The seventeenth-century French diplomat FranCois de CalliEres once wrote that "an ambassador resembles in some way an actor exposed on the stage to the eyes of the public in order to play great roles." The comparison of the diplomat to an actor became commonplace as the practice of diplomacy took hold in early modern Europe. More than an abstract metaphor, it reflected the rich culture of spectacular entertainment that was a backdrop to emissaries' day-to-day lives. Royal courts routinely honored visiting diplomats or celebrated treaty negotiations by staging grandiose performances...
The seventeenth-century French diplomat FranCois de CalliEres once wrote that "an ambassador resembles in some way an actor exposed on the stage to...
What do we know about early modern sex, and how do we know it? How, when, and why does sex become history? In Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns, Valerie Traub addresses these questions and, in doing so, reorients the ways in which historians and literary critics, feminists and queer theorists approach sexuality and its history. Her answers offer interdisciplinary strategies for confronting the difficulties of making sexual knowledge.
Based on the premise that producing sexual knowledge is difficult because sex itself is often inscrutable, Thinking Sex with the Early...
What do we know about early modern sex, and how do we know it? How, when, and why does sex become history? In Thinking Sex with the Early Modern...
The first critical edition in transcription with facing English translation of a medieval Sanskrit text that is known in most parts of India, especially in Bengal. The Krsnakarnamrta ("Nectar to the Ears of Krishna") is a devotional anthology of stanzas in praise of the youthful Krishna.
The first critical edition in transcription with facing English translation of a medieval Sanskrit text that is known in most parts of India, especial...
Compassion's Edge examines the language of fellow-feeling--pity, compassion, and charitable care--that flourished in France in the period from the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which established some degree of religious toleration, to the official breakdown of that toleration with the Revocation of the Edict in 1685. This is not, however, a story about compassion overcoming difference but one of compassion reinforcing division: the seventeenth-century texts of fellow-feeling led not to communal concerns but to paralysis, misreading, and isolation. Early modern fellow-feeling drew...
Compassion's Edge examines the language of fellow-feeling--pity, compassion, and charitable care--that flourished in France in the period fr...
"Politics makes for strange bedfellows," the old saying goes. Americans, however, often forget the obvious lesson underlying this adage: politics is about winning elections and governing once in office. Voters of all stripes seem put off by the rough-and-tumble horse-trading and deal-making of politics, viewing its practitioners as self-serving and without principle or conviction.
Because of these perspectives, the scholarly and popular narrative of American politics has come to focus on ideology over all else. But as Donald T. Critchlow demonstrates in his riveting new book, this...
"Politics makes for strange bedfellows," the old saying goes. Americans, however, often forget the obvious lesson underlying this adage: politics i...
