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Fearless and free
Funny, candid and unconventional: the wildly famous but elusive Josephine Baker tells her own story in this enchanting memoir. She took Paris by storm in the 1920s, dazzling audiences with her humour, beauty and effervescence on stage. Hemingway, Jean Cocteau and Picasso admired her; Shirley Bassey adored her. It was told she strolled the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah who wore a diamond collar. Later, as one of the most recognisable women in the world, she became a spy for the French resistance, her celebrity working as her cover. She was awarded the Légion d'Honneur for military service. After the war she became increasingly interested in civil rights. In 1963 she spoke at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King. All this from a girl born in Missouri to a single Black woman and a white father she did not know. This book offers an insight into a beguiling figure of the 20th century.
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Locating Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu (1930--2002) had an enormous influence on social and
cultural thought in the second half of the 20th century, leaving a mark on fields as
diverse as sociology, anthropology, critical theory, education, literary criticism,
art history, and media studies. From his childhood in a rural French village, to his
fieldwork in Algeria, to his ascension to the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de
France, Bourdieu's life followed a trajectory both complex and contradictory. In
this original and eloquent study, Deborah Reed-Danahay offers fresh insights on
Bourdieu's work by drawing on the perspectives of ethnography and autobiography.
Using Bourdieu's own reflections upon his life and career and considering the
totality of his research and writing, this book locates Bourdieu within his French
milieu and within the current state of discussion of Europe and its colonial legacy.
Locating Bourdieu revisits major themes and concepts such as structure and practice,
taste and distinction, habitus, social field, symbolic capital, and symbolic
violence, adding new perspectives and discovering implications of Bourdieu's work
for understanding emotion, social space, and personal narrative. The result is a
work of impressive scholarship and intellectual creativity that will appeal to
scholars, students, and non-specialists alike. New Anthropologies
of Europe -- Daphne Berdahl, Matti Bunzl, and Michael Herzfeld, editors
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Geoffroy of Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne
Geoffroy of Villehardouin, Marshal of
Champagne by Theodore Evergates traces the
remarkable life of Geoffroy of Villehardouin (c. 1148-c. 1217) from
his earliest years in Champagne through his last years in Greece
after the crusade.
The fourth son of a knight, Geoffroy became marshal of
Champagne, principal negotiator in organizing the Fourth Crusade,
chief of staff of the expedition to and conquest of Constantinople,
garrison commander of Constantinople and, in his late fifties,
field commander defending the Latin settlement in the Byzantine
empire against invading Bulgarian armies and revolting Greek
cities. Known for his diplomatic skills and rectitude, he served as
the chief military advisor to Count Thibaut III of Champagne and
later to Emperor Henry of Constantinople.
Geoffroy is remarkable as well for dictating the earliest war
memoir in medieval Europe, which is also the earliest prose
narrative in Old French. Addressed to a home audience in Champagne,
he described what he did, what he saw, and what he heard during his
eight years on crusade and especially during the fraught period
after the conquest of Constantinople. His memoir, The Book of
the Conquest of Constantinople , furnishes a commander's
retrospective account of the main events and inner workings of the
crusade-the innumerable meetings and speeches, the conduct (not
always commendable) of the barons, and the persistent discontent
within the army-as well as a celebration of his own deeds as a
diplomat and a military commander.
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Derrida's Marrano Passover : exile, survival, betrayal, and the metaphysics of non-identity
\"The first book devoted to Derrida's Marranism - his paradoxical 'non-Jewish Jewishness' - connecting it to the Derridean themes of exile, survival, betrayal and autobiography\"-- Provided by publisher.
