Author: Matthew Dillon File Type: pdf Contributions in this volume demonstrate how, across the ancient Mediterranean and over hundreds of years, womens rituals intersected with the political, economic, cultural, or religious spheres of their communities in a way that has only recently started to gain sustained academic attention. The volume aims to tease out a number of different approaches and contexts, and to expand existing studies of women in the ancient world as well as scholarship on religious and social history. The contributors face a famously difficult task ancient authors rarely recorded aspects of womens lives, including their songs, prophecies, and prayers. Many of the objects women made and used in ritual were perishable and have not survived certain kinds of ritual objects (lowly undecorated pots, for example) tend not even to be recorded in archaeological reports. However, the broad range of contributions in this volume demonstrates the multiplicity of materials that can be used as evidence including inscriptions, textiles, ceramics, figurative art, and written sources and the range of methodologies that can be used, from analysis of texts, images, and material evidence to cognitive and comparative approaches. **

Author: Joanna Clapps Herman File Type: pdf I was born in 1944, but raised in the twelfth century. With that, Joanna Clapps Herman neatly describes the two worlds she inhabited while growing up as the child of Italian American immigrants in Waterbury, Connecticut, a place embedded with values closer to Homers Greece than to Anglo-American New England, where the ethic of hospitality was and still is more Middle Eastern and North African than Anglo-European, and where the pageantry and ritual were more pagan Mediterranean than Western Christian. It was also a place where a stuffed monkey wearing a fedora sat and continues to sit on her grandmothers piano, and a place where, when the donkey got stubborn and wouldnt plow the field, her grandfather bit the animal in a fury. In essays filled with wry humor and affectionate yet probing insights, Herman maps and makes palpable the very particular details of this cultureits pride and its shame, its profound loyalty and its Byzantine betrayals.

Author: Charles Musser File Type: pdf Oscar Micheauxthe most prolific African American filmmaker to date and a filmmaking giant of the silent periodhas finally found his rightful place in film history. Both artist and showman, Micheaux stirred controversy in his time as he confronted issues such as lynching, miscegenation, peonage and white supremacy, passing, and corruption among black clergymen. In this important collection, prominent scholars examine Micheauxs surviving silent films, his fellow producers of race films who alternately challenged or emulated his methods, and the cultural activities that surrounded and sustained these achievements. The relationship between black film and both the stage (particularly the Lafayette Players) and the black press, issues of underdevelopment, and a genealogy of Micheaux scholarship, as well as extensive and more accurate filmographies, give a richly textured portrait of this era. The essays will fascinate the general public as well as scholars in the fields of film studies, cultural studies, and African American history. This thoroughly readable collection is a superb reference work lavishly illustrated with rare photographs. **From Library Journal This informative, interesting, and very important collection of essays is the catalog accompanying a seven-part program of American race films that will be distributed by the New Yorks Museum of Modern Art on 35-mm film. The films and essays have been collected and arranged by Bowser, the founder and director of African Diaspora Images, who has curated film programs at institutions such as the Whitney, the American Museum of the Moving Image, and the Brooklyn Museum Jane Gaines (English, Duke) and Charles Musser (American and film studies, Yale). The 14 essays cover a range of topics, from overviews of black American performance and cinema, to detailed analyses of Micheaux films, to thoughtful discussions of the work and impact of other groups of African American performers and filmmakers. The essays are lively and readable, casting light on an underrepresented facet of American film history. While it is unlikely that many libraries will purchase the film series, this illustrated book will be a valuable addition to any collection, academic or public, that deals with silent film, film history, African American studies, or American cultural history. Andrea Slonosky, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn, NY 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review The 14 essays cover a range of topics, from overviews of black American performance and cinemas, to detailed analyses of Micheaux films, to thoughtful discussion of the work and impact of other groups of African American performers and filmmakers. The essays are lively and readable, casting light on an underrepresented fact of American film history. Library Journal This collection of essays by leading scholars in the field restores Oscar Micheaux to the place he deserves in film history. The book will be a reference for anybody interested in the pioneers of American cinema. Manthia Diawara, author African Cinema Politics and Culture Oscar Michaeux and His Circle is a marvel of scholarly cooperative effort, an omnibus book of heroic scope befitting its authors ambition to recreate the complex African American world of the 1920s that Micheaux and his movies meant to serve.... The book features an uncommonly rich trove of photographs, stills from his movies, advertisements, and other ephemera of his age, along with thorough-going bibliographies and filmographies. Thomas Cripps, author of Black Film as Genre and Making Movies Black This is a landmark text, essential for teaching and reference.... A splendid collective achievement. Hazel V. Carby, author of Cultures in Babylon Black Britain and African America and Race Men An extremely valuable contribution to the history of African American art. Toni Morrison, reviewing a previous edition or volume The 14 essays cover a range of topics, from overviews of black American performance and cinemas, to detailed analyses of Micheaux films, to thoughtful discussion of the work and impact of other groups of African American performers and filmmakers. The essays are lively and readable, casting light on an underrepresented fact of American film history. Library Journal, reviewing a previous edition or volume An extremely valuable contribution to the history of African American art. --Toni Morrison, reviewing a previous edition or volume -An extremely valuable contribution to the history of African American art.- --Toni Morrison, reviewing a previous edition or volume -The 14 essays cover a range of topics, from overviews of black American performance and cinemas, to detailed analyses of Micheaux films, to thoughtful discussion of the work and impact of other groups of African American performers and filmmakers. The essays are lively and readable, casting light on an underrepresented fact of American film history.- --Library Journal, reviewing a previous edition or volume The 14 essays cover a range of topics, from overviews of black American performance and cinemas, to detailed analyses of Micheaux films, to thoughtful discussion of the work and impact of other groups of African American performers and filmmakers. The essays are lively and readable, casting light on an underrepresented fact of American film history. --Library Journal, reviewing a previous edition or volume

Author: Hilary Putnam File Type: pdf Distinguished philosopher Hilary Putnam, who is also a practicing Jew, questions the thought of three major Jewish philosophers of the 20th centuryFranz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Emmanuel Levinasto help him reconcile the philosophical and religious sides of his life. An additional presence in the book is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, although not a practicing Jew, thought about religion in ways that Putnam juxtaposes to the views of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas. Putnam explains the leading ideas of each of these great thinkers, bringing out what, in his opinion, constitutes the decisive intellectual and spiritual contributions of each of them. Although the religion discussed is Judaism, the depth and originality of these philosophers, as incisively interpreted by Putnam, make their thought nothing less than a guide to life.**