A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age
Author: Laurie Wilkie
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2022-08-31
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 147429880X

V. 1. A cultural history of objects in Antiquity / edited by Robin Osborne, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom -- v. 2. A cultural history of objects in the Medieval Age / edited by Julie Lund, University of Oslo, Norway and Sarah Semple, University of Durham, UK.

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age
Author: Laurie Wilkie
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2022-08-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350226726

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age covers the period 1900 to today, a time marked by massive global changes in production, transportation, and information-sharing in a post-colonial world. New materials and inventions - from plastics to the digital to biotechnology - have created unprecedented scales of disruption, shifting and blurring the categories and meanings of the object. If the 20th century demonstrated that humans can be treated like things whilst things can become ever more human, where will the 21st century take us? The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds. Laurie A. Wilkie is Professor at the University of California-Berkeley, USA. John M. Chenoweth, is Associate Professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, USA. Volume 6 in the Cultural History of Objects set. General Editors: Dan Hicks and William Whyte

A Cultural History of Furniture in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Furniture in the Modern Age
Author: Claire I. R. O'Mahony
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2022-02-24
Genre: Design
ISBN: 1350280208

Furniture is a unique witness to the transformations of private and public experience amidst the upheavals of the 20th century. How we work, rest and play are determined by the embodied encounter with furniture, defining and projecting a sense of identity and status, responding to and exemplifying contrasting social conditions, political and economic motivations, aesthetic predilections and debates. Assessing physical and archival evidence drawn from a spectrum of iconic and under-represented case studies, an international team of design historians collaborate in this volume to explore key methodological questions about how the production, consumption and mediation of furniture reveal shifting cultural habits and histories across diverse contexts amidst modernity. Drawing upon a wealth of visual and textual sources, this volume presents essays that examine key characteristics of the furniture of the period on the themes of Design and Motifs; Makers, Making, and Materials; Types and Uses; The Domestic Setting; The Public Setting; Exhibition and Display; Furniture and Architecture; Visual Representations; and Verbal Representations.

A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in the Modern Age
Author: Andrew Teverson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2021-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350287601

How have fairy tales from around the world changed over the centuries? What do they tell us about different cultures and societies? Drawing together contributions from an international range of scholars in history, literature, and cultural studies, this volume uniquely examines creative applications of fairy tales in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It explores how the fairy tale has become a genre that flourishes on film, on TV, and in digital media, as well as in the older technologies of print, performance, and the visual arts. An essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of literature, history, the visual arts and cultural studies, this book explores such themes and topics as: forms of the marvelous, adaptation, gender and sexuality, humans and non-humans, monsters and the monstrous, spaces, socialization, and power. A Cultural History of Fairy Tales (6-volume set) A Cultural History of Fairy Tales in Antiquity is also available as a part of a 6-volume set, A Cultural History of Fairy Tales, tracing fairy tales from antiquity to the present day, available in print, or within a fully-searchable digital library accessible through institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com). Individual volumes for academics and researchers interested in specific historical periods are also available digitally via www.bloomsburycollections.com.

A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age
Author: David T. Mitchell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2023-05-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350029300

If eugenics -- the science of eliminating kinds of undesirable human beings from the species record -- came to overdetermine the late 19th century in relation to disability, the 20th century may be best characterized as managing the repercussions for variable human populations. A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age provides an interdisciplinary overview of disability as an outpouring of professional, political, and representational efforts to fix, correct, eliminate, preserve, and even cultivate the value of crip bodies. This book pursues analyses of disability's deployment as a wellspring for an alternative ethics of living in and alongside the body different while simultaneously considering the varied social and material contexts of devalued human differences from World War I to the present. In short, this volume demonstrates that, in Ozymandias-like ways, the Western Project of the Human with its perpetuation of body-mind hierarchies lies crumbling in the deserts of failed empires, genocidal furies, and the rejuvenating myths of new nation states in the 20th century. An essential resource for researchers, scholars and students of history, literature, culture, philosophy, rehabilitation, technology, and education, A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age explores such themes and topics as: atypical bodies; mobility impairment; chronic pain and illness; blindness; deafness; speech; learning difficulties; and mental health while wrestling with their status as unreliable predictors of what constitutes undesirable humanity.

A History of the World in 100 Objects

A History of the World in 100 Objects
Author: Neil MacGregor
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2011-10-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0141966831

This book takes a dramatically original approach to the history of humanity, using objects which previous civilisations have left behind them, often accidentally, as prisms through which we can explore past worlds and the lives of the men and women who lived in them. The book's range is enormous. It begins with one of the earliest surviving objects made by human hands, a chopping tool from the Olduvai gorge in Africa, and ends with an object from the 21st century which represents the world we live in today. Neil MacGregor's aim is not simply to describe these remarkable things, but to show us their significance - how a stone pillar tells us about a great Indian emperor preaching tolerance to his people, how Spanish pieces of eight tell us about the beginning of a global currency or how an early Victorian tea-set tells us about the impact of empire. Each chapter immerses the reader in a past civilisation accompanied by an exceptionally well-informed guide. Seen through this lens, history is a kaleidoscope - shifting, interconnected, constantly surprising, and shaping our world today in ways that most of us have never imagined. An intellectual and visual feast, it is one of the most engrossing and unusual history books published in years.

