Author: Elisabeth A. Fraser File Type: pdf For centuries artists, diplomats, and merchants served as cultural intermediaries in the Mediterranean. Stationed in port cities and other entrepots of the Mediterranean, these go-betweens forged intercultural connections even as they negotiated and sometimes promoted cultural misunderstandings. They also moved objects of all kinds across time and space. This volume considers how the mobility of art and material culture is intertwined with greater Mediterranean networks from 1580 to 1880. Contributors see the movement of people and objects as transformational, emphasizing the trajectory of objects over single points of origin, multiplicity over unity, and mutability over stasis.About the Author Elisabeth A. Fraser is Professor of Art History at the University of South Florida, Tampa, USA.

Author: Sarah Burns File Type: pdf Fascinating, illuminating, thrilling to read. Sarah Burns critically reframes the lives and works of key nineteenth-century American artists by turning away from social history and moving, ever so deftly, toward what might be called biography of the imagination.--Paul Staiti, Mount Holyoke CollegeSarah Burns leads readers through the interior worlds of seven troubled nineteenth-century painters. With a splendid eye for historical detail, she probes relationships between the work of these tormented individuals and the national upheavals associated with slavery, immigration, industrialization, and womens rights. Painting the Dark Side explores the gothic strain in American art with luminous intelligence.--David Lubin, author of Picturing a Nation Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century AmericaIt is Sarah Burnss mission-and gift-to ask the really interesting questions about what has often been overlooked, underestimated, or otherwise minimized in nineteenth-century American painting. In this striking new book, she looks at works we thought we knew by artists like Thomas Cole, Albert Pinkham Ryder, and Thomas Eakins, discovering in their dark side the shadows that give form and depth to the standard sunny-side-up version of American art history. This is the kind of original scholarship that endures.--Barbara Groseclose, author of Nineteenth-Century American ArtBurnss Painting the Dark Side reveals the pervasive darkness at the heart of nineteenth-century American life. In each fluent chapter, she couples imaginative readings of major pictures with contemporary social concerns-racial, political, and economic-all inflected by informed psychodynamic speculation. The book associates artists rarely, if ever, considered together. The result is an original and invigorating mapping of the mad, bad, and beautiful of the American pictorial gothic.--Marc Simpson, author of Uncanny Spectacle The Public Career of the Young John Singer Sargent

Author: Shaul Magid File Type: pdf Hasidism Incarnate contends that much of modern Judaism in the West developed in reaction to Christianity and in defense of Judaism as a unique tradition. Ironically enough, this occurred even as modern Judaism increasingly dovetailed with Christianity with regard to its ethos, aesthetics, and attitude toward ritual and faith. Shaul Magid argues that the Hasidic movement in Eastern Europe constitutes an alternative modernity, one that opens a new window on Jewish theological history. Unlike Judaism in German lands, Hasidism did not develop under a Christian gaze and had no need to be apologetic of its positions. Unburdened by an apologetic agenda (at least toward Christianity), it offered a particular reading of medieval Jewish Kabbalah filtered through a focus on the charismatic leader that resulted in a religious worldview that has much in common with Christianity. It is not that Hasidic masters knew about Christianity rather, the basic tenets of Christianity remained present, albeit often in veiled form, in much kabbalistic teaching that Hasidism took up in its portrayal of the charismatic figure of the zaddik, whom it often described in supernatural terms. **Review Hasidism Incarnate offers a unique exploration of sensitive subjects, stressing the affinities between two religions widely perceived as staunch adversaries. Focusing on the Hasidic strand of Judaism, a strict orthodox sect, creates for Magid the space to make provocative arguments without giving the impression that he is a proponent of the problematic Judeo-Christian culture school of thought.Adi Mahalel, H-Judaic For critical scholars of Hasidic thought, Magids book has enormous potential to inspire fresh and more detailed studies of the genuinely radical ideas of both the Hasidic masters whose works he cites, as well as the treasury of literature produced by subsequent generations of Hasidic authors . . . Magids book is overwhelmingly a work of scholarship, of original exegeses of arcane Hasidic texts.Allan Nadler, Marginalia But as Shaul Magids