Title: City steeple, city streets: saints' tales from Granada and a changing Spain 
Author: Slater, Candace
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Anthropology | Folklore and Mythology | Literary Theory and Criticism | European Literature
Publisher's Description: Candace Slater's new book focuses on narratives concerning Fray Leopoldo de Alpandeire (1864-1956), a Capuchin friar from Granada and probably the most popular nonconsecrated saint today in all of Spain. In tracing the emergence of a group of contemporary legends about Fray Leopoldo, Slater discusses both the stories she tape-recorded in the streets of Granada and the friar's official biography. She underscores the essential pluralism of the tales, their undercurrent of resistance to institutional authority, and their deep concern for the relationship between past and present. Bearing witness to the subtlety and resilience of even the most apparently conservative folk-literary forms, these stories are not only about the role of saints and miracles in an increasingly secular and industrial society but, first and foremost, also about the legacy of the Franco years.   [brief]
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Title: Inquisition and society in the kingdom of Valencia, 1478-1834 
Author: Haliczer, Stephen 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: History | European History | Medieval History | Renaissance History
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Title: Rural change and royal finances in Spain at the end of the old regime 
Author: Herr, Richard
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: History | European History
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Title: Making Muslim space in North America and Europe 
Author: Metcalf, Barbara Daly 1941-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Anthropology | History | Islam | Middle Eastern Studies | Postcolonial Studies
Publisher's Description: Focusing on the private and public use of space, this volume explores the religious life of the new Muslim communities in North America and Europe. Unlike most studies of immigrant groups, these essays concentrate on cultural practices and expressions of everyday life rather than on the political issues that dominate today's headlines. The authors emphasize the cultural strength and creativity of communities that draw upon Islamic symbols and practices to define "Muslim space" against the background of a non-Muslim environment.The range of perspectives is broad, encompassing middle-class professionals, mosque congregations, factory workers in France and the north of England, itinerant African traders, and prison inmates in New York. The truism that "Islam is a religion of the word" takes on concrete meaning as these disparate communities find ways to elaborate word-centered ritual and to have the visual and aural presence of sacred words in the spaces they inhabit.The volume includes 46 black-and-white photographs that illustrate Muslim populations in Edmonton, Philadelphia, the Green Haven Correction Facility, Manhattan, Marseilles, Berlin, and London, among other places. The focus on space directs attention to the new kinds of boundaries and consciousness that exist not only for these Muslim populations, but for people from all backgrounds in today's ever more integrated world.   [brief]
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Title: Muslim rulers and rebels: everyday politics and armed separatism in the southern Philippines 
Author: McKenna, Thomas M 1952-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Anthropology | Politics | Islam | Southeast Asia | Asian History
Publisher's Description: In this first ground-level account of the Muslim separatist rebellion in the Philippines, Thomas McKenna challenges prevailing anthropological analyses of nationalism as well as their underlying assumptions about the interplay of culture and power. He examines Muslim separatism against a background of more than four hundred years of political relations among indigenous Muslim rulers, their subjects, and external powers seeking the subjugation of Philippine Muslims. He also explores the motivations of the ordinary men and women who fight in armed separatist struggles and investigates the formation of nationalist identities. A skillful meld of historical detail and ethnographic research, Muslim Rulers and Rebels makes a compelling contribution to the study of protest, rebellion, and revolution worldwide.   [brief]
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Title: Crusading peace: Christendom, the Muslim world, and Western political order
Author: Mastnak, Tomaž
Published: University of California Press,  2002
Subjects: History | Medieval History | Middle Eastern History | Christianity | Medieval Studies | Middle Eastern Studies | Social Science | Political Theory
Publisher's Description: Tomaz Mastnak's provocative analysis of the roots of peacemaking in the Western world elucidates struggles for peace that took place in the high and late Middle Ages. Mastnak traces the ways that eleventh-century peace movements, seeking to end violence among Christians, shaped not only power structures within Christendom but also the relationship of the Western Christian world to the world outside. The unification of Christian society under the banner of "holy peace" precipitated a fundamental division between the Christian and non-Christian worlds, and the postulated peace among Christians led to holy war against non-Christians.   [brief]
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Title: Lucrecia's dreams: politics and prophecy in sixteenth-century Spain
Author: Kagan, Richard L 1943-
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: History | Renaissance History | Women's Studies | Gender Studies
