Perspective: Selected Essays on Space in Art and Design

Edited by Sarina Miller, Temple University

'Perspective: Selected Essays on Space in Art and Design' explores the ways in which visual and physical space have been designed and experienced in different cultures. This book amplifies the significance of space as a design element by examining its implications in various contexts through a global perspective of art and design.

Designed to Impress: Guido Mazenta’s Plans for the Entry of Gregoria Maximiliana of Austria into Milan (1597)

With an edition of Madrid MS 2908

Janis Bell et al.

Soon after celebrating the appointment of Federico Borromeo to Archbishop, the city of Milan began planning elaborate festivities to celebrate the betrothal of Prince Philip, future King of Spain, to the niece of the Holy Roman Emperor, Gregoria Maximiliana. She was scheduled to travel through Milan in 1597 on her journey to Spain. Guido Mazenta, a private citizen, planned for the erection of five triumphal arches in strategic locations throughout the city. This volume includes studies of the author and his previously unrecognized importance in turn-of-the-century Milan, presents an analysis and transcription of his illustrated manuscript for the program (Biblioteca Nacional Ms. 2908), and fully examines the scope and expenses of the festivities in honor of royal visitors in the second half of the sixteenth century. Although Gregoria died before the planned celebration, many of its features were transferred to the entry in 1598 of her sister, Margherita, who married Philip soon after he ascended to the throne as Philip III of Spain. This celebration left a permanent mark on the city of Milan through the construction of the Porta Romana. Scholars of early modern European art and history will find a richness of new archival documentation, particularly those interested in the history of book and art collecting and in economic history. The essays in this volume bring to light the important role of a private citizen whose reputation was later deliberately obscured to cover the ignominy that led to his exile from Milan. Janis Bell and Stefano Bruzzese discuss the author and his activities, Silvio Leydi discusses the many elaborate festivities conducted for royal visitors to the city of Milan during the Hapsburg reign and the expenses involved in hosting their courts, and Elisa Ruiz Garcia presents a detailed examination of the program and the sources used by the author.

Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier

Edited by Emily Strand and Amy H. Sturgis

After more than 55 years of transmedia storytelling, 'Star Trek' is a global phenomenon that has never been more successful than it is today. 'Star Trek' fandom is worldwide, time tested, and growing, and academic interest in the franchise, both inside and outside of the classroom, is high; at the moment, more 'Star Trek' works are underway or in development simultaneously than at any other moment in history. Unlike works that focus on a limited number of stories/media in this franchise or only offer one expert’s or discipline’s insights, this accessible and multidisciplinary anthology includes analyses from a wide range of scholars and explores 'Star Trek' from its debut in 1966 to its current incarnations, considers its implications for and collaborations with fandom, and trace its ideas and meanings across series, media, and time. 'Star Trek: Essays Exploring the Final Frontier' will undoubtedly speak to academics in the field, students in the classroom, and informed lay readers and fans.

Freedom Taking Place: War, Women and Culture at the Intersection of Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus

Edited by Jessica Zychowicz, Fulbright Ukraine; Institute of International Education Kyiv office, Ukraine

Freedom as a concept shifts with different forms of expression. As the authors of this volume convey in their focus on 'freedom of expression', the idea of 'freedom' in the twenty-first century does not stand apart as a purely physical location marked by national borders. In the Internet Age information is increasingly co-determinate of physical freedom. The information-dense space of the protests of 2021, and beyond, provide soil for the intellectuals writing in this volume to reflect on women’s agency in struggles for human rights. Where historical discourse on “The Woman Question” once conflicted with “feminism” as a perceived importation from the West, this conflict also produced productive tensions that have provided ongoing sites for research. When closely studied, these contexts can deepen global concepts of democracy and justice, providing not only pathways for acts of solidarity and mutual assistance, but intellectual depth and breadth for the future 'ways of knowing', and thus ways of creating, more equitable post-conflict power systems and citizenship amid times of revolution and war. Coming from multiple generations, gender identities, nationalities, and language; the authors in this volume represent the most forward-thinking voices and figures working on gender in the region today.

