The Confluence of Wisdom Along the Silk Road

Omar Khayyam’s Transformative Poetry

Mostafa Vaziri, University of Innsbruck, Austria

For centuries along the vibrant cultural corridor of the Silk Road of Central Asia, philosophers and thinkers from Hellenic, Chinese and Indian traditions debated existential issues. Out of this stimulating milieu, the iconic poet-mathematician Omar Khayyam emerged in the eleventh century, advancing a transformative intercultural philosophy in his poetic work, the Rubaiyat. Vaziri traces the themes of Khayyam’s Rubaiyat back to the highly influential philosophical traditions of the Silk Road and uncovers fascinating parallels in original works by Heraclitus, Zhuangzi (Daoism), Nagarjuna (Mahayana Buddhism), and the Upanishads. In addition, Vaziri’s elegant translation and unique classification of the verses of the Rubaiyat reveal an existential roadmap laid out by Khayyam. In this pioneering volume, Vaziri not only fuses the multiple disciplines of literature, philosophy, culture, history and medicine but also takes the approach of the Rubaiyat to a new level, presenting it as a source of wisdom therapy that stands the test of time in the face of doubt and confusion, offering a platform for self-restoration.

Arts in the Margins of World Encounters

Edited by Willemijn de Jong, University of Zurich, Switzerland et al.

'Arts in the Margins of World Encounters' presents original contributions that deal with artworks of differently marginalized people—such as ethnic minorities, refugees, immigrants, disabled people, and descendants of slaves—, a wide variety of art forms—like clay figures, textile, paintings, poems, museum exhibits and theatre performances—, and original data based on committed, long-term fieldwork and/or archival research in Brazil, Martinique, Rwanda, India, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The volume develops theoretical approaches inspired by innovative theorists and is based on currently debated analytical categories including the ethnographic turn in contemporary art, polycentric aesthetics, and aesthetic cannibalization, among others. This collection also incorporates fascinating and intriguing contemporary cases, but with solid theoretical arguments and grounds. 'Arts in the Margins of World Encounters' will appeal to students at all levels, scholars, and practitioners in arts, aesthetics, anthropology, social inequality, and discrimination, as well as researchers in other fields, including post-colonialism and cultural organizations.

Snapping and Wrapping: Personal Photography in Japan

Richard M. Chalfen, Temple University

'Snapping and Wrapping' represents an original study in Japanese visual culture, pictorial communication, and photographic studies. Vernacular visual culture is highlighted, stressing ordinary people and everyday life to explore photographic expressions of Japanese family life. The theme of “how people looked” is described from two closely related perspectives: how people appeared in their own photographs, and how people looked at specific features of their own lives with analog camera technology. The book includes unexamined material based on a qualitative study involving personal fieldwork undertaken between 1993 and 2009. The metaphor of “wrapping culture” (Hendry) is suggested for ways of interpreting relationships of personal family photographs in conjunction with acknowledged cultural influences and values of Japanese culture. Across an introduction and six chapters, the book covers a series of research topics evoked by efforts to recover, repair, and return millions of photographs to survivors following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Memory, privacy and kinds of information control are reviewed as parts of strategies of sharing pictures, “presence” and the use of photographs for interpersonal interaction and communication. Throughout the monograph, emphasis is placed on understanding details of analog personal photography for potential comparisons to the intensely popular digitalization of photographic recordings and, in turn, facilitate making informed speculations for future photographic practice. This book will be of interest to upper-level students, graduate students and scholars in the fields of media and culture, Asian Studies (especially Japanese visual culture), as well as those working on sensitive relationships of family, memory and representation.

Love as human virtue and human need and its role in the lives of long-term prisoners

A multidisciplinary exploration

Christina Valeska Straub, University of Leeds

While the importance of love is rarely questioned, the effects of its presence and absence in certain environments often goes unnoticed. This book analyses the role of love in the lives of prisoners in a low security English prison. It seeks to provide a deeper insight into the meaning and role of love as a dual concept in the social-ecology of human existence, human development and well-being, and sets out to encourage a critical and practical (re)consideration of the potential benefits of love´s (re)inclusion into the prison set-up and purpose. This qualitative multidisciplinary analysis – based on psychological, moral philosophical, neuroscientific, and sociological literature – will appeal to postgraduates and early career researchers across the social sciences, as well practitioners of Criminal Justice and others interested in offender rehabilitation, and the effects of prison.

Postmodern Traces and Recent Hindi Novels

Veronica Ghirardi, University of Turin, Italy

Postmodernism is a notoriously elusive concept and still the object of critical debates among scholars across a range of different disciplines. In literature, in particular, these debates are complicated by “postmodern” styles emanating from outside the concept’s Western origins. By analyzing contemporary Hindi novels, and drawing on both Western and Hindi literary criticism, "Postmodern Traces and Recent Hindi Novels" aims to understand some of the manifestations of postmodernism in contemporary Hindi fiction, including ways the latter might challenge the traditional parameters of postmodern literature. This book is essential reading for scholars and students specializing in South Asian studies and both postcolonial and comparative literature. It will also interest the general reader curious to know more about one of the less explored areas of world literature.