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      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        March 2026

        Contemporary art and ecological transformation in East and Southeast Asia

        by Meiqin Wang

        This anthology, presenting new research from fourteen scholars, delves into the interplay between contemporary art and ecological concerns in East and Southeast Asia. Focused on the concept of artistic remediation, the book unravels the diverse capacities of art to combat systemic anthropogenic destruction to the environment and ecology. At its core, the book articulates the ongoing ecological transformation in art and art history that embraces a paradigm shift in human-nature relationships, emphasizing interconnectedness of all life forms of the Earth. Bridging art studies, activism, and environmental studies, the book examines how artistic practices in the region have engaged with ecocritical reflection, biodiversity advocacy, sustainable practices, and environmental justice, among others. Providing a platform for critical and timely analysis of artistic interventions in the face of existential crises, the book acknowledges diverse voices of scholars who have situated their scholarship in the cultural and artistic specificities of various societies, locales, and communities in the region.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2016

        University engagement and environmental sustainability

        by Michael Osborne, Patricia Inman, Diana Robinson

        Universities have a key role to play in contributing to environmental development and combating climate change. The chapters within this volume detail the challenges faced by higher education institutions in considering environmental sustainability, and provide both a broad view of university engagement and a detailed examination of various projects. As part of this series in association with the Place and Social Capital and Learning (PASCAL) International Observatory, the three key PASCAL themes of place management, lifelong learning and the development of social capital are considered throughout the book. While universities have historically generated knowledge outside of specific local contexts, this book argues that it is particularly important for them to engage with the local community and to consider diverse perspectives and assets when looking at issues within an ecological context. The chapters in this volume provide new perspectives and frames of reference for transforming universities by engaging in the development of resilient communities.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2025

        Empirical art

        Filmmaking for fieldwork in practice

        by Andy Lawrence, Martha-Cecilia Dietrich

        Empirical art: Filmmaking for fieldwork in practice is an insightful exploration of what the craft of filmmaking brings to social science research. Providing creative avenues on how to narrate encounters, relationships, and experiences during fieldwork, this comprehensive volume offers a rich tapestry of theoretical explorations and explorative methodologies. Skilfully connecting the worlds of ethnography, art and cinema, the contributors in this book act as a compass for filmmakers and researchers venturing to use a camera and microphone to relate and narrate their research collaborations and fieldsites. Drawing from the authors' extensive experience in disciplines like social anthropology, environmental humanities, and political science, "Empirical Art" breaks down the intricate process of crafting ethnographic films that departs from the researcher's subjectivity. Covering aspects of filmmaking from conceptualisation to production and distribution, readers are equipped with a treasure trove of collaborative techniques, innovative approaches, and ethical considerations necessary to generate and examine storytelling practices in contemporary fields of study. The authors discuss the significance of the multiple roles that technologies of filmmaking play in reflecting on cultural practices, social dynamics, and (beyond) human storytelling and their transformative potentials. Whether a seasoned filmmaker, an aspiring ethnographer, or an academic seeking new dimensions for their research, Empirical Art serves as a guide to integrating visual storytelling, cinema craft and empirical research.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        July 2025

        An idea for a theatre ecology

        Methods, theories, histories and practices

        by Carl Lavery

        An Idea for a Theatre Ecology is the first book in the discipline of Theatre and Performance Studies to provide a rigorous and coherent theory of the ecology that is immanent to the theatrical medium. Over six clearly written chapters, the book provides a genealogy, outlines a method, provides a lexicon and demonstrates an alternative practice of ecoperformance analysis grounded in the figure of the archipelago. Focusing on Antonin Artaud's theatre of cruelty, the book argues that theatre has no need to provide ecological messages nor to transform itself into a platform for the narration of ecological stories. Instead, more is to be gained, environmentally and politically, by concentrating on the power of images, gestures and voices to create corporeal affects and sensations that implicate the spectators in a terrestrial event.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2014

        The humanities and the Irish university

        Anomalies and opportunities

        by Michael O'Sullivan

        This is the first book-length study of the humanities and the Irish university. Ireland was a deeply religious country throughout the twentieth century but the colleges of its National University never established a religion or theology department. The official first language of Ireland is Irish but the vast majority of teaching in the arts and humanities is in English. These are two of the anomalies that long constrained humanities education in Ireland. This book charts a history of responses to humanities education in the Irish context. Reading the work of John Henry Newman, Padraig Pearse, Sean O Tuama, Denis Donoghue, Declan Kiberd, Richard Kearney and others, it looks for an Irish humanities ethos. It compares humanities models in the US, France and Asia with those in Ireland in light of work by Immanuel Kant, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida. It should appeal to those interested in Irish education and history. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Geography & the Environment
        July 2026

        Environments of power

        Vibrant terrain and landscapes of resistance

        by Holly Randell-Moon

        Environments of power provides unique case studies of environmental inclusion and exclusion across the Americas, Africa, Japan, India, and the South-Pacific. Using more-than-human and Indigenist approaches, chapters focus on Indigenous environmental resistance, marginalisation across social and physical environments, ecology as art, and how local communities are caught up in and resist development and infrastructure projects. The book demonstrates how environments influence which bodies and other matter belong (or not) in certain places.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        February 2022

        "I am Jugoslovenka!"

