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In the two centuries since Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito was first performed, and the almost three centuries since Metastasio created the libretto, many rumours, myths and prejudiced opinions have gathered around the work, creating a narrative that Mozart, Mazzolà and their contemporaries would scarcely recognise.
The essays in this book contribute ideas, facts and images that will draw the twenty-first-century reader closer to the events of Central Europe in the late eighteenth century, and these new facts and ideas will help peel off some of the transmitted accretions that may hinder a modern listener from enjoying and understanding the opera in all its fullness. In this sense the essays present the reappraisal promised in the title.
The book is a product of the Performing Premodernity research project, funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences and based at the department of theatre studies of Stockholm University. Envisioned and edited by Magnus Tessing Schneider and Ruth Tatlow, the five essays by internationally renowned Mozart scholars are preceded by a chronology and a selection of original documents presented in new and revised parallel translations.
Praise for Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito: A Reappraisal
“[The monograph] supplies a wealth of information and thoughts about this opera, which has seldom been treated in such detail. It is a very welcome complement to John A. Rice’s 1991 monograph and to Emanuele Senici’s 1997 dissertation on the reception of La clemenza di Tito.”
“The idea of starting the volume with a documented critical chronology of sources relating to the genesis and reception of the opera is brilliant.”
— Lorenzo Bianconi, Università di Bologna
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The aim of this collection is to make possible the forging of a more robust, politically useful, and theoretically elaborate understanding of working-class literature(s).
These essays map a substantial terrain: the history of working-class literature(s) in Russia/The Soviet Union, The USA, Finland, Sweden, The UK, and Mexico. Together they give a complex and comparative – albeit far from comprehensive – picture of working-class literature(s) from an international perspective, without losing sight of national specificities.
By capturing a wide range of definitions and literatures, this collection gives a broad and rich picture of the many-facetted phenomenon of working-class literature(s), disrupts narrow understandings of the concept and phenomenon, as well as identifies and discusses some of the most important theoretical and historical questions brought to the fore by the study of this literature.
If read as stand-alone chapters, each contribution gives an overview of the history and research of a particular nation’s working-class literature. If read as an edited collection (which we hope you do), they contribute toward a more complex understanding of the global phenomenon of working-class literature(s).
Malmö University has published a short interview (2 min) with the editor Magnus Nilsson about the book. View the interview on the SUP blog.
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What does performativity signify? And what does it mean to speak of something as being performative?
Aiming to clarify and critically highlight an important but sometimes elusive concept, this book consists of five chapters, each addressing a concrete situation of interpretation. By highlighting artworks and images from different historical periods and contexts, the authors show how performativity might be a versatile and useful concept for interpretations of images. The purpose is to convey the critical potential of the concept as it is activated in relation to different objects of study.
The book is primarily addressed to students of art history and others who take an interest in questions of visuality and visual practices. Offering not only a theoretical understanding of the concept, it strives to point out ways and possibilities of the practical use of performativity.
This book constitutes the first volume of Theoretical Applications in Art History, which forms part of the series Basic Readings in Culture and Aesthetics. Its editors, Malin Hedlin Hayden and Mårten Snickare, are professors of art history at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University.
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This book is in Swedish:
Vad betyder performativitet? Och vad innebär det att tala om något som performativt? Den här läroboken vill klargöra och kritiskt belysa ett viktigt men ibland svårfångat begrepp.
Bokens bidrag tar upp konkreta tolkningssituationer och visar på direkta tillämpningar av begreppet. Genom att lyfta fram konstverk och andra bilder från olika historiska perioder och sammanhang visar vi hur performativitet är ett mångsidigt och användbart begrepp vid bildtolkning. Syftet är att förmedla den kritiska potential ett begrepp har när det aktiveras i relation till olika studieobjekt.
Boken riktar sig i första hand till studenter i konstvetenskap och andra ämnen där frågor om visualitet och visuella praktiker är centrala. Utgångspunkten är att boken inte bara ska ge en teoretisk förståelse av begreppet utan framförallt peka ut vägar och möjligheter till praktisk tillämpning.
Det här är första volymen i Teoretiska tillämpningar i konstvetenskap, som ingår i serien Basic Readings in Culture and Aesthetics.
Redaktörer för boken är Malin Hedlin Hayden och Mårten Snickare, professorer i konstvetenskap på Institutionen för kultur och estetik vid Stockholms universitet.
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Anarchism and religion have historically had an uneasy relationship. Indeed, representatives of both sides have regularly insisted on the fundamental incompatibility of anarchist and religious ideas and practices. Yet, ever since the emergence of anarchism as an intellectual and political movement, a considerable number of religious anarchists have insisted that their religious tradition necessarily implies an anarchist political stance. Their stories are finally gaining increasing public and scholarly attention.
Reflecting both a rise of interest in anarchist ideas and activism on the one hand, and the revival of religious ideas and movements in the political sphere on the other, this book examines a range of examples of overlaps and contestations between the two from a diverse range of academic perspectives.
