Ashgate Publishing Co.

Advances in social-psychology and music education research.

To honor Charles P. Schmidt on the occasion of his retirement from the music education department at Indiana University, 20 music education researchers with international reputations, weighted toward those he has cited in his own research, were asked to contribute papers on social-psychological advances in music education, social environments for music education, and advancing effective research in music education. Their topics include designing effective music studio instruction, the nonverbal measurement of responsiveness to music, developing a social environment of instruction model for music education, the diversity of dissertation topics in music education supervised by experienced advisers in the US, and a researcher's journey from student to scholar. A bibliography of Schmidt's publications is also included. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Architecture in nineteenth-century photographs; essays on reading a collection.

Nilsen (art history, Indiana U. South Bend) engages with the vast Janos Scholz Collection of 19th-century photographs of the Snite Museum of Art at the U. of Notre Dame to attempt a new contextualizing of the origins and possible original intended meanings of the photographs. Organizing her analysis into themes, such as urban or vernacular architecture, she describes the historical and political circumstances current when the photo was taken and the possible motives of the photographer, deliberately veering away from the aesthetic analysis of these often gorgeous photos that has heretofore prevailed. The volume is heavily illustrated with b&w plates. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The architecture of James Stirling and his partners James Gowan and Michael Wilford; a study of architectural creativity in the twentieth century.

Baker has written extensively about architecture and design and has taught at several institutions in the US and the UK. Here he provides impressively thorough treatment of James Stirling (d. 1992) a preeminent British architect whose four decades of practice began in the 1950s, in the aftermath of World War II. The study draws on interviews and archival material and encompasses analysis of Stirling's innovations, philosophy, influences, and legacy, as well as comparison of his oeuvre with other pioneers such as Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alvar Aalton, and Le Corbusier. The volume includes drawings, plans, and a section of color photos of buildings. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Art in consumer culture; mis-design.

Art, design, commodification — and their interplay — are the themes that occupy McQuilten (culture and communications, U. of Melbourne, Australia). She offers a thorough, nuanced study focusing on the work of Takashi Murakami, Andrea Zittel, Adam Kalkin, and Vito Acconci, exploring what they do, what they say they are doing, and the implicit and explicit ramifications of their work for art-making in the contemporary world. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Ashgate research companion to border studies.

The field of border studies is multidisciplinary and global, and this handbook reflects those characteristics in both scope and authorship. Scholars of geography, government, regional studies, sociology, communications, ocean resource security, political economy, and social philosophy, among others, provide perspectives and case studies from every continent. Intended for a similarly diverse audience of students, scholars, and planners — particularly at the regional level — this collection comprises 32 contributed chapters. Arrangement is thematic in sections on conceptual aspects of border studies; state, nation, and power relations; border enforcement; territorial identities and the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion; the role of borders; border crossings; neighborhoods; and the environment. Editor Wastl-Walter (human geography, U. of Bern, Switzerland) provides an introductory essay. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Ashgate research companion to cosmopolitanism.

This collection of twenty-three essays on cosmopolitanism showcases current research in the social sciences and humanities into this broad cultural and historical concept that plays an important role in studies from many disciplines on the development personal identities, multicultural societies and progressive global world views. Divided into section covering cultural cosmopolitanism, political cosmopolitanism and academic debates, articles discuss topics such as cosmopolitanism and consumption, the cosmopolitan city, Kant, cosmopolitanism and natural law, borders as connections, cosmopolitanism and mobility and cosmopolitanism and political liberalism. Contributors include academics in sociology and the humanities from universities around the world. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Bullying in the arts; vocation, exploitation and abuse of power.

Anne-Marie Quigg, an arts-management consultant in the UK, addresses what she finds to be a deficit of research into workplace-bullying in the arts. She suggests that stereotypes about performers and other kinds of artists, as either ready to put up with anything for their passion or creative geniuses who lose themselves in their passion, help obscure abusive behavior recognized in other employment fields. Her research, which takes the form of ethnography, focuses on the arts and cultural sector in the UK and reveals a startling amount of under-reported abusive behavior. In the first two chapters, she defines the varieties of harassment relevant to her research and explains how she went about studying it. Then in the next three chapters she addresses specific types and aspects of bullying, such as being a target, pair-bullying and founder syndrome, and institutional bullying. The next two and then the final chapter and an appendix address management intervention, legal considerations and resources for dealing with bullying against oneself. This book is ideal for general students of management and organizational behavior, and managers and practitioners in the arts. Distributed by Ashgate. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Capturing Japan in nineteenth century New England photography collections.

