Liberal Education and the Idea of the University

Arguments and Reflections on Theory and Practice

Edited by Karim Dharamsi, Mount Royal University, Canada and James Zimmer, Mount Royal University, Canada

November 2018 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-521-1
Availability: In stock
288pp. ¦ $63 £47 €53

The idea of the university and the idea of liberal education share a family resemblance. However, it is not always explicitly clear what they have in common and what differentiates them. This collection brings together arguments and reflections on the nature of the university and the place of liberal learning in the 21st century. It is divided into two parts. In the first part authors examine the values and ideals that shape our understanding of liberal learning and the university; in the second part authors consider pedagogies informing our practices, asking after what underlying presuppositions, when made explicit, guide our liberal education classrooms in higher education. Unique in its approaches, this volume includes defenses of liberal education’s intrinsic value, the commodification of some of its best ideals, as well as utilitarian defenses that challenge some orthodox conceptions of liberal learning and its justifications. Each in its own right understands liberal learning as essential to the defense of a democratic order. On the pedagogical side, included are essays that defend a view of liberal education from the vantage of STEM subjects, including architecture, as well as those we typically associate with the liberal arts. This volume will aid academics and students seeking to better grasp an understanding of liberal education, but also those seeking to advance their pedagogical ideas about liberal learning. Researchers and students in education, higher education and those interested in the liberal arts and sciences will find this volume a useful addition to their collection.

The Philosophy of Forgiveness – Volume IV

Christian Perspectives on Forgiveness

Edited by Gregory L. Bock, The University of Texas at Tyler

September 2018 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-454-2
Availability: In stock
244pp. ¦ $62 £49 €54

The Philosophy of Forgiveness, Volume IV: Christian Perspectives on Forgiveness is a collection of essays that explores different Christian views on forgiveness. Each essay takes up a different topic, such as the nature of divine forgiveness, the basis for forgiving our enemies, and the limits of forgiveness. In some chapters, the views of different philosophers and theologians are explored, figures such as St. John Climacus, Bonaventure, and Nietzsche. In other chapters, the concept of forgiveness is analyzed in light of historical events, such as the Nickel Mines shooting, the Charleston shooting, and the Armenian genocide. The contributors to the volume come from different backgrounds, including philosophy, theology, and psychology. The essays are written for scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and theology, as well as graduate students and upper-division undergraduate students.

The Centre as Margin: Eccentric Perspectives on Art

Edited by Joana Antunes, Group of Multidisciplinary Studies in Art, CEAACP/Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, Portugal et al.

September 2018 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-447-4
Availability: In stock
362pp. ¦ $66 £49 €56

The Centre as Margin. Eccentric Perspectives on Art is a multi-authored volume of collected essays that answer the challenge of thinking Art History, and the Arts in a broader sense, from a liminal point of view. Its main goal is thus to discuss the margin from the centre - drawing on its concomitance within study themes and subjects, ontological and epistemological positions, or research methodologies themselves. Marginality, eccentricity, liminality, and superfluity are all part of a dynamic relationship between centre and margin(s) that will be approached and discussed, from the point of view of disciplines as different and as close as art history, philosophy, literature and design, from medieval to contemporary art. Resulting from recent research developed from the privileged viewpoint offered by the margin, this volume brings together the contributions of young researchers along with the work of career scholars. Likewise, it does not obey a traditional or a rigid diachronic structure, being rather organized in three major parts that organically articulate the different essays. Within each of these parts in which the book is divided, papers are sometimes organized according to their timeframes, providing the reader with an encompassing (though not encyclopedic) overview of the common ground over which the various artistic disciplines build their methodological, theoretical, and thematic centers and margins. The intended eccentricity of this volume – and the original essays herein presented – should provide researchers, scholars, students, artists, curators, and the general reader interested in art with a refreshing approach to its various scientific strands.

The Art of Artertainment: Nobrow, American Style

Edited by Peter Swirski, University of Alberta, Canada and Tero Eljas Vanhanen, University of Helsinki, Finland

December 2018 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-463-4
Availability: In stock
255pp. ¦ $64 £48 €55

Artertainment is more than a novel aesthetic term reflecting the fact that art and entertainment have cross-pollinated each other throughout history. It is a creative strategy that purposely intertwines highbrow and lowbrow aesthetics in the name of reaching the connoisseurs and the masses. The Art of Artertainment sets out to unravel the jumble of aesthetic faultlines and prejudices found wherever we find artistic crossovers—which is to say, everywhere. Revisionist, iconoclastic, and artertaining in its own right, it provides a new framework for the analysis of American nobrow culture from the Colonial times to the digitally turbocharged present.

Nomads of Mauritania

Diane Himpan Sabatier and Brigitte Himpan

September 2018 / ISBN: 978-1-62273-456-6
Availability: In stock
552pp. ¦ $71 £53 €60

Nomads of Mauritania aims at understanding the cultural identity (religious beliefs, language, values, relationships with others) of the Mauritanian nomads through their geographical environment, an original history, their lifestyle, caste system, diet, housing and crafts and how it is revealed by their art, materially expressed on the everyday objects and the body and defined for the first time as geometrical-abstract and respectively as ephemeral usual art and ephemeral living art. Furthermore, what has become of the nomads of Mauritania with the climate warming and the economic and cultural globalization and to what extent are they still the pillars and heart of the Mauritanian society of today?