A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250–1820 explores the idea that strong links exist in the histories of Africa, Europe and North and South America. John K. Thornton provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the Atlantic Basin before 1830 by describing political, social and cultural interactions between the continents' inhabitants. He traces the backgrounds of the populations on these three continental landmasses brought into contact by European navigation. Thornton then examines the political and social implications of the encounters, tracing the origins of a variety of Atlantic societies and showing how new ways of eating, drinking, speaking and worshipping developed in the newly created Atlantic World. This book uses close readings of original sources to produce new interpretations of its subject.
How were male bodies viewed before the Enlightenment? And what does this reveal about attitudes towards sex and gender in premodern Europe? This richly textured cultural history investigates the characterization of the sex of adult male bodies from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century. Before the modern focus on the phallic, penetrative qualities of male anatomy, Patricia Simons finds that men's bodies were considered in terms of their active physiological characteristics, in relation to semen, testicles and what was considered innately masculine heat. Re-orienting attention from an anatomical to a physiological focus, and from fertility to pleasure, Simons argues that women's sexual agency was perceived in terms of active reception of the valuable male seed. This provocative, compelling study draws on visual, material and textual evidence to elucidate a broad range of material, from medical learning, high art and literary metaphors to obscene badges, codpieces and pictorial or or
This broadly conceived and enlightening look at how Homer's Odyssey has resonated in the West offers a thematic analysis of the poem's impact on social and political ideas, institutions, and mores fr
Europe was formed in the Middle Ages. The merging of the traditions of Roman-Mediterranean societies with the customs of Northern Europe created new political, economic, social and religious structure
Shunsuke Tsurumi, one of Japan’s most distinguished contemporary philosophers, continues his study of the intellectual and social history of modern Japan with this penetrating analysis of popular cult
This volume takes up bankruptcy in early modern Europe, when its frequency made it not only an economic problem but a personal tragedy and a social evil. Using legal, business and personal records, th
This volume takes up bankruptcy in early modern Europe, when its frequency made it not only an economic problem but a personal tragedy and a social evil. Using legal, business and personal records, th
First published in 1997, Photography and its Critics offers an overview of nineteenth-century American and European writing about photography from such disparate fields as art theory, social reform, and physiology. The earliest criticism of the invention was informed by an ample legacy of notions about objectivity, appearances, and copying. Received ideas about neutral vision, intuitive genius, and progress in art also shaped nineteenth-century understanding of photography. In this study, Mary Warner Marien argues that photography was an important social and cultural symbol for modernity and change in several fields, such as art and social reform. Moreover, she demonstrates how photography quickly emerged as a pliant symbol for modernity and change, one that could as easily oppose progress as promote democracy.
This book charts the social and cultural history of the scientific technique known as "tissue culture." It shows how tissue culture was a regular public presence in twentieth-century Britain, and argu
Death and the Idea of Mexico is the first social, cultural, and political history ofdeath in a nation that has made death its tutelary sign. Examining the history of death and of thedeath sign from si
This provocative book draws from a variety of sources--literature, politics, folklore, social history--to attempt to set Southern beliefs about violence in a cultural context. According to Dickson D.
At the center of the project Body, Gaze, Power: A Cultural History of the Bath is a global social practice that is as old as humankind itself. Even though it has always been associated with cleansing
The nineteenth century was a period of enormous change in Ireland and has left a legacy that still affects Irish people today. It saw the shaping of a political nation, the trauma of the Famine, the r
Written by top scholars in the field, EAST ASIA: A CULTURAL, SOCIAL, AND POLITICAL HISTORY, 3E delivers a comprehensive cultural, political, economic, and intellectual history of East Asia, while focu
Yvonne Pitts explores inheritance practices by focusing on nineteenth-century testamentary capacity trials in Kentucky in which disinherited family members challenged relatives' wills. These disappointed heirs claimed that their departed relative lacked the capacity required to write a valid will. These inheritance disputes criss-crossed a variety of legal and cultural terrains, including ordinary people's understandings of what constituted insanity and justice, medical experts' attempts to infuse law with science, and the independence claims of women. Pitts uncovers the contradictions in the body of law that explicitly protected free will while simultaneously reinforcing the primacy of blood in mediating claims to inherited property. By anchoring the study in local communities and the texts of elite jurists, Pitts demonstrates that 'capacity' was a term laden with legal meaning and competing communal values about family, race relations and rationality. These concepts evolved as Kentuc
A Cultural History of Childhood and Family presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of history, charting the cultural, social, econ
A Cultural History of Childhood and Family presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of history, charting the cultural, social, econ
A Cultural History of Childhood and Family presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of history, charting the cultural, social, econ
A Cultural History of Childhood and Family presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of history, charting the cultural, social, econ
