Nieuwe aanwinsten Geesteswetenschappen: apr - jun 2023

Note: The Library has acquired all volumes on science and philosophy of the series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe.

Renaissance writer Laura Cereta (1469-1499) presents feminist issues in a predominantly male venue--the humanist autobiography in the form of personal letters. Cereta's works circulated widely in Italy during the early modern era, but her complete letters have never before been published in English. In her public lectures and essays, Cereta explores the history of women's contributions to the intellectual and political life of Europe. She argues against the slavery of women in marriage and for the rights of women to higher education, the same issues that have occupied feminist thinkers of later centuries. Yet these letters also furnish a detailed portrait of an early modern woman's private experience, for Cereta addressed many letters to a close circle of family and friends, discussing highly personal concerns such as her difficult relationships with her mother and her husband. Taken together, these letters are a testament both to an individual woman and to enduring feminist concerns.

Bias seems to be everywhere. Biased media outlets decisively influence the political opinions and votes of millions of people. Discriminatory policies favor some racial groups over others. We tend to judge ourselves more favorably than our peers, and more favorably than the evidence warrants. But what is it, exactly, for a person or thing to be biased? In Bias: A Philosophical Study, Thomas Kelly explores a number of foundational questions about the nature of bias and our practices of attributing it. He develops a general framework for thinking about bias, the norm theoretic account, and shows how that framework illuminates much that we say and think about bias in both everyday life and the sciences. He argues provocatively that both morality and rationality sometimes require us to be biased; that groups of people can be biased even if none of their members are; that we are often rationally required to believe that those who disagree with us are biased, even if we know absolutely nothing about why they believe as they do or about their psychologies; and that whether someone counts as biased is often a relative matter. He defends the possibility of what he calls 'biased knowing' and argues that the phenomenon has significant implications for both philosophical methodology and scepticism. A central aim of the book is to expand the range of issues that have thus far been considered under the heading 'the philosophy of bias' by putting new theoretical questions on the table and proposing bold answers that can serve as starting points for future inquiry.

Exploring anxieties raised by Atlantic slavery in radical enlightenment literature concerned about political unfreedom in Europe, Metaracial argues that Hegel's philosophy assuages these anxieties for the left. Interpreting Hegel beside Rousseau, Kant, Mary Shelley, and Marx, Terada traces Hegel's transposition of racial hierarchy into a hierarchy of stances toward reality. By doing so, she argues, Hegel is simultaneously antiracist and antiblack. In dialogue with Black Studies, psychoanalysis, and critical theory, Metaracial offers a genealogy of the limits of antiracism"-- Provided by publisher."A formidable critical project on the limits of antiracist philosophy. Exploring anxieties raised by Atlantic slavery in radical enlightenment literature concerned about political unfreedom in Europe, Metaracial argues that Hegel's philosophy assuages these anxieties for the left. Interpreting Hegel beside Rousseau, Kant, Mary Shelley, and Marx, Terada traces Hegel's transposition of racial hierarchy into a hierarchy of stances toward reality. By doing so, she argues, Hegel is simultaneously antiracist and antiblack. In dialogue with Black Studies, psychoanalysis, and critical theory, Metaracial offers a genealogy of the limits of antiracism

The Doctor and the Algorithm combines insights from science and technology studies, critical algorithm studies, and public interest informatics to better understand how health artificial intelligence (AI) is made, promoted, regulated, and justified. It reviews the enthusiastic promises of health AI marketing communication and medical futurism as well as concerns about the dangerous and inequitable effects of AI that have been raised in critical algorithm studies and bioethics. In so doing, The Doctor and the Algorithm investigates promising new applications for health AI, as well as how these new technologies can replicate human biases under a veneer of objectivity and lead to considerable harms. The book also leverages AI, itself, to investigate the foundations of machine-learning technologies and the use of promotional language in health AI research. Along the way, it explores both how the overly enthusiastic embrace of health AI can lead to unintended consequences for patients and public health and how new initiatives in ethical and just AI can support better futures for algorithmic medicine. The Doctor and the Algorithm closes with recommendations for practices and frameworks that can support these more ethical and just approaches to health AI.

Note: The Library has acquired all volumes of the series Edinburgh Companions to Global Christianity.

