Author: Surekha Davies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316546128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Giants, cannibals and other monsters were a regular feature of Renaissance illustrated maps, inhabiting the Americas alongside other indigenous peoples. In a new approach to views of distant peoples, Surekha Davies analyzes this archive alongside prints, costume books and geographical writing. Using sources from Iberia, France, the German lands, the Low Countries, Italy and England, Davies argues that mapmakers and viewers saw these maps as careful syntheses that enabled viewers to compare different peoples. In an age when scholars, missionaries, native peoples and colonial officials debated whether New World inhabitants could – or should – be converted or enslaved, maps were uniquely suited for assessing the impact of environment on bodies and temperaments. Through innovative interdisciplinary methods connecting the European Renaissance to the Atlantic world, Davies uses new sources and questions to explore science as a visual pursuit, revealing how debates about the relationship between humans and monstrous peoples challenged colonial expansion.
Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human
Author: Surekha Davies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316546128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Giants, cannibals and other monsters were a regular feature of Renaissance illustrated maps, inhabiting the Americas alongside other indigenous peoples. In a new approach to views of distant peoples, Surekha Davies analyzes this archive alongside prints, costume books and geographical writing. Using sources from Iberia, France, the German lands, the Low Countries, Italy and England, Davies argues that mapmakers and viewers saw these maps as careful syntheses that enabled viewers to compare different peoples. In an age when scholars, missionaries, native peoples and colonial officials debated whether New World inhabitants could – or should – be converted or enslaved, maps were uniquely suited for assessing the impact of environment on bodies and temperaments. Through innovative interdisciplinary methods connecting the European Renaissance to the Atlantic world, Davies uses new sources and questions to explore science as a visual pursuit, revealing how debates about the relationship between humans and monstrous peoples challenged colonial expansion.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316546128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
Giants, cannibals and other monsters were a regular feature of Renaissance illustrated maps, inhabiting the Americas alongside other indigenous peoples. In a new approach to views of distant peoples, Surekha Davies analyzes this archive alongside prints, costume books and geographical writing. Using sources from Iberia, France, the German lands, the Low Countries, Italy and England, Davies argues that mapmakers and viewers saw these maps as careful syntheses that enabled viewers to compare different peoples. In an age when scholars, missionaries, native peoples and colonial officials debated whether New World inhabitants could – or should – be converted or enslaved, maps were uniquely suited for assessing the impact of environment on bodies and temperaments. Through innovative interdisciplinary methods connecting the European Renaissance to the Atlantic world, Davies uses new sources and questions to explore science as a visual pursuit, revealing how debates about the relationship between humans and monstrous peoples challenged colonial expansion.
Renaissance Ethnography and the Invention of the Human
Author: Surekha Davies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107036674
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381
Book Description
Davies examines how Renaissance illustrated maps shaped ideas about peoples of the Americas, revealing relationships between civility, savagery and monstrosity.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107036674
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381
Book Description
Davies examines how Renaissance illustrated maps shaped ideas about peoples of the Americas, revealing relationships between civility, savagery and monstrosity.
