Bryn Mawr Faculty

Death and Burial Within the Ancient Levant (4500-550 Bce): Challenging the Normative

Death and Burial Within the Ancient Levant (4500-550 Bce): Challenging the Normative
$190.00

by Jennie Bradbury

Assistant Professor and Department Co-Chair of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology and Director of Graduate Studies

 

This book offers a comprehensive survey of burial practices in the ancient Levant and challenges some of the assumptions behind previous attempts to find a normative burial practice.

Exploring the dazzling variety of ways in which the living deal with the dead, this book utilises big data projects and legacy data to highlight the sheer diversity of burial practices in the ancient Levant. Theorizing that some types of burial are significantly underrepresented, this volume argues for the necessity of analysing both the existing and non-existing data at multiple scales of analysis. Thus, rather than attempting to identify a 'normative' or 'typical' burial, the volume highlights the multitude of ways in which the living approached and interacted with the dead across the ancient Levant, from the Late Chalcolithic to the Iron Age (fifth to first millennia BCE). In doing so it acknowledges and foregrounds variability, not only in terms of so-called 'atypicality', but also in terms of burials and practices that have been mistakenly lumped together in the drive to produce narratives of similarity and normative behaviour. This volume also explores some of the broader patterns and temporal/spatial shifts that shed light on wider changes in the ways in which humans perceive(d) of the dead and themselves (the living) over time.

While predominantly focused on the modern regions of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, this book also engages with these broader themes across Western Asia and the Mediterranean, adopting an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to understanding temporal and spatial variability. This book is of relevance for students and researchers of Ancient Western Asia, as well as those of the archaeology of death and burial.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781032894973
Publication Date: 
March 28, 2025
Author: 
Publisher: 

Augustine the African

Augustine the African
$27.19
$31.99
Sale 15% off 1 item

by Catherine Conybeare
Leslie Clark Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Greek, Latin and Classical Studies


Publishes August 12, 2025 - Pre-Order now!


 

Augustine of Hippo (354-430), also known as Saint Augustine, was one of the most influential theologians in history. His writings, including the autobiographical Confessions and The City of God, helped shape the foundations of Christianity and Western philosophy. But for many centuries, Augustine's North African birth and Berber heritage have been simply dismissed. Catherine Conybeare, a world-renowned Augustine scholar, here puts the "African" back in Augustine's story. As she relates, his seminal books were written neither in Rome nor in Milan, but in Africa, where he had returned as a wanderer during a perilous time when the Western Roman Empire was crumbling. Using extant letters and other shards of evidence, Conybeare retraces Augustine's travels, revealing how his groundbreaking works emerge from an exile's perspective within an African context. In its depiction of this Christian saint, Augustine the African upends conventional wisdom and traces core ideas of Christian thought to their origins on the African continent.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781631498527
Publication Date: 
August 12, 2025

Chaplaincy and Seafarers

Chaplaincy and Seafarers
$100.00

by Wendy Cadge et al

President and Professor of Sociology

 

This book explores the faith, work, and lives of port chaplains and seafarers.

 

It draws on archive materials, fieldwork in ports and on cargo ships, and interviews with chaplains in the UK and overseas. The volume presents a detailed picture of seafarers' attitudes to working in mixed faith crews, their understandings of their own faith and its role and negotiation in a life at sea, and their needs with regard to faith and more general welfare support. In addition, it describes the daily life and work of port chaplains, how they understand their roles in relation to their own faith, and how they manage their work in a multi-faith environment. In producing this rich account, the perspectives of relevant stakeholders and the historical underpinnings of port chaplaincy have also been considered, alongside the ways in which port chaplaincy compares with other forms of chaplaincy about which rather more has, hitherto, been known.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780198913269
Publication Date: 
October 18, 2024

Drawing Down the Moon

Drawing Down the Moon
$49.95
$35.00
$35.00 - $49.95

by Radcliffe Edmonds

An unparalleled exploration of magic in the Greco-Roman world

What did magic mean to the people of ancient Greece and Rome? How did Greeks and Romans not only imagine what magic could do, but also use it to try to influence the world around them? In Drawing Down the Moon, Radcliffe Edmonds, one of the foremost experts on magic, religion, and the occult in the ancient world, provides the most comprehensive account of the varieties of phenomena labeled as magic in classical antiquity. Exploring why certain practices, images, and ideas were labeled as "magic" and set apart from "normal" kinds of practices, Edmonds gives insight into the shifting ideas of religion and the divine in the ancient past and later Western tradition.