The first pioneering volume of Essays in Anarchism & Religion comprises eight essays from leading international scholars on topics ranging from the anarchism of the historical Jesus to Zen Buddhism and the philosophies of Max Stirner and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
In a world where political ideas increasingly matter once more, and religion is an increasingly visible aspect of global political life, these essays offer scholarly analysis of overlooked activists, ideas and movements, and as such reveal the possibility of a powerful critique of contemporary global society.
"This book series is being funded via a crowdfunding campaign. For more information, or to make a donation for the next volume, please visit the funding page. This scheme ensures that the content will remain fully open access.
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The Ars Edendi Lectures have been organized by the research programme at Stockholm University funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond during the years 2008-2015, with a focus on editorial methods for dynamic textual traditions of medieval Greek and Latin texts.
This fourth volume gathers contributions both on the fundamentals of editing, as in Glenn Most ‘What is a critical edition?’, and looking at specifics such as marginalia (Teeuwen), errors (Maggioni), musical notation (Atkinson). Two papers focus on digital tools in editing Greek (Dendrinos) and Latin and early Romance (Robinson) texts. Richard Janko describes the challenges in making out words in Herculaneum papyri. Both traditional and innovative approaches are contemplated in this rich and varied collection by leading experts in the field of editing.
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Today's society is often characterized as a knowledge society, in contrast to the earlier industrial society. Historians however know that all societies are and have been knowledge societies. Without the ability to create, transfer, and use knowledge, between individuals and groups, power areas would neither have been built nor maintained.
This edited volume reflects how historical actors, both those in power as well as laymen and officials, have produced and utilised information and knowledge from the Middle Ages until today. It acommodates research into census, urbanisation, history of kings and queens, exercise of public authority, social and political movements, disciplining and formation of opinion.
In Kunskapens tider. Historiska perspektiv på kunskapssamhället (”The knowledge society. A historical perspective”) nine researchers from the Department of History at Stockholm University contribute with examples of the need for and use of knowledge, in different historical situations and periods.
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This book is in Swedish:
Dagens samhälle karaktäriseras ofta som kunskapssamhället, till skillnad från det tidigare industrisamhället. Historiker vet dock att alla samhällen är och har varit kunskapssamhällen: Utan möjligheter att skapa, överföra och använda kunskap, såväl individer som grupper emellan, hade maktområden varken kunnat byggas eller vidmakthållas.
Antologin speglar hur historiska aktörer, såväl makthavare som lekmän och tjänstemän, har producerat och utnyttjat information och kunskap från medeltiden till idag. Här ryms forskning om folkräkning, urbanisering, kungars historieskrivning, myndighetsutövning, sociala och politiska rörelser, disciplinering och opinionsbildning.
I Kunskapens tider bidrar nio medarbetare från Historiska institutionen vid Stockholms universitet med exempel på hur behovet och användandet av kunskap sett ut i olika historiska situationer och tidsperioder.
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What were the ideas about conflicts and conflict resolutions in the Nordic countries during the Vendel Period and the Viking Age? What role did i.e. gender and power hierarchies play in the conflicts?
All of the contributing texts are, in one way or another, related to the theme ‘war and peace’. They present new interpretations of some of the Old Scandinavian texts as well as of archaeological material: the runic inscription on the Eggja stone (Andreas Nordberg), texts about the fight between the god Thor and the giant Hrungnir (Tommy Kuusela), about the valkyries (Britt-Mari Näsström), about a phalos cult (Maths Bertell), about fylgjur, a type of beings regarded as related to the fate of a person (Eldar Heide), about enclosed areas for fights and battles (Torsten Blomkvist), about the defilement of sacred areas and places as a power strategy (Olof Sundqvist), about ritualisations of peace negotiations (Stefan Olsson), and about Ragnarök, the end and renewing of the world (Anders Hultgård).
The book has been edited by Hakan Rydving and Stefan Olsson, both from the The Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion (AHKR) at the University of Bergen.
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This book is published in Swedish:
Vilka idéer om konflikter och konfliktlösningar hade man i Norden under vendel- och vikingatid (från ca 550 till ca 1100)? Hur uppfattades gudar som Oden och Tor och andra väsen som valkyrior och fylgjor kunna påverka krig och fred? Hur reglerades användningen av våld och hur utformades fredsprocesser? Vilken roll spelade kön och makthierarkier i konflikterna? Hur förhåller sig de förkristna skandinaviska föreställningarna om den sista striden till motsvarande kristna och forniranska traditioner? Det är några av de frågor som bidragen i den här boken diskuterar. Undersökningarna baseras i huvudsak på texter från den aktuella perioden och från tidig medeltid, men också på arkeologiskt material. De ger intressanta exempel på hur källorna till vendel- och vikingatida traditioner kan analyseras om man tar utgångspunkt i frågor om krig och fred.