Travellers and Cosmographers
Author: Joan-Pau Rubiés
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000939251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473
Book Description
Joan-Pau Rubiés brings together here eleven studies published between 1991 and 2005 that illuminate the impact of travel writing on the transformation of early modern European culture. The new worlds that European navigation opened up at the turn of the 16th century elicited a great deal of curiosity and were the subject of a vast range of writings, much of them with an empirical basis, albeit often subtly fictionalized. In the context of intense literary and intellectual activity that characterized the Renaissance, the encounters generated by European colonial activities in fact produced a remarkable variety of images of human diversity. Some of these images were conditioned by the actual dynamics of cross-cultural encounters overseas, but many others were elaborated in Europe by cosmographers, historians and philosophers pursuing their own moral and political agendas. As the studies included here show, the combined effect was in the long term dramatic: interacting with the impact of humanism and of insurmountable religious divisions, travel writing decisively contributed to the transformation of European culture towards the concerns of the Enlightenment. The essays illuminate this process through a combination of general discussions and the contextual analysis of particular texts and debates, ranging form the earliest ethnographies produced by merchants travelling to Asia with Vasco da Gama, to the writings of Jesuit missionaries researching idolatry in India and China, or thinkers like Hugo Grotius seeking to explain the origin of the American Indians.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000939251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 473
Book Description
Joan-Pau Rubiés brings together here eleven studies published between 1991 and 2005 that illuminate the impact of travel writing on the transformation of early modern European culture. The new worlds that European navigation opened up at the turn of the 16th century elicited a great deal of curiosity and were the subject of a vast range of writings, much of them with an empirical basis, albeit often subtly fictionalized. In the context of intense literary and intellectual activity that characterized the Renaissance, the encounters generated by European colonial activities in fact produced a remarkable variety of images of human diversity. Some of these images were conditioned by the actual dynamics of cross-cultural encounters overseas, but many others were elaborated in Europe by cosmographers, historians and philosophers pursuing their own moral and political agendas. As the studies included here show, the combined effect was in the long term dramatic: interacting with the impact of humanism and of insurmountable religious divisions, travel writing decisively contributed to the transformation of European culture towards the concerns of the Enlightenment. The essays illuminate this process through a combination of general discussions and the contextual analysis of particular texts and debates, ranging form the earliest ethnographies produced by merchants travelling to Asia with Vasco da Gama, to the writings of Jesuit missionaries researching idolatry in India and China, or thinkers like Hugo Grotius seeking to explain the origin of the American Indians.
Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola
Author: Cécile Fromont
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271094095
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 823
Book Description
Early modern central Africa comes to life in an extraordinary atlas of vivid watercolors and drawings that Italian Capuchin Franciscans, veterans of Kongo and Angola missions, composed between 1650 and 1750 for the training of future missionaries. These “practical guides” present the intricacies of the natural, social, and religious environment of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century west-central Africa and outline the primarily visual catechization methods the friars devised for the region. Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola brings this overlooked visual corpus to public and scholarly attention. This beautifully illustrated book includes full-color reproductions of all the images in the atlas, in conjunction with rarely seen related material gathered from collections and archives around the world. Taking a bold new approach to the study of early modern global interactions, art historian Cécile Fromont demonstrates how visual creations such as the Capuchin vignettes, though European in form and crafstmanship, emerged not from a single perspective but rather from cross-cultural interaction. Fromont models a fresh way to think about images created across cultures, highlighting the formative role that cultural encounter itself played in their conception, execution, and modes of operation. Centering Africa and Africans, and with ramifications on four continents, Fromont’s decolonial history profoundly transforms our understanding of the early modern world. It will be of substantial interest to specialists in early modern studies, art history, and religion.
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271094095
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 823
Book Description
Early modern central Africa comes to life in an extraordinary atlas of vivid watercolors and drawings that Italian Capuchin Franciscans, veterans of Kongo and Angola missions, composed between 1650 and 1750 for the training of future missionaries. These “practical guides” present the intricacies of the natural, social, and religious environment of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century west-central Africa and outline the primarily visual catechization methods the friars devised for the region. Images on a Mission in Early Modern Kongo and Angola brings this overlooked visual corpus to public and scholarly attention. This beautifully illustrated book includes full-color reproductions of all the images in the atlas, in conjunction with rarely seen related material gathered from collections and archives around the world. Taking a bold new approach to the study of early modern global interactions, art historian Cécile Fromont demonstrates how visual creations such as the Capuchin vignettes, though European in form and crafstmanship, emerged not from a single perspective but rather from cross-cultural interaction. Fromont models a fresh way to think about images created across cultures, highlighting the formative role that cultural encounter itself played in their conception, execution, and modes of operation. Centering Africa and Africans, and with ramifications on four continents, Fromont’s decolonial history profoundly transforms our understanding of the early modern world. It will be of substantial interest to specialists in early modern studies, art history, and religion.
Merpeople
Author: Vaughn Scribner
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789143136
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
People have been fascinated by merpeople and merfolk since ancient times. From the sirens of Homer’s Odyssey to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and the film Splash, myths, stories, and legends of half-human, half-fish creatures abound. In modern times “mermaiding” has gained popularity among cosplayers throughout the world. In Merpeople: A Human History, Vaughn Scribner traces the long history of mermaids and mermen, taking in a wide variety of sources and using 117 striking images. From film to philosophy, church halls to coffee houses, ancient myth to modern science, Scribner shows that mermaids and tritons are—and always have been—everywhere.