Escenas Diversas: Drama, Humor y Música

Edited by Pablo Alejandro Suárez Marrero, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (México)

A través de un recorrido sobre prácticas musicales gestadas en diversas localidades iberoamericanas, desde finales del siglo XIX hasta la actualidad, 'Escenas Diversas: Drama, Humor y Música' hace de la diversidad de las escenas musicales, una de sus mayores fortalezas. En esta obra, el concepto de “escena” se convierte en un ámbito discursivo oportuno para construir aproximaciones dinámicas y flexibles sobre el quehacer musical, ya sea del pasado histórico o del accionar reciente. Este volumen constituye un compendio de estudios de caso acontecidos en ciudades de España, Argentina, México, Cuba, Venezuela y Colombia, con el objetivo de contribuir a los debates actuales sobre escenas musicales desde su propia diversidad, asociada a elementos discursivos propios del drama social y el humor inteligente. Desde su individualidad, en cada capítulo se busca conciliar una mirada histórica a escenas pasadas y su pervivencia en documentos musicales de diversa índole. Además, se aborda la creciente virtualización y desterritorialización física de las escenas musicales de alcance glocal, a raíz de la actual situación pandémica. De gran interés para todo aquel atraído por los estudios culturales, la música y los estudios latinoamericanos, 'Escenas Diversas' contribuye a la creación de nuevas y múltiples instancias comunicativas para la socialización de conocimientos especializados sobre nuestras escenas musicales.

Language, Land and Belonging: Poetic Inquiries

Edited by Natalie Honein, American University of Sharjah, UAE and Margaret McKeon, St. Mary’s University, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

This volume takes up themes emergent from the 7th International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry (ISPI) which invited participants to reflect on the United Nations Declaration of 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages. In this refereed collection, Indigenous and non-Indigenous authors use poetic inquiry to explore the importance of their ancestral languages and lands, and consider the Indigenous languages and peoples of the lands where they live. Situated in diverse global contexts, poet-researchers examine the intersectionality of their languages, their lands, and their sense of belonging. They offer relational understandings of, and articulate obligations for, their environment and communities. Through stories of shared generational pain and renewal, each author brings the reader into their world of learning and growth. They do this through discourses of belonging and relational responsibilities that tie them to a place, a genealogy. As a method of study that incorporates poetry into academic research, poetic inquiry is concerned with particularity, complexity, and transformations. Making research more visceral and evocative, it invites researchers to examine and engage with the knowledge they seek through a continual process of questioning, welcoming, and awareness. In this volume, poetic inquiry helps to honor languages and histories taken for granted; it allows looking back in order to reexamine, redefine, and make sense of the present and its shortcomings while reimagining a different future. This work seeks to reclaim, through poetic inquiry, wisdom of language, land, and belonging.

Staging and Stage Décor: Perspectives on European Theater 1500-1950

Edited by Bárbara Mujica, Georgetown University

'Staging and Stage Décor: Perspectives on European Theater 1500-1950' is a compendium of essays by an international array of theater specialists. The Introduction provides an overview of theater décor and architecture from ancient Greece through the Renaissance and beyond, while the articles that follow explore a variety of topics such as the development of lighting techniques in early modern Italy, the staging of convent theater in Portugal, performance spaces at Versailles, the reconstruction of the Globe theater, and Shrovetide plays in Germany. This volume also offers insight into little-studied subjects such as the early productions of Brecht and the spread of Russian theater to Japan. The focus on performance and performance space across centuries and continents makes this a truly unique volume.

“A Hero Will Endure”: Essays at the Twentieth Anniversary of 'Gladiator'

Edited by Rachel L. Carazo, St. Thomas University

This volume adds to previous historical and political studies about 'Gladiator' with essays about the movie’s relation to pop culture and contemporary discourses. It not only relates 'Gladiator' to traditional cinema aspects such as heroism, music, acting, studio culture, and visual effects, but it also connects the film to sports, religion, and the environment, expanding the ways in which the film can be evaluated by modern audiences. The volume can be read by individuals or in classroom settings, especially as a recommended text for students studying the ancient world in film.

