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This thesis is a comparative study of Persepolis and the Akropolis as monumental centres of empire. It considers the relationship between style and politics on the two sites, specifically, the extent to which stylistic variations can be explained by their capacity to promote different political effects. Starting from Gell's proposition that 'art is a system of action intended to change the world, rather than encode symbolic propositions about it,' it examines the precise mechanisms, in particular the eliciting of cognitive or behavourial responses, by which the architecture and sculpture of the two sites have social consequences. It seeks to demonstrate a relationship between variations in the material traits of the sites and the political systems of the two states, defined both in terms of the autocratic/democratic distinction, but also the different structures of the two empires. The comparison of the two sites gives greater analytical security to the interpretation: they function as controls for each other. Each of the five chapters considers a different material aspect of the sites. The first chapter considers the spatial layout of the two sites; the second considers the function of the architectural sculpture of the two sites as decorative art; the third examines the sculpture as human images; the fourth considers the relationship between the iconography of the reliefs and the practice on the sites; the fifth looks at the construction of memory and time. In conclusion, common themes running through the chapters, such as control and legibility, are noted, and the extent to which they form a deliberate political programme is discussed.

"Until this century, Northern Nigeria was a major center of textile production and trade. Textile Ascendancies: Aesthetics, Production, and Trade in Northern Nigeria examines this dramatic change in textile aesthetics, technologies, and social values in order to explain the extraordinary shift in textile demand, production, and trade. Textile Ascendancies provides information for the study of the demise of textile manufacturing outside Nigeria. The book also suggests the conundrum considered by George Orwell concerning the benefits and disadvantages of 'mechanical progress,' and digital progress, for human existence. While textile mill workers in northern Nigeria were proud to participate in the mechanization of weaving, the 'tendency for the mechanization of the world' represented by more efficient looms and printing equipment in China has contributed to the closing of Nigerian mills and unemployment. Textile Ascendancies will appeal to anthropologists for its analyses of social identity as well as how the ethnic identity of consumers influences continued handwoven textile production. The consideration of aesthetics and fashionable dress will appeal to specialists in textiles and clothing. It will be useful to economic historians for the comparative analysis of textile manufacturing decline in the 21st century. It will also be of interest to those thinking about global futures, about digitalization, and how new ways of making cloth and clothing may provide both employment and environmentally sound production practices."

Dorothea E. von Mücke is professor of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She is the author of Virtue and the Veil of Illusion: Generic Innovation and the Pedagogical Project and The Seduction of the Occult and the Rise of the Fantastic Tale. Her coedited books include Body and Text in the Eighteenth Century and New History of German Literature.

Abstract
The article at hand analyses the aesthetic dimension of contemporary "tech companies," particularly how their characteristic rhetoric of creativity, collaboration and disruption is built into the aesthetics of the physical work environments. For that purpose, proceduralist reading and environmental storytelling, usually applied to analyse meaning-making in digital game spaces, are adapted to conduct a comparative spatial affordance analysis on material from Officesnapshots, one of the largest online repositories for workspace documentation. Expanding upon earlier definitions of spatial affordances as quasi-textual features, the article defines the design elements of tech offices as a continuation of verbal and (audio-)visual corporate rhetoric employed by companies like Google, Facebook or Etsy. It thereby contributes a material-semiotic dimension to current debates about the epistemic implications of these software platforms, which José van Dijck summarises using the term "platform society." Besides game and play studies, elements of architectural semiotics and cultural analyses of support spaces (e.g. Kracauer 1999 and Moran 2005) as well as broader concepts such as the politics of theming (Freitag 2017) or the embedding of digital technologies into physical spaces (Kitchin and Dodge 2011) complement the theoretical framework.

Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer undoubtedly belong among the most important representatives of twentieth-century phenomenological hermeneutics, which represents, in turn, one of the major traditions within so-called continental philosophy. Respectively teacher and pupil, during their long and philosophically intense lives and careers Heidegger and Gadamer greatly contributed to the development of philosophical thought in our age, providing significant and often decisive contributions in various fields of philosophical inquiry. Their main works, Being and Time (1927) and Truth and Method (1960), respectively amount to the great "classics" of contemporary philosophy, both being extraordinarily influential books without which the history of twentieth- and also twenty-first century philosophy as we know it would not be conceivable. This book addresses a number of problems concerning aesthetics, metaphysics, language and philosophical anthropology, by focusing on Heidegger's and Gadamer's specific contributions in these fields, and by establishing fruitful and original comparisons between their views and those of other relevant thinkers of our time, such as Hannah Arendt, Richard Rorty and John McDowell. The book adopts a comparative approach that portrays the complex philosophical problems and concepts at the core of this investigation from various points of view, thus broadening the philosophical horizon, generating a more comprehensive perspective, and underlining the compatibility of different philosophical views

In my dissertation, "Refamiliarizing Empathy through the Aesthetics of James Joyce and Agustín Yáñez," I perform a comparative study of aesthetic portrayals of empathy primarily through two representative novels of Latin-American and European modernism: Yáñez's Al filo del agua (The Edge of the Storm) and a work that greatly inspired it, Joyce's Ulysses. In doing so, I advance a new interdisciplinary approach that incorporates aesthetics, Lacanian psychoanalysis, narratology, ethics, and the haptic in order to show how these two narratives, despite generally being more associated with modernist themes such as alienation, not only contain but construct empathy as well. In Al filo del agua I focus primarily on the character Father Reyes as a figure of empathy, while in Ulysses I namely analyze Bloom, particularly within the blind stripling scene. I also include an examination of the striking woodblock prints that accompany the original edition of Al filo del agua in order to demonstrate how this text features empathy not only textually, but also visually. I ultimately argue that empathy primarily makes an appearance in Al filo del agua through its more political form, prosocial action, while in Ulysses empathy occurs principally in the form of perspective taking via the perspicacious musings of Bloom.

