Ashgate Publishing Co.
Adaptations of Calvinism in Reformation Europe; essays in honour of Brian G. Armstrong.
The theology that John Calvin promulgated in Geneva has conventionally been considered the core of the Reform tradition, against which all other aspects were measured, of course to their detriment. Here historians and scholars of religion place his ideas within a longer process that began in Zurich, Strasburg, and elsewhere in the 1520s and 1530s; and continued to evolve beyond Geneva during the 1540s and 1550s. Six of the 13 essays consider the Reformation in France and in England and Scotland. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Agency, visuality and society at the Chartreuse de Champmol.
An American scholar of visual art in late medieval and early modern Europe, Lindquist explains how the art and architecture of a particular Carthusian monastery charterhouse in Dijon, France served to define and enforce the social categories of male and female, lay and religious, and public and private. One of her themes is how conflicts surrounding such categories during the late Middle Ages still arise in monasteries today. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Altarpieces and their viewers in the churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni.
Jones (art history, University of Massachusetts, Boston) has selected five Roman altarpieces painted from 1595-1625 and studied them exhaustively in a brilliant example of interdisciplinary scholarship. Rather than focus on the paintings as art, she looks at them as a form of communication to the viewer. Using contemporary commentaries, broadsheets, sermons, liturgy, popular drama, legal documents — anything that reflects a culture, she has pieced together an image of how these altarpieces were received by the Catholics of Rome of the counter-Reformation. She takes into account the purpose of the churches and the congregation. Parallel photos of the altarpieces, first as close ups and then in the context of the church, stress the difference between seeing art in a vacuum and as a part of daily life. The book has several color plates as well as black and white. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Americans in British literature, 1770-1832; a breed apart.
Flynn (English literature, St. Edward's U., Texas) examines how British writers expressed some confusion and ambivalence over where exactly English settlers in North America fit on the savage-civilized continuum that explained the world during the period of European colonization. Perhaps most confusing was that the Americans seemed to be rejecting the very empire that they themselves personified and did much to create and further. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Amos and the cosmic imagination.
Linville (religious studies, U. of Lethbridge, Canada) integrates the new historical sensibility with a literary approach to present a more creative reading of the biblical book of Amos than either approach alone has managed. His account is wholly within the secular field of religious studies, he says, in which even the prophet's defense of the poor and weak can be subjected to critical analysis. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Art and identity in early modern Rome.
Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a Mecca for artists such as Michelangelo and Raphael. Burke and Bury, both in art history at the University of Edinburgh, are interested in who paid for all this art. The essays in this volume focus on patrons, who they were and why they felt the need to commission works. Not surprisingly, the popes and cardinals were major patrons, some for the glory of god and others for the honor of their families. The authors also note the effect of the Counter-Reformation on art in Rome. There is a comprehensive bibliography and a list of the popes during this time giving their family connections. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Black lives in the English archives, 1500-1677; imprints of the invisible.
Habib (history, Old Dominion U.) presents a systematic, chronological descriptive index, organized into a table format, of the lives of black people in England from 1500-1677, based on archive research examining the scattered, fragmented, and historically disregarded records located in English national document repositories and local archival centers. A multi-chapter historical and theoretical interpretative narrative of the records serves as an introductory guide to the index and contributes to current theory on race in early modern England, with discussion of the records of black people in early 16th-century Britain; in Elizabethan London; in 17th-century London; and elsewhere in England, including black people in the English provinces, and East Indians and other people of color in London and the countryside. The book's afterword analyzes the frequency ratios, demographic patterns, and locational impact of the records as a whole. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Cambridge theology in the nineteenth century; enquiry, controversy, and truth.
Thompson (modern church history, U. of Cambridge) explores whether a distinct Cambridge tradition — distinct from and perhaps even equal to the well known Oxford tradition — can be identified in theology for the long 19th century, from the French Revolution to the First World War. His perspectives include Herbert March and the beginnings of biblical criticism, the Coleridgean inheritance, and some nonconformist voices. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Capabilities and social justice; the political philosophy of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.
Alexander (economics and ethics, U. of Leuven, Belgium) develops a systematic philosophical study of the capability approach to quality of life issues as advocated by contemporary thinkers Sen and Nussbaum, focusing particularly on those claims and characteristics used to justify it as an approach to social justice. He also shows how the capability approach offers resources for criticizing the liberal concept of justice, thus challenging the tendency he sees to drawing the capability approach exclusively within a liberal paradigm. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Christian citizens in an Islamic state; the Pakistan experience.
The Christians in what became the Islamic state of Pakistan were not the same affluent elite as in other parts of India, explains Gabriel (religious studies, U. of Gloucestershire), but had converted from the lower castes during the British colonial period to escape discrimination by the dominant Hindus. He discusses the history of the community and its current status in the shadow of Islamic resurgence and the US government's Global War on Terror. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The companion to The mechanical muse; the piano, pianism and piano music, c.1760-1850.
