Ashgate Publishing Co.

Famine and fashion; needlewomen in the nineteenth century.

The figure of the seamstress occupied an important place in 19th- century debates about women's work and education. The 15 articles in this volume address the seamstress as a cultural icon in the art and literature of 19th-century Britain, North America and France. The authors, who are international scholars from fields as diverse as literary criticism and business history, discuss many types of needlewomen, including skilled milliners and impoverished shirtmakers. The papers include discussions of penny dreadfuls, custom needlework, vocational education and campaigns for protective legislation. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Figuration/abstraction; strategies for public sculpture in Europe, 1945-1968.

Twelve contributions by art scholars examine sculptural practice in both Eastern and Western Europe during the period 1945-1968. The emphasis is on the shift away from the realist figurative traditions of monumental sculpture and towards abstracted alternatives. The volume is illustrated throughout with b&w photographs of sculpture and concludes with a special section containing short extracts from contemporary documents, which give a sense of the critical context. The papers were originally presented at a conference held at the Henry Moore Institute in 1999. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Gateway to the heavenly city; crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic west (1099-1187).

Schein (deceased, formerly Haifa U., Israel) quotes from a wealth of primary sources as she describes in great detail the attitudes of western Christians toward the heavenly and the earthly Jerusalem during the period when the (earthly) city of Jerusalem was ruled as a Crusader state until it was taken by Saladin in 1187. Attitudes concerning the importance of Jerusalem in Christian life and prayer, pilgrimage there, the reasons offered for Christian rule of the city, developments in western Christian attitudes towards the city as a result of the Crusades, the importance of the Holy Sepulchre, and interpretations of the city based on the Old and the New Testament are some of the topics. The volume will be of great interest to historians of the Crusades as well as scholars of religion. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Habitus; a sense of place, 2d ed.

Hillier (U. of Newcastle) and Rooksby (Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, Australia) introduce the concept of "habitus," a sense of one's place in a society, developed by the late French activist sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Containing 19 essays based on a conference held in 2000 in Perth, this paperback edition of the 2002 text pays tribute to Bourdieu's vision of a more just society. Scholars apply habitus to governance, economic, and urban planning policies; and issues of identification (e.g., with the World Trade Center towers, by Australian aboriginal women). (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Images of the Mother of God; perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium.

The 27 articles of this collection were originally presented, in earlier form, at a conference in 2001 held in conjunction with an exhibition at the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece, curated by Vassilaki (Byzantine art history, U. of Thessaly, Greece). Contributors from Greece, the UK, the US, Italy, and Germany present analysis of images and cult practice from the earliest Christian era, with most centering on the 7th-15th centuries. Five articles concern similarities and shared influence in images of the Virgin in eastern and western Christianity. Several of the essays are on individual images. The volume is illustrated with b&w and several color plates. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Integrating city planning and environmental improvement; practicable strategies for sustainable urban development, 2d ed.

Scholars and practitioners in the two fields from Europe, the Americas, and Asia update the 23 case studies in the 1999 edition to reflect increasing interest in sustainable urban development. They report on national, regional, city, and neighborhood programs in a manner to be accessible to public officials and planning professionals. They also provide examples of employing indicators and analysis to achieve integration. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Ireland's heritages; critical perspectives on memory and identity.

Bringing together contributions from historians, geographers, and archaeologists, McCarthy (Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Ireland) presents 13 papers examining relationships between heritage, history, memory, commemoration, economy, and cultural identity in Ireland. The papers are organized around the themes of commemoration and the politics and the politics of heritage; spaces of individual and collective memory; and heritage, economy, and constructs of identity. Examples of specific topics include the 1913 Irish Historic Pageant in New York as the performance of heritage; heritage construction, tourism, and place marketing in Ireland, documentary and oral histories of Irish co-operative creameries, construction of Irish "alterity" in Australia, and national identity and the meanings of tourism since the Irish Civil War. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Jacques Derrida; critical thought.

Dismissed by some as opaque, applauded by others as the first innovating force in criticism in generations, adored by still others as the instigator of the "Grad Students' Full Employment Act," Derrida can be said to be anything but boring. Editor Maclachlan (U. of Aberdeen) contributes an introductory essay on deconstruction and critical thought and an examination of the Austin-Searle-Derrida debate. In eight other essays reflecting scholarship from the 1970s on, contributors examine Derrida's theories on such topics as literature, iterability, the signature, time, alterity, Judaism, metaphor and death. Each essay contains references, but a separate bibliography of Derrida's work could prove useful in subsequent editions. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

John Phillips and the business of Victorian science.

Morrell (history of science, U. of Leeds) explores why Oxford University professor of geology and keeper of the University Museum Phillips (1800-74) was so highly regarded during his life, and finds that one aspect is that he rose from an orphan to Oxford professor — a rags-to-riches story near to the heart of Victorians. Consulting all the existing materials and insights, he presents the first full-length biography of Phillips, highlighting his roles in Victorian culture and his highly productive and varied life. A major theme of his life was career making, that is turning science into scientific business, because for most of his life he was struggling to make ends meet. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Joseph Severn; letters and memoirs.

Of the some 500 extant letters by British painter Severn (1793-1879), only about a hundred have been published. Scott (English, Muhlenberg College, Pennsylvania) here presents 178 previously unpublished letters, including many from a recently discovered cache in the possession of Lady Juliet Townsend that seem to have been passed down the female line of Severn's family. They are arranged chronologically from 1820 to 1879, and include some to him as well as by him. The memoirs are selections from the 1857-58 Incidents of My Life, the 1861 On the Adversities of Keats' Fame, and the 1873 My Tedious Life. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Medieval Narbonne; a city at the heart of the troubadour world.

