"Generations past have embraced a robust array of rituals and customs surrounding death and bereavement. When did we forget how to grieve well? When Amanda Held Opelt suffered a season of loss-including three miscarriages and the death of her grandmother and culminating in the unexpected death of her sister, New York Times bestselling writer Rachel Held Evans-she was faced with sorrow she didn't know to face. And through her career as an international...

"From the beginning, American dance has been an exciting fusion of many disparate influences, with European traditions of ballet and social dancing encountering Native American rituals and African American improvisations to create something new and extraordinary. In this landmark collection, dance critic Mindy Aloff brings together an astonishing array of writersdancers and dance creators, impresarios and critics, and enthusiastic literary observersto...

"An intimate look at one of the greatest leaders the world has ever known ... through the eyes of a child whose life he changed forever. To the rest of the world, Nelson Mandela was a giant: an anti-apartheid revolutionary, a world-renowned humanitarian, and South Africa's first black president. To Ndaba Mandela, he was simply 'Granddad.' In Going to the Mountain, Ndaba tells how he came to live with Mandela shortly after he turned eleven--having...

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission could not heal all the wounds left behind by the apartheid era. Thandeka, a journalist, is still traumatized by the murder of a schoolgirl, which she witnessed years before. Opening shot: a woman is discovered passed out in her car. Next she is in an ambulance having a flashback to the time of South Africa's State of Emergency 13 years ago, a period of maximum police repression. Third sequence: the woman,...

"A groundbreaking biography reveals the haunted origins of the man who created Dracula and traces the psychosexual contours of late Victorian society. Bram Stoker, despite having a name nearly as famous as his legendary undead Count, has remained a puzzling enigma. Now, in this psychological and cultural portrait, David J. Skal exhumes the inner world and strange genius of the writer who conjured an undying cultural icon. Stoker was inexplicably paralyzed...

Through the eyes of funeral director Isaiah Owens, the beauty and grace of African American funerals are brought to life. Filmed at the Owens Funeral Home in Harlem and the rural South, director Christine Turner's Homegoings takes an up-close look at the rarely seen world of undertaking in the black community, where funeral rites draw on a rich palette of tradition, history and celebration. It reveals the special status of undertakers in the community;...

"For more than twenty-five years, All you need to know about the music business has been regarded as the definitive guide to the music industry. Now in its tenth edition, Donald Passman leads novices and experts alike through what has been the most profound change in the music business since the days of wax cylinders and piano rolls: streaming. For the first time in history, music is no longer monetized by selling something--it's monetized by how...

"The early 1950s, when Robert Rauschenberg launched his career, was the heyday of the heroic gestural painting of Abstract Expressionism. Rauschenberg challenged this tradition, inventing new intermedia forms of art making that shaped the decades to come. Published in conjunction with the inaugural 21st-century retrospective of this defining figure, this book offers fresh perspectives on Rauschenberg's widely celebrated Combines (1954--64) and silkscreen...

A scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners, in which a weekend at a marquis's countryside chateau lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haute bourgeois acquaintances. The film was a victim of tumultuous history: it was subjected to cuts after premiere audiences rejected it in 1939, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II. It wasn't reconstructed until 1959. That version, which has stunned...

This course is a journey thorugh time and place from the perspective of forensic science and criminal history. It examines technical advancements and politics and legal issues regarding criminal investigations. The course includes Dr. Murray's own forensic casework.