Columbia University Press: 2355 books
Spirals
The Whirled Image in Twentieth-Century Literature and Art
Language: English
Release Date: February 24, 2015
In this elegantly written and beautifully illustrated book, Nico Israel reveals how spirals are at the heart of the most significant literature and visual art of the twentieth century. Juxtaposing the work of writers and artists—including W. B. Yeats and Vladimir Tatlin, James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp,...
Head Cases
Julia Kristeva on Philosophy and Art in Depressed Times
Language: English
Release Date: February 25, 2014
While philosophy and psychoanalysis privilege language and conceptual distinctions and mistrust the image, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva recognizes the power of art and the imagination to unblock important sources of meaning. She also appreciates the process through which creative...
The Politics of Being
The Political Thought of Martin Heidegger
Language: English
Release Date: November 15, 2016
Martin Heidegger's ties to Nazism have tarnished his stature as one of the towering figures of twentieth-century philosophy. The publication of the Black Notebooks in 2014, which revealed the full extent of Heidegger's anti-Semitism and enduring sympathy for National Socialism, only inflamed the controversy....
On Slowness
Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary
Language: English
Release Date: October 7, 2014
Speed is an obvious facet of contemporary society, whereas slowness has often been dismissed as conservative and antimodern. Challenging a long tradition of thought, Lutz Koepnick instead proposes we understand slowness as a strategy of the contemporary—a decidedly modern practice that gazes firmly...
Creaturely Poetics
Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film
Language: English
Release Date: April 7, 2011
Simone Weil once wrote that "the vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence," establishing a relationship between vulnerability, beauty, and existence transcending the separation of species. Her conception of a radical ethics and aesthetics...
by Hermann Kappelhoff
Language: English
Release Date: August 11, 2015
Language: English
Release Date: August 11, 2015
Hermann Kappelhoff casts the evolution of cinema as an ongoing struggle to relate audiences to their historical moment. Appreciating cinema's unique ability to bind concrete living conditions to individual experience (which existing political institutions cannot), he reads films by Sergei Eisenstein...
Things Beyond Resemblance
Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno
Language: English
Release Date: September 5, 2006
Theodor W. Adorno was a major twentieth-century philosopher and social critic whose writings on oppositional culture in art, music, and literature increasingly stand at the center of contemporary intellectual debate. In this excellent collection, Robert Hullot-Kentor, widely regarded as the most distinguished...
Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers
The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships
Language: English
Release Date: September 14, 2005
Richard W. Bulliet has long been a leading figure in the study of human-animal relations, and in his newest work, Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers, he offers a sweeping and engaging perspective on this dynamic relationship from prehistory to the present. By considering the shifting roles of donkeys,...
Cinema by Design
Art Nouveau, Modernism, and Film History
Language: English
Release Date: March 14, 2017
Art Nouveau thrived from the late 1890s through the First World War. The international design movement reveled in curvilinear forms and both playful and macabre visions and had a deep impact on cinematic art direction, costuming, gender representation, genre, and theme. Though historians have long...
"It's the Pictures That Got Small"
Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age
Language: English
Release Date: December 16, 2014
Golden Age Hollywood screenwriter Charles Brackett was an extremely observant and perceptive chronicler of the entertainment industry during its most exciting years. He is best remembered as the writing partner of director Billy Wilder, who once referred to the pair as "the happiest couple in...
Hearst Over Hollywood
Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies
Language: English
Release Date: January 9, 2002
Hollywood—crossroads of filmmaking, mythmaking, and politics—was dominated by one man more than any other for most of its history. It was William Randolph Hearst who understood how to use cinema to exploit the public's desire for entertainment and to create film propaganda to further his own desire...
by James Shapiro
Language: English
Release Date: March 8, 2016
Language: English
Release Date: March 8, 2016
First published in 1996, James Shapiro's pathbreaking analysis of the portrayal of Jews in Elizabethan England challenged readers to recognize the significance of Jewish questions in Shakespeare's day. From accounts of Christians masquerading as Jews to fantasies of settling foreign Jews in Ireland,...
Hubert Harrison
The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918
Language: English
Release Date: November 25, 2008
Hubert Harrison was an immensely skilled writer, orator, educator, critic, and political activist who, more than any other political leader of his era, combined class consciousness and anti-white-supremacist race consciousness into a coherent political radicalism. Harrison's ideas profoundly influenced...
In Pursuit of Privilege
A History of New York City's Upper Class and the Making of a Metropolis
Language: English
Release Date: November 8, 2016
A history that extends from the 1750s to the present, In Pursuit of Privilege recounts upper-class New Yorkers' struggle to create a distinct world guarded against outsiders, even as economic growth and democratic opportunity enabled aspirants to gain entrance. Despite their efforts, New York City's...