Title: Traveling in Mark Twain 
Author: Bridgman, Richard
Published: University of California Press,  1987
Subjects: Literature | English Literature | American Literature
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Title: Appeasement or resistance and other essays on New Testament Judaism 
Author: Daube, David
Published: University of California Press,  1987
Subjects: Religion
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Title: Shanghai on the Metro: spies, intrigue, and the French between the wars 
Author: Miller, Michael Barry 1945-
Published: University of California Press,  1995
Subjects: History | European History | French Studies
Publisher's Description: Secret agents, gun runners, White Russians, adventurers, and con men - they all play a part in Michael Miller's strikingly original study of interwar France. Based on extensive research in security files and a mass of printed sources, this book shows how a distinctive milieu of spies and spy literature emerged between the two world wars, reflecting the atmosphere and concerns of these years.Miller argues that French fascination with intrigue between the wars reveals a far more assured and playful national mood than historians have hitherto discerned in the final decades of the Third Republic. But the larger history set in motion by World War I and the subsequent reading of French history into global history are the true subjects of this work. Reconstituting through his own narratives the histories of interwar travel and adventure and the willful turning of contemporary affairs into a source of romance, Miller recovers the ambiance and special qualities of the age that produced its intrigues and its tales of spies.   [brief]
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Title: Barbarians and politics at the Court of Arcadius 
Author: Cameron, Alan
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Classics | Religion | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: The chaotic events of A.D. 395-400 marked a momentous turning point for the Roman Empire and its relationship to the barbarian peoples under and beyond its command. In this masterly study, Alan Cameron proposes a complete rewriting of received wisdom concerning the social and political history of these years. Our knowledge of the period comes to us in part through Synesius of Cyrene, who recorded his view of events in his De regno and De providentia . By redating these works, Cameron offers a vital, new interpretation of the interactions of pagans and Christians, Goths and Romans.In 394/95, during the last four months of his life, the emperor Theodosius I ruled as sole Augustus over a united Roman empire that had been divided between at least two emperors for most of the preceding one hundred years. Not only did the death of Theodosius set off a struggle between Roman officeholders of the two empires, but it also set off renewed efforts by the barbarian Goths to sieze both territory and office. Theodosius had encouraged high-ranking Goths to enter Roman military service; thus well placed, their efforts would lead to Alaric's sack of Rome in 410. Though Cameron's interest is in the particularities of events, the book conveys a wonderful sense of the general time and place. Cameron's rebuttal of modern scholarship, which pervades the narrative, enhances the reader's engagement with the complexities of interpretation. The result is a sophisticated recounting of a period of crucial change in the Roman Empire's relationship to the non-Roman world.   [brief]
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Title: Nuptial arithmetic: Marsilio Ficino's commentary on the fatal number in Book VIII of Plato's Republic 
Author: Allen, Michael J. B
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Classics | Philosophy | Medieval Studies | Renaissance History
Publisher's Description: The latest of Michael Allen's distinguished studies of the Renaissance Neoplatonist, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), presents a difficult, fascinating text. Late in his career, Ficino wrote a commentary on the intractable passage in Book VIII of Plato's Republic that concerns the mysterious geometric or "fatal" number. He was thus the first modern interpreter of this famous passage, and Allen is the first in our era to translate and elucidate his remarkable commentary.Allen's critical translation of Ficino's analysis of the fatal number passage shows how it develops philosophical, psychological, numerological, astrological, and prophetic themes that had a particular resonance at the end of the fifteenth century.   [brief]
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Title: Broken tablets: the cult of the law in French art from David to Delacroix 
Author: Ribner, Jonathan P
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Art | Art History | French Studies | European Literature | European History | Law
Publisher's Description: In this first study of art, law, and the legislator, Jonathan Ribner provides a revealing look at French art from 1789 to 1848, the period in which constitutional law was established in France. Drawing on several disciplines, he discusses how each of the early constitutional regimes in France used imagery suggesting the divine origin and sacred character of its laws.Primarily a study of art and politics, Broken Tablets discusses painting, sculpture, prints, and medals (many reproduced here for the first time), as well as contemporary literature, including the poetry of Alfred de Vigny, Alphonse de Lamartine, and Victor Hugo. Ribner assesses the ways in which legislation imagery became an instrument of political propaganda, and he clearly illuminates the cult of the law as it became personalized under Napoleon, monarchist under the Restoration, and defensive under Louis-Phillipe.   [brief]