Using fresh approaches to the history of religions and the social contexts in which magic was exercised, Edmonds delves into the archaeological record and classical literary traditions to examine images of witches, ghosts, and demons as well as the fantastic powers of metamorphosis, erotic attraction, and reversals of nature, such as the famous trick of drawing down the moon. From prayer and divination to astrology and alchemy, Edmonds journeys through all manner of ancient magical rituals and paraphernalia--ancient tablets, spell books, bindings and curses, love charms and healing potions, and amulets and talismans. He considers the ways in which the Greco-Roman discourse of magic was formed amid the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, including Egypt and the Near East.

An investigation of the mystical and marvelous, Drawing Down the Moon offers an unparalleled record of the origins, nature, and functions of ancient magic.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780691156934
Publication Date: 
July 2, 2019
Author: 

Promoting Equity and Justice Through Pedagogical Partnership

Promoting Equity and Justice Through Pedagogical Partnership
$35.00

by Alison Cook-Sather, Mary Katharine Woodworth Professor, Department of Education

Faculty and staff in higher education are looking for ways to address the deep inequity and systemic racism that pervade our colleges and universities. Pedagogical partnership can be a powerful tool to enhance equity, inclusion, and justice in our classrooms and curricula. These partnerships create opportunities for students from underrepresented and equity-seeking groups to collaborate with faculty and staff to revise and reinvent pedagogies, assessments, and course designs, positioning equity and justice as core educational aims. When students have a seat at the table, previously unheard voices are amplified, and diversity and difference introduce essential perspectives that are too often overlooked.In particular, the book contributes to the literature on pedagogical partnership and equity in education by integrating theory, synthesizing research, and providing concrete examples of the ways partnership can contribute to more equitable educational systems. At the same time, the authors acknowledge that partnership can only realize its full potential to redress harms and promote equity and justice when thoughtfully enacted. This book is a resource that will inspire and challenge a wide variety of higher education faculty and staff and contribute to advancing both practice and research on the potential of student-faculty pedagogical partnerships. Presenting a conceptual framework for understanding the various epistemological, affective, and ontological harms that face students from equity-seeking groups in postsecondary education, Promoting Equity and Justice Through Pedagogical Partnership applies this conceptual framework to current literature in partnerships, highlighting the promise of partnership as the way to redress these harms. The authors ground both the conceptual framework and the literature review by offering two case studies of pedagogical partnership in practice. They then explore the complexities raised by their framework, including the conditions under which partnerships themselves may risk reproducing epistemic, affective, or ontological harms. Applying the framework in this way allows them to propose strategies that make it more likely for these mediations to be successful. Finally, the authors focus on the future of pedagogical partnership and share their perspectives on new directions for inquiry and practice. After summarizing the overarching themes developed throughout the book, the authors leave the reader with a set of questions and recommendations for further inquiry and discussion.

A Series on Engaged Learning and Teaching Book. Visit the books' companion website, hosted by the Center for Engaged Learning, for book resources.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781642672091
Publication Date: 
June 24, 2021
Author: 
Publisher: 

Social Work Sociometry and Psychodrama

Social Work Sociometry and Psychodrama
$37.49
$49.99
Sale 25% off 1 item
$35.00
$35.00 - $37.49

by Scott Giacomucci

This open access book outlines the intersections between social work and the methods of sociometry and psychodrama. Different sections offer essential practice wisdom for both trauma-focused and trauma-informed experiential work for individuals, groups, organizations, and communities. This text enriches the understanding of various action-based approaches and highlights how to enliven social work practice. The chapters include clinical vignettes and examples of structured sociometric prompts with diverse populations, topics, and social work settings to enhance the understanding of group practice, individual practice, and community practice. It provides social workers and other professionals with dynamic tools to improve assessment, intervention, activism, and leadership. Strength-based practical tools are offered to readers, along with guidance for theoretical conceptualizations. This integrative book is an essential read for students, practitioners, leaders, and scholars within the fields of social work, psychodrama, the creative art therapies, group therapy, community organizing, and social activism.

