Abstract Wood has been used by mankind since prehistory; therefore the presence of wood in cultural heritage is huge. The dendrochronological dating is considered one of the principal techniques for the study of wood of historical and architectural interest. When the tr...

Although published in close temporal proximity to one another, Don DeLillo’s Falling Man and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist provide markedly different outlooks on the impact of the 11 September 2001 attacks. As these two novels illustrate, 9/11 fiction acti...

This chapter introduces the state of the field in the historical climatology of the Middle Ages in Europe. This region and era witnessed significant human historical changes, as well as climatic phases identified as the Medieval Warm Period and the beginnings of the Lit...

Joyce regarded the Swiss Othmar Schoeck (1886–1957) as one of the most important contemporary composers, standing “head and shoulders over Stravinsky and Antheil as composer for orchestra and voice anyhow”. He was deeply impressed by a performance of Schoeck’s Lebendig ...

The actor Claud Sykes (1883–1963), who had come to Zurich in 1915, met Joyce in 1917. Together they founded the English Players, an English language theatre company that was active in Zurich between April 1918 and late 1919. Sykes moved back to England after the war. He...

Almost entirely overlooked throughout the 20th century, neglected by contemporary medical manuals, the clitoris has gradually returned centre stage thanks to Western feminism.

While the previous chapter was necessarily concerned (given the absence of recorded history) with the movement of things, this chapter engages with the history of ideas and recent theories regarding cultural transmission and the circulation of representations. It is aga...

In October 1881, the “Gunfight at the O.K. (‘Old Kindersley’) Corral,” a combat between lawmen and members of a group of outlaws, the so-called “Cowboys”, took place in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. Tombstone was a booming mining town near the Mexican border. The gunfig...

This chapter applies Roland Barthes’ analysis of the mythical accounts that underpinned the belief system of the bourgeois ideology in France during the Cold War period to the contemporary narratives that unite anti-globalization movements today. They have in common a t...

This chapter tells the story of Joyce’s grave in Fluntern Cemetery; it describes other physical memorials to Joyce throughout the city ranging from a pub named after him to two challenging works of conceptual art by Hannes Vogel. It also tells the story of the Zurich Ja...