Blackwell Publishing
The anthropology of art; a reader.
Morphy (cross-cultural research, Australian National U.) and Perkins (anthropology and art, SUNY, Potsdam) have compiled an anthology of readings on anthropology and art and demonstrate how the two fields inform each other. Readings cover foundational ideas from anthropologists such as Franz Boas and Claude Lévi-Strauss on primitive art; the terms primitivism, art, and artifact; aesthetics in different cultures; the analysis of form, style, and meaning; the production of art for markets; and contemporary artists in Maori, Australian Aboriginal, and Native American cultures. Essays are from the second half of the twentieth century and discuss the art of the Yoruba, Tikopia, and Kwakiutl cultures, and China, New Guinea, and Africa, among others. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Architecture and design in Europe and America, 1750-2000.
Harrison-Moore (art history and museum studies, U. of Leeds, UK) and Rowe (art history, Roehampton U., UK) present a collection of 63 key historical and contemporary essays on European and American architecture from 1750 to 2000, for undergraduate level architectural history courses. The chapters are organized into three major time periods — 1750-1830, 1830-1910, and 1910-2000 — reflecting changes in the ways in which history has been understood and written down; individual essays are arranged chronologically within each section. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Archaeology in practice; a student guide to archaeological analyses.
Students beginning archeology laboratory courses and those who require a review of procedures and techniques will find this collection of articles provides a practical background. Contributors offer guidance in some surprising ways, such as giving a full essay on finding sites, including field methods and remote sensing, and another in actually consulting stakeholders for the sites. They cover rock art (how it is made, how it is recorded, and how to analyze it) stratigraphy, absolute dating, stone artifact analysis, residues and usewear, ceramics, animal bones, plant remains, mollusks and other shells, sediments, artifacts of the modern world, historical sources and producing the record. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Archaeologies of materiality.
Archaeologists often explore the underpinning philosophies of materiality for specific cultural moments across time and space, and the contributors here — presumably but not admittedly archaeologists themselves — provide an array of object orientations in particular and varied contexts. Their topics include magical sense and apotropaic figurine worlds of neo-Assyria, fetishized toothbrushes or the sensuous experience of modernity in late-19th-century Bogota, and unthinkable materiality in the volcanic context of western Panama. The symposium where the nine papers originated was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico at an undisclosed date. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Archaeology of Oceania; Australia and the Pacific Islands.
The series looks in turn at geographical areas of interest in undergraduate archeology studies. Archaeologists either from the region or who have worked there examine not the findings of archaeology, but the practice of the profession in Oceania, focusing on pre-European contact and prehistoric topics. Among the underlying themes are colonization, interaction, cultural diversification, environmental change, and contemporary politics. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Asian art.
Angkor Wat, calligraphy, and statutes of Buddha are commonly associated with Asian art, but not skyscrapers in Malaysia or the Japanese "anti-Art" movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Brown (an independent scholar of South Asian visual culture) and Hutton (art history, College of New Jersey) introduce this anthology on Asian art and artists comprised of 44 wide-ranging material reprinted from books and journals over the past 40 years. Introductions situate each reading in historical and artistic contexts. The art illustrations are in b&w. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Big screen Rome.
Not just for those who get popcorn butter all over themselves while watching gladiator movies, this is a systematic review of major films that have reconstructed the image of Roman antiquity. Silveira Cyrino (classics, U. of New Mexico) gives the cast and suits, the plot, the ancient history of events presented, a background of the making of the film, themes and interpretations, and questions about core issues for such Hollywood stalwarts as Quo Vadis, The Robe, Ben-Hur, Spartacus, Cleopatra and Gladiator, along with the subversive A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Monty Python's Life of Brian and the Roman empire sequence of History of the World, Part I. The result is a comprehensive nine-step explanation of what really happened, and what else happens when Hollywood makes history. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to contemporary art since 1945.
Jones (history of art, U. of Manchester) has gathered cultural critics and scholars from art history and related fields to comment on the historical and theoretical debates central to contemporary arts. The contributors discuss such topics as culture wars, public space, diaspora, new technologies, formalism, the avant-garde and the society of the spectacle. The volume as a whole allows readers to engage with multiple perspectives on current art movements and to consider future directions in the field. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to European romanticism.
With its wide sweep and comprehensive coverage, this collection of essays analyzes the effects of the Romantic system on both literature and culture. Topics include the impact of both Shakespeare and Napoleon, Scottish perspectives, early Romanticism in Germany and its later shift to self-regulating structures, German Romantic fiction and drama as well as song, fairy tales, early French Romanticism and later drama, works on the brink of realism, the ode, the fragment and the cult of ruins, irony, the sacred and the aesthetic, nature, capitalism, orientalism, the poetess, opera, the theme of night, and the Romantic system of the arts. Surveys describe Romanticism in Italy, Spain and Poland and authors serving as topics include Byron, Foscolo, Hugo, Lamartine, Lermontov, Leopardi, Mickiewicz, Musset, Nerval and Pushkin. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to museum studies.
The guide draws on insights from professionals not only in museum studies, but also in art and art history, urban design, and several other disciplines that contribute to examining the nature of museums and their place in society. Among their topics are cultural theory, practices and narratives of museums and anthropology, making and remaking national identities, the language of museum space, museum education, museum ethics, and postmodern restructuring. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to nineteenth-century Europe, 1789-1914.
