Books published by Amsterdam University Press

This is the first monograph to thoroughly analyse Benjamin's film writings, contextualizing them within his oeuvre whilst also paying attention to the various films, actors, and directors that sparked his interest.

Focusing on the interrelationship between Jacob van Loo's art, honor, and career, this book argues that Van Loo's lifelong success and unblemished reputation were by no means incompatible, as art historians have long assumed, with his specialization in painting nudes and his conviction for manslaughter. Van Loo's iconographic specialty - the nude - allowed his clientele to present themselves as judges of beauty and display their mastery of decorum, while his portraiture perfectly expressed his clients' social and political ambitions. Van Loo's honor explains why his success lasted a lifetime, whereas that of Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Vermeer did not. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book reinterprets the manslaughter case as a sign that Van Loo's elite patrons recognized him as a gentleman and highly-esteemed artist.

Our understanding of human evolution is proceeding at an unprecedented rate over the last years.

This volume examines the most spectacular struggle for democracy in post-handover Hong Kong.

This book studies the value system of the French Catholic community the Filles de la Charite, or the Daughters of Charity, in the first half of the seventeenth century.

This book presents the first in-depth discussion of how specific geographical and historical conditions shape the way in which mobile phone maps are read, deployed, and engaged with in daily life.

This book focuses on artists who practiced depicting from life in Italy, both native Italians and migrants from northern Europe.

This book offers a tour of the history of medical virology in the Netherlands from the nineteenth century to the new millennium.

This book argues that serious study of theme parks and their adult fans has much to tell us about contemporary transmediality and convergence, themed and immersive spaces, and audience relationships with places of meaning.

This book describes, historicizes, theorizes, and creatively deploys massive media -- a set of techno-social assemblages and practices -- in order to better understand their critical and creative potential.

This book explores the protracted interest in Spain and its culture, and it exposes the co-existent ambiguity between scorn and fascination that characterizes Western historical perceptions, in particular in Britain and the Low Countries.

A ground-breaking collection of essays that explores the place of the Dutch and English East India Companies in Asia and the nature of their interactions with Asian rulers, officials, merchants, soldiers and brokers.