Through The Making of Early Kashmir, Shonaleeka Kaul, who teaches in the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, deftly presents a new discourse on Kashmir’s culture and history and successfully argues not only that a traditional Sanskrit text can indeed function as a historical text, but that the very fact that s…[Read more]

In the cultural and religious history of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory—a centuries-old Catholic pilgrim site situated on Station Island within the waters of Donegal’s Lough Derg—the mass drowning of 1795 stands out. The aftermath was devastating, stamping a lasting mark on the memory of place. The disaster continues to be complicated by its entangl…[Read more]

The article discusses the presence of a generative principle called Mōt in a short cosmogony found in the Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos (c. 100 CE). The Phoenician History’s Mōt has been usually understood as the euhemeristic interpretation of a Semitic god of death, which is well documented in late Bronze Age documents from Ugarit. I a…[Read more]

This paper was originally prepared for a meeting of the Methodology Seminar of the Distant Worlds Graduate School (LMU, Munich) and was meant as an introduction to the use of the category of magic in the study of ancient Greek and Roman religions offered to a group of scholars coming from different disciplines.

The study of ancient magic is…[Read more]

This article treats late ancient rabbinic texts (ca. 1st-early 3rd cents. CE), reading them as biology, and following their ideas about the limits and possibilities of reproductive and species variation. I read sources from the tractates of Niddah, Kil’ayim, and Bekhorot, in the Mishnah and Toseta, as expressions of a science of generation, or a b…[Read more]

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.

This thesis describes the evolution of the alphabet from Upper Paleolithic to present. We draw a direct line from Aurignacian rock art to Hebrew STA”M script and from Auriginal Paganism to Kabbalah using a Ginzburg Evidentiary Paradigm. Provides strategies for quantifying concepts, belief, and abstraction such as Art, Language, Religion, and…[Read more]

Selections from DE LA MANUFACTURE AU MUR: Pour une histoire matérielle du papier peint 1770-1914 (From the Workshop to the Wall – Toward a Material History of Wallpaper 1770-1914) a thesis by Dr. Bernard Jacqué, University of Lyon, 2003. Translated by Robert M. Kelly.

PDF 3: The Scenic Revival of the Twentieth Century

Selections from DE LA MANUFACTURE AU MUR: Pour une histoire matérielle du papier peint 1770-1914 (From the Workshop to the Wall – Toward a Material History of Wallpaper 1770-1914) a thesis by Dr. Bernard Jacqué, University of Lyon (2003). Translated by Robert M. Kelly.

PDF 2: Zuber’s “Indépendance” (1853), a hand-painted restatement of “Scenic…[Read more]

Selections from DE LA MANUFACTURE AU MUR: Pour une histoire matérielle du papier peint 1770-1914 (From the Workshop to the Wall – Toward a Material History of Wallpaper 1770-1914) a thesis by Dr. Bernard Jacqué, University of Lyon (2003). Translated by Robert M. Kelly.

PDF 1: A Historiography of Wallpaper

Historic Nova Scotia is a digital humanities and public history project that aims to bring community histories to life online (https://historicnovascotia.ca/). This paper will explore how collaborative, digital-storytelling can help bridge the gap between heritage theory and practice. We will provide an overview of the project followed by specific…[Read more]

Anton Pannekoek (1873-1960), prominent astronomer and world-renowned socialist theorist, stood at the nexus of the revolutions in politics, science and the arts of the early twentieth century. His astronomy was uniquely visual and highly innovative, while his politics were radical. Anton Pannekoek: Ways of Viewing Science and Society collects…[Read more]

The genealogy of board games in Britain is also an expression of its imperial past. Built on colonialist and orientalist tropes that reinforce a hierarchy of race, their legacy is still discernible in the worlds created for the games played today.

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An updated version of my Portolan piece from 2018.

The chapter deals with the image of the personal union between Saxony and Poland as portrayed in the novels of the Polish writer Józef Ignacy Kraszewski, who emigrated to the Saxon capital of Dresden in the 19th century. His so called Saxon Novels are an important source for popular conceptions of history until today.

Georg Leibbrandt (1899-1982), one of the leading figures in the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs and the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, claimed his status as an expert for questions concerning Eastern Europe on the basis of his origin: Born as a Volksdeutscher in the Ukraine, he devoted himself early to racial thinking and to…[Read more]

Monarchy – Republic – Dictatorship. The District of Görlitz between 1900 and 1939

The article deals with the images and perceptions of Paris and London as seen by German intellectuals in the era of the French revolution. It discusses the key concepts “freedom” and “equality”, using the examples of Joachim Heinrich Campe and Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz.

The chapter gives a biographic account of Georg Leibbrandt (1899-1982), one of the leading figures in the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs and the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. It deals especially with his involvement with the infamous Wannsee conference of 1942.

The articles of the volume deal with the German-Polish relations in and after World War I until the first years of the Nazi regime.