Mostly historians, but also a few social scientists, discuss not particular events during the long century from the French Revolution to World War I, but conditions and trends within which particular events happened. The general themes are the idea of Europeanness; agriculture, industry, and social change; political developments; intellectual developments and religion; cultural developments; and the international system, colonialism, and war. Each chapter closes with a guide to further reading. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
A companion to the Roman Empire.
The range of contributors — historians, classicists, scholars of literature and religion, and others — reflects the degree to which the study of the Roman Empire has become interdisciplinary over the past decade. They cover literary and other sources, narrative histories from 44 BCE to 337 CE, administration, social and economic life, intellectual life, and religion. The essays are necessarily overviews, and parenthetical notes within the text refer to sources of more detailed information cited in the common bibliography. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Contemporary debates in aesthetics and the philosophy of art.
In these 22 original essays, contributors debate 11 issues within current debates about aesthetics and the philosophy of art, including how experience and value are interrelated, in what true beauty consists, the nature of aesthetic experience, whether we should value works of art for what we can learn form them, how pictures represent, artistic expression, the ways in which imagination is involved in engaging with art, whether emotional responses to fiction can be true or natural, whether artistic intention is relevant to interpretation, the existence of general principles of evaluation, and the relations between moral and aesthetic values of art. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Edges of empire; orientalism and visual culture.
Art historians from the US and Australia explore the movement of objects, artists, and iconography across the edges of empires, between European, North African, and Ottoman cultures. Their topics include Egypt's Statue of Liberty, oriental femininity as cultural commodity, Turkish modernism and the Generation of 1914, and Andalusia in the time of the Moors. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
England and the Italian Renaissance; the growth of interest in its history and art, 4th ed.
New to the 4th edition of this well-regarded text (first published in 1954) is an introduction and updated bibliography, both by Edward Chaney (fine and decorative arts, Southampton Solent U., the UK). Comprising a comparative cultural history, the text describes the impact of the art and ideas of the Italian Renaissance in England from the mid-16th through the 19th century. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Feminist anthropology; a reader.
Lewin (women's studies and anthropology, U. of Iowa) presents a collection of articles previously published between 1968 and 2001, written by North American scholars and dealing with topics within the realm of social-cultural anthropology. Following Lewin's introductory overview of the topic, the 22 essays are organized into five sections highlighting several themes from the past and present. Coverage includes the early efforts during the 1970s and 80s to understand the importance of women and gender in culture and society; questions about ethnographic stance, method, and ethics that have been prominent in feminist anthropology; a focus on the West, particularly the U.S.; the continuing commitment to movements for social change that can improve women's lives; and recent rethinking in the field about transnational and global concerns, and gender in relation to nation, race, and class. For students and scholars. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
From Shane to Kill Bill; rethinking the Western.
McGee (English, Louisiana State U.) traces the development of the Western from 1939 to the present and demonstrates that, in addition to defining the frontier myth and the limits of masculinity, the genre is a successful vehicle for articulating class resentments and the social contradictions in American culture. He uses examples such as Shane, The Searchers, Unforgiven and Kill Bill to discuss the political value of the Western as an expression of social desires typically unspoken in American public discourse. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Historical archaeology.
Employing a broad and inclusive definition of historical archaeology for this survey of the field's theoretical debates and case literature, Hall (U. of Cape Town, South Africa) and Silliman (U. of Massachusetts, US) have chosen to shape the organizing framework of their collection around perspectives on the processes that have formed and shaped modernity. Opening chapters address "dimensions of practice," looking at such disciplinary questions as the environmental aspects of historical archaeology, the links between material culture and texts, and spatial aspects of social life. The next group of papers discusses interpretive perspectives and touch upon issues of gender, ideology, class, and the institution. Finally, surveys of the historical archaeology of Latin America, Africa, North America, the Pacific Islands, and Europe are presented. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Ideas of landscape.
Focusing on the English landscape tradition, Johnson (archeology, U. of Southampton) provides a perspective on landscape archaeology that is more a good pair of boots in the field-oriented than theory-heavy — a dig at American and anthropological approaches. In surveying the origins of landscape studies, he traces the ideological roots of the UK tradition to English Romanticism as interpreted by W.G. Hoskins, the late "father of landscape history" who hosted the television series English Landscapes. He also discusses current political views on landscapes as linked to a rise in interest in heritage. Illustrations include maps showing traces of earlier field systems, and prehistoric settlement remains. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
An introduction to Kant's aesthetics; core concepts and problems.
Wenzel (philosophy, National Chi Nan U.) closely examines Kant's Critique of the Power of Enlightenment, considered one of the most important modern works on aesthetics but also one of the most difficult. Wenzel keeps the needs of undergraduate students in mind as he goes step by step through Kant's thought, making sure each has sufficient context within Kant's works. At the same time he builds on the ideas of subjectivity and objectivity, Kant's four moments of aesthetic judgment and the essence of taste, covering disinterest within subjectivity and objectivity, universality, "purposiveness" without will, necessity and the deduction, the sublime in terms of the analytic, the dialectic and the super-sensible, and the twin challenges of Kant's approach to the ugly and the presence of beauty and genius in mathematics. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