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Title: Time and the crystal: studies in Dante's Rime petrose 
Author: Durling, Robert M
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: Literature | European Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism
Publisher's Description: The Rime petrose , Dante's powerful lyrics about a woman as beautiful and as hard as a precious stone, are generally acknowledged to be an important moment in his stylistic development. In this first full-length investigation of the poetics of the petrose and of their relation to the Divine Comedy , Durling and Martinez uncover much new material, especially from medieval science (astrology and mineralogy), philosophy, and theology. The authors argue that the Rime petrose represent a major turning point in Dante's conception of a "microcosmic poetics" that became the fundamental mode of the Commedia . They demonstrate how Dante here attempts his first full account of his relation to the universe as a whole.This work offers many new insights into the intrinsic significance of these remarkable poems and their place in Dante's development - especially far-reaching are the implications for the interpretation of the Divine Comedy . The book will be of interest not only to students of Dante but also to intellectual historians, historians of science, students of poetics and poetic theory, and to all those interested in medieval literature.   [brief]
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Title: Mass mediations: new approaches to popular culture in the Middle East and beyond 
Author: Armbrust, Walter
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: Middle Eastern Studies | Anthropology | Cultural Anthropology | Media Studies | Music | Cinema and Performance Arts
Publisher's Description: Offering a stimulating diversity of perspectives, this collection examines how popular culture through mass media defines the scale and character of social interaction in the Middle East. The contributors approach popular culture broadly, with an interest in how it creates new scales of communication and new dimensions of identity that affect economics, politics, aesthetics, and performance. Reflected in these essays is the fact that mass media are as ubiquitous in Cairo and Karachi as in Los Angeles and Detroit. From Persian popular music in Beverly Hills to Egyptians' reaction to a recent film on Gamal Abdel Nasser; from postmodern Turkish novels to the music of an Israeli transsexual singer, the essays illustrate the multiple contexts of modern cultural production. The unfolding of modernity in colonial and postcolonial societies has been little analyzed until now. In addressing transnational aspects of Middle Eastern societies, the contributors also challenge conventional assumptions about the region and its relation to the West. The volume will have wide appeal both to Middle Eastern scholars and to readers interested in global and cultural studies.   [brief]
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Title: Guardians of language: the grammarian and society in late antiquity 
Author: Kaster, Robert A
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Classics | Classical Literature and Language | Language and Linguistics | Ancient History
Publisher's Description: What did it mean to be a professional teacher in the prestigious "liberal schools" - the schools of grammar and rhetoric - in late antiquity? How can we account for the abiding prestige of these schools, which remained substantially unchanged in their methods and standing despite the political and religious changes that had taken place around them?The grammarian was a pivotal figure in the lives of the educated upper classes of late antiquity. Introducing his students to correct language and to the literature esteemed by long tradition, he began the education that confirmed his students' standing in a narrowly defined elite. His profession thus contributed to the social as well as cultural continuity of the Empire. The grammarian received honor - and criticism; the profession gave the grammarian a firm sense of cultural authority but also placed him in a position of genteel subordination within the elite.Robert A. Kaster provides the first thorough study of the place and function of these important but ambiguous figures. He also gives a detailed prosopography of the grammarians, and of the other "teachers of letters" below the level of rhetoric, from the middle of the third through the middle of the sixth century, which will provide a valuable research tool for other students of late-antique education.   [brief]
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Title: Claiming the high ground: Sherpas, subsistence, and environmental change in the highest Himalaya 
Author: Stevens, Stanley F
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Geography | Cultural Anthropology | Tibet
Publisher's Description: Stanley Stevens brings a new historical perspective to his remarkably well-researched study of a subsistence society in ever-increasing contact with the outside world. The Khumbu Sherpas, famous for their mountaineering exploits, have frequently been depicted as victims of the world's highest-altitude tourist boom. But has the flow of outsiders to Mt. Everest and the heights of Nepal in fact destroyed a stable, finely balanced relationship between the Sherpas and their environment?Stevens's innovative use of oral history and cultural ecology suggests that tourism is not the watershed circumstance many have considered it to be. Drawing on extensive interviews and data gathered during three years of fieldwork, and with the use of numerous maps and charts, he documents the Sherpas' ingenious adaptation to high-altitude conditions, their past and present agricultural, pastoral, trade, and forest management practices, and their own perspectives on the environmental history of their homeland. This is a book for geographers, anthropologists, and all those interested in conservation of the earth's high places.   [brief]
