Between the years 1550 and 1650, Italy's Jewish intellectuals created a unique and enduring synthesis of the great literary and philosophical heritage of the Andalusian Jews and the Renaissance`s renewal of perspective. While remaining faithful to the beliefs, behaviors, and language of their tradition, Italian Jews proved themselves open to a rapidly evolving world of great richness. The crisi…
Exemplary Bodies: Constructing the Jew in Russian Culture, 1880s to 2008 explores the construction of the Jew’s physical and ontological body in Russian culture as represented in literature, film, and non-literary texts from the 1880s to the present. With the rise of the dominance of biological and racialist discourse in the 1880s, the depiction of Jewish characters in Russian literary and cu…
Israel and Empire introduces students to the history, literature, and theology of the Hebrew Bible and texts of early Judaism, enabling them to read these texts through the lens of postcolonial interpretation. This approach should allow students to recognize not only how cultural and socio-political forces shaped ancient Israel and the worldviews of the early Jews but also the impact of imperia…
The Mishna Berura is, without a doubt, Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan's greatest and most complex contribution to the canon of Orthodox Jewish Law; it is a singular work that synthesizes Jewish traditions, laws, and mores into a practical halakhic guide to daily religious life. For all of his traditionalism, Rabbi Kagan was an iconoclast, and the Mishna Berura broke from many of the traditional approa…
The open area excavation of nearly a half of the small deserted medieval hamlet of West Cotton, Raunds, Northamptonshire has revealed the dynamic processes of constant development in a way that has rarely been achieved on other comparable sites in England. Its origins have been seen to lie in the mid tenth-century plantation of a planned settlement based on regular one-acre plots, which occurre…
The site of Warren Field in Scotland revealed two unusual and enigmatic features; an alignment of pits and a large, rectangular feature interpreted as a timber building. Excavations confirmed that the timber structure was an early Neolithic building and that the pits had been in use from the Mesolithic. This report details the excavations and reveals that the hall was associated with the storag…
ainism, perhaps more so than any other South Asian tradition, focuses strongly on the ethics of birth, life, and death, with regard to both humans and other living beings. Insistent Life is the first full-length interdisciplinary examination of the foundational principles of bioethics within Jain doctrine and the application of those principles in the contemporary sphere. Brianne Donaldson and …
Nonsuch in Surrey was Henry VIII's last and most fantastic palace. Begun in 1538, at the start of the 30th year of Henry's reign, the palace was intended as a triumphal celebration of the power and the grandeur of Henry VIII and the Tudor dynasty. The site was chosen for its fine countryside and hunting potential. The palace was ornately decorated with intricate Renaissance designs in carved an…
Newcastle upon Tyne is one of England’s great cities. Many think of it mainly as a product of the Industrial Revolution when abundant resources of coal, iron ore and water came together to create a Victorian industrial powerhouse. In fact, Newcastle’s long and proud history began in Roman times when Hadrian’s Wall marked the northernmost point of the Roman Empire.Newcastle became a thrivi…
The Till-Tweed river catchment areas in Northumberland contain outstanding archaeological and palaeoenvironmental remains which have been in general only poorly understood. This study has assembled detailed data that will provide a platform for future landscape-based research and site-based investigation. Written from a landscape, or geoarchaeological perspective, this study develops a methodol…