Mongameli Anthony Mabona (1929) is a singular South African scholar with an exceptional life path. The history of British imperialism and apartheid shaped the world into which he was born. To a large extent, these powers had his destiny carved out for him. Nevertheless, a curious set of coincidences enabled him to obtain a tertiary education as a priest, to pursue his doctoral studies in Italy and to befriend Alioune Diop. He is one of the first published philosophers of Anglophone Africa and...

The concept of transfer covers the most diverse phenomena of circulation, transformation and reinterpretation of cultural goods across space and time, and are among the driving forces in opening up the field of translation studies. Transfer processes cross linguistic and cultural boundaries and cannot be reduced to simple movements from a source to a target (culture or text). In a time of paradigm shifts, this book aims to explore the potential and interdisciplinary power of transfer as a con...

Comics and other graphic narratives powerfully represent embodied experiences that are difficult to express in language. A group of authors from various countries and disciplines explore the unique capacity of graphic narratives to represent human embodiment as well as the relation of human bodies to the worlds they inhabit. Using works from illustrated scientific texts to contemporary comics across national traditions, we discover how the graphic narrative can shed new light on everyday expe...

There is little dispute that photography is a material practice, and that the photograph itself is ineluctably material. And yet “matter,” “material,” and “materiality” have proven to be remarkably elusive terms of inquiry, frequently producing studies that are disparate in scope, sharing seemingly little common ground. Although the wide methodological range of materialist study can be dizzying, it is this book’s contention that that multiplicity is also the field’s greatest a...

Contrary to general belief, the history of the Florentine patriciate did not end with the establishment of the State of Tuscany under de’ Medici in 1532. Proud and self-confident patricians did not become subservient courtiers overnight, but remained significantly influential for a long period. They retained their urban identity and longstanding family traditions, while acquiring noble titles, estates, and villas at the same time. The mark that these patricians continued to leave on the cit...

More than one hundred years after the conclusion of the First World War, the edited collection States of Emergency: Architecture, Urbanism, and the First World War reassesses what that cataclysmic global conflict meant for architecture and urbanism from a human, social, economic, and cultural perspective. Chapters probe how underdevelopment and economic collapse manifested spatially, how military technologies were repurposed by civilians, and how cultures of education, care, and memory emerge...

The art world is a multi-billion-dollar industry which captures world headlines on a regular basis, for both good and bad reasons. This book deals with one of the most-discussed areas of controversy: high-profile objects that have experts arguing about their veracity. Some may have been looted, others may be fakes, some may be heavily restored or misattributed. Often, in these cases, analytical science is called on to settle a dispute. The authors of this book have decades of experience in th...

Imitation is, perhaps more than ever, constitutive of human originality. Many things have changed since the emergence of an original species called Homo sapiens, but in the digital age humans remain mimetic creatures: from the development of consciousness to education, aesthetics to politics, mirror neurons to brain plasticity, digital simulations to emotional contagion, (new) fascist insurrections to viral contagion, we are unconsciously formed, deformed, and transformed by the all too human...

Ferenczi Dialogues presents the contribution of Sándor Ferenczi to a psychoanalytic theory of trauma and discusses the philosophical, political and clinical implications of Ferenczi’s thinking. To a far greater extent than Freud, Sándor Ferenczi centered his psychoanalytic thought around trauma.

Ferenczi's work pluralizes the notion of catastrophe, as being both destructive and a turning point. This book addresses Ferenczi’s work in terms of thinking in times of crises, by considering c...

Research Project Sagalassos speaks to the imagination in more ways than one. The authentic and natural beauty of the site no doubt plays a role in that. The Sagalassos Project testifies to the fact that its core business, archaeology, also appeals to the imagination. Learning about the past is fascinating, for young and old alike. Curiosity unquestionably plays a role in this. Archaeologists, as any other scientist, are driven to really know about past human activities. As they leave no stone...