Pablo Neruda (1904–73) is one of Latin America’s best known poets, adored by readers for the passionate love lyrics written during his early years in his native Chile, and respected by critics for the dark, hypnotic verses he composed during his later, solitary years as a diplomat based in the Far East. As Dominic Moran shows in his concise biography of Neruda, rarely have the life and works of a writer been so intimately and dramatically bound up as they are in Neruda.
In Pablo Neruda, Moran takes a detailed and often critical look at this relationship, focusing as much on what the poetry sometimes strategically hides about Neruda the poet, the lover, and the political proselytizer, as what it reveals. Moran describes a life that was marked by an increasingly militant communism, the seeds of which can be traced to Neruda’s experiences in Spain during the early months of the Spanish Civil War. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Neruda became a literary torchbearer for the International Left, and he spent his final years campaigning to bring socialism to his beloved Chile. He lived just long enough to see his hero Salvador Allende unseated by Augusto Pinochet’s bloody coup.
Pablo Neruda paints a fascinating picture of one of the most prodigiously gifted literary figures of the twentieth century. It will appeal to fans of Neruda’s verse who wish to learn more about the life behind it, as well as to readers interested in Latin American literature, politics, and history.
As made abundantly clear in the classified documents recently made public by WikiLeaks, Pakistan is the keystone in the international fight against terrorism today. After the US-led coalition targeted terrorist groups operating in Afghanistan, these groups, including al Qaeda and the Taliban, relocated to the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan. From its base in this remote, inhospitable region of Pakistan, al Qaeda and its associated cells have planned, prepared, and executed numerous terrorist attacks around the world, in addition to supporting and waging insurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.
This book is the first detailed analysis of the myriad insurgent groups working in Pakistan. Written by well-known expert on global terrorism Rohan Gunaratna and Khuram Iqbal, a leading scholar in Pakistan, the book examines and reviews the nature, structure, and agendas of the groups, their links to activists in other countries, such as India and Iran, and the difficulties of defeating terrorism in this part of the world. Drawing on extensive field research and interviews with government officials and former terrorists, the authors argue that Pakistan faces grave and continuing pressures from within, and that without steadfast international goodwill and support, the threats of extremism, terrorism, and insurgency will continue to grow.
This timely and necessary book argues that if the international community is to win the battle against ideological extremism and operational terrorism around the world, then Pakistan should be in the vanguard of the fight.
Artist and critic Victor Burgin’s visual and written works span four decades, and Parallel Texts presents a compilation of essays, interviews, and extracts that evidence the interconnectedness throughout his career of his vast artistic oeuvre exhibited around the world and his influential critical and theoretical writings on art.
Organized chronologically, Parallel Texts includes Burgin’s take on the emergence of conceptual art in the early 1970s, his explorations on the theoretical foundations for a post-conceptualist socialist art practice in such non-Western precedents as Maoism and Russian Formalism, and essays on the issues of gender politics and sexuality as they came to the fore in psychoanalytic criticism. In addition, excerpts from The End of Art Theory record his observations on an art world turning toward fashion and gaining unusual wealth. His later works, influenced by his experiences teaching cultural theory at the University of California, look at art theory from within an environment almost unrecognizably transformed by cultural, political, and economic globalization, as well as unprecedented forms of technology and violence.
An extensive selection of works from a long and influential artistic career, Parallel Texts will be invaluable to admirers of Burgin’s art and writing as well as those readers with an interest in contemporary art and art theory.
A hard chair. An embarrassing conversation. A mosquito bite. All these provoke in us a sense of discomfort, whether an irksome sensation or an experience of unpleasantness. While we normally define “discomfort” simply as a lack of comfort, it is unclear which came first—comfort or the lack of it.
“Living involves being exposed to pain every second—not necessarily as an insistent reality, but always as a possibility,” writes Arne Vetlesen in A Philosophy of Pain, a thought-provoking look at an inevitable and essential aspect of the human condition. Here, Vetlesen addresses pain in many forms, including the pain inflicted during torture; the pain suffered in disease; the pain accompanying anxiety, grief, and depression; and the pain brought by violence. He examines the dual nature of pain: how we attempt to avoid it as much as possible in our daily lives, and yet conversely, we obtain a thrill from seeking it.
Vetlesen’s analysis of pain is revealing, plumbing the very center of many of our most intense and complicated emotions. He looks at pain within different arenas of modern life such as family and work, and he specifically probes at a very common modern phenomenon, the idea of pushing oneself to the limit. Engaging throughout with the ideas of thinkers such as Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Alice Miller, Susan Sontag, and Melanie Klein, A Philosophy of Pain asks which came first, thinking or feeling, and explores the concept and possibility of empathy.
