Cultural Hierarchy in Sixteenth-Century Europe


Book Description

Concentrating on the Habsburg Empire, this book examines the creation of cultural hierarchy in sixteenth-century Europe.




The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights


Book Description

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights provides a comprehensive, transnational, and interdisciplinary map to this emerging field, offering a broad overview of human rights and literature while providing innovative readings on key topics. The first of its kind, this volume covers essential issues and themes, necessarily crossing disciplines between the social sciences and humanities. Sections cover: subjects, with pieces on subjectivity, humanity, identity, gender, universality, the particular, the body forms, visiting the different ways human rights stories are crafted and formed via the literary, the visual, the performative, and the oral contexts, tracing the development of the literature over time and in relation to specific regions and historical events impacts, considering the power and limits of human rights literature, rhetoric, and visual culture Drawn from many different global contexts, the essays offer an ideal introduction for those approaching the study of literature and human rights for the first time, looking for new insights and interdisciplinary perspectives, or interested in new directions for future scholarship. Contributors: Chris Abani, Jonathan E. Abel, Elizabeth S. Anker, Arturo Arias, Ariella Azoulay, Ralph Bauer, Anna Bernard, Brenda Carr Vellino, Eleni Coundouriotis, James Dawes, Erik Doxtader, Marc D. Falkoff, Keith P. Feldman, Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg, Audrey J. Golden, Mark Goodale, Barbara Harlow, Wendy S. Hesford, Peter Hitchcock, David Holloway, Christine Hong, Madelaine Hron, Meg Jensen, Luz Angélica Kirschner, Susan Maslan, Julie Avril Minich, Alexandra Schultheis Moore, Greg Mullins, Laura T. Murphy, Hanna Musiol, Makau Mutua, Zoe Norridge, David Palumbo-Liu, Crystal Parikh, Katrina M. Powell, Claudia Sadowski-Smith, Mark Sanders, Karen-Magrethe Simonsen, Joseph R. Slaughter, Sharon Sliwinski, Sidonie Smith, Domna Stanton, Sarah G. Waisvisz, Belinda Walzer, Ban Wang, Julia Watson, Gillian Whitlock and Sarah Winter.




The New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492-1750


Book Description

This volume considers Italy's history and examines how Italians became fascinated with the New World in the early modern period.




Culture and Diplomacy


Book Description

Diplomats had multiple tasks: not only negotiating with the representatives of other states, but also mediating culture and knowledge, and not least elaborating reports on their observations of politics, society, and culture. Culture, according to the studies featured in this book, is defined as a complex sphere including aspects like systems of communication, literature, music, arts, education, and the creation of knowledge. This edition containing contributions from six conferences held in Vienna and Istanbul by the Don Juan Archiv Wien focuses on the complex diplomatic and cultural relations between the Ottoman Empire and Europe from the time of the early embassies to Istanbul up to "Tanzimat".




Peerless Among Princes


Book Description

"Süleyman ruled over the Ottoman Empire between 1520 and 1566. His domain extended from Hungary to Iran, and from the Crimea to North Africa and the Indian Ocean. The wealth of his treasury and the strength of his armies dazzled historians, poets, courtiers, diplomats, and publics across Eurasia. Süleyman fought with the Catholic Habsburgs in Europe and the Shiite Safavids in the Middle East, while presiding over a multilinguistic and multireligious empire. During his reign, imperial governance expanded considerably, and the law was emphasized as the main bond between ruler and subject. Süleyman's prolific poetic output, his frequent appearances during public ceremonies, his charity, and his patronage of arts and architecture enhanced his reputation as a universal ruler who promised peace and prosperity to his subjects"--




Early Modern Things


Book Description

Early Modern Things supplies fresh and provocative insights into how objects – ordinary and extraordinary, secular and sacred, natural and man-made – came to define some of the key developments of the early modern world. Now in its second edition, this book taps a rich vein of recent scholarship to explore a variety of approaches to the material culture of the early modern world (c. 1500–1800). Divided into seven parts, the book explores the ambiguity of things, representing things, making things, encountering things, empires of things, consuming things, and the power of things. This edition includes a new preface and three new essays on ‘encountering things’ to enrich the volume. These look at cabinets of curiosities, American pearls, and the material culture of West Central Africa. Spanning across the early modern world from Ming dynasty China and Tokugawa Japan to Siberia and Georgian England, from the Kingdom of the Kongo and the Ottoman Empire to the Caribbean and the Spanish Americas, the authors provide a generous set of examples in how to study the circulation, use, consumption, and, most fundamentally, the nature of things themselves. Drawing on a broad range of disciplinary perspectives and lavishly illustrated, this updated edition of Early Modern Things is essential reading for all those interested in the early modern world and the history of material culture.




