New Releases
Transforming Relations
Essays on Jews and Christians throughout History in Honor of Michael A. Signer
Edited by Franklin T. Harkins
Transforming Relations is a collection of original essays on the history of Jews and Christians in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern era that honors the influential work of Michael A. Signer (1945-2009). Reflecting the breadth of Signer’s research and pedagogical interests, the essays treat various aspects of the Jewish-Christian relationship through the centuries, from the divine law in antiquity to philosemitism in contemporary Christianity, from scriptural interpretation in the twelfth century to Christian Hebraism in the fifteenth, and from the presentation of Christianity in the Talmud and Midrashim to modern Christian understandings of Judaism. The essays are unified…
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Death and Conversion in the Andes
Lima and Cuzco, 1532–1670
Gabriela Ramos
When the Spanish invaded the Inca empire in 1532, the cult of the ancestors was an essential feature of pre-Columbian religion throughout the Andes. The dead influenced politics, protected the living, symbolized the past, and legitimized claims over the land their descendants occupied, while the living honored the presence of the dead in numerous aspects of daily life. A central purpose of the Spanish missionary endeavor was to suppress the Andean cult of the ancestors and force the indigenous people to adopt their Catholic, legal, and cultural views concerning death. In her book, Gabriela Ramos reveals the extent to which…
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DISSEMINAL CHAUCER Wins Award
The Robert Penn Warren Center at Western Kentucky University announces that the award jury has chosen Peter W. Travis’s DISSEMINAL CHAUCER: Rereading the Nun’s Priest Tale for the 2009 Warren-Brooks Award for Outstanding Literary Criticism.
Among forty-two books submitted for this year’s contest, Travis’s book was chosen for the breadth and depth of Professor Travis’s scholarship, and the wit and originality of his writing. According to the award jury, “Travis captures the gusto, the canniness, the encyclopedic intelligence, and most of all, the wicked restless energy of Chaucer.”
The award presentation will be on April 16, 2010,…
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