How Sex Got Screwed Up: The Ghosts that Haunt Our Sexual Pleasure - Book One

From the Stone Age to the Enlightenment

Jon Knowles

The ghosts that haunt our sexual pleasure were born in the Stone Age. Sex and gender taboos were used by tribes to differentiate themselves from one another. These taboos filtered into the lives of Bronze and Iron Age men and women who lived in city-states and empires. For the early Christians, all sex play was turned into sin, instilled with guilt, and punished severely. With the invention of sin came the construction of women as subordinate beings to men. Despite the birth of romance in the late middle ages, Renaissance churches held inquisitions to seek out and destroy sex sinners, all of whom it saw as heretics. The Age of Reason saw the demise of these inquisitions. But, it was doctors who would take over the roles of priests and ministers as sex became defined by discourses of crime, degeneracy, and sickness. The middle of the 20th century saw these medical and religious teachings challenged for the first time as activists, such as Alfred Kinsey and Margaret Sanger, sought to carve out a place for sexual freedom in society. However, strong opposition to their beliefs and the growing exploitation of sex by the media at the close of the century would ultimately shape 21st century sexual ambivalence. Book One of this two-part publication traces the history of sex from the Stone Age to the Enlightenment. Interspersed with ‘personal hauntings’ from his own life and the lives of friends and relatives, Knowles reveals how historical discourses of sex continue to haunt us today. This book is a page-turner in simple and plain language about ‘how sex got screwed up’ for millennia. For Knowles, if we know the history of sex, we can get over it.

Singleness in Britain, 1960-1990: Identity, Gender and Social Change

Emily Priscott

This book contributes to an emerging field of research, looking at the significance of marital status to debates about identity and gender. It examines representations and experiences of single men and women between 1960 and 1990, using a wide variety of sources, including digitized British newspapers, social research, films, and lifestyle literature. Whilst much-existing work focuses on the early-to-mid 20th centuries (such as Katherine Holden’s ground-breaking work, The Shadow of Marriage: Singleness in England, 1914-1960), this book alternatively examines the impact of the 1960s and the aftermath of changing attitudes to singleness. While Holden and others, such as Virginia Nicholson in Singled Out, focus largely on social status and lived experience (often through oral testimony), the author is just as interested in finding new ways of looking at gender and sexuality. This work starts from the premise that a distinct double standard existed in attitudes towards single men and women, which continued even after the wave of legislation to improve women’s status during the 1960s. Examining these often vastly different expectations reveals a complex web of progress, continuity, and contradictions, highlighting the uneven pace of social change and its frequent compromises and limitations. Using theoretical approaches such as feminism and queer theory, this work explores the impact of changing gender norms on issues including single fatherhood, old maid stereotypes, and experiences of homelessness. It can be used as a study aid for 20th-century British history and gender studies courses, and might also interest both established academics and intellectually curious non-academic readers. The author has made efforts, where possible, to clearly explain her theoretical approaches and interventions for those who might be unfamiliar with them.

ANIMAE

The invisible sources of the artwork: talks with today’s artists

Emma Coccioli

Romanticism, the brooding and intensely personal eighteenth-century art and literary movement, takes on a new lease of life in this carefully curated collection of interviews with contemporary artists from around the world. Informed by the writings of the renowned psychoanalyst James Hillman, Romanticism is reconsidered from a twenty-first-century perspective. Moving past a purely formal presentation of the artists’ work, this text strives to uncover the deeper meaning and more pressing issues present in the artworks. All connected by a similar romantic vein, Emma Coccioli explores each artist’s individual practice through a series of carefully selected questions. For Coccioli, discussions of ‘the moral issue’ and the future of the world also form an important part of the interviews. Coccioli acknowledges that artists have often been asked questions about their role in relation to the moral issue and the problem of nihilism. However, even if we have an inherent understanding of the concepts of good and evil, Coccioli argues that there is a need to re-examine the modern-day psyche as it tends to be apathetic and with little emotional resonance on our actions and behaviour. Global overpopulation, climate change, and the planet’s limited resources are also meaningfully discussed in this collection of interviews. In questioning the artists, whose work addresses, even remotely, these topics, Coccioli encourages them to consider what they believe to be the greatest threats to today’s global community and to suggest solutions that might be adopted by future generations. This original and engaging look at contemporary art practice presents a sophisticated discussion of some of the most pressing issues for modern-day society. The interdisciplinary nature of this book means that it will appeal to students, scholars, artists and to anyone with an interest in the fascinating world of contemporary art.