The Routledge History of the Renaissance


Book Description

Drawing together the latest research in the field, The Routledge History of the Renaissance treats the Renaissance not as a static concept, but as one of ongoing change within an international framework. It takes as its unifying theme the idea of exchange and interchange through the movement of goods, ideas, disease and people, across social, religious, political and physical boundaries. Covering a broad range of temporal periods and geographic regions, the chapters discuss topics such as the material cultures of Renaissance societies; the increased popularity of shopping as a pastime in fourteenth-century Italy; military entrepreneurs and their networks across Europe; the emergence and development of the Ottoman empire from the early fourteenth to the late sixteenth century; and women and humanism in Renaissance Europe. The volume is interdisciplinary in nature, combining historical methodology with techniques from the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology and literary criticism. It allows for juxtapositions of approaches that are usually segregated into traditional subfields, such as intellectual, political, gender, military and economic history. Capturing dynamic new approaches to the study of this fascinating period and illustrated throughout with images, figures and tables, this comprehensive volume is a valuable resource for all students and scholars of the Renaissance.




The Dawning of the Apocalypse


Book Description

Acclaimed historian Gerald Horne troubles America's settler colonialism's "creation myth" August 2019 saw numerous commemorations of the year 1619, when what was said to be the first arrival of enslaved Africans occurred in North America. Yet in the 1520s, the Spanish, from their imperial perch in Santo Domingo, had already brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. The enslaved people here quickly defected to local Indigenous populations, and compelled their captors to flee. Deploying such illuminating research, The Dawning of the Apocalypse is a riveting revision of the “creation myth” of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed. Here, Gerald Horne argues forcefully that, in order to understand the arrival of colonists from the British Isles in the early seventeenth century, one must first understand the “long sixteenth century”– from 1492 until the arrival of settlers in Virginia in 1607. During this prolonged century, Horne contends, “whiteness” morphed into “white supremacy,” and allowed England to co-opt not only religious minorities but also various nationalities throughout Europe, thus forging a muscular bloc that was needed to confront rambunctious Indigenes and Africans. In retelling the bloodthirsty story of the invasion of the Americas, Horne recounts how the fierce resistance by Africans and their Indigenous allies weakened Spain and enabled London to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607. These settlers laid the groundwork for the British Empire and its revolting spawn that became the United States of America.




Cultures of Empire: Rethinking Venetian Rule, 1400–1700


Book Description

This book investigates perceptions, modes, and techniques of Venetian rule in the early modern Eastern Mediterranean (1400–1700). Against the backdrop of the controversial notion of the Venetian realm as a colonial empire, essays from a range of specialists examine how Venice negotiated control over the territories, resources, and traditions of different empires (Byzantine, Roman, Mamluk, Ottoman) while developing its own claims of authority. Focusing in particular on questions of belonging and status in the Venetian overseas territories, the volume incorporates observations on the daily realities of Venetian rule: how did Venice negotiate claims of authority in light of former and ongoing imperial belongings? What was the status of colonial subjects and ships in the metropolis and in foreign territories? In what ways did Venice accept and continue old forms of imperial belonging? Did subordinate entities join in a shared communal identity? The volume opens new perspectives on Venetian rule at the crossroads of empire and early modern statehood: a polity negotiating and entangling empire. Contributors are Housni Alkhateeb Shehada, Georg Christ, Giacomo Corazzol, Nicholas Davidson, Renard Gluzman, Deborah Howard, David Jacoby (z’’l), Marianna Kolyvà, Franz-Julius Morche, Reinhold C. Mueller, Monique O’Connell, Gerassimos D. Pagratis, Tassos Papacostas, Maria Pia Pedani (†), Dorit Raines, and E. Natalie Rothman.




Mughal Occidentalism


Book Description

In Mughal Occidentalism, Mika Natif elucidates the meaningful and complex ways in which Mughal artists engaged with European art and techniques from the 1580s-1630s. Using visual and textual sources, this book argues that artists repurposed Christian and Renaissance visual idioms to embody themes from classical Persian literature and represent Mughal policy, ideology and dynastic history. A reevaluation of illustrated manuscripts and album paintings incorporating landscape scenery, portraiture, and European objects demonstrates that the appropriation of European elements was highly motivated by Mughal concerns. This book aims to establish a better understanding of cross-cultural exchange from the Mughal perspective by emphasizing the agency of local artists active in the workshops of Emperors Akbar and Jahangir.