The Society of Jesus began a tradition of collecting books and curating those collections at its foundation. These libraries were important to both their European sites and their missions; they helped build a global culture as part of early modern European evangelization. When the Society was suppressed, the Jesuits’ possessions were seized and redistributed, by transfer to other religious orders, confiscation by governments, or sale to individuals. These possessions were rarely returned, and when, in 1814, the Society was restored, the Jesuits had to begin to build new libraries from...

Politics in the Roman Republic rewrites the field’s modern historiographical narrative through critical re-examinations of four foundational historians: Barthold Niebuhr, Theodor Mommsen, Friedrich Münzer, and Matthias Gelzer. Each chapter traces these scholars’ impact and offers novel (re)interpretations of their enduring frameworks, conceptual and methodological alike.

In China, a process of compressed socialization of youth is characterized by multiple spatial, professional and social mobilities. Young skilled Chinese move and circulate to improve their qualification and education levels in order to develop upward social mobility’s trajectories. Young low-skilled migrants’ biographic pathways are structured around spatial discontinuities and horizontal social mobilities. In labor markets, the phenomenon of structural disqualification impacts young Chinese and the risk of downward social mobility has affected the young middle-class. Platforms appear as...

The presidency of Donald J. Trump, has had a considerable impacts on American politics and society. One of these was his altering of the comedic mood in America, taking comedy away from many of its traditions. His presidency turned comedy into political weaponry, as comedians on the liberal side of politics turned their efforts to ridiculing Trump’s buffoonish persona, while on the conservative side, a Trump-supportive group of comedians mocked those very comedians who opposed Trump. Trump himself emerged as a comedian, performing his dark, caustic, comical routines with consummate skill at...

Lucretius’ De rerum natura, written around 55 BCE, ranks among the most influential texts in Roman literature. The poet’s vision of a world made of atoms, his mockery of the fear of death and the gods, and fervent advocacy of the mortality of the soul over many centuries incensed his critics on one hand, and on the other earned him a devoted following. This volume provides an introduction to the oldest completely preserved Latin didactic poem and to the most important research questions concerned with the text.

With a multi-perspective approach and transdisciplinary methods (humanities and sciences), this book offers an in-depth and systematic study of hand-drawn and hand-coloured maps from East Asia. Map colouring provides an insight into past societies, landscapes and territories. Colour is an important key to a more precise understanding of the map’s content, purposes and uses; moreover, colours are also an important aspect of a map’s materiality. The material scientific analysis of colourants makes it possible to find out more about maps’ material nature and their production as well as the...