Publish and Perish: The Practice of Censorship in the British Isles in the Early Modern Period

Edited by Isabelle Fernandes, University of Clermont Auvergne, France

The development of printing practices during Tudor rule led both to the dissemination of religious and secular knowledge, and the development of a legal arsenal to control it. While the vast majority of studies on censorship regard it as being at the origin of the notion of authorship, critics tend to disagree on its actual influence on early modern writings. Who, among the Church and the secular state, were its main supporters? Did it aim at destroying or removing, punishing or protecting, hampering or regulating? Did it propagate a culture of secrecy or, on the contrary, did it help to circulate new ideas and knowledge by controlling them and making them more acceptable to the masses? If the answers to these questions are bound to differ according to the aesthetic and religious biases of both censors and censored, they all lead to one major point of debate: did censorship really work to stop some marginal threat or did it simply improve the lot of early modern writers who turned its limited negative effects into a comforting shield of self-publicity? By suggesting it suppressed neither artistic creativity nor subversive practices, this volume analyses censorship in Britain and Ireland during the Tudor and Stuart periods as an instrument of regulation, rather than a repressive tool. Ideal for both graduate students and general readers interested in Early Modern History, the work sheds new light on a topic as fascinating as it is often misunderstood.

International Opportunities in the Arts

Edited by Mary Sherman, MFA New York University

This book is a compilation of papers derived from talks, presented at TransCultural Exchange’s 2018 International Conference on Opportunities in the Arts. The aim of these talks was to inspire artists to think across disciplines and cultures and to suggest other career models beyond the typical studio to gallery/museum model. Much of this content is unique in that it not only addresses the practical needs of artists but, even more importantly, it does so in the context of today’s global reality. As artists have noted on post-Conference surveys, this information is “the missing link in the art world; the bridge between academic and real-world practice; between a local and international career in the arts.” By making this information available long-after the Conference’s end and to those who could not directly participate in the Conference, many more artists will have access to where to find jobs/residency programs and funding for their work, information on how to put together successful residency applications, how to market their work, and other professional development programming. In addition, they (and interested members of the public) will have access to the Conference talks on what leading artists are doing across disciplines, with new technologies, and in the public sphere.

How Sex Got Screwed Up: The Ghosts that Haunt Our Sexual Pleasure - Book Two

From Victoria to Our Own Times

Jon Knowles

The ghosts that haunt our sexual pleasure were born in the Stone Age. Sex and gender taboos were used by tribes to differentiate themselves from one another. These taboos filtered into the lives of Bronze and Iron Age men and women who lived in city-states and empires. For the early Christians, all sex play was turned into sin, instilled with guilt, and punished severely. With the invention of sin came the construction of women as subordinate beings to men. Despite the birth of romance in the late middle ages, Renaissance churches held inquisitions to seek out and destroy sex sinners, all of whom it saw as heretics. The Age of Reason saw the demise of these inquisitions. But, it was doctors who would take over the roles of priests and ministers as sex became defined by discourses of crime, degeneracy, and sickness. The middle of the 20th century saw these medical and religious teachings challenged for the first time as activists, such as Alfred Kinsey and Margaret Sanger, sought to carve out a place for sexual freedom in society. However, strong opposition to their beliefs and the growing exploitation of sex by the media at the close of the century would ultimately shape 21st century sexual ambivalence. Book Two of this two-part publication traces the history of sex from the Victorian Era to present day. Interspersed with ‘personal hauntings’ from his own life and the lives of friends and relatives, Knowles reveals how historical discourses of sex continue to haunt us today. This book is a page-turner in simple and plain language about ‘how sex got screwed up’ for millennia. For Knowles, if we know the history of sex, we can get over it.

Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene

Edited by Julie Reiss, Christie’s Education, New York

Art, Theory and Practice in the Anthropocene contributes to the growing literature on artistic responses to global climate change and its consequences. Designed to include multiple perspectives, it contains essays by thirteen art historians, art critics, curators, artists and educators, and offers different frameworks for talking about visual representation and the current environmental crisis. The anthology models a range of methodological approaches drawn from different disciplines, and contributes to an understanding of how artists and those writing about art construct narratives around the environment. The book is illustrated with examples of art by nearly thirty different contemporary artists.

