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This book opens a window on a forgotten and glorious time—the life of colonial Mexico. Here is the color of that era in a mosaic of life—a worldly ambitious archbishop, a beautiful nun-poetess, a Creole scholar torn between faith and scientific learning, poetasters, inquisitors—and in the background, the first glimmers of Mexican nationalism. Baroque in its intricate pattern of caste and custom, rich with silver pouring from its mines, the feudal society of Old Mexico lives in this account of a vanished time.

This volume addresses the most pressing issues in higher education today, such as inclusion, academic integrity, and generative AI.

This timely collection explores the politics and practices of academic writing development in UK higher education. The volume addresses issues of access, equity, and generative AI in the context of student writing, to consider what makes writing academic, why it matters, and how we can change the field for the better.

Colleges and universities in urban centers have often leveraged their locales to appeal to students while also taking a more active role in addressing local challenges. They embrace civic engagement, support service-learning, tailor courses to local needs, and even provide university-community collaborations such as lab schools and innovation hubs. Engaging Place, Engaging Practices highlights the significant role the academy, in general, and urban history, in particular, can play in fostering these critical connections.

The editors and contributors to this volume address topics ranging from historical injustices and affordable housing and land use to climate change planning and the emergence of digital humanities. These case studies reveal the intricate components of a city’s history and how they provide context and promote a sense of cultural belonging.

This timely book appreciates and emphasizes the critical role universities must play as intentional—and humble—partners in addressing the past, present, and future challenges facing cities through democratic community engagement.

Comprising the most current scholarship from leading experts in the fields of gender and media studies, Gendered Transformations offers readers a new foundation from which to reexamine traditional perspectives on gender. Organized into sections concerning representational politics, embodied performance, and social constructions of reality, these essays explore a wide variety of concerns from a similarly wide variety of perspectives, from essentialist to anti-essentialist. A thought-provoking contribution to a number of disparate fields, Gendered Transformations offers a rare interdisciplinary approach to gender that reflects the most recent developments in media theory and methodology.

German Literature on the Middle East explores the dynamic between German-speaking and Middle Eastern states and empires from the time of the Crusades to the end of the Cold War. This insightful study illuminates the complex relationships among literary and other writings on the one hand, and economic, social, and political processes and material dimensions on the other. Focusing on German-language literary and nonfiction writings about the Middle East (including historical documents, religious literature, travel writing, essays, and scholarship), Nina Berman evaluates the multiple layers of meaning contained in these works by emphasizing the importance of culture contact; a wide web of political, economic, and social practices; and material dimensions as indispensible factors for the interpretive process.

This analysis of literary and related writing reveals that German views about the Middle East evolved over the centuries and that various forms of action toward the Middle East differed substantially as well. Ideas about religion, culture, race, humanism, nation, and modernity, which emerged successively but remain operative to this day, have fashioned Germany's changed attitudes toward the Middle East. Exploring the interplay between textual discourses and social, political, and economic practices and materiality, German Literature on the Middle East offers insights that challenge accepted approaches to the study of literature, particularly approaches that insist on the centrality of the linguistic construction of the world. In addition, Berman presents evidence that the German encounter with the Middle East is at once distinct and yet at the same time characterized by patterns shared with other European countries. By addressing the individual nature of the German encounter in the larger European context, this study fills a considerable gap in current scholarship.

The interdisciplinary approach of German Literature on the Middle East will be of interest to the humanities in general, and specifically to scholars of German studies, comparative literature, Middle Eastern studies, and history.

Nina Berman is Professor of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University.

Jacket image: Map of Europe by Giovanni Magini, from his “Geography.” Venice, [1598]. From the University of Michigan Map Library. 

Political Map of the World, April 2008.  From the University of Texas Perry-Castañeda Library, Map Collection.

A bountiful resource on history and practice, Living Ethnomusicology is an enlightening intellectual exploration of an exotic academic culture.

• the origins and growth of OA, how to define it, and some of the ways in which librarians have made connections to OA;
• where OA diverges from the historic role of library collection development policies and ways to bring OA into alignment with an institution's collection development principles and practices;
• real-world examples of how libraries have supported or integrated OA into their collections, including strategies for selecting and activating OA titles and collections for inclusion, offering open educational resources (OER) to students, samples of collection management workflows, and ideas for aligning collections with institutional repositories or other Green OA initiatives;
• guidance on financially supporting OA content, initiatives, and platforms;
• how OA publishing does and does not harmonize with diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and
• tips for using ongoing assessment and evaluation to continuously support the library’s path to an open future.

An unorthodox portrait of modern-day Russia, including its paradoxes, practices, and patterns.

Russian Pendulum takes readers on a compelling journey through Russia in which tradition, modernity, power, and informality collide. Linking local knowledge and insider expertise with global trends and international perspectives, the book reveals the patterns that have defined Russia’s destiny for centuries. At its core lies an intricate system of informal networks that are held together by cooptation, control, and camouflage practices.

What is the nature of the fundamental relation we have to ourselves that makes each of us a self? To answer this question, Charles Larmore develops a systematic theory of the self, challenging the widespread view that the self’s defining relation to itself is to have an immediate knowledge of its own thoughts. On the contrary, Larmore maintains, our essential relation to ourselves is practical, as is clear when we consider the nature of belief and desire. For to believe or desire something consists in committing ourselves to thinking and acting in accord with the presumed truth of our belief or the presumed value of what we desire.

Larmore develops this conception with frequent reference to such classic authors as Montaigne, Stendhal, and Proust and by comparing it to other views of the self in contemporary philosophy. He also discusses the important ethical consequences of his theory of the self, arguing that it allows us to better grasp what it means to be ourselves and why self-understanding often involves self-creation.

Winner of the Académie Française’s Grand Prix de Philosophie, The Practices of the Self is that rare kind of lucid yet rigorous work that transcends disciplinary boundaries.