Publisher's Description: Branded by the Spanish Inquisition as an "evil dreamer," a "notorious mother of prophets," the teenager Lucrecia de León had hundreds of bleak but richly imaginative dreams of Spain's future that became the stuff of political controversy and scandal. Based upon surviving transcripts of her dreams and on the voluminous records of her trial before the Inquisition, Lucrecia's Dreams traces the complex personal and political ramifications of Lucrecia's prophetic career. This hitherto unexamined episode in Spanish history sheds new light on the history of women as well as on the history of dream interpretation.Charlatan or clairvoyant, sinner or saint, Lucrecia was transformed by her dreams into a cause celébre , the rebellious counterpart to that other extraordinary woman of Golden Age Spain, St. Theresa of Jesus. Her supporters viewed her as a divinely inspired seer who exposed the personal and political shortcomings of Philip II of Spain. In examining the relation of dreams and prophecy to politics, Richard Kagan pays particular attention to the activities of the streetcorner prophets and female seers who formed the political underworld of sixteenth-century Spain.   [brief]
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Title: A silent minority: deaf education in Spain, 1550-1835 
Author: Plann, Susan
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: History | Language and Linguistics | Medieval History | European History | Education | European Studies | Medieval Studies | Cultural Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: This timely, important, and frequently dramatic story takes place in Spain, for the simple reason that Spain is where language was first systematically taught to the deaf. Instruction is thought to have begun in the mid-sixteenth century in Spanish monastic communities, where the monks under vows of silence employed a well-established system of signed communications. Early in the 1600s, deaf education entered the domain of private tutors, laymen with no use for manual signs who advocated oral instruction for their pupils. Deaf children were taught to speak and lip-read, and this form of deaf education, which has been the subject of controversy ever since, spread from Spain throughout the world.Plann shows how changing conceptions of deafness and language constantly influenced deaf instruction. Nineteenth-century advances brought new opportunities for deaf students, but at the end of what she calls the preprofessional era of deaf education, deaf people were disempowered because they were barred from the teaching profession. The Spanish deaf community to this day shows the effects of the exclusion of deaf teachers for the deaf.The questions raised by Plann's narrative extend well beyond the history of deaf education in Spain: they apply to other minority communities and deaf cultures around the world. At issue are the place of minority communities within the larger society and, ultimately, our tolerance for human diversity and cultural pluralism.   [brief]
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Title: The courtier and the King: Ruy Gómez de Silva, Philip II, and the court of Spain 
Author: Boyden, James M 1954-
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: History | European History | Autobiographies and Biographies
Publisher's Description: Ruy Gómez de Silva, or the prince of Eboli, was one of the central figures at the court of Spain in the sixteenth century. Thanks to his oily affability, social grace, and an uncanny knack for anticipating and catering to the desires of his prince, he rose from obscurity to become the favorite and chief minister of Philip II.From the scattered surviving sources James Boyden weaves a vivid, compelling narrative: one that breathes life not only into Ruy Gómez, but into the court, the era, and the enigmatic character of Phillip II as well. Elegantly written and highly readable, this book discovers in the career of Gómez the techniques, aspirations, and mentality of an accomplished courtier in the age of Castiglione.   [brief]
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Title: Love customs in eighteenth-century Spain 
Author: Martín Gaite, Carmen
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: History | European History | Gender Studies
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Title: Boundaries: the making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees
Author: Sahlins, Peter
Published: University of California Press,  1989
Subjects: History | Anthropology | European History | Geography | French Studies
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Title: The politics of Muslim cultural reform: jadidism in Central Asia 
Author: Khalid, Adeeb 1964-
Published: University of California Press,  1999
Subjects: History | Middle Eastern History | Russian and Eastern European Studies | Middle Eastern Studies | Islam | Asian Studies | Asian History | European History
Publisher's Description: Adeeb Khalid offers the first extended examination of cultural debates in Central Asia during Russian rule. With the Russian conquest in the 1860s and 1870s the region came into contact with modernity. The Jadids, influential Muslim intellectuals, sought to safeguard the indigenous Islamic culture by adapting it to the modern state. Through education, literacy, use of the press and by maintaining close ties with Islamic intellectuals from the Ottoman empire to India, the Jadids established a place for their traditions not only within the changing culture of their own land but also within the larger modern Islamic world.Khalid uses previously untapped literary sources from Uzbek and Tajik as well as archival materials from Uzbekistan, Russia, Britain, and France to explore Russia's role as a colonial power and the politics of Islamic reform movements. He shows how Jadid efforts paralleled developments elsewhere in the world and at the same time provides a social history of the Jadid movement. By including a comparative study of Muslim societies, examining indigenous intellectual life under colonialism, and investigating how knowledge was disseminated in the early modern period, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform does much to remedy the dearth of scholarship on this important period. Interest in Central Asia is growing as a result of the breakup of the former Soviet Union, and Khalid's book will make an important contribution to current debates over political and cultural autonomy in the region.   [brief]
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Title: Perfecting women: Maulana Ashraf ʿAlī Thanawi's Bihishti zewar: a partial translation with commentary
