Bücher veröffentlicht von Academic Studies Press

This book explores Maimonides' rationale for crafting the tradition of the Mishneh Torah and the surprising way he put it to use. It examines many of the philosophical and ethical ideas animating the composition of such a list and discusses the manner by which Maimonides formulated positive commandments in the Mishneh Torah, suggesting new dimensions in Maimonides' legal theory.

Publicly or secretly, traditional Jews increasingly doubt the historical reliability of the Torah. Here, Gellman provides an "old-fashioned" Jewish theology for accepting the contemporary critique of Torah and history. Gellman presents an outline of the scholarly conclusions, and then examines faith responses and rejects apologetic attempts to evade the challenge.

In addition to his numerous works in prose and poetry for both children andadults, Daniil Kharms (1905-42), one of the founders of Russia''s "lost literature of the absurd," wrote notebooks and a diary for most of his adult life. Published for the first time in recent years in Russian, these notebooks provide an intimate look at the daily life and struggles of one of the central figures of the literary avant-garde in Post-Revolutionary Leningrad. While Kharms''s stories have been translated and published in English, these diaries represents an invaluable source for English-language readers who, having already discovered Kharms in translation, desire to learn about the life and times of an avant-garde writer in the first decades of Soviet power.

Covering a wide variety of topics, including science, citizenship, gender, and anti-Semitism, the author demonstrates how sin which rhetoric tied to blood and vampires permeated political discourse and transcended the disparate cultures of Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, forming a cohesive political and cultural metaphor.

An original interpretive history of the origins, rise, and eventual fall of the New Odessa Jewish commune formed by members of Am Olam and an analysis of the process of their transformation from Russian revolutionary intelligentsia who rejected any outward forms of Judaism to Americans who in large measure came to terms with their Jewishness.

"This volume brings together a number of modern treatments emphasizing theTriassic and Jurassic brachiopods of Israel and nearby countries. It provides aconvenient basic resource for students of the Triassic and Jurassic of this biogeographically important region. Important comments are made on the biogeography of the marine faunas, with emphasis on brachiopods, plus useful summaries of lithofacies relations through most of Triassic and Jurassic time for this region. There are also useful accounts on marine ecological phenomenaand depositional environments for some of the fossils. The illustrations areexcellent. The volume is highly recommended for paleontologists and stratigraphers."- Arthur J. Boucot, Distinguished Professor, Department of Zoology,Oregon State University

Creating the Chupah assesses the role of Canadian Zionist organizations in the drive for communal unity within Canadian Jewry in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Two strands of Zionism, represented respectively by the Federation of Zionist Societies of Canada and Poale Zion, were often in conflicts that reflected greater disputes.

There have been significant changes in the last decade in the fields of education and marketing. Both have been transformed by technology and globalization. Educator Dr. Sabra Brock has examined the foundations of these transformations and written about emerging trends in marketing and post-secondary education. This book is a collection of pieces she has authored and co-authored.

Explores Maimonides' views regarding God, the commandments, astrology, medicine, the evil eye, amulets, magic, theurgic practices, omens, communicating with the dead, the messianic era, midrashic literature, and the oral law. It will be of interest in to all who are interested in the intellectual history of Judaism.

Both the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud depict a wide range of sorrowful situations tied to every level of society and to the complexities of human behaviour and the human condition. This explores more than 50 stories from both the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmuds, focusing on these issues.

Examines the following questions: What is Halakhah, and what role has it played in the creative survival of the Jewish people?; Why is Halakhah no longer capable of functioning as it has until now?; and what sort of polity and religious culture can be recommended to replace the Halakhic tradition?

