International Bohemia

Daniel Cottom traces the vagabond word "bohemia" as it migrated across national borders over the course of the nineteenth century—from France to the United States, England, Italy, Spain, and Germany—and how it was transformed, contested, or rejected along the way.

How did this vagabond word, bohemia, migrate across national borderlines over the course of the nineteenth century, and what happened to it as it traveled? In International Bohemia, Daniel Cottom studies how various individuals and groups appropriated this word to serve the identities, passions, cultural forms, politics, and histories they sought to animate. Beginning with the invention of bohemianism's modern sense in Paris during the 1830s and 1840s, Cottom traces the twists and turns of this phenomenon through the rest of the nineteenth century and into the early years of the twentieth century in the United States, England, Italy, Spain, and Germany. Even when they traveled under the banner of l'art pour l'art, the bohemians of this era generally saw little reason to observe borderlines between their lives and their art. On the contrary, they were eager to mix up the one with the other, despite the fact that their critics often reproached them on this account by claiming that bohemians were all talk—do-nothings frittering away their lives in cafés and taverns. Cottom's study of bohemianism draws from the biographies of notable and influential figures of the time, including Thomas Chatterton, George Sand, George Eliot, Henry Murger, Alexandre Privat d'Anglemont, Walt Whitman, Ada Clare, Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Through a wide range of novels, memoirs, essays, plays, poems, letters, and articles, International Bohemia explores the many manifestations of this transnational counterculture, addressing topics such as anti-Semitism, the intersections of race and class, the representation of women, the politics of art and masquerade, the nature of community, and the value of nostalgia.

From roaring nightlife to peaceful yoga retreats, Ibiza’s hippie-chic atmosphere is its hallmark. This quintessential Mediterranean hot spot has served as an escape for artists, creatives, and musicians alike for decades. It is a place to reinvent oneself, to walk the fine line between civilization and wilderness, and to discover bliss. Ibiza Bohemia explores the island’s scenic Balearic cliffs, its legendary cast of characters, and the archetypal interiors that define its signature style.

The theme of socio-spatial differentiation has belonged to the core issues of social geography and urban studies for a long time. The general aim of the book is to describe and explain the current socio-spatial differentiation of Prague and the Central Bohemian Region and the processes that have influenced it during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The book offers its own theoretical perspective on the structuration of spatial patterns and the social environment, a general view of regional development, and the main socio-spatial processes of the period after transition. Maps are an important part of this volume and concentrate crucial information within most chapters. Apart from the static information described in the maps, the book offers a look at current population “processes”, as hinted at by the subtitle of the publication. The presentation and evaluation of “processes” require more dynamic forms of cartographic visualisation and new methods of investigation. Among them, new tools of segregation measurement, various approaches for the use of mobile phone data, and an innovative form of population forecast are presented in the book. The common thread connecting all chapters is a regional focus on Prague and the Central Bohemian Region and a quantitative approach to comparing spatial patterns and regional processes.

As the 400th anniversary of the outbreak of the Thirty Years War approaches, Geoff Mortimer provides a timely re-assessment of its origins. These lie mainly neither in religious tensions in Germany nor in the conflicts between Spain, France and the Dutch, but in the revolt in Bohemia and the famous defenestration of Prague.