Our Books - Ideas That Shape Scholarship

No description available

‘Psychoanalyzing the Post-Apocalypse: Psychoanalytic Approaches to 21st Century Fiction and Film’ offers an interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary post-apocalyptic literature and cinema through psychoanalytic theory. Bringing together studies of major novels, films, and television series, the volume demonstrates how Freudian, Lacanian, Jungian, and post-Lacanian perspectives illuminate recurring themes such as trauma, desire, mourning, identity, repression, survival, and psychic renewal in worlds shaped by catastrophe. The collection distinguishes itself by applying diverse psychoanalytic frameworks to a broad range of twenty-first-century texts, including "Oryx and Crake," "The Stone Gods," "Station Eleven," "War of the Worlds," "Vesper," "The Road," "The Leftovers," and "2012". Rather than offering generalized discussions of apocalypse, each chapter provides a theoretically grounded analysis of a specific work, revealing how narratives of collapse reflect contemporary anxieties while also imagining new forms of subjectivity, ethical relations, and resilience. Positioned at the intersection of psychoanalytic criticism, literary studies, film studies, and cultural theory, the volume advances current scholarship by foregrounding the psychological dimensions of post-apocalyptic storytelling and demonstrating the versatility of psychoanalytic approaches in interpreting ecological, technological, and existential crises. It contributes an original perspective to the growing body of research on post-apocalyptic fiction by integrating multiple psychoanalytic traditions across diverse media and cultural contexts. The book will serve as a valuable resource for researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates in literature, film, media, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies. It is equally suitable for classroom adoption in courses on contemporary fiction, speculative literature, adaptation, and critical theory, while offering scholars a methodological framework for future interdisciplinary research on apocalypse and the human psyche.

'Música antigua: Perspectivas críticas desde América Latina' offers what is, to our knowledge, the first sustained collective reassessment of early music from Latin American perspectives. Rather than treating early music as a stable repertory defined by European periodization or by the historically informed performance movement, the volume approaches it as a contested, dynamic field in which canons, archives, pedagogies, performance practices, and historiographical narratives are continually negotiated. Bringing together scholars from across Latin American and Ibero-American scholarly contexts, the book examines a wide range of subjects: the teaching of music history in the region; Andean archaeomusicology; historical consciousness and early music pedagogy; the impact of the Spanish Black Legend on music historiography; plainchant in Hispanic America; the religious villancico in colonial Hispanic America through big data analysis; villancicos de negro from Puebla; early music institutions in Brazil; and the politics of authenticity in Bolivian mission music archives. Across these case studies, the volume addresses broader questions concerning coloniality, canon formation, archival authority, Indigenous and Afro-descendant agency, cultural memory, and the circulation of musical knowledge. Framed by a prologue by Leonardo Waisman and an epilogue by Miriam Escudero, the volume includes seven chapters in Spanish and two in Portuguese, reflecting the multilingual character of Latin American and Ibero-American musicology. The book contributes to current debates in musicology, ethnomusicology, performance studies, Latin American studies, and cultural history by challenging inherited North Atlantic frameworks and proposing more regionally grounded ways of studying early music. It will be useful as a reference work for researchers, as a methodological aid for scholars working on music history and historiography, and as a teaching resource for undergraduate and graduate courses on early music, Latin American music, colonial music, music historiography, and decolonial approaches to the arts. While academically rigorous, the volume is also relevant to performers, educators, and ensemble directors seeking critical perspectives on early music beyond the traditional European canon.

What if art history were written through the nose? 'Exhalations: A Survey of Olfactory Art' is the first comprehensive English-language book to trace a century of olfactory practices in art, from the Futurists’ early experiments with scent to the bacterial installations of Anicka Yi, from Marcel Duchamp’s sealed vial of Parisian air to the ecological interventions of Peter de Cupere. Through the analysis of more than one hundred works, Sandra Barré demonstrates the extent to which smell has shaped modern and contemporary artistic practice, despite its persistent marginalization within criticism and institutions. Neither a medium nor a unified movement, olfactory art spans from Dada, Arte Povera, Fluxus, body art, Land Art, feminist practices, to postcolonial critique. Its concerns are equally wide-ranging: memory, desire, decay, gender, and ecological crisis. In doing so, it unsettles the ocularcentrism that has dominated Western art history since the Enlightenment, the assumption that vision constitutes the primary mode of aesthetic knowledge. Smell operates differently. It enters the body immediately, resisting stable interpretation and singular meaning. Two individuals may encounter the same smell and experience entirely different realities, neither of which can be fully privileged over the other. Drawing on archival research, conversations with artists, and years of curatorial practice, 'Exhalations: A Survey of Olfactory Art' is both a historical survey and a history of encounters. The book advances a compelling and overdue argument: that smell has always been present within artistic practice, that it has always carried meaning, and that attending to it transforms our understanding of art history itself. Originally published in French in 2021 by 'Les Éditions de la Lettre Volée', 'Exhalations: A Survey of Olfactory Art' is translated into English by artist Emilie McDermott.