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789143136
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
People have been fascinated by merpeople and merfolk since ancient times. From the sirens of Homer’s Odyssey to Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid and the film Splash, myths, stories, and legends of half-human, half-fish creatures abound. In modern times “mermaiding” has gained popularity among cosplayers throughout the world. In Merpeople: A Human History, Vaughn Scribner traces the long history of mermaids and mermen, taking in a wide variety of sources and using 117 striking images. From film to philosophy, church halls to coffee houses, ancient myth to modern science, Scribner shows that mermaids and tritons are—and always have been—everywhere.
History and Presence
Author: Robert A. Orsi
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674984595
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 378
Book Description
Honorable Mention, PROSE Award A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year A Junto Favorite Book of the Year Beginning with metaphysical debates in the sixteenth century over the nature of Christ’s presence in the host, the distinguished historian and scholar of religion Robert Orsi imagines an alternative to the future of religion that early moderns proclaimed was inevitable. “This book is classic Orsi: careful, layered, humane, and subtle... If reformed theology has led to the gods’ ostensible absence in modern religion, History and Presence is a sort of counter-reformation literature that revels in the excesses of divine materiality: the contradictions, the redundancies, the scrambling of borders between the sacred and profane, the dead and the living, the past and the present, the original and the imitator...History and Presence is a thought-provoking, expertly arranged tour of precisely those abundant, excessive phenomena which scholars have historically found so difficult to think.” —Sonja Anderson, Reading Religion “With reference to Marian apparitions, the cult of the saints and other divine–human encounters, Orsi constructs a theory of presence for the study of contemporary religion and history. Many interviews with individuals devoted to particular saints and relics are included in this fascinating study of how people process what they believe.” —Catholic Herald
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674984595
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 378
Book Description
Honorable Mention, PROSE Award A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year A Junto Favorite Book of the Year Beginning with metaphysical debates in the sixteenth century over the nature of Christ’s presence in the host, the distinguished historian and scholar of religion Robert Orsi imagines an alternative to the future of religion that early moderns proclaimed was inevitable. “This book is classic Orsi: careful, layered, humane, and subtle... If reformed theology has led to the gods’ ostensible absence in modern religion, History and Presence is a sort of counter-reformation literature that revels in the excesses of divine materiality: the contradictions, the redundancies, the scrambling of borders between the sacred and profane, the dead and the living, the past and the present, the original and the imitator...History and Presence is a thought-provoking, expertly arranged tour of precisely those abundant, excessive phenomena which scholars have historically found so difficult to think.” —Sonja Anderson, Reading Religion “With reference to Marian apparitions, the cult of the saints and other divine–human encounters, Orsi constructs a theory of presence for the study of contemporary religion and history. Many interviews with individuals devoted to particular saints and relics are included in this fascinating study of how people process what they believe.” —Catholic Herald
Before Boas
Author: Han F. Vermeulen
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803277385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 638
Book Description
The history of anthropology has been written from multiple viewpoints, often from perspectives of gender, nationality, theory, or politics. Before Boas delves deeper into issues concerning anthropology's academic origins to present a groundbreaking study that reveals how ethnography and ethnology originated during the eighteenth rather than the nineteenth century, developing parallel to anthropology, or the "natural history of man." Han F. Vermeulen explores primary and secondary sources from Russia, Germany, Austria, the United States, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, and Great Britain in tracing how "ethnography" originated as field research by German-speaking historians and naturalists in Siberia (Russia) during the 1730s and 1740s, was generalized as "ethnology" by scholars in Göttingen (Germany) and Vienna (Austria) during the 1770s and 1780s, and was subsequently adopted by researchers in other countries. Before Boas argues that anthropology and ethnology were separate sciences during the Age of Reason, studying racial and ethnic diversity, respectively. Ethnography and ethnology focused not on "other" cultures but on all peoples of all eras. Following G. W. Leibniz, researchers in these fields categorized peoples primarily according to their languages. Franz Boas professionalized the holistic study of anthropology from the 1880s into the twentieth century.
