The hardcover edition of volume 8 was published in 1994. This paperback edition is the eighth and final volume to be published in the UNESCO General History of Africa. Volume 8 examines the period from 1935 to the present, and details the role of African states in the Second World War and the rise of postwar Africa. This is one of the most important books in the entire series, and as such, it is an unabridged paperback.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume brings together contributions by distinguished experts from different disciplinary fields for a multidimensional view on immersion in the visual arts and media. In the current media debate, immersion has frequently been linked to the advent of digital technology and its capacity to provide vivid sensations of being placed in or surrounded by an artificial space. The idea of ‘liquidity’ contained in this promise to plunge into another world informs wide areas of contemporary cultural imagination, referring to a myriad of phenomena that relate to experiences of uncertainty and instability, of complexity and change. Considering the fact, however, that the idea of ‘liquid’ spaces appeared long before the digital creation of augmented or virtual environments, the contributors to this volume trace its reemerging throughout the history of the visual arts and media. By focusing on selected works of painting and architecture, photography and cinema, video installation and media art, they explore the variability of immersive experiences according to the different media environments and interfaces that constitute the actual sites of historically shifting relations between media and users. Contributors are: Matthias Bauer, Jörg von Brincken, Robin Curtis, Burcu Dogramaci, Thomas Elsaesser, Ole W. Fischer, Gundolf S. Freyermuth, Ursula Frohne, Henry Keazor, Matthias Krüger, Katja Kwastek, Fabienne Liptay, Karl Prümm, Martin Warnke.

In contrast to the role traditionally fulfilled by secular rulers, the pope has been perceived as an individual person existing in a body subject to decay and death, yet at the same time a corporeal representation of Christ and the Church, eternity and salvation. Using an array of evidence from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries, Agostino Paravicini- Bagliani addresses this paradox. He studies the rituals, metaphors, and images of the pope's body as they developed over time and shows how they resulted in the expectation that the pope's body be simultaneously physical and metaphorical. Also included is a particular emphasis on the thirteenth century when, during the pontificate of Boniface VIII (1294-1303), the papal court became the focus of medicine and the natural sciences as physicians devised ways to protect the pope's health and prolong his life. Masterfully translated from the Italian, this engaging history of the pope's body provides a new perspective for readers to understand the papacy, both historically and in our own time.

Erik Satie (1866-1925) came of age in the bohemian subculture of Montmartre, with its artists' cabarets and cafés-concerts. Yet apologists have all too often downplayed this background as potentially harmful to the reputation of a composer whom they regarded as the progenitor of modern French music. Whiting argues, on the contrary, that Satie's two decades in and around Montmartre decisively shaped his aesthetic priorities and compositional strategies. He gives the fullest account to date of Satie's professional activities as a popular musician, and of how he transferred the parodic techniques and musical idioms of cabaret entertainment to works for concert hall. From the esoteric Gymnopédies to the bizarre suites of the 1910s and avant-garde ballets of the 1920s (not to mention music journalism and playwriting), Satie's output may be daunting in its sheer diversity and heterodoxy; but his radical transvaluation of received artistic values makes far better sense once placed in the fascinating context of bohemian Montmartre.

Two of the key theoretical shifts over the past two decades of critical work have been the 'visual turn' and the 'material turn'. This book argues that these hitherto distinct fields should be understood as in continual dialogue and co-constitution and focuses on reconceptualising the visual as an embodied, material, and often politically-charged realm. This edited volume elaborates this conceptual argument through a series of contemporary case studies, drawn from the disciplines of Architecture, Sociology, Media Studies, Geography and Cultural Studies. The case studies included are paired around four themes: consumption, translation, practice and ethics. As well as exploring the bringing together of visuality and materiality studies, the contributors raise questions of social identity and social critique, and also focus on the ethics of material visualities.

DIVThe different forms that travelogues have taken (documentaries, IMAX, home movies, ethnographic films) from the 1800s to the present./div

From the architectural spectacle of the medieval cathedral and the romantic sublime of the nineteenth-century panorama to the techno-fetishism of today's London Science Museum, humans have gained a deeper understanding of the natural world through highly illusionistic representations that engender new modes of seeing, listening, and thinking. What unites and defines many of these wondrous spaces is an immersive view-an invitation to step inside the virtual world of the image and become a part of its universe, if only for a short time. Since their inception, museums of science and natural history have mixed education and entertainment, often to incredible, eye-opening effect. Immersive spaces of visual display and modes of exhibition send "shivers" down our spines, engaging the distinct cognitive and embodied mapping skills we bring to spectacular architecture and illusionistic media. They also force us to reconsider traditional models of film spectatorship in the context of a mobile and interactive spectator. Through a series of detailed historical case studies, Alison Griffiths masterfully explores the uncanny and unforgettable visceral power of the medieval cathedral, the panorama, the planetarium, the IMAX theater, and the science museum. Examining these structures as exemplary spaces of immersion and interactivity, Griffiths reveals the sometimes surprising antecedents of modern media forms, suggesting the spectator's deep-seated desire to become immersed in a virtual world. Shivers Down Your Spine demonstrates how immersive and interactive museum display techniques such as large video displays, reconstructed environments, and touch-screen computer interactives have redefined the museum space, fueling the opposition between public and private, science and spectacle, civic and corporate interests, voice and text, and life and death. In her remarkable study of sensual spaces, Griffiths explains why, for centuries, we keep coming back for more.