The Art of Cultural Exchange

Translation and Transformation between the UK and Brazil (2012-2016)

Edited by Paul Heritage, Queen Mary University of London, UK and Ilana Strozenberg, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil

Can cultural exchange be understood as a mutual act of translation? Or are elements of a country’s cultural identity inevitably lost in the act of exchange? Brazil and Great Britain, although unlikely collaborators, have shared an artistic dialogue that can be traced back some 500 years. This publication, arising from the namesake research project funded by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, seeks to understand and raise awareness of the present practices of cultural exchange between Brazil and Great Britain in relation to their historical legacy. Presenting five case studies and eight position papers, this research-based project investigates how artists interpret, transmit and circulate ideas, ideologies and forms of knowledge with specific reference to the production of new ‘translations’ produced from and, where possible, between peripheral territories. Written in accessible language, the case studies describe the experience of artists, managers and cultural leaders dealing with important challenges in the creative sector regarding the translation of creative and learning arts methodologies. Projects investigated are at the forefront of social arts collaborative practice, representing internationally influential initiatives that have had a demonstrable impact not only in urban centres and peripheries but also in isolated areas of central Brazil and the north of England. The position papers commissioned by the research from Brazilian and British academics and cultural leaders provide a remarkable variety of social, political, anthropological, historic and artistic perspectives of cultural exchange projects offering valuable experiences for those working in research, policy and for creative practitioners.

The Centre as Margin: Eccentric Perspectives on Art

Edited by Joana Antunes, Group of Multidisciplinary Studies in Art, CEAACP/Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, Portugal et al.

The Centre as Margin. Eccentric Perspectives on Art is a multi-authored volume of collected essays that answer the challenge of thinking Art History, and the Arts in a broader sense, from a liminal point of view. Its main goal is thus to discuss the margin from the centre - drawing on its concomitance within study themes and subjects, ontological and epistemological positions, or research methodologies themselves. Marginality, eccentricity, liminality, and superfluity are all part of a dynamic relationship between centre and margin(s) that will be approached and discussed, from the point of view of disciplines as different and as close as art history, philosophy, literature and design, from medieval to contemporary art. Resulting from recent research developed from the privileged viewpoint offered by the margin, this volume brings together the contributions of young researchers along with the work of career scholars. Likewise, it does not obey a traditional or a rigid diachronic structure, being rather organized in three major parts that organically articulate the different essays. Within each of these parts in which the book is divided, papers are sometimes organized according to their timeframes, providing the reader with an encompassing (though not encyclopedic) overview of the common ground over which the various artistic disciplines build their methodological, theoretical, and thematic centers and margins. The intended eccentricity of this volume – and the original essays herein presented – should provide researchers, scholars, students, artists, curators, and the general reader interested in art with a refreshing approach to its various scientific strands.

Merrimack, The Biography of a Steam Frigate

Stephen Chapin Kinnaman

Merrimack is the biography of a warship, the U.S. Steam Frigate Merrimack. Her name has long been linked to the first duel of ironclads, an epic Civil War battle fought at Hampton Roads between the Monitor and Merrimack. But over time the myth of the Merrimack—actually the C.S.S. Virginia—displaced the memory of a magnificent antebellum U.S. Navy warship. The steam frigate Merrimack lost her identity. Nearly forgotten is the story of the original Merrimack, the namesake of a class of six powerful war steamers. When built she was the largest vessel in the U.S. Navy, the nation’s first screw-propelled frigate and the earliest major warship to be armed entirely with shell-firing guns. Her first commission took her on a tour of the principal naval stations of Europe. During her second commission, she served as flagship of the Navy’s Pacific Squadron, cruising the shores of Chile, Peru, Panama, Hawaii, Mexico and Nicaragua. Through the copious use of Merrimack’s deck logs, official correspondence, contemporary newspapers and journals, and original construction plans, the author’s research illuminates the mechanical issues and human interactions that indelibly shaped Merrimack’s brief career. The author provides an unparalleled glimpse into the day-to-day events that defined the life of an active antebellum warship. But Merrimack offers more than just a summary of the ship’s operational life. The author, a professional naval architect and marine engineer, dissects the origins of her design and compares the Merrimack class steam frigates to contemporary U.S. and British warships. He also examines the controversy surrounding her troubled engines, documenting their performance using archived drawings and steam log data. In summary, Merrimack embraces the many threads of a bygone era—history, biography, geography and technology—and has woven them together in telling of the story of the U.S. Steam Frigate Merrimack.