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The life and afterlife of Isabeau of Bavaria
The fascinating history of Isabeau of Bavaria is a tale of two queens. During her lifetime, Isabeau, the long-suffering wife of mad King Charles VI of France, was respected and revered. After her death, she was reviled as an incompetent regent, depraved adulteress, and betrayer of the throne. Asserting that there is no historical support for this posthumous reputation, Tracy Adams returns Isabeau to her rightful place in history. Adulteress and traitor—two charges long leveled against the queen—are the first subjects of Adam’s reinterpretation of medieval French history. Scholars have concluded that the myths of Isabeau’s scandalous past are just that: rumors that evolved after her death in the context of a political power struggle. Unfortunately, this has not prevented the lies from finding their way into respected studies on the period. Adams’s own work serves as a corrective, rehabilitating the reputation of the good queen and exploring the larger topic of memory and the creation of myth. Adams next challenges the general perception that the queen lacked political acumen. With her husband incapacitated by insanity, Isabeau was forced to rule a country ripped apart by feuding, power-hungry factions. Adams argues that Isabeau handled her role astutely in such a contentious environment, preserving the monarchy from the incursions of the king’s powerful male relatives. Taking issue with history’s harsh treatment of a woman who ruled under difficult circumstances, Adams convincingly recasts Isabeau as a respected and competent queen.
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American By Degrees
In An American by Degrees Robert Young explores Ambassador Jusserand's life and legacy. Fluent in English, married to an American, and a historian who was a frequent guest at many American universities, Jusserand deftly cultivated American sympathies for France. His tasks as a diplomat were formidable, whether during the period of America's war-time neutrality - when France was nearly over-run by the German army - or when as allies they competed for control of the peace process or sought to resolve post-war issues like disarmament, war debts, and reparations. Jusserand relentlessly reminded Americans that France had been an ally during their Revolution and that their concept of \"civilization\" was part of France's intellectual and cultural legacy. His emphasis on their shared history was natural, as befitted the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History and only the second foreigner to serve as president of the American Historical Association.
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Monet : the restless vision
Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile, voracious, nervous yet reckless man, largely unknown. Jackie Wullschläger's enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet's turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting. He was as obsessional in his love affairs as in his love of nature, and changed his art decisively three times when the woman at the centre of his life changed. Enduring devastating bereavements, he pushed the frontier of painting inward, to evoke memory and the passing of time. His work also responded intensely to outside cataclysms - the Dreyfus Affair, the First World War. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience, transforming our understanding of the man, his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.
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The way : religious thinkers of the Russian emigration in Paris and their journal, 1925-1940
The journal Put', or The Way, was one of the major vehicles for philosophical and religious discussion among Russian émigrés in Paris from 1925 until the beginning of World War II. This Russian language journal, edited by Nicholas Berdyaev among others, has been called one of the most erudite in all Russian intellectual history; however, it remained little known in France and the USSR until the early 1990s. This is the first sustained study of the Russian émigré theologians and other intellectuals in Paris who were associated with The Way and of their writings, as published in The Way. Although there have been studies of individual members of that group, this book places the entire generation in a broad historical and intellectual context. Antoine Arjakovsky provides assessments of leading religious figures such as Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Florovsky, Nicholas and Vladimir Lossky, Mother Maria Skobtsova, and Afanasiev, and compares and contrasts their philosophical agreements and conflicts in the pages of The Way. He examines their intense commitment to freedom, their often contentious struggles to bring the Christian tradition as experienced in the Eastern Church into conversation with Christians of the West, and their distinctive contributions to Western theology and ecumenism from the perspective of their Russian Orthodox experience. He also traces the influence of these extraordinary intellectuals in present-day Russia, Western Europe, and the United States. Throughout this comprehensive study, Arjakovsky presents a wealth of arguments, from debates over \"Russian exceptionalism\" to the possibilities of a Christian and Orthodox version of socialist politics, the degree to which the church could allow its agenda to be shaped by both local and global political realities, and controversies about the distinctively Russian theology of Divine Wisdom, Sophia. Arjakovsky also maps out the relationships these émigré thinkers established with significant Western theologians such as Jacques Maritain, Yves-Marie Congar, Henri de Lubac, and Jean Daniélou, who provided the intellectual underpinnings of Vatican II.
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