This project takes the human body and the bodily senses as joints that articulate new kinds of connections between church and theatre and overturns a longstanding notion about theatrical phenomenology in this period.

With step-by-step directions, lessons, projects, cooperative learning activities and more, here are reproducible cut-and-paste patterns for assembling and understanding the systems and organs of the human body.

This fast-paced survey of Western civilization’s transition from the Middle Ages to modernity brings that tumultuous period vividly to life. Carlos Eire, popular professor and gifted writer, chronicles the two-hundred-year era of the Renaissance and Reformation with particular attention to issues that persist as concerns in the present day. Eire connects the Protestant and Catholic Reformations in new and profound ways, and he demonstrates convincingly that this crucial turning point in history not only affected people long gone, but continues to shape our world and define who we are today. The book focuses on the vast changes that took place in Western civilization between 1450 and 1650, from Gutenberg’s printing press and the subsequent revolution in the spread of ideas to the close of the Thirty Years’ War. Eire devotes equal attention to the various Protestant traditions and churches as well as to Catholicism, skepticism, and secularism, and he takes into account the expansion of European culture and religion into other lands, particularly the Americas and Asia. He also underscores how changes in religion transformed the Western secular world. A book created with students and nonspecialists in mind, Reformations is an inspiring, provocative volume for any reader who is curious about the role of ideas and beliefs in history.

"This study has essentially two focuses, two stories to tell. One story traces the secularization, theatricalization, and uncanny returns of suppressed religious culture in early modern drama. The other story concerns the tendency of the theater to expose contingencies and gaps in politico-judicial practices of spectacular violence." "The investigation covers a broad range of plays dating from the fifteenth century to the closing of the theatres in 1642; however, three chapters are devoted to extensive analysis of single plays: R.B.'s Apius and Virginia, Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI, and Marlowe's Doctor Faustus."--Jacket.

"Christine de Pizan's Body Politic (1406-1407) is the first political treatise to have been written not just by a woman, but by a woman capable of holding her own in a normally male domain. It advises not just the prince, as was traditional, but also nobles, knights, and the common people, promoting the ideals of interdependence and social responsibility. Rooted in the mind-set of medieval Christendom, it heralds the humanism of the Renaissance, highlighting classical culture and Roman civic virtues. The Body Politic resounds still today, urging the need for probity in public life and the importance of responsibilities as well as rights"--