Contemporary Japanese horror is deeply rooted in the folklore of its culture, with fairy tales-like ghost stories embedded deeply into the social, cultural, and religious fabric. Ever since the emergence of the J-horror phenomenon in the late 1990s with the opening and critical success of films such as Hideo Nakata’s The Ring (Ringu, 1998) or Takashi Miike’s Audition (Ôdishon, 1999), Japanese horror has been a staple of both film studies and Western culture. Scholars and fans alike through...

A comprehensive study of Jewish magic in the late antiquity and the early Islamic period—the phenomenon, the sources, and method for its research, and the history of scholarly investigation into its nature and origin."Magic culture is certainly fascinating. But what is it? What, in fact, are magic writings, magic artifacts?" Originally published in Hebrew in 2010, Jewish Magic Before the Rise of Kabbalah is a comprehensive study of early Jewish magic focus...

In Japan and much of Europe, Ozu is widely considered to be one of the finest film directors who ever lived. While Ozu has a strong reputation in the West, his films are not as well-known or widely appreciated in the U.S. as they are elsewhere. A notable exception to this trend is film critic Roger Ebert, who recently wrote that Ozu is one of his “three or four” favorite directors. Also, moving beyond the view that Tokyo Story is a masterful exception in the Ozu canon, Ebert sees ...

The Native American Higher Education Initiative (NAHEI), a W.W. Kellogg Foundation project, has supported the development and growth of centers of excellence at Tribal Colleges and Universities across the United States. These are centers of new thinking about learning and teaching, modeling alternative forms of educational leadership, and constructing new systems of post-secondary learning at Tribal Colleges and Universities. This book translates the knowledge gained through the NAHEI prog...