Media, Practice and Theory: Tracking emergent thresholds of experience

Edited by Nicole De Brabandere, McGill University

This volume gathers research at the intersection of art and the interdisciplinary humanities to develop an understanding of media assemblages that insist on the generativity of their situatedness within ecologies of practice. These contributions propose media assemblages that enlarge the time and space for co-compositions between media and bodies that reshape subjective, perceptual, and affective registers of experience. Media assemblages include photography, performance, criticism, curation, installation, animation, collage, video and VR, as well as archival and somatic practices. Research as a form of practice is a key orientation in this volume since it offers a means of engaging the world-making proposition offered by Isabelle Stengers that practices are specified through irreducible entanglements that cause one to think, feel, and hesitate. The generative linkages between different disciplinary approaches for engaging research practice across the arts and humanities are favoured over disciplinary and media-based exclusivity. When practice is not posed as an intervention or counterpoint to scholarly research or in opposition to the discursive, differences emerge, not based on convention but through the situatedness of emergent insight. The goal is thus not to forward a reproducible formula for knowledge creation but to weave the conditions for utterances both within and in excess of discipline, convention, and establishment. How can research engender the making of communities between, across, and in excess of institutional frameworks through the emergent affinities, postures, and formats of evolving and inclusive forms of research? This volume is a valuable reference for researchers/practitioners within the arts and humanities as it exemplifies both critical and situated methods for developing interdisciplinary research as a means of transforming the terms of research itself.

Theatre as Alter/"Native" in Derek Walcott

Nirjhar Sarkar, Raiganj University, India

'Theatre as Alter/“Native” in Derek Walcott' attempts a close and detailed politico-aesthetic analysis of his major plays. At the core of this book lies the attempt to answer the question of how postcolonial artists and intellectuals have dared to imagine radically different ways of living in the face of oppositional, binary choices. And as the title suggests, Walcott’s plays carve out critical spaces for new narratives of “becoming” and alternative priorities, entangled in contesting identities inscribed by race, language and ethnicity. Theatre, as Walcott knew, would be instrumental in demystifying Caribbean “Absence” and “Void” and generating an alternative version of dominant reality. By a deliberate unseating of the Western texts, filled with banal stereotypes and their representational biases, and by triggering “re-action” to the scripts of the colonizers in profoundly paradoxical ways, Walcott’s plays affirm the Caribbean identity. This study seeks to demonstrate how his plays open an alter/“native” universe in terms of aesthetics, dramaturgy and the performative, and reclaims ‘New World’ identity in terms of negotiation rather than negation—undermining the claim of “solid”, “authentic” culture. Placing the arts at the forefront of nation-building, Walcott situated his plays at a crucial juncture between the passing of the Empire and the newly-born Federation in his archipelago.

The Complex City: Social and Built Approaches and Methods

Edited by Caroline Donnellan, Boston University; Global Programs, London, UK

'The Complex City: Social and Built Approaches and Methods' explores different ways of understanding the city. The social city approach proceeds from the ground-up, it focuses on human interactions shaped by economic and environmental processes. The built city method looks through a top-down lens, examining policy and planning for buildings and infrastructure, including utilities and energy networks. This volume is different from other city anthologies in that it explores them through their differences, by presenting each chapter in one of the two categories. While there is invariably an overlap between the two areas, they are distinct positions. In doing so the book identifies how, despite their often adversarial approaches, they both belong to the same city. As essential components of the city they should not necessarily be resolved, as it is in this friction where creativity and innovation happens. 'The Complex City: Social and Built Approaches and Methods' is concerned about the ideas and solutions that they both offer. The book’s originality stems from this duality, and from its recognition that cities are living, organic, protean places of opportunity, crisis, conflict and challenge. The chapters demonstrate the complexity of cities as a set of ideas concerning what they engender, how they function and why they continue to act as a catalyst for different kinds of human activity. They explore issues of socio-political import and questions of the city as a physically constructed space. The themes are diverse and include the inception of the city as a place of competition to centres of regeneration and urban withdrawal. They cover a range of city and urban regions from Athens to Wellington from site specific singular perspectives to comparative assessments. The questions they raise include how do we inhabit urban areas, how do we make plans for them, and how do we, at times, ignore them entirely.

