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Imagining the Chorus in Augustan Poetry
by Lauren CurtisFrom archaic Sparta to classical Athens the chorus was a pervasive feature of Greek social and cultural life. Until now, however, its reception in Roman literature and culture has been little appreciated. This book examines how the chorus is reimagined in a brief but crucial period in the history of Latin literature, the early Augustan period from 30 to 10 BCE. It argues that in the work of Horace, Virgil, and Propertius, the language and imagery of the chorus articulate some of their most pressing concerns surrounding social and literary belonging in a rapidly changing Roman world. By re-examining seminal Roman texts such as Horace's Odes and Virgil's Aeneid from this fresh perspective, the book connects the history of musical culture with Augustan poetry's interrogation of fundamental questions surrounding the relationship between individual and community, poet and audience, performance and writing, Greek and Roman, and tradition and innovation.
Imagining the Creole City: The Rise of Literary Culture in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans
by Rien FertelIn the early years of the nineteenth century, the burgeoning cultural pride of white Creoles in New Orleans intersected with America's golden age of print, to explosive effect. Imagining the Creole City reveals the profusion of literary output -- histories and novels, poetry and plays -- that white Creoles used to imagine themselves as a unified community of writers and readers.Rien Fertel argues that Charles Gayarré's English-language histories of Louisiana, which emphasized the state's dual connection to America and to France, provided the foundation of a white Creole print culture predicated on Louisiana's exceptionalism. The writings of authors like Grace King, Adrien Rouquette, and Alfred Mercier consciously fostered an image of Louisiana as a particular social space, and of themselves as the true inheritors of its history and culture. In turn, the forging of this white Creole identity created a close-knit community of cosmopolitan Creole elites, who reviewed each other's books, attended the same salons, crusaded against the popular fiction of George Washington Cable, and worked together to preserve the French language in local and state governmental institutions. Together they reimagined the definition of "Creole" and used it as a marker of status and power.By the end of this group's era of cultural prominence, Creole exceptionalism had become a cornerstone in the myth of Louisiana in general and of New Orleans in particular. In defining themselves, the authors in the white Creole print community also fashioned a literary identity that resonates even today.
Imagining the Dead in British Literature and Culture, 1790–1848
by David McAllisterThis book offers the first account of the dead as an imagined community in the early nineteenth-century. It examines why Romantic and Victorian writers (including Wordsworth, Dickens, De Quincey, Godwin, and D’Israeli) believed that influencing the imaginative conception of the dead was a way to either advance, or resist, social and political reform. This interdisciplinary study contributes to the burgeoning field of Death Studies by drawing on the work of both canonical and lesser-known writers, reformers, and educationalists to show how both literary representation of the dead, and the burial and display of their corpses in churchyards, dissecting-rooms, and garden cemeteries, responded to developments in literary aesthetics, psychology, ethics, and political philosophy. Imagining the Dead in British Literature and Culture, 1790-1848 shows that whether they were lauded as exemplars or loathed as tyrants, rendered absent by burial, or made uncannily present through exhumation and display, the dead were central to debates about the shape and structure of British society as it underwent some of the most radical transformations in its history.
Imagining the Filipino American Diaspora: Transnational Relations, Identities, and Communities (Studies in Asian Americans)
by Jonathan Y. OkamuraFirst published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making through Science Fiction and Activism
by Shelley StreebyThis title is part of American Studies Now and available as an e-book first. Visit ucpress.edu/go/americanstudiesnow to learn more. From the 1960s to the present, activists, artists, and science fiction writers have imagined the consequences of climate change and its impacts on our future. Authors such as Octavia Butler and Leslie Marmon Silko, movie directors such as Bong Joon-Ho, and creators of digital media such as the makers of the Maori web series Anamata Future News have all envisioned future worlds in the wake of imminent environmental collapse, engaging audiences to think about the Earth’s sustainability. As public awareness of climate change has grown, so has the popularity of imaginative works of climate fiction that connect science with activism. Today real world social movements helmed by Indigenous people and people of color are leading the way against the greatest threat to our environment: the fossil fuel industry. It is through these stories and movements by Natives and people of color—both in the real world and imagined through science fiction—that we understand the relationship between culture and activism and how both can be a valuable tool in creating our future. Imagining the Future of Climate Change introduces readers to the history and most significant flashpoints in climate justice through speculative fictions and social movements to explore post-disaster possibilities and the art of world-making.