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803277385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 638
Book Description
The history of anthropology has been written from multiple viewpoints, often from perspectives of gender, nationality, theory, or politics. Before Boas delves deeper into issues concerning anthropology's academic origins to present a groundbreaking study that reveals how ethnography and ethnology originated during the eighteenth rather than the nineteenth century, developing parallel to anthropology, or the "natural history of man." Han F. Vermeulen explores primary and secondary sources from Russia, Germany, Austria, the United States, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, and Great Britain in tracing how "ethnography" originated as field research by German-speaking historians and naturalists in Siberia (Russia) during the 1730s and 1740s, was generalized as "ethnology" by scholars in Göttingen (Germany) and Vienna (Austria) during the 1770s and 1780s, and was subsequently adopted by researchers in other countries. Before Boas argues that anthropology and ethnology were separate sciences during the Age of Reason, studying racial and ethnic diversity, respectively. Ethnography and ethnology focused not on "other" cultures but on all peoples of all eras. Following G. W. Leibniz, researchers in these fields categorized peoples primarily according to their languages. Franz Boas professionalized the holistic study of anthropology from the 1880s into the twentieth century.
The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages
Author: Geraldine Heng
Publisher:
ISBN: 1108422780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 509
Book Description
This book challenges the common belief that race and racisms are phenomena that began only in the modern era.
Publisher:
ISBN: 1108422780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 509
Book Description
This book challenges the common belief that race and racisms are phenomena that began only in the modern era.
Optical Media
Author: Friedrich Kittler
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745640915
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
Friedrich Kittler’s lecture series provides a concise history of optical media from Renaissance linear perspective to late twentieth-century computer graphics. He begins by looking at European painting since the Renaissance in order to discern the principles according to which modern optical perception was organised. Kittler also discusses the development of various mechanical devices, like the camera obscura and the laterna magica, which were closely connected to the printing press and which played a pivotal role in the media war between the Reformation and the Counterreformation. After examining this history, Kittler then addresses the ways in which images were first stored and made to move through the development of photography and film. Kittler discusses the competitive relationship between photography and painting as well as between film and theater, as innovations like the Baroque proscenium or “picture-frame” stage evolved from elements that would later constitute cinema. The central question, however, is the impact of film on the ancient monopoly of writing, as it not only provoked new forms of competition for novelists but also fundamentally altered the status of books. In the final section, Kittler examines the development of electrical telecommunications and electronic image processing from television to computer simulations. In short, these lectures provide a comprehensive introduction to the history of image production, which is indispensable for anyone wishing to understand the prevailing audiovisual conditions of contemporary culture.
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745640915
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
Friedrich Kittler’s lecture series provides a concise history of optical media from Renaissance linear perspective to late twentieth-century computer graphics. He begins by looking at European painting since the Renaissance in order to discern the principles according to which modern optical perception was organised. Kittler also discusses the development of various mechanical devices, like the camera obscura and the laterna magica, which were closely connected to the printing press and which played a pivotal role in the media war between the Reformation and the Counterreformation. After examining this history, Kittler then addresses the ways in which images were first stored and made to move through the development of photography and film. Kittler discusses the competitive relationship between photography and painting as well as between film and theater, as innovations like the Baroque proscenium or “picture-frame” stage evolved from elements that would later constitute cinema. The central question, however, is the impact of film on the ancient monopoly of writing, as it not only provoked new forms of competition for novelists but also fundamentally altered the status of books. In the final section, Kittler examines the development of electrical telecommunications and electronic image processing from television to computer simulations. In short, these lectures provide a comprehensive introduction to the history of image production, which is indispensable for anyone wishing to understand the prevailing audiovisual conditions of contemporary culture.
Destination Culture
Author: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520209664
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
With the question, "What does it mean to show?", the author explores the agency of display in museums and tourist attractions. She looks at how objects are made to perform their meaning by being collected and how techniques of display, not just the things shown, convey a powerful message.
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520209664
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Book Description
With the question, "What does it mean to show?", the author explores the agency of display in museums and tourist attractions. She looks at how objects are made to perform their meaning by being collected and how techniques of display, not just the things shown, convey a powerful message.