For more than a thousand years, the paths of the Silk Road joined the distant empires of East Asia and the Mediterranean, forming a complex web of trade, pilgrimage and intellectual exchange between China, Central Asia, Persia, Tibet, India, the Near East and Europe.Interest in the cultures of the Silk Road was renewed in the end of the nineteenth century. In 1907 Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943) made one of the most sensational archaeological finds of all time: at the Mogao Caves, also known as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, near Dunhuang, he discovered a library containing thousands of both religious and secular manuscripts dating from the fifth to the eleventh centuries. Most such documents have ended up in institutions like the British Museum, the Bibliothèque Nationale and other national libraries in India, China and Japan.In keeping with the diversity of the Dunhuang discoveries, this book consists of examples of manuscripts in Chinese, Khotanese, Bactrian, Gandhari, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Syriac, Hebrew and Arabic. The material provides a sense of the fruitful exchanges as well as bitter struggles in these regions over the centuries.

Stained glass was unknown in antiquity. Invented around AD 1000, it soon achieved a dominant position in the arts of the Middle Ages, not only in churches but also in secular contexts. Its innovation can be compared with that of television - and like television it involves passing light through a transparent layer, using the light of sun instead of light generated by electricity, so that in a real sense the stained glass image is in constant motion, as the light passing through it changes. Stained glass was linked to all the graphic arts and the most skilled artisans made the drawings for the glassmaker. Even single heads can be masterpieces of draughtsmanship. This book presents a brilliant selection of stained glass now detached from its original location, featuring work related to some of the finest masters of the late Middle Ages, such as the Housebook Master or Domenico Ghirlandaio. All works are fully documented and their provenance traced where possible in an illustrated appendix.

From "The Next Generation" and "The X-Files" to "Farscape" and "Enterprise," science fiction television shows have millions of devoted fans. American Science Fiction TV is the first full-length study of this popular genre. Writing with the clarity of a scholar and the enthusiasm of a fan, Jan Johnson-Smith shows how science fiction television has displaced the Western in the American cultural imagination. As advances in special effects have made science fiction television technically feasible on a more lavish scale than ever before, visual style has become as important as narrative—sometimes even more important—in expressing the meaning of the genre. The main part of the book uses case studies of several key science fiction series, including "Space: Above and Beyond," "StarGate SG-1," and "Babylon 5," to exemplify particular narrative patterns and visual styles. The case studies explore themes such as politics, ideology, race and ethnicity, gender difference, militarism, and the use of science fiction narratives as allegories of present-day social and political concerns. American Science Fiction TV opens an important new area of genre studies and will be of interest to scholars and fans alike.

" Winner of the 2003 Ray and Pat Browne Book Award, given by the Popular Culture Association The contributors to Hollywood's White House examine the historical accuracy of these presidential depictions, illuminate their influence, and uncover how they reflect the concerns of their times and the social and political visions of the filmmakers. The volume, which includes a comprehensive filmography and a bibliography, is ideal for historians and film enthusiasts.

Lynn Garafola has written some of the most influential historical studies and criticism in the field of dance. Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance is a selection of her essays and reviews that together document the extraordinary transformation of dance, especially ballet, since the early 20th century. Part I, "The Ballet Russes and Beyond," explores the relatively uncharted landscape of French ballet and European art dance in the early 1900s. Part II, "Reconfiguring the Sexes," focuses on women, such as choreographer Bronislava Nijinkska and dancer Ida Rubinstein, as well as phenomena that invite a feminist interpretation, such as the feminization of 19th-century ballet and the invisibility of women choreographers in ballet. Part III, "Dance in New York," examines the period when New York became not only the U.S. dance capital but also, by the 1960s, the dance capital of the world. Finally, Part IV, "Staging the Past," deals with issues of memory, reconstruction, and historical neglect. The book includes a generous selection of photographs.