A Cultural History of Hair in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Hair in the Modern Age
Author: Geraldine Biddle-Perry
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2020-12-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350122831

Over the last century, there has been a revolution in self-presentation and social attitudes towards hair. Developments in mass manufacturing, advances in chemical science and new understandings of bodies and minds have been embraced by new kinds of hairdressers and their clientele and embodied in styles that reflect shifting ideals of what it is to be and to look modern. The emergence of the ladies hairdressing salon, the rise of the celebrity stylist, the impact of Hollywood, an expanding mass media, and a new synergy between fashions in clothing and hairstyles have rippled out globally. Fashions in hair styles and their representation have taken on new meanings as a way of resisting dominant social structures, experimenting with social taboos, and expressing a modern sense of self. From the 1920s bob to the punk cut, hair has continued to be deeply involved in society's larger issues. Drawing on a wealth of visual, textual and object sources, and illustrated with 75 images, A Cultural History of Hair in the Modern Age presents essays that explore how politics, science, religion, fashion, beauty, the visual arts, and popular culture have reshaped modern hair and its significance as an agent of social change.

A Cultural History of Shopping in the Early Modern Age

A Cultural History of Shopping in the Early Modern Age
Author: Tim Reinke-Williams
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2022-06-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350278505

A Cultural History of Shopping was a Library Journal Best in Reference selection for 2022. Across Europe, the Early Modern period was marked by political, religious and cultural upheaval, and saw the emergence of the first global economy, developments which profoundly impacted how people shopped and what they were able to buy. This volume engages with the key debates around continuity and change in consumer behavior in the 'long 16th century' and the ways in which shopping became an educational and exciting act for many women, men and children across the social spectrum: shops and market stalls were filled with an increasingly wide range of goods made by skilled craftspeople and transported by merchants making evermore ambitious and lucrative journeys across the world. Even servants and the poor were exposed to these new things, for they could consume by eye and ear what they could not afford to take home in material form. Although they did not yet have a word for the activity of “shopping,” in this period men and women came to understand that this activity was more than a functional act to acquire necessities. A Cultural History of Shopping in the Early Modern Age presents an overview of the period with themes addressing practices and processes; spaces and places; shoppers and identities; luxury and everyday; home and family; visual and literary representations; reputation, trust and credit; and governance, regulation and the state.

A Cultural History of Color in the Modern Age

A Cultural History of Color in the Modern Age
Author: Anders Steinvall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2022-08-31
Genre: Design
ISBN: 1350193607

A Cultural History of Color in the Modern Age covers the period 1920 to the present, a time of extraordinary developments in colour science, philosophy, art, design and technologies. The expansion of products produced with synthetic dyes was accelerated by mass consumerism as artists, designers, architects, writers, theater and filmmakers made us a 'color conscious' society. This influenced what we wore, how we chose to furnish and decorate our homes, and how we responded to the vibrancy and chromatic eclecticism of contemporary visual cultures.The volume brings together research on how philosophers, scientists, linguists and artists debated color's polyvalence, its meaning to different cultures, and how it could be measured, manufactured, manipulated and enjoyed. Color shapes an individual's experience of the world and also how society gives particular spaces, objects, and moments meaning. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Color examines how color has been created, traded, used, and interpreted over the last 5000 years. The themes covered in each volume are color philosophy and science; color technology and trade; power and identity; religion and ritual; body and clothing; language and psychology; literature and the performing arts; art; architecture and interiors; and artefacts. Anders Steinvall is Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics at Umeå University, Sweden. Sarah Street is Professor of Film at the University of Bristol, UK. Volume 6 in the Cultural History of Color set. General Editors: Carole P. Biggam and Kirsten Wolf

Cultural Histories of the Material World

Cultural Histories of the Material World
Author: Peter N. Miller
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013-07-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 0472118919

All across the humanities fields there is a new interest in materials and materiality. This is the first book to capture and study the “material turn” in the humanities from all its varied perspectives. Cultural Histories of the Material World brings together top scholars from all these different fields—from Art History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Classics, Folklore, History, History of Science, Literature, Philosophy—to offer their vision of what cultural history of the material world looks like and attempt to show how attention to materiality can contribute to a more precise historical understanding of specific times, places, ways, and means. The result is a spectacular kaleidoscope of future possibilities and new perspectives.