ENG: The internet and digital technologies have generated a flood of texts and widespread worries about information overload. But this phenomenon is not unique to our age. Already centuries ago scholars complained about an overabundance of books, especially in the wake of the invention of printing in mid-15th century Europe. Blair studies the remedies that the learned devised to cope with that explosion of texts, notably by making summaries and excerpts which could be sorted and accessed in reference books. First she traces methods of information management back to antiquity and the middle ages and across cultures with long textual traditions such the Islamic and Chinese worlds. Then she focuses on the tools and practices in use in early modern Europe, such as note-taking, alphabetical indexing, thematic diagramming, and large scale compiling. The result combines intellectual history with book history to emphasize long continuities between past and present.RUS: Интернет и цифровые технологии порождают необозримый поток текстов, что вызывает особенного типа тревожность - по поводу информационной перегрузки. Но это явление не является уникальным для нашей эпохи. Уже столетия назад ? и особенно после изобретения книгопечатания в Европе в середине XV века ? ученые жаловались

A woman wearing a ballgown singing in the snow for returning ski troops; a technician's tears ruining a master recording of a new wartime song; fresh recruits spontaneously standing and doffing their caps to a new song, thereby creating the new wartime anthem. This well researched, multi-faceted book depicts the relationship between song and society during World War II in the USSR. Chapter topics range from the creation and distribution of the songs to how the public received and shaped them. The body of song that came out of that era created a true cultural legacy which reflected both the hearts of the individuals fighting as well as the narrative of the party and state in bringing the nation to victory.

An original reading of three famous novels reveals a significant shift in the Russian tradition of psychological prose; Justin Weir develops a persuasive analysis of the complex relationship between authorial self-reflection and literary tradition in three of the most famous Russian novels of the first half of the twentieth century: Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and Vladimir Nabokov's The Gift. All three novelists respond to a dual crisis, according to Weir: the general modernist destabilization of identity, and the estrangement from literary tradition that followed the Russian Revolution. Using various self-reflexive literary devices (such as the mise en abyme), these authors reincorporate literary tradition into their works and, in the process, generate a distinctive view of identity. Character, in these novels, is neither the outcome of a continuous process of Building, nor a direct function of the individual's relation to larger historical events. Rather, character is defined in the act of writing itself, so that every hero must be a sort of author. The outcome is a new novelistic art that focuses on the identity of the artist as revealed through his writing. With its innovative interpretation of these novels and its compelling historical, cultural, and theoretical insights, The Author as Hero offers a new view of an important moment in the evolution of Russian literature.

How St. Petersburg Learned to Study Itself: The Russian Idea of Kraevedenie considers the origins and evolutions of kraevedenie, looking specifically at the role that movements and institutions that emerged in early twentieth-century St. Petersburg played in the formation of this discipline. Based on extensive work in archives in St. Petersburg, it looks at the historical preservation movement that was spearheaded by participants in the World of Art circle and contributors to the journal Starye gody. It considers the pedagogical excursion movement and specifically the influence of Ivans Grevs and Nikolai Antsiferov. It also discusses the operations and role of the Central Bureau of Kraevedenie in the 1920s.The original English-language edition of this book (Penn State University Press, 2006) received both the South Central MLA book award and the Nikolai Antsiferov Prize for the best work on St. Petersburg by a foreign author.

While acknowledging Dostoevsky's personal commitment to the Russian Orthodox faith, Jones argues that it is possible to understand his fictional world only in terms of the interplay of a wide variety of religious experiences and outlooks, including affirmations of faith and expressions of radical doubt and unbelief, and a constant questioning of one by the other. In their neglect of its outward expressions, Dostoevsky's novels seem to acknowledge that the Orthodox tradition has to die in order to be reborn in the light of the image of Christ and that, to use his own expression, the final 'hosanna' must pass through a 'furnace of doubt'.