Merrimack, The Biography of a Steam Frigate

Stephen Chapin Kinnaman

Merrimack is the biography of a warship, the U.S. Steam Frigate Merrimack. Her name has long been linked to the first duel of ironclads, an epic Civil War battle fought at Hampton Roads between the Monitor and Merrimack. But over time the myth of the Merrimack—actually the C.S.S. Virginia—displaced the memory of a magnificent antebellum U.S. Navy warship. The steam frigate Merrimack lost her identity. Nearly forgotten is the story of the original Merrimack, the namesake of a class of six powerful war steamers. When built she was the largest vessel in the U.S. Navy, the nation’s first screw-propelled frigate and the earliest major warship to be armed entirely with shell-firing guns. Her first commission took her on a tour of the principal naval stations of Europe. During her second commission, she served as flagship of the Navy’s Pacific Squadron, cruising the shores of Chile, Peru, Panama, Hawaii, Mexico and Nicaragua. Through the copious use of Merrimack’s deck logs, official correspondence, contemporary newspapers and journals, and original construction plans, the author’s research illuminates the mechanical issues and human interactions that indelibly shaped Merrimack’s brief career. The author provides an unparalleled glimpse into the day-to-day events that defined the life of an active antebellum warship. But Merrimack offers more than just a summary of the ship’s operational life. The author, a professional naval architect and marine engineer, dissects the origins of her design and compares the Merrimack class steam frigates to contemporary U.S. and British warships. He also examines the controversy surrounding her troubled engines, documenting their performance using archived drawings and steam log data. In summary, Merrimack embraces the many threads of a bygone era—history, biography, geography and technology—and has woven them together in telling of the story of the U.S. Steam Frigate Merrimack.

ANIMAE

The invisible sources of the artwork: talks with today’s artists

Emma Coccioli

Romanticism, the brooding and intensely personal eighteenth-century art and literary movement, takes on a new lease of life in this carefully curated collection of interviews with contemporary artists from around the world. Informed by the writings of the renowned psychoanalyst James Hillman, Romanticism is reconsidered from a twenty-first-century perspective. Moving past a purely formal presentation of the artists’ work, this text strives to uncover the deeper meaning and more pressing issues present in the artworks. All connected by a similar romantic vein, Emma Coccioli explores each artist’s individual practice through a series of carefully selected questions. For Coccioli, discussions of ‘the moral issue’ and the future of the world also form an important part of the interviews. Coccioli acknowledges that artists have often been asked questions about their role in relation to the moral issue and the problem of nihilism. However, even if we have an inherent understanding of the concepts of good and evil, Coccioli argues that there is a need to re-examine the modern-day psyche as it tends to be apathetic and with little emotional resonance on our actions and behaviour. Global overpopulation, climate change, and the planet’s limited resources are also meaningfully discussed in this collection of interviews. In questioning the artists, whose work addresses, even remotely, these topics, Coccioli encourages them to consider what they believe to be the greatest threats to today’s global community and to suggest solutions that might be adopted by future generations. This original and engaging look at contemporary art practice presents a sophisticated discussion of some of the most pressing issues for modern-day society. The interdisciplinary nature of this book means that it will appeal to students, scholars, artists and to anyone with an interest in the fascinating world of contemporary art.

Inspiring air: A history of air-related science

Pere Grapí, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

| Recommended by CHOICE, November 2019 Vol. 57 No. 3 | Eudiometers were instruments originally devised for checking the ‘goodness’ of common air. Seeking to be more than just a chronological inventory of eudiometers, this book presents a unique retrospective of these fascinating apparatuses from the end of the eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. By paying particular attention to the experimental procedures involved over the course of the test, this book aims to understand and explore how eudiometers function, to describe the materials used in making them and the different reagents employed in each eudiometrical test. Importantly, eudiometers were employed within a variety of spheres including human and animal health, gas analysis, chemical theory, plant and animal physiology, atmospheric composition, chemical compound composition, gas lighting, chemical revolution and experimental demonstration. Finally, this book looks to redress the existing imbalance in the history of chemistry regarding the attention given to theoretical aspects of chemistry in comparison to chemical practice and apparatus. The few existing accounts of chemical devices written in the past century have not been sufficiently helpful for the understanding of experimental practice in chemistry. Until now no work that deals exclusively with eudiometers and gas analysis from a historical standpoint has been published. Thus, this book will not only cast new light on the subject, but will also contribute to further research on the history of chemical instruments.

