Books published by State University of New York Press

The interdisciplinary approaches presented here investigate food in India and Sri Lanka for its wide ranging cultural meaning and uses. The authors examine food in religious and literary contexts, where saints, ritualists, poets, and the divine often provide grounds for a practically inexhaustible hermeneutics. The Eternal Food focuses on reflexive cultural expressions and personal experiences that food elicits in the region. Concerned with food as an "essence" and as an essential experience, the authors give special attention to Hindu saints for whom food, firmly grounded in moral ideals and practice, represents a cosmic divine principle at one level, and a most immediate and intimate material reality at another.In the cultural diversity of India, the authors work with several conceptual models and meanings of food. They demonstrate how it reflects common social understandings about social caste, the cure and prevention of ailments, its ability to alter moods and motivations, or affect innate personal dispositions, personal spiritual pursuits and attainments. In its sweep and depth, food presents a powerful cultural lens for seeing how practical, ritual, and spiritual spheres of life conjoin.

Exploring the cultural perception of animals in early Chinese thought, this careful reading of Warring States and Han dynasty writings analyzes how views of animals were linked to human self perception and investigates the role of the animal world in the conception of ideals of sagehood and socio-political authority. Roel Sterckx shows how perceptions of the animal world influenced early Chinese views of man's place among the living species and in the world at large. He argues that the classic Chinese perception of the world did not insist on clear categorical or ontological boundaries between animals, humans, and other creatures such as ghosts and spirits. Instead the animal realm was positioned as part of an organic whole and the mutual relationships among the living species--both as natural and cultural creatures--were characterized as contingent, continuous, and interdependent.

Provides in-depth analyses of key moments in Brazilian utopianism, including theologico-political, matriarchal, environmental, and work-free utopias.

English-language translations of traditional plays from the marionette puppet theater of Northern China.

Explores the rich history, collections, and significance of the only museum in the United States dedicated solely to the art form of dance.

presents work by New York-based sculptor Oded Halahmy, a Jewish native of Baghdad, alongside that of eight contemporary artists from Iraq: Hayder Ali, Amal Alwan, Mohammed al Hamadany, Ismail Khayat, Hanaa Malallah, Hassan Massoudy, Naziha Rashid and Qasim Sabti.

A collection of Raj's groundbreaking ethnographic studies of "vernacular" Catholic traditions in Tamil Nadu, India.

A new translation and commentary of the Analects for contemporary audiences.