Imagining the Heartland: White Supremacy and the American Midwest
by Britt E. HalvorsonAn overdue examination of the Midwest's long influence on nationalism and white supremacy. Though many associate racism with the regional legacy of the South, it is the Midwest that has upheld some of the nation’s most deep-seated convictions about the value of whiteness. From Jefferson’s noble farmer to The Wizard of Oz, imagining the Midwest has quietly gone hand-in-hand with imagining whiteness as desirable and virtuous. Since at least the U.S. Civil War, the imagined Midwest has served as a screen or canvas, projecting and absorbing tropes and values of virtuous whiteness and its opposite, white deplorability, with national and global significance. Imagining the Heartland provides a poignant and timely answer to how and why the Midwest has played this role in the American imagination. In Imagining the Heartland, anthropologists Britt Halvorson and Josh Reno argue that there is an unexamined affinity between whiteness, Midwestness, and Americanness, anchored in their shared ordinary and homogenized qualities. These seemingly unremarkable qualities of the Midwest take work; they do not happen by default. Instead, creating successful representations of ordinary Midwestness, in both positive and negative senses, has required cultural expression through media ranging from Henry Ford’s assembly line to Grant Wood’s famous "American Gothic." Far from being just another region among others, the Midwest is a political and affective logic in racial projects of global white supremacy. Neglecting the Midwest means neglecting the production of white supremacist imaginings at their most banal and at their most influential, their most locally situated and their most globally dispersed.
Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture
by Samantha ZacherMost studies of Jews in medieval England begin with the year 1066, when Jews first arrived on English soil. Yet the absence of Jews in England before the conquest did not prevent early English authors from writing obsessively about them. Using material from the writings of the Church Fathers, contemporary continental sources, widespread cultural stereotypes, and their own imaginations, their depictions of Jews reflected their own politico-theological experiences.The thirteen essays in Imagining the Jew in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture examine visual and textual representations of Jews, the translation and interpretation of Scripture, the use of Hebrew words and etymologies, and the treatment of Jewish spaces and landmarks. By studying the "imaginary Jews" of Anglo-Saxon England, they offer new perspectives on the treatment of race, religion, and ethnicity in pre- and post-conquest literature and culture.
Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (Dimyonot)
by Ranen Omer-ShermanIn Imagining the Kibbutz, Ranen Omer-Sherman explores the literary and cinematic representations of the socialist experiment that became history’s most successfully sustained communal enterprise. Inspired in part by the kibbutz movement’s recent commemoration of its centennial, this study responds to a significant gap in scholarship. Numerous sociological and economic studies have appeared, but no book-length study has ever addressed the tremendous range of critically imaginative portrayals of the kibbutz. This diachronic study addresses novels, short fiction, memoirs, and cinematic portrayals of the kibbutz by both kibbutz “insiders” (including those born and raised there, as well as those who joined the kibbutz as immigrants or migrants from the city) and “outsiders.” For these artists, the kibbutz is a crucial microcosm for understanding Israeli values and identity. The central drama explored in their works is the monumental tension between the individual and the collective, between individual aspiration and ideological rigor, between self-sacrifice and self-fulfillment. Portraying kibbutz life honestly demands retaining at least two oppositional things in mind at once—the absolute necessity of euphoric dreaming and the mellowing inevitability of disillusionment. As such, these artists’ imaginative witnessing of the fraught relation between the collective and the citizen-soldier is the story of Israel itself.
Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination #2)
by Ranen Omer-ShermanIn Imagining the Kibbutz, Ranen Omer-Sherman explores the literary and cinematic representations of the socialist experiment that became history’s most successfully sustained communal enterprise. Inspired in part by the kibbutz movement’s recent commemoration of its centennial, this study responds to a significant gap in scholarship. Numerous sociological and economic studies have appeared, but no book-length study has ever addressed the tremendous range of critically imaginative portrayals of the kibbutz. This diachronic study addresses novels, short fiction, memoirs, and cinematic portrayals of the kibbutz by both kibbutz “insiders” (including those born and raised there, as well as those who joined the kibbutz as immigrants or migrants from the city) and “outsiders.” For these artists, the kibbutz is a crucial microcosm for understanding Israeli values and identity. The central drama explored in their works is the monumental tension between the individual and the collective, between individual aspiration and ideological rigor, between self-sacrifice and self-fulfillment. Portraying kibbutz life honestly demands retaining at least two oppositional things in mind at once—the absolute necessity of euphoric dreaming and the mellowing inevitability of disillusionment. As such, these artists’ imaginative witnessing of the fraught relation between the collective and the citizen-soldier is the story of Israel itself.
