This is the first thorough English commentary on the geographical books of Pliny the Elder, written in the AD 70s. Pliny's account is the longest in Latin, and represents the geographical knowledge of that era, when the Roman Empire was the dominant force in the Mediterranean world. The work serves both cultural and ideological functions: much of it is topographical, but it also demonstrates th…
This book offers new perspectives on gender-based violence in three regions where the subject has been taboo in everyday discourse often due to patriarchal cultural norms that limit women’s autonomy. The contributions to this book provide rare insight into not only the levels and the socio-demographic determinants of domestic violence, but topics ranging from men’s attitudes toward wife bea…
The study examines textual representations of women’s laughter and smiling and their imagined connection to female virtue in a wide variety of discourses and contexts of the German Middle Ages, including medieval epic, ecclesiastical texts, conduct literature, lyric, and sculpture
This book compares perspectives on gender equality in Norway and Japan, focusing on family, education, media, and sexuality and reproduction as seen through a gendered lens.
He returned to Gleichen late in life—to the home left to him by his mother—and it was there that he began to reconnect with Blackfoot language and culture and to write his story. Although the terrific adversity Bear Chief faced in his childhood made an indelible mark on his life, his unyielding spirit is evident throughout his story.
This volume comprises some twenty articles, speeches and conversations of Fei Xiaotong from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Their central connecting theme is how civilizations could co-exist against a backdrop of rapid globalization. Fei proposes his concept of “cultural self-awareness,” summarized in the axiom “each appreciates his own best, appreciates the best of others, all appreci…
Contingent Encounters offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it appears between music and everyday life. Drawing on work in musicology, cultural studies, and critical improvisation studies, as well as his own performing experience, Dan DiPiero argues that comparing improvisation across domains calls into question how improvisation is typically recognized. By comparing the musi…
This book introduces readers to the concepts of sustainability and philosophy of slowness for the management of public entities such as cities or regions. While many urban communities face economic challenges that clearly show the limitations of growth and ever-increasing speed, this book explores an alternative, thought-provoking standpoint in five chapters. The first chapter explains the impo…
This social, cultural, and political history of Slavic Muslim women of the Yugoslav region in the first decades of the post-Ottoman era is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the issues confronting these women. It is based on a study of voluntary associations (philanthropic, cultural, Islamic-traditionalist, and feminist) of the period. It is broadly held that Muslim women were sil…
This book investigates the role of religion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in Southern Africa.Building on a diverse range of methodologies and disciplinary approaches, the book reflects on how religion, politics and health have interfaced in Southern African contexts, when faced with the sudden public health emergency caused by the pandemic. Religious actors have played a key role on t…