Fragments for a History of a Vanishing Humanism PDF Download

Author: Myra Seaman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780814213049
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Fragments for a History of a Vanishing Humanism brings together scholars working in prehistoric, classical, medieval, and early modern studies who are developing, from longer and slower historical perspectives, critical post/humanisms that explore: 1) the significance (historical, sociocultural, psychic, etc.) of human expression and affectivity; 2) the impact of technology and new sciences on what it means to be a human self; 3) the importance of art and literature in defining and enacting human selves; 4) the importance of history in defining the human; 5) the artistic plasticity of the human; 6) the question of a human collectivity--what is the value, and peril, of "being human" or "being post/human" together?; and finally, 7) the constructive, and destructive, relations (aesthetic, historical, and philosophical) of the human to the nonhuman. This volume, edited by Myra Seaman and Eileen A. Joy, insists on the always provisional and contingent formations of the human, and of various humanisms, over time, while also aiming to demonstrate the different ways these formations emerge (and also disappear) in different times and places, from the most ancient past to the most contemporary present. The essays are offered as "fragments" because the authors do not believe there can ever be a "total history" of either the human or the post/human as they play themselves out in differing historical contexts. At the same time, the volume as a whole argues that defining what "the human" (or "post/human") is has always been an ongoing, never finished cultural project.

Author: James Fennel
Publisher: Hachette Ireland
ISBN: 9780340920275
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In Vanishing Ireland II, the follow up to the bestselling Vanishing Ireland I, we take another journey down memory lane and, through a unique collection of portrait interviews, we look at the dying ways and traditions of Irish life. Illustrated with over a hundred evocative and stunning photographs, we meet the people and the customs that are fast becoming a distant memory. Through their own words and memories, men and women from every corner of Ireland transport us back to a simpler time when people lived off the land and the sea, and when music and storytelling were essential parts of life. Vanishing Ireland brings together the stories of those who lived through Ireland's formative years. These poignant interviews and photographs will make you laugh and cry but, above all, will provide a valuable chronicle that connects twenty-first century Ireland to a rapidly disappearing world.

Author: Amery Colin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
British architectural consultant Amery profiles large historical constructions in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and the Americas that are in advancing stages of deterioration. Most of the many photographs are color. The quality, sewn-bound volume is published in conjunction with the World Monuments Fund. c. Book News Inc.

Author: Deborah Willis
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062020277
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
A French teacher who collects fiancés; a fortune-teller who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter; an aging cowboy seduced by a city girl . . . these are some of the unforgettable people who live in these pages. In Vanishing and Other Stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents, and children. With wisdom and dexterity, moments of dark humor, and a remark- able economy of words, Deborah Willis captures an incredible array of characters that linger in the imagination and prove that nothing is ever truly forgotten.

Author: Lesley Downer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780747264262
Category : Geishas
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
Ever since Westerners arrived in Japan, we have been intrigued by geisha. This fascination has spawned a wealth of fictional creations from Madame Butterfly to Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha. The reality of the geisha's existence has rarely been described. Contrary to popular opinion, geisha are not prostitutes but literally arts people. Their accomplishments might include singing, dancing or playing a musical instrument but, above all, they are masters of the art of conversation, soothing worries of highly paid businessmen who can afford their attentions. The real secret history of the geisha is explored here.

Author: Lynn Casteel Harper
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1948226294
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 126