From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to Touch of Evil (1958), the classic film noir is easily recognizable for its unusual lighting, sinister plots, and feeling of paranoia. For critics and fans alike, these films defined an era. The Philosophy of Film Noir explores philosophical themes and ideas inherent in classic noir and neo-noir films, establishing connections to diverse thinkers ranging from Camus to the Frankfurt School. The authors, each focusing on a different aspect of the genre, explore the philosophical underpinnings of classic films such as The Big Sleep (1946), Out of the Past (1947), and Pulp Fiction (1994). They show how existentialism and nihilism dominate the genre as they explore profound themes in a vital area of popular culture.

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Chandralekha are major choreographers of the 20th century whose work will leave the dance field with a legacy as important and strong as that of Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey. Zollar is Artistic Director of the world-renowned company, The Urban Bush Women (based in New York City), and Chandralekha is an Indian choreographer (based in Madras) who has performed internationally and is known for her radical mixing of postmodern and traditional dance forms. In this nuanced and in-depth study, dance scholar Ananya Chatterjea shows how each of these choreographers has positioned herself through performance in terms of gender, race, and nationality. Reading each dancer's major works in order to assess their unique contributions to the development of global culture, Butting Out does important theoretical work to identify common threads in the history of cultural production and the aesthetic philosophies of the artists. Chatterjea draws on theory from an array of complementary fields, including women's studies, African-American studies, and postcolonial studies. The book is beautifully enhanced by 42 black and white photographs.

Wired for Sound is the first anthology to address the role of sound engineering technologies in the shaping of contemporary global music. Wired sound is at the basis of digital audio editing, multi-track recording, and other studio practices that have powerfully impacted the world's music. Distinctions between musicians and engineers increasingly blur, making it possible for people around the globe to imagine new sounds and construct new musical aesthetics. This collection of 11 essays employs primarily ethnographical, but also historical and psychological, approaches to examine a range of new, technology-intensive musics and musical practices such as: fusions of Indian film-song rhythms, heavy metal, and gamelan in Jakarta; urban Nepali pop which juxtaposes heavy metal, Tibetan Buddhist ritual chant, rap, and Himalayan folksongs; collaborations between Australian aboriginals and sound engineers; the production of "heaviness" in heavy metal music; and the production of the "Austin sound." This anthology is must reading for anyone interested in the global character of contemporary music technology.CONTRIBUTORS: Harris M. Berger, Beverley Diamond, Cornelia Fales, Ingemar Grandin, Louise Meintjes, Frederick J. Moehn, Karl Neunfeldt, Timothy D. Taylor, Jeremy Wallach.

The Cistercian monastery of St Mary Stratford Langthorne once stood on land south of the new Jubilee Line station at Stratford. Excavations 1973-94 recorded large parts of the monastic church, cemetery and related buildings. Topics include the precinct arrangement, architecture and decoration, and the way of life of the inhabitants. The expansion of the monastic church from a simple cruciform building in the mid 12th century into an aisled presbytery with ambulatory and eastern chapel in the 13th century is notable. The excavated burials (647) are the largest sample from a Cistercian site in Europe and provide evidence for burial customs, patterns of cemetery use and the physical characteristics of the population, including medical care.

The first in a planned series of books on photography by Max Forsythe, 'Drive by Shooting' presents images shot from inside moving cars, trains, and rickshaws. The book freezes the transient moments we experience as passengers and allows a rare opportunity to examine them in greater detail. The publication's 25 panoramic images demonstrate Forsythe's passion for intense color and location shooting.

Composer John Luther Adams makes his home in the boreal forest near Fairbanks, Alaska, where he has created a unique musical world grounded in the elemental landscapes and indigenous cultures of the North. Winter Music, a collection of Adams's essays, journal entries, and other writings is poetic and inspirational and delves into the environmental and cultural awareness that creates his reflective, almost spiritual, approach to music. The accompanying audio CD includes two previously unrecorded works by Adams. Adams's music explores natural phenomena from the songs of birds, to the complex nature of chaos, fractal geometry, and elemental noise. Similarly, his writings explore "that region between place and culture, between environment and imagination," reflecting a philosophy of deep awareness that makes him one of the most original composers working today.

