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4 books match the query 'Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara'

cover of Art from Start to Finish: Jazz, Painting, Writing, and Other Improvisations

Art from Start to Finish

Jazz, Painting, Writing, and Other Improvisations

Edited by Howard S. Becker, Robert R. Faulkner, and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

University of Chicago Press, 2006

When is an artistic work finished? When the copyeditor makes the final correction to a manuscript, when the composer writes the last note of a symphony, or when the painter puts the last brushstroke on the canvas? Perhaps it's even later, when someone reads the work, when an ensemble performs, or when the painting is hung on a gallery wall for viewing?

Art from Start to Finish gathers a unique group of contributors from the worlds of sociology, musicology, literature, and communications—many of them practicing artists in their own right—to discuss how artists from jazz musicians to painters work: how they coordinate their efforts, how they think, how they start, and, of course, how they finish their productions.

Specialists in the arts have much to say about the works themselves, which are often neglected by scholarsi n other fields. Art from Start to Finish takes a different tack by exploring the creative process itself and its social component. Any reader who makes art or has an interest in it will value this book.
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cover of Early Jewish Cookbooks: Essays on Hungarian Jewish Gastronomical History

Early Jewish Cookbooks

Essays on Hungarian Jewish Gastronomical History

András Koerner

Central European University Press, 2022

Winner of the Association of Jewish Libraries' 2022 Judaica Bibliography Award.

The seven essays in this volume focus such previously unexplored subjects as the world’s first cookbook printed in Hebrew letters, published in 1854, and a wonderful 19th-century Jewish cookbook, which in addition to its Hungarian edition was also published in Dutch in Rotterdam. The author entertainingly reconstructs the history of bólesz, a legendary yeast pastry that was the specialty of a famous, but long defunct Jewish coffeehouse in Pest, and includes the modernized recipe of this distant relative of cinnamon rolls. Koerner also tells the history of the first Jewish bookstore in Hungary (founded as early as in 1765!) and examines the influence of Jewish cuisine on non-Jewish food.

In this volume András Koerner explores key issues of Hungarian Jewish culinary culture in greater detail and more scholarly manner than what space restrictions permitted in his previous work Jewish Cuisine in Hungary: A Cultural History, also published by CEU Press, which received the prestigious National Jewish Book Award in 2020. The current essays confirm the extent to which Hungarian Jewry was part of the Jewish life and culture of the Central European region before their almost total language shift by the turn of the 20th century.

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cover of Resplendent Synagogue: Architecture and Worship in an Eighteenth-Century Polish Community

Resplendent Synagogue

Architecture and Worship in an Eighteenth-Century Polish Community

Thomas C. Hubka

Brandeis University Press, 2022

This unique exploration of a lost religious and cultural artifact breathes new life into a forgotten but fascinating aspect of eighteenth-century Polish Jewry.
 
Thomas C. Hubka, an architectural historian, immersed himself in medieval and early modern Jewish history, religion, and culture to prepare for this remarkable study of the eighteenth-century Polish synagogue in the town of Gwozdziec, now in present-day Ukraine. Because the Gwozdziec Synagogue, like so many others, was destroyed by the Nazis, this book revives a spiritual community lost to history. Hubka selected the Gwozdziec Synagogue because of the completeness of its photographic and historical records. Graced with nearly two hundred historical photographs, architectural drawings, maps, diagrams, and color illustrations, Resplendent Synagogue vividly recreates the spiritual heart of a once-vibrant Jewish population. Hubka demonstrates that while the architectural exterior of the synagogue was largely the product of non-Jewish, regional influences, the interior design and elaborate wall-paintings signified a distinctly Jewish art form. The collaboration of Jewish and Gentile builders, craftsmen, and artists in the creation of this magnificent wooden structure attests to an eighteenth-century period of relative prosperity and communal well-being for the Jews of Gwozdziec. Part of a tradition that was later abandoned by Eastern European Jewish communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this truly resplendent synagogue exemplified a high point in Jewish architectural art and religious painting.
 
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cover of The Story of Gefilte Fish

The Story of Gefilte Fish

András Koerner

Central European University Press, 2027

This is the first work on the history and cultural significance of gefilte fish, one of the most iconic Ashkenazi Jewish specialties. It was primarily its role in the meals for the Sabbath that has made gefilte fish an important part of Jewish traditions in Eastern Europe. By now, however, it is most frequently served for Passover in the United States. As commercially produced jarred gefilte fish gradually replaced the homemade kind in America, the dish has become something many Jews love to hate. The book examines the rise, fall, and afterlife of this iconic dish, and how gefilte fish, even while detested, could remain so integral to Jewish memory and how it came to be identified with Eastern European Jewish heritage.
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