The six influential New Englanders at the center of this fascinating study traveled to Japan soon after it opened to the world, coincidentally at the same time that photography came into wide use. The travels and careers of the six (among them are the collector Isabella Stewart Gardner and naturalist Edward Sylvester Morse, who was director of the Peabody Essex Museum), their promotion of Japan and its culture, and the world captured in the photographs are described, frequently supplemented with other historic images. Hight (art history, U. of New Hampshire) ascribes the photos of the collections to the shops that sold them in Japan and discusses the process of their production, including hand-coloring, with an extended discussion of the choice of subjects for the western viewer. Guided by the photographs, Hight illuminates elements of the society of 19th-century Japan, such as the lives of girls and women sold into prostitution, and develops an image of the early and important relationship between the two countries in terms of art and commerce. Heavily illustrated with b&w and a series of color plates. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The challenges of command; the Royal Navy's executive branch officers, 1880-1919.

This history of the officer corps of the Royal Navy examines the transitional period between the last decades of the nineteenth century and the start of World War I, focusing on policy changes, social and technological milestones, and economic and financial upheavals that effected the readiness and character of the organization. The volume is at once a history and a detailed organizational analysis and is presented in a well researched academic format. Davidson is a professor of maritime history at the University of Guelph, Ontario. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Cities into battlefields; metropolitan scenarios, experiences and commemorations of total war.

This collection of thirteen articles on the wars of the twentieth century examines the effects of "total war" in a wide variety of European and Asian contexts and explores the effects of modern warfare on the collective psyches of metropolitan populations. Topics discussed include the first days of the London blitz, symbols of national rejuvenation in the Ottoman Balkans, ghettos and the remaking of urban space and memorials to total destruction in post-war Japan. The volume includes several black and white illustrations. The contributors are historians from American, European and Japanese institutions. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Comparative criminal justice and globalization.

This collection of nine essays compares concepts of crime and criminal justice across cultures in light of the phenomenon of globalization. Most of the essays emerged from an international workshop, while others noted in the introduction were added later. They are organized into three sections that cover comparative criminal justice, the globalization of crime and criminal justice, and the potential for further research into the relationship between the two. Some of the essays examine the punitive turn in criminal justice around the world, criminal process as part of legal culture, exceptionalism in global criminal justice, the collapse of state monopolies on force, and in the end offer social justice and human rights as frameworks for pursuing a cosmopolitan criminal justice system. Nelken (sociology, U. of Macerata) provides an afterward that synthesizes the issues and advice of the essays. The contributors are professors of criminology, sociology and public administration. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Costuming the Shakespearean stage; visual codes of representation in early modern theatre and culture.

This interesting monograph on early modern Shakespearean theater examines the costumes of original stage productions and explores the way in which meaning was conveyed to audiences through the use of socially significant clothing cues to communicate culturally meaningful information. The volume is arranged thematically and addresses such topics as sex and gender, social station and class, foreigners, religious affiliation, and political persuasion. The work includes several black and white illustrations and historical reproductions. Lublin is the chair of the department of performing arts at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Crimes against the state; from treason to terrorism.

This study by Michael Head (law, U. of Western Sydney) critically examines laws in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia established to protect the stability and security of prevailing political, economic and social orders. The focus is on high crimes — such as treason, terrorism, sedition, mutiny, conspiracy, espionage, unlawful assembly, riot and rebellion — over more easily integrated crimes that nonetheless affect the State such as tax-evasion, corruption, interference with judicial system, etc. He argues that legal neutrality is a myth and that prosecuting crimes against the State is guided by extra-legal motives; that there is a decidedly class-character to who is targeted as criminals against the state; that the range of crimes against the State has grown over time and employs petty offenses as excuses to trigger prosecution; that courts have allowed executive branches of government to determine "the interests of the State" over and against popular protest; that human rights provide little protection; and that legal and defense campaigns against State prosecution should reach out to the public and not focus too much on legal or evidentiary processes. Head has written for those interested in the intersection between law history and politics, and its practical import, but not necessarily an academic audience. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The cult of the mother of God in Byzantium; texts and images.

Based on papers given at a 2006 conference concluding an Arts and Humanitites Research Council project on the Mother of God in Byzantium, the 16 papers of this collection offer a satisfying array of studies into the way the Virgin Mary was understood in Byzantium, with 12 of the articles devoted to the era before the Iconoclast Controversy. The material is divided into four sections: the early cult, epithets and typology for the Theotokos, the Mother of God in the Middle Byzantine homiletic tradition, and later developments. Icons, wall painting, ivory carving, and other artistic representations of Mary are a source of study, as are texts. A series of color plates are included. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Diagnosing empire; women, medical knowledge, and colonial mobility.