Author: Thānvī, ʿAshraf ʿAlī
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Gender Studies | Women's Studies | History | South Asia | Asian History | Islam
Publisher's Description: Challenging conventional notions about the place of women in Muslim societies, the Bihishti Zewar (Heavenly Ornaments) gives life to the themes of religious and social reform that have too often been treated in the abstract. This instructional guidebook, used by the world's largest population of Muslims, is a vital source for those interested in modern Indian social and intellectual history, in Islamic reform, and in conceptions of gender and women's roles.The Bihishti Zewar was written in northern India in the early 1900s by a revered Muslim scholar and spiritual guide, Maulana Ashraf 'Ali Thanawi (1864-1943), to instruct Muslim girls and women in religious teachings, proper behavior, and prudent conduct of their everyday lives. In so doing, it sets out the core of a reformist version of Islam that has become increasingly prominent across Muslim societies during the past hundred years. Throughout the work, nothing is more striking than the extent to which the book takes women and men as essentially the same, in contrast to European works directed toward women at this time.Its rich descriptions of the everyday life of the relatively privileged classes in turn-of-the-century north India provide information on issues of personality formation as well as on family life, social relations, household management, and encounters with new institutions and inventions. Barbara Metcalf has carefully selected those sections of the Bihishti Zewar that best illustrate the themes of reformist thought about God, the person, society, and gender. She provides a substantial introduction to the text and to each section, as well as detailed annotations.   [brief]
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Title: Rebel and saint: Muslim notables, populist protest, colonial encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904) 
Author: Clancy-Smith, Julia A
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: History | Middle Eastern History | Postcolonial Studies | French Studies | African Studies
Publisher's Description: Julia Clancy-Smith's unprecedented study brings us a remarkable view of North African history from the perspective of the North Africans themselves. Focusing on the religious beliefs and political actions of Muslim elites and their followers in Algeria and Tunisia, she provides a richly detailed analysis of resistance and accommodation to colonial rule.Clancy-Smith demonstrates the continuities between the eras of Turkish and French rule as well as the importance of regional ties among elite families in defining Saharan political cultures. She rejects the position that Algerians and Tunisians were invariably victims of western colonial aggression, arguing instead that Muslim notables understood the outside world and were quite capable of manipulating the massive changes occurring around them.   [brief]
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Title: Seven doors to Islam: spirituality and the religious life of Muslims
Author: Renard, John 1944-
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Religion | Middle Eastern Studies | Middle Eastern History | Islam | Medieval Studies
Publisher's Description: Seven Doors to Islam reveals the religious worldview and spiritual tradition of the world's one billion Muslims. Spanning the breadth of Islamic civilization from Morocco to Indonesia, this book demonstrates how Muslims have used the literary and visual arts in all their richness and diversity to communicate religious values. Each of the seven chapters opens a "door" that leads progressively closer to the very heart of Islam, from the foundational revelation in the Qur'an to the transcendent experience of the Sufi mystics. However, unlike most studies of Islam, which see spirituality as the concern of a minority of mystical seekers, Seven Doors demonstrates its central role in every aspect of the Islamic tradition.   [brief]
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Title: Jews in the notarial culture: Latinate wills in Mediterranean Spain, 1250-1350 
Author: Burns, Robert Ignatius
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Medieval Studies | Judaism | Jewish Studies | European History | Law | Medieval History
Publisher's Description: In the rapidly transforming world of thirteenth-century Mediterranean Spain, the all-purpose scribe and contract lawyer known as the notary became a familiar figure. Most legal transactions of the Roman Law Renaissance were framed in this functionary's notoriously hasty shorthand. Notarial archives, then, offer a remarkable window on the daily life of this pluri-ethnic society. Robert I. Burns brings together the testimony of a multitude of documents, and transcribes in full nearly fifty will-related charters prepared by notaries, to give a never-before-seen view of Jewish society in that place and time.Wills can display the religious conscience, ethical institutions, social mobility, and property dynamics of whole groups or regions. Even a single testament allows a glimpse into the testator's family and into the life and times of the living person. Burns devotes special attention to women in wills and to women's wills, extracting rich information on medieval women and gender relationships.While learning much about the role of kings and courts and the dynamics of Christian-Jewish relations, the reader also gains rare insights into a unique Jewish community.   [brief]
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Title: The calligraphic state: textual domination and history in a Muslim society 
Author: Messick, Brinkley Morris
Published: University of California Press,  1992
Subjects: Anthropology | Middle Eastern History | Cultural Anthropology | Middle Eastern Studies
