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Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy
By William S. Allen. 2016
Maurice Blanchot and Theodor W. Adorno are among the most difficult but also the most profound thinkers in twentieth-century aesthetics.…
While their methods and perspectives differ widely, they share a concern with the negativity of the artwork conceived in terms of either its experience and possibility or its critical expression. Such negativity is neither nihilistic nor pessimistic but concerns the status of the artwork and its autonomy in relation to its context or its experience. For both Blanchot and Adorno negativity is the key to understanding the status of the artwork in post-Kantian aesthetics and, although it indicates how art expresses critical possibilities, albeit negatively, it also shows that art bears an irreducible ambiguity such that its meaning can always negate itself. This ambiguity takes on an added material significance when considered in relation to language as the negativity of the work becomes aesthetic in the further sense of being both sensible and experimental, and in doing so the language of the literary work becomes a form of thinking that enables materiality to be thought in its ambiguity. In a series of rich and compelling readings, William S. Allen shows how an original and rigorous mode of thinking arises within Blanchot’s early writings and how Adorno’s aesthetics depends on a relation between language and materiality that has been widely overlooked. Furthermore, by reconsidering the problem of the autonomous work of art in terms of literature, a central issue in modernist aesthetics is given a greater critical and material relevance as a mode of thinking that is abstract and concrete, rigorous and ambiguous. While examples of this kind of writing can be found in the works of Blanchot and Beckett, the demands that such texts place on readers only confirm the challenges and the possibilities that literary autonomy poses to thought.Of Elephants and Toothaches: Ethics, Politics, and Religion in Krzysztof Kieslowski's 'Decalogue'
By Eva Badowska, Francesca Parmeggiani. 2016
This collection is the first to offer a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Decalogue, a ten-film cycle of modern…
tales that touch on the ethical dilemmas of the Ten Commandments. The cycle’s deft handling of moral ambiguity and inventive technique established Kieślowski as a major international director. Kieślowski once said, “Both the deep believer and the habitual skeptic experience toothaches in exactly the same way.” Of Elephants and Toothaches takes seriously the range of thought, from theological to skeptical, condensed in the cycle’s quite human tales. Bringing together scholars of film, philosophy, literature, and several religions, the volume ranges from individual responsibility, to religion in modernity, to familial bonds, to human desire and material greed. It explores Kieślowski’s cycle as it relentlessly solicits an ethical response that stimulates both inner disquiet and interpersonal dialogue.Manchester: Vivre La Difference (Images of Modern America)
By Gary Samson, Robert B. Perreault. 2005
Known as New Hampshire�s �Queen City,� Manchester could be called �Change City.� Throughout its history, it has reinvented itself many…
times. From a Native American fishing and gathering place called Amoskeag to a Yankee colonial town known as Derryfield, it became a multiethnic industrial center, the �Manchester of America,� home of the world-famous Amoskeag Manufacturing Company (1831�1936). When Amoskeag Manufacturing closed during the Depression, �the city that would not die� was reborn through more diversified industries that carried it through the post�World War II era. Several decades of urban renewal saw the demolition of many older buildings and entire neighborhoods. Lamenting the loss of Boston & Maine Railroad�s Union Station and St. Mary�s Bank�s marble building, Manchester residents drew inspiration from the US bicentennial in 1976 to create a renaissance of interest in history and architecture, which brought about the adaptation to modern use of several remaining older structures. Yet more major losses came in 1978 and 1989 with the destruction of the State Theatre and Manchester�s beloved Notre Dame Bridge.Detroit Gesu Catholic Church and School (Images of America)
By Patricia Montemurri. 2017
In a reconfigured farmhouse just a mile outside of the city limits of Detroit, a Jesuit priest and 25 men,…
women, and children gathered to celebrate Sunday mass on March 19, 1922. The Reverend John McNichols named the Catholic mission church Gesu, the Italian word for �Jesus.� Gesu became one of Detroit�s landmark parishes. Its history illustrates the Motor City�s boom, bust, resilience, and resurgence. It was the home parish of four Detroit mayors, powerful members of Congress, auto industry titans, sports legends, artists, authors, and actors. At its peak in the mid-1960s, Gesu School enrolled 1,600 students. Because of Detroit�s decline and its racial and economic struggles, Gesu is one of only four Catholic elementary schools that remain in the city. But as Detroit rebounds, Gesu School is growing again.Sensible Life: A Micro-ontology of the Image