fascinating new book Hasidism Incarnate shows, the deep religious structures of [Christianity and Judaism] may not always be as different as that first glance might suggest . . . Hasidism Incarnate offers a sophisticated approach to the thorny question of the differences between Jewish and Christian religious theology and practice . . . Hasidism Incarnate is a solid book about an important subject.Emily McAvan, Global Comment Hasidism Incarnate brings a fresh vision to one of the most fascinating modern religious movements and helps us to appreciates how revolutionary leaders such as R. Nahman of Bratslav truly were. Magids subtle and sophisticated challenge to the habitual divide between Judaism and Christianity is pregnant with implications that transcend mere academic study and will help us to face some of the most interesting dilemmas of twenty-first century Western religion. His compelling book will be read and re-read by those drawn to Kabbalah and Hasidism and by anyone aspiring to comparative, imaginal, and embodied understandings of religion.Jonathan Garb, Hebrew University About the Author Shaul Magid is Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Professor of Jewish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Author: Norah Vincent File Type: mobi **The journalist who famously lived as a man commits herself- literally** Norah Vincents *New York Times* bestselling book, *Self-Made Man*, ended on a harrowing note. Suffering from severe depression after her eighteen months living disguised as a man, Vincent felt she was a danger to herself. On the advice of her psychologist she committed herself to a mental institution. Out of this raw and overwhelming experience came the idea for her next book. She decided to get healthy and to study the effect of treatment on the depressed and insane in the bin, as she calls it. Vincents journey takes her from a big city hospital to a facility in the Midwest and finally to an upscale retreat down south, as she analyzes the impact of institutionalization on the unwell, the tyranny of drugs-as-treatment, and the dysfunctional dynamic between caregivers and patients. Vincent applies brilliant insight as she exposes her personal struggle with depression and explores the range of people, caregivers, and methodologies that guide these strange, often scary, and bizarre environments. Eye opening, emotionally wrenching, and at times very funny, *Voluntary Madness* is a riveting work that exposes the state of mental healthcare in America from the inside out. From Publishers WeeklyVincents first trip to a mental institutionto which the writing of Self-Made Man drove herconvinced her that further immersion would give her great material for a follow-up. The grand tour consists of voluntary commitments to a hospital mental ward, a small private facility and a boutique facility but Vincents efforts to make a big statement about the state of mental health treatment quickly give way to a more personal journey. An attempt to wean herself off Prozac, for example, adds a greater sense of urgency to her second research trip, while the therapists overseeing her final treatment lead her to a major emotional breakthrough. Meanwhile, her fellow patients are easily able to peg her as an emotional parasite, though this rarely stops them from interacting with herand though their neediness sometimes frustrates her, she is less judgmental of them than of the doctors and nurses. The conclusions Vincent draws from her experiences tend toward the obvious (the better the facilities, the better chance for recovery) and the banal No one can heal you except you. Though keenly observed, her account never fully transcends its central gimmick. (Jan.) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From BooklistStruggling with the psycho-emotional conflicts of being a woman living as a man for her last book, Self-Made Man (2006), Vincent checked herself into the psychiatric ward of a hospital. While there, she found inspiration for her next immersion-journalism experience. But this experience went way beyond observation as Vincent actually wondered about the state of her mental health. For a woman with a history of depression, what began as an investigation into psychiatric practices and questionable diagnoses, within the broader context of modern American culture, morphed into a personal exploration of mental stability. In this sometimes harrowing and sometimes humorous account, Vincent recalls her stay at three mental-health facilities the ward of a big-city public hospital, a rural private psychiatric hospital, and an alternative-treatment program. Vincent chronicles not just the social and economic differences in illnesses and treatments at the facilities but also the madness of bureaucracies that overmedicate and dont listen enough to what patients have to say. A riveting and enlightening look at mental-health treatment. --Vanessa Bush