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Title: The Muslims of Valencia in the age of Fernando and Isabel: between coexistence and crusade 
Author: Meyerson, Mark D
Published: University of California Press,  1990
Subjects: History | European History | Religion
Publisher's Description: The kingdom of Valencia was home to Christian Spain's largest Muslim population during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, Fernando and Isabel. How did Muslim-Christian coexistence in Valencia remain relatively stable in this volatile period that saw the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition, the Expulsion of the Jews, the conquest of Granada, and the conversion of the Muslims of Granada and Castile? In explanation, Mark Meyerson achieves the first thorough analysis of Fernando and Isabel's policy toward both Muslims and Jews. His findings will stimulate much discussion among Hispanists, Arabists, and historians.Meyerson argues that the key to the persistence of Muslim-Christian coexistence in Valencia lies in the hitherto unexamined differences between the royal couple concerning matters of religion. More than a study of the minority policy of the Catholic Monarchs, however, The Muslims of Valencia is an exemplary analysis of the economic life of Valencia's Muslims and the complex institutional and social network that held them suspended "between coexistence and crusade."   [brief]
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Title: Papal patronage and the music of St. Peter's, 1380-1513 
Author: Reynolds, Christopher A
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Music | Musicology | European History
Publisher's Description: A new picture of music at the basilica of St. Peter's in the fifteenth century emerges in Christopher A. Reynolds's fascinating chronicle of this rich period of Italian musical history. Reynolds examines archival documents, musical styles, and issues of artistic patronage and cultural context in a fertile consideration of the ways historical and musical currents affected each other.This work is both a historical account of performers and composers and an examination of how their music revealed their cultural values and educational backgrounds. Reynolds analyzes several anonymous masses copied at St. Peter's, proposing attributions that have biographical implications for the composers. Taken together, the archival records and the music sung at St. Peter's reveal a much clearer picture of musical life at the basilica than either source would alone. The contents of the St. Peter's choirbook help document musical life as surely as that musical life - insofar as it can be reconstructed from the archives - illumines the choirbook.   [brief]
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Title: Society and politics in Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla 
Author: Bagge, Sverre 1942-
Published: University of California Press,  1991
Subjects: Literature | European Literature | Medieval History | Medieval Studies | Sociology
Publisher's Description: Heimskringla is the best known and most important book of Old Norse kings' sagas. A medieval masterpiece, the collection was written by Snorri Sturluson in the first half of the thirteenth century. The sagas have been studied primarily as literary sources and chronicles of specific historical events, but Sverre Bagge, a noted historian, finds in Heimskringla something more: a brimming guidebook to the culture and politics of Icelandic society.What kind of observer was Snorri Sturluson, and how did he see the world he lived in? Bagge concentrates on Snorri the historian, viewing him in the context of European history in general and contemporary Icelandic and Norwegian society in particular. But it is Snorri's perception of events that matters, more than the "real" events or the society that produced them. With chapters on themes such as conflicts and the "game of politics" that pervades the sagas, Bagge's analysis of Heimskringla is a model for contemporary historians now probing the relationship between narrative and history.   [brief]
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Title: Roberto Rossellini 
Author: Brunette, Peter
Published: University of California Press,  1996
Subjects: Cinema and Performance Arts
Publisher's Description: This is the first full-length study in any language of the most significant film director of Italian Neorealism. Peter Brunette combines close analyses of Roberto Rossellini's formal and narrative style with a thorough account of his position in the political and cultural landscape of postwar Italy. More than forty films are explored, including Open City, Paisan, Voyage to Italy, The Rise to Power of Louis XIV, and films made in the director's later years that documented crucial epochs in human history. Brunette's book is based on eight years of research, during which he interviewed members of the director's family as well as Rossellini himself. Brunette also draws on an enormous body of European and American criticism and discusses the various intellectual debates spawned by the director's work. This landmark study is both a comprehensive introduction to one of the most influential practitioners of the contemporary cinema and a boldly original discussion of Italian Neorealism.   [brief]
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Title: An unmastered past: the autobiographical reflections of Leo Lowenthal 
Author: Lowenthal, Leo
Published: University of California Press,  1987
Subjects: Sociology | Social Theory | Social and Political Thought
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Title: "Mademoiselle Irnois" and other stories 
Author: Gobineau, Arthur, comte de 1816-1882
