Crocodiles Masks And Madonnas

Hoarding New Guinea provides a new cultural history of colonialism that pays close attention to the millions of Indigenous artifacts that serve as witnesses to Europe’s colonial past in ethnographic museums. Rainer F. Buschmann investigates the roughly two hundred thousand artifacts extracted from the colony of German New Guinea from 1870 to 1920. Reversing the typical trajectories that place ethnographic museums at the center of the analysis, he concludes that museum interests in material culture alone cannot account for the large quantities of extracted artifacts. Buschmann moves beyond the easy definition of artifacts as trophies of colonial defeat or religious conversion, instead employing the term hoarding to describe the irrational amassing of Indigenous artifacts by European colonial residents. Buschmann also highlights Indigenous material culture as a bargaining chip for its producers to engage with the imposed colonial regime. In addition, by centering an area of collection rather than an institution, he opens new areas of investigation that include non-professional ethnographic collectors and a sustained rather than superficial consideration of Indigenous peoples as producers behind the material culture. Hoarding New Guinea answers the call for a more significant historical focus on colonial ethnographic collections in European museums.

Throughout the last two decades, the modern dialogue movement has gained worldwide significance. The knowledge about its origins is, however, still very limited. This book presents a wide range of insights from eleven case studies into the early history of several important international interreligious/interfaith dialogue organizations that have shaped the modern development of interreligious dialogue from the late nineteenth century up to the present. Based on new archival research, they describe, on the one hand, how these actors put their ideals into practice and, on the other, how they faced many challenges as pioneers in the establishment of new interreligious/interfaith organizational structures. This book concludes with a comparison of those case studies, bringing to light new and broader historico-sociological understanding of the beginnings of international and multi-religious interreligious/interfaith dialogue organizations over more than one century. The World’s Parliament of Religions / 1893 The Religiöser Menschheitsbund / 1921 The World Congress of Faiths / 1933-1950 The Committee on the Church and the Jewish People of the World Council of Churches / 1961 The Temple of Understanding / 1968 The International Association for Religious Freedom / 1969 The World Conference on Religion and Peace / 1970 The Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions / 1989-1991 The Oxford International Interfaith Centre / 1993 The United Religions Initiative / 2000 The Universal Peace Federation / 2005 Based on these analyses, the authors identify three distinct groups with sometimes-conflicting interests that are shaping the movement: individual religious virtuosi, countercultural activists, and representatives of religious institutions. Published in cooperation with the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Centre for Interreligious & Intercultural Dialogue, Vienna.

Mixing elements of a classic whodunit with a very modern love story, "The Madonna of Las Vegas" is a truly original tale about an artist and the daughter of a local mob boss, who enter a world where meaning is often flipped, and where the fake and the real are interchangeable.

"Madonna of the Snows" represents the obsessions and dissatisfactions that result from the love relationship illustrated in the poem. "A Mass for Desdemona" deals with love, religious conflict, uncertainties of identity, and the difficulties of emotional needs that overpower personal standards.

"They say the last straw was when Jennifer Lopez asked Ben Affleck to tell her honestly, 'Why do people always take an instant dislike to me?' and he said, 'It saves time.'" The bigger they are, the harder they fall . . . and the more they pounce on one another. That's the message that comes through in Boze Hadleigh's celebrity gossip collection, Celebrity Diss and Tell. Goodness, they have something to say about everyone! Luckily for those who relish insider information and star dirt, Hadleigh is right there to capture their spicy quotes. Celebrity Diss and Tell includes hundreds of quotations, snipes, and off-the-cuff remarks. The author divides the book into six sections, covering everything from fellow celebrities and stars' families to lost loves and celebrity slugfests. All of this makes for riveting reading: Open to any page and you're instantly stuck in the down and dirty world of off-screen frankness, such as "How difficult can it be to fly an airplane? I mean, John Travolta learned how." --Graham Chapman of Monty Python They're all here, from Robin Williams to Halle Berry. If anyone has anything good to say about anybody . . . you won't find it in these pages. But that's what makes Celebrity Diss and Tell such a good and cathartic read. These stars are only human, after all, and nobody can sparkle all the time.