Imagining the Middle East
by Matthew F. JacobsAs its interests have become deeply tied to the Middle East, the United States has long sought to develop a usable understanding of the people, politics, and cultures of the region. InImagining the Middle East, Matthew Jacobs illuminates how Americans' ideas and perspectives about the region have shaped, justified, and sustained U. S. cultural, economic, military, and political involvement there. Jacobs examines the ways in which an informal network of academic, business, government, and media specialists interpreted and shared their perceptions of the Middle East from the end of World War I through the late 1960s. During that period, Jacobs argues, members of this network imagined the Middle East as a region defined by certain common characteristics--religion, mass politics, underdevelopment, and an escalating Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict--and as a place that might be transformed through U. S. involvement. Thus, the ways in which specialists and policymakers imagined the Middle East of the past or present came to justify policies designed to create an imagined Middle East of the future. Jacobs demonstrates that an analysis of the intellectual roots of current politics and foreign policy is critical to comprehending the styles of U. S. engagement with the Middle East in a post-9/11 world.
Imagining the Pagan Past: Gods and Goddesses in Literature and History since the Dark Ages
by Marion GibsonImagining the Pagan Past explores stories of Britain’s pagan history. These tales have been characterised by gods and fairies, folklore and magic. They have had an uncomfortable relationship with the scholarly world; often being seen as historically dubious, self-indulgent romance and, worse, encouraging tribal and nationalistic feelings or challenging church and state. This book shows how important these stories are to the history of British culture, taking the reader on a lively tour from prehistory to the present. From the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, Marion Gibson explores the ways in which British pagan gods and goddesses have been represented in poetry, novels, plays, chronicles, scientific and scholarly writing. From Geoffrey of Monmouth to Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney and H.G. Wells to Naomi Mitchison it explores Romano-British, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon deities and fictions. The result is a comprehensive picture of the ways in which writers have peopled the British pagan pantheons throughout history. Imagining the Pagan Past will be essential reading for all those interested in the history of paganism.
Imagining the Past, Constructing the Future
by Brady Wagoner Maria C. D. P. Lyra Alicia BarreiroThis book takes a sociocultural, developmental and dialogical perspective to explore the constructive and interconnected nature of remembering and imagining. Conceived as cognitive-affective processes, both emerge at the border of the person and his or her socio-cultural world. Memory is approached as a functional adaption to the environment using the resources of the past in preparation for action in the present. Imagination is tightly related to memory in that both aim to escape the confines of the concrete here-and-now situation; however, while memory is primarily oriented to the past, imagination looks to the future. Both are embedded in the exchanges with the social and cultural milieu, and thus theorizing them has relied on key ideas from Lev Vygotsky, Frederic Bartlett and Mikhail Bakhtin. Thus, this book aims to integrate theories of remembering and imagining, through rich empirical studies in diverse cultural settings and concerning the development of self and identity. These two groups of studies compose the subparts that organize the book.
Imagining the Roman Emperor: Perceptions of Rulers in the High Empire
by Panayiotis ChristoforouHow was the Roman emperor viewed by his subjects? How strongly did their perception of his role shape his behaviour? Adopting a fresh approach, Panayiotis Christoforou focuses on the emperor from the perspective of his subjects across the Roman Empire. Stress lies on the imagination: the emperor was who he seemed, or was imagined, to be. Through various vignettes employing a wide range of sources, he analyses the emperor through the concerns and expectations of his subjects, which range from intercessory justice to fears of the monstrosities associated with absolute power. The book posits that mythical and fictional stories about the Roman emperor form the substance of what people thought about him, which underlines their importance for the historical and political discourse that formed around him as a figure. The emperor emerges as an ambiguous figure. Loved and hated, feared and revered, he was an object of contradiction and curiosity.
