In recent years, the world community has demonstrated a renewed commitment to the pursuit of international criminal justice. In 1993, the United Nations established two ad hoc international tribunals
Augustine, bishop of Hippo between 395 and 430, and his fellow bishops lived and worked through massive shifts in politics, society, and religion. Christian bishops were frequently asked to serve as i
What does it mean to talk about law as theater, to speak about the "performance" of transactions as mundane as the sale of a pig or as agonizing as receiving compensation for a dead kinsman? In Dark
Young people have been at the forefront of political conflict in many parts of the world, even when it has turned violent. In some of those situations, for a variety of reasons, including coercion, p
Can the ancestry of freemasonry really be traced back to the Knights Templar? Is the image of the eye in a triangle on the back of the dollar bill one of its cryptic signs? Is there a conspiracy that
Modern advertising has changed dramatically since the early twentieth century, but when it comes to food, Katherine Parkin writes, the message has remained consistent. Advertisers have historically p
When Eldridge Cleaver wrote in 1965 that black men "shall have our manhood or the earth will be leveled by our attempt to gain it," he voiced a central strain of Black Power movement rhetoric. In pri
Written in Judeo-Arabic in eleventh-century Muslim Spain but quickly translated into Hebrew, Bahya Ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart is a profound guidebook of Jewish spirituality that has enjoyed trem
Romare Bearden (1911-1988), the great African American artist, spent much of the last two decades of his life on the Caribbean island of St. Martin. This tropical experience influenced not only the wo
For people living in U.S. cities, social services come not only from the government but increasingly also from local religious communities. Ever since the Clinton administration's welfare reform, fai
Magic, always part of the occult underground in North America, has experienced a resurgence since the 1960s. Although most contemporary magical religions have come from abroad, they have found fertile
It is widely acknowledged that the unhuman plays a significant role in the definition of humanity in contemporary thought. It appears in the thematization of "the Other" in philosophical, psychoanalyt
As the Ottoman Empire advanced westward from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, humanists responded on a grand scale, leaving behind a large body of fascinating yet understudied works. These
The most important illuminating source that survived from the two centuries termed "the dark ages of Byzantium" is the chronicle of the monk Theophanes (d. 817 or 818). In it Theophanes paints a vivi
On the eve of the American Revolution there existed throughout the British-American colonial world a variety of contradictory expectations about the political process. Not only was there disagreement
Coiling is one of the most versatile of ceramic techniques. The plasticity of clay invites potters to roll it between their hands to produce a coil that can be joined to form the wall of a hollow vess
Any real education in ceramics must involve, from the outset, an appreciation of the source materials--the rocks around us. While good, throwable clay may be a regional commodity, there is no part of
When former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London at the request of a Spanish judge, the world's attention was focused for the first time on the idea of universal jurisdiction. Uni
One of the great breakthroughs in Chinese studies in the early twentieth century was the archaeological identification of the earliest, fully historical dynasty of kings, the Shang (ca. 1300-1050 B.C.
John Bartram (1699-1777), the first native-born American to devote his entire life to the study of nature, was an eminently practical man, a scientist devoted to the rigorous description of living thi
Representing a lifetime of research, this seven-volume biography will give readers an unmatched resource for understanding Benjamin Franklin's character and place in American history. This second vol
Helen Thompson's Ingenuous Subjection offers a new feminist history of the eighteenth-century domestic novel. By reading social contract theory alongside representations of the domestic sphere by auth
When Muslim invaders conquered Sicily in the ninth century, they took control of a weakened Greek state in cultural decadence. When, two centuries later, the Normans seized control of the island, the
From robber barons to titanic CEOs, from the labor unrest of the 1880s to the mass layoffs of the 1990s, two American Gilded Ages—one in the early 1900s, another in the final years of the tw
Credit and debt appear to be natural, permanent facets of Americans' lives, but a debt-based economy and debt-financed lifestyles are actually recent inventions. In 1951 Diners Club issued a plastic c
On the great influence of a valiant lord: "The companions, who see that good warriors are honored by the great lords for their prowess, become more determined to attain this level of prowess."On the l
In December 1235, Pope Gregory IX altered the mission of a crusade he had begun to preach the year before. Instead of calling for Christian magnates to go on to fight the infidel in Jerusalem, he now
Maureen Quilligan explores the remarkable presence in the Renaissance of what she calls "incest schemes" in the books of a small number of influential women who claimed an active female authority by w
When American radio broadcasting began in the early 1920s there was a consensus among middle-class opinion makers that the airwaves must never be used for advertising. Even the national advertising in
In 1798, the federal government levied its first direct tax on American citizens, one that seemed to favor land speculators over farmers. In eastern Pennsylvania, the tax assessors were largely Quake
The sect known as "the Assassins," a corruption of an Arabic word that means hashish smoker, is familiar to the West as a mystical cult of killers led by the "Man in the Mountain" encountered by the C
Contrary to popular belief, the medieval religious imagination did not restrict itself to masculine images of God but envisaged the divine in multiple forms. In fact, the God of medieval Christendom w
Since independence in 1956, large numbers of Moroccans have been forcibly disappeared, tortured, and imprisoned. Morocco's uncovering and acknowledging of these past human rights abuses are complicat
A teapot is one of the most important ceramic forms; the ability to make one is a key test of a potter's skill. Its construction requires the mastery of many techniques, whether the piece is thrown or
Gambling has been a practice central to many cultures throughout history. In Dice, Cards, Wheels, Thomas M. Kavanagh scrutinizes the changing face of the gambler in France over a period of eight centu
Paper clay, a plastic modeling mix of clay, paper pulp, and water, is an extraordinarily versatile material. It is easy to use, extremely strong in an unfired state, and easily repairable at nearly e
Based on more than two years of fieldwork conducted in a Yemeni community in southeastern Michigan, this unique study examines Yemeni American girls' attempts to construct and make sense of their iden
Data gathered through systematic survey detail the settlement history of the Vrokastro region from the Final Neolithic period through the early part of the twentieth century. Each period is introduced
From 1968 to 1990, Edward Ochsenschlager conducted ethno-archaeological fieldwork near a mound called al-Hiba, in the marshes of southern Iraq. In examining the material culture of three tribes - thei
By the early fourteenth century, the city of Florence had emerged as an economic power in Tuscany, surpassing even Siena, which had previously been the banking center of the region. In the space of fi