Abstract
Chinese aesthetics mainly derives from Confucianism and Taoism. This essay attempts to revisit the main theories that run through Confucian and Taoist aesthetics in order to make them comprehensible within a broader global context. Aesthetics in Confucianism pertains to fields as various as literature, art, music and the natural environment. It holds the idea of ren 仁 (human-heartedness) as the essential attribute of beauty. In comparison, Taoist aesthetics emphasizes the centrality of tao 道 (way), which transpires through naturalness, and, as such, considers natural forms to offer the highest degree of beauty. In order to understand variations of representation and interpretation in Confucian and Taoist aesthetics, the essay discusses accordingly the three fundamentals of Chinese aesthetics: beauty, feeling of beauty, and artistic image. This comparative study will hopefully bring to light differences and similarities between two traditions, which may also resonate within the wider context of modern global aesthetics.

In 12 case studies, this book examines the different ways in which Jihadi groups and their supporters use visualisation, sound production and aesthetic means to articulate their cause in online as well as offline contexts. Divided into four thematic sections, the chapters probe Jihadi appropriation of traditional and popular cultural expressions and show how, in turn, political activists appropriate extremist media to oppose and resist the propaganda. By conceptualising militant Islamist audiovisual productions as part of global media aesthetics and practices, the authors shed light on how religious actors, artists, civil society activists, global youth, political forces, security agencies and researchers engage with mediated manifestations of Jihadi ideology to deconstruct, reinforce, defy or oppose the messages. ; 328 Seiten

Through his numerous works on the philosophy of aesthetics, literature and writing Jacques Rancière has crafted a body of work based on the premise of equality as recognized through aesthetics. In the introduction to the English translation of Rancière's The Politics of Aesthetics, author Gabriel Rockhill writes Rancière supports abolishing "any presupposed inequalities of intelligence". Rancière argues against any "privileged position usurped by philosophy in its various attempts to speak for others, be it the proletariat, the poor, or anyone else who is not 'destined to think'" Rancière's political positioning of aesthetics finds "those who have no name, who remain invisible and inaudible, can only penetrate the police order [politics] via a mode of subjectivization that transforms the aesthetic coordinators of the community by implementing the universal presupposition of politics: we are all equal". I suggest Rancière's theories on the politics of aesthetics, literature and writing are present in letters written by 19th century Romantic poet John Keats.

The work aims to present how comparative aesthetics as such, in a sense of
transcultural aesthetics, has been actual and that its justification has
been found inside architectural parts of Japanese architect Tadao Ando.
Besides, the author has been seeking to register and percieve all the
elements of Ando?s architecture which on one side its basis and origin find
in Western architecture while on the other hand aimes to illuminate the
crucial moments of Ando?s work whose existence has been based on traditional
Japanese (Eastern) aesthetics of emptiness. Moreover, the interpretative
approach has been mostly guided by Figal reflexive notes/references which
thematize both important guidilenes of contemporary architecture as well as
fundamental concepts of Ando?s work.

This monograph takes an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to 20th and 21st -century Canadian Daoist poetry, fiction and criticism in comparative, innovative and engaging ways. Of particular interest are the authors' refreshing insights into such holistic and topical issues as the globalization of concepts of the Dao, the Yin/Yang, the Heaven-Earth-Humanity triad, the Four Greats, Five Phases, Non-action, and so on, as expressed in Canadian literature and criticism - which produces Canadian-constructed Daoist poetics, ethics and aesthetics. Readers will come to understand and appreciate the social and ecological significance of, formal innovations, moral sensitivity, aesthetic principles, and ideological complexity in Canadian-Daoist works.

The colonial conquests of the European nation-state and the ascendance of science and technology within European society characterize the modern era. Among those French writers who ventured into the non-European world, Eugène Fromentin, Victor Segalen, André Gide, and Michel Leiris saw how a politics of representation inheres in the literary task of describing the world peoples. In questioning the limits of their worldview and their aesthetic training, as well as the limits of European knowledge, these writers begin to articulate new forms of literary description. In their works, description emerges as a multi-tiered forum of representation in which epistemological and aesthetic thinking conditioned by an ethical principle shapes textual practice. Ethnographic textual production forms the outward limit of what these literary writers consider aesthetic. In their minor tradition, these writers move beyond the picturesque for more ethically minded descriptions of world peoples.

Chapter One: Introduction -- Chapter Two: The spectator's view -- Chapter Three: A true test and a beautiful sight -- Chapter Four: Sport and art: some central points of comparison -- Chapter Five: Defining sport -- Chapter Six: Defining art -- Chapter Seven: Sport has its own world; art inhabits the everyday world -- Chapter Eight: The value of art -- Chapter Nine: The value of sport -- Chapter Ten: Sport, art and the meaning of life.