a groundbreaking work on how the topic of scale provides an entirely new understanding of inca material culture

although questions of form and style are fundamental to art history, the issue of scale has been surprisingly neglected. yet, scale and scaled relationships are essential to the visual cultures of many societies from around the world, especially in the andes. in scale and the incas, andrew hamilton presents a groundbreaking theoretical framework for analyzing scale, and then applies this approach to inca art, architecture, and belief systems.

the incas were one of humanity's great civilizations, but their lack of a written language has prevented widespread appreciation of their sophisticated intellectual tradition. expansive in scope, this book examines many famous works of inca art including machu picchu and the dumbarton oaks tunic, more enigmatic artifacts like the sayhuite stone and capacocha offerings, and a range of relatively unknown objects in diverse media including fiber, wood, feathers, stone, and metalwork. ultimately, hamilton demonstrates how the incas used scale as an effective mode of expression in their vast multilingual and multiethnic empire.

lavishly illustrated with stunning color plates created by the author, the book's pages depict artifacts alongside scale markers and silhouettes of hands and bodies, allowing readers to gauge scale in multiple ways. the pioneering visual and theoretical arguments of scale andthe incas not only rewrite understandings of inca art, but also provide a benchmark for future studies of scale in art from other cultures.

reimagining how we understand and write about the indigenous listening experience?

hungry listening is the first book to consider listening from both indigenous and settler colonial perspectives. a critical response to what has been called the “whiteness of sound studies,” dylan robinson evaluates how decolonial practices of listening emerge from increasing awareness of our listening positionality. this, he argues, involves identifying habits of settler colonial perception and contending with settler colonialism’s “tin ear” that renders silent the epistemic foundations of indigenous song as history, law, and medicine. 

with case studies on indigenous participation in classical music, musicals, and popular music, hungry listening examines structures of inclusion that reinforce western musical values. alongside this inquiry on the unmarked terms of inclusion in performing arts organizations and compositional practice, hungry listening offers examples of “doing sovereignty” in indigenous performance art, museum exhibition, and gatherings that support an indigenous listening resurgence.

throughout the book, robinson shows how decolonial and resurgent forms of listening might be affirmed by writing otherwise about musical experience. through event scores, dialogic improvisation, and forms of poetic response and refusal, he demands a reorientation toward the act of reading as a way of listening. indigenous relationships to the life of song are here sustained in writing that finds resonance in the intersubjective experience between listener, sound, and space. 

sissi's world offers a transdisciplinary approach to the study of the habsburg empress elisabeth of austria. it investigates the myths, legends, and representations across literature, art, film, and other media of one of the most popular, revered, and misunderstood female figures in european cultural history.

sissi's world explores the cultural foundations for the endurance of the sissi legends and the continuing fascination with the beautiful empress: a bavarian duchess born in 1837, the longest-serving austrian empress, and the queen of hungary who died in 1898 at the hands of a crazed anarchist.

despite the continuing fascination with "the beloved sissi," the habsburg empress, her impact, and legacy have received scant attention from scholars. this collection will go beyond the popular biographical accounts, recountings of her mythic beauty, and scattered studies of her well-known eccentricities to offer transdisciplinary cultural perspectives across art, film, fashion, history, literature, and media.

the material and intellectual presence of egypt is at the heart of western culture, religion and art from antiquity to the present. this volume aims to provide a long term and interdisciplinary perspective on egypt and its mnemohistory, taking theories on objects and their agency as its main point of departure. the central questions the book addresses are why, from the first millennium bc onwards, things and concepts egyptian are to be found in such a great variety of places throughout european history and how we can account for their enduring impact over time. by taking a radically object-oriented perspective on this question, this book is also a major contribution to current debates on the agency of artefacts across archaeology, anthropology and art history.