As a logical concept, identity refers to one and the same thing. So how can it describe membership in various groups, as in ethnic and religious identity? Bringing together an analytic conception of identity with a psychosocial understanding, Vincent Descombes demonstrates why a person has more than one answer to the essential question Who am I?

As a logical concept, identity refers to one and the same thing. So why, Vincent Descombes asks, do we routinely use “identity” to describe the feelings associated with membership in a number of different communities, as when we speak of our ethnic identity and religious identity? And how can we ascribe the same “identity” to more than one individual in a group? In Puzzling Identities, one of the leading figures in French philosophy seeks to bridge the abyss between the logical meaning of identity and the psychological sense of “being oneself.” Bringing together an analytic conception of identity derived from Gottlob Frege with a psychosocial understanding stemming from Erik Erikson, Descombes contrasts a rigorously philosophical notion of identity with ideas of collective identity that have become crucial in contemporary cultural and political discourse. He returns to an argument of ancient Greek philosophy about the impossibility of change for a material individual. Distinguishing between reflexive and expressive views of “being oneself,” he shows the connections between subjective identity and one’s life and achievements. We form profound attachments to the particular communities by which we define ourselves. At the same time, becoming oneself as a modern individual requires a process of disembedding oneself from one’s social milieu. This is how undergoing a crisis of identity while coming of age has become for us a normal stage in human life. Puzzling Identities demonstrates why a person has more than one answer to the essential question “Who am I?”

The twin concepts of "Culture" and "Identity" are inescapable in any discussion of European Integration and yet over the last ten years their meaning has become increasingly contested. By combining an anthropological and political perspective, the authors challenge the traditional boundaries within the issue of the construction of Europe. In the first part, historians and anthropologists from various national traditions discuss the process of the construction of Europe and its implications for cultural identities. The second section examines a number of topics at the core of the process of Europeanization and presents up-to-date information on each of these issues: political parties, regions, football, cities, the Euro, ethnicity, heritage and European cinema. Emphasis is be placed on the political structuring of cultural identities by contrasting top-down and bottom-up processes that define the tensions between the unity and diversity of the European Community.

Numerous churches decorated with medieval wall paintings can be found in Lebanon and Syria, especially in the former Crusader County of Tripoli and the Muslim-controlled Damascus area. In particular the first half of the thirteenth century turned out to be a period of intensive artistic activities. This book addresses the matter of identity formation in the decoration of Maronite, Melkite and Syrian Orthodox churches during this artistic 'Syrian Renaissance', and explores the differences and similarities between the arts of these communities. Attention is given to the interaction between Latins and local Christians, the attribution of works of art to local and Byzantine artists, and the relationship with Islamic art. Furthermore, recent discoveries have revealed that indigenous painters and workshops involved in the embellishment of churches also produced icons which were formerly attributed to Latin artists, thus adding a new dimension to the research on the production of Christian art in the Middle East during the Crusader era.

In the Brazilian Amazon region, cultural “mixture” is expressed in the interaction of city and hinterland, of Indigenous and Black, of religiosity and politics. By examining the multiple cultural and ethnic threads that traverse this landscape, The Amazonian Puzzle sets out to show how the category of caboclo (a powerful spiritual entity to some, and to others a despised peasant of mixed ancestry) reveals deep currents of ethnic recompositions, religious interpenetration, and social hierarchy. These Amazonian dynamics are explored through the lens of ethnography, sociology, and history.

* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award * Silver Medal Society of Illustrators * * Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Comics Beat, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal This “ingenious reckoning with the past” (The New York Times), by award-winning artist Nora Krug investigates the hidden truths of her family’s wartime history in Nazi Germany. Nora Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, but the Second World War cast a long shadow over her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. Yet she knew little about her own family’s involvement; though all four grandparents lived through the war, they never spoke of it. After twelve years in the US, Krug realizes that living abroad has only intensified her need to ask the questions she didn’t dare to as a child. Returning to Germany, she visits archives, conducts research, and interviews family members, uncovering in the process the stories of her maternal grandfather, a driving teacher in Karlsruhe during the war, and her father’s brother Franz-Karl, who died as a teenage SS soldier. In this extraordinary quest, “Krug erases the boundaries between comics, scrapbooking, and collage as she endeavors to make sense of 20th-century history, the Holocaust, her German heritage, and her family's place in it all” (The Boston Globe). A highly inventive, “thoughtful, engrossing” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) graphic memoir, Belonging “packs the power of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and David Small’s Stitches” (NPR.org).

Although many opera dictionaries and encyclopedias are available, very few are devoted exclusively to operas in a single language. In this revised and expanded edition of Operas in English: A Dictionary, Margaret Ross Griffel brings up to date her original work on operas written specifically to an English text (including works both originally prepared in English, as well as English translations). Since its original publication in 1999, Griffel has added nearly 800 entries to the 4,300 from the original volume, covering the world of opera in the English language from 1634 through 2011. Listed alphabetically by letter, each opera entry includes alternative titles, if any; a full, descriptive title; the number of acts; the composer’s name; the librettist’s name, the original language of the libretto, and the original source of the text, with the source title; the date, place, and cast of the first performance; the date of composition, if it occurred substantially earlier than the premiere date; similar information for the first U.S. (including colonial) and British (i.e., in England, Scotland, or Wales) performances, where applicable; a brief plot summary; the main characters (names and vocal ranges, where known); some of the especially noteworthy numbers cited by name; comments on special musical problems, techniques, or other significant aspects; and other settings of the text, including non-English ones, and/or other operas involving the same story or characters (cross references are indicated by asterisks). Entries also include such information as first and critical editions of the score and libretto; a bibliography, ranging from scholarly studies to more informal journal articles and reviews; a discography; and information on video recordings. Griffel also includes four appendixes, a selective bibliography, and two indexes. The first appendix lists composers, their places and years of birth and death, and their operas included in the text as entries; the second does the same for librettists; the third records authors whose works inspired or were adapted for the librettos; and the fourth comprises a chronological listing of the A–Z entries, including as well as the date of first performance, the city of the premiere, the short title of the opera, and the composer. Griffel also include a main character index and an index of singers, conductors, producers, and other key figures.