In what way do we benefit from speaking of things indirectly? How does such a distancing allow us better to discover -- and describe -- people and objects? How does distancing produce an effect? What
The Na of China, farmers in the Himalayan region, live without the institution of marriage. Na brothers and sisters live together their entire lives, sharing household responsibilities and raising th
The Na of China, farmers in the Himalayan region, live without the institution of marriage. Na brothers and sisters live together their entire lives, sharing household responsibilities and raising th
This book introduces to an English-language audience the writings of the so-called New Vienna School of art history. In the 1930s Hans Sedlmayr (1896-1984) and Otto Pacht (1902-1988) undertook an amb
Aby Warburg (1866-1929) is best known as the originator of the discipline oficonology and as the founder of the institute that bears his name. His followers included suchcelebrated art historians of t
Imagine a world without things. There would be nothing to describe, nothing to explain, remark, interpret, or complain about. Without things, we would stop speaking; we would become as mute as things
The work of Alois Riegl (1858-1905) has been highly influential in art history of the modern age. Riegl, the most important member of the so-called Vienna School, developed a refined technique of vis
In this first full-length study of a largely forgotten optical device from the eighteenth century, Arnaud Maillet reconfigures our historical understanding of visual experience and meaning in relatio
Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century
Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997) is a special case in art. His life and works were inextricably linked in a remarkable practice that centered on the role of the artist within both the culture and the s
How does the funeral oration relate to democracy in ancient Greece? How did the deathof an individual citizen-soldier become the occasion to praise the city of Athens? In The Inventionof Athens, Nicol
A picture universally recognized, endlessly scrutinized and described, incessantly copied, adapted, lampooned: does Leonardo's near-ruined Last Supper still offer anything new to be seen or to be sai
Most of the people around us belong to our world not directly, as kin or comrades, but as strangers. How do we recognize them as members of our world? We are related to them as transient participants
In this groundbreaking work, Ariella Azoulay provides a compelling rethinking of the political and ethical status of photography. In her extraordinary account of the "civil contract" of pho
In this widely anticipated book, two leading contemporary art historians offer a subtle and profound reconsideration of the problem of time in the Renaissance. Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood ex
Sound, Structures, and Their Interaction covers theoretical acoustics, structural vibrations, and the interaction of elastic structures with an ambient acoustic medium. It is intended both as a text f
Universities can teach and demonstrate environmental principles and stewardship by taking action to understand and reduce the environmental impacts of their own activities. Greening the Ivory Tower,
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which allows researchers to observeneural activity in the human brain noninvasively, has revolutionized the scientific study of themind. An fMRI experimen
In the period between 1150 and 1550, an increasing number of Christians in westernEurope made pilgrimage to places where material objects—among them paintings, statues,relics, pieces of wood, earth, s
