Writing biographies for a long time had been a male hegemonic project. Ever since Plutarch and Sueton composed their vitae of the greats of classical antiquity, to the medieval obsession with the hagiographies of holy men (and a few women) and saints, Vasari's lives of great Renaissance artists, down to the French encyclopedists, Dr. Johnson and Lytton Strachey, as well as Ranke and Droysen the…
The spectacle of the wounded body figured prominently in the Middle Ages, from images of Christ’s wounds on the cross, to the ripped and torn bodies of tortured saints who miraculously heal through divine intervention, to graphic accounts of battlefield and tournament wounds—evidence of which survives in the archaeological record—and literary episodes of fatal (or not so fatal) wounds. Th…
"Austerity Baby might best be described as an ‘oblique memoir’. Janet Wolff’s fascinating volume is a family history – but one that is digressive and consistently surprising. The central underlying and repeated themes of the book are exile and displacement; lives (and deaths) during the Third Reich; mother-daughter and sibling relationships; the generational transmission of trauma and e…
This work lends a wonderfully-comprehensive look at the Angevin Empire, which consists of the reigns of Henry II, Richard I and John from 1154 to 1216. The book documents well the difficult family dynamics that led to war within the family for many years. This volume also features detailed maps and illustrations pertaining to the kings' reigns and the Crusades.
Hugh Dempsey has for decades been one of Alberta’s most prolific and influential public historians. Author of more than twenty books, he has also been “in on the ground floor” of the development of many key Alberta institutions, including the Indian Association of Alberta, the Historical Society of Alberta, and most importantly, the Glenbow Museum. Now, in his own words, he recounts his i…
This book provides a broad overview of the key concepts in public archaeology, a research field that examines the relationship between archaeology and the public, in both theoretical and practical terms. While based on the long-standing programme of undergraduate and graduate teaching in public archaeology at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, the book also takes into account the growth of schol…
Fonthill, in Wiltshire, is traditionally associated with the writer and collector William Beckford who built his Gothic fantasy house called Fonthill Abbey at the end of the eighteenth century. The collapse of the Abbey’s tower in 1825 transformed the name Fonthill into a symbol for overarching ambition and folly, a sublime ruin. Fonthill is, however, much more than the story of one man’s e…
The recent exhibitions dedicated to Botticelli around the world show, more than ever, the significant and continued debate about the artist. Botticelli Past and Present engages with this debate. The book comprises four thematic parts, spanning four centuries of Botticelli’s artistic fame and reception from the fifteenth century. Each part comprises a number of essays and includes a short intr…
Artist. Activist. Curator. Joane Cardinal-Schubert was a phenomenal talent. Her work recognizes the social and political ramifications of lived Indigenous experience, exposing truths about history, culture, and the contemporary world. She was a teacher and mentor, supporting those who struggle against the legacies of colonial history. She was an activist for Indigenous sovereignty, advocating f…
Marion Nicoll (1909 1985) is a widely acknowledged and important founder of Alberta art and certainly one of a dedicated few that brought abstraction into practice in the province. Her life and career is a story of determination, of dedication to her vision regardless of professional or personal challenges. Nicoll became the first woman instructor hired at the Provincial Institute of Art and Te…