Glorious Bodies

Glorious Bodies
Author: Colby Gordon
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2024-09-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0226835014

A prehistory of transness that recovers early modern theological resources for trans lifeworlds. In this striking contribution to trans history, Colby Gordon challenges the prevailing assumption that trans life is a byproduct of recent medical innovation by locating a cultural imaginary of transition in the religious writing of the English Renaissance. Marking a major intervention in early modern gender studies, Glorious Bodies insists that transition happened, both socially and surgically, hundreds of years before the nineteenth-century advent of sexology. Pairing literary texts by Shakespeare, Webster, Donne, and Milton with a broad range of primary sources, Gordon examines the religious tropes available to early modern subjects for imagining how gender could change. From George Herbert’s invaginated Jesus and Milton’s gestational Adam to the ungendered “glorious body” of the resurrection, early modern theology offers a rich conceptual reservoir of trans imagery. In uncovering early modern trans theology, Glorious Bodies mounts a critique of the broad consensus that secularism is a necessary precondition for trans life, while also combating contemporary transphobia and the right-wing Christian culture war seeking to criminalize transition. Developing a rehabilitative account of theology’s value for positing trans lifeworlds, this book leverages premodern religion to imagine a postsecular transness in the present.

Tales of the Golden Corpse

Tales of the Golden Corpse
Author: Sandra Benson
Publisher: Interlink Books
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2006-08-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN:

Tales of the Golden Corpse is the first complete English version of the famous Tibetan folktales told to a young boy who has killed seven sorcerers in the defense of his Master. The boy must redeem himself by carrying a talking corpse full of wondrous tales on a long journey, without himself speaking a word. These 25 tales of intrigue and magic provide the reader with a window through which to view ancient Tibetan culture. Within them, you will encounter heroes and villains, fearsome witches, murderous demons, and clever tricksters with a uniquely Tibetan humor. Songs, riddles, jokes, and sayings make the stories come alive as they unfold against the background of everyday Tibet—its farmers and nomads, kings and magical beings.

Embodying the Dead

Embodying the Dead
Author: Claire Hind
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2019-11-13
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137602937

Where do we find the dead? Do the dead appear in our dreams? What is it like to play dead? This book is an exciting exploration of the relationship between death and play in performance. Exploring a range of artists and creative disciplines that remember, personify and re-imagine the dead, it playfully unpacks the psychoanalytic concepts of the Death Drive, Desire and the Uncanny as a way of thinking about performance. Embodying the Dead draws on work of Gary Winters and Claire Hind and the various qualities of deadness found in their projects. The authors' work includes live art, theatre, installation, Super 8mm film, walking arts practice and durational performance. This book includes scripts and scores of their performances, original creative texts, interviews with internationally renowned artists and a series of practice-led research tasks to support readers creating their own imaginative performance work. Rich in creative and critical content, this book is ideal for students of drama, theatre and performance studies who have an interest in devised theatre, theatre making, writing for performance and intermedial practice.

Talking to the Dead

Talking to the Dead
Author: Harry Bingham
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2012-09-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0345533747

A mesmerizing and thrilling novel—perfect for fans of Tana French and Stieg Larsson—that introduces a modern, unforgettable rookie cop whose past is as fascinating and as deadly as the crimes she investigates. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Boston Globe • The Seattle Times SHE KNOWS WHAT IT’S LIKE. . . . At first, the murder scene appears sad, but not unusual: a young woman undone by drugs and prostitution, her six-year-old daughter dead alongside her. But then detectives find a strange piece of evidence in the squalid house: the platinum credit card of a very wealthy—and long dead—steel tycoon. What is a heroin-addicted hooker doing with the credit card of a well-known and powerful man who died months ago? This is the question that the most junior member of the investigative team, Detective Constable Fiona Griffiths, is assigned to answer. But D.C. Griffiths is no ordinary cop. She’s earned a reputation at police headquarters in Cardiff, Wales, for being odd, for not picking up on social cues, for being a little overintense. And there’s that gap in her past, the two-year hiatus that everyone assumes was a breakdown. But Fiona is a crack investigator, quick and intuitive. She is immediately drawn to the crime scene, and to the tragic face of the six-year-old girl, who she is certain has something to tell her . . . something that will break the case wide open. Ignoring orders and protocol, Fiona begins to explore far beyond the rich man’s credit card and into the secrets of her seaside city. And when she uncovers another dead prostitute, Fiona knows that she’s only begun to scratch the surface of a dark world of crime and murder. But the deeper she digs, the more danger she risks—not just from criminals and killers but from her own past . . . and the abyss that threatens to pull her back at any time. BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Harry Bingham's Love Story, with Murders. Praise for Talking to the Dead “Gritty, compelling . . . a procedural unlike any other you are likely to read this year.”—USA Today “With Detective Constable Fiona ‘Fi’ Griffiths, Harry Bingham . . . finds a sweet spot in crime fiction . . . think Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander . . . Denise Mina’s ‘Paddy’ Meehan [or] Lee Child’s Jack Reacher. . . . The writing is terrific.”—The Boston Globe “The mystery-thriller genre is already so staffed with masterminds that it’s hard to make room for another. But along comes a book like Talking to the Dead, and suddenly an unadvertised opening is filled. . . . [This] has the feel of something fresh and compelling.”—New York Daily News “A stunner with precision plotting, an unusual setting, and a deeply complex protagonist . . . We have the welcome promise of more books to come about Griffiths.”—The Seattle Times “Recommended highly . . . [a] riveting procedural thriller.”—Library Journal (starred review)

