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Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema
James Walters
Intellect Books, 2008
The use of alternate realities in cinema has been brought to new heights by such recent films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Donnie Darko. Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema is the first book to analyze these imaginary realms, tracing their construction and development across periods, genres, and history.
Through an analysis of such landmark films as The Wizard of Oz, Vanilla Sky, and Back to the Future, James Walters reveals how unconventional worlds are crucial to each film’s dramatic agenda and narrative structure. This groundbreaking volume unifies decades of divergent work by film scholars and points the way towards a new theoretical framework for understanding fantasy in the context of popular film. Alternative Worlds in Hollywood Cinema will be an essential resource for film studies scholars and movie buffs alike.
 
“The book is very readable . . . an important area of film study. The most original aspects of the book are the close readings of the films discussed and how these readings cohere across a single thesis.”—Pat Brereton, Dublin City University, author of Hollywood Utopia
 
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Ephesos, Metropolis of Asia
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Its Archaeology, Religion, and Culture
Helmut Koester
Harvard University Press

This volume brings together studies of Ephesos—a major city in the Greco-Roman period and a primary center for the spread of Christianity into the Western world—by an international array of scholars from the fields of classics, fine arts, history of religion, New Testament, ancient Christianity, and archaeology. The studies were presented at a spring 1994 Harvard Divinity School symposium on Ephesos, focusing on the results of one hundred years of archaeological work at Ephesos by members of the Austrian Archaeological Institute.

The contributors to this volume discuss some of the most interesting and controversial results of recent investigations: the Processional Way of Artemis, the Hadrianic Olympieion and the Church of Mary, the so-called Temple of Domitian, and the heroes Androkolos and Arsinoe.

Since very little about the Austrian excavations at Ephesos has been published in English, this volume should prove useful in introducing the archaeology of this metropolis to a wider readership.

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Religious Imaginations
How Narratives of Faith are Shaping Today’s World
Edited by James Walters
Gingko, 2018
Market globalization, technology, climate change, and postcolonial political forces are together forging a new, more modern world. However, caught up in the mix are some powerful religious narratives that are galvanizing peoples and reimagining – and sometimes stifling – the political and social order. Some are repressive, fundamentalist imaginations, such as the so-called Islamic Caliphate. Others could be described as post-religious, such as the evolution of universal human rights out of the European Christian tradition. But the question of the compatibility of these religious worldviews, particularly those that have emerged out of the Abrahamic faith traditions, is perhaps the most pressing issue in global stability today. What scope for dialogue is there between the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian ways of imagining the future? How can we engage with these multiple imaginations to create a shared and peaceful global society? Religious Imaginations is an interdisciplinary volume of both new and well-known scholars exploring how religious narratives interact with the contemporary geopolitical climate.
 
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