By Scott Alan Stuart, Kevin Attell, Emanuele Coccia. 2016
We like to imagine ourselves as rational beings who think and speak, yet to live means first and foremost to…
look, taste, feel, or smell the world around us. But sensibility is not just a faculty: We are sensible objects both to ourselves and to others, and our life is through and through a sensible life. This book, now translated into five languages, rehabilitates sensible existence from its marginalization at the hands of modern philosophy, theology, and politics. Coccia begins by defining the ontological status of images. Not just an internal modification of our consciousness, an image has an intermediate ontological status that differs from that of objects or subjects. The book’s second part explores our interactions with images in dream, fashion, and biological facts like growth and generation. Our life, Coccia argues, is the life of images.Haunted Lawrence (Haunted America)
By Paul Thomas, Beth Kornegay. 2017
Founded in 1854 as an abolitionist outpost, Lawrence is a seemingly unassuming college town with a long history of hauntings.…
A ghostly guest never checked out of the Eldridge Hotel�s mysterious room 506. Sigma Nu�s fraternity house, the former home of Kansas�s eighteenth governor, is still haunted by the specter of a young woman. Learn the tragic stories of Pete Vinegar, George Albach and Lizzie Madden and uncover the devilish truth behind the �legend� of Stull Cemetery. Author Paul Thomas reveals the ghoulish history behind these stories and many more.Portland’s Historic Eastern Cemetery: A Field of Ancient Graves (Landmarks)
By Ron Romano. 2017
Eastern Cemetery holds more than 350 years of Portland�s rich history. Within the sacred burial ground rest settlers who struggled…
with the natives over resources, citizens who had to choose their allegiance to the king or independence and abolitionists fighting for the end of slavery. From bank robbers and murdering mutineers to Quakers and war heroes, the lives of those interred offer a window into the past. Author and cemetery guide Ron Romano tells the fascinating tale of this historic landscape, illuminating centuries of Portland�s history through the stories of those laid to rest.Douglas Duncan: A Memorial Portrait
By Alan Jarvis. 1974
This is an unusual memorial to an unusual man. Douglas Duncan was a Torontonian who, by his patronage of the…
arts, has had an almost incalculable influence on their development in Canada. A bibliophile all his life, he began by espousing bookbinding as his chosen profession and after studying in Paris he returned to Toronto to set up as a bookbinder in 1928. But this was only one part of his life, and while in Paris his interest in music and painting had grown and matured. In 1936 the Picture Loan Society was founded and Duncan, at first one of the Committee, soon became solely responsible for it. It is in this capacity that his influence was greatest: literally hundreds of Canadian artists owe to him, in some measure, a debt of gratitude for sound advice, encouragement, and help generously given. Ten informal essays have been contributed by people who knew Duncan well at different times and at various stages in his career. Because each contributor concentrates on the Douglas Duncan he knew the result is a personal, vivid and immediate portrait of a very attractive man. The book also includes reproductions of paintings by some of the artists whose work Duncan encouraged and collected, and examples of his work as a bookbinder and a photographer.University of Toledo (Campus History)
By Barbara L. Floyd. 2017
In 1872, Jesup W. Scott donated 160 acres of land to serve as an endowment for the Toledo University of…
Arts and Trades. Unfortunately, the university failed in its early years but was resurrected in 1884 by Scott's three sons, who gave the remaining assets to the City of Toledo to create a manual training school. By 1909, the institution was becoming a full-fledged university but struggled financially and did not have a permanent home. That changed in 1931 with the construction of the Bancroft Street campus, including the iconic University Hall, built in the Collegiate Gothic style. The University of Toledo remained a municipally supported university until 1967, when it joined Ohio's higher education system. In 2006, the University of Toledo merged with the former Medical College of Ohio, a state-supported institution founded in 1964. Today, the University of Toledo serves 20,000 students in degree programs as varied as medicine, law, engineering, business, education, pharmacy, nursing, and liberal arts.Practicing the City: Early Modern London on Stage
By Nina Levine. 2016
In late-sixteenth-century London, the commercial theaters undertook a novel experiment, fueling a fashion for plays that trafficked in the contemporary…