The Picturesque, The Sublime, The Beautiful: Visual Artistry in the Works of Charlotte Smith (1749-1806)

Valerie Derbyshire, University of Sheffield

This book considers the relationships between British Romantic-era novelist, poet and writer of educational works for children, Charlotte Smith (1749-1806), and a number of visual artists of the eighteenth century with whom she had connections. By exploring these associations with artists such as George Smith of Chichester, George Romney, James Northcote, John Raphael Smith and Emma Smith, the book demonstrates how the artwork of these individual artists influenced Charlotte Smith’s literary corpus. It also shows a mutual influence: how the literary works of Charlotte Smith impacted the corpora of these artists. This study uncovers information which was not heretofore known regarding these artists: it reveals a mistaken attribution of a sketch which accompanied the second volume of Smith’s Elegiac Sonnets (1797) and sheds light on a print, held by the British Museum, which was previously shrouded in mystery. The artworks also enhance the existing scholarly knowledge about Smith’s biography. This book analyses the tropes and motifs employed by Smith’s artist-associates in the context of the popular aesthetics of the period and undertakes parallel readings between such visual artistry and Smith’s literary works. The book deliberates on how Smith utilises these aesthetics as narrative devices, making use of the tropes of the picturesque, the sublime and the beautiful, as well as that of a national British heraldic artwork, in order to produce and enhance meaning in her literary oeuvre. Thus, Smith uses aesthetic structures as vehicles for social critique, commentating on political, gender, moral and class concerns in addition to enhancing the perceived authenticity of her own artistry. The scholarship aims to correct the common misperception that Smith was a lonely marginal figure of Romanticism and instead asserts her central position in an enormous network of key artistic figures of British Romanticism.

Acceptance, Understanding, and the Moral Imperative of Promoting Social Justice Education in the Schoolhouse

Teresa A. Citro, Learning Disabilities Worldwide et al.

This book examines the critical issues associated with the topic of social justice in primary and secondary education. Understanding the challenges related to educational inequity requires a comprehensive and systematic re-examination of educational reform; specifically, this book defines social justice education, offers different perspectives from major thought leaders and examines the challenges faced by different populations when it comes to receiving equal opportunity and treatment. Emphasis will be placed on programs, approaches and strategies to increasingly teach tolerance, respect, and understanding within and between these groups and members of the majority culture. The focus, then, will be on educational practices designed to prepare students from diverse backgrounds to be active, contributing, and fully participatory members of our contemporary society. This book is most appropriate for preservice and veteran teachers, school and educational psychologists, related special education service professionals, educational administrators, guidance counselors, graduate education professors, policymakers, parents, and student leaders who wish to gain a better understanding of how social justice can and should become a valuable part of the educational landscape.

Blues in the 21st Century: Myth, Self-Expression and Trans-Culturalism

Edited by Douglas Mark Ponton, University of Catania, Italy and Uwe Zagratzki, University of Szczecin, Poland

The book is the fruit of Douglas Mark Ponton’s and co-editor Uwe Zagratzki’s enduring interest in the Blues as a musical and cultural phenomenon and source of personal inspiration. Continuing in the tradition of Blues studies established by the likes of Samuel Charters and Paul Oliver, the authors hope to contribute to the revitalisation of the field through a multi-disciplinary approach designed to explore this constantly evolving social phenomenon in all its heterogeneity. Focusing either on particular artists (Lightnin’ Hopkins, Robert Johnson), or specific texts (Langston Hughes’ Weary Blues and Backlash Blues, Jimi Hendrix’s Machine Gun), the book tackles issues ranging from authenticity and musicology in Blues performance to the Blues in diaspora, while also applying techniques of linguistic analysis to the corpora of Blues texts. While some chapters focus on the Blues as a quintessentially American phenomenon, linked to a specific social context, others see it in its current evolutions, as the bearer of vital cultural attitudes into the digital age. This multidisciplinary volume will appeal to a broad range of scholars operating in a number of different academic disciplines, including Musicology, Linguistics, Sociology, History, Ethnomusicology, Literature, Economics and Cultural Studies. It will also interest educators across the Humanities, and could be used to exemplify the application to data of specific analytical methodologies, and as a general introduction to the field of Blues studies.

