The Language of MA the primal MotherThe evolution of the female image in 40,000 years of global Venus ArtAnnine van der Meer, 592 p. 1300 ill. full color, ISBN 978-90-820313-8-6Den Haag, 2013; heruitgave Den Haag, 2015De Bijbel van Venuskunst; het boek voor vrouwelijke symbolen.1300... Venussen kleurrijk in beeld in een groot full color boek van 592 pagina's.1300... vrouwelijke topstukken uit vele culturen en musea gepresenteerd in één boek.1300... Venus-beauties, ieder voorzien van een num...

Two of the world's foremost media studies academics explore media regulation and its impact on government, commerce and civil society.

The construction of gender in Belgian Catholicism.

Although women were called the 'pious sex' much earlier, it was during the nineteenth century, when the differences between men and women were being made more explicit, that an intense bond between women and religion was developed. Religiosity was thought to be a 'natural' part of femininity and turned religious masculinity into an oddity. This clear-cut gender ideology, however, remains an ideology (prescribed and contested) that needs to be...

The Battle of Lepanto, celebrated as the greatest triumph of Christianity over its Ottoman enemy, was soon transformed into a powerful myth through a vast media campaign. The varied storytelling and the many visual representations that contributed to shape the perception of the battle in Christian Europe are the focus of this book. In broader terms, Lepanto and Beyond also sheds light on the construction of religious alterity in the early modern Mediterranean. It presents cross-disciplinary c...

A critical and controversial exploration of global events. Looking at examples such as the Olympic games and Live Aid, acclaimed sociologist Chris Rojek suggests that these kind of events are really about power, manipulation and social control.

Throughout the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, the Low Countries were home to a vibrant tradition of lay philosophy in Dutch. Sparks of Reason takes a detailed look at this philosophical tradition, with a special focus on the sixteenth century. During this turbulent century, several authors, such as Dirck Volkertsz Coornhert (1522-1590) and Hendrik Laurensz Spiegel (1549-1612), developed a philosophy which was founded on rationality and self-motivation. This "Vernacular Rational...

Strategies and characteristics of scournful criticism and fierce debate in the Humanist tradition

Renaissance humanists were often engaged in a wide variety of polemics, ranging from matter-of-fact debate to scathing invective. The programmatic nature of Renaissance humanism, intent on a fundamental reform of language, education, and society at large, led the humanists almost inevitably to conflicts with those who represented other intellectual traditions, first and foremost the Scholastics. ...

Gum Arabic is a natural product which grows exclusively in the Sahel and has played an ever increasing role in the global economy. In the time of the crusades, Europeans bought the ingredient in Arab countries. Soon, it was not only used in ink or medicine, but also as a symbol of its putative Arab origin, the noble Orient. Later, gum was bought directly in the countries where it was produced, but western dependence on it grew. As European countries were laying the foundations for their colon...

This is the first single-volume social history of eighteenth-century Dutch Cape Town. Not only does it consider the elite inhabitants such as the 'expat' officials of the Dutch East India Company and the free burghers but it also includes members of Cape Town's underclasses: soldiers and sailors, artisans, convicts, exiles and freed slaves. At the same time the book positions the town in the wider context of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and stresses its complex connections with Europe, Asia...

International exchange in European cultural life in the 19th and 20th centuries.From the early nineteenth century till the middle of the twentieth century, cultures in Europe were primarily national. They were organized and conceived of as attributes of the nation states. Nonetheless, these national cultures crossed borders with an unprecedented intensity even before globalization transformed the very concept of culture. During that long period, European cultures have imported and exported pr...