Offers a uniquely detailed account of Christianity in Latin America and the Caribbean through empirical data and original analysis
• Contains profiles of Christianity in every country in Latin America and the Caribbean, coupled with attractive presentations of statistical and demographic information
• Analyses leading features and current trends in Christianity in Latin America and the Caribbean, featuring local scholars with expertise in their field
• Examines each of the major Christian traditions in Latin America and the Caribbean: Protestants, Independents, Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Evangelicals and Pentecostals/Charismatics
• Explores key themes such as faith and culture, worship and spirituality, theology, social and political engagement, mission and evangelism, religious freedom, gender, inter-faith relations, Afro-descendants, migration, indigenous peoples, persecution and martyrdom
This volume is the sixth in a series of reference works that takes the analysis of worldwide Christianity to a deeper level of detail. It focuses on Christianity in Latin America and the Caribbean, covering every country and offering both reliable demographic information and original interpretative essays by indigenous scholars and practitioners. It maps patterns of growth and decline, assesses major traditions and movements, analyses key themes, and examines current trends. As a comprehensive account of the presence of Christianity in every country in Latin America, this volume will become a standard work of reference in its field.

Adam, Eve, the Serpent, the Garden of Eden...and the apple. That fruit is one of the most potent symbols in all of human history. It is so closely tied to temptation, knowledge, the "Fall of Man," and sin that it needs no explanation when deployed in everything from art to advertising to movies. It's no secret that the fruit in the Book of Genesis is never actually identified as an apple. So how did we get to this common association? The standard story, repeated since at least the seventeenth century, is that it is due to a Latin pun. But what if that story is wrong? In Temptation Transformed, scholar of religion Azzan Yadin-Israel offers a different story. He examines how the Fall of Man was represented in art form early Christianity through the Renaissance, revealing that the iconography of the apple emerged in twelfth-century France. From there it spread to England, Germany, and the Low Countries, while remaining only a marginal presence in Italy and Spain for centuries. Armed with the when and where, Yadin-Israel then explains why the apple tradition arose and circulated as it did. Surprisingly, the answer is found in the evolution of Europe's vernaculars. Three centuries is a long time to labor under a misconception, especially one that involves the most prominent biblical symbol other than the cross. Through an interdisciplinary engagement of scholastic commentary, Christian iconography, and Fall of Man narratives, Temptation Transformed offers a long-overdue corrective

"How are you feeling today?" We may think of emotions as universal responses, felt inside, but in Between Us, acclaimed psychologist Batja Mesquita asks us to reconsider them through the lens of what they do in our relationships, both one-on-one and within larger social networks. From an outside-in perspective, readers will understand why pride in a Dutch context does not translate well to the same emotion in North Carolina, or why one's anger at a boss does not mean the same as your anger at a partner in a close relationship. By looking outward at relationships at work, school, and home, we can better judge how our emotions will be understood, how they might change a situation, and how they change us. Brilliantly synthesizing original psychological studies and stories from peoples across time and geography, Between Us skillfully argues that acknowledging differences in emotions allows us to find common ground, humanizing and humbling us all for the better.

How do we understand types of cinema that offer experiences of discomfort, awkwardness or disquieting uncertainty? This book examines a number of examples of such work at the heart of contemporary art and indie film. While the commercial mainstream tends to offer comforting viewing experiences - or moments of discomfort that exist largely to be overcome - The Cinema of Discomfort analyses films in which discomfort is offered in a sustained manner. Cinema of this kind confronts us with material such as distinctly uncomfortable sexual encounters. It invites us into uncertain relationships with awkward and sometimes unlikable characters. It presents us with challenging behaviour or what are presented as uncomfortable realities. It often refuses information on which to base judgments. More discomfortingly, cinema of this kind tends to provoke uncertainty at the level of what emotional responses were are encouraged to have towards difficult, sometimes controversial, characters or events. The Cinema of Discomfort examines a number of case-studies, including Palindromes by Todd Solondz (US) and Dogtooth from Yorgos Lanthimos (Greece). Offering close textual analysis of the manner in which discomfort is generated, it also asks how we should understand the appeal of such work to certain viewers and how the existence of films of this kind can be explained, as products of both their socio-cultural context and the more particular institutional realms of art and indie film.

Un voyage à travers l’histoire d’un objet, d’un symbole et d’un patrimoine moderne et attachant.

Démodée la carte postale ?

Avec l’essor du numérique, on aurait pu le croire. Constamment réinventée, de manière souvent critique par les artistes et les écrivains, sa fabrique et son histoire restent plus que jamais d’actualité, autant que ses liens avec les représentations géographiques et culturelles. L’histoire de son économie et de sa diffusion à l’échelle globale est éclairée par des contributions d’artistes et de spécialistes en histoire de l’art, littérature et philosophie. Un monde en cartes postales donne à voir les circulations d’un médium d’apparence banale dans la culture moderne. Richement illustré, cet ouvrage renouvelle notre regard sur un objet patrimonial toujours séduisant, et à portée de main.