urban scene. But beyond the stage’s representing the everyday activities of the expanding metropolis, its unprecedented urban turn introduced a new dimension into theatrical experience, opening up a reflexive space within which an increasingly diverse population might begin to “practice” the city. In this, the London stage began to operate as a medium as well as a model for urban understanding. Practicing the City traces a range of local engagements, onstage and off, in which the city’s population came to practice new forms of urban sociability and belonging. With this practice, Levine suggests, city residents became more self-conscious about their place within the expanding metropolis and, in the process, began to experiment in new forms of collective association. Reading an array of materials, from Shakespeare and Middleton to plague bills and French-language manuals, Levine explores urban practices that push against the exclusions of civic tradition and look instead to the more fluid relations playing out in the disruptive encounters of urban plurality.Resilient Cities, Second Edition: Overcoming Fossil Fuel Dependence
By Timothy Beatley, Peter Newman, Heather Boyer. 1984
What does it mean to be a resilient city in the age of a changing climate and growing inequity? As…
urban populations grow, how do we create efficient transportation systems, access to healthy green space, and lower-carbon buildings for all citizens?Peter Newman, Timothy Beatley, and Heather Boyer respond to these questions in the revised and updated edition of Resilient Cities. Since the first edition was published in 2009, interest in resilience has surged, in part due to increasingly frequent and deadly natural disasters, and in part due to the contribution of our cities to climate change. The number of new initiatives and approaches from citizens and all levels of government show the promise as well as the challenges of creating cities that are truly resilient.The authors' hopeful approach to creating cities that are not only resilient, but striving to become regenerative, is now organized around their characteristics of a resilient city. A resilient city is one that uses renewable and distributed energy; has an efficient and regenerative metabolism; offers inclusive and healthy places; fosters biophilic and naturally adaptive systems; is invested in disaster preparedness; and is designed around efficient urban fabrics that allow for sustainable mobility.Resilient Cities, Second Edition reveals how the resilient city characteristics have been achieved in communities around the globe. The authors offer stories, insights, and inspiration for urban planners, policymakers, and professionals interested in creating more sustainable, equitable, and, eventually, regenerative cities. Most importantly, the book is about overcoming fear and generating hope in our cities. Cities will need to claim a different future that helps us regenerate the whole planet–this is the challenge of resilient cities.Trek Script 2
By Robert T. Jeschonek. 2012
Once upon a galaxy, a spaced-out writer launched a script for a starry TV episode set in a universe much…
like a certain trek we know and love. Here, for the first time, you can experience this voyage into trekkerness. The names are new, but you might recognize the drama and excitement of an epic encounter aboard the star cruiser Sojourner in a distant quadrant of the final frontier. In this deep space adventure, an alien warlord seeks revenge against the Sojourner crew, claiming he knows and hates them well--but they've never even met him before! When a member of the crew goes rogue and jumps ship, his actions might just set an impossible chain of events in motion. Can Captain Jamison and her embattled crew change the destiny of destruction that awaits them all? Don't miss this exciting lost script by award-winning Star Trek author Robert T. Jeschonek, a master of unique and unexpected science fiction that really packs a punch. He won the Grand Prize in the nationwide Star Trek: Strange New Worlds competition and has written official Star Trek fiction in the realms of the original series, The Next Generation, Voyager, and even New Frontier. He also writes for Star Trek Magazine.Responding to Loss
By Robert Mugerauer. 2014
Much recent philosophical work proposes to illuminate dilemmas of human existence with reference to the arts and culture, often to…
the point of submitting particular works to preconceived formulations. In this examination of three texts that respond to loss, Robert Mugerauer responds withclose, detailed readings that seek to clarify the particularity of the intense force such works bring forth. Mugerauer shows how, in the face of what is irrevocably taken away as well as of what continues to be given, the unavoidable task of interpretation is ours alone. Mugerauer examines works in three different forms that powerfully call on us to respond to loss: Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing, Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum Berlin, and Wim Wenders's film Wings of Desire. Explicating these difficult but rich works with reference to the thought of MartinHeidegger, Jean-Luc Marion, Hannah Arendt, and Emmanuel Levinas, the author helps us to experience the multiple and diverse ways in which all of us are opened to the saturated phenomena of loss, violence, witnessing, and responsibility.Beyond the Supersquare: Art and Architecture in Latin America after Modernism
