Recommendations based on "The Essential Paul Laffoley Works from the Boston Visionary Cell"

In Black Sun, Julia Kristeva addresses the subject of melancholia, examining this phenomenon in the context of art, literature, philosophy, the history of religion and culture, as well as psychoanalysis. She describes the depressive as one who perceives the sense of self as a crucial pursuit and a nearly unattainable goal and explains how the love of a lost identity of attachment lies at the very core of depression's dark heart.In her discussion she analyzes Holbein's controversial 1522 painting "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb," and has revealing comments on the works of Marguerite Duras, Dostoyevsky and Nerval. Black Sun takes the view that depression is a discourse with a language to be learned, rather than strictly a pathology to be treated.

Featuring a new introduction by Casey Nelson Blake, this classic text provides the essence of Mumford's views on the distinct yet interpenetrating roles of technology and the arts in modern culture. Mumford contends that modern man's overemphasis on technics has contributed to the depersonalization and emptiness of much of twentieth-century life. He issues a call for a renewed respect for artistic impulses and achievements. His repeated insistence that technological development take the Human as its measure -- as well as his impassioned plea for humanity to make the most of its "splendid potentialities and promise" and reverse its progress toward anomie and destruction -- is ever more relevant as the new century dawns.

The evil eye—the power to inflict illness, damage to property, or even death simply by gazing at or praising someone—is among the most pervasive and powerful folk beliefs in the Indo-European and Semitic world. It is also one of the oldest, judging from its appearance in the Bible and in Sumerian texts five thousand years old. Remnants of the superstition persist today when we drink toasts, tip waiters, and bless sneezers. To avert the evil eye, Muslim women wear veils, baseball players avoid mentioning a no-hitter in progress, and traditional Jews say their business or health is "not bad" (rather than "good").Though by no means universal, the evil eye continues to be a major factor in the behavior of millions of people living in the Mediterranean and Arab countries, as well as among immigrants to the Americas. This widespread superstition has attracted the attention of many scholars, and the twenty-one essays gathered in this book represent research from diverse perspectives: anthropology, classics, folklore studies, ophthalmology, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, sociology, and religious studies. Some essays are fascinating reports of beliefs about the evil eye, from India and Iran to Scotland and Slovak-American communities; others analyze the origin, function, and cultural significance of this folk belief from ancient times to the present day. Editor Alan Dundes concludes the volume by proffering a comprehensive theoretical explanation of the evil eye.Anyone who has ever knocked on wood to ward off misfortune will enjoy this generous sampling of evil eye scholarship, and may never see the world through the same eyes again.

Robert Hughes, who has stunned us with comprehensive works on subjects as sweeping and complex as the history of Australia (The Fatal Shore), the modern art movement (The Shock of the New), the nature of American art (American Visions), and the nature of America itself as seen through its art (The Culture of Complaint), now turns his renowned critical eye to one of art history’s most compelling, enigmatic, and important figures, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes. With characteristic critical fervor and sure-eyed insight, Hughes brings us the story of an artist whose life and work bridged the transition from the eighteenth-century reign of the old masters to the early days of the nineteenth-century moderns.With his salient passion for the artist and the art, Hughes brings Goya vividly to life through dazzling analysis of a vast breadth of his work. Building upon the historical evidence that exists, Hughes tracks Goya’s development, as man and artist, without missing a beat, from the early works commissioned by the Church, through his long, productive, and tempestuous career at court, to the darkly sinister and cryptic work he did at the end of his life.In a work that is at once interpretive biography and cultural epic, Hughes grounds Goya firmly in the context of his time, taking us on a wild romp through Spanish history; from the brutality and easy violence of street life to the fiery terrors of the Holy Inquisition to the grave realities of war, Hughes shows us in vibrant detail the cultural forces that shaped Goya’s work.Underlying the exhaustive, critical analysis and the rich historical background is Hughes’s own intimately personal relationship to his subject. This is a book informed not only by lifelong love and study, but by his own recent experiences of mortality and death. As such this is a uniquely moving and human book; with the same relentless and fearless intelligence he has brought to every subject he has ever tackled, Hughes here transcends biography to bring us a rich and fiercely brave book about art and life, love and rage, impotence and death. This is one genius writing at full capacity about another—and the result is truly spectacular.