Boken har redigerats av Håkan Rydving och Stefan Olsson, båda verksamma vid Institutt for arkeologi, historie, kultur- og religionsvitskap (AHKR) vid Universitetet i Bergen.
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The multifarious and sometimes contested concept of “shamanism” has aroused intense popular and scholarly interest since its initial coinage by the Russian scholar V. M. Mikhailovsky in the late 19th century. In this book, three leading scholars, representing different branches of the humanities, dwell on the current status of shamanic practices and conceptions of the soul, both as ‘etic’ scholarly categories in historical research and as foci of spiritual revitalization among the indigenous populations of post-Soviet Siberia.
Framed by an introduction and a critical afterword by historian of religions Ulf Drobin, the three essays address issues crucial to the understanding of cultural history and the history of religions. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Research Professor in CERES, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgetown, Jan N. Bremmer, professor emeritus and former Chair of Religious Studies at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen and Carlo Ginzburg at Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.
The editor Peter Jackson, is Professor at the Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies at Stockholm University.
Book DetailsThis collection of essays investigates elements of the human voice and performance, and their implications for gender and sexuality. The chapters address affect, pleasure, and memory in the enjoyment of musical and theatrical performance. Rosenberg also examines contemporary feminist performance, anti-racist interventions, activist aesthetics, and political agency especially with regard to feminist and queer interpretations of opera and theatre. She contextualizes her work within broader developments in gender and queer studies, and within the feminist movement by highlighting important contributions of artists who draw from the above to create performance. The book will be welcomed by opera and theatre lovers, students, academics, and the wider public that is interested in the performing arts and its queer feminist potential.
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“Polemik in den Schriften Melchior Hoffmans. Inszenierungen rhetorischer Streitkultur in der Reformationszeit” is a study of pamphlets written as a reaction to, and attempt for, expansion of the Lutheran and Zwinglian Reformation. Melchior Hoffman’s work has, so far, almost solely been investigated by historians of religion and thus focused merely on religious topics and argumentation, and rather seldomly on the literary aspects of his pamphlets – such as rhetorics, argumentation strategies and text compilation. In order to close this gap of research on Melchior Hoffman and – in the sense of a New Historicism approach – give him as a non-canonical author more attention, this book focuses on the literary qualities of the texts. It is thus the first full-length study on Melchior Hoffman by a literary scholar. Not only has little been written on Melchior Hoffman, but also about lay writers in the Reformation at all. Thus, the book delivers new perspectives within the field of Reformation pamphlet writers.
Theoretical significance is an integral part of the study, with a focus on developing a new theoretical concept for analyzing polemic texts. The innovative approach combines post-modern theories like (constructivist) Cultural Studies, and Performativity concepts with Communication Analyses and Classical Rhetorics. By doing so, it provides a unique approach to texts from the 16th century, which can easily and reasonably be applied to polemical texts of the 21st century as well as to even older texts than Hoffman’s.
The book has been written in the research field of German Literature, but will be of great interest for both literary scholars and historians (of religion or culture).
This book is published in German:
Als ‚radikaler Reformator‘ geriet Melchior Hoffman immer wieder in Konflikte mit Vertretern der lutherischen und zwinglischen Reformation. Die Auseinandersetzungen über die ‚wahre Lehre Gottes‘ schlugen sich dabei in unterschiedlichen Textsorten und formen nieder: Hoffman stritt in polemischen Einzelschriften, Schriftwechseln sowie einem Reformationsdialog und polemisierte sogar in Bibelkommentaren und Traktaten.
Diese Schriften Hoffmans werden hier erstmals unter literaturwissenschaftlichen Gesichtspunkten behandelt. Sie werden als Orte der Performanz einer rhetorischen Streitkultur verstanden, die typisch für die Reformationszeit und generell für religiöse Auseinandersetzungen zwischen Theologie und Laienfrömmigkeit sind: In der schriftlichen Inszenierung des Streits manifestiert sich die komplexe kulturelle Wechselwirkung zwischen den rhetorischen Normen und Traditionen auf der einen und der individuellen Auseinandersetzung mit ihnen auf der anderen Seite. Das textuelle In-Szene-Setzen ist somit als performative Handlung zu verstehen, die Polemik selbst als deren grundlegendes inszenatorisches Prinzip.
Kerstin Lundström untersucht Hoffmans Polemik mittels einer Kombination aus Rhetorikanalyse und modernen Methoden der Kommunikations- und Performativitätsanalyse. Das Ergebnis ist die Identifizierung unterschiedlicher Konstellationen der Rede, die maßgeblich mit der sprachlichen Ausgestaltung zusammenwirken. Der Fokus liegt insbesondere darauf, wie die einzelnen Bausteine von Hoffmans vielschichtiger Polemik – auf Text- und auf Kontextebene – ineinander greifen und ihre performative Wirkmächtigkeit entfalten.
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