Author: Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge File Type: pdf Written in three weeks of creative inspiration, Rainer Maria Rilkes Sonnets to Orpheus (1923) is well known for its enigmatic power and lyrical intensity. The essays in this volume forge a new path in illuminating the philosophical significance of this late masterpiece. Contributions illustrate the unique character and importance of the Sonnets , their philosophical import, as well as their significant connections to the Duino Elegies (completed in the same period). The volume features eight essays by philosophers, literary critics, and Rilke scholars, which approach a number of the central themes and motifs of the Sonnets as well as the significance of their formal and technical qualities. An introductory essay (co-authored by the editors) situates the book in the context of philosophical poetics, the reception of Rilke as a philosophical poet, and the place of the Sonnets in Rilkes oeuvre. Above all, this volumes premise is that an interdisciplinary approach to poetry and, more specifically, to Rilkes Sonnets , can facilitate crucial insights with the potential to expand the horizons of philosophy and criticism. Essays elucidate the relevance of the Sonnets to such wide-ranging topics as phenomenology and existentialism, hermeneutics and philosophy of language, philosophy of mythology, metaphysics, Modernist aesthetics, feminism, ecocriticism, animal ethics, and the philosophy of technology.About the Author Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge is Associate Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Her research focus is literature of the 18th to 20th century, with particular interest in lyric poetry, metrical theory, literature and philosophy, and the relationship between sound and text. Her first monograph, Lyric Orientations Holderlin, Rilke, and the Poetics of Community appeared with Cornell University Press in 2015 she has also published on Wittgenstein, Klopstock, Nietzsche, and the contemporary poet Durs Grunbein. Luke Fischer is a philosopher, poet, and scholar of poetry. His books include The Poet as Phenomenologist Rilke and the New Poems (Bloomsbury, 2015) and the poetry collections A Personal History of Vision (UWAP, 2017) and Paths of Flight (Black Pepper, 2013). He has authored and co-edited works on poetry, philosophy, art, and the environment, including the special section Goethe and Environmentalism in the Goethe Yearbook (2015). He is an honorary associate of the University of Sydney. More information can be found at his website www.lukefischerauthor.com

Author: Jacqueline H. Wolf File Type: pdf Between 1965 and 1987, the cesarean section rate in the United States rose precipitouslyfrom 4.5 percent to 25 percent of births. By 2009, one in three births was by cesarean, a far higher number than the 510% rate that the World Health Organization suggests is optimal. While physicians largely avoided cesareans through the mid-twentieth century, by the early twenty-first century, cesarean section was the most commonly performed surgery in the country. Although the procedure can be life-saving, howand whydid it become so ubiquitous? Cesarean Section is the first book to chronicle this history. In exploring the creation of the complex social, cultural, economic, and medical factors leading to the surgerys increase, Jacqueline H. Wolf describes obstetricians reliance on assorted medical technologies that weakened the skills they had traditionally employed to foster vaginal birth. She also reflects on an unsettling malpractice climateprompted in part by a raft of dubious diagnosesthat helped to legitimize defensive medicine, and a health care system that ensured cesarean birth would be more lucrative than vaginal birth. In exaggerating the risks of vaginal birth, doctors and patients alike came to view cesareans as normal and, increasingly, as essential. Sweeping change in womens lives beginning in the 1970s cemented this markedly different approach to childbirth. Wolf examines the public health effects of a high cesarean rate and explains how the language of reproductive choice has been used to discourage debate about cesareans and the risks associated with the surgery. Drawing on data from nineteenth- and early twentieth-century obstetric logs to better represent the experience of cesarean surgery for women of all classes and races, as well as interviews with obstetricians who have performed cesareans and women who have given birth by cesarean, Cesarean Section is the definitive history of the use of this surgical procedure and its effects on womens and childrens health in the United States. **

Author: Heidi A Campbell File Type: pdf In this volume, contributors consider the ways that Jewish communities and users of new media negotiate their uses of digital technologies in light of issues related to religious identity, community and authority. Digital Judaism presents a broad analysis of how and why various Jewish groups negotiate with digital culture in particular ways, situating such observations within a wider discourse of how Jewish groups throughout history have utilized communication technologies to maintain their Jewish identities across time and space. Chapters address issues related to the negotiation of authority between online users and offline religious leaders and institutions not only within ultra-Orthodox communities, but also within the broader Jewish religious culture, taking into account how Jewish engagement with media in Israel and the diaspora raises a number of important issues related to Jewish community and identity. Featuring recent scholarship by leading and emerging scholars of Judaism and media, Digital Judaism is an invaluable resource for researchers in new media, religion and digital culture. **

Author: Edward Rutherfurd File Type: mobi The bestselling master of historical fiction weaves a grand, sweeping drama of New York from the citys founding to the present day.Rutherfurd celebrates Americas greatest city in a rich, engrossing saga that showcases his extraordinary ability to combine impeccable historical research and storytelling flair. As in his earlier, bestselling novels, he illuminates cultural, social, and political upheavals through the lives of a remarkably diverse set of families. As he recounts the intertwining fates of characters rich and poor, black and white, native born and immigrant, Rutherfurd brings to life the momentous events that shaped New York and America the Revolutionary War, the emergence of the city as a great trading and financial center, the excesses of the Gilded Age, the explosion of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the trials of World War II, the near-demise of New York in the 1970s and its roaring rebirth in the 90s, and the attacks on the World Trade Center. Sprinkled throughout are captivating cameo appearances by historical figures ranging from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Babe Ruth.New York is the book that millions of Rutherfurds American fans have been waiting for. A brilliant mix of romance, war, family drama, and personal triumphs, it gloriously captures the search for freedom and prosperity at the heart of our nations history.