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This is an original and accessible introduction to the modern idea of history and its value, and an indispensable companion to the study of history and its philosophical underpinnings. The book answers two basic questions: What is history? And what is its value? It also shows how the answers to these questions are mutually dependent. The old view that history is the teacher of life, for instance, assumes that the past is a reservoir of examples from which moral lessons for the present can be drawn. The subjects discussed include history as the teacher of life, the need for truth and objectivity, the moral standards of the historian, realism and the value of historical insight, historical explanation and understanding, the intelligibility of the historical process, the tragedy of history, the politics of history-writing, and the close connection between history, narrative, and the desire for justice. These topics are discussed with the help of inspiring and influential historians and philosophers such as Thucydides, Ranke, Hegel, Nietzsche, Collingwood, Arendt, White, Hunt, and Ankersmit.

Performative methods are playing an increasingly prominent role in research into historical production processes, materials, and bodily knowledge and sensory skills, and in forms of education and public engagement in classrooms and museums. This book offers, for the first time, sustained, interdisciplinary reflections on performative methods, variously known as Reconstruction, Re-enactment, Replication, Reproduction and Reworking (RRR) practices across the fields of history of science, archaeology, art history, conservation, musicology and anthropology. Each of these fields has distinct histories, approaches, tools and research questions. Researchers in the historical disciplines have used reconstructions to learn about the materials and practices of the past, while anthropologists and ethnographers have more often studied the re-enactments themselves, participating in these performances as engaged observers. In this book, an interdisciplinary group of authors bring their experiences of RRR practices within their discipline into conversation with RRR practices in other disciplines, providing a basis for interdisciplinary cross-fertilization.

How are intergenerational relationships playing out in and through the digital rhythms of the household? Through extensive fieldwork in Tokyo, Shanghai and Melbourne, this book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices. It investigates the rise of self-tracking, quantified self and informal practices of care at distance as part of contemporary household dynamics.

Poussin's Women: Sex and Gender in the Artist's Works examines the paintings and drawings of the well-known seventeenth-century French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) from a gender studies perspective, focusing on a critical analysis of his representations of women. The book's thematic chapters investigate Poussin's women in their roles as predators, as lustful or the objects of lust, as lovers, killers, victims, heroines, or models of virtue. Poussin's paintings reflect issues of gender within his social situation as he consciously or unconsciously articulated its conflicts and assumptions. A gender studies approach brings to light new critical insights that illuminate how the artist represented women, both positively and negatively, within the framework in his seventeenth-century culture. This book covers the artist's works from Classical mythology, Roman history, Tasso, and the Bible. It serves as a good overview of Poussin as an artist, discussing the latest research and including new interpretations of his major works.

With changing technologies and social habits, the communal cinema experience would seem to be a legacy from another era. However, the 2010s saw a surge in interest for screening films in other temporary public settings. This desire to turn ruins, pubs, galleries, parks, village halls, and even boats into ephemeral cinema spaces is a search for ways of being and working together, using cinema as a framework for social encounter. This book documents contemporary practices of pop-up and sitespecific cinema exhibition in the UK (with a focus on Scotland), tracing their links with historical forms of non-theatrical exhibition such as public hall cinema and fairground bioscopes. Through archival research, observation and interviews with film exhibitors and programmers, the book explores how exhibitors create ephemeral social spaces, how they negotiate the various uses and configurations of films and venues, and how they reinvent cinemagoing from its margins.