Between Play and Prayer: The Variety of Theatricals in Spiritual Performance
Author: Anita Hammer File Type: pdf Between Play and Prayer launches Spiritual Performance as a term to cover all human performance which in some way refers to creating the presence of beings or entities from a realm that transgresses the sensorial. This notion covers a great variety of performative genres, ranging from funerary services, spiritualist performances of deceased souls, to spiritual readings. This broad and deep approach to a range of performances is answering a renewed craving for spirituality in contemporary culture. By way of performance theory and aesthetic theory, concepts of faith, belief, experience, play, prayer and theatricality, are set in motion when proposing the necessity of experiencing such performances on their own terms. In depth descriptions of a variety of performances in Norwegian and New Zealand local contexts show the necessity of experiencing and understanding an existential quality in Spiritual Performance. Faith, not credo, is at the heart of spiritual practice. The book represents a new, innovative and trans-disciplinary approach to spirituality in performance. The reading of this book is a must for scholars in the field of theatre- and performance studies, ritual and festival studies, for scholars of religion, and anyone interested in the understanding of spiritual practices.**
Author: Richard J. Wiseman
File Type: pdf
Three staff manuals and handbooks from the formative years of the Riverview Hospital for Children and Youth, a groundbreaking psychiatric hospital in Middletown, Connecticut. Includes the ABCD Program, BLEU Handbook, and Sunburst Handbook. These archival materials provide detail that illuminates the treatment philosophy and methods employed by the hospital staff during the hospitals formative years.This ebook is being published as a companion to Riverview Hospital for Children and Youth A Culture of Promise, by Richard J. Wiseman.
Author: Olga Beloborodova
File Type: pdf
This book of collected essays approaches Becketts work through the context of modernism, while situating it in the literary tradition at large. It builds on current debates aiming to redefine modernism in connection to concepts such as late modernism or postmodernism. Instead of definitively re-categorizing Beckett under any of these labels, the essays use his diverse oeuvre encompassing poetry, criticism, prose, theatre, radio and film as a case study to investigate and reassess the concept of modernism after postmodernism in all its complexity, covering a broad range of topics spanning Becketts entire career. In addition to more thematic essays about art, history, politics, psychology and philosophy, the collection places his work in relation to that of other modernists such as T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf, as well as to the literary canon in general. It represents an important contribution to both Beckett studies and modernism studies. **
Author: Patryk Babiracki
File Type: pdf
Approaching the early decades of the Iron Curtain with new questions and perspectives, this important book examines the political and cultural implications of the communists international initiatives. Building on recent scholarship and working from new archival sources, the seven contributors to this volume study various effects of international outreachpersonal, technological, and culturalon the population and politics of the Soviet bloc. Several authors analyze lesser-known complications of East-West exchange others show the contradictory nature of Moscows efforts to consolidate its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and in the Third World. An outgrowth of the forty-sixth annual Walter Prescott Webb Lectures, hosted in 2011 by the University of Texas at Arlington, Cold War Crossings features diverse focuses with a unifying theme. **
Author: Allan G. Grapard
File Type: pdf
In Mountain Mandalas Allan G. Grapard provides a thought-provoking history of one aspect of the Japanese Shugendo tradition in Kyushu, by focusing on three cultic systems Mount Hiko, Usa-Hachiman, and the Kunisaki Peninsula. Grapard draws from a rich range of theorists from the disciplines of geography, history, anthropology, sociology, and humanistic geography and situates the historical terrain of his research within a much larger context. This book includes detailed analyses of the geography of sacred sites, translations from many original texts, and discussions on rituals and social practices. Grapard studies Mount Hiko and the Kunisaki Peninsula, which was very influential in Japanese cultural and religious history throughout the ages. We are introduced to important information on archaic social structures and their religious traditions the development of the cult to the deity Hachiman a history of the interactions between Buddhism and local cults in Japan a history of the Shugendo tradition of mountain religious ascetics, and much more. Mountain Mandalas sheds light on important aspects of Japans religion and culture, and will be of interest to all scholars of Shinto and Japanese religion. Extensive translations of source material can be found on the books webpage. **Review Mountain Mandalas is thought provoking and Grapards prose, ever inventive and sometimes even amazing, makes it a fun read It is a rich and rewarding book for specialists in Japanese religious history and should provoke a range of discussions and further research for years to come. Journal of Japanese Studies About the Author Allan G. Grapard is Professor Emeritus in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.