Vetlesen offers an original and insightful perspective on something that all of us suffer and endure—from a sprained ankle to a broken heart. Although pain is in itself unpleasant, our ability to feel it reminds us that we are alive.
A land comprising more than fifty nations and innumerable cultural and geographic variations, from harsh desert to lush jungle, Africa has long been a favorite subject for photographers. Since the advent of the medium in the first half of the nineteenth century, a myriad of photographers—both indigenous and immigrant, amateur and professional, explorer and colonist, naturalist and artist—have recorded intrepid expeditions, documented flora and fauna, and chronicled the transformations of the cultural landscape.
Photography and Africa investigates the many themes that intertwine the photographs with the circumstances of their creation. Presenting a wealth of astonishing and rare images, Erin Haney brings together some of the most vibrant examples captured in the continent. From royal portraiture in the nineteenth-century Cape Coast to staged vignettes of old Cairo streets to apartheid-era South African resistance photography, this book illustrates the fascinating and long-standing relationship between Africa and the photograph.
A powerful and celebratory insight into Africa’s relationship with the photograph, Photography and Africa will appeal to those interested in the photography and culture of Africa and how the two have interacted and informed each other over time.
In Photography and Anthropology, Christopher Pinney presents a provocative and readable account of the strikingly parallel histories of the two disciplines, as well as a polemical narrative and overview of the use of photography by anthropologists from the 1840s to the present. Walter Benjamin suggested that photography “make[s] the difference between technology and magic visible as a thoroughly historical variable,” and Pinney here explores photography as a divinatory practice that prompted anthropologists to capture the “primitive” lives of those they studied.
Early anthropology celebrated photography as a physical record, whose authority and permanence promised an escape from the lack of certainty in speech. But later anthropologists faulted photography for failing to capture movement and process. Anthropology as a practice of “being there” has thus found itself entwined in an intimate engagement with photography as metaphor for the collection of evidence.
Through numerous examples from the annals of anthropological photography, Photography and Anthropology examines the history of anthropology’s enchantment with photography alongside the anthropological theory of photography and documentation.
With its lush and diverse landscapes, ancient ruins, and stunning architecture, China is a photographer’s dream. Exploring this visually rich and evocative country, Photography and China highlights Chinese photographers and subjects from the inception of photography to the present day.
What did the arrival of cinema do for photography? How did the moving image change our relation to the still image? Why have cinema and photography been so drawn to each other? Close-ups, freeze frames and the countless portrayals of photographers on screen are signs of cinema’s enduring attraction to the still image. Photo-stories, sequences and staged tableaux speak of the deep influence of cinema on photography.
Photography and Cinema a considers the importance of the still image for filmmakers such as the Lumière brothers, Alfred Hitchcock, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Mark Lewis, Agnès Varda, Peter Weir, Christopher Nolan and many others. In parallel it looks at the cinematic in the work of photographers and artists that include Germaine Krull, William Klein, John Baldessari, Jeff Wall, Victor Burgin and Cindy Sherman.
From film stills and flipbooks to slide shows and digital imaging, hybrid visual forms have established an ambiguous realm between motion and stillness. David Campany assembles a missing history in which photography and cinema have been each other’s muse and inspiration for over a century.
The idea of photographing the dead is as old as photography itself. For the most part, early death photographs were commissioned or taken by relatives of the deceased and preserved in the home as part of the family collection. Once thought inappropriate and macabre, today these photographs are considered to have a beneficial role in bereavement therapy.
Photography and Death reveals the beauty and significance of such images, formerly dismissed as disturbing or grotesque, and places them within the context of changing cultural attitudes towards death and loss. Excluding images of death through war, violence, or natural disasters, Audrey Linkman concentrates on photographs of natural deaths within the family. She identifies the range of death-related photographs that have been produced in both Europe and North America since the 1840s and charts changes in their treatment through the decades.
Photography and Death will interest photo, art, and social historians and practitioners in the field of bereavement therapy, as well as those who wish to better understand the images of long-lost ancestors who gaze back from the pages of family albums.
Egypt immediately conjures images of the pyramids, the temples and the Sphinx in the desert. Early photographs of Egypt took these ancient monuments as their primary subjects, and these have remained hugely influential in constructing our view of the country. But while Egypt and its monuments have been regularly photographed by foreigners, little has been known about the early days of photography among Egyptians. Photography and Egypt examines both, considering images from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, including studio portraits, landscapes and photojournalism.
Two forces drove photography’s early development in Egypt: its link as an essential tool of archaeology and the accelerating effects of archaeological photographs on the burgeoning tourism industry. In this book, Maria Golia examines these twin drives, through the work of Europeans who travelled to Egypt as well as early Egyptian and Middle Eastern photographers. Golia examines how photography was also employed for propaganda purposes, including depictions of celebrated soldiers, workers and farmers; and how studio-based photography was used to portray the growing Egyptian middle class. Today’s young photographic artists, Golia reveals, use the medium to celebrate everyday life and to indict political and social conditions, with photography bearing witness to history––as well as helping to shape it.