Israel and the Nations: The Bible, The Rabbis, and Jewish-Gentile Relations explores the theological and legal (halakhic) aspects of Jewish thought relating to non-Jews. It analyzes biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and contemporary Jewish writings about gentiles and their religions. The book will interest both Jewish laypersons familiar with Jewish tradition as well as scholars of theology and interfaith relations

How did Gorbachev and Yeltsin get away with transforming and replacing the Soviet system and its foreign relations? Why did they act as they did in pushing for such radical changes? And how will history evaluate their accomplishments? In this unique and original study, George W. Breslauer compares and evaluates the leadership strategies adopted by Gorbachev and Yeltsin at each stage of their administrations: political rise, political ascendancy, and political decline. He demonstrates how these men used the power of ideas to mobilize support for their policies, to seize the initiative from political rivals, and to mold their images as effective problem solvers, indispensable politicians, and symbols of national unity and élan. Gorbachev and Yeltsin as Leaders also compares these men with Khrushchev and Brezhnev, yielding new insight into the nature of Soviet and post-Soviet politics and into the dynamics of "transformational" leadership more generally. The book is an important contribution to the analysis and evaluation of political leadership. It is exceptionally well written and accessible to the nonspecialist.

Bieganski is a stereotype of Poles and other Eastern Europeans. In the 'Bieganski' stereotype, Poles exhibit the qualities of animals. Their special hatefulness is epitomized by their Polish anti-Semitism. This book discovers this stereotype in the mainstream press, scholarship, film, in Jews' self-definition, and in responses to the Holocaust.

Cities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Postsocialist China analyzes urban aesthetics in the Peoples Republic of China at the turn of the 21st century (1990-2010). Applying empirical field research, historical frameworks, and critical theory to analysis of urban fiction, cinema, art, architecture, and urban planning, the book explores how new forms of urban identity manifest in private lifestyles, local cultures, civic activism, narrative ethics, and urban governance. Cities is unique in its sustained analysis of cultural aesthetics in relation to the built environment and in its contextualization of urban aesthetics within broader economic and intellectual trends.

In stark contrast to the widespread preoccupation with the wartime looting of priceless works of art, Bo¿ena Shallcross focuses on the meaning of ordinary objects¿pots, eyeglasses, shoes, clothing, kitchen utensils¿tangible vestiges of a once-lived reality, which she reads here ascultural texts. Shallcross delineates the ways in which Holocaust objects are represented in Polish and Polish-Jewish texts written during or shortly after World War II. These representational strategies are distilled from the writings of Zuzanna Ginczanka, W¿adys¿aw Szlengel, Zofia Näkowska, Czes¿aw Mi¿osz, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Tadeusz Borowski. Combining close readings of selected texts with critical interrogations of a wide range of philosophical and theoretical approaches to the nature of matter, Shallcross's study broadens the current discourse on the Holocaust by embracing humble and overlooked material objects as they were perceived by writers of that time.

The Comics of Asaf Hanuka: Telling Particular and Universal Stories traces how Asaf Hanuka's comics and graphic novels reflect his own experiences of being an insider (as a Jew and Israeli) and an outsider (as a Mizrahi or Judeo-Arab) in Israeli society alongside what it means to be a parent and a spouse in contemporary Western society.

From Victory to Peace: Russian Diplomacy After Napoleon explores how Russia's diplomats understood European security as they worked to implement the edifice of pacification and peace constructed in 1814, 1815, and 1818. In response to developments across Europe and in Spanish America, Emperor Alexander I's hopes for peace, pragmatic adaptability, and commitment to act in concert with the other great powers came fully into focus. Based on sources of Russian provenance, the book challenges characterizations of Alexander's behavior as erratic and his foreign policy as heavy-handed and expansionist. Indeed, as historians assimilate the Russian perspective on European order (as well as the perspectives of other less well-studied countries), they encounter a multifaceted Restoration built upon practices of enlightened reformism and direct experience of revolution and war.

What should we make of claims by members of other groups to have moralities different from our own? Human Rights in Chinese Thought gives an extended answer to this question in the first study of its kind. It integrates a full account of the development of Chinese rights discourse with philosophical consideration of how various communities should respond to contemporary Chinese claims about the uniqueness of their human rights concepts. The book elaborates a plausible kind of moral pluralism and demonstrates that Chinese ideas of human rights do indeed have distinctive characteristics, but it nonetheless argues for the importance and promise of cross-cultural moral engagement.