By Antonio Sergio Bessa, Mario Torres. 2014
Beyond the Supersquare: Art and Architecture in Latin America after Modernism, which developed from a symposium presented by the Bronx…
Museum of the Arts in 2011, showcases original essays by distinguished Latin American architects, historians, and curators whose research examines architecture and urban design practices in the region during a significant period of the twentieth century. Drawing from the exuberant architectural projects of the 1940s to the 1960s, as well as from critically engaged artistic practices of the present day, the essays in this collection reveal how the heroic visions and utopian ideals popular in architectural discourse during the modernist era bore complicated legacies for Latin America—the consequences of which are evident in the vastly uneven economic conditions and socially disparate societies found throughout the region today. The innovative contributions in this volume address how the modernist movement came into being in Latin America and compellingly explore how it continues to resonate in today’s cultural discourse. Beyond the Supersquare takes themes traditionally examined within the strict field of urbanism and architecture and explores them against a broader range of disciplines, including the global economy, political science, gender, visual arts, philosophy, and urban planning. Containing a breadth of scholarship, this book offers a compelling and distinctive view of contemporary life in Latin America. Among the topics explored are the circulation of national cultural identities through architectural media, the intersection of contemporary art and urban social politics, and the recovery of canonically overlooked figures in art and architectural histories, such as Lina Bo Bardi and Joao Filgueiras Lima (“Lele”) from Brazil, Juan Legarreta of Mexico, and Henry Klumb in Puerto Rico.Apocalypse-Cinema: 2012 and Other Ends of the World
By Samuel Weber, Peter Szendy, Will Bishop. 2015
Apocalypse-cinema is not only the end of time that has so often been staged as spectacle in films like 2012,…
The Day After Tomorrow, and The Terminator. By looking at blockbusters that play with general annihilation while also paying close attention to films like Melancholia, Cloverfield, Blade Runner, and Twelve Monkeys, this book suggests that in the apocalyptic genre, film gnaws at its own limit. Apocalypse-cinema is, at the same time and with the same double blow, the end of the world and the end of the film. It is the consummation and the (self-)consumption of cinema, in the form of an acinema that Lyotard evoked as the nihilistic horizon of filmic economy. The innumerable countdowns, dazzling radiations, freeze-overs, and seismic cracks and crevices are but other names and pretexts for staging film itself, with its economy of time and its rewinds, its overexposed images and fades to white, its freeze-frames and digital touch-ups. The apocalyptic genre is not just one genre among others: It plays with the very conditions of possibility of cinema. And it bears witness to the fact that, every time, in each and every film, what Jean-Luc Nancy called the cine-world is exposed on the verge of disappearing. In a Postface specially written for the English edition, Szendy extends his argument into a debate with speculative materialism. Apocalypse-cinema, he argues, announces itself as cinders that question the “ultratestimonial” structure of the filmic gaze. The cine-eye, he argues, eludes the correlationism and anthropomorphic structure that speculative materialists have placed under critique, allowing only the ashes it bears to be heard.The Arts in Canada: The Last Fifty Years
By Ben-Z Shek, William Keith. 1980
In this volume a baker's dozen of creative Canadians make personal responses to the state of the arts in Canada:…
Northrop Frye and Guy Rocher write on general cultural trends; Hugh MacLennan and Gérard Bessette on fiction; Ralph Gustafson and Michèle Lalonde on poetry; Robertson Davies and Gratien Gélinas on drama; George Woodcock and Jacques Allard on non-fiction prose; Godfrey Ridout on music, and Aba Bayefsky and Humphrey N. Milnes on art. The essays were written to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the University of Toronto Quarterly. The contributors were invited to discuss the changes, problems, challenges, and achievements in the arts in the last fifty years. Since all the authors had personal experience of at least a large section of the period surveyed, the editors welcomed personal reminiscence as well as description and assessment. The result is a varied group of essays in each of which the character of the individual artist is clearly evident; together, they provide a complex, many-faceted, lively, and living discussion of the cultural development of Canada. This anniversary collection of essays is a valuable and provocative source for courses in Canadian studies and for anyone interested in the development of the arts and humanities in Canada.In Search of Greatness: Reflections of Yousuf Karsh
By Yousef Karsh. 1962