Four of Caille's 14 studies of one of the chief urban centers of medieval Languedoc have been translated into English and updated; the rest are reproduced as originally published in French, with addenda and corrigenda. After a historical overview of Narbonne from Roman foundations to the 15th century, they cover urban development, the politics and rulers, Ergengarde viscountess of Narbonne 1127/29-1196/97, and society and religious life. Among specific topics are Narbonne and Montpellier as examples of urban expansion in the region of Languedoc from the 11th to the 14th centuries; the origin and development of the temporal lordship of the archbishop in the city and territory of Narbonne; and hospitals, charity, and urban life in the Middle Ages as exemplified by Narbonne. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The nature of classical collecting; collectors and collections, 100 BCE-100 CE.

Reforming modern museums requires an understanding of the ancestry of the cultural institution of the museum and collecting, says Bounia. To that end, she examines collecting during the Classical age, specifically during the two centuries bracketing the advent of the Current Era. She takes as examples Marcus Tullius Cicero, Gaius Plinius Secondus, Marcus Valerius Martialis, and Titus Petronius Arbiter. The study began as her 1998 Ph.D. dissertation for the University of Leicester, but for the published version, she has had to drop the appendices of relevant passages and translations from those writers, and embed the most important paragraphs in the text itself. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Omnia disce; medieval studies in memory of Leonard Boyle, O.P..

Boyle, Prefect of the Vatican Library, died in 1999, and scholars from North America, Australia, and Europe commemorate his contributions by focusing on three of his particular interests: Rome and the papacy with special emphasis on the basilica of San Clemente; Latin paleography and the study of manuscripts; and clerical education, pastoral care, the Friars, and St. Thomas Aquinas. Among specific topics are a new look at the mosaics of San Clemente, the notaries' archives of Rome as a source for English history, wanderings of Carolingian manuscripts to and from the Vatican Library, clerical power and the natural world, and the fame of the Dominicans according to the penitentiary archives. The 18 essays are followed by recollections and his scholarly valediction on Aquinas. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

On Paul Ricoeur; the owl of Minerva.

Kearney (Boston College) offers an overview of the thinking of 20th-century French philosopher Ricoeur, emphasizing the particular brand of philosophical hermeneutics he developed. He examines in some detail his phenomenology and hermeneutics, imagination and language, myth and tradition, ideology and utopia, good and evil, and poetics and ethics. Then he surveys more briefly his work in myth as the bearer of possible worlds; the creativity of language; universality and the power of difference; imagination, testimony, and trust; and life stories. A select and unannotated bibliography of his works is included. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The origins of the grand tour; the travels of Robert Montagu, Lord Mandeville (1649-1654), William Hammond (1655-1658), Banaster Maynard (1660-1663).

Fully annotated, old-spelling texts of three separate manuscript accounts of travels within Western Europe are published here for the first time. They describe journeys by three young English travelers, but in very different formats and for very different purposes. Taken together, they offer an perspective into the views and aspirations of certain kinds of young Englishmen who were sent abroad by their families during a tumultuous period of English domestic politics and international relations — from the execution of Charles I through the Commonwealth and Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell, until three years after the Restoration of Charles II. Distributed in the US by Ashgate. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The Passion in art.

Harries, Bishop of Oxford, surveys the Crucifixion of Christ from its earliest depiction in Christian art to the present, exploring how the art in each age reflected the Christian understanding at the time. In order to keep his account focused, he does not deal with any part of the Passion cycle except the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. He describes one image from each century, beginning with the second, except that he considers several from the 20th century. Among the stages of his journey are a sixth-century Gospel book, a Byzantine mosaic, an Ottonian crucifix of the 10th century, a 13th-century illuminated Gospel, and Marc Chagall's The White Crucifixion. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The public art museum in nineteenth century Britain; the development of the National Gallery.

Whitehead (U. Newcastle upon Tyne) offers an account of the architectural and institutional development of the public museum in 19th-century Britain, with a particular emphasis on the National Gallery in London, where many of the issues surrounding the philosophy, design, collecting activities, and management of the public museum were addressed seriously for the first time. His study diverges from others of the 19th-century museum by investigating how architectural settings and art displays produced specific discourses about the works of art on show, and about how those works should be appreciated and understood historically. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Queenship and political power in medieval and early modern Spain.

Like their better studied royal sisters farther north, Spanish queens were expected to produce an heir, to raise and educate their children, to take part in ceremonial functions, to perform charitable work, and to patronize religion and art. However, they were more likely to be active in the governance of the realm and to exercise considerable legitimate authority, more often, more publicly, and more directly than elsewhere in Europe. Mostly American, but some Spanish, historians explore the practical limits of partnership, practicing the politics of religion, and representing the politics of queenship. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Re-thinking aesthetics; rogue essays on aesthetics and the arts.

Finding himself in a post-Kantian ruin where knowledge, morality, and judgment are separated from one another, Berleant (emeritus philosophy, Long Island U., New York) contributes to the process of reconstructing philosophy. His central theme is that aesthetic value is pervasive and always present; and that the Kantian directive to adopt a disinterested attitude in the aesthetic appreciation of art and nature was guided by non-aesthetic considerations, and is unsuccessful in accounting both for the traditional arts and even more so for contemporary ones. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Representing emotions; new connections in the histories of art, music, and medicine.

The product of a 2001 conference at the University of Manchester on the representation of emotions, these essays examine ways in which emotions have been conceived, articulated and treated in Western art, music, philosophy and medicine. Their unifying premise is that emotions do not exist but are brought into being socially and historically, and recognized, encouraged, controlled, particularly in relation to race, class and gender. The essays report on case studies in western Europe and the US from the 17th to the 20th century. Topics include the cultural history of the emotions, the spirit of affect in Giotto and Piero, and the rhythmic conception of music and emotions. (Annotation ©2006 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)