Drawing from ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary sources, this textbook offers a comprehensive and systematic historical overview of aesthetic theory.

The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art provides an extensive research resource to the burgeoning field of Asian aesthetics. Featuring leading international scholars and teachers whose work defines the field, this unique volume reflects the very best scholarship in creative, analytic, and comparative philosophy. Beginning with a philosophical reconstruction of the classical rasa aesthetics, chapters range from the nature of art-emotions, tones of thinking, and aesthetic education to issues in film-theory and problems of the past versus present. As well as discussing indigenous versus foreign in aesthetic practices, this volume covers North and South Indian performance practices and theories, alongside recent and new themes including the Gandhian aesthetics of surrender and self-control and the aesthetics of touch in the light of the politics of untouchability. With such unparalleled and authoritative coverage, The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art represents a dynamic map of comparative cross-cultural aesthetics. Bringing together original philosophical research from renowned thinkers, it makes a major contribution to both Eastern and Western contemporary aesthetics.

The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry collects more than 200 poems by over 100 poets to celebrate contemporary writers, born after World War II, who write about Jewish themes. In bringing together poets whose writings explore cultural Jewish topics with those who directly address Jewish religious themes as well as those who only indirectly touch on their Jewishness, this anthology offers a fascinating insight into what it is to be a Jewish poet. Featuring established poets as well as representatives of the next generation of Jewish voices, included are poems by, among others, Ellen Bass, Jane Hirshfield, Ed Hirsch, David Lehman, Charles Bernstein, Carol V. Davis, Judith Skillman, Jacqueline Osherow, Alan Shapiro, Ira Sadoff, Melissa Stein, Matthew Zapruder, Philip Schultz, and Jane Shore.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art explores and delineates what Sound Art is in the 21st century. Sound artworks today embody the contemporary and transcultural trends towards the post-apocalyptic, a wide sensorial spectrum of sonic imaginaries as well as the decolonization and deinstitutionalization around the making of sound. Within the areas of musicology, art history, and, later, sound studies, Sound Art has evolved at least since the 1980s into a turbulant field of academic critique and aesthetic analysis. Summoning artists, researchers, curators, and critics, this volume takes note of and reflects the most recent shifts and drifts in Sound Art--rooted in sonic histories and implying future trajectories.

Part of the Continuum Aesthetics series, this book addresses all the central issues in the aesthetics of nature.

What is the future of conceptualism? What expressions can it take in the 21st century? Is there a new role for aesthetic experience in art and, if so, what is that role exactly? Aesthetics, Philosophy and Martin Creed uses one of this generation's most important and influential artists to address themes crucial to contemporary aesthetics. Working in an impressive variety of artistic media, Creed represents a strikingly innovative take on conceptualism. Through his ingenious and thought-provoking work, a team of international philosophers, jurists and art historians illustrate how Creed epitomizes several questions central to philosophical aesthetics today and provides a glimpse of the future both of art and aesthetic discourse. They discuss key concepts for Creed's work, including immediacy (in his photographs of smiling people), compositional order (in his geometric paintings), simplicity (in Work No. 218, a sheet paper crumpled into a ball) and shamelessness (in his videos of vomiting people). By bringing a working artist into the heart of academic discussions, Aesthetics, Philosophy and Martin Creed highlights the relevance of philosophical discussions of art to understanding art today.

"Aesthetics and Modernity brings together Agnes Heller's most recent essays around the topics of aesthetic genres such as painting, music, literature and comedy, aesthetic reception, and embodiment. The essays draw on Heller's deep appreciation of aesthetics in all its forms from the classical to the Renaissance and the contemporary periods. Heller's recent work on aesthetics explores the complex status of artworks within the context of the history of modernity, and she engages this task with a critical recognition of modernity's pitfalls. This collection highlights these pitfalls in the context of continuing possibilities for aesthetics and our relationship with works of art, and it throws light on Heller's theory of emotions and feelings and her theory of modernity. Aesthetics and Modernity collects the essential essays of Agnes Heller and is a must-read for anyone interested in Heller's major contributions to philosophy. John Rundell is associate professor of social theory at the University of Melbourne. "--Book jacket.