July started with Ketikoti and ends with Roze Maandag. The International Four Days Marches (the Vierdaagse) will also take place in Nijmegen. There are many important and special days in July to commemorate or celebrate, and many RU students and staff will also enjoy a well-deserved break. Still looking for something interesting and informative to read on holiday, or perhaps a nice novel to enjoy? The librarians for the humanities drew up a reading list that reflects the contents of our wonderful library: from important literature about the Dutch colonial past, to books about the science of walking or the history of holidaying. There are also bookcases in De Verdieping packed with new novels, in a variety of languages (Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish…). Feel free to borrow them if you've got some space left in your suitcase!
Andreas Mayer - The science of walking : investigations into locomotion in the long nineteenth century (2020)
Do you know how you walk? Most people consider walking to be a natural and self-evident activity of everyday life. Yet the mechanism of walking has long puzzled scientists and doctors. In The Science of Walking, Andreas Mayer provides a history of investigations of the human gait that emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines, including physiology, neurology, orthopedic surgery, anthropology, and psychiatry. The book analyzes the attempts to observe human (and animal) locomotion through the long nineteenth century and traces the effects of this new knowledge in other cultural domains, most notably literature and the visual arts.
Karwan Fatah-Black, Lauren Lauret & Joris van den Tol - Serving the chain? : De Nederlandsche Bank and the last decades of slavery, 1814-1863 (2023)
In the nineteenth century, when the principal cultural, political, and financial institutions of the Netherlands were established, slavery was still very much part of the nation's global imperial structures. Dutch families, institutions, and governments are increasingly interested in the role their predecessors played in this history of colonialism and enslavement. This book is a history of De Nederlandsche Bank in which particular attention is paid to its links with slavery, both as a factor in the economy and as a subject of political debate. Because De Nederlandsche Bank served the Dutch ministery of Colonies and consequently followed Dutch trade interests, the bank's history intersects with the history of slavery. The investigation in this book focuses not only upon DNB's formal involvement but also on the private involvement of its directors. In addition, it examines whether the bank and its directors played any role in the abolition of slavery.
Orvar Löfgren - On holiday: a history of vacationing (2010)
Lofgren takes us on a tour of the Western holiday world and shows how two centuries of 'learning to be a tourist' have shaped our own ways of vacationing. We see how fashions in destinations have changed through the years, with popular images (written, drawn, painted, and later photographed) teaching the tourist what to look for and how to experience it. Travelers present and future will never see their cruises, treks, ecotours, round-the-world journeys, or trips to the vacation cottage or condo in quite the same way again. All our land-, sea-, and mindscapes will be the richer for Lofgren's insights.
Byung-Chul Han - Vita contemplativa : in praise of inactivity (2024)
In our busy and hurried lives, we are losing the ability to be inactive. Human existence becomes fully absorbed by activity - even leisure, treated as a respite from work, becomes part of the same logic. Intense life today means first of all more performance or more consumption. We have forgotten that it is precisely inactivity, which does not produce anything, that represents an intense and radiant form of life. For Byung-Chul Han, inactivity constitutes the human. Without moments of pause or hesitation, acting deteriorates into blind action and reaction. When life follows the rule of stimulus-response and need-satisfaction, it atrophies into pure survival: naked biological life. If we lose the ability to be inactive, we begin to resemble machines that simply function. True life begins when concern for survival, for the exigencies of mere life, ends. The ultimate purpose of all human endeavour is inactivity. In a beautifully crafted ode to the art of being still, Han shows that the current crisis in our society calls for a very different way of life: one based on the vita contemplative. He pleads for bringing our ceaseless activities to a stop and making room for the magic that happens in between. Life receives its radiance only from inactivity.
