By Judith Farquhar (NHC Fellow, 2007–08; 2015–16) Ten Thousand Things explores the many forms of life, or, in ancient Chinese parlance “the ten thousand things” that life is and is becoming, in contemporary Beijing and beyond. Coauthored by an American anthropologist and a Chinese philosopher, the book examines the myriad ways contemporary residents of Beijing understand … Continued
By Robert L. Kendrick (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) In this book, a follow-up to his 1996 monograph Celestial Sirens, Robert Kendrick examines the cultural contexts of music in early-modern Milan. This book describes the churches and palaces that served as performance spaces in Milan, analyzes the power structures in the city, discusses the devotional rites of the … Continued
Edited by Gavin Kelly (NHC Fellow, 2010–11) and Lucy Grig The city of Constantinople was named New Rome or Second Rome very soon after its foundation in AD 324; over the next two hundred years it replaced the original Rome as the greatest city of the Mediterranean. In this unified essay collection, prominent international scholars … Continued
Edited by Franklin W. Knight (NHC Fellow, 1986–87) and Peggy K. Liss This volume began with the symposium on Atlantic port cities held at the Library of Congress in May 1986. Ten original essays examine the texture of economy, society, and culture in selected Latin American and Caribbean ports, illustrating the patterns of development.
Edited by David Strand (NHC Fellow, 1995–96), Sherman Cochran (NHC Fellow, 2002–03), and Wen-Hsin Yeh This volume offers a fresh perspective on how Chinese cities were transformed or "Westernized" in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how Asian and Western cities received Chinese influences dispatched through the media of commerce and migration. Part 1 … Continued
By Pamela O. Long (NHC Fellow, 2012–13) Between the catastrophic flood of the Tiber River in 1557 and the death of the “engineering pope” Sixtus V in 1590, the city of Rome was transformed by intense activity involving building construction and engineering projects of all kinds. Using hundreds of archival documents and primary sources, Engineering the … Continued
Edited by Maryanne Kowaleski (NHC Fellow, 2005–06) This exciting new collection of documents from across Europe gives a fresh perspective and sharp taste of everyday life in a medieval town. The sources range from the standard chronicles and charters to the less often viewed accounts of marriage disputes, urban women, families, the environment, the dangers … Continued
By Ellen Stroud (NHC Fellow, 2009–10) The once denuded northeastern United States is now a region of trees. Nature Next Door argues that the growth of cities, the construction of parks, the transformation of farming, the boom in tourism, and changes in the timber industry have together brought about a return of northeastern forests. Although historians and … Continued
By Caroline Bruzelius (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) Friars transformed the relationship of the church to laymen by taking religion outside to public and domestic spaces. Mendicant commitment to apostolic poverty bound friars to donors in an exchange of donations in return for intercessory prayers and burial: association with friars was believed to reduce the suffering of … Continued
By John F. Kasson (NHC Fellow, 1980–81; 2009–10) With keen insight and subtle humor, John F. Kasson explores the history and politics of etiquette from America's colonial times through the nineteenth century. He describes the transformation of our notion of "gentility," once considered a birthright to some, and the development of etiquette as a middle-class … Continued