Books to look out for in October 2018

Looking for a new Boydell book this month? From the presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to the various stages of the European Romantic period, we round up the best (and most eclectic range of) books to put on your reading list this October. Until next time!

 

Nasty Women and Bad Hombres

Gender and Race in the 2016 US Presidential Election

Edited by Christine A. Kray, Tamar W. Carroll and Hinda Mandell

Gender and racial politics were at the center of the 2016 US presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This collection of essays looks at the often vitriolic rhetoric that characterized the election: “nasty women” vs. “deplorables”; “bad hombres” and “Crooked Hillary”; analyzing the struggle and its result through the lenses of gender, race, and their intersections, and with particular attention to the roles of memory, performance, narrative, and social media.

Material Enlightenment

Women Writers and the Science of Mind, 1770-1830

by Joanna Wharton

Women writers played a central, but hitherto under-recognised, role in the development of the philosophy of mind and its practical outworkings in Romantic era England, Scotland and Ireland. This book focuses on the writings and lives of five leading figures – Anna Barbauld, Honora Edgeworth, Hannah More, Elizabeth Hamilton and Maria Edgeworth – a group of women who differed profoundly in their political, religious and social views but were nevertheless associated through correspondence, family ties and a shared belief in the importance of female education.

Birds in Medieval English Poetry

Metaphors, Realities, Transformations

by Michael J. Warren

Birds featured in many aspects of medieval people’s lives, not least in their poetry. But despite their familiar presence in literary culture, it is still often assumed that these representations have little to do with the real natural world. Warren presents the first full-length study of birds and their metamorphoses as treated in a wide range of medieval poetry, from the Anglo-Saxons to Chaucer and Gower.

Township Violence and the End of Apartheid

War on the Reef

by Gary Kynoch

A powerful re-reading of modern South African history following apartheid that examines the violent transformation during the transition era and how this was enacted in the African townships of the Witwatersrand. This book studies, for the first time, the conflicts between the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party that took place in South Africa’s industrial heartland surrounding Johannesburg.

Stages of European Romanticism

Cultural Synchronicity across the Arts, 1798-1848

by Theodore Ziolkowski

Romanticism was a truly European phenomenon, extending roughly from the French Revolution to the 1848 revolutions and embracing not only literature and drama but also music and visual arts. Because of Romanticism’s vast scope, most treatments have restricted themselves to single countries or to specific forms, notably literature, art, or music. This book employs an innovative approach by “stages” to offer a unified vision of European Romanticism over the half-century of its growth and decline.

The Music of Joseph Joachim

by Katharina Uhde

Joseph Joachim (1831-1907) was arguably the greatest violinist of the nineteenth century. But Joachim was also a composer of virtuoso pieces, violin concertos, orchestral overtures and chamber music works. Uhde’s book will be the standard work on the music of Joseph Joachim for many years to come, following Joachim’s compositional path through a changing cultural milieu.

Ludwig Leichhardt’s Ghosts

The Strange Career of a Traveling Myth

by Andrew Wright Hurley

After the renowned Prussian scientist and explorer Ludwig Leichhardt left the Australian frontier in 1848 on an expedition to cross the continent, he disappeared without a trace. Andrew Hurley’s book complicates that view by undertaking an afterlife biography of “the Humboldt of Australia.” A fascinating cultural studies account of the “afterlife” of Leichhardt, revealing both German entanglement in British colonialism in Australia, and in a broader sense, what happens when we maintain an open stance to the ghosts of the past.

Late Medieval Heresy: New Perspectives

Studies in Honor of Robert E. Lerner

Edited by Michael D. Bailey and Sean L. Field

From the Gregorian reforms to the Protestant Reformation, heresies and heretics helped shape the religious, political, and institutional structures of medieval Europe. This volume takes the history of heresy in late medieval Europe (1300-1500) on its own terms. From Paris to Prague and from northern Germany to Italy and even extending as far as Ethiopia, the essays shed new light on a vibrant world of audacious beguines, ardent Joachites, Spiritual Franciscans, innovative mystics, lay prophets, idiosyncratic alchemists, daring magicians, and even rebellious princes locked in battles with the papacy.

Art and Political Thought in Medieval England, c.1150-1350

by Laura Slater

Images and imagery played a major role in medieval political thought and culture, but their influence has rarely been explored. From the examination of the writings of late twelfth-century courtier-clerics to events such as the Thomas Becket conflict, the making of Magna Carta, the Barons’ War and the deposition of Edward II, Slater explores how power and political society were imagined, represented and reflected on in medieval English art.

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