The Lover

The Lover
Author: Laury Silvers
Publisher: Laury Silvers
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2019-05-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1999122844

The First Book in The Sufi Mysteries Quartet It's easier to solve a crime than solve yourself Baghdad 295 hijri/907 CE Zaytuna just wants to be left alone to her ascetic practices and nurse her dark view of the world. But when an impoverished servant girl she barely knows comes and begs her to bring some justice to the death of a local boy, she is forced to face the suffering of the most vulnerable in Baghdad and the emotional and mystical legacy of her mother, a famed ecstatic whose love for God eclipsed everything. The Lover is a historically sensitive mystery that introduces us to the world of medieval Baghdad and the lives of the great Sufi mystics, washerwomen, Hadith scholars, tavern owners, the enslaved, corpsewashers, police, and children indentured to serve in the homes of the wealthy. It asks what it means to have family when you have nearly no one left, what it takes to love and be loved by those who have stuck by you, and how one can come to love God and everything He’s done to you. "Completely engrossing and richly atmospheric. Tenth century Baghdad comes alive through the eyes of a dazzling cast of characters." —Ausma Zehanat Khan, critically acclaimed author of A Deadly Divide from The Getty-Khattak Mysteries, and The Khorasan Archives

The Unseen

The Unseen
Author: Laury Silvers
Publisher: Laury Silvers
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2021
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1777531330

Laury Silvers is a retired historian of early Islam and early Sufism. She is a North American Muslim living in Toronto. Book Three in The Sufi Mysteries Quartet It’s easier to solve a crime than solve yourself Baghdad, 295 Hijri (908 CE) When a young man is found dead, killed in the exact manner as a martyr slain on the fields of Karbala some two hundred years before, there is no mistaking it as anything other than an attack on the Shia community of Baghdad. The city is on edge as religious and political factions are exposed sending the caliph’s army into the streets. Ammar and Tein have to clear the case, one way or another, before violence erupts. But Zaytuna has had a visionary dream of the murder that holds the key to solving the case. Can she can read its signs? And will Tein and Ammar listen? "Completely engrossing and richly atmospheric. Tenth century Baghdad comes alive through the eyes of a dazzling cast of characters." —Ausma Zehanat Khan, critically acclaimed author of A Deadly Divide from The Getty-Khattak Mysteries, and The Khorasan Archives “In this exceptionally well-written and lucid book, Laury Silvers brings the intricacies of medieval Islamic religiosities and society to life. In exploring the little-known religious communities of medieval Baghdad, Silvers invites the reader to journey through the often forgotten multifaceted dimensions of pre-modern society, addressing questions such as dissent, sectarianism, and communal relations.” — Ahab Bdaiwi, Leiden and Cambridge Universities

The Living Blood

The Living Blood
Author: Tananarive Due
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2014-01-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1439121923

*From the author of The Reformatory—A New York Times Notable Book of 2023* The bestselling author of Joplin's Ghost delivers a riveting novel of supernatural suspense—a gripping tale that showcases a writer at the pinnacle of her astounding storytelling abilities. “Due has become a modern-day Octavia Butler, a talented storyteller who stands tall among her horror cohorts Anne Rice and Stephen King.” —The Boston Globe Jessica Jacobs-Wolde has somehow survived the worst that any mother or wife could ever endure: the deaths of her husband and first daughter. But now, four years later, not only is the nightmare continuing— it may have only just begun. Jessica has discovered the terrifying truth behind the legacy that her husband left to their second daughter, Fana...a legacy preordained a thousand years before her time and drenched in the powerful lifeblood that now courses through her veins. As young Fana begins to display unearthly abilities that are quickly spiraling out of control, she becomes the target of those who will stop at nothing to exploit her power—and the unwitting touchstone in an ancient supernatural battle whose outcome may decide the fate of all humanity.