Winner of the 2004 ARSC Award for Best Research in Recorded Rock, Rhythm & Blues or Soul, The Holy Profane explores the strong presence of religion in the secular music of twentieth-century African American artists as diverse as Rosetta Tharpe, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Tupac Shakur. Analyzing lyrics and the historical contexts which shaped those lyrics, Teresa L. Reed examines the link between West-African musical and religious culture and the way African Americans convey religious sentiment in styles such as the blues, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, and gangsta rap. She looks at Pentecostalism and black secular music, minstrelsy and its portrayal of black religion, the black church, "crossing over" from gospel to R&B, images of the black preacher, and the salience of God in the rap of Tupac Shakur.Traditionally, west European culture has drawn distinct divisions between the secular and the sacred in music. Liturgical music belongs in church, not on pop radio, and artists who fuse the two are guilty of sacrilege. In the West-African worldview, however, both music and the divine permeate every imaginable part of life -- so much so that concepts like sacred and secular were entirely foreign to African slaves arriving in the colonies. The Western influence on African Americans eventually resulted in more polarization between these two musical forms, and black musicians who grew up singing in church were often lamented as hellbound once they found popular success. Even these artists, however, never completely left behind their West-African musical ancestry. Reed's exploration of this trend in African American music connects the work of today's artists to their West-African ancestry -- a tradition that over two-hundred years of Western influence could not completely stamp out.

" Thomas Dixon has a notorious reputation as the writer of the source material for D.W. Griffith's groundbreaking and controversial 1915 feature film The Birth of a Nation. Perhaps unfairly, Dixon has been branded an arch-conservative and a racist obsessed with what he viewed as "the Negro problem." As American Racist makes clear, however, Dixon was a complex, multitalented individual who, as well as writing some of the most popular novels of the early twentieth century, was involved in the production of some eighteen films. Dixon used the motion picture as a propaganda tool for his often outrageous opinions on race, communism, socialism, and feminism. His most spectacular production, The Fall of a Nation (1916), argues for American preparedness in the face of war and boasts a musical score by Victor Herbert, making it the first American feature film to have an original score by a major composer. Like the majority of Dixon's films, The Fall of a Nation has been lost, but had it survived, it might well have taken its place alongside The Birth of a Nation as a masterwork of silent film. Anthony Slide examines each of Dixon's films and discusses the novels from which they were adapted. Slide chronicles Dixon's transformation from a major supporter of the original Ku Klux Klan in his early novels to an ardent critic of the modern Klan in his last film, Nation Aflame. American Racist is the first book to discuss Dixon's work outside of literature and provide a wide overview of the life and career of this highly controversial twentieth-century southern populist. Anthony Slide is the author of numerous books, including Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses.

Italian visual artist Andrea Dojmi captures the essence of being a child in the 1970s through this unique art project presented in book form. Edited by Raffaella Guidobono, 'Aimready' celebrates infancy, the time and place where no rules apply. Revisiting the actual and mental spaces of his own childhood, Dojmi creates a family album of digitally altered photographs that are both familiar and uncanny.

With a foreword by Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy RichardsGirls Rock! explores the many ways women have defined themselves as rock musicians in an industry once dominated and controlled by men. Integrating history, feminist analysis, and developmental theory, the authors describe how and why women have become rock musicians -- what inspires them to play and perform, how they write, what their music means to them, and what they hope their music means to listeners. As these musicians tell their stories, topics emerge that illuminate broader trends in rock's history. From Wanda Jackson's revolutionary act of picking up a guitar to the current success of independent artists such as Ani DiFranco, Girls Rock! examines the shared threads of these performers' lives and the evolution of women's roles in rock music since its beginnings in the 1950s. This provocative investigation of women in rock is based on numerous interviews with a broad spectrum of women performers -- those who have achieved fame and those just starting bands, those playing at local coffeehouses and those selling out huge arenas. Girls Rock! celebrates what female musicians have to teach about their experiences as women, artists, and rock musicians.

Cecil B. DeMille was the most successful filmmaker in early Hollywood history.