Books published by Amsterdam University Press

This book focuses on five saints: the four female Irish saints who have extant medieval biographies (Darerca, Brigid, Ite, and Samthann), and Patrick, whose writings -- fifth-century Ireland's sole surviving texts -- attest to the centrality of women in Irish Christianity's development.

This book examines changes in living standards across the ten countries of Southeast Asia.

This book will be of interest to historians of Buddhism, Chinese religion and Taiwanese society, and to those with an interest in interfaith dialogue more generally.

Visions of Electric Media is an historical examination into the early history of television, as it was understood during the Victorian and Machine ages. How did the television that we use today develop into a functional technology? What did Victorians expect it to become? How did the 'vision' of television change once viewers could actually see pictures on a screen? We will journey through the history of 'television': from the first indications of live communications in technology and culture in the late nineteenth century, to the development of electronic televisual systems in the early twentieth century. Along the way, we will investigate the philosophy, folklore, engineering practices, and satires that went into making television a useful medium.

This book examines the media history of swarm research and its significance to current socio-technological processes.

This book interrogates how people engage with their violent past, both within their families and as members of a national community, when living in an extremely complicated society with a short history of independence and a desire to belong to Europe.

The humanities include disciplines as diverse as literary theory, linguistics, history, film studies, theology, and philosophy. Do these various fields of study have anything in common, which distinguishes them from e.g. physics or sociology? The tripartite division between the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities may seem self-

This book offers a fresh perspective on the association between mobility and the ethnocultural category 'Malay'.

Empire-building did not only involve the use of excessive violence against native communities, but also required the gathering of data about the native Other. This is a book about books, which looks at the writings of Western colonial administrators, company-men and map-makers who wrote about Southeast Asia in the 19th century. In the course of their information-gathering they had also framed the people of Southeast Asia in a manner that gave rise to Orientalist racial stereotypes that would be used again and again. Data-Gathering in Colonial Southeast Asia 1800-1900: Framing the Other revisits the era of colonial data-collecting to demonstrate the workings of the imperial echo chamber, and how in the discourse of 19th century colonial-capitalism data was effectively weaponized to serve the interests of Empire.

This collection provides the first interdisciplinary overview of the political nature of border deaths. The chapters address how this contested field is interpreted and represented by diverse actors and how statistics are widely (mis)used to support different readings of border deaths.

This book provides original, nuanced insights into social meanings of money and wealth in moral economies of Asia.

This book brings together papers that investigate the way Asian migrants experience, think about, perceive and utilize their bodies as part of the journeys they have embarked on.

This book builds on existing scholarship in a variety of disciplines on the topic of gender and sexuality in Islam.

This book highlights that the current tensions in Islam and the Muslim world are the result of historical dynamics as opposed to an alleged incompatibility between religious tradition and modernity.

This book examines an array of auteur-driven fiction and documentary independent film projects that have emerged since the turn of the millennium from East and Southeast Asia.

This book looks at local collective action and city government responses and its impact on the neighbourhood and the city in Pacific Asia.

An English and updated version of the popular introduction to literary studies.

The impact of French film critic Andr Bazin (1918-1958) on the development of film studies, though generally acknowledged, remains contested. Although he was a passionate initiator of film culture during his lifetime, his ideas have been challenged, defended and revived throughout his afterlife. Studying Film with Andr Bazin offers an entirely or

The evolution of the game industry and changes in the advertising landscape in recent years have led to a keen interest of marketers in using digital games for advertising purposes. However, despite the increasing interest in this marketing strategy, the potential of digital games as a medium to convey advertising messages remains unexploited.[-][-

Infanticide in Tudor and Stuart England explores one of society's darkest crimes using archival sources and discussing its representation in the drama, pamphlets and broadside ballads of the early modern period.

Religious Materiality in the Early Modern World investigates for the first time how seismic religious changes, a dramatic rise in the availability and consumption of goods, and new global connections transformed the nature and experience of religious material life.