Blackwell Publishing
The access manual; auditing and managing inclusive built environments, 2d ed.
Building access consultants Sawyer and Bright provide guidance on designing buildings and building elements that enable access by disabled individuals mandated by British Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 and related standards and regulations. Over the course of the work, they give advice on access management, handover and commissioning of new and improved buildings, feedback procedures, post-occupancy evaluation, and access audits. While legal standards and regulations are discussed in the British context, there is enough coverage of general issues of accessibility to interest other audiences. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The archaeologist's fieldwork companion.
Kipfer, a lexicographer and author, provides a guide to information and materials needed when doing archeological fieldwork, compiled in one volume that can be carried while in the field. Aimed at students, amateurs, and professionals, the book covers classification and typology; sample forms and records; lists and checklists; mapping, drawing, and photographing settings and artifacts; measurements and conversion, including charts and using equipment; and planning and designing projects. Resources are listed in the final chapter, including organizations and journals, ethical guidelines, legislation, and government information. Chapters cover topics in alphabetical order; no index is supplied. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Archaeological semiotics.
Anthropology is a semiotic enterprise, declares Preucel (anthropology, U. of Pennsylvania), but then so is every other academic discipline that must attend to the linkages between theories, data, and social practices in the pursuit of meaning. Exploring the interpretive aspects of the profession, he looks at contributions by Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce, post-structuralism and post-processual archaeology, Brook Farm and the architecture of Utopia, and other topics. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Art's agency and art history.
As the title suggests, this group of essays engages with the theoretical approach set forth by Alfred Gell in his 1998 work Art and agency; an anthropological theory. Articles are offered by classicists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and art historians who teach in the UK and the US. The nine articles consider objects created in ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, Elizabethan England, ancient Greece and Rome, and Peru. Osborne (ancient history, U. of Cambridge, UK) and Tanner (classical archaeology, University College, London, UK) contribute a lengthy introductory essay applying Gell's theory to the practice of art history. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Beautiful things in popular culture.
Scholars and other pop culture analysts explore such consumer icons as superheroes in comics, shoes, crime fiction, "post-gay" websites, and a villain in the Xena: Warrior Princess TV show that they highly rate. The most unusual of the 13 essays treats why a 1943 propaganda film about a massacred village can be considered beautiful. McKee (creative industries, Queensland U. of Technology) situates these attractions in the context of critical debates over high vs. mass culture aesthetics. The few b&w photos include self-styled pop princess Kylie Minogue, and the beautifully styled Ducati 916 motorbike. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The Blackwell companion to Catholicism.
Why do some theologians relate Romantic understanding of religion to subjectivity or even cultural relativism? How was the Black Death perhaps offset by technological innovations that led to considerations of faith? Do not expect pat answers in this collection of 33 articles; each contains its own surprises and alternate insights. Contributors cover history, cultures, doctrines and practices in such topics as the worlds of the Old and New Testaments, the early Church, the middle ages, the Reformation, modernity and post-modernity, cultures from the Holy Land to India, Africa, Europe, Great Britain and Ireland, Latin America, North America, Asia and Oceania, the practice of Catholic theology and the development of doctrine, God, creation and anthropology, Jesus Christ, Mary, the concept of "church," the liturgy and sacraments, moral theology, the end times, spirituality, institutions, the Holy See, ecumenism, inter-religious dialog, art and literature, science and technology, and justice and peace. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The Blackwell companion to the Bible and culture.
Offering readers a one-volume reference source about 21st- century approaches to the Bible, this volume explores the ways the Bible has affected all the major social contexts where it has been influential: ancient, medieval and modern. The 30 articles are written by distinguished specialists and are organized into sections on revealing the past, the nomadic text, the Bible and the senses, and reading in practice. The articles emphasize the multi- faceted nature of the Bible and its impact on the world and help to bridge the gap between specialist biblical studies and other disciplines, such as literature, art, music, history, theology, politics and psychology. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Cinema and modernism.