From the late nineteenth century to the eve of World War II, America's experts on Russia watched as Russia and the Soviet Union embarked on a course of rapid industrialization. Captivated by the idea of modernization, diplomats, journalists, and scholars across the political spectrum rationalized the enormous human cost of this path to progress. In a fascinating examination of this crucial era, David Engerman underscores the key role economic development played in America's understanding of Russia and explores its profound effects on U.S. policy.American intellectuals from George Kennan to Samuel Harper to Calvin Hoover understood Russian events in terms of national character. Many of them used stereotypes of Russian passivity, backwardness, and fatalism to explain the need for-and the costs of-Soviet economic development. These costs included devastating famines that left millions starving while the government still exported grain.This book is a stellar example of the new international history that seamlessly blends cultural and intellectual currents with policymaking and foreign relations. It offers valuable insights into the role of cultural differences and the shaping of economic policy for developing nations even today.

In The Icon and the Square, Maria Taroutina examines how the traditional interests of institutions such as the crown, the church, and the Imperial Academy of Arts temporarily aligned with the radical, leftist, and revolutionary avant-garde at the turn of the twentieth century through a shared interest in the Byzantine past, offering a counternarrative to prevailing notions of Russian modernism. Focusing on the works of four different artists-Mikhail Vrubel, Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, and Vladimir Tatlin-Taroutina shows how engagement with medieval pictorial traditions drove each artist to transform his own practice, pushing beyond the established boundaries of his respective artistic and intellectual milieu. She also contextualizes and complements her study of the work of these artists with an examination of the activities of a number of important cultural associations and institutions over the course of several decades. As a result, The Icon and the Square gives a more complete picture of Russian modernism: one that attends to the dialogue between generations of artists, curators, collectors, critics, and theorists.

In this incisive analysis of one of the most spectacular economic breakthroughs in the Deng era, Jean C. Oi shows how and why Chinese rural-based industry has become the fastest growing economic sector not just in China but in the world. Oi argues that decollectivization and fiscal decentralization provided party officials of the localities-counties, townships, and villages-with the incentives to act as entrepreneurs and to promote rural industrialization in many areas of the Chinese countryside. As a result, the corporatism practiced by local officials has become effective enough to challenge the centrality of the national state.

Taking aim at the conventional narrative that standard, national languages transform 'peasants' into citizens, Gina Anne Tam centers the history of the Chinese nation and national identity on fangyan - languages like Shanghainese, Cantonese, and dozens of others that are categorically different from the Chinese national language, Mandarin. She traces how, on the one hand, linguists, policy-makers, bureaucrats and workaday educators framed fangyan as non-standard 'variants' of the Chinese language, subsidiary in symbolic importance to standard Mandarin. She simultaneously highlights, on the other hand, the folksong collectors, playwrights, hip-hop artists and popular protestors who argued that fangyan were more authentic and representative of China's national culture and its history. From the late Qing through the height of the Maoist period, these intertwined visions of the Chinese nation - one spoken in one voice, one spoken in many - interacted and shaped one another, and in the process, shaped the basis for national identity itself.

Conventional narratives describe the United States as a continental country bordered by Canada and Mexico. Yet, since the late twentieth century the United States has claimed more water space than land space, and more water space than perhaps any other country in the world. This watery version of the United States borders some twenty-one countries, particularly in the archipelagoes of the Pacific and the Caribbean. In Borderwaters Brian Russell Roberts dispels continental national mythologies to advance an alternative image of the United States as an archipelagic nation. Drawing on literature, visual art, and other expressive forms that range from novels by Mark Twain and Zora Neale Hurston to Indigenous testimonies against nuclear testing and Miguel Covarrubias's visual representations of Indonesia and the Caribbean, Roberts remaps both the fundamentals of US geography and the foundations of how we discuss US culture.