Böcker utgivna av SUNY Press

Argues that the descriptions of buildings frequently encountered in Victorian novels offer more than evocative settings for characters and plot; instead, such descriptions signal these novels' self-reflexive consideration of the structure itself.

A study of the significance of the visual arts in Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics in relation to the work of five artists not known or discussed by him.

"What makes something funny? Some take this question to be effectively unanswerable, while others turn to comic theory. Funny How? offers a new approach, showing how humor can be analyzed without killing the joke. Alex Clayon writes that the brevity of a sketch or skit and its typical rejection of narrative development make it comedy concentrate, providing a rich field for exploring how humor works. Focusing on a dozen or so skits and scenes, Clayton shows precisely how sketch comedy appeals to the funny bone and engages our philosophical imagination. He posits that since humor is about persuading an audience to laugh, it can be understood as a form of rhetoric. Through vivid, highly readable analyses of individual sketches, Clayton argues that Aristotle's three forms of appeal-logos, the appeal to reason; ethos, the appeal to communality; and pathos, the appeal to emotion-can form the basis for illuminating the inner workings of humor. He draws on both popular and lesser-known examples from the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere, across film and television, from Monty Python's Flying Circus to Key and Peele, via Saturday Night Live, Airplane!, and Smack the Pony"--

Slapstick film comedy may be grounded in idiocy and failure, but the genre is far more sophisticated than it initially appears. In this book, Burke Hilsabeck suggests that slapstick is often animated by a philosophical impulse to understand the cinema. He looks closely at movies and gags that represent the conditions and conventions of cinema production and demonstrates that film comedians display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium--from Buster Keaton's encounter with the film screen in Sherlock Jr. (1924) to Harpo Marx's lip-sync turn with a phonograph in Monkey Business (1931) to Jerry Lewis's film-on-film performance in The Errand Boy (1961). The Slapstick Camera follows the observation of philosopher Stanley Cavell that self-reference is one way in which "film exists in a state of philosophy." By moving historically across the studio era, the book looks at a series of comedies that play with the changing technologies and economic practices behind film production and describes how comedians offered their own understanding of the nature of film and filmmaking. Hilsabeck locates the hidden intricacies of Hollywood cinema in a place where one might least expect them--the clowns, idiots, and scoundrels of slapstick comedy.

A study of novelty through analyses of the language of announcement in revolutionary texts.

Argues that the role of Buddhism in modern Japanese prose literature has been significantly overlooked.

Explores the possibilities and challenges of Asian immigrant Christian leadership in the United States.

Presents a new vision of the Buddhist history and philosophy of emptiness in Tibet.

Explains the Hindi novel's role in anticipating and creating the story of middle-class modernity and modernization in North India.

Argues that symbolism is an important and unique element of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology.

Argues for postcoloniality as a model for philosophical practice.

Examines Hegel's insights regarding the complexity and significance of embodiment in human life, identity, and experience.

Offers the first focused study of the shifei debates of the Warring States period in ancient China and challenges the imposition of Western conceptual categories onto these debates.

Examines the history of the Italian anarchist movement in New London, Connecticut.