Author: Gary Ferguson
File Type: pdf
Read an interview with Gary Ferguson at NOTCHES, as well as his latest essay at The Conversation. Same-sex marriage is a hotly debated topic in the United States, and the world, today. From the tenor of most discussions, however, it would be easy to conclude that the idea of marriage between two people of the same sex is a uniquely contemporary phenomenon. Not so, argues Gary Ferguson in this remarkable book about a same-sex wedding ceremony in sixteenth-century Rome. The case in question involved a group of mostly Spanish and Portuguese men, arrested and executed in Rome in 1578, said to have performed same-sex wedding ceremonies in one of the citys major churches. We know about the incident from a number of sources, including the travel journal of the French essayist Michel de Montaigne. Several substantial fragments of the transcript of the mens trial have also survived, along with copies of their wills. Making use of all these documents, Ferguson brings the story to life in striking detail. He reveals not only the names of the men but also where they lived, how they were employed, and who their friends were. In particular, he unearths a surprising amount of detail about the mens sex lives, and how others responded to this information, which allows him to explore attitudes toward marriage, sex, and gender at the time. Emphasizing the instability of marriage in premodern Europe, Ferguson argues that same-sex unions should be considered part of the institutions complex and contested history. **
Author: Harry Berger Jr.
File Type: pdf
In The Perils of Uglytown, Harry Berger, Jr., considers a variety of texts and images ranging from those of Thucydides and Plato to those of Shakespeare and Rembrandt. The Introduction explains the key concept of the study, structural misanthropology, a variant on Claude Levi-Strausss idea of structural anthropology. Part I explores its activity in several Platonic dialogues Lysis, Crito, Phaedo, The Republic, and Timaeus. Part II turns to the Renaissance in Italy, England, and the Netherlands. Structural misanthropology is discussed first in the work of several Italian humanists (Alberti, Leonardo, Castiglione, and Vasari), then in English drama (Gorbuduc and several plays by Shakespeare), and finally in group portraits by Hals and Rembrandt. The Perils of Uglytown applies and brings up to date the methods of interpretation Berger has developed during the past half-century in his many studies of literature, drama, philosophy, social and cultural studies, and the visual arts.**ReviewThe Perils of Uglytown is a distillation of Harry Berger, Jr.s intensive study of the Republic and other Platonic dialogues over several decades and makes an important contribution to understanding these texts and to the literary interpretation of the dialogues generally. Its highly original, provocative, and stimulating close reading of well-chosen passages is grounded in Bergers understanding of the textuality of the Platonic dialogues.-Seth L. Schein, University of California, DavisSomewhere in his innermost closet Harry Berger, Jr., must harbor the secret of perennial freshness. For decades now his vitally important work has conferred the power to see with new eyes familiar works of literature, philosophy, and art, as if their innermost meanings were being glimpsed for the first time.-Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard UniversityAbout the Author Harry Berger, Jr. , is Professor Emeritus of Literature and Art History at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Author: Lisa Moses Leff
File Type: pdf
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jewish historian Zosa Szajkowski gathered up tens of thousands of documents from Nazi buildings in Berlin, and later, public archives and private synagogues in France, and moved them all, illicitly, to New York. In The Archive Thief, Lisa Moses Leff reconstructs Szajkowskis story in all its ambiguity. Born into poverty in Russian Poland, Szajkowski first made his name in Paris as a communist journalist. In the late 1930s, as he saw the threats to Jewish safety rising in Europe, he broke with the party and committed himself to defending his people in a new way, as a scholar associated with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Following a harrowing 1941 escape from France and U.S. army service, Szajkowski struggled to remake his life as a historian, eking out a living as a YIVO archivist in postwar New York. His scholarly output was tremendous nevertheless he published scores of studies on French Jewish history that opened up new ways of thinking about Jewish emancipation, modernization, and the rise of modern antisemitism. But underlying Szajkowskis scholarly accomplishments were the documents he stole, moved, and eventually sold to American and Israeli research libraries, where they remain today. Part detective story, part analysis of the construction of history, * The Archive Thief* offers a window into the debates over the rightful ownership of contested Jewish archives and the powerful ideological, economic, and psychological forces that have made Jewish scholars care so deeply about preserving the remnants of their past. **
Author: Sara Ahmed
File Type: pdf
The question what counts as feminist theory? is an instructive one first, it suggests to me that some theories and not others count as feminist second, it suggests that the demarcation of feminist theory as an entity is not a simple act, but one that involves a set of criteria about what is feminism as well as what is theory that are always in dispute. That is, the question what counts as feminist theory? suggests that somebody is doing the counting. As I arrive at this question, I have to both laugh and grimace I can almost see a ghostly image of a woman, upstairs in the dusty attics of our institutions, counting out theories, counting out feminisms. . . . I can almost hear her voice, gleeful and joyous, as she throws out some works, names them as impostors, saying that they dont count, that they cant be counted. Am I that woman? Have I been her? Are you her? Have you made such judgements with the ease of the one who is counted, of the one who counts?
