The study of history has changed dramatically in recent decades. The swiftness and scale of the shift is indisputable, but its precise nature as well as its implications remain hotly contested. This study by one of the liveliest and most acute practitioners in the field has a refreshing transparency, a determination to demystify what historians do, and in particular, why and how they have recently brought about such a sweeping change to their discipline. This thoroughly updated and more accessible edition incorporates recent world events such as 9/11 and the war in Iraq, and includes a new chapter on the relationships between religious, ethnic, and political identities, the history of international diplomacy, and how the world map gets reconfigured. Ludmilla Jordanova teaches cultural history at the University of East Anglia. The study of history has changed dramatically in recent decades. The swiftness and scale of the shift is indisputable, but its precise nature as well as its implications remain hotly contested. This study by one of the liveliest and most acute practitioners in the field has a refreshing transparency, a determination to demystify what historians do, and in particular, why and how they have recently brought about such a sweeping change to their discipline. This thoroughly updated and more accessible edition incorporates recent world events such as 9/11 and the war in Iraq, and includes a new chapter on the relationships between religious, ethnic, and political identities, the history of international diplomacy, and how the world map gets reconfigured. 'This brilliant essay abounds with penetrating yet down-to-earth insights about the practice of academic history. One of the last half-century's most insightful, level-headed, and humane reflections on the practice of history and its cultural significance...(to be) welcomed by professional historians...also accessible to general readers and undergraduates.”—History Journal “Jordanova is brilliant in exposition...makes a fine case for the inescapability of the past and the absolute essentiality of studying it.” —English Historical Review 'This brilliant essay abounds with penetrating yet down-to-earth insights about the practice of academic history. One of the last half-century's most insightful, level-headed, and humane reflections on the practice of history and its cultural significance...(to be) welcomed by professional historians...also accessible to general readers and undergraduates.”—History Journal “Achieves what I had thought increasingly impossible in this congested field: it says something fresh, stimulating, and thought provoking. It is, to my mind, a very significant contribution to current debates about the nature of history in offering an account which is simultaneously rooted in practice and engaged with theoretical debates.”—Patrick Finney, University of Wales “Jordanova succeeds admirably in her aim to place the practice of history in a wider disciplinary context. Not only is she alive to the constructed nature of subject boundaries and their porosity, but also to the relatively recent date of their institutionalization.”—Reviews in History"A major, deeply reflective work upon the nature of studying and writing history....No other author has treated the subject in the same way." —Ronald Hutton, University of Bristol 

Product Description: This study considers attitudes to sexuality, the body, motherhood and the natural world during the 18th and 19th centuries. The collection brings together essays which reinterpret texts and images drawn from the period and includes coverage of cultural history, gender history and anthropology...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The human body has long been central to Western art, and in order to represent the body in all its manifestations many artists have studied anatomy: dissecting the dead to better depict the living. The Quick and the Dead focuses on a range of artists, among them Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Albrecht Dürer, William Hogarth, George Stubbs, Théodore Géricault, Kiki Smith, Joel-Peter Witkin, and Cindy Sherman to show the great richness and complexity that can result when art and science intersect...read more

Product Description: Book by Jordanova, Ludmilla