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An essential book for those coping with Alzheimer’s and other cognitive disorders that “reframe[s] our understanding of dementia with sensitivity and accuracy . . . to grant better futures to our loved ones and ourselves” (The New York Times). An estimated fifty million people in the world suffer from dementia. Diseases such as Alzheimer's erase parts of one's memory but are also often said to erase the self. People don't simply die from such diseases; they are imagined, in the clichés of our era, as vanishing in plain sight, fading away, or enduring a long goodbye. In On Vanishing, Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain, investigates the myths and metaphors surrounding dementia and aging, addressing not only the indignities caused by the condition but also by the rhetoric surrounding it. Harper asks essential questions about the nature of our outsized fear of dementia, the stigma this fear may create, and what it might mean for us all to try to “vanish well.” Weaving together personal stories with theology, history, philosophy, literature, and science, Harper confronts our elemental fears of disappearance and death, drawing on her own experiences with people with dementia both in the American healthcare system and within her own family. In the course of unpacking her own stories and encounters—of leading a prayer group on a dementia unit; of meeting individuals dismissed as “already gone” and finding them still possessed of complex, vital inner lives; of witnessing her grandfather’s final years with Alzheimer’s and discovering her own heightened genetic risk of succumbing to the disease—Harper engages in an exploration of dementia that is unlike anything written before on the subject. A rich and startling work of nonfiction, On Vanishing reveals cognitive change as it truly is, an essential aspect of what it means to be mortal.

Author: Katherine Verdery
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801488696
Category : Land reform
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
In most countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the fall of communism meant individuals could acquire land. Based on fieldwork between 1990 and 2001, the author explores the importance of land and land ownership in one Transylvanian community.

Author: Miles A. Powell
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Introduction: A Nation's Park, Containing Man and Beast -- Chapter 1. Surviving Progress -- Chapter 2. Preserving the Frontier -- Chapter 3. A Line of Unbroken Descent -- Chapter 4. The Last of Her Tribe -- Chapter 5. Dead of Its Own Too-Much -- Epilogue: De-Extinction -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index

Author: Janine di Giovanni
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541756681
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
The Vanishing reveals the plight and possible extinction of Christian communities across Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine after 2,000 years in their historical homeland. Some of the countries that first nurtured and characterized Christianity - along the North African Coast, on the Euphrates and across the Middle East and Arabia - are the ones in which it is likely to first go extinct. Christians are already vanishing. We are past the tipping point, now tilted toward the end of Christianity in its historical homeland. Christians have fled the lands where their prophets wandered, where Jesus Christ preached, where the great Doctors and hierarchs of the early church established the doctrinal norms that would last millennia. From Syria to Egypt, the cities of northern Iraq to the Gaza Strip, ancient communities, the birthplaces of prophets and saints, are losing any living connection to the religion that once was such a characteristic feature of their social and cultural lives. In The Vanishing, Janine di Giovanni has combined astonishing journalistic work to discover the last traces of small, hardy communities that have become wisely fearful of outsiders and where ancient rituals are quietly preserved amid 360 degree threats. Di Giovanni's riveting personal stories and her conception of faith and hope are intertwined throughout the chapters. The book is a unique act of pre-archeology: the last chance to visit the living religion before all that will be left are the stones of the past.

Author: Jenny Diski
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062685724
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 137

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Book Description
The only story collection from the beloved Jenny Diski—darkly funny, subversive, sexy, and eccentric tales from one of the most original and intelligent voices of our time “Mordant and talon-sharp.” —Dwight Garner, New York Times, on Jenny Diski Description Jenny Diski’s prose is as sharp and steely as her imagination is wild and wondrous. When she died of cancer in April 2016, after chronicling her illness in strikingly honest essays in the London Review of Books, readers, admirers, and critics around the world mourned the loss. In a cool and unflinching tone that came to define her singular voice, she explored the subjects of sex, power, domesticity, femininity, hysteria, and loneliness with humor and honesty, The stories in The Vanishing Princess showcase a rarely seen side of this beloved writer, channeling both the piercing social examination of her nonfiction and the vivid, dreamlike landscapes of her novels. In a Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale turned on its head, a miller’s daughter rises to power and wealth to rule over her kingdom and outwit the title villain. “Bathtime” tells the story of a woman’s life through her attempts to build the perfect bathtub, chasing an elusive moment of peace. In “Short Curcuit,” the author mines her own bouts in and out of mental institutions outside London to question whether those we think are mad are really the sanest among us. Longtime fans of Diski and those who have discovered her since her death will find much to treasure here, in her only short story collection, released in the US for the very first time. The Vanishing Princess is another vital stop on Jenny Diski’s journey for meaning and beauty in her prolific writing, one that feels as fresh and necessary as if it were brand-new.