Throughout its history, Christianity has adapted to contemporary society and culture in order to reach people effectively and have an impact on the world. This process often evokes controversy. Certainly this is the case in the current century, and so it was in the sixteenth. Robert Bireley argues that early modern Catholicism, the period known ......
Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America
Honor was everywhere in Colonial Latin America, and to understand the many ways it had an impact on people's lives is to understand the organizing principles of a society.
Sex and sexuality have always been the subject of much attention, both scholarly and popular. Yet, accounts of the early years of the United States tend to overlook the importance of their influence on the shaping of American culture. This book addresses this neglected topic with original research covering a wide spectrum, from sexual behavior to ......
"Outstanding. . . . Brings to life the Apalachee and their Spanish conquerors. In clear, concise prose it paints a picture of the Apalachee and their society and shows how their interactions with Spanish explorers, missionaries, and colonists shaped the history of their society."--John F. Scarry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The ......
Focusing on the British empire, this book assesses the extent to which Jews participated in the institution of slavery through investment in slave trading companies, ownership of slave ships, commercial activity as merchants who sold slaves upon their arrival from Africa, and direct ownership of slaves.
This text provides a reinterpretation of London during a period of dramatic change, and presents ways of understanding the coming modernity through the transformation of urban landscapes.
Johann Lorenz Schmidt and Censorship in Eighteenth-century Germany
Under the patronage of two south German nobles, Johann Lorenz Schmidt published an annotated translation of the Bible's opening books in 1735. The story of the controversy the work aroused and of its eventual suppression sheds light on many aspects of the eighteenth century, as well as the nature of censorship in our time.
Although social sciences such as anthropology are often thought to have been organized as academic specialties in the nineteenth century, the ideas upon which these disciplines were founded actually developed centuries earlier. In fact, the foundational concepts can be traced at least as far back as the sixteenth century, when contact with ......
They flew through the air, consorted with animals, and made pacts with the devil. Witches were as unquestioned as alchemy or astrology in medieval England; yet it wasn't until the midsixteenth century that laws were passed against them. Now a leading historian of crime and society in early modern England offers the first scholarly overview of ......