Author: Shaun Walker
File Type: pdf
In The Long Hangover, Shaun Walker provides a deeply reported, bottom-up explanation of Russias resurgence under Putin. By cleverly exploiting the memory of the Soviet victory over fascism in World War II, Putins regime has made ordinary Russians feel that their country is great again. Shaun Walker provides new insight into contemporary Russia and its search for a new identity, telling the story through the countrys troubled relationship with its Soviet past. Walker not only explains Vladimir Putins goals and the governments official manipulations of history, but also focuses on ordinary Russians and their motivations. He charts how Putin raised victory in World War II to the status of a national founding myth in the search for a unifying force to heal a divided country, and shows how dangerous the ramifications of this have been. The book explores why Russia, unlike Germany, has failed to come to terms with the darkest pages of its past Stalins purges, the Gulag, and the war deportations. The narrative roams from the corridors of the Kremlin to the wilds of the Gulags and the trenches of East Ukraine. It puts the annexation of Crimea and the newly assertive Russia in the context of the delayed fallout of the Soviet collapse. The Long Hangover is a book about a lost generation the millions of Russians who lost their country and the subsequent attempts to restore to them a sense of purpose. Packed with analysis but told mainly through vibrant reportage, it is a thoughtful exploration of the legacy of the Soviet collapse and how it has affected life in Russia and Putins policies. **
Author: David Fitzgerald
File Type: epub
Anthology containing bJesus Mything in Action, Vol. IbAbout the book David Fitzgeralds award-winning 2010 book Nailed Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All pointed out the top ten fatal flaws of Christianitys origin story. Now, Jesus Mything in Action presents the most compelling new findings in Jesus Myth theory and critically examines its controversial reception by biblical scholars, the extent and reliability of our sources for Jesus, and reveals the surprising history behind Jesus evolution. In this volume Mything in Action, vol. I (chapters 1 12) looks at the myths of Jesus Mythicism what it is and isnt what biblical scholars are saying about it (and why) and examines our oldest biographical source for Jesus the allegorical story we know as the Gospel of Mark.(Complete Heretics Guide to Western Religion, Volume 2)bJesus Mything in Action, Vol. IIbAbout the book David Fitzgeralds award-winning 2010 book Nailed Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All pointed out the top ten fatal flaws of Christianitys origin story. Now, Jesus Mything in Action presents the most compelling new findings in Jesus Myth theory and critically examines its controversial reception by biblical scholars, the extent and reliability of our sources for Jesus, and reveals the surprising history behind Jesus evolution. In this volume Mything in Action, vol. II (chapters 13 18) discusses the changing Jesus from even before the earliest Christians, to Paul, to the Book of Hebrews, to the Gospels and beyond the construction (and deconstruction) of the Gospels how Jesus is presented in the rest of the New Testament and examines the historical sources for Jesus outside of the Bible.(The Complete Heretics Guide to Western Religion, Volume 3)bJesus Mything in Action, Vol. IIIbAbout the book David Fitzgeralds award-winning 2010 book Nailed Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All pointed out the top ten fatal flaws of Christianitys origin story. Now, Jesus Mything in Action presents the most compelling new findings in Jesus Myth theory and critically examines its controversial reception by biblical scholars, the extent and reliability of our sources for Jesus, and reveals the surprising history behind Jesus evolution. In this volume Mything in Action, vol. III (chapters 19 25) presents a bold thought experiment The Gospel According to H.G. Wells, a multi-chapter time travel expedition through the origins and evolution of Christianity.(The Complete Heretics Guide to Western Religion, Volume 4)
Author: Mary Louise Roberts
File Type: pdf
In fin-de-siecle France, politics were in an uproar, and gender roles blurred as never before. Into this maelstrom stepped the new women, a group of primarily urban, middle-class French women who became the objects of intense public scrutiny. Some remained single, some entered nontraditional marriages, and some took up the professions of medicine and law, journalism and teaching. All of them challenged traditional notions of womanhood by living unconventional lives and doing supposedly masculine work outside the home. Mary Louise Roberts examines a constellation of famous new women active in journalism and the theater, including Marguerite Durand, founder of the womens newspaper La Fronde the journalists Severine and Gyp and the actress Sarah Bernhardt. Roberts demonstrates how the tolerance for playacting in both these arenas allowed new women to stage acts that profoundly disrupted accepted gender roles. The existence of La Fronde itself was such an act, because it demonstrated that women could write just as well about the same subjects as meneven about the volatile Dreyfus Affair. When female reporters for La Fronde put on disguises to get a scoop or wrote under a pseudonym, and when actresses played men on stage, they demonstrated that gender identities were not fixed or natural, but inherently unstable. Thanks to the adventures of new women like these, conventional domestic femininity was exposed as a choice, not a destiny. Lively, sophisticated, and persuasive, Disruptive Acts will be a major work not just for historians, but also for scholars of cultural studies, gender studies, and the theater. **