The Spaces and Places of Horror

Edited by Francesco Pascuzzi, Rutgers University and Sandra Waters, Rutgers University

This volume explores the complex horizon of landscapes in horror film culture to better understand the use that the genre makes of settings, locations, spaces, and places, be they physical, imagined, or altogether imaginary. In The Philosophy of Horror, Noël Carroll discusses the “geography” of horror as often situating the filmic genre in liminal spaces as a means to displace the narrative away from commonly accepted social structures: this use of space is meant to trigger the audience’s innate fear of the unknown. This notion recalls Freud’s theorization of the uncanny, as it is centered on recognizable locations outside of the Lacanian symbolic order. In some instances, a location may act as one of the describing characteristics of evil itself: In A Nightmare on Elm Street teenagers fall asleep only to be dragged from their bedrooms into Freddy Krueger’s labyrinthine lair, an inescapable boiler room that enhances Freddie’s powers and makes him invincible. In other scenarios, the action may take place in a distant, little-known country to isolate characters (Roth’s Hostel films), or as a way to mythicize the very origin of evil (Bava’s Black Sunday). Finally, anxieties related to the encroaching presence of technology in our lives may give rise to postmodern narratives of loneliness and disconnect at the crossing between virtual and real places: in Kurosawa’s Pulse, the internet acts as a gateway between the living and spirit worlds, creating an oneiric realm where the living vanish and ghosts move to replace them. This suggestive topic begs to be further investigated; this volume represents a crucial addition to the scholarship on horror film culture by adopting a transnational, comparative approach to the analysis of formal and narrative concerns specific to the genre by considering some of the most popular titles in horror film culture alongside lesser-known works for which this anthology represents the first piece of relevant scholarship.

Reason, causation and compatibility with the phenomena

Basil Evangelidis

'Reason, Causation and Compatibility with the Phenomena' strives to give answers to the philosophical problem of the interplay between realism, explanation and experience. This book is a compilation of essays that recollect significant conceptions of rival terms such as determinism and freedom, reason and appearance, power and knowledge. This title discusses the progress made in epistemology and natural philosophy, especially the steps that led from the ancient theory of atomism to the modern quantum theory, and from mathematization to analytic philosophy. Moreover, it provides possible gateways from modern deadlocks of theory either through approaches to consciousness or through historical critique of intellectual authorities. This work will be of interest to those either researching or studying in colleges and universities, especially in the departments of philosophy, history of science, philosophy of science, philosophy of physics and quantum mechanics, history of ideas and culture. Greek and Latin Literature students and instructors may also find this book to be both a fascinating and valuable point of reference.

Negotiating Waters: Seas, Oceans, and Passageways in the Colonial and Postcolonial Anglophone World

Edited by André Dodeman, University of Grenoble Alpes, France and Nancy Pedri, Memorial University of Newfoundland

This book examines how seas, oceans, and passageways have shaped and reshaped cultural identities, spurred stories of reunion and separation, and redefined entire nations. It explores how entire communities have crossed seas and oceans, voluntarily or not, to settle in foreign lands and undergone identity, cultural and literary transformations. It also explores how these crossings are represented. The book thus contributes to oceanic studies, a field of study that asks how the seas and oceans have and continue to affect political (narratives of exploration, cartography), international (maritime law), identity (insularity), and literary issues (survival narratives, fishing stories). Divided into three sections, Negotiating Waters explores the management, the crossings, and the re-imaginings of the seas and oceans that played such an important role in the configuration of the colonial and postcolonial world and imagination. In their careful considerations of how water figures prominently in maps, travel journals, diaries, letters, and literary narratives from the 17th century onwards, the three thematic sections come together to shed light on how water, in all of its shapes and forms, has marked lands, nations, and identities. They thus offer readers from different disciplines and with different colonial and postcolonial interests the possibility to investigate and discover new approaches to maritime spaces. By advancing views on how seas and oceans exert power through representation, Negotiating Waters engages in important critical work in an age of rising concern about maritime environments.

The Idea of Sport in Western Culture from Antiquity to the Contemporary Era

Saverio Battente, University of Siena, Italy

In “The Idea of Sport in Western Culture from Antiquity to the Contemporary Era,” Dr Saverio Battente examines the concept of sport as an element of Western culture. Sport has aided in structuring the collective identities that underpin individual civilisations in the West, and, far from being a merely marginal phenomenon, it has in fact been an essential feature of Western civilisation and culture from antiquity, in its various forms. The starting point of the book is the idea that there is a certain number of universal traits—unchanged across time and different cultures—underlying all sports, even if there are a series of entirely original elements with which sport has been linked over the centuries in specific civilizations. This volume thus makes a comparative analysis of the ancient, modern, and contemporary worlds and various national contexts; longues durées (whose presence transcends anthropological and cultural barriers), divergences, and discontinuities pertaining to the concept of sport are identified and explored. The book also looks at the link between the rise of civilisation and the educational and training function of sport, as well as the connection between a culture’s decline and a growing emphasis on sport as an element of entertainment and spectacle in and of itself.