princeton university press mär 2000 (4 Ergebnisse)

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Aristophanes has enjoyed a conspicuous revival in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Greece. Here, Gonda Van Steen provides the first critical analysis of the role of the classical Athenian playwright in modern Greek culture, explaining how the sociopolitical 'venom' of Aristophanes' verses remains relevant and appealing to modern Greek audiences. Deriding or challenging well-known figures and conservative values, Aristophanes' comedies transgress authority and continue to speak to many social groups in Greece who have found in him a witty, pointed, and accessible champion from their 'native' tradition.The book addresses the broader issues reflected in the poet's revival: political and linguistic nationalism, literary and cultural authenticity versus creativity, censorship, and social strife. Van Steen's discussion ranges from attitudes toward Aristophanes before and during Greece's War of Independence in the 1820s to those during the Cold War, from feminist debates to the significance of the popular music integrated into comic revival productions, from the havoc transvestite adaptations wreaked on gender roles to the political protest symbolized by Karolos Koun's directorial choices.Crossing boundaries of classical philology, critical theory, and performance studies, the book encourages us to reassess Aristophanes' comedies as both play-acts and modern methods of communication. Van Steen uses material never before accessible in English as she proves that Aristophanes remains Greece's immortal comic genius and political voice.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - American higher education was transformed between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I. During this period, U.S. colleges underwent fundamental changes--changes that helped to create the modern university we know today. Most significantly, the study of the sciences and the humanities effectively dissolved the Protestant framework of learning by introducing a new secularized curriculum. This secularization has long been recognized as a decisive turning point in the history of American education. Until now, however, there has been remarkably little attention paid to the details of how this transformation came about. Here, at last, Jon Roberts and James Turner identify the forces and explain the events that reformed the college curriculum during this era.The first section of the book examines how the study of science became detached from theological considerations. Previously, one of the primary pursuits of 'natural scientists' was to achieve an understanding of the workings of the divine in earthly events. During the late nineteenth century, however, scientists reduced the scope of their inquiries to subjects that could be isolated, measured, and studied objectively. In pursuit of 'scientific truth,' they were drawn away from the larger 'truths' that they had once sought. On a related path, social scientists began to pursue the study of human society more scientifically, attempting to generalize principles of behavior from empirically observed events.The second section describes the revolution that occurred in the humanities, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, when the study of humanities was largely the study of Greek and Latin. By 1900, however, the humanities were much more broadly construed, including such previously unstudied subjects as literature, philosophy, history, and art history. The 'triumph of the humanities' represented a significant change in attitudes about what constituted academic knowledge and, therefore, what should be a part of the college curriculum.The Sacred and the Secular University rewrites the history of higher education in the United States. It will interest all readers who are concerned about American universities and about how the content of a 'college education' has changed over the course of the last century.'[Jon Roberts and James Turner's] thoroughly researched and carefully argued presentations invite readers to revisit stereotypical generalizations and to rethink the premises developed in the late nineteenth century that underlie the modern university. At the least, their arguments challenge crude versions of the secularization thesis as applied to higher education.'--From the foreword by William G. Bowen and Harold T. Shapiro.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Here, for the first time, two of Russia's leading economists provide an authoritative analysis of the transition to a democratic market economy that has taken place in Russia since 1990. Serguey Braguinsky, a Russian economist with extensive international experience, and Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal 'Yabloko' party and a major public figure in Russia, focus on the institutions that are critical to a successful transition and the economic incentives needed to make these institutions work. Finally, they discuss in detail the specific components of the economic processes that are necessary for economic transition in general and they draw lessons that can be applied to other nations dealing with similar transitions.In 1989, Grigory Yavlinsky became a member of the Commission for Economic Reform and wrote the groundbreaking '500 Day Plan,' which outlined the first program of transition to a market economy. Two years later, he co-wrote the program of strategic cooperation between the Soviet government and the West (known as the 'Grand Bargain'). Here he and Serguey Braguinsky examine what went wrong with the Russian plan--and what is needed to put the economy back on the road to becoming a fully functioning market economy.The first section of the book presents a new interpretation of the political economy of the socialist state and the incentives and institutions that underpin it, with an emphasis on the present Russian situation. The second part deals with the political economy of 'spontaneous transition' and the inefficiencies inherent in economies that lack the organizations and institutions that inhere in established Western democratic economies. In the final section, the authors present a program of actions to put the economic transition in Russia back on track, based on their assessment of the actual current state of both the economy and the government. Their approach is unique in emphasizing organizational evolution at the microeconomic level instead of stressing macroeconomic issues such as money and inflation that are at the heart of most arguments.This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking book and one that will be widely discussed and debated.

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Aristotle's Categories can easily seem to be a statement of a naïve, pre-philosophical ontology, centered around ordinary items. Wolfgang-Rainer Mann argues that the treatise, in fact, presents a revolutionary metaphysical picture, one Aristotle arrives at by (implicitly) criticizing Plato and Plato's strange counterparts, the 'Late-Learners' of the Sophist. As Mann shows, the Categories reflects Aristotle's discovery that ordinary items are things (objects with properties). Put most starkly, Mann contends that there were no things before Aristotle.The author's argument consists of two main elements. First, a careful investigation of Plato which aims to make sense of the odd-sounding suggestion that things do not show up as things in his ontology. Secondly, an exposition of the theoretical apparatus Aristotle introduces in the Categories--an exposition which shows how Plato's and the Late-Learners' metaphysical pictures cannot help but seem inadequate in light of that apparatus. In doing so, Mann reveals that Aristotle's conception of things--now so engrained in Western thought as to seem a natural expression of common sense--was really a hard-won philosophical achievement.Clear, subtle, and rigorously argued, The Discovery of Things will reshape our understanding of some of Aristotle's--and Plato's--most basic ideas.