Edward Field writes poetry that is literate, immediate, funny and completely personal--like small essays on the human condition, spoken by a friend we trust.

"[A]n excellent analytical study of a sensationally beautiful type of temple. . . . This work is not just art historical but embraces . . . religious studies, anthropology, history, and literature." —Catherine B. Asher "[A]dvances our knowledge of . . . Bengali temple building practices, the complex inter-reliance between religion, state power, and art, and the ways in which Western colonial assumptions have distorted correct interpretation. . . . A splendid book." —Rachel Fell McDermott In the flux created by the Mughal conquest, Hindu landholders of eastern India began to build a spectacularly beautiful new style of brick temple, known as Ratna. This "bejeweled" style combined features of Sultanate mosques and thatched houses, and included second-story rooms conceived as the pleasure grounds of the gods, where Krishna and his beloved Radha could rekindle their passion. Pika Ghosh uses art historical, archaeological, textual, and ethnographic approaches to explore this innovation in the context of its times. Includes 82 stunning black-and-white images of rarely photographed structures. Published in association with the American Institute of Indian Studies

Gay presence is nothing new to American verse and theater. Homoerotic themes are discernible in American poetry as early as the 19th century, and identifiably gay characters appeared on the American stage more than 70 years ago. But aside from a few notable exceptions, gay artists of earlier generations felt compelled to avoid sexual candor in their writings. Conversely, most contemporary gay poets and playwrights are free from such constraints and have created a remarkable body of work. This reference is a guide to their creative achievements. Alphabetically arranged entries present 62 contemporary gay American poets and dramatists. While the majority of included writers are younger artists who came of age in the post-Stonewall U.S., some are older authors whose work has continued or persisted into recent decades. A number of these writers are well known, including Edward Albee, Harvey Fierstein, and Allen Ginsberg. Others, such as Alan Bowne, Timothy Liu, and Robert O'Hara, merit wider recognition. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, an overview of the author's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies.

Presents an alphabetical reference guide detailing the lives and works of poets associated with the New York Schools of the early twentieth century.

“Rodrigues uses subtle metaphors of haunting memory to dramatize the Portuguese penetrationof the Arab trading world of the sixteenth century.” —Jaysinh Birjepatil, author of The Good Muslim of Jackson Heights Love and Samsara is an epic diorama of the world in the early 16th century, stretching from Europe to Asia, taking in Brazil, Africa, the Middle East, India, and then the lands below the wind, the monsoon countries of South East Asia. The hero, a renowned Arab ship pilot, hunted down for eloping with a Jain girl, escapes from their assassins by guiding Vasco da Gama and the Portuguese ships to Calicut, the major emporium of the spice trade. Only later does he realize the tremendous significance of his innocent betrayal, for it leads to the Portuguese imperial domination of the oceansea. This marks a turning point in history, a time when the modern world becomes inexorably linked with power—gunpowder for cannon, printing for the spread of knowledge, and astronomy for a new understanding of the heavens. A time also of significant encounter among the world’s major religions—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism—with their complex languages, philosophies and theologies. Here is a samsara crowded with adventure, history, tragic love, philosophical speculation, religious confrontation, suspense and mystery, that reaches its climax in 1510 with the Portuguese conquest of Goa. “This is fiction at its best, a masterful multi-layered epic novel, compelling and lyrical at the same time that will challenge and delight any devotee of the genre and of the English language.” —Roberto Severino, Professor Emeritus of Italian, Georgetown University “The most epic novel written about Goa.” —José Pereira, author of Suárez: Between Scholasticism and Modernity

Well Worth a Shindy tells the story of the Old Well, beloved symbol of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the United States' first public university. The Old Well is a Greco-Roman garden temple built in 1897 over an old water well on the campus. The facts concerning the Old Well's beginnings serve to introduce an historical study of the round temple from Mycenaean tholos tombs and treasuries to eighteenth-century English garden follies. The reasons that the Old Well was built, according to its commissioner, Edwin Alderman, the sixth president of the University of North Carolina, are repetitious of those that directed such as Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, and Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to build round temples to be symbols of their territorial and dynastic desires. The mythological, philosophical, and artistic conventions that Alderman and the designer of the Old Well, Eugene Lewis Harris, used to construct the temple were not new but were ancient guides filtered through Medieval and Renaissance prisms. A catalog of over 100 round structures in 14 countries is provided.