A Centre of Wonders

A Centre of Wonders
Author: Janet Moore Lindman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501717634

Images of bodies and bodily practices abound in early America: from spirit possession, Fasting Days, and infanticide to running the gauntlet, going "naked as a sign," flogging, bundling, and scalping. All have implications for the study of gender, sexuality, masculinity, illness, the "body politic," spirituality, race, and slavery. The first book devoted solely to the history and theory of the body in early American cultural studies brings together authors representing diverse academic disciplines.Drawing on a wide range of archival sources—including itinerant ministers' journals, Revolutionary tracts and broadsides, advice manuals, and household inventories—they approach the theoretical analysis of the body in exciting new ways. A Centre of Wonders covers such varied topics as dance and movement among Native Americans; invading witch bodies in architecture and household spaces; rituals of baptism, conversion, and church discipline; eighteenth-century women's journaling; and the body as a rhetorical device in the language of diplomacy.

Buried Lives

Buried Lives
Author: Michele Lise Tarter
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 0820341193

Buried Lives offers the first critical examination of the experience of imprisonment in early America. These interdisciplinary essays investigate several carceral institutions to show how confinement shaped identity, politics, and the social imaginary both in the colonies and in the new nation. The historians and literary scholars included in this volume offer a complement and corrective to conventional understandings of incarceration that privilege the intentions of those in power over the experiences of prisoners. Considering such varied settings as jails, penitentiaries, almshouses, workhouses, floating prison ships, and plantations, the contributors reconstruct the struggles of people imprisoned in locations from Antigua to Boston. The essays draw upon a rich array of archival sources from the seventeenth century to the eve of the Civil War, including warden logs, petitions, execution sermons, physicians' clinical notes, private letters, newspaper articles, runaway slave advertisements, and legal documents. Through the voices, bodies, and texts of the incarcerated, Buried Lives reveals the largely ignored experiences of inmates who contested their subjection to regimes of power.

Seven Wonders of Ancient Africa

Seven Wonders of Ancient Africa
Author: Michael Woods
Publisher: Lerner Books [UK]
Total Pages: 84
Release: 2009
Genre: Africa
ISBN: 076134327X

Take a new look at ancient history through the seven wonders of a geographical or cultural region. Each book in this series explains the qualities that makes something a 'wonder', with information about how the wonders were constructed, how they were discovered or preserved, how they are studied, and if and how they are used in modern times.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Author: Bettany Hughes
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2024-04-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0593686152

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER • From the award-winning historian and broadcaster comes an immersive, awe-inspiring tour of the ancient sites that kindle our imagination and afford us a glimpse into our shared history “This fascinating book is brimming with stories of people and places, all told with Bettany’s natural sense of wonder and adventure.” —Simon Sebag Montefiore, New York Times bestselling author of The World For millennia, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have been known for their aesthetic sublimity, ingenious engineering, and sheer, audacious magnitude: The Great Pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the Statue of Zeus, the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse at Alexandria. Echoing down time, each of these persists in our imagination as an emblem of the glory of antiquity, but beneath the familiar images is a surprising, revelatory history. Guiding us through it is historian Bettany Hughes, who has traveled to each of the sites to uncover the latest archaeological discoveries and bring these monuments and the distinct cultures that built them back to breathtaking life. Spellbinding, richly illustrated, and full of insight, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is a journey into the indomitable ambition and creativity of the human spirit.