Emily Levine - Böcker

Called by Heinrich Heine a city of dull and culturally limited merchants where poets only go to die, Hamburg would seem an improbable setting for a major new intellectual movement. Yet it was there, at a new university in an unintellectual banking city at the end of World War I, that a trio of innovative thinkers emerged. Together, Aby Warburg, Ernst Cassirer, and Erwin Panofsky developed new avenues of thought in cultural theory, art history, and philosophy, changing the course of cultural and intellectual history not just in Weimar Germany, but throughout the world. In Dreamland of Humanists, Emily J. Levine considers not just these men, but the historical significance of the time and place where their ideas first took form. Shedding light on the origins of their work in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Levine clarifies the social, political, and economic pressures faced by German-Jewish scholars on the periphery of Germany's intellectual world. And by examining the role that this context plays in our analysis of their ideas, Levine confirms that great ideas - like great intellectuals - must come from somewhere.

Deemed by Heinrich Heine a city of merchants where poets go to die, Hamburg was an improbable setting for a major intellectual movement. Yet it was there, at the end of World War I, at a new university in this commercial center, that a trio of twentieth-century pioneers in the humanities emerged. Working side by side, Aby Warburg, Ernst Cassirer, and Erwin Panofsky developed new avenues in art history, cultural history, and philosophy, changing the course of cultural and intellectural history in Weimar Germany and throughout the world. In Dreamland of Humanists, Emily J. Levine considers not just these men but also the historical significance of the time and place where their ideas took form. Shedding light on the origins of their work on the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Levine clarifies the social, political, and economic pressures faced by German-Jewish scholars on the periphery of Germany's intellectual world. By examining the role that context plays in our analysis of ideas, Levine confirms that great ideas-like great intellectuals-must come from somewhere.

Winner of the 2015 J. Franklin Jameson AwardWinner of the 2014 Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) AwardWinner of the 2014 Nebraska Book Award in Nonfiction/ReferenceDuring the 1920s and 1930s, Josephine Waggoner (1871–1943), a Lakota woman who had been educated at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, grew increasingly concerned that the history and culture of her people were being lost as elders died without passing along their knowledge. A skilled writer, Waggoner set out to record the lifeways of her people and correct much of the misinformation about them spread by white writers, journalists, and scholars of the day. To accomplish this task, she traveled to several Lakota and Dakota reservations to interview chiefs, elders, traditional tribal historians, and other tribal members, including women.   Published for the first time and augmented by extensive annotations, Witness offers a rare participant’s perspective on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lakota and Dakota life. The first of Waggoner’s two manuscripts presented here includes extraordinary firsthand and as-told-to historical stories by tribal members, such as accounts of life in the Powder River camps and at the agencies in the 1870s, the experiences of a mixed-blood HÚŋkpapȟa girl at the first off-reservation boarding school, and descriptions of traditional beliefs. The second manuscript consists of Waggoner’s sixty biographies of Lakota and Dakota chiefs and headmen based on eyewitness accounts and interviews with the men themselves. Together these singular manuscripts provide new and extensive information on the history, culture, and experiences of the Lakota and Dakota peoples.