Dynamics of Interregional Exchange in East Asian Buddhist Art, 5th–13th Century

Edited by Dorothy C. Wong, University of Virginia, USA

This volume examines the various patterns of trans-regional exchanges in Buddhist art within East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan) in the medieval period, from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries. A traditional approach to the study of East Asian Buddhist art revolves around the notion of an artistic relay: India was regarded as the source of inspiration for China, and China in turn influenced artistic production in the Korean peninsula and Japan. While this narrative holds some truth, it has the implicit baggage of assuming that art in the host country is only derivative and obscures a deep understanding of the complexity of transnational exchanges. The essays in this volume aim to go beyond the conventional query of tracing origins and mapping exchanges in order to investigate the agency of the “receivers” with contextual case studies that can expand our understanding of artistic dialogues across cultures. The volume is divided into three sections. In Section I, “Transmission and Local Interpretations,” the three chapters by Jinchao Zhao, Li-kuei Chien, and Hong Wu all address topics of transnational transmission of Buddhist imagery, their figural styles, and subsequent alterations or adaptations based on local preferences and interpretations. Buddhism had important impacts on East Asian countries in the political dimension, especially when the religion and certain Buddhist sutras and deities were believed to have state-protecting properties. The chapters by Dorothy C. Wong, Imann Lai, and Clara Ma in Section II, “Buddhism and the State,” attend to the political aspect of Buddhism in visual representation. Section III, “Iconography and Traditions,” includes chapters by Sakiko Takahashi, Suijun Ra, and Tamami Hamada that closely study the cross-border transmission of and subtle variations in iconography and style of specific Buddhist deities, notably deities of esoteric strands that include the Thousand-Armed Avalokiteśvara (Bodhisattva of Compassion).

The Enlightened Mind: Education in the Long Eighteenth Century

Edited by Amanda Strasik, Eastern Kentucky University

The rise of Enlightenment philosophical and scientific thought during the long eighteenth century in Europe and North America (c. 1688-1815) sparked artistic and political revolutions, reframed social, gender, and race relations, reshaped attitudes toward children and animals, and reconceptualized womanhood, marriage, and family life. The meaning of “education” at this time was wide-ranging and access to it was divided along lines of gender, class, and race. Learning happened in diverse environments under the tutelage of various teachers, ranging from bourgeois mothers at home, to Spanish clergy, to nature itself. The contributors to this cross-disciplinary volume weave together methods in art history, gender studies, and literary analysis to reexamine “education” in different contexts during the Enlightenment era. They explore the implications of redesigned curricula, educational categorizations and spaces, pedagogical aids and games, the role of religion, and new prospects for visual artists, parents, children, and society at large. Collectively, the authors demonstrate how new learning opportunities transformed familial structures and the socio-political conditions of urban centers in France, Britain, the United States, and Spain. Expanded approaches to education also established new artistic practices and redefined women’s roles in the arts. This volume offers groundbreaking perspectives on education that will appeal to beginning and seasoned humanities scholars alike.

The Theatre of Twenty-First Century Spain / El teatro de España del siglo XXI

Identities, Anxieties, and Social Immediacies / Identidades, ansiedades e urgencias sociales

Edited by Helen Freear-Papio, College of the Holy Cross and Candyce Crew Leonard, Wake Forest University

Identifying, naming, and belonging lend a sense of rational order, a feeling of rootedness within specific societies and eras, yet that order may collapse and threaten to undermine the predictability that ensures stability. As Spain enters only its fifth decade as a fully democratic nation, the country’s identity is unfocused and disorganized as it continues to reckon with its traumatic past. The nine research essays presented in this volume, all on plays authored in the twenty-first century, aim to address the myriad of complex social immediacies that impact Spain in the twenty-first century. Such topics include: non-heteronormative gender identity; “fake news” and how facts are interpreted, withheld, or distorted; female self-agency and authorship; violence against women; and the ongoing need for justice for family histories that have been erased and repressed by Spain’s inability to resolve its recent past. Identificar, nombrar y pertenecer brinda un sentido de orden racional, un sentimiento de arraigo dentro de sociedades y épocas específicas, pero ese orden puede colapsar y amenazar con socavar la previsibilidad que asegura la estabilidad. A medida que España entra en su quinta década como una nación totalmente democrática, la identidad del país está desenfocada y desorganizada mientras continúa teniendo en cuenta su pasado traumático. Los nueve ensayos de investigación presentados en este volumen, todos sobre obras de teatro de autor del siglo XXI, pretenden abordar la miríada de complejas inmediateces sociales que impactan en la España del siglo XXI. Dichos temas incluyen: identidad de género no heteronormativa; “noticias falsas” y cómo se interpretan, ocultan o distorsionan los hechos; auto-agencia y autoría femenina; la violencia contra las mujeres; y la continua necesidad de justicia por las historias familiares que han sido borradas y reprimidas por la incapacidad de España para resolver su pasado reciente.

