With the birth of the cult of the saints, their relics became valuables whose possession would guarantee prestige, protection, and spiritual benefits to a town, church, or monastery. For this reasonーat first with the aim of preserving the bodies of newly-executed martyrs from destruction and later of increasing the...

This book reconstructs the factional-ideological conflicts surrounding socialist transformation and political reform in China that were played out through ‘factional model-making’, a norm-bound mechanism for elites of the Chinese Communist Party to contest the party line publicly. Dazhai, Anhui, Nanjie, Shekou, Shen...

Winner, French Voices Award This book, a crossover hit in France, offers a fresh genealogy of our neoliberal moment. “We must adapt!” These words can be heard almost everywhere and in every aspect of our lives. Where does this widespread sense that we have fallen behind come from? How can we explain this progressive...

The lifetime of Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) was marked by dramatic transformations in Europe. Cityscapes, aesthetic codes, social orders, political cultures, international travel and means of warfare developed beyond recognition; entire catalogues of hopes and fears were torn asunder and replaced by new ones during n...

What do scholars do when they talk about virtues (impartiality, accuracy) or vices (dogmatism, prejudice)? Against the common view that such high-minded talk is largely irrelevant to actual scholarly practice, this volume proposes to treat it as a practice in its own right. Drawing on case studies from the nineteent...

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography presents an interdisciplinary examination of trans and genderqueer subjects in medieval hagiography. Scholarship has productively combined analysis of medieval literary texts with modern queer theory – yet, too often, questions of gender are explored almost excl...

Discover the wisdom at the heart of Confucian philosophy with Zisi's Doctrine of the Meanーa timeless guide to harmony, virtue, and the cultivation of moral character. Attributed to Zisi (Tzu Ssu), the grandson of Confucius, this classic text is one of the Four Books of Confucianism, serving as a cornerstone of Chin...

Young people in the West are more likely to encounter religion in videogames than in places of worship like churches, mosques or temples. Lars de Wildt interviews developers and players of games such as Assassin’s Creed to find out how and why the Pop Theology of Videogames is so appealing to modern audiences. Based...

Cultural Security in Contemporary China and Mongolia applies the term “cultural security” not exclusively to state- or institution-implemented processes, but also considers the indigenous, bottom-up, and inside-out mechanisms of establishing and maintaining communal cultural security of an ethnic group. Markers of c...

Subjectivity is a central concept in film theory, philosophy and cultural studies. It was also a key term in the reception of the Nouvelle Vague film movement in France and Italy from the start of 1945. This timely volume explores the ways in which the concept of subjectivity has made its way into film theory, histo...

In a crucial sense, all machines are time machines. The essays in Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time develop the central concept of hardwired temporalities to consider how technical networks hardwire and rewire patterns of time. Digital media introduce new temporal patterns in their features of i...

Helmuth Plessner (1892-1985) was one of the founders of philosophical anthropology, and his book The Stages of the Organic and Man, first published in 1928, has inspired generations of philosophers, biologists, social scientists, and humanities scholars. This volume offers the first substantial introduction to Pless...

Even in adversity, Catholics exercised considerable agency in post-Reformation Utrecht. Through the political practices of repression and toleration, Utrecht’s magistrates, under constant pressure from the Reformed Church, attempted to exclude Catholics from the urban public sphere. However, by mobilizing their soci...

Views on climate change are often either pessimistic or optimistic. In this book Jan Jorrit Hasselaar discovers and explores a third way, one of hope. A debate within economics on risk and uncertainty brings him to theological questions and the concept of hope in the work of the late Jonathan Sacksーand to a renewed...

How did gender shape the expanding Jesuit enterprise in the early modern world? What did it take to become a missionary man? And how did missionary masculinity align itself with the European colonial project? This book highlights the central importance of male affective ties and masculine mimesis in the formation of...

In the southeast of Indonesia, on the Moluccas, theologians are developing contextual theologies for the Moluccan Protestant church. The Moluccas were colonized by the Dutch for more than three centuries. As an effort of religious decolonization, Moluccan theologians aim to better connect Christianity with the cultu...