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arts_briefly03_0515WORLDLY GURUS AND SPIRITUAL KINGS: Architecture and Asceticism in Medieval India
By Tamara I. Sears G’99 Gr’04 (Yale University Press, 2014, $75.) The matha, or Hindu monastery, which developed in India at the turn of the first millennium, represented an impressive architectural innovation. Moreover, it signaled the institutionalization of asceticism into a formalized monastic practice and the emergence of the guru as a public figure. Sears, assistant professor of South Asian art and architectural history at Yale, uses new primary research to examine the histories of six monasteries in central India. Buy this book

arts_briefly02_0515ELECTRIC CITY: General Electric in Schenectady By Julia Kirk Blackwelder CW’64 (Texas A&M University Press, 2014, $35.00.) Using archival sources, personal interviews, and company records, Blackwelder (professor emerita of history at Texas A&M) portrays General Electric as a successful corporation that focused on technology for social good. She also examines race, gender, and class in the workplace culture and GE’s impact on community life in the rustbelt city of Schenectady, New York. Buy this book

arts_briefly04SHAKESPEARE’S MEDIEVAL CRAFT: Remnants of the Mysteries on the London Stage Kurt A. Schreyer Gr’07 (Cornell University Press, 2014, $49.95.) Schreyer, associate professor of English at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, examines the Chester Banns, an annual 16th-century proclamation announcing the city’s cycle of “mystery plays” (a form of late medieval English biblical drama), as well as the material features of Shakespeare’s stage. In doing so, he demonstrates the central importance of medieval stage objects. Buy this book

arts_briefly01_0515IF WE LIVED HERE By Lindsey J. Palmer C’05 (Kensington Publishing Corporation, 2015, $15.) Palmer, author of Pretty in Ink, explores the modern city again in her new novel, this time through the lens of the real-estate market. Emma and Nick, a couple in their 30s, decide to leap into apartment sharing, a choice that soon brings unexpected concerns for Emma. Buy this book

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