Raja Adal
Raja Adal received his doctorate from Harvard University and is an Assistant Professor of Japanese history at the University of Pittsburgh who works on aesthetics and the material history of writing from the nineteenth century to the present. His first book is entitled Beauty in the Age of Empire: Japan, Egypt, and the Global History of Aesthetic Education (Columbia University Press, 2019), and is currently working on a global history of scripts and their relationship to technology. Although a historian of modern Japan, his research is global and includes archival research in Egypt, France, Great Britain, India, Lebanon, and Turkey.
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Books by Raja Adal
Beauty in the Age of Empire is a global history of aesthetic education focused on how Western practices were adopted, transformed, and repurposed in Egypt and Japan. Raja Adal uncovers the emergence of aesthetic education in modern schools and its role in making a broad spectrum of ideologies from fascism to humanism attractive. With aesthetics, educators sought to enchant children with sounds and sights, using their ears and eyes to make ideologies into objects of desire. Spanning multiple languages and continents, and engaging with the histories of nationalism, art, education, and transnational exchanges, Beauty in the Age of Empire offers a strikingly original account of the rise of aesthetics in modern schools and the modern world. It shows that, while aesthetics is important to all societies, it was all the more important for those countries on the receiving end of Western expansion, which could not claim to be wealthier or more powerful than Western empires, only more beautiful.
* The volume can be purchased directly from Columbia University Press: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/beauty-in-the-age-of-empire/9780231191166
DISCOUNT CODE: CUP30 (for customers in the United States, Canada, and most of Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia)
* For customers in the United Kingdom, Europe, Africa, Middle East, South Asia, and South Africa, please contact our distributor John Wiley & Sons, to order a book and for information regarding price and shipping cost. E-mail: customer@wiley.com. Tel: (1243) 843-291. Fax: (1243) 843-296
* For customers in Australia and New Zealand, please contact Footprint Books to purchase books: http://www.footprint.com.au/
Papers by Raja Adal
Beauty in the Age of Empire is a global history of aesthetic education focused on how Western practices were adopted, transformed, and repurposed in Egypt and Japan. Raja Adal uncovers the emergence of aesthetic education in modern schools and its role in making a broad spectrum of ideologies from fascism to humanism attractive. With aesthetics, educators sought to enchant children with sounds and sights, using their ears and eyes to make ideologies into objects of desire. Spanning multiple languages and continents, and engaging with the histories of nationalism, art, education, and transnational exchanges, Beauty in the Age of Empire offers a strikingly original account of the rise of aesthetics in modern schools and the modern world. It shows that, while aesthetics is important to all societies, it was all the more important for those countries on the receiving end of Western expansion, which could not claim to be wealthier or more powerful than Western empires, only more beautiful.
* The volume can be purchased directly from Columbia University Press: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/beauty-in-the-age-of-empire/9780231191166
DISCOUNT CODE: CUP30 (for customers in the United States, Canada, and most of Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia)
* For customers in the United Kingdom, Europe, Africa, Middle East, South Asia, and South Africa, please contact our distributor John Wiley & Sons, to order a book and for information regarding price and shipping cost. E-mail: customer@wiley.com. Tel: (1243) 843-291. Fax: (1243) 843-296
* For customers in Australia and New Zealand, please contact Footprint Books to purchase books: http://www.footprint.com.au/