Trotter (English literature, U. of Cambridge, UK) agrees with the late British novelist Elizabeth Bowen that there are affinities between cinema and modernist literature, but rather than reiterate previous arguments that those affinities are connected to transferable techniques, he proposes a model of parallelism. In other words modern literature and early cinema can be understood as constituting and constituted by parallel histories. He suggests that cinema, for at least the first ten years after its invention, was a neutral recording medium and not a representational art. It was this recording nature of cinema that fascinated modernist writers and modernism's formula became "literature as (recording) medium before literature as (representational) art." (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Classical archaeology.
This work is intended by editors Alcock (director, Institute for Archeology and the Ancient World, Brown U., US) and Osborn (ancient history, U. of Cambridge, UK) to serve as an introduction to the material archaeology of the "Classical World;" the world of the Greeks and the Romans between the eighth century BC and the fourth century AD. Following an overview of the field's scope and range and an introduction to its standard methodological tools and modes of analysis, chapters introduce current understandings of classical rural, urban, and household archaeology. Remaining chapters summarize archaeological knowledge of civic religion, commemorative statuary as an expression of political self-presentation, the projection of community identities, and processes and impacts of cultural interchange. Distributed in North America by The David Brown Book Co. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to Greek religion.
Historians, religious scholars, and archaeologists discuss various aspects of Greek religion during the archaic, classical, and Hellenistic periods, about 776-30 BC. They do not consider myth extensively, another volume in the series being devoted to that, but do encounter it often while examining other topics. Among those topics are the gods and the dead; local religious systems; mysteries and magic; and intersections of Greek religion with literature, philosophy, and art. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to medieval art; Romanesque and Gothic in Northern Europe.
This impressive volume gathers 30 essays by prominent medieval art historians that survey the state and historiography of the field, describing its theoretical basis and controversies in the process. Among the topics are vision, Gregory the Great and image theory, the concept of spolia, art and exegesis, the monstrous in medieval art, and art and pilgrimage. Five essays are devoted to architecture, with Eric Fernie (emeritus, the Courtauld Institute of Art, U. of London, UK) writing about Romanesque, Columbia University's Stephen Murray writing about Gothic, and Peter Fergusson (Wellesley College) on Cistercian. Two essays consider medievalism in architecture (by Tina Waldeier Bizzarro, Rosemont College, Penn.) and current museum practices in presenting medieval art (by Michelle Brown, of the British Library). All the essays are illustrated with b&w plates, annotated, and concluded with a list of bibliography. Both scholars and students of art history will find this a handy and thought- provoking resource. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to Roman religion.
These 31 articles focus on how humans behaved within the political, cultural, social and economic contexts of Roman religion, with contributors covering the importance of what the Romans believed, early religions and their urban cohorts, religion and the integration of policy and the empire, and a host of media (the epic tradition, coins, reliefs, inscriptions, home religion), symbols and practices (sites, games, processionals, prayers, hymns, music, dance, sacrifice), and related religious identities (Roman diaspora Judaism, religious individualism and intellectual choices, institutional religious options such as Mithrasism and "Romanness"). The collection closes with observations from the outside, including exported Roman religion, the Roman East and Roman religion under the purview of Tertullian. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to the classical Greek world.
Kinzl (ancient history, Trent U., emeritus) has gathered into a single volume material usually scattered throughout a variety of publications. The essays, which are written by international scholars, address topics not usually found in discussions of this period in Greek history such as government, the environment, art, philosophy, rhetoric, religion and society. The volume includes a concise narrative overview of the period from the aftermath of the Persian Wars in 478 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. It is fully illustrated and contains several maps, as well as a thorough treatment of both written and material sources. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to the history of the book.