In this book Yousuf Karsh, whose great photographic portraits have revealed so vividly the outstanding personalities of our time, writes…
about his own life and work. It is the story of an Armenian immigrant boy who rose to be the world's finest portrait photographer, whose pictures, reproduced in newspapers, magazines, and books, and shown in museums, art galleries and exhibitions, have been admired by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. Of his early years in Armenia, Karsh gives a brief but compelling account, writing without bitterness but not sparing the reader the impact on his youthful mind of the brutalities, massacres, and atrocities of that time. The dramatic impression made on him by his first experiences as a young citizen of Sherbrooke, Quebec. His several years of study in Boston with the famous photographer, Garo, show the gradual development of his ideas and skills in portraiture. In 1932, Karsh opened his own studio in Ottawa, capital city of Canada, and there he met Solange Gauthier, the volatile, charming, and practical Frenchwoman whom he married. Together they established his world-wide reputation. Karsh takes the reader with him to his sittings, and shows how he seeks to bring out the essence of the personalities he is portraying. The reader accompanies Karsh and Madam Karsh as they travel to Washington, New York, Hollywood, across Canada and to the Arctic, and on their European tours, photographing and interviewing statesmen, tycoons, artists, actors, musicians, popes, presidents, and kings. At Karsh's side, the reader hears Churchill's lion roar, the wit of Bernard Shaw, the bark of John L. Lewis, the profound accents of Einstein. He observes the grave serenity of Sibelius, and hears the noble 'cello of Casals. He shares in the problems and disappointments of securing adequate reproduction of the portraits in book form, and in the artist's gratification when Portraits of Greatness, printed by the finest gravure for the University of Toronto Press, appeared in 1959 and the magnificent volume became an immediate best-seller. Yousuf's profession has led him into the high places of the world, and this book is enriched by his twenty years of observation of the celebrities he has encountered. These are the experiences of a distinguished artist, a gifted raconteur, and a delightful human being.Dream Wedding Photography
By Lorna Yablsey. 2013
Create stunning contemporary wedding photographyDream Wedding Photography is a complete guide to producing stunning photographs of the perfect wedding. Packed…
with exciting and original images, it will inspire you to create your own professional wedding portfolio.Find out about the approaches and techniques used by top wedding photographer Lorna YabsleyUnderstand practical shooting plans and get essential technical advice from a professionalDiscover how to enhance your work with post-production and presentation techniquesKierkegaard and the Staging of Desire: Rhetoric and Performance in a Theology of Eros
By Carl S. Hughes. 2014
Theology in the modern era often assumes that the consummate form of theological discourse is objective prose—ignoring or condemning apophatic…
traditions and the spiritual eros that drives them. For too long, Kierkegaard has been read along these lines as a progenitor of twentieth-century neo-orthodoxy and a stern critic of the erotic in all its forms. In contrast, Hughes argues that Kierkegaard envisions faith fundamentally as a form of infinite, insatiable eros. He depicts the essential purpose of Kierkegaard’s writing as to elicit ever-greater spiritual desire, not to provide the satisfactions of doctrine or knowledge. Hughes’s argument revolves around close readings of provocative, disparate, and (in many cases) little-known Kierkegaardian texts. The thread connecting all of these texts is that they each conjure up some sort of performative “stage setting,” which they invite readers to enter. By analyzing the theological function of these texts, the book sheds new light on the role of the aesthetic in Kierkegaard’s authorship, his surprising affinity for liturgy and sacrament, and his overarching effort to conjoin eros for God with this-worldly love.Ten Thousand Nights: Highlights from 50 Years of Theatre-Going
By Marvin Carlson. 2017
Esteemed scholar and theater aficionado Marvin Carlson has seen an unsurpassed number of theatrical productions in his long and distinguished…
career. Ten Thousand Nights is a lively chronicle of a half-century of theatre-going, in which Carlson recalls one memorable production for each year from 1960 to 2010. These are not conventional reviews, but essays using each theater experience to provide an insight into the theater and theatre-going at a particular time. The range of performances covered is broad, from edgy experimental fare to mainstream musicals, most of them based in New York but with stops at major theater events in Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Milan, and elsewhere. The engagingly written pieces convey a vivid sense not only of each production but also of the particular venue, neighborhood, and cultural context, covering nearly all significant movements, theater artists, and groups of the late twentieth century.