ISBN/SKU: 
9789813363441
Publication Date: 
February 24, 2021
Author: 
Publisher: 

Cambridge Companion to Gadamer

Cambridge Companion to Gadamer
$34.99

by Robert Dostal, Rufus M. Jones Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) is widely recognized as the leading exponent of philosophical hermeneutics. The essays in this volume examine Gadamer's biography, the core of hermeneutical theory, and the significance of his work for ethics, aesthetics, the social sciences, and theology. There is full consideration of Gadamer's appropriation of Hegel, Heidegger and the Greeks, as well as his relation to modernity, critical theory and poststructuralism. This revised edition includes several new chapters on aspects of Gadamer's work, as well as updated chapters from the first edition and the most comprehensive bibliography of works by and about Gadamer available in the English language.
ISBN/SKU: 
9781108816298
Publication Date: 
August 12, 2021

Finding the Numinous: An Ecocritical Look at Dune and the Lord of the Rings

Finding the Numinous: An Ecocritical Look at Dune and the Lord of the Rings
$39.95

by Willow DiPasquale

Visiting Assistant Professor in the Writing Program

 

Analyzing how the mythopoeic fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert portray the natural world

Finding the Numinous explores the premise that the environments depicted in The Lord of the Rings and the Dune saga are not only for the purpose of world-building; rather, these imagined worlds' environments are sacred spaces fundamental to understanding these texts and their authors' purposes. Willow Wilson DiPasquale applies Tolkien's three functions of fantasy--recover, escape, and consolation--to demonstrate how both authors' works are intrinsically connected to their ecocritical messages and overarching moral philosophies.

This book also compares Tolkien's Roman Catholic viewpoint with Herbert's Zen Buddhist perspective, arguing that the authors' religious beliefs and biographical, historical, and cultural influences impacted how they chose to craft their creative works and write about nature.

Applying various ecocritical positions to the text, Finding the Numinous explores descriptions of the natural landscapes in both authors' texts, as well as the relationships characters and communities have with those natural spaces. As our current society's relationships with nature are increasingly challenged and changed by various ecocrises, DiPasquale convincingly argues, these worlds offer readers various environmental models to critique, to condemn, or, in some cases, to adopt.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781606354926
Publication Date: 
February 18, 2025

Gadamer's Hermeneutics

Gadamer's Hermeneutics
$34.95

by Robert Dostal, Rufus M. Jones Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy

In Gadamer's Hermeneutics Robert J. Dostal provides a comprehensive and critical account of Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy, arguing that Gadamer's enterprise is rooted in the thesis that "being that can be understood is language." He defends Gadamer against charges of linguistic idealism and emphasizes language's relationship to understanding, though he criticizes Gadamer for too often ignoring the role of the prelinguistic in our experience. Dostal goes on to explain the concept of the "inner word" for Gadamer's account of language. 

The book situates Gadamer's hermeneutics in three important ways: in relation to the contestability of the legacy of the Enlightenment project; in relation to the work of his mentor, Martin Heidegger; and in relation to Gadamer's reading of Plato and Aristotle. Dostal explores both Gadamer's claim on the Enlightenment and his ambivalence toward it. He considers Gadamer's dependence on Heidegger's accomplishment while pointing out the ways in which Gadamer charted his own course, rejecting his teacher's reading of Plato and his antihumanism. Dostal points out notable differences in the philosophers' politics as well. Finally, Dostal mediates between Gadamer's hermeneutics and what might be called philological hermeneutics. His analysis defends the civic humanism that is the culmination of the philosopher's hermeneutics, a humanism defined by moral education, common sense, judgment, and taste. Supporters and critics of Gadamer's philosophy will learn much from this major achievement.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780810144507
Publication Date: 
January 15, 2022

Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel

Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel
$30.00

by Pardis Dabashi

An examination of the relationship between literature and classical Hollywood cinema reveals a profound longing for plot in modernist fiction.

The modernist novel sought to escape what Virginia Woolf called the "tyranny" of plot. Yet even as twentieth-century writers pushed against the constraints of plot-driven Victorian novels, plot kept its hold on them through the influence of another medium: the cinema. Focusing on the novels of Nella Larsen, Djuna Barnes, and William Faulkner--writers known for their affinities and connections to classical Hollywood--Pardis Dabashi links the moviegoing practices of these writers to the tensions between the formal properties of their novels and the characters in them. Even when they did not feature outright happy endings, classical Hollywood films often provided satisfying formal resolutions and promoted normative social and political values. Watching these films, modernist authors were reminded of what they were leaving behind--both formally and in the name of aesthetic experimentalism--by losing the plot.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780226829258
Publication Date: 
November 6, 2023