Illustrated with a rich, sometimes surprising variety of images, many published for the first time in the West, Photography and Egypt is the first book to relate the story of Egypt’s rapport with photography in one concise and highly readable account.
In this beautifully illustrated book Maria Antonella Pelizzari traces the history of photography in Italy from its beginnings to the present as she guides us through the history of Italy and its ancient sites and Renaissance landmarks.
Pelizzari specifically considers the role of photography in the formation of Italian national identity during times of political struggle, such as the lead up to Unification in 1860, and later in the nationalist wars of Mussolini’s regime. While many Italians and foreigners— such as Fratelli Alinari or Carlo Ponti, John Ruskin or Kit Talbot—focused their lenses on architectural masterpieces, others documented the changing times and political heroes, creating icons of figures such as Garibaldi and the brigands. Pelizzari’s exploration of Italian visual traditions also includes the photographic collages of Bruno Munari, the neorealist work of photographers such as Franco Pinna, the bold stylized compositions of Mario Giacomelli, and the controversial images created by Oliviero Toscani for Benetton advertising in the 1980s.
Featuring unpublished works and a rare selection of over one hundred images, this book will appeal to art collectors and students of art history and Italian culture.
In Photography and Japan, Karen Fraser argues that the diversity of styles, subjects, and functions of Japanese photography precludes easy categorization along nationalized lines. Instead, she shows that the development of photography within Japan is best understood by examining its close relationship with the country’s dramatic cultural, political, and social history.
Photography and Japan covers 150 years of photography, a period in which Japan has experienced some of the most significant events in modern history and made a remarkable transformation from an isolated, feudal country into an industrialized, modern world power—a transformation that included a striking rise and fall as an imperial power during the first half of the twentieth century and a miraculous economic recovery in the decades following the devastation of World War II. The history of photography has paralleled these events, becoming inextricably linked with notions of modernity and cultural change.
Through thematic chapters that focus on photography’s role in negotiating cultural identity, war, and the documentation of urban life, Photography and Japan introduces many images that will be unfamiliar to Western viewers and provides a broadened context for those photos that are better known.
Aspiring writers are often admonished to “show, not tell,” an instruction that immediately speaks to the relationship between the written word and the visual world. It is a tenuous correspondence—both literature and art are striving toward the same goal of depiction, but the reality they portray is shaped by their chosen tools. As François Brunet argues in Photography and Literature, the advent of photography posed one of the greatest challenges to writers—here was an artistic medium that could almost instantly distill a scene or perspective. As Brunet shows, the result of this challenge has been a fantastic interplay between the two and between photographers and writers themselves.
Photography and Literature assess the complete history of photography, and Brunet begins by examining how the invention of photography was shaped by written culture, both scientific and literary. As well, Brunet looks at the creation of the photo-book, the frequent personal discovery of photography by writers, and how photography and literature eventually began to trade tools and merge formats to create a new photo-textual genre. Highly illustrated, Photography and Literature reflects a photographer’s point of view, giving new attention to such works as the groundbreaking exploration of photography in The Pencil of Nature by William Henry Fox Talbot and Sophie Calle’s projects with Jean Baudrillard and Paul Auster.
Essential for anyone interested in the intersection of the verbal and the visual, Photography and Literature provides a fascinating wealth of autobiography, manifesto, and fiction as well as a variety of images from the first daguerreotypes to the digital age.
Can film capture what our eyes can’t see? There are many examples—both historical and contemporary—of photographs of spirits or “ghosts.” These images alternately have been derided as hoaxes or, at the other extreme, held up as irrefutable proof of the otherworld. Photography and Spirit examines these mesmerizing images of phantoms, psychical emanations, and religious apparitions.
Drawing upon eighty images taken between 1860 and today, John Harvey explores spirit photography from the various perspectives of religion, science, and art. Some of the photographs he considers were taken by scientists, others by amateur and commercial photographers, and still others by robotic surveillance devices. The diverse origins of the spirit photographs have inspired a multiplicity of interpretations and engendered, in some cases, high levels of skepticism. Harvey’s analysis probes the connections between the images, human imagination, and larger cultural traditions. Photography and Spirit transforms what are often fringe objects of kitsch into revelatory artifacts of cultural history, drawing from them thought-provoking insights into the historical connections between the material and spiritual worlds, representations of grief, and human cultures’ enduring fascination with the supernatural.
Photo images of ethereal spirits render the border between what is real and what is fantastic indistinguishable. Photography and Spirit challenges our pre-conceived notions and offers an intriguing new perspective on the nature of photography.
