Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at Columbia University

Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at Columbia University

Author: Columbia University

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 54

ISBN-13: 0231076487

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Why do smokers claim that the first cigarette of the day is the best? What is the biological basis behind some heavy drinkers' belief that the "hair-of-the-dog" method alleviates the effects of a hangover? Why does marijuana seem to affect ones problem-solving capacity? Intoxicating Minds is, in the author's words, "a grand excavation of drug myth." Neither extolling nor condemning drug use, it is a story of scientific and artistic achievement, war and greed, empires and religions, and lessons for the future. Ciaran Regan looks at each class of drugs, describing the historical evolution of their use, explaining how they work within the brain's neurophysiology, and outlining the basic pharmacology of those substances. From a consideration of the effect of stimulants, such as caffeine and nicotine, and the reasons and consequences of their sudden popularity in the seventeenth century, the book moves to a discussion of more modern stimulants, such as cocaine and ecstasy. In addition, Regan explains how we process memory, the nature of thought disorders, and therapies for treating depression and schizophrenia. Regan then considers psychedelic drugs and their perceived mystical properties and traces the history of placebos to ancient civilizations. Finally, Intoxicating Minds considers the physical consequences of our co-evolution with drugs -- how they have altered our very being -- and offers a glimpse of the brave new world of drug therapies.


The Columbia University Club

The Columbia University Club

Author: Columbia University Club

Publisher:

Published: 1907

Total Pages: 86

ISBN-13:

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Consists of, Incorporators, charter, constitution, house rules, officers and members of the Columbia University Club.


The Shape of Sex

The Shape of Sex

Author: Leah DeVun

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2021-05-25

Total Pages: 661

ISBN-13: 0231551363

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Winner, 2024 Haskins Medal, Medieval Academy of America Winner, 2023 Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize, History of Science Society Winner, 2022 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Historical Studies, American Academy of Religion Honorable Mention, 2023 John Boswell Prize, The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History (CLGBTH) Longlisted, 2022 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies, Lambda Literary Awards The Shape of Sex is a pathbreaking history of nonbinary sex, focusing on ideas and individuals who allegedly combined or crossed sex or gender categories from 200–1400 C.E. Ranging widely across premodern European thought and culture, Leah DeVun reveals how and why efforts to define “the human” so often hinged on ideas about nonbinary sex. The Shape of Sex examines a host of thinkers—theologians, cartographers, natural philosophers, lawyers, poets, surgeons, and alchemists—who used ideas about nonbinary sex as conceptual tools to order their political, cultural, and natural worlds. DeVun reconstructs the cultural landscape navigated by individuals whose sex or gender did not fit the binary alongside debates about animality, sexuality, race, religion, and human nature. The Shape of Sex charts an embrace of nonbinary sex in early Christianity, its brutal erasure at the turn of the thirteenth century, and a new enthusiasm for nonbinary transformations at the dawn of the Renaissance. Along the way, DeVun explores beliefs that Adam and Jesus were nonbinary-sexed; images of “monstrous races” in encyclopedias, maps, and illuminated manuscripts; justifications for violence against purportedly nonbinary outsiders such as Jews and Muslims; and the surgical “correction” of bodies that seemed to flout binary divisions. In a moment when questions about sex, gender, and identity have become incredibly urgent, The Shape of Sex casts new light on a complex and often contradictory past. It shows how premodern thinkers created a system of sex and embodiment that both anticipates and challenges modern beliefs about what it means to be male, female—and human.


Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Letters

Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Letters

Author: Emil J. Polak

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-02-11

Total Pages: 921

ISBN-13: 9004284672

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Letter writing was the major branch of rhetoric in the High Middle Ages (ars dictaminis) and Renaissance (ars epistolandi). As the primary source of discourse it played major roles in the history of education, the Latin language and literature, and its relation to grammar and oratory (ars arengandi). The letters are also a very rich source ranging from Church and State correspondence to social hierarchies and fiction. Several hundred authors, recognized as precursors of the Humanists, produced treatises, manuals, formularies and model letter collections found in a few thousand largely unstudied manuscripts. This is the third and final volume of the Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Letters, a singular reference work, a manuscript inventory of texts, most of which were examined in situ by Emil J. Polak in almost nine-hundred libraries and archives. The repertory is arranged alphabetically by country and city with standard details for each manuscript. Four indexes conclude the work.


Two Renaissance Book Hunters

Two Renaissance Book Hunters

Author: Poggio Bracciolini

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9780231096331

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A reissue of the 1974 Columbia U. Press edition of the letters of Florentine humanist Poggius (1380-1459) to his friend de Niccolis regarding the rediscovery of lost classical texts. Translated (from the Latin) with notes by Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordon. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portla