective detail, describing its history from the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire following World War I to the present day.
In concise and clear prose, Bickerton argues that the present problem can be traced to the fact that each side is trapped by a conception of their past from which they seem unable to break free. This attachment and reaction to history has had a negative influence on the decision-making of Arabs and Israelis since 1948. Ultimately, Bickerton maintains that the use of armed force has not, and will not, resolve the issues that have divided Israelis and Arabs.
The Arab-Israeli Conflict is a plea for reasoned diplomacy in a situation that has been dominated by extreme violence. This book will appeal to a wide general audience seeking a balanced understanding of this enduring struggle that still dominates headlines.
In this groundbreaking account of film history, Bettina Bildhauer shows how from the earliest silent films to recent blockbusters, medieval topics and plots have played an important but overlooked role in the development of cinema.
Filming the Middle Ages is the first book to define medieval films as a group and trace their history from silent film in Weimar Germany to Hollywood and then to recent European co-productions. Bildhauer provides incisive new interpretations of classics like Murnau’s Faust and Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky, and she rediscovers some forgotten works like Douglas Sirk’s Sign of the Pagan and Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet. As Bildhauer explains, both art house films like The Seventh Seal and The Passion of Joan of Arc and popular films like Beowulf or The Da Vinci Code cleverly use the Middle Ages to challenge modern ideas of historical progress, to find alternatives to a print-dominated culture, and even to question what makes us human. Filming the Middle Ages pays special attention to medieval animated and detective films and provactively demonstrates that the invention of cinema itself is considered a return to the Middle Ages by many film theorists and film makers.
Filming the Middle Ages is ideal reading for medievalists with a stake in the contemporary and film scholars with an interest in the distant past.
Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, Demons, The Idiot—the complex and prolific Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81) is responsible for some of our greatest literary works and most fascinating characters. Praised by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf, he is also acknowledged by critics to be a preeminent writer of psychological fiction and a precursor of the twentieth-century existentialism. Set in the troubled political and social world of nineteenth-century Russia, Dostoevsky’s stories were shaped by the great suffering and difficult life the author himself experienced. Robert Bird explores these influences in this new biography of the prominent Russian author.
In Europe since the Seventies, Jeremy Black offers a succinct and authoritative analysis of the social and economic development of Europe in recent decades.
While providing a full treatment of environmental, demographic, and cultural issues in Europe, Black also offers delineations of broader political, economic, and social matters discussing practical, immediate subjects like migration, crime, transportation, and the environment. Europe since the Seventies reveals how European society has changed strikingly—former societal lines drawn on the basis of economics and class have given way to lines formed by identity, such as gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity. Meanwhile, the European Union has created an expanded Europe and is now a testing ground for new forms of economics and politics.
A readable, concise, and timely work, this latest book by a notable European historian will be indispensable to anyone wishing to understand the complexities of present-day Europe.
In A History of Diplomacy, historian Jeremy Black investigates how a form of courtly negotiation and information-gathering in the early modern period developed through increasing globalization into a world-shaping force in twenty-first-century politics. The monarchic systems of the sixteenth century gave way to the colonial development of European nations—which in turn were shaken by the revolutions of the eighteenth century—the rise and progression of multiple global interests led to the establishment of the modern-day international embassy system. In this detailed and engaging study of the ever-changing role of international relations, the aims, achievements, and failures of foreign diplomacy are presented along with their complete historical and cultural background.
Geopolitics and Globalization in the Twentieth Century looks at the struggle between the processes of globalization and the forces of geopolitics over the last 150 years. The twentieth century witnessed conflicts between geopolitical states who wanted to close off and control land, resources, and population—like Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union—and globalizing ones who wished to open up the world to the free flow of ideas, goods and services—like Britain and America. Geopolitics and Globalization describes and analyzes the tug-of-war between these two tendencies, the results of which have determined the shape and behavior of the world we live in today.
Beginning his survey in the late nineteenth century, Brian W. Blouet, in this revised and expanded second edition, brings his analysis up to the present day, when communication technologies are no longer land- or sea-based, and thus render globalization nearly inevitable.
When Americans seek an escape from the worries and dilemmas of everyday life, the crystal blue waters and white sands of the Caribbean islands seem like the answer to a prayer. Yet this image of a tourist’s paradise hides a tumultuous history marked by strife and division over race, political power, and economic inequality. Olwyn Blouet explores the story of “the Caribbean” over the last 50 years, revealing it to be a region positioned at the heart of some the most prominent geopolitical issues of modern times.
Navigating a rich mélange of cultures and histories, Blouet unearths a complex narrative that is frequently overlooked in histories of the Americas. In stark contrast to widely-read guidebooks, this chronicle unflinchingly probes two strikingly different worlds in the Caribbean islands—those of the haves and the have-nots—created by the volatile mixture of colonial politics, racial segregation, and economic upheaval. The strategic political relations between Caribbean nations, Cuba in particular, and the world powers during the Cold War; the economic transformations instigated by tourism; and the modernizing efforts of Caribbean nations in order to meet the demands of a globalizing twenty-first century market are among the numerous issues explored by Blouet in her efforts to redress the historical record’s imbalance. The Contemporary Caribbean also explores the proud histories of the region's many nations in sports such as cricket and baseball, as well as their famed cuisines, and the uneasy balance today between local traditions and the vestiges of colonial influence.
Though donkeys have historically been among our most useful domesticated animals—from plowing fields to navigating difficult terrain—they have been much maligned in popular culture and given very little respect. So much so, that their perceived qualities of stupidity and stubbornness have made their way into the language of insult. But in Donkey, Jill Bough champions this humble creature, proving that after 10,000 years of domestication, this incredibly hard-working animal deserves our appreciation.
Bough reveals the animal’s historic significance in Ancient Egypt, where it was once highly regarded—even worshipped. However, this elevated status did not endure in Ancient Greece and Rome, where donkeys were denigrated, ridiculed, and abused. Since that time, donkeys have continued to be associated with the poorest and most marginalized in human societies. All that time and all over the world, donkeys continue to be used for innumerable tasks, and even today, donkeys are considered to be one of the best draught animals in developing nations, where they continue to make a vital contribution. Bough rounds out her account with a look at the variety of social, cultural, and religious meanings that donkeys have embodied, especially in literature and art.
With accounts that are both fascinating and touching, this cultural history of the donkey will inspire a new respect and admiration for this essential creature.
Best known for his contribution to the development of the motion picture, Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) was a pioneering photographer during his lifetime. Alongside his remarkable photographic achievements, his personal life was riddled with melodrama—including a near-fatal stagecoach accident and a betrayal by his wife that ended with Muybridge being tried for the murder of her lover. Marta Braun’s revealing biography traces the sensational events of Muybridge’s life and his personal reinventions as artist, photographer, researcher, and showman.
In the 1870s, Muybridge’s photography skills were enlisted by Leland Stanford, a racehorse breeder who later founded Stanford University, to prove the “unsupported motion controversy”—the theory that during a horse’s stride, there was a moment when all four of its legs left the ground. The resulting collection of motion studies, as Braun explains, inspired Muybridge to take photography beyond landscapes to the realm of science. He went on to invent the zoopraxiscope, which captures movement too quick for the human eye to record. Most importantly, simulating motion through a series of stills, his pioneering use of sequence photography served as a forerunner to the introduction of cinematography in the 1890s.
This illuminating study examines a man whose influence has resounded through generations. In Eadweard Muybridge, Braun firmly establishes Muybridge’s central contributions to the history of art, science, photography, and motion pictures.
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