Imagining the Self in South Asian and African Literatures
by Inder SidhuThis book examines the idea of the self in Anglophone literatures from British colonies in Africa and the subcontinent, and in the context of intercultural encounter, literary hybridity and globalization. The project examines texts by eight authors across the colonial, postwar and post-9/11 eras – Olaudah Equiano, Sake Dean Mahomet, Henry Callaway, R.C. Temple, Amos Tutuola, G.V. Desani, Tsitsi Dangarembga and Aravind Adiga – in order to map different strategies of selfhood across four fields of literature: autobiographical life writing, folk anthology, postwar fabulism, and contemporary realism. Drawing on historical analysis, psychological inquiry, comparative linguistics, postcolonial criticism and social theory, this book responds to a renewed emphasis on the narrative strategies and creative choices involved in a literary construction of the self. Threaded through this investigation is an analysis of the effects of globalization, or the intensification of intercultural and dialogic complexity over time.
Imagining the Soul in Premodern Literature (Early Modern Literature in History)
by Abe DaviesThis book is a study of ghostly matters - of the soul - in literature spanning the tenth century and the age of Shakespeare. All people, according to John Donne, ‘constantly beleeve’ that they have an immortal soul. But he also reflects that in fact there is nothing ‘so well established as constrains us to beleeve, both that the soul is immortall, and that every particular man hath such a soul’. In understanding the question of man's disembodied part as at once fundamental and fundamentally uncertain he was entirely of his time, and Imagining the Soul in Premodern Literature considers this fraught, shifting, yet uniquely compelling entity in the context of the literary forms and effects involved in its representation. Gruesome medieval dialogues between damned souls and worm-eaten bodies; verse and prose works by Donne, René Descartes, Margaret Cavendish and Andrew Marvell; a profusion of sonnet sequences, sermons, manuals of instruction and travelogues; Hamlet and its natural philosophical thinking about the apparently disembodied soul haunting Elsinore: these chapters range across all this and more, offering a rigorous yet accessible account of an essential aspect of premodern literature that will be of interest to scholars, students and the general reader alike.
Imagining the Tropics: Women, Romance, and the Making of Modern Tourism (Critical Caribbean Studies)
by Elizabeth S. Manley Elizabeth ManleyImagining the Tropics is a history of the development of tourism in the Caribbean from the 1910s through the 1970s that focuses on the ways women’s labors of hospitality, writing, and advocacy built the industry and its ubiquitous imagery of tropical island relaxation, escape, and romance. By examining a range of sources, engaging an array of women protagonists, and looking broadly across multiple Caribbean island-states including Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, it seeks to understand how the region came to be sold as a romantic escape from the “troubles” of the modern world. By putting women at the center of Caribbean tourism history—as both its ambassadors and objects of desire—it seeks to explain some of the complicated contradictions that plague the business of pleasure but also to point toward ways of building alternative models to its present and past extractive realities.
Imagistic Care: Growing Old in a Precarious World (Thinking from Elsewhere)
by Cheryl MattinglyImagistic Care explores ethnographically how images function in our concepts, our writing, our fieldwork, and our lives. With contributions from anthropologists, philosophers and an artist, the volume asks: How can imagistic inquiries help us understand the complex entanglements of self and other, dependence and independency, frailty and charisma, notions of good and bad aging, and norms and practices of care in old age? And how can imagistic inquiries offer grounds for critique? Cutting between ethnography, phenomenology and art, this volume offers a powerful contribution to understandings of growing old. The images created in words and drawings are used to complicate rather than simplify the world. The contributors advance an understanding of care, and of aging itself, marked by alterity, spectral presences and uncertainty.Contributors: Rasmus Dyring, Harmandeep Kaur Gill, Lone Grøn, Maria Louw, Cheryl Mattingly, Lotte Meinert, Maria Speyer, Helle S. Wentzer, Susan Reynolds Whyte
Imago Cosmi: The Vision of the Cosmos and the History of Astronomical Machines (Astronomers' Universe)
by Daniele L. MariniThis book takes the reader on an exploration of the Cosmos, from Mesopotamia and Egypt to China; it unveils the fascinating development of astronomy and mathematics. After an overview of the origins of these subjects, highlighting the contributions of Greek astronomers, the Arab culture, and Copernicus' solar system model, the book delves into the revolutionary work of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton, leading to a comprehensive understanding of the solar system. Special attention is given to the instruments used by ancient astronomers, including the most important astronomical clocks and planetary machines. In light of this, the author examines Kepler's almost unknown design of a planetary machine and offers an interpretation using virtual reality techniques. The book also highlights the Chinese view of the Cosmos and the evolution of its astronomy and astronomical machines, offering readers a unique perspective and insight into the relationship between astronomy and technology in different cultures. Finally, the author provides a practical approach to understanding the construction and mechanics of astronomical machines, exploring the process of designing and manufacturing a Tellurium. The reading is enriched with short videos of the Tellurium, along with a translation of the description of the planetary machine by Christian Huygens. In addition, it provides a unique glimpse into the religious influences on astronomical studies during the mid-1700s through the translation of Johann Albrecht Bengel's book Cyclus. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of science and technology. It appeals to astronomers, mathematicians, physicists, and historians of science and technology alike, providing fascinating descriptions and insightful analysis of the vision of the Cosmos from its earliest conceptions to the present day.