Author: Hung Cam Thai
File Type: pdf
Every year migrants across the globe send more than $500 billion to relatives in their home countries, and this circulation of money has important personal, cultural, and emotional implications for the immigrants and their family members alike. Insufficient Funds tells the story of how low-wage Vietnamese immigrants in the United States and their poor, non-migrant family members give, receive, and spend money. Drawing on interviews and fieldwork with more than one hundred members of transnational families, Hung Cam Thai examines how and why immigrants, who largely earn low wages as hairdressers, cleaners, and other invisible workers, send home a substantial portion of their earnings, as well as spend lavishly on relatives during return trips. Extending beyond mere altruism, this spending is motivated by complex social obligations and the desire to gain self-worth despite their limited economic opportunities in the United States. At the same time, such remittances raise expectations for standards of living, producing a cascade effect that monetizes family relationships. Insufficient Funds powerfully illuminates these and other contradictions associated with money and its new meanings in an increasingly transnational world.
Author: Vipin Kumar
File Type: pdf
Modern society depends critically on computers that control and manage systems on which we depend in many aspects of our daily lives. While this provides conveniences of a level unimaginable just a few years ago, it also leaves us vulnerable to attacks on the computers managing these systems. In recent times the explosion in cyber attacks, including viruses, worms, and intrusions, has turned this vulnerability into a clear and visible threat. Due to the escalating number and increased sophistication of cyber attacks, it has become important to develop a broad range of techniques, which can ensure that the information infrastructure continues to operate smoothly, even in the presence of dire and continuous threats. This book brings together the latest techniques for managing cyber threats, developed by some of the worlds leading experts in the area. The book includes broad surveys on a number of topics, as well as specific techniques. It provides an excellent reference point for researchers and practitioners in the government, academic, and industrial communities who want to understand the issues and challenges in this area of growing worldwide importance. Audience This book is intended for members of the computer security research and development community interested in state-of-the-art techniques personnel in federal organizations tasked with managing cyber threats and information leaks from computer systems personnel at the military and intelligence agencies tasked with defensive and offensive information warfare personnel in the commercial sector tasked with detection and prevention of fraud in their systems and personnel running large-scale data centers, either for their organization or for others, tasked with ensuring the security, integrity, and availability of data.
Author: Michael Heinrich
File Type: pdf
The global economic crisis and recession that began in 2008 had at least one unexpected outcome a surge in sales of Karl MarxsCapital. Although mainstream economists and commentators once dismissed Marxs work as outmoded and flawed, some are begrudgingly acknowledging an analysis that sees capitalism as inherently unstable. And of course, there are those, like Michael Heinrich, who have seen the value of Marx all along, and are in a unique position to explain the intricacies of Marxs thought. Heinrichs modern interpretation ofCapitalis now available to English-speaking readers for the first time. It has gone through nine editions in Germany, is the standard work for Marxist study groups, and is used widely in German universities. The author systematically covers all three volumes ofCapitaland explains all the basic aspects of Marxs critique of capitalism in a way that is clear and concise. He provides background information on the intellectual and political milieu in which Marx worked, and looks at crucial issues beyond the scope of Capital, such as class struggle, the relationship between capital and the state, accusations of historical determinism, and Marxs understanding of communism. Uniquely, Heinrich emphasizes the monetary character of Marxs work, in addition to the traditional emphasis on the labor theory of value, this highlighting the relevance ofCapitalto the age of financial explosions and implosions.
Author: Juan-David Nasio
File Type: pdf
Addresses unconscious repetition, a concept that is crucial to an understanding of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. In Psychoanalysis and Repetition , Juan-David Nasio, one of the leading contemporary Lacanian psychoanalysts in France, argues that unconscious repetition represents the core of psychoanalysis as well as no less than the fundamental constitution of the human being. Through repetition, the unconscious memory of the past erupts, without our knowledge, in our choices and actions, to such an extent that, for Nasio, we are our past in action. While Nasio explains that repetition is both healthy and pathological, the book is primarily concerned with the repetition of unconscious trauma, as trauma engenders trauma, through unconscious fantasms that are expressed, in turn, as symptoms. Through vivid clinical examples, as well as trenchant theoretical explications involving repetition, Nasio illuminates a range of fundamental concepts in Freud and Lacan and offers a rethinking of the psychoanalytic tradition in the context of this theme. Nasios approach is richly interdisciplinary, incorporating passages from philosophers Descartes and Spinoza, for example, and from such literary figures as Pindar, Proust, and Verlaine. The interdisciplinary fabric of Nasios discourse conveys the crucial importance of the concept of repetition in psychoanalysis and in the human condition. bJuan-David Nasio bis a psychoanalyst who lives and works in Paris. He was the first psychoanalyst to be inducted into the prestigious French Legion of Honor. bDavid Pettigrew bis Professor of Philosophy at Southern Connecticut State University. He is the coeditor and cotranslator of many books, including Nasios Oedipus The Most Crucial Concept in Psychoanalysis (cotranslated with Francois Raffoul), also published by SUNY Press.