A book about the role of books in shaping the ancient religious landscape This collection of essays by leading scholars from a variety of academic disciplines explores the ongoing relevance of Harry Gamble’s Books and Readers in the Early Church (1995) for the study of premodern book cultures. Contributors expand the conversation of book culture to examine the role the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an played in shaping the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions in the ancient and medieval world. By considering books as material objects rather than as repositories for stories and texts, the essays examine how new technologies, new materials, and new cultural encounters contributed to these holy books spreading throughout territories, becoming authoritative, and profoundly shaping three global religions. Features: Comparative analysis of book culture in Roman, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic contexts Art-historical, papyrological, philological, and historical modes of analysis Essays that demonstrate the vibrant, ongoing legacy of Gamble’s seminal work

Highlights the importance of translation for the global exchange of medical theories, practices, and materials in the premodern period. This volume of Osiris turns the analytical lens of translation onto medical knowledge and practices across the premodern world. Understandings of the human body, and of diseases and their cures, were influenced by a range of religious, cultural, environmental, and intellectual factors. As a result, complex systems of translation emerged as people crossed linguistic and territorial boundaries to share not only theories and concepts, but also materials, such as drugs, amulets, and surgical tools. The studies here reveal how instances of translation helped to shape and, in some cases, reimagine these ideas and objects to fit within local frameworks of medical belief. Translating Medicine across Premodern Worlds features case studies located in geographically and temporally diverse contexts, including ninth-century Baghdad, sixteenth-century Seville, seventeenth-century Cartagena, and nineteenth-century Bengal. Throughout, the contributors explore common themes and divergent experiences associated with a variety of historical endeavors to “translate” knowledge about health and the body across languages, practices, and media. By deconstructing traditional narratives and de-emphasizing well-worn dichotomies, this volume ultimately offers a fresh and innovative approach to histories of knowledge.

This beautifully illustrated book provides an accessible introduction to the medieval manuscript and explores how its materiality can act as a vibrant and versatile tool to understand the deep historical roots of human interaction with written information.

The Global Humanities Reader is a collaboratively edited collection of primary sources with student-centered support features. It serves as the core curriculum of the University of North Carolina Asheville's almost-sixty-year-old interdisciplinary Humanities Program. Its three volumes--Engaging Ancient Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 1), Engaging Premodern Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 2), and Engaging Modern Worlds and Perspectives (Volume 3)--offer accessible ways to explore facets of human subjectivity and interconnectedness across cultures, times, and places. In highlighting the struggles and resilient strategies for surviving and thriving from multiple perspectives and positionalities, and through diverse voices, these volumes course correct from humanities textbooks that remain Western-centric. One of the main features of the The Global Humanities Reader is a sustained and nuanced focus on cultivating the ability to ask questions--to inquire--while enhancing culturally aware, reflective, and interdisciplinary engagements with the materials. The editorial team created a thoroughly interactive text with the following unique features that work together to actualize student success: * Cross-cultural historical introductions to each volume * Comprehensive and source-specific timelines highlighting periods, events, and people around the world * An introduction for each source with bolded key terms and questions to facilitate active engagement * Primed and Ready questions (PARs)--questions just before and after a reading that activate students' own knowledge and skills * Inquiry Corner--questions consisting of four types: Content, Comparative, Critical, and Connection * Beyond the Classroom--explore how ideas discussed in sources can apply to broader social contexts, such as job, career, project teams or professional communities * Glossary of Tags--topical 'hubs' that point to exciting new connections across multiple sources These volumes reflect the central role of Humanities in deepening an empathic understanding of human experience and cultivating culturally appropriate and community-centered problem-solving skills that help us flourish as global and local citizens.

Eminent historian Patricia Crone defines the common features of a wide range of pre-industrial societies, from locations as seemingly disparate as the Mongol Empire and pre-Columbian America, to cultures as diverse as the Ming Dynasty and seventeenth-century France. In a lucid exploration of the characteristics shared by these societies, the author examines such key elements as economic organization, politics, culture, and the role of religion. An essential introductory text for all students of history, Pre-Industrial Societies provides readers with all the necessary tools for gaining a substantial understanding of life in pre-modern times. In addition, as a perceptive insight into a lost world, italso acts as a starting point for anyone interested in the present possibilities and future challenges faced by our own global society.

This important and overdue book examines illuminated manuscripts and other book arts of the Global Middle Ages. Illuminated manuscripts and illustrated or decorated books—like today’s museums—preserve a rich array of information about how premodern peoples conceived of and perceived the world, its many cultures, and everyone’s place in it. Often a Eurocentric field of study, manuscripts are prisms through which we can glimpse the interconnected global history of humanity. Toward a Global Middle Ages is the first publication to examine decorated books produced across the globe during the period traditionally known as medieval. Through essays and case studies, the volume’s multidisciplinary contributors expand the historiography, chronology, and geography of manuscript studies to embrace a diversity of objects, individuals, narratives, and materials from Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas—an approach that both engages with and contributes to the emerging field of scholarly inquiry known as the Global Middle Ages. Featuring more than 160 color illustrations, this wide-ranging and provocative collection is intended for all who are interested in engaging in a dialogue about how books and other textual objects contributed to world-making strategies from about 400 to 1600.

Medicine and Healing in the Premodern West traces the history of medicine and medical practice from Ancient Egypt through to the end of the Middle Ages. Featuring nearly one hundred primary documents and images, this book introduces readers to the words and ideas of men and women from across Europe and the Mediterranean Sea, from prominent physicians to humble healers. Each of the book’s ten chronological and thematic chapters is given a significant historical introduction, in which each primary source is described in its original context. Many of the included source texts are newly translated by the editor, some of them appearing in English for the first time.

Why do we love wizards? Where do these magical figures come from? Thinking Queerly traces the wizard from medieval Arthurian literature to contemporary YA adaptations. By exploring the link between Merlin and Harry Potter, or Morgan le Fay and Sabrina, readers will see how the wizard offers spaces of hope and transformation for young readers. In particular, this book examines how wizards think differently, and how this difference can resonate with both LGBTQ and neurodivergent readers, who’ve been told they don’t fit in.

Join award-winning author Mitali Perkins as she explores the promise of seven timeless children's novels for adults living in uncertain times. Through works by Louisa May Alcott, C. S. Lewis, L. M. Montgomery, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and other literary uncles and aunts, Perkins unpacks wisdom to help us thrive.

Premodern Ecologies in the Modern Literary Imagination explores how the cognitive and physical landscapes in which scholars conduct research, write, and teach have shaped their understandings of medieval and Renaissance English literary "oecologies." The collection strives to practice what Ursula K. Heise calls "eco-cosmopolitanism," a method that imagines forms of local environmentalism as a defense against the interventions of open-market global networks. It also expands the idea’s possibilities and identifies its limitations through critical studies of premodern texts, artefacts, and environmental history. The essays connect real environments and their imaginative (re)creations and affirm the urgency of reorienting humanity’s responsiveness to, and responsibility for, the historical links between human and non-human existence. The discussion of ways in which meditation on scholarly place and time can deepen ecocritical work offers an innovative and engaging approach that will appeal to both ecocritics generally and to medieval and early modern scholars.