Thomas Jefferson on Taste and the Fine Arts

M. Andrew Holowchak

Jefferson tended to classify the books of his libraries under the Baconian headings of memory, reason, and imagination, which corresponded to history, philosophy, and the fine arts. Thus, education in the Fine Arts, which Jefferson listed as eight, was considered an indispensible part of the life of an educated person—especially a Virginian. An educated person needed knowledge of architecture, gardening, painting, sculpture, rhetoric, belle lettres, poetry music, and criticism, considered as a sort of meta-art. Knowledge of such arts was indispensible because each person, thought Jefferson, was equipped with a faculty of taste as well as ratiocination and a moral-sense faculty—each of which required cultivation for human thriving. An uncultivated imagination would severely impair ratiocination and moral sensitivity. This book is the first book-length attempt to flesh out and critically assess Jefferson’s views on taste and the Fine Arts. It is a must read for any serious biographer of Jefferson.

Novels, Rhetoric, and Criticism: A Brief History of Belles Lettres and British Literary Culture, 1680 – 1900

Jack M. Downs, Washington State University Health Sciences Spokane

Developing a history of the English novel requires the inclusion of a vast range of cultural, economic, religious, social, and aesthetic influences. But the role of eighteenth-century English rhetorical theory in the emergence of the novel – and the critical discourse surrounding that emergence – has often been neglected or overlooked. The influence of rhetorical theory in the development of the English novel is undeniable, however, and changes to rhetorical theory in Britain during the eighteenth century led to the development of a critical aesthetic discourse about the novel in Victorian England. This study argues that eighteenth-century 'belles lettres' rhetorical theory played a key role in developing a horizon of expectation concerning the nature and purpose of the novel that extended well into the nineteenth century. There is a connection between the emergence of the English novel, eighteenth-century rhetorical theory, and Victorian novel criticism that has been neglected; this study attempts to recover and articulate that connection.

Lionello Perera: An Italian Banker and Patron in New York

Diego Mantoan, University of Palermo, Italy

The book presents the long-lost biography of Lionello Perera, principal banker, patron, and philanthropist of the Italian American community in New York at the inception of the twentieth century. Born and raised in Venice, Lionello Perera took over his uncle’s financial activity in Wall Street and developed the family business into a stronghold of the Italian American community. His remarkable career led him to become the Vice President of Bank of America in 1928 as an associate of California born Amadeo P. Giannini, while he also was instrumental to the political success of New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Recognised as a true founding father of the Italian American community of the East Coast, he supported welfare societies and public hospitals to foster the integration of Italian immigrants. A close friend of star conductor Arturo Toscanini, Lionello Perera and his wife Carolyn Allen Perera turned into influential music patrons for Italian and Jewish musicians. Their unique Art Deco house in the Upper East Side became an epicentre of the New York music world, showcasing the banker’s refined art collection that matched the taste of J. Pierpont Morgan and Samuel H. Kress. The book relies on unprecedented archival material rendering justice to the relevance Lionello Perera holds as a contributor to the political, social, and cultural integration of Italians in the USA. It offers an innovative perspective that considers the tight interrelation of Italian Americans of the East Coast with ongoing events in their country of origin. Lionello Perera’s life highlights the silent contribution of Italian Americans to change the US banking system and help the integration of Italian immigrants in their new country. Hence, the main audience are students and scholars interested in the history of immigration, banking history, Italian American culture as well as music studies and art history.

