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The Silk Road in World History
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The Silk Road was the contemporary name for a complex of ancient trade routes linking East Asia with Central Asia, South Asia, and the Mediterranean world. This network of exchange emerged along the borders between agricultural China and the steppe nomads during the Han Dynasty (206BCE-220CE), in consequence of the inter-dependence and the conflict...
Sarah Bond
Mar 25, 2021Why did the Romans turn out in their tens of thousands to watch brutal gladiatorial games? Previous studies have tried to explain the attraction of the arena by theorizing about its cultural function in Roman society. The games have been seen as celebrations of the violence of empire or of Rome's martial heritage or as manifestations of the emperor...
Sarah Bond
Mar 18, 2021Before Harriet Tubman or Martin Luther King was identified with Moses, African Americans identified those who challenged racial oppression in America with Samson. In Black Samson: The Untold Story of an American Icon, Nyasha Junior and Jeremy Schipper tell the story of how this biblical character became an icon of African American literature. Along...
Sarah Bond
Mar 09, 2021Tabernae were ubiquitous in all Roman cities, lining the busiest streets and dominating their most crowded intersections in numbers far exceeding those of any other form of building. That they played a vital role in the operation of the city, and indeed in the very definition of urbanization in ancient Rome, is a point too often under-appreciated i...
Sarah Bond
Mar 07, 2021The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily
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From the Palaeolithic to the later Roman period, The Archaeology of Ancient Sicily explores all the main topics of archaeological interest. These range from Greek colinization, sancyuaries and burial, the architecture of temples, houses, theaters, and military sites, to sculpture, the cities of the island and the Sicels. Separate sections explore t...
Sarah Bond
Dec 10, 2020A fascinating history of marginalized identities in the medieval worldWhile the term "intersectionality" was coined in 1989, the existence of marginalized identities extends back over millennia. Byzantine Intersectionality reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in medieval thought and visual culture around matters of sexual and repr...
Sarah Bond
Dec 02, 2020The untold political story of the most controversial consumer product in American history.Tobacco is the quintessential American product. From Jamestown to the Marlboro Man, the plant occupied the heart of the nation's economy and expressed its enduring myths. But today smoking rates have declined and smokers are exiled from many public spaces. The...
Sarah Bond
Aug 22, 2020The Personalization of the Museum Visit
Art Museums, Discourse, and Visitors (Routledge Research in Museum Studies)
The Personalization of the Museum Visit examines a fundamental shift in institutional behavior in museums located in the United States and the United Kingdom. Contending that art museums have moved toward a new paradigm of public engagement, it posits that modern museum visitors are treated as self-directed "clients", with the agency to make meanin...
Sarah Bond
Aug 21, 2020Strega Nona -- "Grandma Witch" -- is the source for potions, cures, magic, and comfort in her Calabrian town. Her magical everfull pasta pot is especially intriguing to hungry Big Anthony. He is supposed to look after her house and tend her garden but one day, when she goes over the mountain to visit Strega Amelia, Big Anthony recites the magic ver...
Sarah Bond
Jul 02, 2020Also recommended by
Chitra B. DivakaruniForce and Freedom
Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence (America in the Nineteenth Century)
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From its origins in the 1750s, the white-led American abolitionist movement adhered to principles of "moral suasion" and nonviolent resistance as both religious tenet and political strategy. But by the 1850s, the population of enslaved Americans had increased exponentially, and such legislative efforts as the Fugitive Slave Act and the Supreme Cour...
Sarah Bond
Jun 19, 2020Asylia
Territorial Inviolability in the Hellenistic World (Hellenistic Culture and Society)
In the Hellenistic period certain Greek temples and cities came to be declared "sacred and inviolable." Asylia was the practice of declaring religious places precincts of asylum, meaning they were immune to violence and civil authority. The evidence for this phenomenon—mainly inscriptions and coins—is scattered in the published record. The material...
Sarah Bond
Mar 04, 2020Cæsar’s Calendar by Denis Feeney
Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs by Nadia Maria El Cheikh
Chasing Vines by Beth Moore
On the Bullet Train with Emily Brontë by Judith Pascoe
On Roman Time by Michele Renee Salzman
Bishops in Flight by Jennifer Barry
Floods of the Tiber in Ancient Rome by Gregory S. Aldrete