Glimpses into the soul of a people and a nation.

A monumental new biography of a pivotal yet poorly understood pioneer in modern philosophy. When a painter once told Goethe that he wanted to paint the most celebrated man of the age, Goethe directed him to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel worked from the credo: To philosophize is to learn to live freely. While he was slow and cautious in the development of his philosophy, his intellectual growth was like an odyssey of the mind, and, contrary to popular belief, his life was full of twists and turns, suspense and even danger. In this landmark biography, the philosopher Klaus Vieweg paints a new picture of the life and work of the most important representative of German idealism. His vivid portrait provides readers an intimate account of Hegel's times and the milieu in which he developed his thought, along with detailed, clear-sighted analyses of Hegel's four major works. What results is a new interpretation of Hegel through the lens of reason and freedom. Vieweg draws on extensive archival research that has brought to light a wealth of hitherto undiscovered documents and handwritten notes relating to Hegel's work, touching on Hegel's engagement with the leading thinkers and writers of his age: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hölderlin, and others. Combatting clichés and misunderstandings about Hegel, Vieweg also offers a sustained defense of the philosopher's more progressive impulses. Highly praised upon its release in Germany as having set the new biographical standard, this monumental work emphasizes Hegel's relevance for today, depicting him as a vital figure in the history of philosophy.

An exploration of the castrato as a critical provocation to explore the relationships between sound, music, voice instrument, and machine. Italian courts and churches began employing castrato singers in the late sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century, the singers occupied a celebrity status on the operatic stage. Constructed through surgical alteration and further modified by rigorous training, castrati inhabited human bodies that had been “mechanized” to produce sounds in ways that unmechanized bodies could not. The voices of these technologically enhanced singers, with their unique timbre, range, and strength, contributed to a dramatic expansion of musical vocabulary and prompted new ways of imagining sound, the body, and personhood. Connecting sometimes bizarre snippets of history, this multi-disciplinary book moves backward and forward in time, deliberately troubling the meaning of concepts like “technology” and “human.” Voice Machines attends to the ways that early modern encounters and inventions—including settler colonialism, emergent racialized worldviews, the printing press, gunpowder, and the telescope—participated in making castrati. In Bonnie Gordon’s revealing study, castrati serve as a critical provocation to ask questions about the voice, the limits of the body, and the stories historians tell.

Ever wondered how we got here? "People and Progress" is your answer. From the first sparks of consciousness to the digital age, this book is your all-access pass to the human story. Trace humanity's journey: the rise and fall of ancient civilizations, the vibrant exchange of cultures along the Silk Road, the transformative power of the Industrial Revolution, and the profound impact of world wars and the Cold War. Explore the complexities of globalization and Asia's rise. Grapple with the challenges of environmental sustainability and the ethical dilemmas of technological advancement. Delve into the ongoing struggle for human rights and social justice, and the complexities of migration and identity in a globalized world. Gain a deeper understanding of the forces that have shaped our world, from the earliest tools to the latest technologies. Discover the resilience of the human spirit, the power of ideas, and the interconnectedness of our global community. "People and Progress" is more than just a history book; it's a conversation about our shared humanity. It invites you to connect with the past, understand the present, and actively contribute to shaping a better future.

Examines the practice and purposes of presenting the small-scale in literature, material culture and theories of cognition.

World Christianity: An Introduction provides an accessible introduction to the discipline, methodology, and field of world Christianity. In this book, Graham Joseph Hill engages with more than one hundred high-profile Majority World and First Nations Christian leaders to learn what they can teach the West about mission, leadership, hospitality, creation care, education, worship, and more. Hill challenges the Western church to move away from a Eurocentric and Americentric view of church and mission, and he calls for the church to engage with crucial paradigm shifts in world Christianity. The future of the global church—including the churches in the West—exists in these global exchanges. World Christianity is an indispensable guide for the church as it navigates the unique global experiences of the twenty-first century.

The stage musical constitutes a major industry not only in the US and the UK, but in many regions of the world. Over the last four decades many countries have developed their own musical theatre industries, not only by importing hit shows from Broadway and London but also by establishing or reviving local traditions of musical theatre. In response to the rapid growth of musical theatre as a global phenomenon, The Oxford Handbook of the Global Stage Musical presents new scholarly approaches to issues arising from these new international markets. The volume examines the stage musical from theoretical and empirical perspectives including concepts of globalization and consumer culture, performance and musicological analysis, historical and cultural studies, media studies, notions of interculturalism and hybridity, gender studies, and international politics. The thirty-three essays investigate major aspects of the global musical, such as the dominance of Western colonialism in its early production and dissemination, racism and sexism--both in representation and in the industry itself--as well as current conflicts between global and local interests in postmodern cultures. Featuring contributors from seventeen countries, the essays offer informed insider perspectives that reflect the diversity of the subject and offer in-depth examinations of specific cultural and economic systems. Together, they conduct penetrating comparative analysis of musical theatre in different contexts as well as a survey of the transcultural spread of musicals.

"This timely volume engages with one of the most important shifts in recent film studies: the turn away from text-based analysis towards the viewer. Historically, this marks a return to early interest in the effect of film on the audience by psychoanalysts and psychologists, which was overtaken by concern with the 'effects' of film, linked to calls for censorship and moral panics rather than to understanding the mental and behavioral world of the spectator. Early cinema history has revealed the diversity of film-viewing habits, while traditional 'box office' studies, which treated the audience initially as a homogeneous market, have been replaced by the study of individual consumers and their motivations. Latterly, there has been a marked turn towards more sophisticated economic and sociological analysis of attendance data. And as the film experience fragments across multiple formats, the perceptual and cognitive experience of the individual viewer (who is also an auditor) has become increasingly accessible. With contributions from Gregory Waller, John Sedgwick and Martin Barker, this work spans the spectrum of contemporary audience studies, revealing work being done on local, non-theatrical and live digital transmission audiences, and on the relative attraction of large-scale, domestic and mobile platforms."--Publisher's website.