New Titles Tuesday, December 5

Here is a selection the dozen items added to the catalogue last week. Click on a title for more information. TWU log in may be required.

The age of evangelicalism: America’s born-again years /Steven P. Miller. The Age of Evangelicalism chronicles the place and meaning of evangelical Christianity in America since 1970, a period Miller defines as America’s “born-again years.”   Miller shows, evangelicalism influenced not only its devotees but its many detractors: religious conservatives, secular liberals, and just about everyone in between. The Age of Evangelicalism tells the captivating story of how born-again Christianity shaped the cultural and political climate in which millions of Americans came to terms with their times.

Bloomsbury scientists: science and art in the wake of Darwin /Michael Boulter. Bloomsbury Scientists is the story of the network of scientists and artists living in a square mile of London before and after the First World War. Michael Boulter seamlessly weaves together the stories originating from Bloomsbury’s laboratories, libraries and studios. He narrates the breakthroughs of scientists such as Ray Lankester and Marie Stopes alongside the creative outputs of H. G. Wells and Virginia Woolf, among many others, and intricately connects them all through personal friendships, grievances, quarrels and affections. Bloomsbury Scientists offers a fresh and crucial perspective on this history at a time when the complex relationship between science and art continues to be debated.

Body, personhood and privacy: perspectives on the cultural other and human experience /edited by Anu Kannike, Monika Tasa, and Ergo-Hart Västrik. This book studies how the concepts of body, personhood and privacy can be expanded across disciplinary borders. Notwithstanding the diversity of empirical material and theoretical frameworks, the chapters suggest innovative tools for common key issues: dialogue with the cultural Other, the appropriation of space, and personality. Human embodiment and ethical aspects of representing and regulating cultural practices are a major focus through much of the volume. The book is illustrated with some of the finest examples of Tartu street art.

In the balance: indigeneity, performance, globalization /edited by Helen Gilbert, J.D. Phillipson, and Michelle H. Raheja. Focusing specifically on embodied arts and activism, this interdisciplinary volume offers vital new perspectives on the power and precariousness of indigeneity as a politicized cultural force in our unevenly connected world. Twenty-three distinct voices speak to the growing visibility of indigenous peoples’ performance on a global scale over recent decades, drawing specific examples from the Americas, Australia, the Pacific, Scandinavia and South Africa. To explore this critical terrain, the essays and images gathered here range in subject from independent film, musical production, endurance art and the performative turn in exhibition and repatriation practices to the appropriation of hip-hop, karaoke and reality TV. Collectively, they urge a fresh look at mechanisms of postcolonial entanglement in the early 21st century as well as the particular rights and insights afforded by indigeneity in that process.

Karl Popper, science and the enlightenment /Nicholas Maxwell. By proposing a new conception of scientific methodology, which can be applied to all worthwhile human endeavours with problematic aims, Maxwell argues for a revolution in academic inquiry to help humanity make progress towards a better, more civilized and enlightened world.

Key concepts in public archaeology /edited by Gabriel Moshenka. This book provides a broad overview of the key concepts in public archaeology, a research field that examines the relationship between archaeology and the public, in both theoretical and practical terms. While based on the long-standing program of undergraduate and graduate teaching in public archaeology at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, the book also takes into account the growth of scholarship from around the world and seeks to clarify what exactly ‘public archaeology’ is by promoting an inclusive, socially and politically engaged vision of the discipline. Written for students and practitioners, the individual chapters provide textbook-level introductions to the themes, theories and controversies that connect archaeology to wider society, from the trade in illicit antiquities to the use of digital media in public engagement, and point readers to the most relevant case studies and learning resources to aid their further study.

Landscape in the longue durée: a history and theory of pebbles in a pebbled heathland landscape /Christopher Tilley ; with contributions by Michael J. Allen [and 6 others] Landscape in the Longue Durée is a 4,000 year history of pebbles. It is based on the results of a four-year archaeological research project of the east Devon Pebblebed heathlands, a fascinating and geologically unique landscape in the UK whose bedrock is composed entirely of water-rounded pebbles. Christopher Tilley uses this landscape to argue that pebbles are like no other kind of stone – they occupy an especial place both in the prehistoric past and in our contemporary culture. Tilley first explores the prehistoric landscape from the Mesolithic to the end of the Iron Age, and follows with an analysis of the same landscape from the eighteenth into the twenty-first century. The major findings of the four-year study are revealed through this chronological journey: from archaeological discoveries, such as the excavation of three early Bronze Age cairns, to the documentation of all 829 surviving pebble structures, and beyond, to the impact of the landscape on local economies and its importance today as a military training camp. The results of the study will inform many disciplines including archaeology, cultural and art history, anthropology, conservation, and landscape studies.

Popular music in Southeast Asia: banal beats, muted histories /Bart Barendregt, Peter Keppy, and Henk Schulte Nordholt. This book presents a cultural history of modern Southeast Asia from the vantage point of popular music, considering not just singers and musicians but their fans as well, showing how the music was intrinsically bound up with modern life and the societal changes that came with it. Reaching new audiences across national borders, popular music of the period helped push social change, and at times served as a medium for expressions of social or political discontent.

Star Wars and the history of transmedia storytelling /edited by Sean Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest. In emphasizing that Star Wars is both a media franchise and a transmedia storyworld, Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling demonstrates the ways in which transmedia storytelling and the industrial logic of media franchising have developed in concert over the past four decades, as multinational corporations have become the central means for subsidizing, profiting from, and selling modes of immersive storyworlds to global audiences. By taking this dual approach, the book focuses on the interconnected nature of corporate production, fan consumption, and transmedia world-building. As such, this collection grapples with the historical, cultural, aesthetic, and political-economic implications of the relationship between media franchising and transmedia storytelling as they are seen at work in the world’s most profitable transmedia franchise.

The uplift of China [electronic resource] /by Arthur H. Smith ; [introduction by Griffith John]. The Uplift of China was produced in various denominational editions. Available here are the Church Missionary Society (Anglican) and the 1914 revised edition.