Byzantine and Russian Orthodox icons are perhaps the most enduring form of religious art ever developed—and one of the most mysterious. This book, featuring the painted panels made for churches and for prayer at home, provides an accessible guide to their story and power. Illustrated mostly with Cretan, Greek, and Russian examples from the British Museum, which houses Britain’s most important collection of icons, the book examines icons in the context of the history of Christianity, as well as within the perspective of art history.
Robin Cormack, a preeminent expert on the subject, explains how icons were made, framed, and displayed. He investigates their subject matter, showing how scenes can be identified, how the iconography developed over centuries, and what role portraiture plays in their imagery. Icons have not lost their power in much of the world, and Cormack considers their continuing use in our day—whether in a religious setting or as an inspiration to modern-day artists like Matisse.
A uniquely accessible and authoritative introduction to this distinctive art form, Icons defines its subject’s unusual place at the intersection of religion, Russian culture, and art history.
Jennifer Franklin reimagines an Antigone for our times in her third collection, If Some God Shakes Your House, where filial devotion and ossified roles of gendered labor become the engine of her defiance. Franklin’s Antigone is ferocious, feeling, and unafraid of the consequences of speaking the truth to power about the political atrocities she has witnessed and personal traumas she has withstood. With a sensitivity that equally elevates the quotidian and the classical, and an attention that moves from the ancient ruins of Pompeii to the right of bodily autonomy and agency stripped away by our own Supreme Court, Franklin reveals the high stakes of our moment where “the one who does the judging judges things all wrong.” Franklin’s Antigone has embraced the sacrifice of self for something greater—a dual devotion to her disabled daughter and to her art. “For twenty years, I have been disappearing,” she writes in the book’s final poem, yet she continues to sing.
In American Waters is the catalog of an exhibition co-organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, and Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
The exhibition and this associated catalog invite visitors to discover the sea as an expansive way to reflect on American culture and environment, learn how coastal and maritime symbols moved inland across the United States, and question what it means to be “in American waters.” Work by Georgia O’Keeffe, Amy Sherald, Kay WalkingStick, Norman Rockwell, Hale Woodruff, Paul Cadmus, Thomas Hart Benton, Jacob Lawrence, Valerie Hegarty, Stuart Davis, and many others is included, along with essays from scholars, critics, and the curators.
The first English translation of the narrative poem that is widely recognized as one of treasures of pre-modern Bengali culture.
In 1752, the Bengali poet Bharatchandra Ray completed a long narrative poem dedicated to the glory of Annada, the consort of Shiva and the divinity who, as her name proclaims, “bestows the bounty of rice.”
A poet well-versed in Sanskrit, Persian, and Hindi—all of which enrich his work—Bharatchandra took up the literary performance genre maṅgalkāvya and thoroughly transformed it, addressing the aesthetic tastes of the court rather than those of the traditional village audience. He added depth and sensitivity to well-known legends, along with allusions to his own experiences of poverty, and more than a dash of mischievous wit.
The second volume recounts the clandestine love affair of Princess Vidya and Prince Sundar, and how Bhavananda, ancestor of the poet’s patron, stopped a rebellion and became a king.
This translation, the first in English, features the original text in the Bangla script. Lively and entertaining, In Praise of Annada was regarded as a major achievement in its own time and is now counted one of the treasures of Bengali literature.
The first English translation of the narrative poem that is widely recognized as one of treasures of pre-modern Bengali culture.
In 1752, the Bengali poet Bharatchandra Ray completed a long narrative poem dedicated to the glory of Annada, Shiva’s consort and the divinity who, as her name proclaims, “bestows the bounty of rice.”
A poet well versed in Sanskrit, Persian, and Hindi—all of which enrich his work—Bharatchandra took up the literary performance genre maṅgalkāvya and thoroughly transformed it, addressing the aesthetic tastes of the court rather than of the traditional village audience. He added depth and sensitivity to well-known legends, along with allusions to his own experiences of poverty, and more than a dash of mischievous wit. The first volume narrates Annada’s origins, including the building of her city and temple under Shiva’s direction and the spread of her worship, and incorporates praise of the poet’s patron, the Nadia royal family.
This translation, the first into English, accompanies the original text in the Bangla script. Lively and entertaining, In Praise of Annada was regarded as a major achievement in its own time and remains a treasure of Bengali literature.
An inspiring document of passion and advocacy, In the Spirit of Wetlands reveals the transformative power of restoration.
For award-winning poet James Fujinami Moore, the past is never past. In this brutal debut, sensual, political, and imagined worlds collide, tracing a history of diaspora and trauma that asks: what do we do in the aftermath of violence, and why do we long to inflict it? From Vegas boxing rings and the restless sands of Manzanar to the scrolling horrors of a Facebook feed, Moore’s poems trace over intimate details with surprising humor, fierce eroticism, and a restless eye.
Reliving the overdoses of friends and loved ones, Malachi Black closes this book’s opening poem with a resuscitating command: “Doctor, / turn back. One of us lives.” Indirect Light is a testament to and apologia for this assertion of vitality, each eponymous poem an elegy dedicated to one of Black’s dearly departed. Though this book mourns an irretrievable past, it wages war against amnesia, refusing to let death erase the vibrancy of their lives. These poems preserve “the breath we left beside us on the train tracks,” “the watery inscriptions of nearby dogwood branches / dipped in shade,” “our bookbags’ mouths / pouting open on our laps,” “our street-scabbed bodies / briefly tinseled in the sun.”
Insofar as this collection returns to kin and friends to honor them by the indirect light of memory, it also seeks to memorialize the author's personal experience of adolescence and addiction amidst the opioid epidemic. It is a lament for all that's lost and a paean to the near misses and the just enough: a dim glow you can see by, a cup of coffee passed during NA, a prayer during detox to "be // as empty / as the sky" if floating means survival.
An appeal for the importance of theory, utopia, and close consideration of our contemporary dark times
What does any particular theory allow us to do? What is the value of doing so? And who benefits? In Invoking Hope, Phillip E. Wegner argues for the undiminished importance of the practices of theory, utopia, and a deep and critical reading of our current situation of what Bertolt Brecht refers to as finsteren Zeiten, or dark times.
Invoking Hope was written in response to three events that occurred in 2016: the five hundredth anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia; the one hundredth anniversary of the founding text in theory, Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics; and the rise of the right-wing populism that culminated in the election of Donald Trump. Wegner offers original readings of major interventions in theory alongside dazzling utopian imaginaries developed from classical Greece to our global present—from Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Fredric Jameson, Sarah Ahmed, Susan Buck-Morss, and Jacques Lacan to such works as Plato’s Republic, W. E. B. Du Bois’s John Brown, Isak Dinesen’s “Babette’s Feast,” Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312, and more. Wegner comments on an expansive array of modernist and contemporary literature, film, theory, and popular culture.
With Invoking Hope, Wegner provides an innovative lens for considering the rise of right-wing populism and the current crisis in democracy. He discusses challenges in the humanities and higher education and develops strategies of creative critical reading and hope against the grain of current trends in scholarship.
Houlihan’s sixth collection of lyric poems reflects upon the persistence of what is lost and the accidental ruptures of trauma that allow re-entry into our world. These poems are at once despairing and hopeful.
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