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In the Early Modern period - as both reformed and Catholic churches strove to articulate orthodox belief and conduct through texts, sermons, rituals, and images - communities grappled frequently with the connection between sacred space and behavior. The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World explores individual and community involvement in the approbation, reconfiguration and regulation of sacred spaces and the behavior (both animal and human) within them. The individual’s understanding of sacred space, and consequently the behavior appropriate within it, depended on local need, group dynamics, and the dissemination of normative expectations. While these expectations...
The Mediality of Sugar probes the potential of reading sugar as a mediator across some of the disciplinary distinctions in early twenty-first century research in the arts, literature, architecture, and popular culture. Selected artistic practices and material cultures of sugar across Europe and the Americas from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century are investigated and connected to the transcontinental and transoceanic history of the sugar plants cane and beet, their botanical and cultural dissemination, and global sugar capital and trade under colonialism and in decoloniality. The collection contributes to the vision of a Transnational and Postdisciplinary Sugar Studies.
The aim of this book is to investigate the delicate relationship between female sanctity and madness, in a time-frame extending from medieval until contemporary times. Constellated by visions, ecstatic raptures, morbid rituals, stigmata and obsessions, the complex phenomenology of female mysticism appears in fact to be articulated and polymorphous, traversed by 'representations' that it seems possible to link to the wide spectrum of mental disorders, as well to the hagiographic stereotypes and anthropological implications. Male and female scholars from different disciplines (from history to philology, from anthropology to art history, from theology to literary criticism, from psychiatry to psychoanalysis) try to outline a thematic and problematic itinerary, intended to examine, step by step, potential pathological aspects and contexts of reference for the purpose of attempting to reconstruct the complex evolutionary trajectory of female mystical language.
This volume critically discusses the role empathy plays in different processes of understanding. More precisely, it clarifies empathy’s role in interpersonal understanding and appreciating works of literature and art. The volume also includes a section on historical theories of empathy’s role in understanding. When it comes to understanding other persons, empathy is typically seen as a process that enables the empathizer to recognize a target person’s mental states, a process which is in turn seen as “understanding” this person. This volume, however, explores empathy’s role in understanding beyond mere mental state recognition. With contributions on processes of interpersonal und...
"Bildkonflikte machen Geschichte sichtbar. Zerrissen zwischen Beschleunigung und Verspätung, zeigt Geschichte sich in ihnen als ein dynamischer Prozess der Aktualisierung, der zur Aufrechterhaltung unterschiedlicher Erfüllungsmythologien Opfer fordert. Zu einem stummen Akteur auf der historischen Bühne avanciert dabei das Idol, das aus seiner Abwesenheit über gesamte Bildkulturen einen Schatten wirft und in jeder Neuzeit wieder als Gespenst umgeht. Die an der Schnittstelle zwischen Bildgeschichte und Geschichtsphilosophie angesiedelte Studie untersucht im Sinne einer kritisch-analytischen Beschreibung den bildlichen Topos der Zerstörung von antiken und außereuropäischen (Vor-)Bildern ...
A brief intellectual history of the idea of the art public. The Art Public explores the history of efforts to imagine a collective, general audience for art in the world. Oskar Bätschmann explores both written and pictorial evidence of the development of the “art public” as an idea and disentangles connections between art production, audiences, and actual reception. Two aspects shape the narrative: the transformation of the audience from passive recipient to active agent as well as satirical jabs at audiences by the likes of Cruikshank, Rowlandson, and Daumier. This sweeping account connects the ancient Greeks with Renaissance painters, modern writers, and contemporary movie stars in a deft survey of the ways we imagine art’s immediate impact on audiences and its afterlives in museums, galleries, and the world.
Characters are central to the creation and experience of films and other media. Their cultural significance is profound, but they also raise a wide range of questions. This book provides a comprehensive theory that guides the analysis and interpretation of characters across four dimensions: as represented beings with physical, psychological, and social characteristics; as artefacts with aesthetic structures; as meaningful symbols; and as symptoms of socio-cultural origins and effects. Integrating insights from film, media, and literary studies as well as philosophy, psychology and sociology, the book offers a broad range of approaches for understanding characters and the emotional responses they evoke. Richly illustrated and offering practical tools, along with case studies of numerous characters from different genres of films, this book will be invaluable to scholars and students of film and media studies and related disciplines, as well as artistic practitioners.