Molla Nasreddin
Molla Nasreddin

Author: Slavs and Tatars

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-02-16

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1838608842

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Published between 1906 and 1930, Molla Nasreddin was a satirical Azeri periodical edited by Jalil Mammadguluzadeh and named after the legendary Sufi wise man-cum-fool of the Middle Ages (who reputedly lived in the thirteenth century in the Ottoman Empire). With an acerbic sense of humour and realist illustrations, Molla Nasreddin attacked the hypocrisy of the Muslim clergy, the colonial policies of European nations, and later the United States, towards the rest of the world and the corruption of local elites, while at the same time arguing for Westernisation, educational reform and equal rights for women. The publication was an instant success-selling half of its initial print run of 1,000 in the first day-and within months would sell 5000 copies per issue, which was record-breaking for the time. It became one of the most influential publications of its kind and was read across the Muslim world. Slavs and Tatars, a leading art collective focusing on Eurasia, has brought together this collection of sketches, caricatures and satirical writings from Molla Nasreddin, in the process revealing an unusual manifestation of nationalism in the Caucasus and its surrounding regions.

On the Threshold of Eurasia
On the Threshold of Eurasia

Author: Leah Feldman

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-10-15

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1501726528

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On the Threshold of Eurasia explores the idea of the Russian and Soviet "East" as a political, aesthetic, and scientific system of ideas that emerged through a series of intertextual encounters produced by Russians and Turkic Muslims on the imperial periphery amidst the revolutionary transition from 1905 to 1929. Identifying the role of Russian and Soviet Orientalism in shaping the formation of a specifically Eurasian imaginary, Leah Feldman examines connections between avant-garde literary works; Orientalist historical, geographic and linguistic texts; and political essays written by Russian and Azeri Turkic Muslim writers and thinkers. Tracing these engagements and interactions between Russia and the Caucasus, Feldman offers an alternative vision of empire, modernity, and anti-imperialism from the vantage point not of the metropole but from the cosmopolitan centers at the edges of the Russian and later Soviet empires. In this way, On the Threshold of Eurasia illustrates the pivotal impact that the Caucasus (and the Soviet periphery more broadly) had—through the founding of an avant-garde poetics animated by Russian and Arabo-Persian precursors, Islamic metaphysics, and Marxist-Leninist theories of language —on the monumental aesthetic and political shifts of the early twentieth century.

Storming the Heavens
Storming the Heavens

Author: Daniel Peris

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9780801434853

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A member of the first generation of scholars allowed access to formerly closed Soviet archives, Daniel Peris offers a new perspective on the Bolshevik regime's antireligious policy from 1917 until 1941. He focuses on the activities of the League of the Militant Godless, the organization founded by the regime in 1925 to spearhead its efforts to promote atheism and he presents the League's propaganda, activities, and personnel at both the central and the provincial levels. On the basis of his research in archives in rural Pskov and industrial Iaroslavl', as well as in the central party and state archives in Moscow, Peris emphasizes the transformation of the ideological agenda formulated in Moscow as it moved to its intended audience. Storming the Heavens places the League within the broader context of a Bolshevik political culture that often acted at cross purposes to undermine the regime's stated goals. The League's lack of success, argues Peris, reflects the bureaucratic orientation of Bolshevik political culture, particularly in how it pursued the radical social vision of 1917. His book provides a framework for undertanding secularization in revolutionary contexts as well as contributing to the on-going reassessments of the Bolshevik era.

God Mocks
God Mocks

Author: Terry Lindvall

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2015-11-13

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1479883824

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Winner of the 2016 Religious Communication Association Book of the Year Award In God Mocks, Terry Lindvall ventures into the muddy and dangerous realm of religious satire, chronicling its evolution from the biblical wit and humor of the Hebrew prophets through the Roman Era and the Middle Ages all the way up to the present. He takes the reader on a journey through the work of Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales, Cervantes, Jonathan Swift, and Mark Twain, and ending with the mediated entertainment of modern wags like Stephen Colbert. Lindvall finds that there is a method to the madness of these mockers: true satire, he argues, is at its heart moral outrage expressed in laughter. But there are remarkable differences in how these religious satirists express their outrage.The changing costumes of religious satirists fit their times. The earthy coarse language of Martin Luther and Sir Thomas More during the carnival spirit of the late medieval period was refined with the enlightened wit of Alexander Pope. The sacrilege of Monty Python does not translate well to the ironic voices of Soren Kierkegaard. The religious satirist does not even need to be part of the community of faith. All he needs is an eye and ear for the folly and chicanery of religious poseurs. To follow the paths of the satirist, writes Lindvall, is to encounter the odd and peculiar treasures who are God’s mouthpieces. In God Mocks, he offers an engaging look at their religious use of humor toward moral ends.

TEACHING A HORSE TO SING
TEACHING A HORSE TO SING

Author: Delshad Karanjia

Publisher:

Published: 2021-04-05

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9789390652570

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Akbar and Birbal, Krishnadeva Raya and Tenali Raman, Vikram and Vetal, Mullah Nasruddin.... The exploits of these legendary wits, rulers, wise men, riddlers, and tricksters are familiar to every Indian who loves a good story and a good laugh. In Teaching a Horse to Sing: Tales of Uncommon Sense from India and Elsewhere, Delshad Karanjia retells the best-known stories featuring these characters and a few others from around the world. This volume is an eclectic collection of 150 tales from across the world. Teaching a Horse to Sing brings together some of the timeless themes in storytelling like the difference between good and evil, and the trials of day-to-day life. Equally humourous and wise, this collection is an entertaining and instructive read for all ages.

The Photobook
The Photobook

Author: Patrizia Di Bello

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-08-07

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1000211800

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The photograph found a home in the book before it won for itself a place on the gallery wall. Only a few years after the birth of photography, the publication of Henry Fox Talbot's "The Pencil of Nature" heralded a new genre in the history of the book, one in which the photograph was the primary vehicle of expression and communication, or stood in equal if sometimes conflicted partnership with the written word. In this book, practicing photographers and writers across several fields of scholarship share a range of fresh approaches to reading the photobook, developing new ways of understanding how meaning is shaped by an image's interaction with its text and context and engaging with the visual, tactile and interactive experience of the photobook in all its dimensions. Through close studies of individual works, the photobook from fetishised objet d'art to cheaply-printed booklet is explored and its unique creative and cultural contributions celebrated.