Books in the Convergences: Inventories of the Present series

In this book, Casanova shows us the state of world literature behind the stylistic refinements-a world of letters relatively independent from economic and political realms, and in which language systems, aesthetic orders, and genres struggle for dominance.

Our modern narratives of science and technology can only go so far in teaching us about the death that we must all finally face. In this title, a physician and a literary theorist bring together scientific and humanistic perspectives on the lessons on living and dying that this extravagant and seemingly artificial art imparts.

In a rigorous exploration of how secularism and identity emerged as conflicting concepts in the modern world, Akeel Bilgrami elaborates a notion of secular enchantment with a view to finding in secular modernity a locus of meaning and value, while addressing squarely the anxiety that all such notions are exercises in nostalgia.

The cultural Cold War in Latin America was waged as a war of values. This book charts the conflicting universals of this period, the clash between avant-garde and political vanguard.

What is colonialism and what is a colonial state? In exploring these questions, Ranajit Guha points out that the South Asian colonial state was a historical paradox. Britain may have ruled India as a colony, but it never achieved hegemony over most of the population, collaborating with the nationalist elite but never persuading the masses.

The complex cultural status of Chopin-he was a native Pole and adopted Frenchman, a male composer writing in "feminine" genres-is the subject of Kallberg's absorbing book. Combining social history, literary theory, musicology, and feminist thought, this book situates Chopin's music within the construct of his somewhat marginal sexual identity.

Kaplan shows how U.S. imperialism-from "Manifest Destiny" to the "American Century"-has profoundly shaped key elements of American culture at home, and how the struggle for power over foreign peoples and places has disrupted the quest for domestic order.

This work presents in English translation the largest collection ever assembled of the sayings and stories of Jesus in Arabic Islamic literature. The 300 sayings and stories, arranged in chronological order, show us how the image of this Jesus evolved throughout a millennium of Islamic history.