The history of the book is a relatively new discipline that looks at books as historical artifacts as well as carriers of literary texts. It considers not just printed volumes, but any texts that have been reproduced and distributed by any means — clay tablets as well as manuscripts. Here scholars from various humanities set out the fundamentals of the field: methods and approaches, periodicals and other book-like entities, and issues. A long section also surveys the history of the material text, from the world before the codex, the book beyond the West, and the codex in the West since 400. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to the Roman Republic.
Put together by Rosenstein (history, Ohio State U.) and Morstein-Marx (classics, U. of California at Santa Barbara), the goal of this work is to present some of the most important themes of and debates about the rise and fall of the Roman Republic in a manner that takes into account the most recent research in the literature. Following chapters that discuss the raw material of the historiography of Rome (the historical scholarship from the early 20th century to the present, literary and epigraphic evidence, the archaeology of the Roman city, and the physical geography and environment of Italy), the chronological framework is presented in chapters that narrate military and political developments from the origins of Rome to the death of Julius Caesar. Beginning with the tenth chapter and continuing to the 25th, the material turns broadly thematic, with sections addressing civic structures of church, law, constitution, and military; social issues of demography, social structure, and gender; issues of political culture, including aristocratic values, popular power, patronage, rhetoric and public life; and questions of Roman identity, including history and collective memory, art and architecture, literature, and the relationships between the Roman and the Other. The final four chapters introduce areas of continuing historical controversy such as imperial expansion under the Republic, agrarian change and the economy, the relationship between Rome and Italy, and the transformation from Republic to Empire. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Conservation and sustainability in historic cities.
Rodwell, a practicing architect and planner specializing in historic cities and a consultant on site management, examines how conservation and sustainability relate to each other and to the historic sites themselves. He reviews the theories behind conservation and its effect on cultural identity, reveals the weaknesses and strengths in current philosophy and practice, and describes best practices. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The design quality manual; improving building performance.
British architect Cook sets out criteria for assessing the quality of a building, hopefully in a stage long before it is actually constructed, when the quality can be improved without having to evict tenants and tear stuff down. He covers building procurement, schools, hospitals, and housing. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Dictionary of artifacts.
Concise b&w drawings and some photos are included throughout this superb reference, which contains over 2000 definitions of the terms used to name artifacts in the field of archaeology. Terms were selected that concern the analysis, examination, and identification of artifacts, their care, handling, preservation, decoration, description, production, technology, and specific types. Architectural terminology and specific sites and objects are not included. Definitions are also provided for major time periods. Kipfer is an archaeologist and lexicographer with two other archaeology compendia to her name (Encyclopedic dictionary of archaeology and The archaeologist's fieldwork companion). (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Dying to belong; gangster movies in Hollywood and Hong Kong.
Nochimson (film studies, NYU) sees similarities between gangster movies in America and Hong Kong not just because they are particularly prolific exporters of such films, but also because both are immigrant nations, whose lawless gangsters are nonetheless eerily similar to their "straight" citizens. Here she examines works from days before The Godfather (e.g. Little Caesar) to the present (Hong Kong's Young and Dangerous series), illustrating themes including the anxiety of marginality, the Taoist code and Hong Kong's gangsters, and illusions of material wealth and upward mobility of newcomers. In The Sopranos TV series, she finds a marriage of the characterization and filmmaking of both Hollywood and Hong Kong. An interview with the show's creator, David Chase, composes the epilogue. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Exhibition experiments.
Macdonald (social anthropology, U. of Manchester, UK) and Basu (anthropology, U. of Sussex, UK) compile 10 essays by art historians, anthropologists, curators, and artists from Europe and the US, who put forth the idea that contemporary exhibitions do more than disseminate knowledge, but are also experimental practices in "meaning-making" and means of generating knowledge and experience. Some of the essays were based on those presented at a panel entitled "Exhibition Experiments: Technologies and Cultures of Display" at the Anthropology and Science conference of the Association of Social Anthropologists held in Manchester in 2003. Subjects discussed in the essays relate to museums and contemporary museum design, exhibition as film, specific projects in places such as Chicago and Portugal, social documentary, and reflexivity. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
