New Titles Tuesday, March 6

Here is a small sample of the 10 books added to the collection in the past week. Click on a title for more information. TWU login may be required.

Contemporary Indonesian film: spirits of reform and ghosts from the past /by Katinka van Heeren. This highly informative book explores the world of Post-Soeharto Indonesian audio-visual media in the exiting era of Reform. From a multidisciplinary approach it considers a wide variety of issues such as mainstream and alternative film practices, ceremonial and independent film festivals, film piracy, history and horror, documentary, television soaps, and Islamic films, as well as censorship from the state and street. This book gives a detailed insight into current issues of Indonesia’s social and political situation, where Islam, secular realities, and ghosts on and off screen, mingle or clash.

Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679): Dutch playwright in the golden age /edited by Jan Bloemendal, Frans-Willem Korsten. Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) was the most prolific poet and playwright of his age. During his long life, roughly coincinding with the Dutch Golden Age, he wrote over thirty tragedies. He was a famous figure in political and artistic circles of Amsterdam, a contemporary and acquaintance of Grotius and Rembrandt, but in general well acquainted with Latin humanists, Dutch scholars, authors and Amsterdam burgomasters. He fuelled literary, religious and political debates. His tragedy Gysbreght van Aemstel was to become the most famous play in Dutch history, and can probably boast holding the record for the longest tradition of annual performance in Europe. In general, Vondel’s texts are literary works in the full sense of the word, complex and inexhasutive; attracting attention throughout the centuries.

Nature as spiritual practice /Steven Chase. Chase offers insight into the spiritual side of nature along with exercises (called practices) that the reader can do to experience this relationship firsthand. The fairly easy practices can be done alone or in a group in a retreat setting. They include contemplative prayer, discernment, occasional scripture reading, and meditation on your relationship with nature. Most compelling is the concluding chapter, “The Green Beatitudes,” where Chase goes through the beatitudes one by one and offers an interpretation of each that relates it to nature. After each interpretation is a section that presents a way for the reader to relate with nature through that beatitude. Those focusing on green theology or these new kinds of spiritual and meditative exercises would especially benefit.

A subgrouping of nine Philippine languages /by Teodoro A. Llamzon ; preface by J.C. Anceaux. Since the appearance of Brugmann’s famous article on the relationships of the Indo-European languages in 1884, the subject of sub­ grouping of languages as a methodological problem has been raised only occasionally. For the Austronesian languages serious attemps to arrive at a lin­guistic classification started relatively late. Certain cases of closer relationships were obvious enough to be recognized very early.

Women in the Bible, Qumran, and early Rabbinic literature: their status and roles /by Peter Heger. Women in the Bible, Qumran and Early Rabbinic Literature explores the different attitudes toward the woman’s guilt for the expulsion from the Garden and human’s calamities and the legal ramifications of her lower social and legal status regarding independence, ownership and membership in the community.

A world of water: rain, rivers and seas in Southeast Asian histories /edited by Peter Boomgaard. This volume contains thirteen essays representing a broad range of approaches to the study of Southeast Asia with water as the central theme.