From Ansel Adams to Carleton Watkins, Diane Arbus to Weegee, Richard Avedon to James VanDerZee, American photographers have recorded their vast, multicultural nation in images that, for more than a hundred years, have come to define the USA. In Photography and the USA, Mick Gidley explores not only the medium of photography and the efforts to capture key events and moments through photographs, but also the many ways in which the medium has played a formative role in American culture.
Photography and the USA encompasses the major movements, figures and works that are crucial to understanding American photography, but also pays attention to more obscure aspects of photography’s history. Focusing on works that reveal many different facets of America, its landscapes and its people, Gidley explores the ambiguities of American history and culture. We encounter images that range from an anti-lynching demo in 1934 to Dorothea Lange’s poster “All races serve the crops in California;” an early photographic view of Niagara Falls against the painstaking detail of Edward Weston’s Pepper, No. 30; a fireman’s fight in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to the Ground Zero images of 2001 by Joel Meyerowitz; an 1890s “Wanted” image to Elliot Erwitt’s shot of the Nixon–Kruschchev “Kitchen Debate.” Organizing his narrative around the themes of history, technology, the document and the emblem, Mick Gidley not only presents a history of photography, but also reveals the complexities inherent in reading photographs themselves.
A concise yet comprehensive overview of photography in the United States, this book is an excellent introduction to the subject for American Studies or visual arts students, or for anyone interested in US history or culture.
Apple pie. Pumpkin pie. Shepherd’s pie. Chicken potpie. Sweet or savory, pies are beloved; everyone has a favorite. Yet despite its widespread appeal there has never been a book devoted to this humble dish—until now.
Janet Clarkson in Pie illustrates how what was once a purely pragmatic dish of thick layers of dough has grown into an esteemed creation of culinary art. There is as much debate about how to perfect the ideal, flaky pastry crust as there is about the very definition of a pie: Must it have a top and bottom crust? Is a pasty a pie? In flavorful detail, Clarkson celebrates the pie in all its variations. She touches pon the pie’s commercial applications, nutritional value, and cultural significance; and she examines its international variations, from Britain’s pork pie and Australia and New Zealand’s endless varieties of meat pie to the Russian kurnik and good old-fashioned American apple pie.
This delectable salute to the many pies enjoyed the world over will satisfy the appetites of all readers hungry for culinary history and curious about the many varieties of this delightful food, and it just might inspire them to don aprons and head for the stove.
Known as much for their pink curly tails and pudgy snouts as their low-brow choice of diet and habitat, pigs are prevalent in popular culture—from the Three Little Pigs to Miss Piggy to Babe. Today there are more than one billion pigs on the planet, and there are countless representations of pigs and piggishness throughout the world’s cultures.
In Pig, Brett Mizelle provides a richly illustrated and compelling look at the long, complicated relationship between humans and these highly intelligent, sociable animals. Mizelle traces the natural and cultural history of the pig, focusing on the contradictions between our imaginative representation of pigs and the real-world truth of the ways in which pigs are prized for their meat, used as subjects in medical research, and killed in order to make hundreds of consumer products. Pig begins with the evolution of the suidae, animals that were domesticated in multiple regions 9,000 years ago, and points toward a future where pigs and humans are even more closely intertwined as a result of biomedical breakthroughs. Pig both examines the widespread art, entertainment, and literature that imagines human kinship with pigs and the development of modern industrial pork production.
In charting how humans have shaped the pig and how the pig has shaped us, Mizelle focuses on the unresolved contradictions between the fiction and the reality of our relations with pigs.
Our frequent urban companion, cooing in the eaves of train stations or scavenging underfoot for breadcrumbs and discarded French fries, the pigeon has many detractors—and even some fans. Written out of love for and fascination with this humble yet important bird, Barbara Allen’s Pigeon explores its cultural significance, as well as its similarities to and differences from its close counterpart, the dove. While the dove is seen as a symbol of love, peace, and goodwill, the pigeon is commonly perceived as a filthy, ill-mannered flying rodent, a “rat with wings.”
Readers will find in Pigeon an enticing exploration of the historical and contemporary bonds between humans and these two unique and closely related birds. For polluting statues and architecture, the pigeon has earned a bad reputation, but Barbara Allen offers several examples of the bird’s importance—as a source of food and fertilizer, a bearer of messages during times of war, a pollution monitor, and an aid to Charles Darwin in his pivotal research on evolutionary theory. Allen also comments on the literary love and celebration of pigeons and doves in the work of such writers and poets as Shakespeare, Dickens, Beatrix Potter, Proust, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. Along the way, Allen corrects the many stereotypes about pigeons in the hope that the rich history of one of the oldest human-animal partnerships will be both admired and celebrated.
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