Contemporary literary theory, though it sometimes embraces the values of performance, has rarely addressed the concerns of the professional performer. The Actor's Instrument: Body, Theory, Stage reinterprets performance at a theoretical level and applies theory to acting problems in the attempt to offer new options to the professional artist. Hollis Huston scrutinizes with a highly theoretical eye the specific and practical problems of performance, believing that such philosophical thinking will enable artists to reappropriate the powers of the theatrical art.Huston challenges the notion that the director is the central figure in theater. Drawing on theater history and architecture, on contemporary corporeal research, on philosophies of text and representation, and on his experience in the acting studio, he shows that the director's theater is only one of many ways in which theater might be organized. The Actor's Instrument challenges directors, theater scholars and artists to see theater in a larger context. It offers the acting teacher a new physiological interpretation of the performer's breathing, as it supports voice, movement, role, and the spectator's attention. It describes the performance contract, as it is seen most simply in street theater, and speculates on what a performer's theater might be like. The book also offers a poetics of the central stage and suggests a new way of writing about performance.

Founded in 1983, Annali d’Italianistica has become synonymous with timely and fundamental scholarship on Italy’s literary culture, employing broad historical, cultural, and literary perspectives that are of interest to a wide variety of scholars. Published annually and monographic in nature, the journal uses as its point of departure the study of Italian literature and the Humanities more generally to foster scholarly excellence at all levels. Annali d’Italianistica is receptive to a variety of topics, critical approaches, and theoretical perspectives that cross disciplinary boundaries and span several centuries, from the beginning of Italy’s cultural history to the present.

Pope John Paul's Theology of the Body catecheses has garnered tremendous popularity in theological and catechetical circles. Students of the Theology of the Body have generally interpreted it as innovative not only in its presentation of the Church's teaching on marriage and sexuality, but also as radically advancing that teaching. Aquinas and the Theology of the Body offers a somewhat different interpretation. Fr. Thomas Petri argues that the philosophy and theology of Thomas Aquinas substantially contributed to John Paul's intellectual formation, which he never abandoned. A correct interpretation of the Theology of the Body requires, therefore, a thorough understanding of Thomistic anthropology and theology, which has been mostly lacking in commentaries on the pope's important contributions on the subject of marriage and sexuality.