Donna Harrington-Lueker - Books for idle hours: nineteenth-century publishing and the rise of summer reading (2019)
The publishing phenomenon of summer reading, often focused on novels set in vacation destinations, started in the nineteenth century, as both print culture and tourist culture expanded in the United States. As an emerging middle class increasingly embraced summer leisure as a marker of social status, book publishers sought new market opportunities, authors discovered a growing readership, and more readers indulged in lighter fare. Drawing on publishing records, book reviews, readers' diaries, and popular novels of the period, Donna Harrington-Lueker explores the beginning of summer reading and the backlash against it. Countering fears about the dangers of leisurely reading--especially for young women--publishers framed summer reading not as a disreputable habit but as a respectable pastime and welcome respite. Books for Idle Hours sheds new light on an ongoing seasonal publishing tradition.
Emma van Bijnen, Pepijn Brandon, Karwan Fatah-Black, Imara Limon, Wayne Modest & Margriet Schavemaker - The future of the Dutch colonial past: curating heritage, art and activism (2024)
Institutions across the globe are increasingly questioned on how their foundations are rooted in colonialism and how they aim to 'decolonize'. <cite>The Future of the Dutch Colonial Past</cite> provides an overview of critical scholarly reflections on the history of Dutch slavery and colonization, as well as how this translates into critical cultural practices. It also explores possible futures: What can heritage institutions learn from (international) best practices regarding the 'decolonization' of museums? And what role can contemporary artistic practices take in these processes? Through a variety of essays, interventions, interviews, and a roundtable conversation, scholars and cultural practitioners address these complex questions.
Luc Brants - Van Willem II naar Roze Maandag: de zichtbaarheid van homoseksualiteit, sekse- en genderdiversiteit in Tilburg (2020)
Tilburg heeft een rijke geschiedenis als het gaat om homoseksualiteit en gender- en seksediversiteit. Een geschiedenis die veel verder terugreikt in de tijd dan Roze Maandag op de kermis en feitelijk begint in 1831, toen de toenmalige kroonprins Willem zich in Tilburg vestigde. Hij is de eerste van wie we zeker weten dat hij homoseksueel gedrag vertoonde. Dit boek gaat over de lange weg van het doodzwijgen van de homoseksuele kant van de Willem II tot de uitbundige viering van Roze Maandag. Een weg die lang meanderde rond misdaad, schaamte en onderdrukking, om vanaf de jaren zestig van de twintigste eeuw van richting te veranderen naar een langzaam groeiend zelfbewustzijn. Vanaf die tijd was homoseksualiteit in Tilburg zichtbaar in het publieke domein. LHBTI'ers wisten vanaf de late jaren zeventig erkenning af te dwingen. Homoseksueel, sekse- en genderdivers gedrag drong langzaam door tot het dagelijks Tilburgse leven en werd, door de viering van Roze Maandag, zelfs onderdeel van de Tilburgse identiteit.
Al Gini - Importance of being lazy : in praise of play, leisure, and vacations (2003)
In a tour of our workaholic society, where summers at the seashore have been supplanted by the long weekend, Gini draws on studies of Americans' vacation habits as well as interviews, personal stories, and the wry observations of philosophers, writers, and sociologists from Aristotle to Mark Twain to Thorstein Veblen." "Without true leisure, Gini says, we are diminished as individuals and as a society. Even if we love our jobs, find creativity, success, and pleasure in our work, we also crave, desire, and need not to work. The Importance of Being Lazy is our road map for learning how to play, doze, gaze, amble, and goof off without guilt.
Rob van Essen - Ik kom hier nog op terug : roman (2023)
Journalist Rob Hollander wordt door zijn oud-studiegenoot Icks uitgenodigd langs te komen in Los Angeles. Daar biedt Icks hem de mogelijkheid fouten uit het verleden te herstellen door terug te reizen in de tijd. In de trip waarin Hollander vervolgens terechtkomt is een grote rol weggelegd voor een ingrijpende gebeurtenis uit zijn jeugd en zorgt een hereniging met een aantal medestudenten ervoor dat alles wat voorafging in een nieuw licht komt te staan. Is het leven een enkele reis of kan je zo nu en dan een stukje terug om iets te herstellen?
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