The eleventh-century Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, probably produced in the second quarter of the eleventh century, in or near St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, houses a wealth of imagery, including several images of giants that appear throughout the manuscript’s approximately 400 images and 156 folios. These giants form a primary point of…[Read more]

Monstrous iconography was a major, even central, element of the visual arts throughout the entire medieval period, Early Christian through late Gothic, east and west, north and south. There are few—if any—medieval cultural traditions that do not rely on monstrous imagery for vital cultural functions. Within this catchall category, often def…[Read more]

A short introduction to an artist book on history and ecology and loss.

In this article, we bring to light a text that foregrounds listening to the monster, in this case the Blemmyes, by making available to scholarly readers a previously unknown Middle English poem of great historical and literary significance. Our discovery was made possible through the generous funding of the NEPS (National Endowment for the…[Read more]

“Here there be Dragons”

The line “Enge anpaðas uncuð gelad” [narrow path, unknown way] appears twice in the Old English corpus: once in the Old English Exodus (a tale from Old Testament narrative poetry that tells us a story of the Israelites fleeing the Egyptians) and once in Beowulf (an epic story of masculine bravado, intense alienation and Otherness, and time past…[Read more]

This study centers on issues of marginality and monstrosity in medieval England. In the middle ages, geography was viewed as divinely ordered, so Britain’s location at the periphery of the inhabitable world caused anxiety among its inhabitants. Far from the world’s holy center, the geographic margins were considered monstrous. Medieval geography,…[Read more]

The field of monster studies has grown significantly over the past few years and this companion provides a comprehensive guide to the study of monsters and the monstrous from historical, regional and thematic perspectives. The collection reflects the truly multi-disciplinary nature of monster studies, bringing in scholars from literature, art…[Read more]

Bound with Beowulf, the Old English Wonders of the East, a catalogue of marvelous beings, describes the very creatures it depicts as ungefrægelicu (unheard of, inconceivable). Insistently, these representations, both visual and textual, provoke questions about the nature and possibility of representation itself. In doing so, they also destabilize…[Read more]

University courses on monsters are becoming widespread as many disciplines use monsters to think about what it means to be human. To date no source collection on the literature of the monstrous exists, and this volume offers the key primary readings on monsters from ancient times to the present day. Each work is preceded by a critical…[Read more]

BEACHES GIVE AND TAKE, bringing unexpected surprises to society, and pulling essentials away from it. The ocean offers monsters— whales and whirlpools—but when a massive creature is pushed into human proximity by the ocean’s wide shoulders, the waves deposit and erode human assumptions about itself and its environment: words, sounds, breath, water…[Read more]

This essay examines the US government’s attempts throughout the 20th century to
improve its relations with Latin America. It shows that most of these efforts were
motivated by external factors such as wars or conflicts with other world powers. Although genuine, these attempts were ultimately subordinate to the United States’
geopolitical and…[Read more]

The author is examining the interplay between voice and sculpture, within the field of sound art. The term ‘sculpture’ has been appropriated by many artists to define their work with the voice. Exploring the sculpted voice, three main categories are here identified: the plastic dimension of voice as a sculptable material, the sculptural…[Read more]

The opening text for the exhibition Hafıza-i Beşer: Osmanlı Yazmalarından Hikâyeler | Memories of Humankind: Stories from the Ottoman Manuscripts, organized by the Istanbul Research Institute, open between October 18, 2019 – July 25, 2020.

Sergi Küratörü/Exhibition Curator
K. Mehmet Kentel

Danısmanlar/Advisors
M. Baha Tanman, Selim S.…[Read more]

As per its title

Availability of vocal music scores compilations containing art songs by African American composers. Supplemental content accompanying the book, So You Want to Sing Spirituals.

This thesis follows my earlier work on Aurignacian rock art by drawing a clear line between cave painting in the south of France and the holiest Hebrew script Ktav Ivrit or STA”M. This is an in depth study detailing relationships between Language, Mysticism and Kabbalah, as well as Religious Dogma that answers the question, “Why do all religions…[Read more]

This is a series of brief paradigms that suggest ways of manipulating abstraction, such as Art Language Religion and Politics, for use with a Carlos Ginzburg Evidentiary Paradigm, or other multivariate analysis. The tables in this appendix accompany the Index of Deities and Demons and How the Aleph-Bet Got Its Shape.

Article for the exhibition catalogue “Hagenbund. A European network of modernism 1900 to 1938” (2014)

Article for the exhibition catalogue “Hagenbund. A European network of modernism 1900 to 1938” (2014)