Published: University of California Press,  1988
Subjects: Literature
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Title: Resistant structures: particularity, radicalism, and Renaissance texts 
Author: Strier, Richard
Published: University of California Press,  1997
Subjects: Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | Renaissance Literature | English Literature
Publisher's Description: Taking Wittgenstein's "Don't think, but look" as his motto, Richard Strier argues against the application of a priori schemes to Renaissance (and all) texts. He argues for the possibility and desirability of rigorously attentive but "pre-theoretical" reading. His approach privileges particularity and attempts to respect the "resistant structures" of texts. He opposes theories, critical and historical, that dictate in advance what texts must - or cannot - say or do.The first part of the book, "Against Schemes," demonstrates, in discussions of Rosemond Tuve, Stephen Greenblatt, and Stanley Fish among others, how both historicist and purely theoretical approaches can equally produce distortion of particulars. The second part, "Against Received Ideas," shows how a variety of texts (by Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and others) have been seen through the lenses of fixed, mainly conservative ideas in ways that have obscured their actual, surprising, and sometimes surprisingly radical content.   [brief]
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Title: The culture of sectarianism: community, history, and violence in nineteenth-century Ottoman Lebanon 
Author: Makdisi, Ussama Samir 1968-
Published: University of California Press,  2000
Subjects: History | Middle Eastern History | Middle Eastern Studies | Postcolonial Studies | Islam | Cultural Anthropology
Publisher's Description: Focusing on Ottoman Lebanon, Ussama Makdisi shows how sectarianism was a manifestation of modernity that transcended the physical boundaries of a particular country. His study challenges those who have viewed sectarian violence as an Islamic response to westernization or simply as a product of social and economic inequities among religious groups. The religious violence of the nineteenth century, which culminated in sectarian mobilizations and massacres in 1860, was a complex, multilayered, subaltern expression of modernization, he says, not a primordial reaction to it. Makdisi argues that sectarianism represented a deliberate mobilization of religious identities for political and social purposes. The Ottoman reform movement launched in 1839 and the growing European presence in the Middle East contributed to the disintegration of the traditional Lebanese social order based on a hierarchy that bridged religious differences. Makdisi highlights how European colonialism and Orientalism, with their emphasis on Christian salvation and Islamic despotism, and Ottoman and local nationalisms each created and used narratives of sectarianism as foils to their own visions of modernity and to their own projects of colonial, imperial, and national development. Makdisi's book is important to our understanding of Lebanese society today, but it also makes a significant contribution to the discussion of the importance of religious discourse in the formation and dissolution of social and national identities in the modern world.   [brief]
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Title: J.M. Coetzee: South Africa and the politics of writing 
Author: Attwell, David
Published: University of California Press,  1993
Subjects: Literature | African Studies | Literary Theory and Criticism
Publisher's Description: David Attwell defends the literary and political integrity of South African novelist J.M. Coetzee by arguing that Coetzee has absorbed the textual turn of postmodern culture while still addressing the ethical tensions of the South African crisis. As a form of "situational metafiction," Coetzee's writing reconstructs and critiques some of the key discourses in the history of colonialism and apartheid from the eighteenth century to the present. While self-conscious about fiction-making, it takes seriously the condition of the society in which it is produced.Attwell begins by describing the intellectual and political contexts surrounding Coetzee's fiction and then provides a developmental analysis of his six novels, drawing on Coetzee's other writings in stylistics, literary criticism, translation, political journalism and popular culture. Elegantly written, Attwell's analysis deals with both Coetzee's subversion of the dominant culture around him and his ability to see the complexities of giving voice to the anguish of South Africa.   [brief]
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Title: Ambiguous angels: gender in the novels of Galdós 
Author: Jagoe, Catherine
Published: University of California Press,  1994
Subjects: Literature | European Literature | Literary Theory and Criticism | Women's Studies
Publisher's Description: The contradictory nature of the work of Benito Pérez Galdós, Spain's greatest modern novelist, is brought to the fore in Catherine Jagoe's innovative and rigorous study. Revising commonly held views of his feminism, she explores the relation of Galdós's novels to the "woman question" in Spain, arguing that after 1892 the muted feminist discourse of his early work largely disappears. While his later novels have been interpreted as celebrations of the emancipated new woman, Jagoe contends that they actually reinforce the conservative, bourgeois model of frugal, virtuous womanhood - the angel of the house.Using primary sources such as periodicals, medical texts, and conduct literature, Jagoe's examination of the evolution of feminism makes Ambiguous Angels valuable to anyone interested in gender, culture, and narrative in nineteenth-century Europe.   [brief]
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