Imago Cosmi: Visioni del Cosmo e Storia delle Macchine Astronomiche
by Daniele L. MariniQuesto libro conduce il lettore in un viaggio esplorativo attraverso il Cosmo, dall'antica Mesopotamia ed Egitto fino alla Cina, svelando il fascino dello sviluppo dell'astronomia e della matematica che ha dato vita alla rivoluzione scientifica. Dopo una panoramica sulle origini di questi campi di studio, evidenziando i contributi degli astronomi greci, della cultura araba e del modello eliocentrico di Copernico, il testo si addentra nel lavoro rivoluzionario di Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei e Isaac Newton, offrendo una comprensione approfondita del sistema solare. Gli strumenti utilizzati dagli astronomi, tra cui gli orologi astronomici e le macchine planetarie più significative, sono al centro dell'attenzione, consentendo di comprendere meglio la formazione e la diffusione della concezione del Sistema Solare. Inoltre, l'autore esamina il poco conosciuto progetto di una macchina planetaria di Kepler e ne offre un'interpretazione utilizzando tecniche di realtà virtuale. Il libro mette in luce anche la visione cinese del Cosmo e l'evoluzione della sua astronomia e delle relative macchine, offrendo ai lettori una prospettiva unitaria sulla concezione del cosmo e della tecnologia in Occidente e nell'Estremo Oriente. I dati degli ingranaggi e dei periodi planetari delle macchine esaminate nel testo sono raccolti tra gli annessi web del libo. L'esperienza di lettura è arricchita dalla traduzione della descrizione della macchina planetaria di Christian Huygens e dalla trattazione del progetto e della realizzazione di un Tellurium per comprendere la costruzione e la meccanica delle macchine astronomiche. Inoltre, viene offerta una visione unica sulle influenze religiose sugli studi astronomici del XVIII secolo attraverso la traduzione del libro Cyclus di Johann Albrecht Bengel. Breve materiale video sull'Antikythera, sul Tellurium dell'autore e su quello di Philip M. Hahn completa la documentazione. Questo libro è un must per chiunque sia interessato alla storia della scienza e della tecnologia, appassionando sia gli astronomi, i matematici e i fisici che gli storici della scienza e della tecnologia, fornendo descrizioni affascinanti e analisi illuminanti della visione del Cosmo dalle sue prime concezioni fino ai giorni nostri. Video e documenti disponibili tramite app: scarica gratuitamente l'app SN More Media, scansiona il link con il tasto play e accedi ai video e ai documenti direttamente sul tuo smartphone o tablet.