No description available

This illustrated volume brings together a wide variety of perspectives on the historic installation, 'Womanhouse' (1972). The introduction discusses the background and creation of this first whole-house feminist installation, a class assignment for the Feminist Art Program in the newly established California Institute of the Arts under the direction of Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro. Two of the original artists offer remembrances and speak to the project’s impact on their long careers of artmaking. Artistic descendants of the exhibition are discussed: these include whole-house installations which respond to the original, expanding the conversation by including artists of differing races, ethnicities, and gender expressions, and several iterations which served various roles in their communities. Two shows in galleries commemorating 'Womanhouse' and its artistic offspring are also considered. Next, several contemporary artists present their work and discuss how it relates to 'Womanhouse' and the questions it raised. Finally, a contemporary re-imagining of 'Womanhouse' is offered, giving a contemporary take on the historic exhibition. While much has been written about the original exhibition, rarely have we heard from some of the original artists about how their participation affected their careers and artistic output. In addition, this volume offers information on some of the descendant exhibitions. Discussion of these and their impact in the communities housing them underscores the importance of 'Womanhouse' in the lives of women in the years since 1972. Consideration of shows in galleries highlights the difference between them and the house installations. Reactions of contemporary artists offer new insight into the longevity of the original. And a contemporary re-imagining of 'Womanhouse' surprises the reader with unusual additions and re-evaluations.

This second volume in the 'Poetic Inquiry Atlas' series continues the mapping of the first edition by bringing together a collection that represents some of the diverse uses of ecopoetics across various fields of research and study and explores poetry as a form of environmental geography. With chapters from scholars from diverse ecosystems across the globe, this book highlights both generative and epistemological uses of Poetic Inquiry. Suitable for researchers, educators, poets, ecologists and those who wish to better understand the connection between humans and the world that we live in, this book adds to what is known about Poetic Inquiry, ecology, and about lived experiences in/with nature from both non-Indigenous and Indigenous poets and scholars alike.

In order to explain the concepts related to film reception and perception—such as screen personality, image, persona, identification-projection and subjective perception—theorists and lecturers usually ask the readers or audiences to imagine a hypothetical situation involving a screening of a certain film. They do not realize or forget that it would be much easier to use a situation already existing, created, for instance, by a talented and knowledgeable novelist or poet in the form of film references or allusions. So, here it is, the movie world—films, directors, actors, characters, particular scenes or lines—as perceived and commented on by some of the greatest authors and characters they have created in the pages of their novels, short stories, plays and poems. The main body of the book, consisting of nearly forty entries, is divided into three parts: mainstream fiction, represented by F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Jones, John Updike, Paul Auster and Marisa de los Santos; crime and mystery fiction—including such authors as Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block and Laura Lippman; and thriller/horror fiction, covering two unquestioned masters, Dean Koontz and Stephen King. A dozen more writers—e.g., Kurt Vonnegut and Jill McCorkle—whose contribution to the topic is somewhat less spectacular but still worth presenting, are briefly discussed, as entries of an intentionally limited scope, in the Appendix. In addition to providing precious observations corroborating the legendary status of some distinguished film directors and actors, as well as the assets of their most representative pictures, the analyses of the outstanding film references explain and ingeniously illustrate the major concepts related to film reception/perception studies and, more importantly, they demonstrate how some writers use references to enhance or embellish their poetic and/or narrative devices in such areas as character development, analogy within the plot or description of a specific period or location.

'A Materialist Social Theory of the Idea' advances a unified theoretical framework for understanding how ideas emerge, circulate, and materialize in the world. Rejecting both classical Idealism and reductive Materialism, the book develops a neuromaterialist approach that defines ideas as physically instantiated patterns of neural activity and traces their effects across social, institutional, and material domains. Beginning from the premise that thought is a biological process, the book follows the idea from its origin in the brain through its transmission via language and behavior, its reproduction within culture, and its eventual crystallization in norms, institutions, and physical structures. This recursive process—linking brain, behavior, environment, and social organization—provides a comprehensive model of how ideas function as causal forces in history. Drawing on insights from sociology, philosophy, neuroscience, and political theory, the work introduces original conceptual tools, including models of ideational transmission, activation, and threshold dynamics, as well as the concept of cognitive terraforming to describe the large-scale transformation of reality through ideation. This book offers an interdisciplinary framework for analyzing ideology, social change, and institutional development, making it relevant to scholars and students in social theory, sociology, philosophy of mind, and related fields. It also provides a foundation for further research into the material basis of thought and its role in shaping human behavior and social structure.