These texts represent both the formation of visual culture, and the ways in which it has transformed, and continues to transform, our understanding and experience of the world as a visual domain.

These texts represent both the formation of visual culture, and the ways in which it has transformed, and continues to transform, our understanding and experience of the world as a visual domain.

Provides a broad view of the history and current state of scholarship on the art of the ancient Near East This book covers the aesthetic traditions of Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatolia, and the Levant, from Neolithic times to the end of the Achaemenid Persian Empire around 330 BCE. It describes and examines the field from a variety of critical perspectives: across approaches and interpretive frameworks, key explanatory concepts, materials and selected media and formats, and zones of interaction. This important work also addresses both traditional and emerging categories of material, intellectual perspectives, and research priorities. The book covers geography and chronology, context and setting, medium and scale, while acknowledging the diversity of regional and cultural traditions and the uneven survival of evidence. Part One of the book considers the methodologies and approaches that the field has drawn on and refined. Part Two addresses terms and concepts critical to understanding the subjects and formal characteristics of the Near Eastern material record, including the intellectual frameworks within which monuments have been approached and interpreted. Part Three surveys the field’s most distinctive and characteristic genres, with special reference to Mesopotamian art and architecture. Part Four considers involvement with artistic traditions across a broader reach, examining connections with Egypt, the Aegean, and the Mediterranean. And finally, Part Five addresses intersections with the closely allied discipline of archaeology and the institutional stewardship of cultural heritage in the modern Middle East. Told from multiple perspectives, A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Art is an enlightening, must-have book for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of ancient Near East art and Near East history as well as those interested in history and art history.

A compelling alternative account of the history of knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment Until now the history of knowledge has largely been about formal and documented accumulation, concentrating on systems, collections, academies, and institutions. The central narrative has been one of advancement, refinement, and expansion. Martin Mulsow tells a different story. Knowledge can be lost: manuscripts are burned, oral learning dies with its bearers, new ideas are suppressed by censors. Knowledge Lost is a history of efforts, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, to counter such loss. It describes how critics of ruling political and religious regimes developed tactics to preserve their views; how they buried their ideas in footnotes and allusions; how they circulated their tracts and treatises in handwritten copies; and how they commissioned younger scholars to spread their writings after death. Filled with exciting stories, Knowledge Lost follows the trail of precarious knowledge through a series of richly detailed episodes. It deals not with the major themes of metaphysics and epistemology, but rather with interpretations of the Bible, Orientalism, and such marginal zones as magic. And it focuses not on the usual major thinkers, but rather on forgotten or half-forgotten members of the “knowledge underclass,” such as Pietro della Vecchia, a libertine painter and intellectual; Charles-César Baudelot, an antiquarian and numismatist; and Johann Christoph Wolf, a pastor, Hebrew scholar, and witness to the persecution of heretics. Offering a fascinating new approach to the intellectual history of early modern Europe, Knowledge Lost is also an ambitious attempt to rethink the very concept of knowledge.

These texts represent both the formation of visual culture, and the ways in which it has transformed, and continues to transform, our understanding and experience of the world as a visual domain.

Visual Culture Studies presents 13 engaging and detailed interviews with some of the most influential intellectuals working today on the objects, subjects, media and environments of visual culture. Exploring historical and theoretical questions of vision, the visual and visuality, this collection reveals the provocative insights of these thinkers as they have contributed in exhilarating ways to disturbing the parameters of more traditional areas of study across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. In so doing they have key roles in establishing Visual Culture Studies as a significant field of inquiry. Each interview draws out the interests and commitments of the interviewee to critically interrogate the past, present and future possibilities of Visual Culture Studies and visual culture itself. The discussions concentrate on three broad areas of deliberation: The intellectual and institutional status of Visual Culture Studies. The histories, genealogies and archaeologies of visual culture and its study. The diverse ways in which the experiences of vision, and the visual, can be articulated and mobilized to political, aesthetic and ethical ends. This book demonstrates the intellectual significance of Visual Culture Studies, and the ongoing importance of the study of the visual. Marquard Smith is Reader in Visual and Material Culture at Kingston University, London, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Visual Culture.