In the mid-nineteenth century, Jerusalem was rich with urban texts inscribed in marble, gold, and cloth, investing holy sites with divine meaning. Ottoman modernization and British colonial rule transformed the city; new texts became a key means to organize society and subjectivity. Stone inscriptions, pilgrims' graffiti, and sacred banners gave way to street markers, shop signs, identity papers, and visiting cards that each sought to define and categorize urban space and people. A City in Fragments tells the modern history of a city overwhelmed by its religious and symbolic significance. Yair Wallach walked the streets of Jerusalem to consider the graffiti, logos, inscriptions, official signs, and ephemera that transformed the city over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As these urban texts became a tool in the service of capitalism, nationalism, and colonialism, the affinities of Arabic and Hebrew were forgotten and these sister-languages found themselves locked in a bitter war. Looking at the writing of—and literally on—Jerusalem, Wallach offers a creative and expansive history of the city, a fresh take on modern urban texts, and a new reading of the Israel/Palestine conflict through its material culture.

Pursuing fragments -- Pulling together, falling apart -- Knowing fragments -- Writing in fragments -- Political framings -- Walking cities -- In completion.

Pursuing fragments -- Pulling together, falling apart -- Knowing fragments -- Writing in fragments -- Political framings -- Walking cities -- In completion.

Picture your 21st birthday. Did you have a party? If so, do you remember who was there? How clear are these memories? Should we trust them? Such questions have fascinated scientists for hundreds of years, and, as Alison Winter shows in this book, the answers have changed dramatically in just the past century.

DIVThe first cultural history of post-1940s Mexico to relate issues of representation and meaning to questions of power; it includes essays on popular music, unions, TV, tourism, cinema, wrestling, and illustrated magazines./div

A pioneering exploration of four cities where East meets West and past becomes future: St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Mumbai, and Dubai.

The capital of Germany and home to 3.5 million people, Berlin has one the most fascinating histories in all of Europe. At end of the nineteenth century it rapidly developed into a major urban center, and today it is a site where the scars of history sit alongside ultra-modern urban developments. It is a place where people have figured in an especially intimate relationship with the wider fabric of the city, in which bodily interaction has been an important aspect of day-to-day urban life. In this book, Stephen Barber offers an innovative history of the city, one that focuses on how the human body has shaped the city’s very streets. Spanning the twentieth century and moving up to today, Barber’s book offers a unique account of Berlin’s development. He explores previously neglected material from the city’s audio and visual archives to examine how people interacted with the city’s streets, buildings, squares, and public spaces. He recounts a history of riots, ruins, nightclubs, crowds, architectural experiments, citywide spectacles, film, art, and performances, showing how these human forces have affected the structure of the city. Through this innovative approach, Barber offers a new way to think about modern urban spaces as corporeal spaces, and how people exert a cumulative effect on cities over time.

In Fragments and Assemblages, Arthur Bahr expands the ways in which we interpret medieval manuscripts, examining the formal characteristics of both physical manuscripts and literary works. Specifically, Bahr argues that manuscript compilations from fourteenth-century London reward interpretation as both assemblages and fragments: as meaningfully constructed objects whose forms and textual contents shed light on the city’s literary, social, and political cultures, but also as artifacts whose physical fragmentation invites forms of literary criticism that were unintended by their medieval makers. Such compilations are not simply repositories of data to be used for the reconstruction of the distant past; their physical forms reward literary and aesthetic analysis in their own right. The compilations analyzed reflect the full vibrancy of fourteenth-century London’s literary cultures: the multilingual codices of Edwardian civil servant Andrew Horn and Ricardian poet John Gower, the famous Auchinleck manuscript of texts in Middle English, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. By reading these compilations as both formal shapes and historical occurrences, Bahr uncovers neglected literary histories specific to the time and place of their production. The book offers a less empiricist way of interpreting the relationship between textual and physical form that will be of interest to a wide range of literary critics and manuscript scholars.

This volume deals with the episcopate of Cyril of Jerusalem (350 to 387). Its overall theme is the relationship between the city and its bishop and, in particular, Cyril’s efforts to promote Jerusalem as the Christian city par excellence, by employing Jerusalem’s religious symbols - the holy sites and the Cross. Apart from chapters on Jerusalem in the fourth century C.E. and on the life and works of Cyril, this study discusses important aspects and events of Cyril's episcopacy, such as his pastoral work as an urban bishop of the Jerusalem Christian community, Jerusalem’s liturgy, the rebuilding of the Temple, giving a re-interpretation of the Syriac letter ascribed to Cyril about this event, and Jerusalem’s and Palestine’s religious landscape.

Re-assesses the phenomenon of Greek 'local history-writing' and its role in creating political and cultural identity in a changing world.