Lionello Perera: An Italian Banker and Patron in New York

Diego Mantoan, University of Palermo, Italy

The book presents the long-lost biography of Lionello Perera, principal banker, patron, and philanthropist of the Italian American community in New York at the inception of the twentieth century. Born and raised in Venice, Lionello Perera took over his uncle’s financial activity in Wall Street and developed the family business into a stronghold of the Italian American community. His remarkable career led him to become the Vice President of Bank of America in 1928 as an associate of California born Amadeo P. Giannini, while he also was instrumental to the political success of New York mayor Fiorello La Guardia. Recognised as a true founding father of the Italian American community of the East Coast, he supported welfare societies and public hospitals to foster the integration of Italian immigrants. A close friend of star conductor Arturo Toscanini, Lionello Perera and his wife Carolyn Allen Perera turned into influential music patrons for Italian and Jewish musicians. Their unique Art Deco house in the Upper East Side became an epicentre of the New York music world, showcasing the banker’s refined art collection that matched the taste of J. Pierpont Morgan and Samuel H. Kress. The book relies on unprecedented archival material rendering justice to the relevance Lionello Perera holds as a contributor to the political, social, and cultural integration of Italians in the USA. It offers an innovative perspective that considers the tight interrelation of Italian Americans of the East Coast with ongoing events in their country of origin. Lionello Perera’s life highlights the silent contribution of Italian Americans to change the US banking system and help the integration of Italian immigrants in their new country. Hence, the main audience are students and scholars interested in the history of immigration, banking history, Italian American culture as well as music studies and art history.

The Prisons Memory Archive: A Case Study in Filmed Memory of Conflict

Edited by Jolene Mairs Dyer, Ulster University et al.

The Prisons Memory Archive (PMA) explores ways that narratives of a conflicted past are filmed at the site of the experiences and later negotiated in a contested present in the North of Ireland. Given the state’s failed attempts at establishing an official process for addressing the legacy of the conflict that lasted between 1968 and 1998, there are a number of community and academic initiatives that have taken up this task. The Prisons Memory Archive is one such project, whose aim is to research the possibilities of engaging with the story of the ‘other’ in a society that is emerging from decades of political violence. The PMA filmed back inside the prisons with those who passed through Armagh Gaol (2006) and the Maze and Long Kesh Prison (2007), which were both touchstone and tinderbox during the 30 years of violent conflict. We applied protocols of co-ownership, where participants become co-authors of their own story, with the right to withdraw up to the point of exhibition; inclusivity to ensure a multi-narrative archive with prison staff, prisoners, visitors, teachers, chaplains, etc.; and life-story telling, where leading questions are eschewed in order to return more agency to the participants. Currently, the full archive, made up of 160 walk-and-talk recordings totaling 300 hours of filmed material, is available at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, where it is preserved and made accessible to the public, and a website has been designed for educational use of the archive. This collection offers critical reflections on the processes of recording, archiving and utilising the archive in its several manifestations, e.g. feature films, website, and full archive at the Public Records Office. The perspectives offer a range of reflections, including filming, editing, archiving, web design, education, and museum practice.

Participatory Practice in Space, Place, and Service Design

Questions of Access, Engagement and Creative Experience

Edited by Kelly L. Anderson, Monash University

'Participatory Practice in Space, Place, and Service Design' is premised on a belief in the importance of participatory practices in finding creative solutions to the plethora of problems we face today. It argues that engaging professions with the public in mutual exploration, analysis, and creative thinking is essential. It not only ensures better quality products, places, services, and a greater sense of civic agency but also facilitates fuller access to them and the life opportunities they can unleash. This book offers a uniquely varied perspective of the myriad ways in which participatory practices operate across disciplines and how they impact the worlds and communities we create and inhabit. This book suggests that participatory practices are multi-disciplinary and relevant in fields as diverse as design, architecture, education, health care, sustainability, and community activism, to name a few of those discussed here. How do designed objects and environments affect wellness, creativity, learning, and a sense of belonging? How do products and services affect everyday experience and attitudes towards issues such as sustainability? How does giving people a creative voice in their own education, services, and built environments open up their potential and strengthen identity and civic agency? Addressing these questions requires a rethinking of relations between people, objects, and environments; it demands attention to space, place, and services.