South Africa possesses one of the richest popular music traditions in the world—from marabi to mbaqanga, from boeremusiek to bubblegum, from kwela to kwaito. Yet the risk that future generations of South Africans will not know their musical roots is very real. Of all the recordings made here since the 1930s, thousands have been lost for ever, for the powers-that-be never deemed them worthy of…
The study of African music must be grounded in indigenous African knowledge systems, thus making it truly representative of indigenous Africa’s intellectual history. The African Classical Ensemble Music: Theory and Drum-based Concert Series is intended to empower literacy-driven ensemble creativity which, in turn, advances the philosophical, theoretical, medical and humanizing imperatives of …
The study of African music must be grounded in indigenous African knowledge systems, thus making it truly representative of indigenous Africa’s intellectual history. The African Classical Ensemble Music: Theory and Drum-based Concert Series is intended to empower literacy-driven ensemble creativity which, in turn, advances the philosophical, theoretical, medical and humanizing imperatives of …
As German Jews emigrated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and as exiles from Nazi Germany, they carried the traditions, culture, and particular prejudices of their home with them. At the same time, Germany—and Berlin in particular—attracted both secular and religious Jewish scholars from eastern Europe. They engaged in vital intellectual exchange with German Jewry, although t…
This collection addresses the concept of gender in the middle ages through the study of place and space, exploring how gender and space may be mutually constructive and how individuals and communities make and are made by the places and spaces they inhabit. From womb to tomb, how are we defined and confined by gender and by space? Interrogating the thresholds between sacred and secular, public …
We all have an animal story—the pet we loved, the wild animal that captured our childhood imagination, the deer the neighbor hit while driving. While scientific breakthroughs in animal cognition, the effects of global climate change and dwindling animal habitats, and the exploding interdisciplinary field of animal studies have complicated things, such stories remain a part of how we tell the …
From Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 search for the Northwest Passage to early twentieth-century sprints to the South Pole, polar expeditions produced an extravagant archive of documents that are as varied as they are engaging. As the polar ice sheets melt, fragments of this archive are newly emergent. In The News at the Ends of the Earth Hester Blum examines the rich, offbeat collection of pri…
Although there is considerable historical literature describing the social and economic impact of drought on the prairies in the 1930s, little has been written about the challenges presented by drought in more contemporary times. The drought of 2001-02 was, for example, the most recent large-area, intense, and prolonged drought in Canada and one of Canada’s most costly natural disasters in a …
Before the fall of Imperial Rome, priests cast the guts of sacrificial animals on the temple floor, claiming to be able to divine the future from these entrails. By probing the remains of Alberta’s past sacrifices (reading the entrails), the author believes we might dimly see an apparition of Alberta’s future. This controversial book vividly portrays the history of land and life in Alberta …
Northern Canada’s distinctive landscapes, its complex social relations and the contested place of the North in contemporary political, military, scientific and economic affairs have fueled recent scholarly discussion. At the same time, both the media and the wider public have shown increasing interest in the region. This timely volume extends our understanding of the environmental history of …