A journey through the history of an object, a symbol and a modern, appealing heritage.

Have postcards gone out of fashion?

With the rise of digital technology, you would think so. Constantly reinvented, often critically, by artists and writers, its production and history remain more relevant than ever, as it links with geographical and cultural representations. The history of the postcard economy and its global dissemination is illuminated by contributions from artists and specialists in art history, literature and philosophy. A World of Postcards shows how a seemingly banal medium circulates in modern culture. Richly illustrated, this book takes a fresh look at a heritage object that is always attractive, and always within reach.

It was hardly a surprise to philosophers or members of every religion in the world when economists announced in the 1970s that happiness was not correlated with rises in personal income or national GDP; their traditions had made this point for millennia. But it did prompt a response: the happiness agenda, a movement that endorses metrics indicating happiness and well-being as a guide to public policy, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network annual World Happiness Report. A surprising and unnerving 2021 Gallup report revealed that Americans are "thriving" at the highest levels ever measured-despite COVID, declining life expectancy, alarming rises in economic insecurity, political polarization, creeping authoritarianism, stress, and loneliness. This collection challenges the report's assumptions, investigating the nature of happiness and well-being in cross-cultural, multiracial contexts. It examines terminology, theoretical approaches, and measurement criteria; interpretations of self-reports; the sciences of emotion; the importance of culture; and racial and hermeneutic injustice, concluding that there are vast inter- and intracultural differences in ideas and theories about happiness but that all are socially based, culturally specific and normative-ethics-based-in contrast to standard indices and measurements, which are empirical snapshots of economic conditions. If subjective measures of well-being are to guide policy, they must presume a deep connection to social justice, and they work best if the causes of unhappiness and ill-being are identified and solutions to eliminate them are prioritized

"[A] tour de force of global history...Bosma has turned the humble sugar crystal into a mighty prism for understanding aspects of global history and the world in which we live."--Los Angeles Review of Books The definitive 2,500-year history of sugar and its human costs, from its little-known origins as a luxury good in Asia to worldwide environmental devastation and the obesity pandemic. For most of history, humans did without refined sugar. After all, it serves no necessary purpose in our diets, and extracting it from plants takes hard work and ingenuity. Granulated sugar was first produced in India around the sixth century BC, yet for almost 2,500 years afterward sugar remained marginal in the diets of most people. Then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How did sugar find its way into almost all the food we eat, fostering illness and ecological crisis along the way? The World of Sugar begins with the earliest evidence of sugar production. Through the Middle Ages, traders brought small quantities of the precious white crystals to rajahs, emperors, and caliphs. But after sugar crossed the Mediterranean to Europe, where cane could not be cultivated, demand spawned a brutal quest for supply. European cravings were satisfied by enslaved labor; two-thirds of the 12.5 million Africans taken across the Atlantic were destined for sugar plantations. By the twentieth century, sugar was a major source of calories in diets across Europe and North America. Sugar transformed life on every continent, creating and destroying whole cultures through industrialization, labor migration, and changes in diet. Sugar made fortunes, corrupted governments, and shaped the policies of technocrats. And it provoked freedom cries that rang with world-changing consequences. In Ulbe Bosma's definitive telling, to understand sugar's past is to glimpse the origins of our own world of corn syrup and ethanol and begin to see the threat that a not-so-simple commodity poses to our bodies, our environment, and our communities.

In The Force of Witness Rosa-Linda Fregoso examines the contra feminicide movement in Mexico and other feminist efforts to eradicate gender violence. Drawing on interviews, art, documentaries, and her years of activism, Fregoso traces the micro and macro scales of misogyny and the patterns of state complicity with gender violence. She shows how different forms of witnessing--from activist-mothers' bearing witness to the memories of their daughters and expert witnesses in court cases to communal witnessing and a scholar-activist-citizen witnessing her own actions--are key to resisting feminicidal violence. Fregoso situates these forms of witness in the histories, contexts, structures, bodies, and intersectional struggles they emerge from. By outlining the complexities of feminicidal violence in relation to witnessing processes, Fregoso challenges the notion of witness as an individual or autonomous subject inscribed solely in the legal or religious arenas. Rather, she theorizes witness as a force of collectivity and a constellation of multiple social locations and intersectional practices that work together to abolish feminicidal violence.