Drawing from the example of Victorian portable medical chests and guides for British families living in the colonies, Hassan (literature, communication, and culture; Georgia Institute of Technology, US) examines how medicine and colonialism in 19th-century India and the Middle East were related to women's travel. She considers the exchanges of British women with natives through the lens of colonial medicine to suggest that foreign contact zones were spaces of invention and cultivation where women could contribute to medical culture and enjoy cultural and literary productivity. Among her topics are female travel writers and colonial knowledge, fashioning and marketing the doctress of empire, and female medical education in India. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Disguise on the early modern English stage.

This is a study of the role of disguise devices in early modern English drama that focuses on the theatrical or material performance of spectacle of disguise, which Hyland (early modern literature and drama, U. of Western Ontario, Canada) argues other scholars have tended to neglect in favor of looking through the performance of disguise to its social or metaphorical meanings. He presents a catalog of disguise plays and devices, including many obscure plays, describes the technology of disguise and how it was staged, addresses aesthetic issues such as the way disguise (fundamentally a comic device) affects different dramatic genres and the metadramatic implications of disguise plays, considers the ways audience's prejudices and expectations would influence the reception of disguise plays, and considers the ways that disguise reflects ideas about the self. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Early Gothic column-figure sculpture in France; appearance, materials, and significance.

An unusually fine work, long in the making, this heavily illustrated volume describes in detail the clothing and jewelry worn by the column figures of the early Gothic cathedrals, including those on Notre Dame de Chartres and the abbey church of Saint Denis, defining the unique style of this seminal era through close analysis of the dressing and presentation of the figures. Through her focus on the textiles that were so precisely represented in the stone sculpture, Snyder (art history, West Virginia U.) takes the study far beyond 12th-century France, describing at length the trade in silk and other textiles from Byzantium, Fatimid Egypt, and Sicily, among other lands, and the types of materials produced and imported. Her concluding chapter explores how textiles were understood and valued by medieval viewers, in part through analysis of descriptions in literature and other texts. The volume includes a wealth of b&w and color plates of excellent quality, an appendix on limestone quarries and limestone analysis, and a lengthy bibliography. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Empress Eugénie and the arts; politics and visual culture in the nineteenth century.

The last empress of the French, Eugénie (1826-1920) has had many biographers and has been "...a convenient scapegoat for criticisms of imperial politics and the person to blame for France's losses both during the Franco-Prussian War and after...," writes McQueen (art history, McMaster U., Canada) in her introduction. This study diverges by investigating a neglected aspect of her activities — those involving her patronage of art and her collections — and by viewing those activities in their social and political context. The volume is elegantly produced and includes numerous illustrations. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Exploring the boundaries of international criminal justice.

This collection of ten essays examines international criminal justice along lines of historical development, balancing interests, conflicting regulatory forces and regulatory pluralism, authority and legitimacy, conceptual and institutional dichotomies, and global governance. They seek to answer a two-fold-question: where has international criminal justice come from and where is it going? The collection is divided into two parts with the first focusing on issues of legal vs. social accountability in international criminal justice, and the second developing themes of achieving justice beyond legal procedures as a paradigm for global governance. Some specific contributions consider the limitations of the liability paradigm, victim expectations toward justice in post-conflict societies, biopolitics, and global governance through criminalization. The contributors are mostly distinguished academics teaching criminology, international criminal justice and law in the UK. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Financial crisis management and the pursuit of power; American pre-eminence and the credit crunch.

Doyran (economics, City U. of New York) explores the dynamic between state power and crisis management, specifically by examining US policy responses to three relatively financial crises that feature the US. Specifically, she looks at the 1998 US hedge fund collapse, the 2000-2002 high tech bubble and Enron scandal, and the recent home mortgage crisis with systematic failures in financial institutions (2007-2010). She looks at the systemic causes, the role of the state (first two "liberal lassez-faire" cases and then a "liberal interventionist") and crisis management arrangements. She takes issue with essentialist narratives of US hegemony in the post-war era and the Bretton Woods system, critically examining realist, liberal interventionist and marxist models, and additionally argues that post-1970 financial literature failed to detect the contradictions in the emerging international financial system. The book also rejects the state-centric view that financial stability requires a strongly interventionist state and argues that there is a trend of government regulatory interventions creating bigger crises that in turn demand bigger interventions, leading to excessive competitiveness and financial instability. To that end, she documents the trend of "financialization" in the US economy since the 1970s. (Annotation ©2011 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)