Imago Dei: The Byzantine Apologia for Icons (The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts #36)
by Jaroslav PelikanA sweeping account of the controversies surrounding the worship of images in the early Byzantine churchIn 726, the Byzantine emperor, Leo III, issued an edict that all religious images in the empire were to be destroyed, a directive that was later endorsed by a synod of the church in 753 under his son, Constantine V. If the policy of Iconoclasm had succeeded, the entire history of Christian art—and of the Christian church, at least in the East—would have been altered.Iconoclasm was defeated by Byzantine politics, popular revolts, monastic piety, and, most fundamentally of all, by theology, just as it had been theology that the opponents of images had used to justify their actions. Analyzing an intriguing chapter in the history of ideas, the renowned scholar Jaroslav Pelikan shows how a faith that began by attacking the worship of images ended first in permitting and then in commanding it.Pelikan charts the theological defense of icons during the iconoclastic controversies of the eighth and ninth centuries, whose high point came in 787, when the Second Council of Nicaea restored the cult of images in the church. He demonstrates how the dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation eventually provided the basic rationale for images: because the invisible God had become human and therefore personally visible in Jesus Christ, it became permissible to make images of that Image. And because not only the human nature of Christ, but that of his Mother had been transformed by the Incarnation, she, too, could be “iconized,” together with all the other saints and angels.The iconographic “text” of the book is provided by one of the very few surviving icons from the period before Iconoclasm, the Egyptian tapestry Icon of the Virgin now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Other icons serve to illustrate the theological argument, just as the theological argument serves to explain the icons.In an incisive foreword, Judith Herrin explains the enduring importance of the book and discusses how later scholars have built on Pelikan’s work.Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.
Imaro
by Charles R. SaundersForsaken, outcast, warrior . . . Abandoned as a child, Imaro has struggled for acceptance all his life among the warrior-herdsmen tribe, the Ilyassai. Seeking answers and identity, his quest leads him across the vast continent of Nyumbani as he discovers he has powerful enemies, both human and inhuman. Hunted by relentless foes, Imaro becomes the hunter and events preordained before his birth begin to unfold. Powers are stirring in Nyumbani. As Imaro struggles to hold on to his hard-won acceptance, the warrior in him seeks the answer to the question that has haunted him all his life: Who am I?Praise for Charles R. Saunders'A writer of vivid and thoughtful fantasy' - Scott Lynch, bestselling author of The Lies of Locke Lamora'You can't talk African epic fantasy without mentioning Charles Saunders' - Nnedi Okorafor, multi award-winning author of Binti and The Book of Phoenix'One of the godfathers of Afrofuturism and black speculative fiction' - Tananarive Due, multi award-winning author of The Reformatory and The Living Blood'A Literary Lion' - CBC'A whole new flavour of heroic fantasy' - Analog'Saunders' words paint his vivid vision of the mythical continent of Nyumbani ineradicably upon his readers' minds' - TorDotCom'Saunders alone has appreciated the potential of Africa as a backdrop for heroic fantasy' - Publishers Weekly'Terrific epic fantasy' - Cat Rambo, author of You Sexy Thing'A literary trailblazer' - New York Times'The Father of Sword and Soul' - Medium'One of the titans of '70s-'80s sword-and-sorcery' - DMR Books'Imaro opened that world up for me, and I will be forever grateful' - BlackGate'Imaro follows in the footsteps of Conan . . . an epic journey' - Eons
Imaro
by Charles R. SaundersForsaken, outcast, warrior . . . Abandoned as a child, Imaro has struggled for acceptance all his life among the warrior-herdsmen tribe, the Ilyassai. Seeking answers and identity, his quest leads him across the vast continent of Nyumbani as he discovers he has powerful enemies, both human and inhuman. Hunted by relentless foes, Imaro becomes the hunter and events preordained before his birth begin to unfold. Powers are stirring in Nyumbani. As Imaro struggles to hold on to his hard-won acceptance, the warrior in him seeks the answer to the question that has haunted him all his life: Who am I?Praise for Charles R. Saunders'A writer of vivid and thoughtful fantasy' - Scott Lynch, bestselling author of The Lies of Locke Lamora'You can't talk African epic fantasy without mentioning Charles Saunders' - Nnedi Okorafor, multi award-winning author of Binti and The Book of Phoenix'One of the godfathers of Afrofuturism and black speculative fiction' - Tananarive Due, multi award-winning author of The Reformatory and The Living Blood'A Literary Lion' - CBC'A whole new flavour of heroic fantasy' - Analog'Saunders' words paint his vivid vision of the mythical continent of Nyumbani ineradicably upon his readers' minds' - TorDotCom'Saunders alone has appreciated the potential of Africa as a backdrop for heroic fantasy' - Publishers Weekly'A literary trailblazer' - New York Times
Imayamalai
by S. MohanaThe book gives the mythological, historical and geographical details of the Himalayas, the great mountain of India.
Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck
by Adam CohenLonglisted for the 2016 National Book Award for NonfictionOne of America’s great miscarriages of justice, the Supreme Court’s infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling made government sterilization of “undesirable” citizens the law of the land In 1927, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling so disturbing, ignorant, and cruel that it stands as one of the great injustices in American history. In Imbeciles, bestselling author Adam Cohen exposes the court’s decision to allow the sterilization of a young woman it wrongly thought to be “feebleminded” and to champion the mass eugenic sterilization of undesirable citizens for the greater good of the country. The 8–1 ruling was signed by some of the most revered figures in American law—including Chief Justice William Howard Taft, a former U.S. president; and Louis Brandeis, a progressive icon. Oliver Wendell Holmes, considered by many the greatest Supreme Court justice in history, wrote the majority opinion, including the court’s famous declaration “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”Imbeciles is the shocking story of Buck v. Bell, a legal case that challenges our faith in American justice. A gripping courtroom drama, it pits a helpless young woman against powerful scientists, lawyers, and judges who believed that eugenic measures were necessary to save the nation from being “swamped with incompetence.” At the center was Carrie Buck, who was born into a poor family in Charlottesville, Virginia, and taken in by a foster family, until she became pregnant out of wedlock. She was then declared “feebleminded” and shipped off to the Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded.Buck v. Bell unfolded against the backdrop of a nation in the thrall of eugenics, which many Americans thought would uplift the human race. Congress embraced this fervor, enacting the first laws designed to prevent immigration by Italians, Jews, and other groups charged with being genetically inferior. Cohen shows how Buck arrived at the colony at just the wrong time, when influential scientists and politicians were looking for a “test case” to determine whether Virginia’s new eugenic sterilization law could withstand a legal challenge. A cabal of powerful men lined up against her, and no one stood up for her—not even her lawyer, who, it is now clear, was in collusion with the men who wanted her sterilized.In the end, Buck’s case was heard by the Supreme Court, the institution established by the founders to ensure that justice would prevail. The court could have seen through the false claim that Buck was a threat to the gene pool, or it could have found that forced sterilization was a violation of her rights. Instead, Holmes, a scion of several prominent Boston Brahmin families, who was raised to believe in the superiority of his own bloodlines, wrote a vicious, haunting decision upholding Buck’s sterilization and imploring the nation to sterilize many more. Holmes got his wish, and before the madness ended some sixty to seventy thousand Americans were sterilized. Cohen overturns cherished myths and demolishes lauded figures in relentless pursuit of the truth. With the intellectual force of a legal brief and the passion of a front-page exposé, Imbeciles is an ardent indictment of our champions of justice and our optimistic faith in progress, as well as a triumph of American legal and social history.From the Hardcover edition.
Imhotep the African: Architect of the Cosmos
by Robert Bauval Thomas BrophyA bold study of the ancient Egyptian architect, high priest, and royal astronomer—and his influence as the true father of African civilization.In this groundbreaking book, Egyptologist Robert Bauval and astrophysicist Thomas Brophy uncover the mystery of Imhotep, an ancient Egyptian superstar, pharaonic Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo, and Newton all rolled into one. Based on their research at the Step Pyramid Complex at Saqqara, the book delves into observational astronomy to “decode” the alignments and other design features of the Step Pyramid Complex, to uncover the true origins and genius of Imhotep. Like a whodunit detective story, they follow the clues that take them on an exhilarating magical mystery tour starting at Saqqara, leading them to temples in Upper Egypt and to the stones of Nabta Playa and the black African stargazers who placed them there.Imhotep the African describes how Imhotep was the ancient link to the birth of modern civilization, restoring him to his proper place at the center of the birthing of Egyptian, and world, civilization.Praise for Imhotep the African“An archaeological detective story. Bauval and Brophy make the case that the legendary Egyptian physician, architect, and astronomer Imhotep was not only an historical figure but that he was black. This remarkable book challenges many assumptions about life along the Nile, revealing a worldview and technology that was more sophisticated than anything previously imagined.” —Stanley Krippner, PhD, co-author of Personal Mythology“It is evident to many of their colleagues that Robert Bauval and Thomas Brophy are the dynamic duo of independent Egyptologists. They are to be commended for their scholarship and their dogged determination to present an honest assessment of historical events—even if it flies in the face of conventional dogma.” —Anthony T. Browder, author and independent Egyptologist