Publisher's Description: In this innovative combination of anthropology, history, and postmodern theory, Brinkley Messick examines the changing relation of writing and authority in a Muslim society from the late nineteenth century to the present. The creation and interpretation of texts, from sacred scriptures to administrative and legal contracts, are among the fundamental ways that authority is established and maintained in a complex state. Yet few scholars have explored this process and the ways in which it changes, especially outside the Western world.Messick brings together intensive ethnography and textual analysis from a wealth of material: Islamic jurisprudence, Yemeni histories, local documents. In exploring the structure and transformation of literacy, law, and statecraft in Yemen, he raises important issues that are of comparative significance for understanding political life in other Muslim and nonwestern states as well.   [brief]
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Title: Pilgrim stories: on and off the road to Santiago
Author: Frey, Nancy Louise 1968-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Religion | Anthropology | Christianity | European History
Publisher's Description: Each year thousands of men and women from more than sixty countries journey by foot and bicycle across northern Spain, following the medieval pilgrimage road known as the Camino de Santiago. Their destination is Santiago de Compostela, where the remains of the apostle James are said to be buried. These modern-day pilgrims and the role of the pilgrimage in their lives are the subject of Nancy Louise Frey's fascinating book.Unlike the religiously-oriented pilgrims who visit Marian shrines such as Lourdes, the modern Road of St. James attracts an ecumenical mix of largely well-educated, urban middle-class participants. Eschewing comfortable methods of travel, they choose physically demanding journeys, some as long as four months, in order to experience nature, enjoy cultural and historical patrimony, renew faith, or cope with personal trauma.Frey's anthropological study focuses on the remarkable reanimation of the Road that has gained momentum since the 1980s. Her intensive fieldwork (including making the pilgrimage several times herself) provides a colorful portrayal of the pilgrimage while revealing a spectrum of hopes, discontents, and desires among its participants, many of whom feel estranged from society. The Camino's physical and mental journey offers them closer community, greater personal knowledge, and links to the past and to nature.But what happens when pilgrims return home? Exploring this crucial question Frey finds that pilgrims often reflect deeply on their lives and some make significant changes: an artistic voice is discovered, a marriage is ended, meaningful work is found. Other pilgrims repeat the pilgrimage or join a pilgrims' association to keep their connection to the Camino alive. And some only remain pilgrims while on the road. In all, Pilgrim Stories is an exceptional prism through which to understand the desires and dissatisfactions of contemporary Western life at the end of the millennium."Feet are touched, discussed, massaged, [and] become signs of a journey well traveled: 'I did it all on foot!' . . . Pilgrims give feet a power and importance not recognized in daily life, as a causeway and direct channel to the road, the past, meaningful relations, nature, and the self."   [brief]
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Title: Windows on the house of Islam: Muslim sources on spirituality and religious life
Author: Renard, John 1944-
Published: University of California Press,  1998
Subjects: Religion | Middle Eastern Studies | History | Islam
Publisher's Description: Over the centuries and across the globe, Muslim authors and artists have given moving testimony to their experience of being members of the Islamic community. Their many vantage points come together in this collection, one that represents major Islamic groups from the past through the present and covers a range of themes essential to understanding Islamic spirituality and religious life. More than thirty leading Islam scholars present translations originating from a dozen languages, including Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Indonesian. Texts include samples of virtually every major literary form of significance to the Muslim faith: the Qur'an, hadith, scriptural commentary, letters, treatises, lyric and didactic poetry, hagiography, historical chronicle, aphorism, endowment deeds, and personal diary entries. In addition, over five dozen illustrations thematically document a full range of artistic forms and historical periods, from ritual objects and architecture to manuscripts of religious texts. This volume and its companion, John Renard's 1996 book, Seven Doors to Islam , are the only books available that integrate such a wide range of Islamic literary and visual forms. Together they offer a superb introduction to the primary religious sources as well as a general understanding of Islamic spirituality and culture.   [brief]
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Title: Loyola's acts: the rhetoric of the self 
Author: Boyle, Marjorie O'Rourke 1943-
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Literature | Renaissance History | Christianity | Rhetoric | Art History | Medieval History
Publisher's Description: This revisionist view of Ignatius Loyola argues that his "autobiography" - until now taken to be a literal, documentary account - is in reality a work of rhetoric, a moral narrative that exploits the techniques of fiction. In radically reinterpreting this canonical text, our main source of information about the founder of the largest and most powerful religious order in Roman Catholicism, Boyle paints a vivid picture of Loyola's world. She surveys rhetorical and artistic theory, religious iconography, everyday custom, and an astonishing array of scenes and subjects: from curiosity, to codes of honor, to the holy places of Spain, to the significance of apparitions and flying serpents.Written in the tradition of Renaissance studies on individualism, Loyola's Acts engages current interest in autobiography and in the history of private life. The book also provides a powerful heuristic for interpreting a wide range of texts of the Christian tradition. Finally, this secular treatment of a canonized saint provides revealing insights into how a prestigious sixteenth-century figure like Loyola understood himself.   [brief]
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