Deirdre Bair has written about some of the most influential figures in 20th century culture - Samuel Beckett, Simone De Beauvoir and Anais Nin. Now she turns her expert eye to the one person whose teachings and writings are the most influential of all: psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung. Jung was Freud's 'crown prince', hand picked by the founding father of psychoanalysis to become the first president of the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1910. Their professional relationship ended in 1914 when Jung could not accept Freud's emphasis on infantile sexuality. Jung abandoned Freud's theory to found his own system of Analytical psychology. As Freud's influence has waned over the years, Jung's ideas - the collective unconscious, the archetypal myths underpinning all societies, synchronocity, 'new age' spirituality and much more - have achieved an overwhelming ascendancy. Bair addresses the myths about Jung - accusations that he was an anti-Semite and a misogynist and that he falsified data - with evidence from his own writings and from those of his colleagues and former patients. The result is groundbreaking and accessible.

Hard to Imagine is the first work to chronicle in detail the evolution of gay male erotic image culture, from the canonical works of "art" cinema and photography to the private and often highly explicit productions of amateurs. In this visual history of homoerotic image-making in its first century, Thomas Waugh brings together nearly four hundred photographs and film stills, from archives and personal collections in Europe and North America. Waugh identifies four primary aspects of homoerotic photography and film - the artistic, the commercial, the illicit, and the politico-scientific - tracing their development against a background of advances in visual technology. This comprehensive work explores a vast, eclectic tradition in its totality, analyzing the visual imagery in addition to its production, circulation, and consumption. A pathbreaking examination of the interplay between gay film and photography, gay life, and the larger social and political world, Hard to Imagine is a model for social and cultural historians. Interweaving an analysis of these images in their gay cultural context with the broader social and legal implications, Thomas Waugh offers a pioneering chapter in both gay and visual history.

Celebrated scholar Joseph Campbell shares his intimate and inspiring reflections on the art of living in this beautifully packaged book, part of a new series to be based on his unpublished writings.

The most comprehensive best-selling anthology of its kind, the second volume in this two-part survey enables readers to choose among the most important canonical and less-familiar texts of the Western literary tradition in Europe and the Americas. It offers complete texts whenever possible, uses the best translations of foreign-language material, and, when appropriate, presents more than one text by each author. Volume Two provides detailed historical and biographical notes and introductions to the later literary periods including Neoclassicism and Romanticism; Realism and Naturalism; and Modern and Contemporary. Individuals interested in a comprehensive look at Western literature through the ages.

'I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life, and with these my autobiography deals' Carl Jung An eye-opening biography of one of the most influential psychiatrists of the modern age, drawing from his lectures, conversations, and own writings. In the spring of 1957, when he was eighty-one years old, Carl Gustav Jung undertook the telling of his life story. Memories, Dreams, Reflections is that book, composed of conversations with his colleague and friend Aniela Jaffé, as well as chapters written in his own hand, and other materials. Jung continued to work on the final stages of the manuscript until shortly before his death on June 6, 1961, making this a uniquely comprehensive reflection on a remarkable life.

In a series of pioneering studies, this book examines the creation—and the conflict behind the creation—of sacred space in America. The essays in this volume visit places in America where economic, political, and social forces clash over the sacred and the profane, from wilderness areas in the American West to the Mall in Washington, D.C., and they investigate visions of America as sacred space at home and abroad. Here are the beginnings of a new American religious history—told as the story of the contested spaces it has inhabited.The contributors are David Chidester, Matthew Glass, Edward T. Linenthal, Colleen McDannell, Robert S. Michaelsen, Rowland A. Sherrill, and Bron Taylor.