By Colleen E. Kriger (NHC Fellow, 2014–15) A new era in world history began when Atlantic maritime trade among Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas opened up in the fifteenth century, setting the stage for massive economic and cultural change. In Making Money, Colleen Kriger examines the influence of the global trade on the Upper Guinea Coast … Continued
By Stephen J. Shoemaker (NHC Fellow, 2013–14) For the first time a noted historian of Christianity explores the full story of the emergence and development of the Marian cult in the early Christian centuries. The means by which Mary, mother of Jesus, came to prominence have long remained strangely overlooked despite, or perhaps because of, … Continued
Edited by Alison Keith (NHC Fellow, 2007–08) and Stephen Rupp This collection of fifteen essays examines the literary influence of Ovid’s Metamorphoses from the late Middle Ages to the seventeenth century. Such notable authors as Christine de Pizan, Gower, Chaucer, Petrarch, Scève, Cervantes, Góngora, and Milton are explored. By concentrating on Ovid’s most influential work, … Continued
Edited by Shepard Krech, III (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1993–94; 2000–01) New edition of a bibliography first published in 1986 by the Rupert's Land Research Centre, intended to lay the groundwork for well-researched student projects. Scholars are warned in the introduction that the more inaccessible governmental or research-center reports are not within the scope of this … Continued
By Merrill D. Peterson (NHC Fellow, 1980–81) Dominated by the personalities of three towering figures of the nation’s middle period—Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and President Andrew Jackson—Olive Branch and Sword: The Compromise of 1833 tells of the political and rhetorical dueling that brought about the Compromise of 1833, resolving the crisis of the Union caused … Continued
By Larry Silver (NHC Fellow, 1991–92) Modern viewers take for granted the pictorial conventions present in easel paintings and engraved prints of such subjects as landscapes or peasants. These generic subjects and their representational conventions, however, have their own origins and early histories. In sixteenth-century Antwerp, painting and the emerging new medium of engraving began … Continued
By Mary Gluck (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) A radical reconceptualization of modernism, this book traces the appearance of the modern artist to the Paris of the 1830s and links the emergence of an enduring modernist aesthetic to the fleeting forms of popular culture. Contrary to conventional views of a private self retreating from history and modernity, Popular … Continued
By Tad M. Schmaltz (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) This is a book-length study of two of Descartes's most innovative successors, Robert Desgabets and Pierre-Sylvain Regis, and of their highly original contributions to Cartesianism. The focus of the book is an analysis of radical doctrines in the work of these thinkers that derive from arguments in Descartes: … Continued
By Richard C. Trexler (NHC Fellow, 1997–98) In Reliving Golgotha, Richard Trexler brings an important new perspective to religious spectacle in an engrossing exploration of the annual passion play at Iztapalapa, the largest and poorest borough of Mexico City. After tracing the history of European passion theater, Trexler examines the process by which representations of the passion were … 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