        Feminist performance politics during and after Yugoslav Socialism

        by Jasmina Tumbas, Amelia Jones, Marsha Meskimmon

        "I am Jugoslovenka" argues that queer-feminist artistic and political resistance were paradoxically enabled by socialist Yugoslavia's unique history of patriarchy and women's emancipation. Spanning performance and conceptual art, video works, film and pop music, lesbian activism and press photos of female snipers in the Yugoslav wars, the book analyses feminist resistance in a range of performative actions that manifest the radical embodiment of Yugoslavia's anti-fascist, transnational and feminist legacies. It covers celebrated and lesser-known artists from the 1970s to today, including Marina Abramovic, Sanja Ivekovic, Vlasta Delimar, Tanja Ostojic, Selma Selman and Helena Janecic, along with music legends Lepa Brena and Esma Redzepova. "I am Jugoslovenka" tells a unique story of women's resistance through the intersection of feminism, socialism and nationalism in East European visual culture.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2014

        University engagement and environmental sustainability

        by Patricia Inman, Michael Osborne, Diana Robinson

        Universities have a key role to play in contributing to environmental development and combating climate change. The chapters within this volume detail the challenges faced by higher education institutions in considering environmental sustainability, and provide both a broad view of university engagement and a detailed examination of various projects. As part of this series in association with the Place and Social Capital and Learning (PASCAL) International Observatory, the three key PASCAL themes of place management, lifelong learning and the development of social capital are considered throughout the book. While universities have historically generated knowledge outside of specific local contexts, this book argues that it is particularly important for them to engage with the local community and to consider diverse perspectives and assets when looking at issues within an ecological context. The chapters in this volume provide new perspectives and frames of reference for transforming universities by engaging in the development of resilient communities. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        February 2026

        Caribbean eco-aesthetics

        Strategies of survival through contemporary art

        by Kate Keohane, Daniella Rose King, Giulia Smith

        This edited volume reframes the Caribbean as a paradigm of ecological resilience and creativity by bringing together the voices of contemporary artists and scholars who are at the forefront of environmental activism in the region and across its diasporas. While dominant narratives percolating from the environmental sciences to the mainstream press present the Caribbean as a frontier of planetary disaster, the contributors to this volume show how the region offers radical models for overcoming the environmental challenges of the present. At the heart of this argument lies the history of the Caribbean as a centre for grassroots forms of anti-colonial and anti-capitalist resistance founded upon nature-centred cosmologies and practices. Caribbean Eco-Aesthetics shows how contemporary artists are mobilising this radical heritage in a bid to unlock alternative planetary futures.

      • The Arts
        March 1905

        Concerning the Spiritual in Art

        by Wassily Kandinsky

        A pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, this book is one of the most important documents in the history of modern art. Written by the famous nonobjective painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), it explains Kandinsky's own theory of painting and crystallizes the ideas that were influencing many other modern artists of the period. Along with his own groundbreaking paintings, this book had a tremendous impact on the development of modern art. Kandinsky's ideas are presented in two parts. The first part, called "About General Aesthetic," issues a call for a spiritual revolution in painting that will let artists express their own inner lives in abstract, non-material terms. Just as musicians do not depend upon the material world for their music, so artists should not have to depend upon the material world for their art. In the second part, "About Painting," Kandinsky discusses the psychology of colors, the language of form and color, and the responsibilities of the artist. An Introduction by the translator, Michael T. H. Sadler, offers additional explanation of Kandinsky's art and theories, while a new Preface by Richard Stratton discusses Kandinsky's career as a whole and the impact of the book. Making the book even more valuable are nine woodcuts by Kandinsky himself that appear at the chapter headings. This English translation of Über das Geistige in der Kunst was a significant contribution to the understanding of nonobjectivism in art. It continues to be a stimulating and necessary reading experience for every artist, art student, and art patron concerned with the direction of 20th-century painting.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        February 2026

        Visual arts and medicine in early modern Europe and beyond

        A collection of essays and sources

        by Robert Brennan, Fabian Jonietz, Romana Sammern

        This book opens up new perspectives on the relationship between art, medicine, and science in late-medieval and early modern Europe. Looking beyond the traditional nexus of art, anatomy, and optics, the volume sheds light on a broader array of connections between artists and physicians: collaborations between painters and doctors on colour charts, handwork skills common to sculptors and surgeons, the transmission of art theory through medical texts long before the emergence of art writing itself as an independent genre, and the kinship of medical diagnosis with early modes of connoisseurship. Reconfiguring the histories of art, medicine, and science, the book also traverses conventional boundaries between physical and mental health, religious and medical modes of healing, menial and exalted forms of knowledge and labour, as well as vernacular and scientific understandings of human difference, including gender, race, and neurodiversity.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        June 2026