This volume by Carew (music, Cardiff U., UK), which supplements The Mechanical Muse: The Piano, Pianism and Piano Music, c. 1760-1850, is an encyclopedia consisting of biographical entries on people mentioned in the book, including composers, performers, theorists, teachers, piano makers, and publishers. Presented alphabetically, entries also contain lists of principal works; others are on the works themselves, or musical forms, characteristics, and terms related to the piano. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Deception and detection in eighteenth-century Britain.
The voluminous literature on hoaxes has not spared the 18th century, says Lynch (English, Rutgers U., New Jersey), but his account differs from the many others by focusing not on the fakers but on the critics who argued over their hoaxes, forgeries, and counterfeits. More broadly, he explores the controversies that were spawned, and the cultural resources that were mobilized to sift through evidence and weigh competing claims in order to discover the truth. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Dickens, family, authorship; psychoanalytic perspectives on kinship and creativity.
Cain applies psychoanalytic theory to four early novels by British writer Charles Dickens (1812-70), from Martin Chuzzlewit in January 1843 to Bleak House in September 1853, a period during which, she says, he established both a mature writing style and his reputation. The novels, she says, work sequentially through the four primary relationships between parent and child, the first and fourth being parricidal and the central pair being desiring. The study is revised from her Ph.D. dissertation at Newcastle University at an undisclosed date. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Ecumenism today; the universal church in the 21st century.
Scholars mostly of theology and mostly from Scotland, but also of ethics, church history, and other fields; and from Rome, the US, and other pastures, take up a particular, and perhaps harsher than usual, type of ecumenical theology or theological ecumenism. They attribute the current chilling of the once vibrant ecumenical movement not to foot-dragging by church leaders or the lack of theological imagination — the most popular causes cited. Rather they criticize the religious traditions themselves, but at the same time argue that confessional identity is the key rather than an impediment. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Europe's global role; external policies of the European Union.
Eleven papers presented by Orbie (Ghent U., Belgium) explore the Europe Union's external policies in those areas where it is a potentially or prima facie powerful actor. Focusing on both instruments of power and the goals of policy, the papers address European Union policy in the realms of trade, development, humanitarian aid, environment, energy, competition, social issues, and asylum and migration, as well as its enlargement and neighborhood policies. The text as a whole uses the concept of the European Union as a "civilian power" in world politics as a leitmotiv. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Federal antitrust and EC competition law analysis.
Alese (a lawyer who practices in the UK and the US) presents a comparative treatment of European competition and US antitrust law and policy. He begins with an overview of the enforcement structures of the two systems, followed by a discussion of anti-competitive agreements, which includes treatment of the historical development of US law and Article 81 of the European Community Treaty, the substantive law of such agreements and issues of proof, horizontal restraints, boycotts, information exchanges, and vertical price restraints. He then addresses market power offenses in chapters addressing the problem of market definition, comparison of the offense of abuse of dominance under European law and monopolization in US law, tying and "leverage" offenses," and refusal to supply. Remaining chapters discuss exclusive dealing, predatory pricing, price discrimination, horizontal and vertical mergers, and jurisdictional issues and other limitations on coverage. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
The founding fathers, pop culture, and constitutional law; who's your daddy?
From the staid and stately halls of academe, Burgess (political science and women's studies, Ohio U.) has lured the field of constitutional studies out into the morass of contemporary cultural studies, and from that perspective investigates the role that The Founding Fathers play in legitimizing contemporary judicial review. She explores the representation of law and legitimacy in such sites of popular culture as soap operas, romance novels, science fiction, reality television, and coming out narratives. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
From Pac-Man to pop music; interactive audio in games and new media.
Collins (U. of Waterloo, Canada) has edited this series of articles on the relationship between digital interactive video and other artistic ventures such as music, video games, art installations, theatrical events and even theme parks. Contributors include musical composers, sound recording engineers and software programmers who discuss interactive video in the context of history, culture and sociology. These essays are targeted for students of film, music theory and even video game programming. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
From wives to widows in early modern Paris; gender, economy and law.
Lanza (history, Wayne State U.) finds from her extensive use of archival information and close analysis that artisan women did not comprise a united front in how they felt about widowhood and the changes it imposed upon them; their responses ranged widely depending upon family, economics, the law, age, and maternal state along with the conditions of their particular locale. She examines the era from the late sixteenth century to the French Revolution, tracking the evolution of the laws affecting widows and how the two related to each other. She pays particular attention to the role of women in guilds, the possibilities and dangers of remarriage, and the means by which widows became outcasts and paupers. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Geography and genealogy; locating personal pasts.
Contributors identified only by name explore genealogy and family history as cultural practices, primarily leisure activity. Six of the 10 essays consider the tools, sources, and implications of geography, such as geographical information sources and historical geography, and a genealogy of environmental impact assessment. The others discuss such topics as tourism and the search for a personal past, and the doctrine and practice of family history in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
