Poems for the Millennium, Volume Four

Poems for the Millennium, Volume Four
Author: Jerome Rothenberg
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 792
Release: 1995
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0520273850

"Global anthology of twentieth-century poetry"--Back cover.

Haunting Experiences

Haunting Experiences
Author: Diane Goldstein
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2007-09-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0874216818

Ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are widely represented throughout modern culture. They can be found in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts, but popular media or commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from the beliefs people hold about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Personal belief and cultural tradition on the one hand, and popular and commercial representation on the other, nevertheless continually feed each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting Experiences, three well-known folklorists seek to broaden the discussion of ghost lore by examining it from a variety of angles in various modern contexts. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas take ghosts seriously, as they draw on contemporary scholarship that emphasizes both the basis of belief in experience (rather than mere fantasy) and the usefulness of ghost stories. They look closely at the narrative role of such lore in matters such as socialization and gender. And they unravel the complex mix of mass media, commodification, and popular culture that today puts old spirits into new contexts.

The Cultural Contradictions Of Capitalism

The Cultural Contradictions Of Capitalism
Author: Daniel Bell
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 400
Release: 1996-10-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780465014996

With a new afterword by the author, this classic analysis of Western liberal capitalist society contends that capitalism—and the culture it creates—harbors the seeds of its own downfall by creating a need among successful people for personal gratification—a need that corrodes the work ethic that led to their success in the first place. With the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a new world order, this provocative manifesto is more relevant than ever.

The Mandaean Book of John

The Mandaean Book of John
Author: Charles G. Häberl
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2019-11-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3110487861

Given the degree of popular fascination with Gnostic religions, it is surprising how few pay attention to the one such religion that has survived from antiquity until the present day: Mandaism. Mandaeans, who esteem John the Baptist as the most famous adherent to their religion, have in our time found themselves driven from their historic homelands by war and oppression. Today, they are a community in crisis, but they provide us with unparalleled access to a library of ancient Gnostic scriptures, as part of the living tradition that has sustained them across the centuries. Gnostic texts such as these have caught popular interest in recent times, as traditional assumptions about the original forms and cultural contexts of related religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have been called into question. However, we can learn only so much from texts in isolation from their own contexts. Mandaean literature uniquely allows us not only to increase our knowledge about Gnosticism, and by extension all these other religions, but also to observe the relationship between Gnostic texts, rituals, beliefs, and living practices, both historically and in the present day.