        Borderline bodies in art and visual culture

        Unsettling identity and place since 1800

        by Keren Hammerschlag, Natasha Ruiz-Gómez, Tania Anne Cleaves

        Borderline bodies offers original interpretations of visual representations of human bodies as bounded and unbounded, fortified and permeable, mobile and static-subject to borders and able to traverse and challenge them. It also takes as its focus images and objects that might be considered 'borderline' because they sit at the intersection of disciplines or sit outside accepted notions of what constitutes serious 'art.' By mapping the ways human bodies traverse borders and straddle-even dismantle-categories, this volume's essays approach afresh the relationship of bodies to traditional modes of representation, especially in art and medicine, and encourage us to think anew about how we understand the relationship between human corporeality, identity and place. Critical transdisciplinary and transnational analyses of objects and images from a range of geographies shed new light on the themes of: bodies and identity; typologies of the body; racialised bodies; 'normal' and 'abnormal' bodies; encounters between bodies; bodies in transition; bodies and mobility; and the bounded and unbounded human body. The outcome is a fresh approach to depictions of the human body produced for the purposes of artistic and medical education, aesthetic edification, and scientific and professional advancement, which disrupts assumptions about the normative human body perpetuated through Western image-making traditions.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        September 2020

        Science in performance

        Theatre and the politics of engagement

        by Simon Parry

        This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book is about science in theatre and performance. It explores how theatre and performance engage with emerging scientific themes from artificial intelligence to genetics and climate change. The book covers a wide range of performance forms from Broadway musicals to educational theatre, from Somali drama to grime videos. It features work by pioneering companies including Gob Squad, Headlong Theatre and Theatre of Debate as well as offering fresh analysis of global blockbusters such as Wicked and Urinetown. The book offers detailed description and analysis of theatre and performance practices as well as broader commentary on the politics of theatre as public engagement with science. Science in performance is essential reading for researchers, students and practitioners working between science and the arts within fields such as theatre and performance studies, science communication, interdisciplinary arts and health humanities.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        March 2013

        Women, the arts and globalization

        Eccentric experience

        by Marsha Meskimmon, Amelia Jones, Dorothy C. Rowe, Dorothy Rowe, Marsha Meskimmon

        Women, the arts and globalization: Eccentric experience is the first anthology to bring transnational feminist theory and criticism together with women's art practices to discuss the connections between aesthetics, gender and identity in a global world. The essays in Women, the Arts and Globalization demonstrate that women in the arts are rarely positioned at the centre of the art market, and the movement of women globally (as travelers or migrants, empowered artists/scholars or exiled practitioners), rarely corresponds with the dominant models of global exchange. Rather, contemporary women's art practices provide a fascinating instance of women's eccentric experiences of the myriad effects of globalization. Bringing scholarly essays on gender, art and globalization together with interviews and autobiographical accounts of personal experiences, the diversity of the book is relevant to artists, art historians, feminist theorists and humanities scholars interested in the impact of globalization on culture in the broadest sense. ;

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Medicine
        June 2025

        Head in the game

        Sociocultural analyses of brain trauma in sport

        by Stephen Townsend, Murray G. Phillips, Gary Osmond, Rebecca Olive

        Head in the game brings together international scholars from multiple humanities, social science, and scientific disciplines to critically examine one of the most vexing issues in global sport: concussion. It argues that science and medicine alone cannot solve the concussion crisis: sociocultural factors must also be considered. This edited collection draws attention to the ways that social, cultural, historical, political, literary, philosophical, and legal factors have shaped the concussion crisis in sport. Head in the game is essential reading for those who want to understand how the concussion crisis came to be, and provides guidance for developing ethical and evidence-based solutions in the future.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2011

        Irish Environmental Politics After the Communicative Turn

        by Patrick O'Mahony

        This book applies social and political theory to the field of environmental politics in Ireland. It offers both a substantive contribution to understanding environmental politics in this country and a test case of the application of theory within the field of environmental scholarship more generally. The essays are integrated by a concern for analysing the relationship between culture, discourse and action in this political field, hence the emphasis on the communicative turn. The book is innovative in offering a sustained application of social and political theory within environmental scholarship as well as in combining theoretical and empirical approaches to advancing environmental scholarship in a particular case. This synergy of theory and substantive analysis is a key feature of the book and offers an important contribution to the environmental literature in the social sciences. The authors apply key developments in the modern social sciences and offer compelling evidence of their value for clarifying the cultural foundations of political action and for its evaluation and critique. Academics in the social sciences and in philosophy, postgraduate and advanced undergraduate, both in Ireland and beyond, will find this book highly rewarding for its multi-faceted application of social and political theories and associated methodologies to the environmental field. ;

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